Naked Science Forum

On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: Plato on 03/10/2014 18:20:19

Title: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 18:20:19
This is a major bombshell indeed : A real scientific revolution like no other :
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-pruett/toward-a-postmaterialistic-science_b_5842730.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

You can read the actual paper here below :

http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2814%2900116-5/abstract

Full Text :

http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2814%2900116-5/fulltext




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 18:35:56
Materialism must be kicked out of science indeed  without mercy , regret or hesitation :
http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 03/10/2014 18:56:28
Incompetent. We all recognise that what we see around us may not be the whole story - it could be entirely virtual. However, shoving consciousness somewhere else doesn't add anything to an explanation of it at all. You still end up with something somewhere else which defies explanation in the self same way as it does for materialists.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: chiralSPO on 03/10/2014 19:08:50
In this manifesto, under point 7, they claim:

"Most importantly, [quantum mechanics] explicitly introduces the mind into its basic conceptual structure since it was found that particles being observed and the observer--the physicist and the method used --are linked. According to one interpretation of QM, this phenomenon implies that the consciousness of the observer is vital to the existence of the physical events being observed and the mental events can affect the physical world."

I object to this interpretation. As far as I know there is no experiment that explicitly shows the dependence of the physicist's thoughts. That a physical system was prepared in a particular way and that a measurement or interaction took place is sufficient to produce experimental results testing/showing QM effects. Information does not need to be understood by anyone (anything) to be transferred or manipulated. If I set up an experiment to be performed by an automated program, and the data saved, the results would be the same as if I saw them in real time, tomorrow or a year from now. Would the experiment care if I misunderstood the data?

Note, I am open to ideas that don't conform to strict materialism, but this argument doesn't pass much scrutiny.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 19:37:52
In this manifesto, under point 7, they claim:

"Most importantly, [quantum mechanics] explicitly introduces the mind into its basic conceptual structure since it was found that particles being observed and the observer--the physicist and the method used --are linked. According to one interpretation of QM, this phenomenon implies that the consciousness of the observer is vital to the existence of the physical events being observed and the mental events can affect the physical world."

I object to this interpretation. As far as I know there is no experiment that explicitly shows the dependence of the physicist's thoughts. That a physical system was prepared in a particular way and that a measurement or interaction took place is sufficient to produce experimental results testing/showing QM effects. Information does not need to be understood by anyone (anything) to be transferred or manipulated. If I set up an experiment to be performed by an automated program, and the data saved, the results would be the same as if I saw them in real time, tomorrow or a year from now. Would the experiment care if I misunderstood the data?

Note, I am open to ideas that don't conform to strict materialism, but this argument doesn't pass much scrutiny.

Well, sir :
That argument doesn't pass much scrutiny only if you look at it from the materialist perspective , ironically enough .It all starts making sense ,if one would be willing to look at it from a non-materialist perspective thus .
That's what that manifesto is all about in fact : It all makes no sense ,only from the materialist angle .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/10/2014 19:39:55
Materialism must be kicked out of science indeed  without mercy , regret or hesitation :
http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science
I dare say that if we follow this illogical logic, none of the material tests using material devices will serve us as experimental proofs. Such nonsense leaves us with nothing to form any conclusions about our supposed reality. As such, leaving us with nothing to trust but our personal imaginations and opening the door to every crackpot preaching about fairies and extraterrestrials. Utter nonsense!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 19:42:24
Incompetent. We all recognise that what we see around us may not be the whole story - it could be entirely virtual. However, shoving consciousness somewhere else doesn't add anything to an explanation of it at all. You still end up with something somewhere else which defies explanation in the self same way as it does for materialists.

Well, sir :
That manifesto referred to many consciousness studies from the non-materialist "Camp" .You should first try to look at the evidence there , instead of a -priori dismissing it out of hand  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 19:48:26
Materialism must be kicked out of science indeed  without mercy , regret or hesitation :
http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science
I dare say that if we follow this illogical logic, none of the material tests using material devices will serve us as experimental proofs. Such nonsense leaves us with nothing to form any conclusions about our supposed reality. As such, leaving us with nothing to trust but our personal imaginations and opening the door to every crackpot preaching about fairies and extraterrestrials. Utter nonsense!!!!!!!!!!

Well, sir :
If you  carefully read that manifesto, you would notice that it says clearly that the previous scientific advances will not be abandoned of course , needless to say , and that the post-materialistic science admits that reality is made up of both matter and mind : matter-mind in fact .Mind that's irreducible to matter thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 03/10/2014 20:13:00
Materialism must be kicked out of science indeed  without mercy , regret or hesitation :
http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science
I dare say that if we follow this illogical logic, none of the material tests using material devices will serve us as experimental proofs. Such nonsense leaves us with nothing to form any conclusions about our supposed reality. As such, leaving us with nothing to trust but our personal imaginations and opening the door to every crackpot preaching about fairies and extraterrestrials. Utter nonsense!!!!!!!!!!

Well, sir :
If you  carefully read that manifesto, you would notice that it says clearly that the previous scientific advances will not be abandoned of course , needless to say , and that the post-materialistic science admits that reality is made up of both matter and mind : matter-mind in fact .Mind that's irreducible to matter thus .
I could be mistaken but, you remind me of a long absent member here at TNS. He went by the name of DonQuichotte if I remember correctly? Could I "thus" be right dear sir? :
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 20:42:29
Materialism must be kicked out of science indeed  without mercy , regret or hesitation :
http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science
I dare say that if we follow this illogical logic, none of the material tests using material devices will serve us as experimental proofs. Such nonsense leaves us with nothing to form any conclusions about our supposed reality. As such, leaving us with nothing to trust but our personal imaginations and opening the door to every crackpot preaching about fairies and extraterrestrials. Utter nonsense!!!!!!!!!!

Well, sir :
If you  carefully read that manifesto, you would notice that it says clearly that the previous scientific advances will not be abandoned of course , needless to say , and that the post-materialistic science admits that reality is made up of both matter and mind : matter-mind in fact .Mind that's irreducible to matter thus .
I could be mistaken but, you remind me of a long absent member here at TNS. He went by the name of DonQuichotte if I remember correctly? Could I "thus" be right dear sir? :

I don't think so , dear sir .
Anyway , people change all the time , every moment a resurrection .Life gets renewed every moment . I can't  say about myself at least,for example,  that i totally am who i was just a moment ago .But, that's another story thus .
Please , try to read that manifesto carefully and tell me about it .Thanks .
Science will never be the same again after this historic major bombshell , i guess .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 03/10/2014 21:00:25
Incompetent. We all recognise that what we see around us may not be the whole story - it could be entirely virtual. However, shoving consciousness somewhere else doesn't add anything to an explanation of it at all. You still end up with something somewhere else which defies explanation in the self same way as it does for materialists.

Well, sir :
That manifesto referred to many consciousness studies from the non-materialist "Camp" .You should first try to look at the evidence there , instead of a -priori dismissing it out of hand  .

We have gone over all this quackers stuff before on this forum, so I'm not merely dismissing it out of hand. Tell me how you imagine it gets past the problem of how sentience can make itself known to the information system of the brain. http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html (http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html). Until you can do that, all you have to offer is a very long string of quacks.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Plato on 03/10/2014 21:23:28
Incompetent. We all recognise that what we see around us may not be the whole story - it could be entirely virtual. However, shoving consciousness somewhere else doesn't add anything to an explanation of it at all. You still end up with something somewhere else which defies explanation in the self same way as it does for materialists.

Well, sir :
That manifesto referred to many consciousness studies from the non-materialist "Camp" .You should first try to look at the evidence there , instead of a -priori dismissing it out of hand  .

We have gone over all this quackers stuff before on this forum, so I'm not merely dismissing it out of hand. Tell me how you imagine it gets past the problem of how sentience can make itself known to the information system of the brain. http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html (http://www.magicschoolbook.com/consciousness.html). Until you can do that, all you have to offer is a very long string of quacks.

I am just a messenger , sir .
Read that manifesto carefully and the work of those scientists who signed it .Thanks .

Or just see this :

http://opensciences.org/videos/consciousness-studies
I will try to elaborate on that , tomorrow then , i hope .
Thanks, guys , for your interesting replies .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 03/10/2014 23:05:57
More of a fart than a bombshell.

Quote
Quantum mechanics, however, supersedes Newtonian mechanics and undermines the classical assumption of materialism.

Crap. It underpins Newtonian mechanics.

The reason new ideas are accepted is because they make sense. They only make sense if, when projected to the everyday scale, they predict what we actually see. Hence quantum mechanics allows atoms to be stable and finite, and is thus consistent with the fact that a rock is a rock; and relativistic equations approximate to classical mechanics at low speeds whilst explaining a number of observations that are not consistent with a simpler model of the universe.   

The rest of the article seems to drivel on about consciousness without defining it or examining any aspect of what it does, and is therefore irrelevant to science.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 04/10/2014 18:43:22
I am just a messenger , sir .
Read that manifesto carefully and the work of those scientists who signed it .Thanks .

Here's some reading for you to save everyone else from ploughing this well-ploughed field again:-

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.0 (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.0)

A 70 page thread for you sir! Enjoy!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 19:04:15
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg441651#msg441651 date=1412373957]
More of a fart than a bombshell.

Don't over-estimate your capacity of judgment .

Some people said  something similar to or worse than what you uttered here above , regarding what revolutionary scientists came up with .

Quote
Quote
Quantum mechanics, however, supersedes Newtonian mechanics and undermines the classical assumption of materialism.

Crap. It underpins Newtonian mechanics.


See below , and read that manifesto to remember the fact that Newton's physics superseded the previous ones , as QM superseded Newtonian physics ...

Quote
The reason new ideas are accepted is because they make sense. They only make sense if, when projected to the everyday scale, they predict what we actually see. Hence quantum mechanics allows atoms to be stable and finite, and is thus consistent with the fact that a rock is a rock; and relativistic equations approximate to classical mechanics at low speeds whilst explaining a number of observations that are not consistent with a simpler model of the universe. 
 

The reason new ideas or new theories are accepted is because they happen to have more explanatory power than the rest : QM clearly clearly has more explanatory power than the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical determinist Newtonian world view .

Furthermore , Quantum theory has been refuting the Newtonian classical or conventional conception of matter as something like billiard balls that are  solid ,indivisible, inderstructible .

Quote
The rest of the article seems to drivel on about consciousness without defining it or examining any aspect of what it does, and is therefore irrelevant to science.

You haven't even looked at the overwhelming evidence that has been supporting some of the non-materialist theories of consciousness .How can you tell then ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 19:14:41
Quote
author=David Cooper link=topic=52526.msg441674#msg441674 date=1412444602]
I am just a messenger , sir .
Read that manifesto carefully and the work of those scientists who signed it .Thanks .

Here's some reading for you to save everyone else from ploughing this well-ploughed field again:-

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.0 (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=48746.0)

A 70 page thread for you sir! Enjoy!

lol : That link sounds and looks so familiar lol

Mr.David Cooper : consciousness does collapse the wave function without any transfer of energy , so, the conservation of energy law is not violated , not to mention the fact that quantum theory has been showing that the universe is not  causally closed ,as the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view made us believe it was .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 19:18:43
 Read that manifesto carefully, guys .
Use your minds .
Materialist brainwash ,conditioning or indoctrination are very hard to undo , i see .
No wonder , most scientists thought/ think that materialism has been based on empirical evidence lol , as that manifesto says .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 19:21:15
Take at least a look at the following , with an open mind , otherwise the new science will be leaving you behind , soon enough :


http://opensciences.org/videos/consciousness-studies
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 19:25:26
Human Consciousness And The End of Materialism :

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/human-consciousness-and-the-end-of-2jszrulazj6wq-58/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 04/10/2014 20:26:57
Human Consciousness And The End of Materialism :

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/human-consciousness-and-the-end-of-2jszrulazj6wq-58/
Well, well,.......look who's back! Is it Plato or Don.... these days? Doesn't really matter I suppose whether it's Plato or Don...., it's still all crap!!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 04/10/2014 20:30:35
I could be mistaken but, you remind me of a long absent member here at TNS. He went by the name of DonQuichotte if I remember correctly? Could I "thus" be right dear sir? :
I must say fellow members, did I call that one right or not?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 20:41:26
Human Consciousness And The End of Materialism :

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/human-consciousness-and-the-end-of-2jszrulazj6wq-58/
Well, well,.......look who's back! Is it Plato or Don.... these days? Doesn't really matter I suppose whether it's Plato or Don...., it's still all crap!!

lol

You're not welcoming me back , Ethos ? Nevermind .How are you by the way ? Fine, i hope .
Well, when science proved that earth was not flat , many people said : oh, it's crap lol , to mention just that .
You gotta come up with some serious arguments to disprove those non-materialist scientists , so .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 20:43:38
I could be mistaken but, you remind me of a long absent member here at TNS. He went by the name of DonQuichotte if I remember correctly? Could I "thus" be right dear sir? :
I must say fellow members, did I call that one right or not?

You did indeed , but , i made that a lot easier for you ....deliberately .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 04/10/2014 20:49:05

You gotta come up with some serious arguments to disprove those non-materialist scientists , so .
Nonsense,...................it's incumbent upon you to prove your case my friend. And I see no proof. It's all drivel.............................Ethos
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 04/10/2014 20:50:33


You're not welcoming me back , Ethos ? Nevermind .How are you by the way ? Fine, i hope .

BTW, welcome back Don......., it's good to hear from you again. While we disagree on this subject, I admire your dedication and persistence. I will therefore give you credit where credit is due but I will not accept your definition for good science.

All that being said, I must confess I've missed our heated debates. So out of respect for your convictions and your dedication to them, I offer you a sincere "Welcome Back".
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 21:09:01


You're not welcoming me back , Ethos ? Nevermind .How are you by the way ? Fine, i hope .

BTW, welcome back Don......., it's good to hear from you again.

Likewise , man , thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/10/2014 21:11:05
Sir Karl Popper's Science As  Falsification :

 All our knowledge is hypothetical , inluding the scientific one thus , as Karl Popper taught us .
Science itself is not even about the truth , whatever the latter might be indeed .
Watch this Popper's short video about the nature of science , the nature of knowledge or epistemology ... : mind -blowing : a real eye-opener :

You will see the falsehood of materialism reflected on its mirror :
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/10/2014 01:46:48
Hi Don. How have you been? What have you been up to since January? I have all sorts of great books to recommend to you!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Bored chemist on 05/10/2014 12:38:38
OK, so I had a quick look at the "full text" cited in the OP.
The second paragraph says
" Many scientists believe a similar transition is currently required, because the materialistic focus that has dominated science in the modern era cannot account for an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality"
Before we go any further someone needs to demonstrate that really are "many" scientists who believe that.

They will also need to demonstrate that there is "an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality".
As far as I am aware there are precisely zero scientific findings in those fields.
We still don't know what consciousness is and "spirituality" is not a subject open to scientific study (except, perhaps as a subset of psychology- why do people believe stuff for which there's no evidence?)


So the second paragraph of this "manifesto"  is manifestly bogus.
This isn't a bombshell, it's not even a fart; it's just hype.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 05/10/2014 14:07:51

Before we go any further someone needs to demonstrate that really are "many" scientists who believe that.

They will also need to demonstrate that there is "an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality".
As far as I am aware there are precisely zero scientific findings in those fields.
We still don't know what consciousness is and "spirituality" is not a subject open to scientific study (except, perhaps as a subset of psychology- why do people believe stuff for which there's no evidence?)


So the second paragraph of this "manifesto"  is manifestly bogus.
This isn't a bombshell, it's not even a fart; it's just hype.
I agree with your assessment 100% BC, and especially with the observation that; Consciousness and spirituality are difficult if not impossible to define scientifically. Also, I think Don...... needs to supply us with a list of well established scientists that believe this model. I'll bet the list won't be very long indeed.








Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 05/10/2014 16:58:23

You haven't even looked at the overwhelming evidence that has been supporting some of the non-materialist theories of consciousness .How can you tell then ?


Just tell me what it is and what it does, and maybe I'll take an interest in a theory of how it does it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 05/10/2014 17:04:54
Mr.David Cooper : consciousness does collapse the wave function without any transfer of energy , so, the conservation of energy law is not violated , not to mention the fact that quantum theory has been showing that the universe is not  causally closed ,as the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view made us believe it was .

You make it sound as if you're responding to something I said, but I've never discussed conservation of energy anywhere. As for the universe being or not being causally closed, the closest I've come to discussing that is in the distant past when discussing how a remote consciousness outside of the universe would have to interact mechanistically with the content of the universe in order to have any causal input, and that may well happen - we will find out some day when we can see all the detail of what goes on in the brain, but it's out of reach for now. The big problem for you is that there has to be a mechanical coupling between the remote consciousness and the mechanical brain, and that renders the entire process mechanical with part of it merely being outside the universe instead of inside it, which isn't much of a solution to the problem of understanding how sentience can interface with an information system. Everyone gets completely stuck at that point and no amount of voodoo has made this any easier - all it does is add obfuscation and enable people to claim that the explanation is in the added, magical mess, but that's a non-explanation because it completely ignores the crucial interface problem.

Out of interest, are we supposed to believe that you've been lurking and watching this forum all this time without posting to it, or that you're a friend of the OP and were brought back here by him? (That's assuming you aren't the OP, of course.)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 17:41:12
Hi Don. How have you been? What have you been up to since January? I have all sorts of great books to recommend to you!

Hi, lady :
Nice "talking" to you again this way , thank you . How are you doing ? Fine , i hope .
Well, what can i say ? I have been through many great experiences , challenges , read so many mind-blowing books on the subject , done so many things....in such relatively short notice  .I don't know from where to start in fact ?
I can recommend great books to you too , and much more ,from consciousness studies to neuroscience , through cognitive psychology , quantum physics ....all the way to meditation, mindfulness and much more .Tell me , please , about those recommended books  of yours . Thanks .
It feels good to come back to this attractive site , and "talk " to such amazing people such as yourselves  . Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 18:12:11
Quote
author=Bored chemist link=topic=52526.msg441733#msg441733 date=1412509118]
OK, so I had a quick look at the "full text" cited in the OP.
The second paragraph says
" Many scientists believe a similar transition is currently required, because the materialistic focus that has dominated science in the modern era cannot account for an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality"
Before we go any further someone needs to demonstrate that really are "many" scientists who believe that.

Oh, yes , man : You have no idea , not even remotely close thus , needless to add thus : there is an increasing little army of scientists , philosophers ...who are firmly convinced of the urgent need of making science get rid of the materialist outdated dogmatic belief system that's still sutck within the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view , in order for science to progress beyond materialism  , as there has been an overwhelming body of evidence supporting that view of those scientists , philsophers ...
Just take a look at the other links on this thread's opening's article then ....for starters  ....like this one :

http://opensciences.org/videos/consciousness-studies

Quote
They will also need to demonstrate that there is "an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality".
As far as I am aware there are precisely zero scientific findings in those fields.

Check out those links on this thread , don't be lazy .

Check out the publications , videos and more from the link below , to mention just this one : Your ignorance on the subject is no argument, on the contrary  :

http://opensciences.org/videos



Quote
We still don't know what consciousness is and "spirituality" is not a subject open to scientific study (except, perhaps as a subset of psychology- why do people believe stuff for which there's no evidence?)

We still don't know nothing about neither the orign nor nature of consciousness indeed , but , we do know now that consciousness is non-local and non-physical and more .

Spirituality is a "matter " of consciousness and world views ,so , if consciousness can be studied scientifically ,to some extent at least , why not spirituality ?

Cognitive psychology, for example , has been delivering some revolutionary findings concerning human behavior, consciousness and more , and it relies mainly on the non-materialist interpretations of the recent scientific  discoveries at the level of neuroscience + on quantum physics where consciousness plays a central role ...Cognitive psychology that does work (I have been applying it to myself and to my surroundings with relative amazing success ) and is consistent with both quantum physics and neuroscience thus .

Quote
So the second paragraph of this "manifesto"  is manifestly bogus.

Can you elaborate on that , please ? That's no answer , let alone an argument ,you know .

Quote
This isn't a bombshell, it's not even a fart; it's just hype.

Can you elaborate on that , please ? That's no way of addressing the subject matter at hand , let alone that it is a scientific way to do that .

Oh, man : that's a major nuclear lol bombshell , a  major and unprecedented  scientific revolution like no other , you have no idea .

Ignorance is bliss indeed ...



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 18:35:59
Related Issue : Freedom Expelled From Science By The Modern Exclusive Materialist Mainstream Inquisition , and How Darwinism Is More of An Ideology Than A Scientific Theory , And Much More :

Scientists, journalists and others who do dare to challenge the materialist world view or ideology  in science have been persecuted ,excluded as parias or heretics ,  their reputations and careers destroyed or ruined and much more, while science is all about free inquiry  :


How Darwinism is more of an ideology than a scientific theory , how there is absolutely no scientific evidence whasoever for the so-called macro-evolution for which the so-called unguided , blind and random natural selection cannot account , how the natural selection cannot account for DNA information or life information ,and much more ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Bored chemist on 05/10/2014 18:44:45
Quote
author=Bored chemist link=topic=52526.msg441733#msg441733 date=1412509118]
OK, so I had a quick look at the "full text" cited in the OP.
The second paragraph says
" Many scientists believe a similar transition is currently required, because the materialistic focus that has dominated science in the modern era cannot account for an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality"
Before we go any further someone needs to demonstrate that really are "many" scientists who believe that.

Oh, yes , man : You have no idea , not even remotely close thus , needless to add thus : there is an increasing little army of scientists , philosophers ...who are firmly convinced of the urgent need of making science get rid of the materialist outdated dogmatic belief system that's still sutck within the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view , in order for science to progress beyond materialism  , as there has been an overwhelming body of evidence supporting that view of those scientists , philsophers ...
Just take a look at the other links on this thread's opening's article then ....for starters  ....like this one :

http://opensciences.org/videos/consciousness-studies (http://opensciences.org/videos/consciousness-studies)

Quote
They will also need to demonstrate that there is "an ever-increasing body of empirical findings in the domain of consciousness and spirituality".
As far as I am aware there are precisely zero scientific findings in those fields.

Check out those links on this thread , don't be lazy .

Check out the publications , videos and more from the link below , to mention just this one : Your ignorance on the subject is no argument, on the contrary  :

http://opensciences.org/videos (http://opensciences.org/videos)



Quote
We still don't know what consciousness is and "spirituality" is not a subject open to scientific study (except, perhaps as a subset of psychology- why do people believe stuff for which there's no evidence?)

We still don't know nothing about neither the orign nor nature of consciousness indeed , but , we do know now that consciousness is non-local and non-physical and more .

Spirituality is a "matter " of consciousness and world views ,so , if consciousness can be studied scientifically ,to some extent at least , why not spirituality ?

Cognitive psychology, for example , has been delivering some revolutionary findings concerning human behavior, consciousness and more , and it relies mainly on the non-materialist interpretations of the recent scientific  discoveries at the level of neuroscience + on quantum physics where consciousness plays a central role ...Cognitive psychology that does work (I have been applying it to myself and to my surroundings with relative amazing success ) and is consistent with both quantum physics and neuroscience thus .

Quote
So the second paragraph of this "manifesto"  is manifestly bogus.

Can you elaborate on that , please ? That's no answer , let alone an argument ,you know .

Quote
This isn't a bombshell, it's not even a fart; it's just hype.

Can you elaborate on that , please ? That's no way of addressing the subject matter at hand , let alone that it is a scientific way to do that .

Oh, man : that's a major nuclear lol bombshell , a  major and unprecedented  scientific revolution like no other , you have no idea .

Ignorance is bliss indeed ...





You are going to have to do better than pointing me to a web page that tells me about
"Telephone Telepathy with the Nolan Sisters"
as science.
In the mean time
http://xkcd.com/285/ (http://xkcd.com/285/)
re.
"there is an increasing little army of scientists , philosophers ...who are firmly convinced of the urgent need ..."
and
"we do know now that consciousness is non-local and non-physical and more ."


Also, I'm happy to elaborate on my earlier assertions.


First I should clear something up, when I said "the second part of the manifesto is manifestly bogus" it wasn't intended as an argument.
it's plainly a summary of what I had said before.
So, pointing out that it's not a valid argument is a strawman attack.
If you can't do better than logical fallacy to support your ideas, perhaps you should keep them to yourself.
Para 2 is bogus because it has no evidential basis , yet it represents itself as a statement of fact.

This isn't a bombshell because it isn't based in reality.
Even a fart really stinks, and, as such, has more impact in the world.

It's just hype- stuff like "Oh, man : that's a major nuclear lol bombshell"; "[/size] [/size]You have no idea , not even remotely close" and "[/size]there is an increasing little army[/size] "
[/size]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 19:08:59
Quote
author=David Cooper link=topic=52526.msg441742#msg441742 date=1412525094]
Mr.David Cooper : consciousness does collapse the wave function without any transfer of energy , so, the conservation of energy law is not violated , not to mention the fact that quantum theory has been showing that the universe is not  causally closed ,as the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view made us believe it was .

You make it sound as if you're responding to something I said, but I've never discussed conservation of energy anywhere. As for the universe being or not being causally closed, the closest I've come to discussing that is in the distant past when discussing how a remote consciousness outside of the universe would have to interact mechanistically with the content of the universe in order to have any causal input, and that may well happen - we will find out some day when we can see all the detail of what goes on in the brain, but it's out of reach for now. The big problem for you is that there has to be a mechanical coupling between the remote consciousness and the mechanical brain, and that renders the entire process mechanical with part of it merely being outside the universe instead of inside it, which isn't much of a solution to the problem of understanding how sentience can interface with an information system. Everyone gets completely stuck at that point and no amount of voodoo has made this any easier - all it does is add obfuscation and enable people to claim that the explanation is in the added, magical mess, but that's a non-explanation because it completely ignores the crucial interface problem.


For starters : consciousness is neither in the brain nor is it brain activity (That's just a  materialist myth ) , so, neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness , also because the physical brain is just a medium for consciousness, both ways , as a receiver and as a "generator " :

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/human-consciousness-and-the-end-of-2jszrulazj6wq-58/

So, scientists have been "looking" for consciousness in the wrong place (The brain ) , whereas it is placeless , timeless , non-local thus and non-physical + primordial .

Quantum physics , one particular interpretation of quantum theory at least , that of Von Neumann school and others , and that of most quantum theory founders , has been showing that out-of-space-and-time consciousness has a downward causation on "matter" , at the quantum level , since quantum theory has been showing that the universe is NOT causally closed as the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view made us all believe it was ,  without any transfer of energy ....So, there is an upward and downward causation : How consciousness does the latter  ? : See this , even though i am no fan of idealist monism :



Furthermore, the very fact that there are many interpretations of quantum theory , and the very fact that science itself is just a human social activity , and to some extent just a CULTURAL one also (See how the Eurocenric materialist world view has been equated with science , for relatively so long now and counting ) are evidence enough for the fact that our "reality " is observer-DEPENDENT , psycho-physical = consciousness of the observer cannot be separated from the observed "physical reality " , but , that does not mean that the objective or ultimate reality out there is not out there .It is , we just can't reach it through science at least , simply because whenever we look at it or observe it , we turn it into the illusory physical reality . Not to mention the fact that physicists have been talking about  the field the existence of which they can only prove mathematically , not otherwise .The field from which consciousness "chooses " to actualize the particular wave-like eventualities , possibilities , probabilities...from it .


So, you have to abandon the classical outdated and superseded determinist mechanical Newtonian world view , in order to make room for the above, instead of behaving as if quantum theory never existed  .

Quote
Out of interest, are we supposed to believe that you've been lurking and watching this forum all this time without posting to it, or that you're a friend of the OP and were brought back here by him? (That's assuming you aren't the OP, of course.)

 I have never looked back when i left this forum , to be honest . I went back to it for a couple of days afterwards , then , i moved on to explore other horizons and fields , just to come back again to share with you all what i have been stumbling upon so far ,and it is a lot = an understatement .

Who's this OP then by the way ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 19:21:54
Important Note :

Guys : I am here ,as just a messenger , to refer you to the work of the increasing number of all those non-materialist scientists on the subject , that's all .

All you have to do is check out their work , and figure that out for yourselves , either way, or not  .It's entirely up to you then indeed .

No doubt in my mind whatsoever that science will be leaving materialism behind and will be dispelling all that materialist dogmatic belief system at the heart of current science .The latter that's all about dispelling dogmas , falsehood ......It's inevitable .Just a matter of time thus .

It's up to you all to either join the new science or be left behind , because none can stop the progress of science , not even materialists .

So, I am NOT here to "defend " or talk about the work of those non-materialist scientists thus ,also because it would cost me too much time and energy i cannot afford .

Thanks , appreciate indeed .Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 19:31:45
This is time and energy consuming : I should be paid for this lol .
This is way too much for one person to do too , a person that has also other more important duties and other to attend to .
Don't be lazy , guys : I am just a mesenger : check out those provided sources . Make some effort , instead of resorting to silly remarks such as "Oh, this is crap, fart , hype ..." .

Now the following , then i am gone for today  : I have got better things to do , you know :

Is The Universe Just An Elaborate Hologram ? :

I am neither a  fan of the holographic universe notion , nor that i agree with the monistic idealist view of the world , or with the metaphysical conclusions of the narrator at the end of these  5-part holographic universe workshop series , BUT , the science part in them  is relatively SOLID , to some extent at least .Enjoy :


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 05/10/2014 20:32:47
For starters : consciousness is neither in the brain nor is it brain activity (That's just a  materialist myth ) , so, neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness , also because the physical brain is just a medium for consciousness, both ways , as a receiver and as a "generator " :

It doesn't matter whether consciousness is in the brain or not. What matters is that it has to interface with the brain and have a causal involvement in what the brain does, one which also allows the mechanical information system of the brain to access the consciousness side of things in order for the physical animal to speak of consciousness. It is the interfacing that is problematic, not the idea of consciousness itself. It doesn't matter where consciousness resides - all that matters is the big problem which is how it interfaces with the material. A million texts and videos evangelising voodoo which fail to address that problem are a complete irrelevance.

Quote
I have never looked back when i left this forum , to be honest . I went back to it for a couple of days afterwards , then , i moved on to explore other horizons and fields , just to come back again to share with you all what i have been stumbling upon so far ,and it is a lot = an understatement .

So it's just a coincidence that you happened to look in here a day after this subject came up?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Bored chemist on 05/10/2014 20:45:05
Important Note :

Guys : I am here ,as just a messenger , to refer you to the work of the increasing number of all those non-materialist scientists on the subject , that's all .


Please do.
I haven't seen any science yet.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 21:01:50
Quote
author=David Cooper link=topic=52526.msg441763#msg441763 date=1412537567]
For starters : consciousness is neither in the brain nor is it brain activity (That's just a  materialist myth ) , so, neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness , also because the physical brain is just a medium for consciousness, both ways , as a receiver and as a "generator " :

It doesn't matter whether consciousness is in the brain or not. What matters is that it has to interface with the brain and have a causal involvement in what the brain does, one which also allows the mechanical information system of the brain to access the consciousness side of things in order for the physical animal to speak of consciousness. It is the interfacing that is problematic, not the idea of consciousness itself. It doesn't matter where consciousness resides - all that matters is the big problem which is how it interfaces with the material. A million texts and videos evangelising voodoo which fail to address that problem are a complete irrelevance.

Dave, buddy :
I am gonna be quick , all my replies were , due to my tight time-frame .May apologies for any inevitable errors thus .
I think that quantum physics can answer your legetimate above displayed concerns : There is no interface between mind and "matter " :
This simple interpretation of quantum theory does answer your questions :


Von Neumann , for example, to mention just that genius , saw no solution to the measurement problem in quantum physics but to conclude , albeit reluctatntly thus , through rigorous maths , that there must be a process outside of the laws of physics that collapses the wave function .The only plausible candidate is : consciousness of the observer thus .

"Matter " or rather particle's duality : wave/particle explains that , in the sense that consciousness collapses the wave function to actualize the particular wave-like eventualities , possibilities , probabilities ...

So, "matter " exist only when observed .

Quote
Quote
I have never looked back when i left this forum , to be honest . I went back to it for a couple of days afterwards , then , i moved on to explore other horizons and fields , just to come back again to share with you all what i have been stumbling upon so far ,and it is a lot = an understatement .

So it's just a coincidence that you happened to look in here a day after this subject came up?

I am also Plato lol .

Get the hell out of your cave , Dave lol :

Plato was right after all : Our "physical reality " is an illusion :

Watch Plato's cave allegory : here below :



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 05/10/2014 21:09:59
Is The Universe Just An Elaborate Hologram ?


Hologram of what?

Quote
How Darwinism Is More of An Ideology Than A Scientific Theory

Only to those who don't understand science.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/10/2014 21:18:42
Important Note :

Guys : I am here ,as just a messenger , to refer you to the work of the increasing number of all those non-materialist scientists on the subject , that's all .


Please do.
I haven't seen any science yet.

Please do what ? I said i was  just referring you all to the work of all those increasing numbers of non-materialist scientists ...

Before you can pretend to talk about science , sir , you have to know what science IS , and what science is NOT , to know the nature of science thus .

Since the majority of scientists, and many other people ,  have been assuming that materialism has been supported by empirical evidence , or that science and materialism are one and the same thing , then, they do not know what science IS :

Watch this mind-blowing short video on the subject :

Sir Karl Popper's Science as falsification :


All knowledge is hypothetical, once again, including the scientific one , so, even science itself is NOT about the truth , whatever the latter might be indeed :

You will see the faslehood of materialism reflected on the mirror of that video so to speak, ,if you are smart enough though , since materialism seems to be corroborated , confirmed and verified by almost everything ...=That's a weakness , a vice , not a strength .

Materialism is thus hardly falsifiable , but nevertheless false , since all world views or beliefs are all unscientific = unfalsifiable , per definition, but, they are NOT all necessarily false , as materialism certainly IS .

Ciao.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 05/10/2014 21:49:51
Collapsing wave functions doesn't help in the slightest. If there is no interface between mind and matter, brains cannot know of consciousness and mouths cannot speak of it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 05/10/2014 22:27:32
Allow me to inform those of the membership here about Don........ if you haven't dealt with him before.

1. He'll first require us to prove his model wrong while not offering proper scientific evidence himself.

2. He will copy and past reams of material in his effort to recruit new believers without offering credible evidence.

3. And, no matter how much and how often he is asked to provide empirical evidence, he will continue to demand we prove him wrong first.

A few of us have already been thru this debate with him and I suggest that any further attempt to create any proper understanding of the scientific method within him is a useless and fruitless effort.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 06/10/2014 00:06:55
Allow me to inform those of the membership here about Don........
A few of us have already been thru this debate with him and I suggest that any further attempt to create any proper understanding of the scientific method within him is a useless and fruitless effort.
+1 (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=49531.5;wap2)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/10/2014 01:40:10
.

So, "matter " exist only when observed .


By whom?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 16:57:00
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg441779#msg441779 date=1412556010]
.

So, "matter " exist only when observed .

By whom?


By ...Cheryl lol . by the observer of course .



That's the interpretation of quantum theory that was shared by Von Neumann school , by Pauli , Planck and by most quantum theory founders ...

The bottom line here is that materialism that was built upon the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view has been superseded by quantum theory , and must thus be kicked out of science .


For example :

How can materialism explain the following ? ever :

-Consciousness

-The placebo/nocebo effects

- Psychosomatic phenomena in general

-Self-directed neuro-plasticity

- PSI phenomena

-Telepathy

-Remote viewing

- Near death experiences

- The effects of meditation , mindfulness...

- The fact that brain or meditation  training can even alter the normally NOT under our voluntary control vital biological functions via biofeedback .

- The fact that our thoughts and actions can alter our neurophysiology , biology , and even make certain genes switch on or off

- The fact that   our thoughts can boost our immune system ...

- Non-locality or entanglment in qantum physics where particles can infulence each other instantly , even from huge distances ...

To mention just those ....for the time being at least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 17:22:11
Collapsing wave functions doesn't help in the slightest. If there is no interface between mind and matter, brains cannot know of consciousness and mouths cannot speak of it.

That particular interpretation of quantum theory shows, once again, that what we call matter and mind are INSEPARABLE (There is in fact no separate matter and separate mind ) , so, our "reality " is observer-dependent = psycho-physical , which means that matter and mind are interconnected and inseparable + are 1 .

There is no radical separation between matter and mind thus = no mind-body problem .

We can't thus speak of separate matter and separate mind , as we should abandon the materialist assumption that the mind has no causal effects on matter + that the observed "objecttive reality " can be separated from the consciousness of the observer .

That means also that consciousness intervenes actively in the so-called physical reality , also by altering it and more via downward causation , and vice versa .

Even at the "material level " , there are both upward and downward causations: complex structures have downward causations regarding their  simpler or  sub-structures and vice versa .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 17:30:07
Bored Chemist :

See this about how no chemical theory can account for macro-evolution , let alone for biological information , by a prominent chemist, since materialists assumes that psychology is just applied biology , biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics ... :

The materialist version of evolution, for example, is full of fairy tales thus :

Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/995875-prominent-chemist-says-scientists-dont-really-understand-evolution/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 17:42:01
Cheryl :

How can materialism account for this major sort of self-directed neuro-plasticity by this amazing woman who could literally change her brain via mind training , via her informed thoughts and efforts , if the mind has no causal effects on matter brain or body ,as those lunatic materialists wanna make us believe :

Canadian Barbara Arrowsmith Young is a living proof of the falsehood of materialism .


Barbara Arrowsmith Young could "fix " here severe mental disabilities by developing brain or mind training that relied on the work of Russian neurologist Luria's book " The man with a shattered world " , here is her book on the subject :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Woman-who-Changed-Brain-Transformation/dp/0099563584/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412615554&sr=1-1&keywords=the+woman+who+changed+her+brain

She has been helping kids with severe disabilities to overcome them with great success also ,see her work on her website :

http://www.barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com/


See what this Canadian neurologist has to say about materialism and science , about the materialist myths in science regarding the origin and nature of consciousness , about the placebo/ nocebo effects , and much more :



See this also , concerning the capacity of the mind to change the structure and wiring of the brain : challenges the materialist mechanical myth that the brain is hardwired or that brain's anatomy is fixed after the critical period of childhood, or that the brain just deteriorates from that period onward  ....: neuroplasticity : The brain that changes itself :


See the book :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Brain-That-Changes-Itself/dp/0143113100


See how this nobel prize winner for physiology or medicine ,John Eccles, had abandoned the materialist myths in science , thanks mainly to Karl Popper who co-authored this book  with Eccles  :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Self-Its-Brain-Interactionism/dp/0415058988


See how thoughts , mind training , meditation and mindfulness can make people get rid of their negative "deceptive brain messages " (Cognitive psychology or therapy WITHOUT any medicines involved " WITHOUT any side effects whatsoever , ever  thus  ",  or in combination with them  for severly mentally ill patients  , ....  that relies on the work of physicist Henry P.Stapp 's Zeno effect , and Hebb's law, and on the non-materialist interpretations of neuroscience  :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Are-Not-Your-Brain/dp/1583334831/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412615471&sr=1-1&keywords=you+are+not+your+brain


I have a lot for you in store , great books and more i have been reading and storing in my database .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 06/10/2014 17:51:55
Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

which, as with every other subject, is why we study it. Intellectual humility is what distinguishes us from priests, politicians and philosophers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 18:15:26
Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

which, as with every other subject, is why we study it. Intellectual humility is what distinguishes us from priests, politicians and philosophers.

Read that article first .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 06/10/2014 18:19:14
I don't need to read an article if the headline is selfevidently true. And I don't want to read an article if the headline is of no importance.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 06/10/2014 18:19:47
There is no radical separation between matter and mind thus = no mind-body problem .

We can't thus speak of separate matter and separate mind , as we should abandon the materialist assumption that the mind has no causal effects on matter + that the observed "objecttive reality " can be separated from the consciousness of the observer .

That means also that consciousness intervenes actively in the so-called physical reality , also by altering it and more via downward causation , and vice versa .

Even at the "material level " , there are both upward and downward causations: complex structures have downward causations regarding their  simpler or  sub-structures and vice versa .

It's all very well saying that there's no division between the two, but unless you can spell out the mechanism by which sentience can announce its existence to an information system (whether it's separate from it or part of it), you do not understand the issue. If you can spell it out, then you've got a bombshell, and it'll be a better bombshell than the one you think you have.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 18:30:00
Cheryl : Follow up :

I have a lots of material on the subject you hardly can handle , all of you put together , no false pretentions or arrogance :

See this also : How the mind or thoughts and beliefs that shape them can alter our biology , immune system, DNA and much more :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciousness/dp/1401923127



This famous psychology test , and the related great book show how our human perception or attention focus are  so deceptive , selective  and more : (Materialists have been missing the GORILLA in the room ,thanks to their materialist false belief that shapes their consciousness, big time )  :


http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412617620&sr=1-1&keywords=the+invisible+gorilla+and+other+ways+our+intuitions+deceive+us




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 18:43:40
There is no radical separation between matter and mind thus = no mind-body problem .

We can't thus speak of separate matter and separate mind , as we should abandon the materialist assumption that the mind has no causal effects on matter + that the observed "objecttive reality " can be separated from the consciousness of the observer .

That means also that consciousness intervenes actively in the so-called physical reality , also by altering it and more via downward causation , and vice versa .

Even at the "material level " , there are both upward and downward causations: complex structures have downward causations regarding their  simpler or  sub-structures and vice versa .

It's all very well saying that there's no division between the two, but unless you can spell out the mechanism by which sentience can announce its existence to an information system (whether it's separate from it or part of it), you do not understand the issue. If you can spell it out, then you've got a bombshell, and it'll be a better bombshell than the one you think you have.

Dave, Dave :

Prior note :

Quantum theory shows that what we call matter and mind are inseparable .

First : The bottom line is :

There is an overwhelming body of evidence that has been sending all those materialist myths , including those concerning the origin, function and nature of consciousness, to the land of the wizard of Oz , or to Alice's wonderland where they belong .

Second :

There is also an overwhelming body of evidence that has been proving that the mind does have fundamental causal effects on matter brain and  body ,the mind that can change even our biology , brain wiring , DNA expression, boost the immune system and much more just via thoughts and training ...that we even can have control and change our biological vital functions which are NOT under our control normally ...that beliefs can heal the body or damage it or even kill it : see the placebo /Nocebo effects , for example .

and much more : see my latest posts to Cheryl    here above .

Third : We still do not know how exactly how mind and body interact with each other , if interaction is the right expression of that , since mind and matter are inseparable = 1 .

I think that consciousness has been underlying "matter " and the laws of physics , not the other way around .

That's all i can say right now , i have to go .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 19:04:34
I don't need to read an article if the headline is selfevidently true. And I don't want to read an article if the headline is of no importance.

Read that article , lazy man , and read what i said above on the subject as well .

See the scientific challenges to the materialist version of evolution and to the materialist version of the origin of life : to mention just these ones :

Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism :

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0684834936

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Doubt-Explosive-Origin-Intelligent/dp/0062071483/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412619709&sr=1-1&keywords=darwin%27s+doubt+stephen+meyer


http://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design/dp/0061472794/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412619759&sr=1-1&keywords=signature+in+the+cell
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 06/10/2014 20:20:11
Don,

If you had something new to say, you'd be able to link to one single place where the revelation resides and we could all go there and see the mechanism laid bare as to how consciousness fits into the model. Instead of that, you're playing your usual game of bombarding people with useless reading and viewing which will only waste their time. We'll, like last time, you've had enough of my time already, so now I'm out. If other people want to help you rack up another 70 pages, that's up to them.

Ciao baby!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: chiralSPO on 06/10/2014 20:47:55
Science is all about models. As far as I know we cannot prove that something is actually true or false, but we can propose models that allow us to make testable predictions.

I choose to model my brain as a computer, and my mind as several programs running simultaneously on that computer. The fact that the programs can physically alter both the dynamic and static properties of the computer is not surprising. A computer reads and writes data all the time (and this is physically observable, measurable, and very understandable/interpretable).

Are the programs material? In a very round about way, yes. I don't entirely understand the physics of coding, but there is a physical computer, a machine language, and other languages built on it. Is there any predictive power in choosing a model in which the programs are not material? I can't think of any at the moment, but perhaps there is.

Is it surprising that neuroplasticity is observable and measurable? Not to me. We know that people can physically change their brains as they learn new facts, acquire new skills, or just practice the same thing over and over and over. That the mind is not measurable other than through the action of the brain does not necessarily mean that the mind itself is not material, and more than a program could be considered material. We can see how the material world affects the mind (various drugs, brain damage, electrical impulses) and we can see how the mind affects the material world (neuroplasticity, people's actions [I will NOT count anything about the "observer effect" here until someone shows me some solid experimental results demonstrating this]) Given that the mind and material world interact with each other, I see no reason not to think that therefore the mind is material in essence.

What insight do we gain by using models in which the mind is not material?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 20:56:54
Don,

If you had something new to say, you'd be able to link to one single place where the revelation resides and we could all go there and see the mechanism laid bare as to how consciousness fits into the model. Instead of that, you're playing your usual game of bombarding people with useless reading and viewing which will only waste their time. We'll, like last time, you've had enough of my time already, so now I'm out. If other people want to help you rack up another 70 pages, that's up to them.

Ciao baby!

(I started this thread by sending you or referring you all to 1 particular site mainly , didn't i , Dave ? )

No , you just want something that would fit into and confirm your own world view on the subject , that's all.That's why you have been insisting on seeing it all through your interface and mechanical world view  .

The manifesto of this thread should have given you enough clues to start with,so  .

Not to mention that i am not a magician lol or a dogmatic deluded fool  like materialists are ,who would woud be able to show you consciousness' nature , function and origin emerging from some sort of a hat lol

Hallooooo : we're talking here about the most hard problem ever : consciousness ....The materialist theory of consciousness is certainly false , and there is overwhelming evidence for what consciousness can do ....See above .

See what i said above on the subject in my previous posts .

Bye , Dave .Just go back to chasing a mirage .Good luck .

The new science is already born , and it does not need either your approval or attention . Ciao. Nice "talking " to you again . Your predictable  thought and thus behavior  patterns make no room for what the new science is all about , unless you try to change them .And yes, you can . Take care . Life is 2 short , enjoy it .Best wishes.Cheers.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2014 21:25:27
Science is all about models. As far as I know we cannot prove that something is actually true or false, but we can propose models that allow us to make testable predictions.

I choose to model my brain as a computer, and my mind as several programs running simultaneously on that computer. The fact that the programs can physically alter both the dynamic and static properties of the computer is not surprising. A computer reads and writes data all the time (and this is physically observable, measurable, and very understandable/interpretable).

Are the programs material? In a very round about way, yes. I don't entirely understand the physics of coding, but there is a physical computer, a machine language, and other languages built on it. Is there any predictive power in choosing a model in which the programs are not material? I can't think of any at the moment, but perhaps there is.

Is it surprising that neuroplasticity is observable and measurable? Not to me. We know that people can physically change their brains as they learn new facts, acquire new skills, or just practice the same thing over and over and over. That the mind is not measurable other than through the action of the brain does not necessarily mean that the mind itself is not material, and more than a program could be considered material. We can see how the material world affects the mind (various drugs, brain damage, electrical impulses) and we can see how the mind affects the material world (neuroplasticity, people's actions [I will NOT count anything about the "observer effect" here until someone shows me some solid experimental results demonstrating this]) Given that the mind and material world interact with each other, I see no reason not to think that therefore the mind is material in essence.

What insight do we gain by using models in which the mind is not material?

See the above displayed video of Karl Popper on the nature of science .The latter is not about the truth indeed , as we can never prove any theory , model or knowledge to be " true " , ever , no matter how many amounts of unsuccesful falsifications they might pass successfully, because it would have to take only one  single successful faslifiaction to make them irreversibly false  = all knowledge remains hypothetical untill other knowledge or theories , models with more explanatory power than the rest are discovered or invented , found ...

The mechanical materialist theory of nature is certainly false , partly because it cannot account for consciousness , to mention just that , and there is a non-materialist theory of consciousness with more explanatory power that's been supported by an overwhelming body of evidence , so, why should scientists be so irrational illogical , DOGMATIC ( Science is all about dispelling dogmas .Science is not a dogmatic ideology or religion as the current materialist science most certainly IS )  , and unscientific as to stick to the fomer instead of to the latter , according to you ? That's how science works and progresses : successfully faslified theories, knowledge , models must be abandoned and replaced by those that have more explanatory power through evidence and other : see the history of science then .

Scientists should follow the evidence wherever it might take them or lead them to ,and modify their models accordignly , not the other way around ,  instead of confining science within a particular world view : determinist mechanical materialism in this case that's still stuck within the classical Newtonian world view .The latter that's been superseded by quantum theory .

And no , the computer or  machine metaphors regarding life are not models , since  they are consequences of the false mechanical materialist world view , and since models should be scientific .

What's so scientific about the mechanical materialist world view then ? Nothing = zero .

And yes, we can observe , measure , scan , see, test , predict  ...neuro-plasticity at work , but what or who triggered it then ? The brain itself ?, since the mind is in the brain lol or just brain activity , according to the false materialist theory of consciousness ? That's a materialist mechanical false theory of consciousness, NOT a model of consciousness : can you see the difference ?

Did you at least read that manifesto ? or did u take a look at what those non-materialist scientists have been saying or at the overwhelming evidence they have been gleaning , accumulating and gathering ...? Of course not .

Why write a long hollow talk without looking at the evidence that has been delivered by the non-materialist scientists then ? Why stick to an unscientific and false "model" : that of mechanical comupter-like materialism ?

You gottta be a fool , an ignorant or a deluded DOGMATIC materialist to do that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 06/10/2014 22:17:12
We'll, like last time, you've had enough of my time already, so now I'm out. If other people want to help you rack up another 70 pages, that's up to them.

Ciao baby!
My time is also limited and wasting it rehashing this tiresome subject with someone as intransigent as Don..... is something I wish not to pursue. Reminds me of a sign I once saw at the Zoo, the written instructions about not feeding the animals? This discussion is one I personally wish not to feed any longer!

This discussion will most likely end the same way it did the last time. With no resolution, nonsense piled upon more nonsense, and outrageous amounts of bandwidth wasted. I like David am not up to it again so I will also bow out. If Don...... is fortunate enough to find someone here gullible enough to offer support to this crackpot scheme, let them revel in it together. But it is not based upon the good scientific method and holds little prospect of ever being such.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 07/10/2014 00:32:00

Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism :


Theories are ten a penny. Where's the proof? What is the consequence? Who cares?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2014 01:43:19
Cheryl : Follow up :

I have a lots of material on the subject you hardly can handle , all of you put together , no false pretentions or arrogance :

See this also : How the mind or thoughts and beliefs that shape them can alter our biology , immune system, DNA and much more :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciousness/dp/1401923127



This famous psychology test , and the related great book show how our human perception or attention focus are  so deceptive , selective  and more : (Materialists have been missing the GORILLA in the room ,thanks to their materialist false belief that shapes their consciousness, big time )  :


http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412617620&sr=1-1&keywords=the+invisible+gorilla+and+other+ways+our+intuitions+deceive+us






I'm fully aware that mental ie brain activity has physiological effects on the rest of the body, but it can also be explained, better explained in fact, by conventional neuroscience than by the dualist model, which as Dave keeps pointing out to you requires a kind of interface between the immaterial and the material.

And by the way, there are lots of examples of macro-evolution. Do you need some?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2014 03:01:58
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg441779#msg441779 date=1412556010]
.

So, "matter " exist only when observed .

By whom?


By ...Cheryl lol . by the observer of course .





Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg441779#msg441779 date=1412556010]
.

So, "matter " exist only when observed .

By whom?


By ...Cheryl lol . by the observer of course .





Does the observer have to be human? Did matter not exist before sentient life?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/10/2014 04:10:57
At anyrate, Thursday I am having surgery for a sigmoid resection under general anesthetic, and I will let you all know if my non local consciousness has any zany adventures has while my brain is temporarily off line.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/10/2014 13:34:07
At anyrate, Thursday I am having surgery for a sigmoid resection under general anesthetic, and I will let you all know if my non local consciousness has any zany adventures has while my brain is temporarily off line.
I'll be wishing you all the best Cheryl. Hopefully, this procedure will be completely successful and we can have your pleasant personality back with us very soon here at TNS. Good luck my friend............................Ethos
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Bored chemist on 07/10/2014 20:37:55
Bored Chemist :

See this about how no chemical theory can account for macro-evolution , let alone for biological information , by a prominent chemist, since materialists assumes that psychology is just applied biology , biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics ... :

The materialist version of evolution, for example, is full of fairy tales thus :

Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/995875-prominent-chemist-says-scientists-dont-really-understand-evolution/

I had a brief look and what the article actually says is
A member of the "intelligent design" conspiracy says that he doesn't understand evolution - which is no shock because he's not a biologist, and he says that some other people- whom he doesn't name, also don't understand it.


Given that nobody fully understands it, the ignorance of a chemist and a few of his friends is utterly meaningless.


And, re.
"Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : "
Nope.
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/10/2014 03:52:56
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial

I think it's creationism minus the crazy Ark story.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 17:25:24
Bored Chemist :

See this about how no chemical theory can account for macro-evolution , let alone for biological information , by a prominent chemist, since materialists assumes that psychology is just applied biology , biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics ... :

The materialist version of evolution, for example, is full of fairy tales thus :

Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/995875-prominent-chemist-says-scientists-dont-really-understand-evolution/

I had a brief look and what the article actually says is
A member of the "intelligent design" conspiracy says that he doesn't understand evolution - which is no shock because he's not a biologist, and he says that some other people- whom he doesn't name, also don't understand it.


Given that nobody fully understands it, the ignorance of a chemist and a few of his friends is utterly meaningless.


And, re.
"Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : "
Nope.
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial

What are you talking about ? The man is a prominent chemist who should know what he's talking about , and he's no proponent of ID .

For your information : no chemical theory can account for either macro-evolution nor for the origin of life , let alone for biological or life information .
That's a fact you should know , a fact known to all chemists , biologists ...


And yes, ID is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : read those books i mentioned above on the subject , instead of relying on wikipedia .You're confusing creationism with ID , so, since when are courts the place where scientific theories are settled ? lol

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 17:29:13
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial

I think it's creationism minus the crazy Ark story.

You just went along with the ignorant guy above .Congratulations .
ID is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism , see above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 17:40:48
At anyrate, Thursday I am having surgery for a sigmoid resection under general anesthetic, and I will let you all know if my non local consciousness has any zany adventures has while my brain is temporarily off line.

Wow , Cheryl . My heart goes to you and to your beloved ones in that regard ,I wish you a good successful surgery and recovery .
Your health is more important than what you can tell us about your experience under anesthetic .Best wishes, lady . Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 17:58:04
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg441854#msg441854 date=1412642599]
Cheryl : Follow up :

I have a lots of material on the subject you hardly can handle , all of you put together , no false pretentions or arrogance :

See this also : How the mind or thoughts and beliefs that shape them can alter our biology , immune system, DNA and much more :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Biology-Belief-Unleashing-Consciousness/dp/1401923127



This famous psychology test , and the related great book show how our human perception or attention focus are  so deceptive , selective  and more : (Materialists have been missing the GORILLA in the room ,thanks to their materialist false belief that shapes their consciousness, big time )  :


http://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Gorilla-How-Intuitions-Deceive/dp/0307459667/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412617620&sr=1-1&keywords=the+invisible+gorilla+and+other+ways+our+intuitions+deceive+us






Quote
I'm fully aware that mental ie brain activity has physiological effects on the rest of the body, but it can also be explained, better explained in fact, by conventional neuroscience than by the dualist model, which as Dave keeps pointing out to you requires a kind of interface between the immaterial and the material.

Neither you nor Dave understand what's at stake here , mainly the fact that the materialist theory of nature and all its extensions , including the materialist theory of consciousness have been proven false through an overwhelming body of evidence , but , you keep sticking to them , like all materialists do : that 's dogmatism in science , while the latter is no dogmatic ideology like the current materialist science certainly is , that's why that manifesto saw the light ......

Neuroscience can be interpreted non-materialistically too , and with better explanatory power at that than the false materialist theory of consciousness .

And who talked about any dualism either ? I said : there is no separate matter  or separate mind as such , only matter-mind that are inseparable as quantum theory shows , or as one particular interpretation of the latter shows .

Quote
And by the way, there are lots of examples of macro-evolution. Do you need some?


Keep deluding yourself : there is no scientific evidence for macro-evolution , just materialist fairy tales speculations , simply because no chemical theory to date can account for that .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 18:05:08
Bored Chemist , Cheryl :

See how non-materialist scientists who dare to challenge Darwinism have been persecuted , excluded , their reputations and careers ruined by the mainstream materialist inquisition , while science is all about free inquiry : freedom of thought expelled from science thus .

ID is a scientific theory , no creationism , i can tell , because i studied it .I was against it once untill i saw their arguments and evidence :


Listen to the arguments of Stephen Meyer who wrote signature in the cell, Darwin's doubt and more :


Listen to those of Michael Behe who wrote Darwin's black box :


If you don't want to read their books, or have no time for that , watch their videos on the subject on youtube then , instead of swallowing the mainstream materialist distorted dogmatic version of events , without question .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: David Cooper on 08/10/2014 18:24:01
Just to clear something up, I am not a materialist. It doesn't matter to me what stuff is made or not made of because what actually matters is mechanism. A denial of the material is a complete non-issue as it doesn't address the mechanism of how sentience (and consciousness as a whole) interacts with an information system which is clearly a key part of the system and which is manifestly mechanistic. If you can't explain the interface, you're just howling in the wind.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/10/2014 18:41:29

ID is a scientific theory


What does it predict? How does it explain the everyday observation of evolution? In order to be scientific, it must make accurate predictions and explain all the data we already have. If not, it's just waffle.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 20:59:32

ID is a scientific theory


What does it predict? How does it explain the everyday observation of evolution? In order to be scientific, it must make accurate predictions and explain all the data we already have. If not, it's just waffle.

There is just micro-evolution or rather adaptation within species , no macro-evolution for which there is absolutely no scientific evidence ."Evolution "  must be replaced by adaptation ...within species , that is . watch those videos here above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/10/2014 21:27:06
Just to clear something up, I am not a materialist. It doesn't matter to me what stuff is made or not made of because what actually matters is mechanism. A denial of the material is a complete non-issue as it doesn't address the mechanism of how sentience (and consciousness as a whole) interacts with an information system which is clearly a key part of the system and which is manifestly mechanistic. If you can't explain the interface, you're just howling in the wind.

If i could explain how consciousness "interacts " with "matter ", i would have been the greatest genius of all times lol , don't you think ? .

Our current science or the level of our current human   scientific "progress" are simply still too primitive to account for that  ( Not to mention that current science has been materialist = has been based on the false materialist conception of nature or world view, philosophy, ideology ...) , or as Einstein used to say , or in similar words to that same effect at least : we forgot or lost our ability to  connect ourselves to our inner light that makes current science look like child's play  . Einstein who even admitted that  all his  scientific discoveries could not be made  without that inner light he talked about .

Imagine what we can achieve if we would use the limitless potential of our  human  inner light , since our "reality " is psycho-physical ,as Von Neumann school and others + Most quantum theory founders showed.
 
What you don't understand is that no physical reality or matter can exist without consciousness = "matter " exists only when observed , so, consciousness precedes the existence of "matter " .That means that "matter " and consciousness are inseparable .............In fact : our illusory physical reality is the LOWEST level of reality .

Finally : IF you are neither a materialist nor a non-materialist , who are you then ? and how can the nature of reality or what is it made up of not matter to you , since the nature of reality is inseparable of the nature of life and of the nature of consciousness, not to mention that it is inseparable of the origin of life , "evolution " of life .... .

For example, a materialist cannot but assume that consciousness is material , NOT because it is , but , simply because materialism allows ONLY that assumption regarding the nature of everything , including consciousness .

A materialist would also seek ONLY a "natural " or a material process behind the origin of life , "evolution" of life ............behind everything thus , since materialism assumes that everything is matter , including the mind thus .

But , a non-materialist would think otherwise ,so .

In short :

Science should be based on the 'correct " theory of nature of the moment , that which has more explanatory power than the rest : the non-materialist theory of nature in this case that has more explanatory power than the false materialist theory of nature .The latter that has been proven to be false through an overwhelming body of evidence .

Only evidence should show the way to scientists thus , wherever evidence might take them , not dogmatic world views .

Non-materialist scientists thus adopt the non-materialist world view ONLY because the scientific evidence points that way , unlike materialists thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/10/2014 23:47:38
If things were indeed intelligently designed, they would be optimal. Thus adaptation within a species would be unnecessary and the variability of genetics, which produces a very few successful evolutes and an awful lot of painful deformities and deficiencies, would have been eliminated.

You might make a weak case for design, or at least a series of discarded prototypes, but there is no evidence for a guiding intelligence. Life, at least on this planet,  is either an inevitable consequence of the geometries of the p orbital and the hydrogen bond, or the plaything of a sadistic deity. The first statement meets Occam's criterion, and is explanatory.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2014 02:41:59

Keep deluding yourself : there is no scientific evidence for macro-evolution , just materialist fairy tales speculations , simply because no chemical theory to date can account for that .



Of course there's evidence of macro evolution.

Micro- evolution is a term that has been co-opted by creationists because even they can't deny that there are obvious observable changes that can be selected for in animal breeding.  They're pretty much forced into making that concession, but dig in their heels claiming there's no macro-evolution - one species cannot become another, a dinosaur cannot evolve into a bird.

Creationists have a tendency to move the species line when it suits them, on the one hand claiming that the identity and separation between species is fixed and unchanging, and there are no "links" But when you try to point out the links - examples of different, but closely related species that can still sometimes reproduce (dog-wolf, dog-jackal) although usually with lower fertility, suddenly the species line is moved to include them as well - "they're all really just different kinds of dogs."

Never the less, there are plenty examples of observable artificially or experimentally induced speciation - with Drosophilia flies, in  fish breeding, and in plants. A selective force is applied until the progeny are morphologically different and are no longer able to reproduce, either naturally or artificially, with the parent stock.

There are also examples of speciation occurring in nature as well  - not just in the fossil record but in recent times. One of my favorite examples:
The February, 1989 issue of Scientific American ("A Breed Apart.") describes a fruit fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, that was a parasite of the hawthorn tree and its fruit (commonly called the thorn apple.) About 150 years ago, some of these flies began infesting apple trees, as well. The species split into two groups that feed and breed on either apples or thorn apples, but not both. This is an interesting case because the changes in the two groups are related to their different food choice – their development, maturity, and mating becoming synchronized with the different ripening time of one fruit or the other, causing the two groups to become both developmentally and genetically different, and sexually incompatible with one another, despite sharing the same general geographical region.

What is it about the process of speciation that you think needs supernatural help, Don? Why do you think it requires a designer?


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/10/2014 02:52:59

In short :
The non-materialist theory of nature in this case that has more explanatory power than the false materialist theory of nature.....

Only evidence should show the way to scientists thus....


That's exactly what people have been asking you to provide for more than a year now - examples of the explanatory power of your theory, instead of merely attacking the one you don't agree with it. Evidence for your theory, instead of simply complaining that another one doesn't explain things "fully."

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2014 18:08:47
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg441968#msg441968 date=1412819579]

In short :
The non-materialist theory of nature in this case that has more explanatory power than the false materialist theory of nature.....

Only evidence should show the way to scientists thus....


That's exactly what people have been asking you to provide for more than a year now - examples of the explanatory power of your theory, instead of merely attacking the one you don't agree with it. Evidence for your theory, instead of simply complaining that another one doesn't explain things "fully."

(You were supposed to undergo a surgery today .Is everything ok ? , or will you have to go through that surgery ,later on ? Best wishes , either way .)

Well, first of all : the materialist theory of nature ,together with all its extensions , including the materialist theory of consciousness  , is  certainly false ,and has been proven to be false by an overwhelming body of evidence , once again .

So, i have been against it , NOT because i do not agree with it or because i don't like it .I have been against it , ONLY because it is false and has been proven to be false ,while the mainstream materialist scientific community has been so dogmatic as to ignore all that evidence and facts against materialism .

Second : this thread is all about that and more : about refuting materialism , and also about proving the fact that non-materialist theories of consciousness and nature do have more explanatory power than the materialist ones .

The former has been presenting an overwhelming body of evidence that can explain many 'anomalies " such as psi phenomena , including telepathy , remote viewing , near death experiences , the placebo/nocebo effects , and the rest .Materialism can clearly not explain all that , NOT today and not tomorrow , no matter how promissory materialism would say on the subject , simply because materialism is incompatible with psi phenomena and the rest .

I have even been referring you all to the site of the manifesto for a post-materialistic science where you can check all that out .

But , you have been all lazy enough as not to do that .

It has been proven scientifically that consciousness is a non-physical and non-local process , and that the brain is just a medium for consciousness, both ways .The brain that just limits or  filters consciousness or just confines it within the physical reality sometimes ...that's why some drugs ,brain damage , mental illness, ...can either shut down, so to speak, reduce or expand the scope of consciousness , for example .

The limiting capacity of the brain regarding the scope of consciousness explains why consciousness seems to be altered , reduced or gone ,after brain damage .....

It has been proven scientifically that consciousness can survive death , can exist without the brain when the latter is shut down under coma ...and more .

Not to mention that non-materialist theories of nature and consciousness are consistent with quantum theory and with the recent discoveries at the level of neuroscience .

If you want some detailed display of the related experiments , data, results ...on the subject , i would be glad to display them here in great  detail .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2014 18:45:25

Keep deluding yourself : there is no scientific evidence for macro-evolution , just materialist fairy tales speculations , simply because no chemical theory to date can account for that .



Of course there's evidence of macro evolution.

Micro- evolution is a term that has been co-opted by creationists because even they can't deny that there are obvious observable changes that can be selected for in animal breeding.  They're pretty much forced into making that concession, but dig in their heels claiming there's no macro-evolution - one species cannot become another, a dinosaur cannot evolve into a bird.

Creationists have a tendency to move the species line when it suits them, on the one hand claiming that the identity and separation between species is fixed and unchanging, and there are no "links" But when you try to point out the links - examples of different, but closely related species that can still sometimes reproduce (dog-wolf, dog-jackal) although usually with lower fertility, suddenly the species line is moved to include them as well - "they're all really just different kinds of dogs."

Never the less, there are plenty examples of observable artificially or experimentally induced speciation - with Drosophilia flies, in  fish breeding, and in plants. A selective force is applied until the progeny are morphologically different and are no longer able to reproduce, either naturally or artificially, with the parent stock.

There are also examples of speciation occurring in nature as well  - not just in the fossil record but in recent times. One of my favorite examples:
The February, 1989 issue of Scientific American ("A Breed Apart.") describes a fruit fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, that was a parasite of the hawthorn tree and its fruit (commonly called the thorn apple.) About 150 years ago, some of these flies began infesting apple trees, as well. The species split into two groups that feed and breed on either apples or thorn apples, but not both. This is an interesting case because the changes in the two groups are related to their different food choice – their development, maturity, and mating becoming synchronized with the different ripening time of one fruit or the other, causing the two groups to become both developmentally and genetically different, and sexually incompatible with one another, despite sharing the same general geographical region.

What is it about the process of speciation that you think needs supernatural help, Don? Why do you think it requires a designer?

Well :

"Evolution " or rather adaptation occurs only within species : "micro-evolution" or rather micro-adaptation .

There is absolutely no scientific evidence for HOW the so-called macro-evolution occurs : no chemical theory to date can account for that , or ever .

I am not talking about any supernatural intervention here .

I am saying :  HOW the so-called macro-evolution occurs ?: that's been "explained " only by materialist fairy tales speculations, while relying on resemblances , similarities and common features of certain species, in essence in the same way the materialist theory of consciousness 'explains " consciousness .....via inexplicable magic thus   .

I am talking just about the fact that the appearance of design in nature , not to mention the origin of biological ,DNA or life  information , cannot be accounted for by Darwinism through natural selection .


Regarding the origin of life that's inseparable of the nature of life and of the origin of life information : There has to be life first for the "unguided almighty blind and random " natural selection to do its 'work, not to mention that the highly unlikely lottery of that unguided natural selection cannot account for the complexity and diversity  of life on earth  : do the maths to see how likely it might be for the natural selection to account for that .

Darwin himself admitted that there was an appearance of design in nature , and that he could not refute that .His theory of evolution through the unguided blind random natural selection replaced the appearance of design by yet another form of design, the materialist one ,that is  : the unguided blind random selection that cannot account really for all the complexity and diversity of life on this planet ,since no chemical theory to date can account for that .

Darwin himself was puzzled by the Cambrian explosion where species appeared suddenly, and where the fossil evidence contradicted his theory   : a fact Darwin could not explain ,  none can through natural selection .

Darwin has even sent a copy of his "On the origin of species " to a famous naturalist on the subject who responded by saying that Darwinism could not  account for the Cambrian explosion, for example  .

Otherwise , try to explain to me how macro-evolution occurs through natural selection then , chemically ,that is ,since reductionist materialism assumes that biology is just applied chemistry .

Darwinism can also not account for DNA or biological information that's necessary for "evolution " ..............

Even prominent chemists , biologists admit that they do not see how the so-called macro-evolution can take place . They can't identify any chemical or biological process that can account for that , NOT because they cannot do that today , but , because no chemical theory can ever account for all that complexity and diversity of life .

Even chance has been ruled out from 'evolution " .

So, how can that lottery of the unguided blind random natural selection give rise to all that complexity and diversity of life then ? Darwin should have studied maths lol, or just probability , before uttering such non-sense .

Later more ...


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/10/2014 19:06:24
If things were indeed intelligently designed, they would be optimal. Thus adaptation within a species would be unnecessary and the variability of genetics, which produces a very few successful evolutes and an awful lot of painful deformities and deficiencies, would have been eliminated.

You might make a weak case for design, or at least a series of discarded prototypes, but there is no evidence for a guiding intelligence. Life, at least on this planet,  is either an inevitable consequence of the geometries of the p orbital and the hydrogen bond, or the plaything of a sadistic deity. The first statement meets Occam's criterion, and is explanatory.

Ockham's razor would agree with the idea of design behind life information instead , as well as behind the rich diversity and complexity of life .

Design that has nothing to do with creationism though .

How can any chemical , biological or material process account for life information then ? , let alone for the complexity and diversity of life on earth , through some highly unlikely , mathematically impossible, unguided blind random natural selection ?

Your your mind, scientist .

Many chemists , biologists and other prominent scientists admit the fact that they have no clue regarding how the so-called macro-evolution can occur that way ... Not because they don't know that NOW , but because no material biological or chemical process can ever account for that through the highly unlikely lottery of the unguided blind random natural selection .

Materialist science is full of fairy tales thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Bored chemist on 09/10/2014 21:02:51
Bored Chemist :

See this about how no chemical theory can account for macro-evolution , let alone for biological information , by a prominent chemist, since materialists assumes that psychology is just applied biology , biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics ... :

The materialist version of evolution, for example, is full of fairy tales thus :

Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/995875-prominent-chemist-says-scientists-dont-really-understand-evolution/

I had a brief look and what the article actually says is
A member of the "intelligent design" conspiracy says that he doesn't understand evolution - which is no shock because he's not a biologist, and he says that some other people- whom he doesn't name, also don't understand it.


Given that nobody fully understands it, the ignorance of a chemist and a few of his friends is utterly meaningless.


And, re.
"Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : "
Nope.
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial

What are you talking about ? The man is a prominent chemist who should know what he's talking about , and he's no proponent of ID .

For your information : no chemical theory can account for either macro-evolution nor for the origin of life , let alone for biological or life information .
That's a fact you should know , a fact known to all chemists , biologists ...


And yes, ID is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : read those books i mentioned above on the subject , instead of relying on wikipedia .You're confusing creationism with ID , so, since when are courts the place where scientific theories are settled ? lol


OK, for a start, he is, in fact a signatory to this
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
which is used to indicate his support for "ID"
That's rather boringly factual, rather than as you describe it "ignorant".

It's equally clear that so called  "intelligent design" is creationist- it requires a "Designer" who, in turn needs to have been created as well as to create.

Even the proponents accept that they have no scientific theory
"Intelligent design (ID) is the pseudoscientific view[1][2] that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[3] Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community have demonstrated that ID is a religious argument, a form of creationism which lacks empirical support and offers no tenable hypotheses.[4][5][6] Proponents argue that it is "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins" that challenges the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science,[7][8] while conceding that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.[9] " (from wiki)

And there is very clear evidence of macro evolution.
You have about half your DNA in common with a banana.

So, the essence of your thread seems to be a set of false statements.

Why is that?


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2014 18:45:18
Bored Chemist :

See this about how no chemical theory can account for macro-evolution , let alone for biological information , by a prominent chemist, since materialists assumes that psychology is just applied biology , biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics ... :

The materialist version of evolution, for example, is full of fairy tales thus :

Prominent Chemist Says Scientists Don’t Really Understand Evolution

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/995875-prominent-chemist-says-scientists-dont-really-understand-evolution/

I had a brief look and what the article actually says is
A member of the "intelligent design" conspiracy says that he doesn't understand evolution - which is no shock because he's not a biologist, and he says that some other people- whom he doesn't name, also don't understand it.


Given that nobody fully understands it, the ignorance of a chemist and a few of his friends is utterly meaningless.


And, re.
"Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : "
Nope.
It's not a theory in the scientific sense and the courts have noticed that it's creationism in (poor) disguise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design#Kitzmiller_trial

What are you talking about ? The man is a prominent chemist who should know what he's talking about , and he's no proponent of ID .

For your information : no chemical theory can account for either macro-evolution nor for the origin of life , let alone for biological or life information .
That's a fact you should know , a fact known to all chemists , biologists ...


And yes, ID is a scientific theory that has nothing to do with creationism : read those books i mentioned above on the subject , instead of relying on wikipedia .You're confusing creationism with ID , so, since when are courts the place where scientific theories are settled ? lol


OK, for a start, he is, in fact a signatory to this
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660
which is used to indicate his support for "ID"
That's rather boringly factual, rather than as you describe it "ignorant".

It's equally clear that so called  "intelligent design" is creationist- it requires a "Designer" who, in turn needs to have been created as well as to create.

Even the proponents accept that they have no scientific theory
"Intelligent design (ID) is the pseudoscientific view[1][2] that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."[3] Educators, philosophers, and the scientific community have demonstrated that ID is a religious argument, a form of creationism which lacks empirical support and offers no tenable hypotheses.[4][5][6] Proponents argue that it is "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins" that challenges the methodological naturalism inherent in modern science,[7][8] while conceding that they have yet to produce a scientific theory.[9] " (from wiki)

And there is very clear evidence of macro evolution.
You have about half your DNA in common with a banana.

So, the essence of your thread seems to be a set of false statements.

Why is that?

All i know about that jewish chemist who was brave and honest enough as to dare say that scientists don't  understand macro-evolution , is what i read about him on that particular article where it is clearly mentioned that he 's no proponent of ID , even though he admits he believes in God ...

Second : There is no evolutionary chemical theory or material process that can explain HOW macro-evolution occurs, or how the necessary new life information arises , in order to "build " novel forms and body plans , not to mention the Cambrian explosion where species appeared suddenly without preceding or pre-existing species , and where the fossil record or evidence contradicts Darwinism on the subject  .

And this thread is also all about that manifesto for a post-materialistic science , since materialism is certainly false and hence  the mainstream materialist "scientific world view " is also false .

Third : ID is a scientific theory , NOT a religious one , even though it has religious implications , and it has thus nothing to do with creationism , once again :


What false statements are you talking about then ? Those that exist only in your own mind ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2014 18:56:04
Scientific Proof of Intelligent Design in DNA by a NON-Proponent of ID :




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2014 20:41:07
The Following Should  Clarify What I was Talking About Concerning The Many Scientific Challenges To The Materialist Neo-Darwinian Versions of The Origin of Life and Evolution of Life.... :
Excerpt From "Darwin's Doubt " By Stephen Meyer :


Good Read , Enjoy :

Prologue :

When people today hear the term “information revolution,” they typically think of silicon chips and software code, cellular phones and supercomputers.
They rarely think of tiny one-celled organisms or the rise of animal life.
 But, while writing these words in the summer of 2012, I am sitting at the end of a narrow medieval street in Cambridge, England, where more than half a century ago a far-reaching information revolution began in biology.
This revolution was launched by an unlikely but now immortalized pair of scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson. Since my time as a Ph.D. student at Cambridge during the late 1980s, I have been fascinated by the way their discovery transformed our understanding of the nature of life. Indeed, since the 1950s, when Watson and Crick first illuminated the chemical structure and information-bearing properties of DNA, biologists have come to understand that living things, as much as high-tech devices, depend upon digital information— information that, in the case of life, is stored in a four-character chemical code embedded within the twisting figure of a double helix.
Because of the importance of information to living things, it has now become apparent that many distinct “information revolutions” have occurred in the history of life—not revolutions of human discovery or invention, but revolutions involving dramatic increases in the information present within the living world itself. Scientists now know that building a living organism requires information, and building a fundamentally new form of life from a simpler form of life requires an immense amount of new information. Thus, wherever the fossil record testifies to the origin of a completely new form of animal life—a pulse of biological innovation—it also testifies to a significant increase in the information content of the biosphere.
In 2009, I wrote a book called Signature in the Cell about the first “information revolution” in the history of life—the one that occurred with the origin of the first life on earth.
My book described how discoveries in molecular biology during the 1950s and 1960s established that DNA contains information in digital form, with its four chemical subunits (called nucleotide bases) functioning like
letters in a written language or symbols in a computer code. And molecular biology also revealed that cells employ a complex information-processing system to access and express the information stored in DNA as they use that information to build the proteins and protein machines that they need to stay alive. Scientists attempting to explain the origin of life must explain how both information-rich molecules and the cell’s information-processing system arose.
The type of information present in living cells—that is, “specified” information in which the sequence of characters matters to the function of the sequence as a whole—has generated an acute mystery.
No undirected physical or chemical process has demonstrated the capacity to produce specified information starting “from purely physical or chemical” precursors. For this reason, chemical evolutionary theories have failed to solve the mystery of the origin of first life—a claim that few mainstream evolutionary theorists now dispute.
In Signature in the Cell, I not only reported the well-known impasse in origin-of-life studies; I also made an affirmative case for the theory of intelligent design. Although we don’t know of a material cause that generates functioning digital code from physical or chemical precursors, we do know— based upon our uniform and repeated experience—of one type of cause that has demonstrated the power to produce this type of information. That cause is intelligence or mind. As information theorist Henry Quastler observed, “The creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”
 Whenever we find functional information—whether embedded in a radio signal, carved in a stone monument, etched on a magnetic disc, or produced by an origin-of-life scientist attempting to engineer a self-replicating molecule—and we trace that information back to its ultimate source, invariably we come to a mind, not merely a material process. For this reason, the discovery of digital information in even the simplest living cells indicates the prior activity of a designing intelligence at work in the origin of the first life.
My book proved controversial, but in an unexpected way. Though I clearly stated that I was writing about the origin of the first life and about theories of chemical evolution that attempt to explain it from simpler preexisting chemicals, many critics responded as if I had written another book altogether. Indeed, few attempted to refute my book’s actual thesis that intelligent design provides the best explanation for the origin of the information necessary to produce the first life. Instead, most criticized the book as if it had presented a critique of the standard neo-Darwinian theories of biological evolution—theories that attempt to account for the origin of new forms of life from simpler preexisting forms of life. Thus, to refute my claim that no chemical evolutionary processes had demonstrated the power to explain the ultimate origin of information in the DNA (or RNA) necessary to produce life from simpler preexisting chemicals in the first place, many critics cited processes at work in already living organisms—in particular, the process of natural selection acting on random mutations in already existing sections of information-rich DNA. In other words, these critics cited an undirected process that acts on preexistent information-rich DNA to refute my argument about the failure of undirected material processes to produce information in DNA in the first place.
For example, the eminent evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala attempted to refute Signature by arguing that evidence from the DNA of humans and lower primates showed that the genomes of these organisms had arisen as the result of an unguided, rather than intelligently designed, process—even
though my book did not address the question of human evolution or attempt to explain the origin of the human genome, and even though the process to which Ayala alluded clearly presupposed the existence of another information-rich genome in some hypothetical lower primate.
Other discussions of the book cited the mammalian immune system as an example of the power of natural selection and mutation to generate new biological information, even though the mammalian immune system can only perform the marvels it does because its mammalian hosts are already alive,
and even though the mammalian immune system depends upon an elaborately preprogrammed form of adaptive capacity rich in genetic information—one that arose long after the origin of the first life.
Another critic steadfastly maintained that “Meyer’s main argument” concerns “the inability of random mutation and selection to add information to [preexisting] DNA” and attempted to refute the book’s presumed critique of the neo-Darwinian mechanism of biological evolution accordingly.
I found this all a bit surreal, as if I had wandered into a lost chapter from a Kafka novel. Signature in the Cell simply did not critique the theory of biological evolution, nor did it ask whether mutation and selection can add new information to preexisting information-rich DNA.
To imply otherwise, as many of my critics did, was simply to erect a straw man.
To those unfamiliar with the particular problems faced by scientists trying to explain the origin of life, it might not seem obvious why invoking natural selection does not help to explain the origin of the first life. After all, if natural selection and random mutations can generate new information in
living organisms, why can it also not do so in a prebiotic environment? But the distinction between a biological and prebiotic context was crucially important to my argument.
Natural selection assumes the existence of living organisms with a capacity to reproduce. Yet self-replication in all extant cells depends upon information-rich proteins and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), and the origin of such information-rich molecules is precisely what origin-of-life research needs to explain.
That’s why Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis, can state flatly, “Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.”5 Or, as Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist and origin-of-life researcher Christian de Duve explains, theories of prebiotic natural selection fail because they “need information which implies they have to presuppose what is to be explained in the first place.”
Clearly, it is not sufficient to invoke a process that commences only once life has begun, or once biological information has arisen, to explain the origin of life or the origin of the information necessary to produce it.
All this notwithstanding, I have long been aware of strong reasons for doubting that mutation and selection can add enough new information of the right kind to account for large-scale, or “macroevolutionary,” innovations—the various information revolutions that have occurred after the origin of life. For this reason, I have found it increasingly tedious to have to concede, if only for the sake of argument, the substance of claims I think likely to be false.
And so the repeated prodding of my critics has paid off. Even though I did not write the book or make the argument that many of my critics critiqued in responding to Signature in the Cell, I have decided to write that book. And this is that book.
Of course, it might have seemed a safer course to leave well enough alone. Many evolutionary biologists now grudgingly acknowledge that no chemical evolutionary theory has offered an adequate explanation of the origin of life or the ultimate origin of the information necessary to produce it.
Why press a point you never made in the first place?
Because despite the widespread impression to the contrary—conveyed by textbooks, the popular media, and spokespersons for official science—the orthodox neo-Darwinian theory of biological evolution has reached an impasse nearly as acute as the one faced by chemical evolutionary theory.
Leading figures in several subdisciplines of biology—cell biology, developmental biology, molecular biology, paleontology, and even evolutionary biology—now openly criticize key tenets of the modern
version of Darwinian theory in the peer-reviewed technical literature.
 Since 1980, when Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould declared that neo-Darwinism “is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy,” the weight of critical opinion in biology has grown steadily with
each passing year.
 A steady stream of technical articles and books have cast new doubt on the creative power of the mutation and selection mechanism.
 So well established are these doubts that prominent evolutionary theorists must now periodically assure the public, as biologist Douglas Futuyma has done, that “just because we don’t know how evolution occurred, does not justify doubt about whether it occurred.”
Some leading evolutionary biologists, particularly those associated with a group of scientists known as the “Altenberg 16,” are openly calling for a new theory of evolution because they doubt the creative power of the mutation and natural selection mechanism.
The fundamental problem confronting neo-Darwinism, as with chemical evolutionary theory, is the problem of the origin of new biological information.
Though neo-Darwinists often dismiss the problem of the origin of life as an isolated anomaly, leading theoreticians acknowledge that neo- Darwinism has also failed to explain the source of novel variation without which natural selection can do nothing—a problem equivalent to the problem of the origin of biological information. Indeed, the problem of the origin of information lies at the root of a host of other acknowledged problems in contemporary Darwinian theory—from the origin of new body plans to the origin of complex structures and systems such as wings, feathers, eyes, echolocation, blood clotting, molecular machines, the amniotic egg, skin, nervous systems, and multicellularity, to name just a few.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/10/2014 20:51:38
At the same time, classical examples illustrating the prowess of natural selection and random mutations do not involve the creation of novel genetic information. Many biology texts tell, for example, about the famous finches in the Galápagos Islands, whose beaks have varied in shape and length over time.
They also recall how moth populations in England darkened and then lightened in response to varying levels of industrial pollution. Such episodes are often presented as conclusive evidence for the power of evolution. And indeed they are, depending on how one defines “evolution.”
That term has many meanings, and few biology textbooks distinguish between them. “Evolution” can refer to anything from trivial cyclical change within the limits of a preexisting gene pool to the creation of entirely novel genetic information and structure as the result of natural selection acting on random mutations. As a host of distinguished biologists have explained in recent technical papers, small-scale, or “microevolutionary,” change cannot be extrapolated to explain large-scale, or “macroevolutionary,” innovation.11 For the most part, microevolutionary changes (such as variation in color or shape) merely utilize or express existing genetic information, while the macroevolutionary change necessary to assemble new organs or whole body plans requires the creation of entirely new information. As an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have noted, natural selection explains “only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.”12 The technical literature in biology is now replete with world-class biologists13 routinely expressing doubts about various aspects of neo- Darwinian theory, and especially about its central tenet, namely, the alleged creative power of the natural selection and mutation mechanism.
Nevertheless, popular defenses of the theory continue apace, rarely if ever acknowledging the growing body of critical scientific opinion about the standing of the theory. Rarely has there been such a great disparity between the popular perception of a theory and its actual standing in the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature. Today modern neo-Darwinism seems to enjoy almost universal acclaim among science journalists and bloggers, biology textbook writers, and other popular spokespersons for science as the great unifying theory of all biology. High-school and college textbooks present its tenets without qualification and do not acknowledge the existence of any significant scientific criticism of it. At the same time, official scientific organizations—such as the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT)—routinely assure the public that the contemporary version of Darwinian theory enjoys unequivocal support among qualified scientists and that the evidence of biology overwhelmingly supports the theory. For example, in 2006 the AAAS declared, “There is no significant controversy within the scientific community about the validity of the theory of evolution.” The media dutifully echo these pronouncements.
 As New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean asserted in 2007, “There is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the complexity and diversity of life on earth.”
The extent of the disparity between popular representations of the status of the theory and its actual status, as indicated in the peer-reviewed technical journals, came home to me with particular poignancy as I was preparing to testify before the Texas State Board of Education in 2009. At the time the board was considering the adoption of a provision in its science education standards that would encourage teachers to inform students of both the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories.
This provision had become a political hot potato after several groups asserted that “teaching strengths and weaknesses” were code words for biblical creationism or for removing the teaching of the theory of evolution from the curriculum. Nevertheless, after defenders of the provision insisted that it neither sanctioned teaching creationism nor censored evolutionary theory, opponents of the provision shifted their ground.
They attacked the provision by insisting that there was no need to consider weaknesses in modern evolutionary theory because, as Eugenie Scott, spokeswoman for the National Center for Science Education, insisted in The Dallas Morning News, “There are no weaknesses in the theory of evolution.”
At the same time, I was preparing a binder of one hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles in which biologists described significant problems with the theory—a binder later presented to the board during my testimony.
 So I knew—unequivocally—that Dr. Scott was misrepresenting the status of scientific opinion about the theory in the relevant scientific literature. I also knew that her attempts to prevent students from hearing about significant problems with evolutionary theory would have likely made Charles Darwin himself uncomfortable. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin openly acknowledged important weaknesses in his theory and professed his own doubts about key aspects of it.
Yet today’s public defenders of a Darwin-only science curriculum apparently do not want these, or any other scientific doubts about contemporary Darwinian theory, reported to students.
This book addresses Darwin’s most significant doubt and what has become of it. It examines an event during a remote period of geological history in which numerous animal forms appear to have arisen suddenly and without evolutionary precursors in the fossil record, a mysterious event commonly referred to as the “Cambrian explosion.” As he acknowledged in the Origin, Darwin viewed this event as a troubling anomaly—one that he hoped future fossil discoveries would eventually eliminate.
The book is divided into three main parts. Part One, “The Mystery of the Missing Fossils,” describes the problem that first generated Darwin’s doubt—the missing ancestors of the Cambrian animals in the earlier Precambrian fossil record—and then tells the story of the successive, but unsuccessful, attempts that biologists and paleontologists have made to resolve that mystery.
Part Two, “How to Build an Animal,” explains why the discovery of the importance of information to living systems has made the mystery of the Cambrian explosion more acute. Biologists now know that the Cambrian explosion not only represents an explosion of new animal form and structure but also an explosion of information—that it was, indeed, one of the most significant “information revolutions” in the history of life. Part Two examines the problem of explaining how the unguided mechanism of natural selection and random mutations could have produced the biological information necessary to build the Cambrian animal forms. This group of chapters explains why so many leading biologists now doubt the creative power of the neo-Darwinian mechanism and it presents four rigorous critiques of the mechanism based on recent biological research.
Part Three, “After Darwin, What?” evaluates more current evolutionary theories to see if any of them explain the origin of form and information more satisfactorily than standard neo-Darwinism does.
Part Three also presents and assesses the theory of intelligent design as a possible solution to the Cambrian mystery.
 A concluding chapter discusses the implications of the debate about design in biology for the larger philosophical questions that animate human existence. As the story of the book unfolds, it will become apparent that a seemingly isolated anomaly that Darwin acknowledged almost in passing has grown to become illustrative of a fundamental problem for all of evolutionary biology:
the problem of the origin of biological form and information.
To see where that problem came from and why it has generated a crisis in evolutionary biology, we need to begin at the beginning: with Darwin’s own doubt, with the fossil evidence that elicited it, and with a clash between a pair of celebrated Victorian naturalists—the famed Harvard paleontologist Louis Agassiz and Charles Darwin himself.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/10/2014 17:45:45
Bored Chemist , Cheryl (Whenever you come  back ) :

See my posts to the both of you here above .
Don't be shy , just try to accept the challenge that might change the way you perceive science  , and more,and that might make you reconsider most of what you think you know about science as well  .

Best wishes, Cheryl .

Take care .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/10/2014 20:33:05

Well :

"Evolution " or rather adaptation occurs only within species : "micro-evolution" or rather micro-adaptation .

There is absolutely no scientific evidence for HOW the so-called macro-evolution occurs : no chemical theory to date can account for that , or ever .


The example I gave you clearly is one of macroevolution, documented in recent times, and there are others if you're interested.  And the "how," or the mechanism, is exactly the same as microevolution - DNA, mutation and natural selection. There's no gap here, Don, and saying there is one, over and over, will not make it so.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 11/10/2014 23:47:00
The problem seems to arise from two causes.

1. Some people think that "species" has a fixed and meaningful definition. Fact is, it doesn't. Biologists categorise things for convenience, as we all do, but their categories are assigned on the basis of similarities with no particularly fixed boundaries. The closest we get to a hard-edged definition is the notion that all members of a species can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but practically all honey bees and worker ants are sterile yet clearly members of a species, and most of the living things on this planet reproduce asexually. There is no single definition of species.

2. The second  big problem is the failure to comprehend the magnitude of biological success, and the paucity of prehistoric data. Mitochondrial DNA studies suggest that all extant humans and dogs are descended from very few ancestral individuals. It seems absurd that there could at one time have been only four proto-humans or two archedogs, but these few clearly had some advantage over their contemporaries and outbred them by several orders of magnitude over suceeding generations. Now we have reason to believe that there were millions or billions of dinosaurs at one time, yet the number of actual skeletons  (as distinct from museum casts) is in the dozens as the conditions for fossilisation are rare and the probabiity of finding one is very low. So it is no surprise that we only have evidence of the most successful outcomes of evolution: evolutionary dominance is absolute.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 12/10/2014 02:17:24
Don, I don't know if your inclusion of the distorted paraphrasing of Darwin's views is intentional or not, but it certainly indicates a lack of integrity on the someones' part, unless they ,too, simply accepted at face value what someone else claimed that Darwin said, without bothering to verify it or look at the context.
 
Creationists are famous for quoting Darwin out of context in order to build a case that he had serious doubts about the entire idea of natural selection or evolution, or that his work was riddled with inconsistencies’.  It's pretty brazen at times.

Darwin quote by creationist: "“One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed"
Quote in context: "One cannot look at this Universe with all living productions & man without believing that all has been intelligently designed; yet when I look to each individual organism, I can see no evidence of this. For, I am not prepared to admit that God designed the feathers in the tail of the rock-pigeon to vary in a highly peculiar manner in order that man might select such variations & make a Fan-tail; & if this be not admitted (I know it would be admitted by many persons), then I cannot see design in the variations of structure in animals in a state of nature,—those variations which were useful to the animal being preserved & those useless or injurious being destroyed."

Or this:

Darwin quote from Creationist:  “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Actual quote: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.”

While I’m not sure what actual quote about Precambrian fossils the author refers to (because, of course, it’s not included) I suspect it was a reference to the lack of fossils with animals that had soft structures, not that he was seriously reconsidering whether new creatures were “poofed” into existence by a designing deity in the Cambrian period.

One would expect there to be things that perplexed Darwin, the mechanism – DNA - had not yet been discovered! Of course  he felt there were more questions to be answered, more data to be gathered. It’s ridiculous to portray this as “having  grave doubts.” Instead of saying “Darwin wondered why..” creationists phrase it like “Even Darwin was forced to admit....”

Finally, there are also examples of organisms, alive today and in the fossil record that demonstrate how complex structures evolved from simpler ones, including “wings, feathers, eyes, echolocation, blood clotting, molecular machines, the amniotic egg, skin, nervous systems, and multicellularity, to name just a few” that your author refers to. But if I were to provide explanations or citations for any or all of them, you would just ignore them anyway. Nor would you provide us with any examples of the “better explanatory power” of your theory for these things, because it’s impossible, and you know it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 12/10/2014 08:42:29
Face it, there are two ways of looking at the world

A. It's magic

B. It's complicated

A is insufferable vanity: "I understand it but it's way beyond your comprehension". Or it may be intellectual failure: "I don't know or care, but I hope it's all organised by a man with a beard in the sky."

B is science.

There are places where proponents of A feel welcome and can be cared for by kind people who think B. What worries me is the vituperation heaped on the B-thinkers by every generation of A-sellers, from mediaeval popes to present day jihadists and creationists. Why are nonthinkers so obnoxious?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: jeffreyH on 12/10/2014 23:51:59
SingleCelledOrganism ^ n = HigherLifeForm

when n = 1 we begin the initial life cycle

Evolution = f(SingleCelledOrganism)

f(SingleCelledOrganism) = n * SingleCelledOrganism

n = f(ChangeInGeneticConfiguration)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/10/2014 18:37:13
Cheryl, alancalverd  ...  :

I am in fact no full  fan of US ID or of any other theory of nature or beyond .....I never stick to any theory of nature , knowledge , models ...or beyond, a full  100 % , so to speak , since all knowledge is hypothetical , including the scientific one,and can thus never proven to be "true ", ever   .

I am not against ID  either , needless to add,since it is not yet proven to be false thus , a full 100 % or fundamentally  .

I deal with all the scientific spectrum in the same way ,relatively speaking .I try to filter science from all those approaches or perceptions of science , that is   .

I try to separate science from its world views or theories of nature of the moment .

 i just brought up ID  to mention the many flaws of Darwinism that's more of an ideology than a scientific theory,since it is a materialistic theory , in the sense that materialism  assumes that there can be only material or "natural" processes behind everything ,including behind the origin of life , evolution of life , consciousness, human language , and the rest ,since everything is just matter thus , according to materialism   .

That said :

Neither of you did address the above key mentioned  issues or objections  raised by either my earlier posts ,or  by that  excerpt of Meyer here above , concerning Darwinism , the origin of life , life information ..., an excerpt that shows that there has been many forms of dissent within the materialist mainstream scientific community itself regarding Darwinism and more  .
Nobody is denying that there is some form of natural selection at work through mutations ....It's just that natural selection ( Analogous to the mysterious  " invisible hand " of the market lol ) cannot account for the rich diversity and complexity of life , let alone for the added biological or life information that's necessary to account for novel forms and novel body plans ....to mention just that .

Not to mention the Cambrian explosion where whole complex species appeared suddenly without preexisting simpler forms or simpler ancestors ,and where the fossil record or evidence contradicted Darwinism .

Darwin himself was puzzled by that and admitted that he could find no explanation to that , and that his theory might turn out to be false  ,if future scientists wouldn't be able to solve that Cambrian dilemma ,for example .

Many attempts have been conducted so far to solve the Cambrian dilemma ,since Darwin, up to this date , in vain still ,as far as i can tell at least .

Darwin even sent a copy of his "On the origin of species " to the famous US naturalist Agassiz who even tried to go through the same voyage that was done by Darwin ...and who did study Darwin's mentioned book thoroughly and rigorously .

Agassiz ' response to Darwin was that the Cambrian explosion posed a lethal dilemma to Darwinism ...

Agassiz was a brilliant scientist in the full sense of the term , despite all attacks against him for daring to challenge the Darwinist orthodoxy  that scientific way , even though he was some sort of an idealist too .

Anyway , that  is a very broad subject to deal with this way , so :
I suggest going back to the subject matter of this thread , even though the materialist Darwinian theory  of evolution is a part of it , which is :

"Manifesto for a post-materialistic science", since materialism is certainly false , fundamentally at least , thanks to an overwhelming body of evidence , once again , so, all its extensions are fundamentally false , including the mainstream materialist "scientific world view ", including the materialist versions of the origin of life , evolution of life , origin of human language , theory of consciousness, even though they might contain  some elements of "truth" , here and there, to some extent at least , if we would take into consideration the fact that the nature of reality is partly "physical or material " thus = The nature of life , the origin of life , evolution of life and the rest cannot be separated from the nature of reality : They all depend on the nature of reality or on our theories of reality or nature    .
 


Since materialism is false , then the nature of reality cannot be just material or physical, whatever the latter might mean in the light of quantum physics anyway , but also mental .

The latter that's irreducible to "matter " , and that has serious implications for all extensions of materialism indeed :

 For example , evolution cannot be just biological , the origin of life cannot be explained by just chemical or material biological processes , .....= material processes are NOT the only ways to explain nature or the universe , the mental ones must also be integrated as an option, and as a  primary one at that , that is .

Not to mention the fact that quantum theory has been showing that there is no separation between what we call matter and mind ,and that our "reality " is psycho-physical = there is no separation between the observer and the observed ,and that the illusory physical reality cannot exist without consciousness .

All scientific theories, models , knowledge ...have no choice but to integrate consciousness into their frameworks , otherwise , they would be just delivering distorted or "half " versions of "reality " .

In short :
The materialist theory of nature , together with all its extensions thus , is fundamentally false , and must be replaced by a non-materialist theory of nature that has more explanatory power indeed .The latter has been showing that it does have more explanatory power through an overwhelming body of evidence thus .

Scientists have thus no choice but to follow the line of evidence wherever it might take them , instead of sticking to the fundamentally false materialist theory of nature and to all its fundamentally false extensions that dogmatic unscientific way .

The non-materialist theory of nature thus is NOT the last or final word in science , and it might turn out to be fundamentally false too, in its turn, just to pave the way for the rise of another theory of nature with more explanatory power , and so on and on and on , since all knowledge remains hypothetical , no matter how much explanatory power it might deliver , and thus cannot be proven to be "true " , ever , as Popper taught us .

Time for science to move on and abandon materialism thus , and hence to abandon the search for exclusively material physical or biological explanations for natural phenomena = consciousness or the mental must take its primordial and privileged place in science, since consciousness is  a KEY "component or building block " of this universe  .

P.S.: Cheryl :

How about the surgery you seem to have been gone through ? It did go well, i see . I am glad for you .Nice to have you back .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 13/10/2014 21:20:24
To be a scientist, you need a lot of humility because, however clever your hypothesis,  the facts always win, and you rarely get to explain everything.

To be an observer of science, you need a lot of patience, because it sometimes takes years or even centuries to work out something obvious like why the sky is blue or what powers the sun.

Darwin was not a priest. He was a scientist. So you can't expect his writing to reveal all the deepest secrets of the universe, unlike L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, or any other charlatan you care to name. The Cambrian explosion was a long time ago, and a pretty major event that lasted a lot longer than humans have been around, let alone science. So don't hold your breath waiting for an explanation, and don't denigrate the only hope we have of ever explaining it. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/10/2014 21:47:21
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg442216#msg442216 date=1413231624]
To be a scientist, you need a lot of humility because, however clever your hypothesis,  the facts always win, and you rarely get to explain everything
.

Well, the non-materialist theory regarding the nature of reality has been supported by an overwhelming body of evidence , once again , and it has much more explanatory power than the materialist fundamentally false one , so .
Who said that one can explain "everything " ? All knowledge remains hypothetical ,so , but , materialism has been ossifying itself as to pretend to be "true " by trying to explain everything just via material processes or via physics and chemistry ONLY , by pretending that everything is matter , including the mind  .

Quote
To be an observer of science, you need a lot of patience, because it sometimes takes years or even centuries to work out something obvious like why the sky is blue or what powers the sun.

Who said otherwise ?

Quote
Darwin was not a priest. He was a scientist. So you can't expect his writing to reveal all the deepest secrets of the universe, unlike L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, or any other charlatan you care to name. The Cambrian explosion was a long time ago, and a pretty major event that lasted a lot longer than humans have been around, let alone science. So don't hold your breath waiting for an explanation, and don't denigrate the only hope we have of ever explaining it.

Darwin was a materialist first , and a scientist second , not the other way around .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 13/10/2014 23:23:11
So what does the "nonmaterialist theory of reality" predict?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/10/2014 18:21:06
So what does the "nonmaterialist theory of reality" predict?

The ...future  .
Well, it has much more explanatory power than the materialist fundamentally false one :  a bit  like how the probabilistic non-local dualistic quantum world view has proven to have more explanatory power than the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2014 18:25:07
Cheryl, alancalverd :
This will rock your false  materialist world view : Why Science Must Become Non-Materialist  ? : 


Excerpt from "Brain Wars ..." By Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard :



Conclusion :

A Great Shift in Consciousness:

"The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."
—PHYSICIST AND ASTRONOMER JAMES JEANS

In the quantum universe—in which we increasingly live—there is no mind-brain problem because there is no radical separation between the mental world and the physical world. The new paradigm is here; we just need to open our eyes. It is my fervent hope that Brain Wars will be an important part of that process.
The wealth of scientific studies you have read about in the chapters of this book indicate that our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions can greatly influence what is happening in our brains and bodies and play a key role in our health and well-being:
Norman Cousins was one of a number of people who have demonstrated that our beliefs and expectations about medical treatments can stimulate our self-healing capacity, even in diseases as severe as cancer and Parkinson’s disease. And recent research suggests that our thoughts and emotions can even affect how our bodies can turn certain genes on or off.
Jake’s success in controlling his seizures and behaviors is one of many examples of how we can use neurofeedback to deliberately change brain processes that are normally not under voluntary control and improve our mental functions. As you have seen, other studies show that we can intentionally train our minds—through meditative practices—to enhance the activity of brain areas implicated in emotional well-being, compassion, and attention. Meditative practices can even alter the physical structure of the brain.
Our minds can be extremely powerful—far more powerful than we thought only a few decades ago.
The effects of the mind and mental abilities are not limited to the confines of the body. For instance, psi studies show that we can sometimes receive meaningful information without the use of ordinary senses and in ways that transcend the habitual space and time constraints. Still other psi research demonstrates that we can intentionally influence—at a distance—not only random number generators but living organisms, including human beings.
NDE studies show that people like Pam Reynolds can have veridical perceptions—corroborated by independent witnesses—during OBEs triggered by a cardiac arrest. These perceptions concern events that occur while the heart is not functioning. We know that the activity of the brain ceases within a few seconds following a cardiac arrest. Given this, the findings of NDE research strongly challenge the idea that mind is “only” a product of brain activity, giving rather more credence to the view that mind may be dependent on the brain “much as a radio transmission is dependent upon a receiver and broadcast unit.”
 Additionally, the mystical (or transcendental) component of NDEs occurring during a cardiac arrest supports the idea that the brain usually acts as a filter that prevents the perception of what could be dubbed other realms of reality. This aspect of NDEs also corroborates the idea that we are more than our physical bodies.
Mental activity is not the same as brain activity, and we are not “meat puppets,” totally controlled by our brains, our genes, and our environments.
 Indeed, our minds and our consciousness can significantly affect events occurring in the brain and body, and outside the body.
We do have these immensely important capacities, and it is time for science to begin taking them seriously. But for this to happen, science—and all of us—must change the lens through which we view reality.
Fortunately, the scientific enterprise (as a method, not as materialist ideology) allows for all of these
possibilities, and infinitely more.
Materialist science, based on the classical Newtonian physics, took science out of the Dark Ages, showing us a world no one had ever seen before. Now there is another heretofore invisible world for us to see, one that the dogmas of materialist science obscure but that is brought into focus by the discoveries of quantum physics.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it became obvious that classical physics was limited; it was just not able to explain certain phenomena at the atomic level.
The acknowledgment of these limitations led to the development of a revolutionary new branch of physics called quantum mechanics (QM), which smashed the scientific materialist worldview. In the words of theoretical physicist Amit Goswami, QM is “a new paradigm of science based on the primacy of consciousness. .
. . The new paradigm resolves many paradoxes of the old paradigm and explains much anomalous data.”
The work of QM has effectively dematerialized the classical universe by showing that it is not made of minuscule billiard balls, as drawings of atoms and molecules would lead us to believe.
QM has shown that atoms and subatomic particles are not really objects—they do not exist with certainty at definite spatial locations and definite times. Rather, they show “tendencies to exist,” forming a world of potentialities within the quantum domain.
Werner Heisenberg, winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, explained, “The atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real, they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.”
The quantum world appears different from the physical world, but some elements may sound familiar. For example, a central feature of QM is called the observer effect: particles being observed and the observer—the physicist and the method used for observation—are linked, and the results of the observation are influenced by the observer’s conscious intent. This effect implies that the consciousness of the observer is vital to the existence of the physical events being observed.
 In otherwords, QM acknowledges that the physical world cannot be fully understood without making reference to mind and consciousness.7
In QM, the physical world is thus no longer viewed as the primary or sole component of reality.
Most contemporary physicists agree with Wolfgang Pauli—one of the founders of QM—that the physical and the psychological, physis and psyche, should be recognized and embraced as distinct but complementary aspects of one reality.
 Regarding this issue, the mathematician and physicist John von Neumann raised the possibility that mind and consciousness constitute not an emergent property but rather a fundamental component of the universe. Regardless of whether it is the case, QM teaches us that we must consider mind and consciousness if we are to reach a more adequate conception of nature and reality.
Nonlocality (or nonseparability)—which Albert Einstein memorably referred to as “spooky actions at a distance”—is another remarkable discovery of QM. This concept is based on entanglement, the instantaneous connections that persist between particles (such as photons, electrons) that interacted physically and then become separated. These connections remain even if the particles are separated by enormous distances (for instance, billions of light-years). This counterintuitive aspect of nature has been demonstrated experimentally in a number of labs since the beginning of the 1970s. Nonlocality and entanglement suggest that the universe constitutes an undivided whole.
Naturally, contemporary materialists strongly disagree with the conclusion that scientific materialism has failed and is currently breaking down. They argue that sooner or later, neuroscience will be able to completely explain mind and consciousness. These materialists do not seem to realize that future technological development will only allow neuroscientists to measure more refined correlates of mental activity.
Belief in the materialist worldview compels certain scientists and philosophers to neglect the subjective dimension of human experience and downplay the importance of mind and consciousness.
In so doing, they create a severely distorted and impoverished understanding of human beings and reality.
Materialist scientists and philosophers are also led to consider certain phenomena such as psi, NDE, and mystical experiences (MEs) as anomalous. These phenomena are anomalous only to the extent
that we cling to the false assumptions of scientific materialism. Seen and understood through the lens of QM, most of these phenomena do not appear anomalous at all. So-called paranormal events are, in effect, perfectly normal.
Physicists were forced to abandon the assumptions of classical physics and the scientific materialist worldview nearly a century ago, but the battles of the brain wars are still being fought by many neuroscientists. The time has come for my colleagues to embrace the many possibilities of the universe opened by the new physics and free their minds from the shackles and blinders of the scientific materialist credo.
The expanded model of reality you have read about in this book offers infinite and exciting concepts for science—and you—to freely explore:
• This model acknowledges all the empirical evidences related to mind and consciousness, not only those that appear at first sight to be compatible with materialist theories.
• It includes the mental and the physical, the subjective and the objective, the first-person perspective, and the third-person perspective.
• It assumes that mind and consciousness are a prerequisite for reality because they allow us to perceive and experience the world. Stated otherwise, they represent an aspect of reality as fundamental as the physical world.
• It assumes that mind and the physical world are continually interacting because they are not really separated—they only appear to be separated. This means that there is a deep interconnectedness between the mental world and the physical world, which both arise out of the same source. This basic interconnectedness renders the mind capable of influencing various phenomena and events belonging to the physical world. Information may act as a bridge between these complementary aspects of reality. Some physicists go as far as to suggest that the whole of reality can be seen as a pattern of information.
• It assumes that mind and consciousness are not produced by the brain. This idea suggests that mental functions and personality can survive physical death.
In other respects, MEs indicate that we are not encapsulated within our brains and bodies but, rather, connected—within the deepest levels of the psyche—with everything in the universe, as well as with the underlying source giving birth to both mind and matter. In this way, MEs represent a direct, intuitive apprehension of the undivided wholeness.
The scientific evidence you have read about in this book makes two things clear: scientific materialism is just plain false, and we humans are not powerless, biochemical machines. Together with exciting possibilities of the quantum universe, this evidence tells us that it is time to enlarge our concept of the natural world to reintegrate mind and consciousness.
This emerging scientific model of reality—this new paradigm of what is possible—has far-reaching implications. Perhaps most important, it fundamentally alters the vision we have of ourselves, giving us back our dignity and power, as humans and as scientists.
We are no longer at the mercy of Big Pharma: in many instances we can willfully choose to positively influence our health and mental functioning by being aware of our thoughts and emotions, and by training our brains.
Scientists, free of the materialist box, are now invited to embark on research into the whole gamut of psi phenomena, expanded and altered consciousness, and spiritual experiences.
Last but not least, the new paradigm fosters positive values such as compassion, respect, and peace.
By emphasizing a deep connection between ourselves and nature at large, it also promotes environmental awareness and the preservation of our biosphere.
When mind and consciousness are recognized as one, we are again connected to ourselves, to each other, to our planet, and to the universe.
A great shift in consciousness has begun, bringing with it a profound transformation of our world.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/10/2014 18:29:33
David Cooper :

One of the main gateways to consciousness has been ...quantum physics : See the excerpt above .
You should study QM thus  . Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 15/10/2014 19:18:29
Cheryl, alancalverd  ...  :

I am in fact no full  fan of US ID or of any other theory of nature or beyond .....I never stick to any theory of nature , knowledge , models ...or beyond, a full  100 % , so to speak , since all knowledge is hypothetical , including the scientific one,and can thus never proven to be "true ", ever   .


Back peddling.


Quote

That said :

Neither of you did address the above key mentioned  issues or objections  raised by either my earlier posts ,or  by that  excerpt of Meyer here above , concerning Darwinism , the origin of life , life information ...,


Yes, we did. Go back and read it.

Quote
Nobody is denying that there is some form of natural selection at work through mutations ....

Well, I'm glad you concede that much at least.

Quote
It's just that natural selection ( Analogous to the mysterious  " invisible hand " of the market lol ) cannot account for the rich diversity and complexity of life , let alone for the added biological or life information that's necessary to account for novel forms and novel body plans ....to mention just that .

You keep saying "it can't account for" but are unable to explain specifically why or what can't be accounted for. We've already given you examples of macroevolution.

Quote

Not to mention the Cambrian explosion where whole complex species appeared suddenly without preexisting simpler forms or simpler ancestors ,and where the fossil record or evidence contradicted Darwinism .
Darwin himself was puzzled by that and admitted that he could find no explanation to that , and that his theory might turn out to be false  ,if future scientists wouldn't be able to solve that Cambrian dilemma ,for example .
Many attempts have been conducted so far to solve the Cambrian dilemma ,since Darwin, up to this date , in vain still ,as far as i can tell at least .


Here is some information to update you since the 1800s about the Cambrian explosion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090108082914.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061209083521.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130912131753.htm




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 15/10/2014 19:42:04


P.S.: Cheryl :

How about the surgery you seem to have been gone through ? It did go well, i see . I am glad for you .Nice to have you back .


Yes, doing better, thanks. Not moving around too much, but home from the hospital, and reading, sketching, and a lot of sleeping, with my cats to keep me company.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 15/10/2014 20:40:57
Cheryl, alancalverd :
This will rock your false  materialist world view : Why Science Must Become Non-Materialist  ? : 


Excerpt from "Brain Wars ..." By Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard :



All of this seems based on a false dichotomy. That the "mental" affects the physiological processes of the body is only evidence of some non-material mechanism if you believe that mental processes do not arise from the physical.

Sensory information, whether it's a physical threat, bad news, a stressful environment - is transmitted through the nervous system, processed in the brain, and undoubtedly has physiological effects on the rest of the body via nervous system, hormones, etc. This is well understood and not magical. Likewise the positive effects of meditation can also be explained without resorting to anything immaterial or mystical.

The idea that our internal thoughts, imagery, emotions have physiological effects is also not a violation of materialism. There is no contradiction in the idea of "top down control" or the whole constraining the parts. The brain contains a wealth of two way tracts, up and down communication. (I am not referring to sensory/motor systems, but processing in brain itself)
The flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas plays a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways.  In this respect, there is no starting point for information flow - that is - you cannot point to a part of the loop and say the beginning or stimulus is here, and the effect is there.

There is no need to invoke the supernatural to explain how our conscious thoughts affect other aspects of brain function or physiology. On the other hand, suggesting that people can cure their cancer with a positive attitude is cruel and reckless and no different than believing that I can fix the transmission in my car by thinking happy thoughts about it.

Here is a critique of Beauregard's work.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 15/10/2014 23:57:25
So what does the "nonmaterialist theory of reality" predict?

The ...future  .


Full marks for a statement worthy of  Sam Goldwyn at his best. I won't even mutter "tautology" if you can give me one actual example.

I can't waste time reading the rest of the stuff because it talks about "consciousness" which is undefined.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2014 18:07:16
So what does the "nonmaterialist theory of reality" predict?

The ...future  .


Full marks for a statement worthy of  Sam Goldwyn at his best. I won't even mutter "tautology" if you can give me one actual example.

I can't waste time reading the rest of the stuff because it talks about "consciousness" which is undefined.

"Predict the future " was just a metaphor (Science is full of metaphors like the natural selection, the machine or computer metaphors regarding the nature of life  ...)  , in the sense that the future non-materialist science will be having more explanatory power than the current materialist science : the already born and prospering non-materialist science has already been proving that : see the excerpt above on the subject .

Consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of this universe ,and a primary one at that , that is , so, science has no choice but to integrate it in any scientific theory of reality or nature , so .

That consciousness cannot be defined clearly is no argument against approaching it scientifically ( We can't define what electricity is , for example, but we know what it does and how it works , how it can be stored , generated ...) : see how quantum physics has been opening a gateway to consciousness .

Science will not stop trying to explain phenomena or processes it cannot define clearly , otherwise , science would have 'shut its doors " a long time ago ....

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2014 19:15:41
Cheryl, alancalverd :
This will rock your false  materialist world view : Why Science Must Become Non-Materialist  ? : 


Excerpt from "Brain Wars ..." By Canadian neuroscientist Mario Beauregard :



All of this seems based on a false dichotomy. That the "mental" affects the physiological processes of the body is only evidence of some non-material mechanism if you believe that mental processes do not arise from the physical.

Sensory information, whether it's a physical threat, bad news, a stressful environment - is transmitted through the nervous system, processed in the brain, and undoubtedly has physiological effects on the rest of the body via nervous system, hormones, etc. This is well understood and not magical. Likewise the positive effects of meditation can also be explained without resorting to anything immaterial or mystical.

The idea that our internal thoughts, imagery, emotions have physiological effects is also not a violation of materialism. There is no contradiction in the idea of "top down control" or the whole constraining the parts. The brain contains a wealth of two way tracts, up and down communication. (I am not referring to sensory/motor systems, but processing in brain itself)
The flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas plays a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways.  In this respect, there is no starting point for information flow - that is - you cannot point to a part of the loop and say the beginning or stimulus is here, and the effect is there.

There is no need to invoke the supernatural to explain how our conscious thoughts affect other aspects of brain function or physiology. On the other hand, suggesting that people can cure their cancer with a positive attitude is cruel and reckless and no different than believing that I can fix the transmission in my car by thinking happy thoughts about it.

Here is a critique of Beauregard's work.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience

First of all :

 There was not even a hint or  any  implicit allusion whatsoever to any 'supernatural " intervention in the above displayed excerpt, regarding the mind-body interaction  : the non-physical non-local nature of consciousness is perfectly normal , not "super or paranormal " .

Quantum physics has been opening revolutionary gateways that can account for  psi and other phenomena like the placebo/nocebo effects and more , in total contrast with what the materialist false theory of reality  wanna make people believe reality is .

Quantum physics has been proving that consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of this universe , and a primary one at that , that is ,so, consciousness must be integrated in any serious scientific theory of reality .Science has no choice but to do that , if science wanna try to deliver some relatively accurate reflection or representation of reality , instead of that materialist false and distorted version of reality .

Materialists just resort to branding non-materialist world views as some forms of "supernatural " , just because they reject the materialist false world view in science .

When you would consider all those "paranormal " phenomena like psi phenomena from the non-materialist perspective , they would appear to you as they are in reality : perfectly normal .

Only from the materialist perspective do they seem to be 'supernatural " , simply because they cannot be explained materialistically via material processes . The latter are  just one part or one level of reality , not the whole part .

In fact , there is no separate matter and separate consciousness : they are inseparable = our "reality " is psycho-physical ,as one of the founders of quantum physics , Pauli , used to say, for example .

Quantum physics has even proved that there is no matter as such : has revolutionized our classical or conventional Newtonian conception of what matter might be .

What are you talking about then ? Go re-read that excerpt  once more , because you clearly did not understand what Beauregard  was talking about .

For example, some forms of materialism assume that consciousness is just a product of the evolutionary complexity of the brain , just an epiphenomena , a side effect of evolution without (absurd )   any causal effects on matter brain or body :  How can then consciousness trigger or have influence on the physical reality, on the self-directed neuro-plasticity ...How can meditation through consciousness have influence on the brain , body ...How can consciousness work through neurofeedback ...?
How can the placebo or nocebo effects be explained in materialistic terms ?
How can belief that shapes consciousness have influence on our biology , brain and even genes ?, heal our bodies ? ... if the mind has no causal effects on matter brain or body . as those materialist lunatics wanna make us believe it is ? , or if the mind is in the brain or just brain activity ...

Just re-read that above displayed excerpt more carefully then .




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2014 19:30:37


P.S.: Cheryl :

How about the surgery you seem to have been gone through ? It did go well, i see . I am glad for you .Nice to have you back .


Yes, doing better, thanks. Not moving around too much, but home from the hospital, and reading, sketching, and a lot of sleeping, with my cats to keep me company.

I am happy for you , Cheryl . Nice recovery .Best wishes .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/10/2014 19:46:44
Cheryl, alancalverd  ...  :

I am in fact no full  fan of US ID or of any other theory of nature or beyond .....I never stick to any theory of nature , knowledge , models ...or beyond, a full  100 % , so to speak , since all knowledge is hypothetical , including the scientific one,and can thus never proven to be "true ", ever   .


Back peddling.


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That said :

Neither of you did address the above key mentioned  issues or objections  raised by either my earlier posts ,or  by that  excerpt of Meyer here above , concerning Darwinism , the origin of life , life information ...,


Yes, we did. Go back and read it.

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Nobody is denying that there is some form of natural selection at work through mutations ....

Well, I'm glad you concede that much at least.

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It's just that natural selection ( Analogous to the mysterious  " invisible hand " of the market lol ) cannot account for the rich diversity and complexity of life , let alone for the added biological or life information that's necessary to account for novel forms and novel body plans ....to mention just that .

You keep saying "it can't account for" but are unable to explain specifically why or what can't be accounted for. We've already given you examples of macroevolution.

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Not to mention the Cambrian explosion where whole complex species appeared suddenly without preexisting simpler forms or simpler ancestors ,and where the fossil record or evidence contradicted Darwinism .
Darwin himself was puzzled by that and admitted that he could find no explanation to that , and that his theory might turn out to be false  ,if future scientists wouldn't be able to solve that Cambrian dilemma ,for example .
Many attempts have been conducted so far to solve the Cambrian dilemma ,since Darwin, up to this date , in vain still ,as far as i can tell at least .


Here is some information to update you since the 1800s about the Cambrian explosion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090108082914.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061209083521.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130912131753.htm

First of all :

Thanks for your above displayed links regarding the Cambrian explosion ,appreciate indeed .I did not have time enough to study them more closely , and research about them .

Second : macro-evolution cannot be extrapolated from micro-evolution , simply because the natural selection cannot account for the  added biological information that's necessary for "building " novel forms and novel body plans, not to mention that the highly unlikely blind unguided random lottery of the natural selection can never account for all that complexity and diversity of life on earth , via gradual, step by step , trial and error attempts , so to speak ( Not in trillions of years or more thus, so to speak  ) : that's mathematically impossible , not to mention that even computer science has proved that  gradual  simple or small random variations cannot account for or ever lead to large scale variations : random variations can work only in a limited small way  .

Many biologists have been doubting the creative power of the natural selection , as that excerpt of Meyer showed ,and much more : Go back and re-read it more carefully , please .

I will even supply you with more relevant excerpts on the subject as well, if you want to .

That's all i have time for right now , sorry .
I am in the middle of something , so, please forgive me for not having time to elaborate on this or on the rest here above .

P.S.: All my posted comments of today were written very quickly ,due to my tight time -framework right now , so, my apologies for the inevitable errors you might encounter while reading them .

Thanks for your time, efforts , and replies , appreciate indeed .

Take care .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 01:08:53

 There was not even a hint or  any  implicit allusion whatsoever to any 'supernatural " intervention in the above displayed excerpt, regarding the mind-body interaction  : the non-physical non-local nature of consciousness is perfectly normal , not "super or paranormal " .

"Normal" or not, as long as you repeatedly fail to explain how it works, as long as you cant demonstrate the mechanism,supernatural is as good as any other descriptive term.

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When you would consider all those "paranormal " phenomena like psi phenomena from the non-materialist perspective , they would appear to you as they are in reality : perfectly normal .

Again, call it whatever name you care to make up. Just explain how it works.

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Go re-read that excerpt  once more , because you clearly did not understand what Beauregard  was talking about .
What's to understand? They are just statements of various claims, not explanations.  What particular claim of his do you want me to address. Did you read the Rationalwiki link?

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For example, some forms of materialism assume that consciousness is just a product of the evolutionary complexity of the brain , just an epiphenomena , a side effect of evolution without (absurd )   any causal effects on matter brain or body.

I haven't said that, and I don't think it's an epiphenomena.

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 :  How can then consciousness trigger or have influence on the physical reality, on the self-directed neuro-plasticity ...How can meditation through consciousness have influence on the brain , body ...How can consciousness work through neurofeedback ...?
How can the placebo or nocebo effects be explained in materialistic terms ?
How can belief that shapes consciousness have influence on our biology , brain and even genes ?, heal our bodies ? ... if the mind has no causal effects on matter brain or body . as those materialist lunatics wanna make us believe it is ? , or if the mind is in the brain or just brain activity ...

Just re-read that above displayed excerpt more carefully then .


Go read re-read the answers I just gave you to all of those questions!




[/quote]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 01:59:54


Second : macro-evolution cannot be extrapolated from micro-evolution , simply because the natural selection cannot account for the  added biological information that's necessary for "building " novel forms and novel body plans, not to mention that the highly unlikely blind unguided random lottery of the natural selection can never account for all that complexity and diversity of life on earth , via gradual, step by step , trial and error attempts , so to speak ( Not in trillions of years or more thus, so to speak  ) : that's mathematically impossible , not to mention that even computer science has proved that  gradual  simple or small random variations cannot account for or ever lead to large scale variations : random variations can work only in a limited small way  .


Yet, macroevolution does happen - it's an observable event. Species do split into other species that are morphologically different and no longer genetically compatible with the original, parent stock.
I don't understand why you feel recombination of genetic material in sexual reproduction, mutation and natural selection cannot account for "added information." When a base pair is added, that's new information, when it's deleted, the shift can result in new information, when genes are accidentally duplicated, that's new information. When some of those duplicated genes mutate and become different genes, that's new information. Surprisingly small and simple mutations can have big affects, such as relocating entire appendages or wings.  What confuses you about this?
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Many biologists have been doubting the creative power of the natural selection , as that excerpt of Meyer showed ,and much more : Go back and re-read it more carefully , please .

I'm not sure who these "many biologists" are, but they're not the ones publishing research in thousands of peer reviewed scientific journals.

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I will even supply you with more relevant excerpts on the subject as well, if you want to .


knock yourself out.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 03:18:48
Don, isn't it rather telling that after a year or more, and all the investigation that you yourself have done, we are still referring to the non-material, as the "non-material," that it doesn't even have its own name, other than what it is not?

Why is that?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2014 18:25:19
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442393#msg442393 date=1413504533]

 There was not even a hint or  any  implicit allusion whatsoever to any 'supernatural " intervention in the above displayed excerpt, regarding the mind-body interaction  : the non-physical non-local nature of consciousness is perfectly normal , not "super or paranormal " .

"Normal" or not, as long as you repeatedly fail to explain how it works, as long as you cant demonstrate the mechanism,supernatural is as good as any other descriptive term.

Look :

First of all :

You're making a false premise from the very start on which you have been building all your materialist sand castles , like all materialist are :

 Is there any empirical evidence supporting the materialist theory of consciousness , for example ? , in the sense that consciousness is in the brain or just brain activity ,without any causal effects on matter brain and body .
 If consciousness is just that , then, it can have no causal effects on the brain that "produces " it ,let alone on the physical reality in general , or on the body or its biology , genes ....How then can this false materialist theory of consciousness account for psi-phenomena , the placebo /Nocebo effects , for self -directed neuroplasticity, ...., neurofeedback and the rest of those "anomalies " ? or just for your daily decisions and actions ? It cannot , despite those  reductionist materialist "explanations " you have been providing ,that reduce the whole universe to just material processes (That's what materialists call "methodological naturalism " by the way = reducing the universe to just material processes ,"methodological naturalism " which is in fact just a consequence of materialism ) ... unless you think of yourself as being just some sort of a mindless machine , a hardware programmed by software : how can the consciousness software that's allegedly produced by the "hardware" of the physical brain  ( neuroplasticity is an evidence for the fact that the brain is NOT hardwired , and that  its anatomy , physiology or structure are NOT fixed )   have any effects on the latter then ? See the inherent materialist contradictions , incoherence and inconsistency here ?    .

The answer is a big absolutely certain NO : there is absolutely no empirical evidence for that materialist claim : correlations between mind and brain are NO causations ( IT has been proven by NDE , by psi phenomena ...that the brain is just a physical medium for consciousness .The brain that  can filter , reduce or limit the scope of consciousness .The brain as some sort of a valva , so to speak , through which consciousness has to express itself .that's why some drugs can expand consciousness , for example , to mention just that .That's why when certain areas of the brain are damaged , some correlating or 'corresponding " aspects of consciousness  seem to be reduced , limited or gone )  , not to mention that the quantitative neurophysiology cannot account for conscious subjective qualitative experiences or states , despite all that materialist non-sense in the form of computation ,and despite that materialist machine -like , computer-like metaphor regarding the nature of life ...

Look, once again : The non-materialist model of consciousness has more explanatory power than the materialist false one .The former can account for all the 'anomalies " for which the latter cannot account  and more, almost in the same fashion quantum physics has more explanatory power than the fundamentally false and approximately correct determinist mechanical classical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built  .

That quantum physics is NOT yet complete , if ever , or that it cannot explain that quantum weird world completely is NO evidence against it .The same goes for the non-materialist theory of reality or consciousness .
And there is no war on science , as that wiki link of yours wanna make people believe there is .There is only a rejection of the false materialist theory of reality that's been underlying the current materialist science .

Furthermore , correlation between mind and brain is no causation .

See this simple summary on the subject  here below  , regarding the fact that neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness , not to mention the materialist neuroscience , simply because neuroscientists will only keep on finding correlations between neural networks and the mind , and simply because the mind is not in the brain or brain activity , not a product of the brain : that much we know for sure , despite all those silly and unscientific materialist gymnastics on the subject in the form of computation and the rest :

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/05/17/human-consciousness-and-the-end-of-2jszrulazj6wq-58/

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When you would consider all those "paranormal " phenomena like psi phenomena from the non-materialist perspective , they would appear to you as they are in reality : perfectly normal .

Again, call it whatever name you care to make up. Just explain how it works.
[/quote]

See above .

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Go re-read that excerpt  once more , because you clearly did not understand what Beauregard  was talking about .
What's to understand? They are just statements of various claims, not explanations.  What particular claim of his do you want me to address. Did you read the Rationalwiki link?

Well, once again : the materialist theory of nature or reality has been proven to be false , together with all its extensions, including the materialist theory of consciousness , so, that wiki link of yours is just a desperate materialist attempt to equate materialism with science , by explaining away the non-materialist refutations of materialism as a 'war on science ", while it is in fact just a rejection of the materialist false theory of reality in science through an overwhelming body of evidence .

There are are only , once again, just correlations between mind and brain, no causation : the mind is NOT in the brain or  brain activity ....

You assume that the materialist theory of consciousness is supported by empirical evidence , it is not , not even remotely close thus .There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that neurons' firings "produce " thought " : that's just materialist bullshit that has been proven to be false .

Hebb's law and other physical laws to which the physical brain obeys  is no evidence for the "material of physical " nature of the mind : we can't extrapolate the latter from the former ,as we can't assume that correlations between brain and mind are "evidence " for the materialist "fact ", or rather for the materialist belief assumption that the mind is caused or produced by the brain's activity .... .

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For example, some forms of materialism assume that consciousness is just a product of the evolutionary complexity of the brain , just an epiphenomena , a side effect of evolution without (absurd )   any causal effects on matter brain or body.

I haven't said that, and I don't think it's an epiphenomena.
[/quote]

Then, you're NOT well informed regarding the materialist theory of consciousness you seem to be  so eager and so passionate to "defend " :You're trying to defend the indefensible .

One form of materialism assumes that consciousness is identical with the brain : identity theory .

Another one assumes that the mind is in the brain or just brain activity =  consciousness as a so-called product of the evolutionary complexity of the brain (emergent property theory , that's rejected by even our friend here David Cooper   , and rightly so . ), and so consciousness is regarded as just an epiphenomena , a useless side effect of evolution , without any causal effects on matter brain or body .

An extreme form of materialism that's represented by lunatics such as Dennett even denies the existence of consciousness as such, period ....

All forms of materialism and physicalism , realism , positivism ,...assume that consciousness is material or physical without any causal effects on matter brain or body , without any empirical evidence supporting those claims : they are just materialist dogmatic acts of faith , no science .



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Quote
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:  How can then consciousness trigger or have influence on the physical reality, on the self-directed neuro-plasticity ...How can meditation through consciousness have influence on the brain , body ...How can consciousness work through neurofeedback ...?
How can the placebo or nocebo effects be explained in materialistic terms ?
How can belief that shapes consciousness have influence on our biology , brain and even genes ?, heal our bodies ? ... if the mind has no causal effects on matter brain or body . as those materialist lunatics wanna make us believe it is ? , or if the mind is in the brain or just brain activity ...

Just re-read that above displayed excerpt more carefully then
.




Go read re-read the answers I just gave you to all of those questions!
[/quote]

All those "answers " you assume to have given me , together with that materialist wiki link of yours , do assume that the materialist theory of consciousness and reality have been supported by empirical evidence ,and that materialist science  and materialist scientists are  the only real forms of science and real scientists .

Both claims or premises are false , and have been proven to be so by an overwhelming body of evidence for which Beauregard had just delivered a small summary in his above displayed excerpt .

Science does neither require materialism nor is it condemned to be materialist or condemned to be confined within the materialist false theory of reality and all its false extensions thus .

Materialism or "methodological naturalism " are not synonymous of science .Only the scientific method is .

Materialism assumes , for example , that the universe can be explained only by material processes (That's the definition of the materialist reductionist "methodological naturalism " by the way )  , since materialism assumes that everything is matter , including the mind : that's no empirical claim , just a materialist dogmatic act of faith .

It now has been proven that consciousness and what we call matter are inseparable : through one particular interpretation of quantum theory that's supported by Von Neumann school and by most founders of quantum physics . In fact : the very fact that quantum theory has many interpretations , and the very fact that science itself is just a human social activity , and to some extent a cultural one also ( See how the Eurocentric materialism has been taken for granted as science , or as the scientific world view , without question, since the 19th century and counting ) , then , our "reality " cannot but be observer-dependent , and therefore consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of this universe ,and a primary one at that , that is , once again ,so, any serious scientific theory of reality has no choice but to integrate consciousness in it , if science wanna deliver some relatively accurate reflection or representation of reality , instead of that materialist distorted and false version of reality .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2014 20:16:58
Don, isn't it rather telling that after a year or more, and all the investigation that you yourself have done, we are still referring to the non-material, as the "non-material," that it doesn't even have its own name, other than what it is not?

Why is that?

See above :

You're falsely assuming that materialism is scientific , in the sense that everything is matter , including the mind , and hence the whole universe can be basically and actually explained only by material processes = that's what reductionist materialists call "methodological naturalism " = that's just a consequence of the false reductionist materialist theory of reality in science , no science ( Methodological naturalism is reductionist materialist thus , and reductionism has also been proven to be false , so ) .

Furthermore , science  is no synonymous of the reductionist materialist so-called methodological naturalism .

Science is  just a synonymous of the scientific method that should incite scientists to follow the evidence wherever it might take them .

Reductionist materialism or its "methodological naturalism " consequence just confine science within the materialist false theory of reality in fact , by preventing science from going beyond that false materialist theory of reality : it's a bit like dictating to an adventurer NOT to go beyond a certain territory that's assumed to be the whole territory , and if that given adventurer would stumble upon evidence that would prove to him/her that that particular territory is NOT the whole territory , then , that adventurer would be branded as a heretic or worse .

Reminds me of 'The Village " movie , ironically enough , in a religious context : Nice movie : Replace religion in it by "scientific materialism " ,and see what happens :


Materialists have been confining science to a certain "village " of reality ,while assuming that that is the whole reality thus , assuming that their materialist reductionist key hole theory of reality is the real and whole reality thus .

...........

What name do you want to have for the non-material non-physical mental which is a key component or a key "building block " of the universe then ?

Call it what you want , but , that does not make the fact go away that the immaterial consciousness is a key part of reality , and a primary one at that , that is , so , any serious scientific theory of reality must integrate it , in accordance with the overwhelming evidence on the subject to which you seem to have been closing your mind and doors by believing so dogmatically ,  blindly and irrationally , not to mention, unscientifically , in the false materialist theory of reality .

Have fun with the latter then, if that would happen to make you happy at least, just don't equate it with or call it ....science  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2014 20:41:37
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442394#msg442394 date=1413507594]


Second : macro-evolution cannot be extrapolated from micro-evolution , simply because the natural selection cannot account for the  added biological information that's necessary for "building " novel forms and novel body plans, not to mention that the highly unlikely blind unguided random lottery of the natural selection can never account for all that complexity and diversity of life on earth , via gradual, step by step , trial and error attempts , so to speak ( Not in trillions of years or more thus, so to speak  ) : that's mathematically impossible , not to mention that even computer science has proved that  gradual  simple or small random variations cannot account for or ever lead to large scale variations : random variations can work only in a limited small way  .


Yet, macroevolution does happen - it's an observable event. Species do split into other species that are morphologically different and no longer genetically compatible with the original, parent stock.
I don't understand why you feel recombination of genetic material in sexual reproduction, mutation and natural selection cannot account for "added information." When a base pair is added, that's new information, when it's deleted, the shift can result in new information, when genes are accidentally duplicated, that's new information. When some of those duplicated genes mutate and become different genes, that's new information. Surprisingly small and simple mutations can have big affects, such as relocating entire appendages or wings.  What confuses you about this?

That's a very broad subject , so, i recommend reading Meyer's excerpt more carefully .

Watch this great lecture by James A.Shapiro on the subject : Don't pay attention to the title that must have been added by some ID proponents : Just watch its content :


I have learned to adopt no scientific theory or model of reality in particular permanently , by assuming it to be "true " .No scientific theory or model of reality can ever be proved to be "true ", ever thus (See Karl Popper on the subject )  .I just follow the scientific evidence , as much as possible, wherever it might take me ,and hence i keep my beliefs to myself and do not pretend that they are 'scientific " ,unlike materialists such as  yourself  .

All beliefs or world views , including materialism thus , are , once again, per definition, unscientific = unfalsifiable , but , they are NOT all false , as materialism most certainly IS .

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Many biologists have been doubting the creative power of the natural selection , as that excerpt of Meyer showed ,and much more : Go back and re-read it more carefully , please .

I'm not sure who these "many biologists" are, but they're not the ones publishing research in thousands of peer reviewed scientific journals.

That's an argument from ignorance : those dissident scientists are prominent ones, la creme de la creme ,  with a lots of peer-reviewed works and more : see Meyer's excerpt on the subject , don't be lazy .

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I will even supply you with more relevant excerpts on the subject as well, if you want to .


knock yourself out.
[/quote]

Well, since you seem not to have really read those above displayed excerpts fully and carefully, while misunderstanding them  in the process , i will not post any more excerpts , for the time being at least .

What for then ?

Instead of trying to read them and understand them well , you just try to find materialist sources that try to "debunk " them ,so .

Well, of course materialists would try to defend their indefensible dogmatic belief system in science .

I would be extremely surprised ,if they wouldn't .

Maybe , you just don't have time enough for that , i don't know .

In any case , you have to try to be open -minded regarding science that's an ever changing evolving process , instead of sub-consciously or consciously assuming that materialism is "true " (No scientific theory or model of reality can ever be  proved to be  "true ",ever,  including the non-materialist one thus ) , while science is not even about the "truth",  whatever the latter might be indeed .

There is also an overwhelming body of evidence proving materialism and all its extensions , including the materialist theory of consciousness thus , to be ...false , so .

If you wanna keep on believing in that materialist dogmatic belief system in science , that's up to you to do so thus .Just don't call it ...science .

Thanks, take care .

By the way : don't take the following the wrong way , please :

It's thanks to the  wonderful  discoveries and advances of science that've been achieved by materialist and non-materialist scientists alike  through the unparalleled scientific method only that your surgery was possible and successful  , NOT thanks to ...materialism that's just a false theory of reality that pretends to be ..."scientific " .

Best wishes , and nice weekend .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 20:53:40
Don, isn't it rather telling that after a year or more, and all the investigation that you yourself have done, we are still referring to the non-material, as the "non-material," that it doesn't even have its own name, other than what it is not?

Why is that?

See above :

You're falsely assuming that materialism is scientific , in the sense that everything is matter , including the mind , and hence the whole universe can be basically and actually explained only by material processes = that's what reductionist materialists call "methodological naturalism " = that's just a consequence of the false reductionist materialist theory of reality in science , no science ( Methodological naturalism is reductionist materialist thus , and reductionism has also been proven to be false , so ) .

Furthermore , science  is no synonymous of the reductionist materialist so-called methodological naturalism .

Science is  just a synonymous of the scientific method that should incite scientists to follow the evidence wherever it might take them .



I'm not assuming anything, and have been perfectly willing to consider your evidence - you just haven't provided any. After months (years?)of investigation, all you seem to have for your work is the same list of phenomena you feel have not yet been adequately explained to your satisfaction, but not a single alternative explanation backed by evidence for that explanation. And again, this thing or concept of yours, for lack of a better word, doesn't even have it's own name, a definition, or a descriptive list of qualities, other than being "non-material."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/10/2014 21:18:50
Don, isn't it rather telling that after a year or more, and all the investigation that you yourself have done, we are still referring to the non-material, as the "non-material," that it doesn't even have its own name, other than what it is not?

Why is that?

See above :

You're falsely assuming that materialism is scientific , in the sense that everything is matter , including the mind , and hence the whole universe can be basically and actually explained only by material processes = that's what reductionist materialists call "methodological naturalism " = that's just a consequence of the false reductionist materialist theory of reality in science , no science ( Methodological naturalism is reductionist materialist thus , and reductionism has also been proven to be false , so ) .

Furthermore , science  is no synonymous of the reductionist materialist so-called methodological naturalism .

Science is  just a synonymous of the scientific method that should incite scientists to follow the evidence wherever it might take them .



I'm not assuming anything, and have been perfectly willing to consider your evidence - you just haven't provided any. After months (years?)of investigation, all you seem to have for your work is the same list of phenomena you feel have not yet been adequately explained to your satisfaction, but not a single alternative explanation backed by evidence for that explanation. And again, this thing or concept of yours, for lack of a better word, doesn't even have it's own name, a definition, or a descriptive list of qualities, other than being "non-material."

I have to go , sorry .before i do, the following then, very quickly :

Let's be honest .Let's not be kidding ourselves , please :
You are a self-declared materialist , that's your choice : you have been assuming that the materialist theory of reality and all its extensions , including the materialist theory of consciousness , have been scientific ,and hence have been supported by empirical evidence : that's a false premise of yours .

You're thus a materialist first , and a scientific person only second , instead of following the scientific evidence wherever it might take you as you should have been doing .

For the rest : that's yet another argument from ignorance of yours :

How do you expect to have a glimpse of the extended non-materialist theory or model of reality , let alone of the extended non-materialist theory or model of consciousness , if you a -priori confine yourself within  the materialist ones ,by assuming the latter not only to be "true " (There is no such thing in science ) , but that it has been also supported by empirical evidence , and so in doing so , you cannot but close your non-material mind to any given non-materialist scientific evidence   ...a -priori thus .


In short :

You need to go through a major meta-paradigm shift to change your mind in the face of evidence  , otherwise , you would continue confining yourself within the false materialist key hole version of reality , while assuming it is the whole real reality .

You have to broaden your horizon thus by following the evidence wherever it might take you, not the other way around  .

The  overwhelming body of evidence that has been supporting the non-materialist theory or model of reality is there for everyone to take a closer look at : it's not some sort of a state  secret : it's public .

Start by checking out the main link of this thread that would open the public gates of the non-materialist science to you through the manifesto for a post-materialistic science site .

Gotta go, bye , thanks .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 21:51:35


Well, since you seem not to have really read those above displayed excerpts fully and carefully, while misunderstanding them  in the process , i will not post any more excerpts , for the time being at least .


Well, that's too bad.
But, you can't assume that because someone does not agree with you or the author you have excerpted, they have not read it, or do not understand it, particularly if they take the time to explain why they do not agree.

The format of the argument in the Meyer excerpt is essentially the same as yours - you don't believe materialist mechanisms can account for everything, but offer nothing of substance as an alternative. Since you've read his book, perhaps you can tell me, how many chapters are devoted to what conventional evolutionary theory does not explain, and how many chapters are actually about intelligent design itself, who or what this designer is, how it interacts with physical matter, DNA, cells, etc., what experiments might provide more insight into the process, how or why certain organisms come into existence but not others, or take the morphological forms that they do, and so on. Those are the excerpts I'd really be interested in looking at.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/10/2014 22:29:22
ps. Does it not bother you in the least that none of the phenomena you have mentioned, psi, NDE, psychosomatic illness, consciousness, etc has ever been explained in any detail, "cannot be accounted for" by a non-material mechanism, either? How long do you intend to cling to your belief without evidence?

I believe that is called "faith."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 18/10/2014 11:26:18
Regarding the OP - there's no bombshell there, it's just the same old pseudoscientific nonsense in a new paper. 

Let me know when 'Post-Materialistic Science' has produced something useful.

Oh, and while not everyone agrees that Popperian falsifiability is the last word, it certainly makes ID pseudoscience too.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/10/2014 14:01:38

In short :

You need to go through a major meta-paradigm shift to change your mind in the face of evidence 


No "meta-paradigm shift" is appropriate in the "face of NO evidence".

This is the reason I do not participate in this thread. And even though I've taken the time to post this short reply, it will not inspire someone with no evidence to provide any. The reason: He has no evidence,....... period.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 16:24:06
Cheryl :

This is the definition of naturalism or methodological naturalism from Encyclopædia Britannica : methodological naturalism goes beyond materialism thus :

I have made a slight mistake about it earlier :

Quote : " Naturalism :

 in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.

Naturalism presumes that nature is in principle completely knowable. There is in nature a regularity, unity, and wholeness that implies objective laws, without which the pursuit of scientific knowledge would be absurd. Man's endless search for concrete proofs of his beliefs is seen as a confirmation of naturalistic methodology. Naturalists point out that even when one scientific theory is abandoned in favour of another, man does not despair of knowing nature, nor does he repudiate the “natural method” in his search for truth. Theories change; methodology does not.

While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism.

Only rarely do naturalists give attention to metaphysics (which they deride), and they make no philosophical attempts to establish their position. Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it. There is nothing beyond, nothing “other than,” no “other world” of being.

Naturalism's greatest vogue occurred during the 1930s and '40s, chiefly in the United States among philosophers such as F.J.E. Woodbridge, Morris R. Cohen, John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and Sidney Hook." End quote .
 

    * MLA Style:   "naturalism." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.
    * APA Style:   naturalism. (2013). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 16:43:40
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg442477#msg442477 date=1413627978]
Regarding the OP - there's no bombshell there, it's just the same old pseudoscientific nonsense in a new paper. 

(Hiiii, dlorde : nice to "talk " to you again this way .I am delighted to see you landing on this thread,so to speak   . Welcome .
My sincere apologies for being so rude to you the last times when we interacted with each other on this forum  .I am not the same man i used to be, so.How are you , man ? Fine, i hope .)

Would you care to elaborate on that , please ? What's so pseudo-scientific about non-materialist science then ? Is it just because it refutes materialism and its "scientific world view " ,and hence proposes a new , unprecedented and radical meta-paradigm shift in science ?

Who says  that  science has to be materialist , or that science does require materialism then ?

Quote
Let me know when 'Post-Materialistic Science' has produced something useful.

That's an argument from ignorance : check out the manifesto for a post-materialistic science site at least then to figure that out for yourself .

Quote
Oh, and while not everyone agrees that Popperian falsifiability is the last word, it certainly makes ID pseudoscience too.

Popperian falsifiability is certainly NOT the last word indeed, but it does offer  the best criterion so far for distinguishing between science and psuedo-science .

P.S.: ID does not necessarily reflect my own views regarding evolution, the origin of life ....I just brought it up to raise the issues regarding the many flaws and false claims of Darwinism .The latter that's more of an ideology or a secular atheist religion than a scientific theory .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 16:56:56
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442441#msg442441 date=1413579095]


Well, since you seem not to have really read those above displayed excerpts fully and carefully, while misunderstanding them  in the process , i will not post any more excerpts , for the time being at least .


Well, that's too bad.
But, you can't assume that because someone does not agree with you or the author you have excerpted, they have not read it, or do not understand it, particularly if they take the time to explain why they do not agree.

Well, i could only conclude from what you were saying about Beauregard ' s conclusion   that i posted  from  his "Brain wars ..." book that you did not understand it , while resorting to materialist 'authority "  for help,  in the form of that rationalwiki link as an "counter-argument",so  .

All your 'explanations " came from that materialist link thus ,so .

Quote
The format of the argument in the Meyer excerpt is essentially the same as yours - you don't believe materialist mechanisms can account for everything, but offer nothing of substance as an alternative. Since you've read his book, perhaps you can tell me, how many chapters are devoted to what conventional evolutionary theory does not explain, and how many chapters are actually about intelligent design itself, who or what this designer is, how it interacts with physical matter, DNA, cells, etc., what experiments might provide more insight into the process, how or why certain organisms come into existence but not others, or take the morphological forms that they do, and so on. Those are the excerpts I'd really be interested in looking at.

Actually , Meyer's excerpt should have given you enough clues about that book of his to start from , not to mention that i have provided you with a lecture by James A.Shapiro on the subject .Shapiro who agrees with some arguments against Darwinism that were raised by ID proponents ,while offering third way alternatives to both darwinism and ID thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 17:14:35
ps. Does it not bother you in the least that none of the phenomena you have mentioned, psi, NDE, psychosomatic illness, consciousness, etc has ever been explained in any detail, "cannot be accounted for" by a non-material mechanism, either? How long do you intend to cling to your belief without evidence?

I believe that is called "faith."

You're just projecting , Cheryl :

The materialist dogmatic belief system in science is the one that's only an act of faith that's not supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever , not the other way around .

Well, this  is yet another argument from ignorance from your part + misunderstanding of what those excerpts said and of what i said .

New scientific theories or models , scientific knowledge ...in general, including the new scientific theories of the nature of reality , theories of consciousness ....must be both falsifiable and must also have more explanatory power than the previous ones (the materialist ones in this case ) ,and thus account for all the 'anomalies " which were not accounted for by the materialist ones thus .

The non-materialist theory of the nature of reality ,together with its extension in the form of the non-materialist theory of consciousness have been accounting for all those 'anomalies " that were/are not accounted for by materialism , have been relatively falsifiable , and to some extent reproducible via thousands of cases and experiments ,and they do clearly have more explanatory power than the materialist false ones .

Not to mention that those non-materialist theories or models have been backed by quantum physics or just by one particular interpretation of quantum theory that's more plausible than the other interpretations of quantum  theory thus ....and also by the only  plausible interpretations of neuroscience , biology , chemistry, by the fine tuning of the universe ,  and by the only plausible interpretations of all sciences in fact .

It all comes down thus to the interpretation -dilemma in science in the face of an overwhelming body of evidence : Occam's razor is NOT on the side of materialist science thus , so to speak .

I can only add that you seem to be reading both my words and those of my excerpts in a selective manner through the filter or lens of materialism only , so .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 18/10/2014 17:20:46


 "Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way."


I'm fine with that. The "influence" that is "detectable" is whats known as evidence.

Quote

 Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it. There is nothing beyond, nothing “other than,” no “other world” of being.

This statement would seem to be more problematic for you than helpful. If some mechanism or new force was found to be responsible for psi, and could be "detectable" - verifiable - it would no longer be considered supernatural, but another aspect of the natural world, no different than say, the discovery of electromagnetism.

The sticking point, though, is that all of our means for "detecting" and verifying tend to be material in nature - observation by people or instruments, the effects of the phenomena on other physical things, or the effects of different physical variables on the phenomena being studied.

Secondly, "detectable", does not mean proof by process of elimination, which is generally what psi experiments at their most convincing rely on, and never get beyond.  "There is no way we can think of that this person could have access to that information, so it must be.....esp, or out of body consciousness, or remote viewing."
Process of elimination is not the same as detection or demonstrating a mechanism.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 17:30:42
Cheryl :

Why did you skip this quote from "Naturalism " through Encyclopedia Britannica ? :

Quote : "While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism." End quote .

There is also what can be called theistic naturalism thus , after all,  , not just atheistic naturalistic materialism ....

And who says that that naturalist philosophy that was developed in the last century is the final world on naturalistic science ?

Who says that if scientists would discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature itself , science should not go beyond nature or discard that ?

In short :

Who says that science has to be exclusively naturalistic then ? ,if scientists would discover someday that nature is not the whole reality thus .

I thought that science was / is an ever -changing process , and that scientists should follow the evidence wherever it might take them , not confine science within their preferred world view of the moment or within the zeitgeist of the moment then ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 18/10/2014 17:45:34
Cheryl :

Why did you skip this quote from "Naturalism " through Encyclopedia Britannica ? :

"While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism."

I didn't skip or ignore that passage. The author simply says there is no bias for or against these things, providing there is evidence, a detectable influence, not just a theory or an idea about it,  which is exactly what I've been saying.

Quote
There is also what can be called theistic naturalism , not just atheistic materialism ....

And who says that that naturalist philosophy that was developed in the last century is the final world on naturalistic science ?

Who says that if scientists would discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature itself , science should not go beyond nature or discard that ?

I assumed the excerpt about naturalism was the one you wanted to discuss and put forth for a reason, so those were the remarks I addressed. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "beyond nature" what exactly that refers to, so unless you can be a little clearer or specific about what that even is, there is not much I can say about it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 18:11:40
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442504#msg442504 date=1413649246]


 "Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way."


I'm fine with that. The "influence" that is "detectable" is whats known as evidence.

Agree indeed . Detectable can also mean indirectly detectable , not just directly detetctable thus .

Quote

Quote
Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it. There is nothing beyond, nothing “other than,” no “other world” of being.

This statement would seem to be more problematic for you than helpful. If some mechanism or new force was found to be responsible for psi, and could be "detectable" - verifiable - it would no longer be considered supernatural, but another ashttp://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/Themes/naksci3/images/bbc/bold.gifpect of the natural world, no different than say, the discovery of electromagnetism.

First of all : clearly : no material process can ever account for psi phenomena , the placebo/nocebo effect , for the fact that beliefs and expectations that shape consciousness can heal the body , turn genes on or off, change the structure and physiology of the brain through self- directed neuroplasticity , neurofeedback and much more ...let alone for the origin of life , .......

Second : Why would it seem to be problematic for me ?

Non-materialist science has been proving the fact that psi-phenomena and the rest of those 'anomalies " for which materialism can never account are perfectly natural , normal , NOT "supernatural or paranormal " .The latter labels are just hollow semantics used by materialists to explain away what materialism cannot account for or deal with in fact .

Quote
The sticking point, though, is that all of our means for "detecting" and verifying tend to be material in nature - observation by people or instruments, the effects of the phenomena on other physical things, or the effects of different physical variables on the phenomena being studied.

One can deduce from all those thousands of cases and experiments relating to psi phenomena that can all come down to the mind -body relationship that the influence of consciousness is detectable indirectly , and that consciousness cannot but be non-physical , non -material and non-local .See also the entanglement phenomena in quantum physics : explain that instantaneous action from huge distances between particles through some material process of yours then ? I thought nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light .

Explain what Einstein called instantaneous "spooky action at a distance " throught some faster than the speed of light material process of yours then . Entanglement that has been proved  to occur via a lots of duplicated experiments .

Why can't consciousness work through entanglement also , via instantaneous action on  "matter" or via minds-minds interactions from a distance then ? ,to mention just that .

Quote
Secondly, "detectable", does not mean proof by process of elimination, which is generally what psi experiments at their most convincing rely on, and never get beyond.  "There is no way we can think of that this person could have access to that information, so it must be.....esp, or out of body consciousness, or remote viewing."
Process of elimination is not the same as detection or demonstrating a mechanism.

So, materialism can afford to be eliminative , and the rest not ???

Regardless of that :

Do you think that the great physicist and mathematician Von Neumann did detect the role of consciousness in physics through any form of elimination, or direct detection  ?

He concluded through rigorous maths that the measurement problem in quantum physics could not be solved but by concluding that there must be a process of some sort that collapses the wave function , a process outside of the laws of physics . He could not think of anythingelse than the consciousness of the observer , albeit reluctantly .That's how real scientists should work : follow the evidence wherever it might take them , not make it fit into their a-priori held beliefs or theories , deny it as such or ignore it as such , as materialists do whenever  the data or evidence contradicts their materialist dogmatic belief .

P.S.: Physicists have been talking about the eixtence of THE field ,field of information or otherwise , where everything  seem to come from .

They can't prove the existence of that field indirectly . let alone directly , through empirical evidence , just ...mathematically . Should we discard that ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/10/2014 18:23:08
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442507#msg442507 date=1413650734]
Cheryl :

Why did you skip this quote from "Naturalism " through Encyclopedia Britannica ? :

"While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism."

I didn't skip or ignore that passage. The author simply says there is no bias for or against these things, providing there is evidence, a detectable influence, not just a theory or an idea about it,  which is exactly what I've been saying.

Well, you seem to have some sort of argument from ignorance thought pattern of some sort , Cheryl : I am tired of repeating that fact :

Non-materialist science is in fact all about an overwhelming body of evidence that has been supporting  its claims and theories, models .... and all about detecting , albeit indireclty, the influence of consciousness as a key component of reality on matter brain and body , and much more , through psi-phenomena , through the impact of beliefs and expactations on body brain and biology genes ... via thousands of experiments and documented cases ...

Quote
Quote
There is also what can be called theistic naturalism , not just atheistic materialism ....

And who says that that naturalist philosophy that was developed in the last century is the final world on naturalistic science ?

Who says that if scientists would discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature itself , science should not go beyond nature or discard that ?

I assumed the excerpt about naturalism was the one you wanted to discuss and put forth for a reason, so those were the remarks I addressed. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "beyond nature" what exactly that refers to, so unless you can be a little clearer or specific about what that even is, there is not much I can say about it.

Well, you said that that particular quote which you posted from my post about " naturalism" was a problem for me, so, i replied why should science be confined to that naturalist philosophy that was developed in the last century, that's all, while providing you with another quote from that same post of mine regardin naturalism , to show you that there is also what can be called theistic naturalism ,so....., that's all  .

Who says then thus that science has to be materialist  all this time and counting , or that science has to require materialism , like that rationalwiki link of yours said , the more when we see that materialism has been challenged and refuted by an overwhelming body of evidence ?

In short :

Who says that real science or real scientists have to be materialists ,as that rationalwiki link of yours also said , in the sense that science or scientists have to seek only material or physical biological explanations of the universe and life in it , via only   material processes then ?

Think about that then .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2014 01:41:47

Well, you seem to have some sort of argument from ignorance thought pattern of some sort , Cheryl : I am tired of repeating that fact :

Non-materialist science is in fact all about an overwhelming body of evidence that has been supporting  its claims and theories, models .... and all about detecting , albeit indireclty, the influence of consciousness as a key component of reality on matter brain and body , and much more , through psi-phenomena , through the impact of beliefs and expactations on body brain and biology genes ... via thousands of experiments and documented cases ...

First, I'm not sure you understand what the phrase "argument from ignorance" means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance 

It does not mean that some one simply disagrees with the veracity of your facts or your line of reasoning. Your premises seem much worthy of the label of 'argument from ignorance', since you are the one saying that if materialism cannot disprove the immaterial, the immaterial must be accepted as true.
I never have said the the immaterial does not exist, I just (repeatedly) asked for evidence and demonstrations of a mechanism.

Quote

And who says that that naturalist philosophy that was developed in the last century is the final world on naturalistic science ?

Who says that if scientists would discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature itself , science should not go beyond nature or discard that ?



Who says then thus that science has to be materialist  all this time and counting , or that science has to require materialism , like that rationalwiki link of yours said , the more when we see that materialism has been challenged and refuted by an overwhelming body of evidence ?

In short :

Who says that real science or real scientists have to be materialists ,as that rationalwiki link of yours also said , in the sense that science or scientists have to seek only material or physical biological explanations of the universe and life in it , via only   material processes then ?

Think about that then .

No one says it.

But it's interesting that some how in 80 something pages and claims of "overwhelming evidence," we have never taken the time to look closely at anyone of these studies or examples. And it seems, that when we talk specifically about a particular area, like macroevolution, and you are provided with facts or examples that contradict your claims, you ignore them or change the subject to physics. When physics is discussed (as with the lengthy Stapp debate or discussions about wave function collapse) and you are again backed into into a corner,  you switch topics yet again, without any attempt to address the other person's comments or support what you've said earlier.

Then many posts later, you repeat the same claims over as if they were never addressed.

You began this thread with the announcement that important scientists were rejecting materialism in great numbers. If true, they seem a bit slow out of the gate in engaging in any research along those lines or producing any new findings. But if they do, I'm willing to take a look at it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 19/10/2014 20:48:09
At any rate, thanks for providing me with an activity to pass the time during my convalescence.

I can't help but wonder, what if some new type of force involving consciousness , or some new form of  "stuff" was discovered? What difference would it make? It would just become another aspect of the natural world and no longer mysterious or magical, like  electromagnetism,  and no more amazing than my cell phone (which actually, still amazes me.)

If it were proven that fairies or angels existed, why should I find them more interesting or awe inspiring than birds or octopi?

I can't help but think in the end, all this fervent pursuit and debate about a post material paradigm shift isn't about science at all. It's a desperate search for a God who will protect, and the possibility of an afterlife. That is the motive that drives the whole anti-materialist quest. Otherwise, they wouldn't bother, since they don't seem all that interested in any kind of science in the first place.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2014 16:48:29
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442605#msg442605 date=1413748089]
At any rate, thanks for providing me with an activity to pass the time during my convalescence.

You're welcome . It would be more entertainning and educative to listen to the "Spiritual Brain " By Beauregrad . Did you get it yet ? For much more solid scientific non-materialist stuff , i would provide you with relevant books on the subject that would rock your false materialist sand castles , if you want to at least  . 

"Spiritual brain ..." is  a funny derision of materialism , and shows how it is false , ridiculous , dogmatic , contradictoty  paradoxical incoherent , unscientific and much more , while offering some alternate scientific explanations to the false materialist ones .

It deals with Darwinism, consciousness , neuroscience and much more .

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I can't help but wonder, what if some new type of force involving consciousness , or some new form of  "stuff" was discovered? What difference would it make? It would just become another aspect of the natural world and no longer mysterious or magical, like  electromagnetism,  and no more amazing than my cell phone (which actually, still amazes me.)

You see ? You can't get out of your materialist key hole box . I hate to tell you : " I told you so ", didn't i ?

What makes you think that materialistic "explanations " , through material processes or causes are the only explanations of natural phenomena then ?

The natural world or naturalism are no synonymous of materialism : material causes or material processes are not the only ways through which science can explain the universe : they are just a part of the picture , not the whole picture .

Quote
If it were proven that fairies or angels existed, why should I find them more interesting or awe inspiring than birds or octopi?

Very funny .
Your materialism cannot account for such things , remember , even if they would exist .
Materialism that denies everything that's beyond the illusory physical world or reality .In fact , materialism assumes that the latter is all what there is "out there "  .

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I can't help but think in the end, all this fervent pursuit and debate about a post material paradigm shift isn't about science at all. It's a desperate search for a God who will protect, and the possibility of an afterlife. That is the motive that drives the whole anti-materialist quest

About a post materialistic ....you mean : there is a difference between material and materialist . The former is all about the physical or material universe , the latter is all about reducing   the whole universe to just material processes .

Non-materialist science embraces both the material and the immaterial mental in nature , so : it even says that our "reality " is psycho-physical .

How do you know that's the motive ? Science is not about motives ,and is not concerned by them either , even though materialist science reduces even motives to just physics and chemistry , ironically enough , to just survival strategies or illusions .

The manifesto for a post-materialistic science is all about the fact that materialist science has been delivering a false , dogmatic and distorted version of nature or reality, a false  version  of the nature of reality that pretend to be scientific ,thanks to materialism.

Science is all about trying to explain the universe or the nature of reality or nature ,so, science must abandon materialism , if science wanna be able to deliver some relatively accurate reflections of representations of reality .

"Scientific materialism " is false , so, science has no choice but to become non-materialst , if science doesn't wanna loose its ceredibility and reliability as a valid source of knowledge , otherwise science under materialism would remain just a dogmatic ideology or atheist religion that would remain confined within the false materialist version of reality  , despite all  scientific advances, discoveries ...that were achieved only through the scientific method by materialist and non-materialist scientists alike .

The non-materialist scientists thus are more scientific than the materialist ones could ever be , simply because the former  follow what emiprical evidence show to them , and the latter  just try to make empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialist world view ,or just deny it , ignore it as such ,or just call it pseudo-science or worse whenever that empirical evidence would contradict their a-priori held materialist belief or world view .

Science has become a servant or a slave of materialists and materialism , in the sense that science gets misused for the service of the materialist ideology , in order to vindicate it , in vain ,while science should be used to explore the universe through free inquiry .


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Otherwise, they wouldn't bother, since they don't seem all that interested in any kind of science in the first place.

What are you talking about in Zeus' name , Cheryl ?

There is a whole pseudo-scientific materialist dogmatic belief syetem at the very heart of materialist science that has been proven to be not only as such ,but also as false .

So, non-materialist scientists wanna liberate science from materialism ,while offering alternatives to the latter .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/10/2014 18:25:21
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442560#msg442560 date=1413679307]



In short :

Who says that real science or real scientists have to be materialists ,as that rationalwiki link of yours also said , in the sense that science or scientists have to seek only material or physical biological explanations of the universe and life in it , via only   material processes then ?

Think about that then .

No one says it.

Prior note : Fact is : you have made many arguments from ignorance (I am well aware of what that means ) , not because you disagreed with me ....., but , simply because you implied that since you were  not familiar with or not informed regarding the evidence provided by non-materialist and other  scientists , then , there were none , and because of similar replies of yours ....Check that out in your own posts to me .

That said : 

No one says it ? Are you sure about that ? Think twice .
Your take on this is too naive and uninformed to be taken seriously .
Even that rationlawiki link of yours not only implied it , but also said it explicitly , in the sense that real scientists or real science are the ones who stick to the materialist methodological naturalism, come on .

Any given scientist who would even imply that some natural phenomena can be explained by non-material processes , or that they are non-material like in the case of the nature of consciousness, would be immediately or automatically considered as a heretic or worse who tries to introduce the "supernatural " into science : see what naturalism , naturalistic science or methodlogical naturalism are  all about , once again , through Encyclopedia Britannica 's quote here above : materialists reduce them to just the materialist ones , in the sense that the whole universe can be explained by or reduced only to material causes or processes .

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But it's interesting that some how in 80 something pages and claims of "overwhelming evidence," we have never taken the time to look closely at anyone of these studies or examples. And it seems, that when we talk specifically about a particular area, like macroevolution, and you are provided with facts or examples that contradict your claims, you ignore them or change the subject to physics. When physics is discussed (as with the lengthy Stapp debate or discussions about wave function collapse) and you are again backed into into a corner,  you switch topics yet again, without any attempt to address the other person's comments or support what you've said earlier.

See below .

It's not possible to cover all those fields this way , let alone in detail ,so, that's why i was just referring you all to them through the work of some non-materialist scientists ...

I cannot do the whole work for you thus : the evidence is there to take a loot at , some of the evidence that's provided even by some mainstream scientists like Shapiro , Jay Gould and others .

It's up to you thus to check out my links and excerpts.

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Then many posts later, you repeat the same claims over as if they were never addressed.

You did not provide any conclusive evidence against  my earlier claims , or against those of non-materialist scientists , so, except that link regarding the discovered fossils in relation to pre-cambrian period , and even that is no conclusive evidence for  macro-evolution ,or for the so-called creative power of the gradulal , step by step, natural selection that can never  account for macro-evolution , let alone for its added novel biological information ...

Regarding Stapp's work  where he connected Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) to what he called the Zeno-effect ( a kindda "glue " that holds the created neural pathways or brain wiring  in place  through the power of conscious focus .The latter explains why habits are so difficult to break ,since focussing on them only strengthens their old neural pathways , and explains that focussing away from old habits regularily through excercises , meditation , discipline ... methodologically , away from them on healthier thoughts can create new neural pathways or brain wiring that would override the old neural pathways created by negative habits  ....  Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy  is built up on that: i tried it myself , and it does work .I can provide you with mind-blowing books on the subject also, if you want to, It even helped me get rid of many old habits , of  some form of light depression, mood swings, anger  ....It can also help people get rid of anxiety , depression, erroneous thinking , catastrophizing, wrong mind reading of others  , ....and much more , without any side effects whatsoever thus , without use of any medicine.Only severely mentally ill patients must  combine  the steps , excercises and techniques of cognitive psychology or therapy with ...their medication ... .Long story thus.)

Regarding Stapp's work thus : he relied on one particular interpretation of quantum theory that's supported by Von Neumann school + by many others and by most founders of quantum physics thus : it is more plausible then the rest of those interpretations of quantum theory . The latter is evidence enough , once again , for the fact that our "reality " is observer -dependent , otherwise we wouldn't have the interpretation dilemma in science in general, or elsewhere  .

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You began this thread with the announcement that important scientists were rejecting materialism in great numbers. If true, they seem a bit slow out of the gate in engaging in any research along those lines or producing any new findings. But if they do, I'm willing to take a look at it.

Check out the main link of this thread, don't be lazy  :

I cannot do the whole work for you , once again :

I am only a messenger who can only refer you to their work via general ideas , insights ....Otherwise , it would be too much time and energy consuming to do that for you this way . I cannot afford to do that either .

Maybe , i will write a book that will be talking about all those books, work, experiments , data and much more that were written and delivered by some mainstream scientists as well as by non-materialist scientists alike : that book would be hundreds of miles long lol . 

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

The scientists who signed that manifesto, from Beauregard to Larry Dossey through Gary Schwartz , are just the top of the iceberg of those non-materialist scientists out there who have been delivering some important data and evidence on the subject .

If you want to , i can make it even easier for you by displaying the work of some of them through their own words .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/10/2014 22:59:43
My sincere apologies for being so rude to you the last times when we interacted with each other on this forum  .I am not the same man i used to be, so.How are you , man ? Fine, i hope .)
I'm fine thank you.

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Would you care to elaborate on that , please ? What's so pseudo-scientific about non-materialist science then ? Is it just because it refutes materialism and its "scientific world view " ,and hence proposes a new , unprecedented and radical meta-paradigm shift in science ?
Ah -  straight in with the straw man argument, just like the old days [;)]

When I say "the same old pseudoscientific nonsense in a new paper", I mean the paper contains pseudo-scientific nonsense that is unoriginal. I don't really care how it's labelled.

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Let me know when 'Post-Materialistic Science' has produced something useful.
That's an argument from ignorance : check out the manifesto for a post-materialistic science site at least then to figure that out for yourself .
Keep your fallacy powder dry - it's not an argument at all, it's simply a request.

But you're right; I see now that the manifesto is a useful example of attention-seeking drivel. How could I have missed that.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/10/2014 23:48:44
... See also the entanglement phenomena in quantum physics : explain that instantaneous action from huge distances between particles through some material process of yours then ? I thought nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light .
Not quite. The rule is that nothing can accelerate to or past the speed of light (in vacuo), and that no information can travel faster than light (in vacuo).

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Why can't consciousness work through entanglement also , via instantaneous action on  "matter" or via minds-minds interactions from a distance then ?
Decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence).

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Do you think that the great physicist and mathematician Von Neumann did detect the role of consciousness in physics through any form of elimination, or direct detection  ?

He concluded through rigorous maths that the measurement problem in quantum physics could not be solved but by concluding that there must be a process of some sort that collapses the wave function , a process outside of the laws of physics . He could not think of anythingelse than the consciousness of the observer , albeit reluctantly .
In the 82(!) years since von Neumann's publication, physics has moved on. Wave function collapse is just one of a number of interpretations of QM, and the idea of conscious collapse is now a historical footnote (except for a few fringe woosters, like Stapp).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/10/2014 00:10:59
I can't help but wonder, what if some new type of force involving consciousness , or some new form of  "stuff" was discovered? What difference would it make?
If quantum field theory (the Standard Model) is even a reasonable approximation to the way the world works (and the evidence suggests it is far more than that - particularly now the long-predicted Higgs particle has been found), then such a force doesn't exist, and any 'stuff' would have to be made of familiar material. No unknown forces or particles relevant to everyday human-scale interactions remain to be discovered - there are probably plenty at other scales and strengths, but the fundamentals of our everyday environment are all accounted for (gravity, electromagnetism, electrons, protons, and neutrons).

It's a strong claim, but QFT is a strong theory. For the full, exciting, entertaining details, see Sean Carroll's talk The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k). Skip to 33 minutes for the specific claim (although the whole thing is well worth watching). Please pay close attention to the caveats and limits that Carroll describes.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 00:42:22

"Spiritual brain ..." is  a funny derision of materialism , and shows how it is false , ridiculous , dogmatic , contradictoty  paradoxical incoherent , unscientific and much more ,

See, that is exactly why I think it will likely be a waste of time. I’m less interested in page after page of  their litany of criticisms about evolution or neuroscience. I want to see what alternative explanations and mechanisms they have, and the evidence that backs it, and I suspect that will be once again sorely  lacking and a waste of my time. 
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while offering some alternate scientific explanations to the false materialist ones .

If I check it out at all, that is what I'd be most interested in seeing if only out of curiosity as to how they think they can pull that off.  But I'm not hopeful.



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The manifesto for a post-materialistic science is all about the fact that materialist science has been delivering a false , dogmatic and distorted version of nature or reality, a false  version  of the nature of reality that pretend to be scientific ,thanks to materialism.

Science is all about trying to explain the universe or the nature of reality or nature ,so, science must abandon materialism , if science wanna be able to deliver some relatively accurate reflections of representations of reality .

"Scientific materialism " is false , so, science has no choice but to become non-materialst , if science doesn't wanna loose its ceredibility and reliability as a valid source of knowledge , otherwise science under materialism would remain just a dogmatic ideology or atheist religion that would remain confined within the false materialist version of reality  , despite all  scientific advances, discoveries ...that were achieved only through the scientific method by materialist and non-materialist scientists alike .

The non-materialist scientists thus are more scientific than the materialist ones could ever be , simply because the former  follow what emiprical evidence show to them , and the latter  just try to make empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialist world view ,or just deny it , ignore it as such ,or just call it pseudo-science or worse whenever that empirical evidence would contradict their a-priori held materialist belief or world view .

Science has become a servant or a slave of materialists and materialism , in the sense that science gets misused for the service of the materialist ideology , in order to vindicate it , in vain ,while science should be used to explore the universe through free inquiry .

For the life of me I’ll never understand the benefit you see in attacking all of conventional science based on physical processes, and characterizing it as “false” when clearly it has elucidated the mechanisms behind a vast number of phenomena, in physics, chemistry, biology, botany, medicine, etc and has completely altered the human experience and potential. And although you keep saying this progress in knowledge has nothing to do with materialism, it has had everything to do with it, and the belief that nature was intelligible and could be explained through physical processes without resorting to mystical elements or God. 

But fine, if you feel there is "more", or "something else" out there, what’s stopping you or anyone else from discovering it and using the scientific method to explain its workings? A mass conspiracy against such investigations is not tenable.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 00:51:23

Prior note : Fact is : you have made many arguments from ignorance (I am well aware of what that means ) , not because you disagreed with me ....., but , simply because you implied that since you were  not familiar with or not informed regarding the evidence provided by non-materialist and other  scientists , then , there were none , and because of similar replies of yours ....Check that out in your own posts to me .
...It's not possible to cover all those fields this way , let alone in detail ,so, that's why i was just referring you all to them through the work of some non-materialist scientists ...

....I cannot do the whole work for you thus : the evidence is there to take a loot at , some of the evidence that's provided even by some mainstream scientists like Shapiro , Jay Gould and others .

It's up to you thus to check out my links and excerpts.
Check out the main link of this thread, don't be lazy  :

I cannot do the whole work for you , once again :



I am not asking you to  “do the work for” me. I am simply suggesting that you provide a link to particular study or two that you feel is most illustrative of the “overwhelming evidence” you keep referring to, and is an example of the kind of  non-material influences your theory proposes. You can’t expect in a discussion forum that people have the time or the motivation to read a dozen books and view countless videos   It is not “lazy” to request that you reference the most important studies that your ideas are based on. (In fact on another science forum, it’s mandatory after repeated requests, or the thread can be closed.)   I do not direct your attention to entire anatomy or neuroscience text books and complain that you are being lazy, narrow minded, or “arguing from ignorance” for not having read them.
If nothing else it would give us something new to do beside rehash the same philosophical disagreement, the general trueness and falseness of methodologies, over and over.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 01:40:51


Regarding Stapp's work  where he connected Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) to what he called the Zeno-effect ( a kindda "glue " that holds the created neural pathways or brain wiring  in place  through the power of conscious focus .


You realize that makes absolutely no sense, right?  Not even metaphorically.

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The latter explains why habits are so difficult to break ,since focussing on them only strengthens their old neural pathways , and explains that focussing away from old habits regularily through excercises , meditation , discipline ... methodologically , away from them on healthier thoughts can create new neural pathways or brain wiring that would override the old neural pathways created by negative habits  ....  Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy  is built up on that: i tried it myself , and it does work .

Why do you think cognitive therapy is non materialist?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 01:47:37
I can't help but wonder, what if some new type of force involving consciousness , or some new form of  "stuff" was discovered? What difference would it make?
If quantum field theory (the Standard Model) is even a reasonable approximation to the way the world works (and the evidence suggests it is far more than that - particularly now the long-predicted Higgs particle has been found), then such a force doesn't exist, and any 'stuff' would have to be made of familiar material. No unknown forces or particles relevant to everyday human-scale interactions remain to be discovered - there are probably plenty at other scales and strengths, but the fundamentals of our everyday environment are all accounted for (gravity, electromagnetism, electrons, protons, and neutrons).

It's a strong claim, but QFT is a strong theory. For the full, exciting, entertaining details, see Sean Carroll's talk The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k). Skip to 33 minutes for the specific claim (although the whole thing is well worth watching). Please pay close attention to the caveats and limits that Carroll describes.

Thanks. Tomorrow is library night and I plan to catch up on some viewing with their wifi.
I really wish I had a better understanding of physics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 21/10/2014 08:59:31

I am only a messenger


But unlike the Post Office or the internet, you have the last word over which messages you transmit, and like BBC television, you do yourself no credit by broadcasting rubbish.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/10/2014 09:23:27
Thanks. Tomorrow is library night and I plan to catch up on some viewing with their wifi.
I really wish I had a better understanding of physics.
I hope you enjoy the video - Carroll is that rare combination of high-level expertise, broad general knowledge, and a Feynman-like clarity of exposition - with a sense of humour.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2014 18:16:02
 
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442699#msg442699 date=1413852051]


Regarding Stapp's work  where he connected Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) to what he called the Zeno-effect ( a kindda "glue " that holds the created neural pathways or brain wiring  in place  through the power of conscious focus .


You realize that makes absolutely no sense, right?  Not even metaphorically.

That's a bit how neuroplasticity or self-directed neuroplasticity , grosso-modo , work, from the non-materialist neuroscience's perspective that relies on one particular interpretation of quantum theory , in total contrast with the materialist neuroscience that's still stuck within the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view . Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy rely on the above , and it works .I tried it myself, once again .I can tell . Many other people did try it also with success...


Why  does  it make no sense to you then ? You have admitted to dlorde that you weren't that into physics, for example  ? Haven't you ? How can you tell then ?

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Quote
The latter explains why habits are so difficult to break ,since focussing on them only strengthens their old neural pathways , and explains that focussing away from old habits regularily through excercises , meditation , discipline ... methodologically , away from them on healthier thoughts can create new neural pathways or brain wiring that would override the old neural pathways created by negative habits  ....  Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy  is built up on that: i tried it myself , and it does work .

Why do you think cognitive therapy is non materialist?

You should try to read me well, Cheryl :  Be serious, please :

I said : the non-materialist cognitive therapy .....

There is  materialist and non-materialist cognitive therapy or spychology  ,as there is materialist and non-materialist neuroscience , as there is materialist science and non-materialist science ...

Comprende ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2014 18:28:07

Prior note : Fact is : you have made many arguments from ignorance (I am well aware of what that means ) , not because you disagreed with me ....., but , simply because you implied that since you were  not familiar with or not informed regarding the evidence provided by non-materialist and other  scientists , then , there were none , and because of similar replies of yours ....Check that out in your own posts to me .
...It's not possible to cover all those fields this way , let alone in detail ,so, that's why i was just referring you all to them through the work of some non-materialist scientists ...

....I cannot do the whole work for you thus : the evidence is there to take a loot at , some of the evidence that's provided even by some mainstream scientists like Shapiro , Jay Gould and others .

It's up to you thus to check out my links and excerpts.
Check out the main link of this thread, don't be lazy  :

I cannot do the whole work for you , once again :



I am not asking you to  “do the work for” me. I am simply suggesting that you provide a link to particular study or two that you feel is most illustrative of the “overwhelming evidence” you keep referring to, and is an example of the kind of  non-material influences your theory proposes. You can’t expect in a discussion forum that people have the time or the motivation to read a dozen books and view countless videos   It is not “lazy” to request that you reference the most important studies that your ideas are based on. (In fact on another science forum, it’s mandatory after repeated requests, or the thread can be closed.)   I do not direct your attention to entire anatomy or neuroscience text books and complain that you are being lazy, narrow minded, or “arguing from ignorance” for not having read them.
If nothing else it would give us something new to do beside rehash the same philosophical disagreement, the general trueness and falseness of methodologies, over and over.

Once again , i am just a messenger and i referred you all to that main particular site regarding the manifesto for a post-materialistic science at least ,as i talked about all that in general terms in my earlier posts via my own words , and also via posting links , excerpts from books, video links ...

That's all i can do for you , since i cannot afford to be spending too much time and energy here which i cannot afford anyway .

You keep repeating the same remarks i have responded to earlier , on many occasions .

That's not serious .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2014 18:49:15
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442693#msg442693 date=1413848542]

"Spiritual brain ..." is  a funny derision of materialism , and shows how it is false , ridiculous , dogmatic , contradictoty  paradoxical incoherent , unscientific and much more ,

See, that is exactly why I think it will likely be a waste of time. I’m less interested in page after paghttp://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/Themes/naksci3/images/bbc/bold.gife of  their litany of criticisms about evolution or neuroscience. I want to see what alternative explanations and mechanisms they have, and the evidence that backs it, and I suspect that will be once again sorely  lacking and a waste of my time. 
Quote

See ? That's exactly what i mean : you don't read me well : I said that that particular work showed how ridiculous , false ...materialism was / is , while offering alternate explanations to the materialist false ones , through evidence .

 
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while offering some alternate scientific explanations to the false materialist ones .

If I check it out at all, that is what I'd be most interested in seeing if only out of curiosity as to how they think they can pull that off.  But I'm not hopeful.

How can you tell without listening to the evidence presented by "The spiritual brain ..." , for example .I have even offered you a link to download the audio version of the book for free ,remember, so .

Try to download it via the library 's wifi then .

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The manifesto for a post-materialistic science is all about the fact that materialist science has been delivering a false , dogmatic and distorted version of nature or reality, a false  version  of the nature of reality that pretend to be scientific ,thanks to materialism.

Science is all about trying to explain the universe or the nature of reality or nature ,so, science must abandon materialism , if science wanna be able to deliver some relatively accurate reflections of representations of reality .

"Scientific materialism " is false , so, science has no choice but to become non-materialst , if science doesn't wanna loose its ceredibility and reliability as a valid source of knowledge , otherwise science under materialism would remain just a dogmatic ideology or atheist religion that would remain confined within the false materialist version of reality  , despite all  scientific advances, discoveries ...that were achieved only through the scientific method by materialist and non-materialist scientists alike .

The non-materialist scientists thus are more scientific than the materialist ones could ever be , simply because the former  follow what emiprical evidence show to them , and the latter  just try to make empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialist world view ,or just deny it , ignore it as such ,or just call it pseudo-science or worse whenever that empirical evidence would contradict their a-priori held materialist belief or world view .

Science has become a servant or a slave of materialists and materialism , in the sense that science gets misused for the service of the materialist ideology , in order to vindicate it , in vain ,while science should be used to explore the universe through free inquiry .

For the life of me I’ll never understand the benefit you see in attacking all of conventional science based on physical processes, and characterizing it as “false” when clearly it has elucidated the mechanisms behind a vast number of phenomena, in physics, chemistry, biology, botany, medicine, etc and has completely altered the human experience and potential. And although you keep saying this progress in knowledge has nothing to do with materialism, it has had everything to do with it, and the belief that nature was intelligible and could be explained through physical processes without resorting to mystical elements or God.


Material causes or material processes are one part of the picture , not the whole picture , that's why science has been successful , even within the boundaries of the materialist false theory of the nature of reality , since the physical or material world is also a part of the whole picture .

But, when materialist science tries to approach certain natural phenomena whose nature has been proven to be non-material or non-physical and non-local as well such as consciousness, for example, to mention just that one and its related psi phenomena , placebo/nocebo effects and much more , then materialist science cannot but break its materialist neck on those 'anomalies " it cannot account for .that's why the urgent need of a post -materialistic science that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature through one particular interpretation of quantum theory .

So, only through the scientific method were /are and will scientists (materialist and non-materialist scientists alike thus ) advance science , make discoveries , acquire scientific knowledge , propose theories, models  .....
Materialism has been having absolutely nothing to do with all that amazing and wonderful success of science .Materialism has just been confining science within its materialist false theory of the nature of reality= within the material or physical level of reality that's not the whole reality thus  .That's why science was only successful at the physical or material level of reality only : there is more to reality than just that thus .And even at the level of the material or physical world ,materialist science has been breaking its materialist head on what  quantum theory tells us about the "nature of matter or the nature of reality " , or just one particular interpretation of quantum theory  that  has shown that there is no separate material or physical world as such , no separate matter as such thus , no separate mind as such : they are inseparable : Our "reality " is psycho-physical .

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But fine, if you feel there is "more", or "something else" out there, what’s stopping you or anyone else from discovering it and using the scientific method to explain its workings? A mass conspiracy against such investigations is not tenable.

Non-materialist scientists were /are and will be doing just that : you're just not aware of their work ,theories, models , data or evidence .

Who talked about any form of conspiracy then ?

To claim that materialism is false is no 'conspiracy theory " lol : that's a claim that has been backed by a lots of evidence .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/10/2014 19:08:50
Cheryl :

Just responding to most of the posts here does cost me quite some time and energy (not to mention money as well lol ) , so, how do you expect me to tell you about all the work, models, theories, evidence , data of non-materialist scientists .? You gotta be kidding me .

I talked about all that in general terms in my own words , and via links , video links , excerpts of books ....That's all i can do for you , guys ...

It's up to you all to check all that out , or otherwise ,so : I can only take you to the fountain .I cannot make you drink from it , not that i necessarily care that you would  .

Got other things and duties to attend to as well like everybodyelse , so .

P.S .: dlorde, alancalverd...  :

No time left , sorry .Thanks .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 21:20:23
Cheryl :

Just responding to most of the posts here does cost me quite some time and energy (not to mention money as well lol ) , so, how do you expect me to tell you about all the work, models, theories, evidence , data of non-materialist scientists .? You gotta be kidding me .

I talked about all that in general terms in my own words , and via links , video links , excerpts of books ....That's all i can do for you , guys ...

It's up to you all to check all that out , or otherwise ,so : I can only take you to the fountain .I cannot make you drink from it , not that i necessarily care that you would  .

Got other things and duties to attend to as well like everybodyelse , so .

P.S .: dlorde, alancalverd...  :

No time left , sorry .Thanks .Cheers.

I asked for one solid study as an example of the "over whelming body of evidence" you keep referring to.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/10/2014 21:39:25
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442699#msg442699 date=1413852051]


Regarding Stapp's work  where he connected Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) to what he called the Zeno-effect ( a kindda "glue " that holds the created neural pathways or brain wiring  in place  through the power of conscious focus .


You realize that makes absolutely no sense, right?  Not even metaphorically.

That's a bit how neuroplasticity or self-directed neuroplasticity , grosso-modo , work, from the non-materialist neuroscience's perspective that relies on one particular interpretation of quantum theory , in total contrast with the materialist neuroscience that's still stuck within the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view . Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy rely on the above , and it works .I tried it myself, once again .I can tell . Many other people did try it also with success...


Why  does  it make no sense to you then ? You have admitted to dlorde that you weren't that into physics, for example  ? Haven't you ? How can you tell then ?

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The latter explains why habits are so difficult to break ,since focussing on them only strengthens their old neural pathways , and explains that focussing away from old habits regularily through excercises , meditation , discipline ... methodologically , away from them on healthier thoughts can create new neural pathways or brain wiring that would override the old neural pathways created by negative habits  ....  Non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy  is built up on that: i tried it myself , and it does work .

Why do you think cognitive therapy is non materialist?

You should try to read me well, Cheryl :  Be serious, please :

I said : the non-materialist cognitive therapy .....

There is  materialist and non-materialist cognitive therapy or spychology  ,as there is materialist and non-materialist neuroscience , as there is materialist science and non-materialist science ...

Comprende ?

How does materialist cognitive therapy differ from non-materialist cognitive therapy and how can you tell which one you or your therapist is using?

So if someone tells you that angels or crystals  healed their pneumonia or sprained ankle, Don, do you believe it?

I'm not talking about any placebo effect.  Let's say a friend comes to you and says she believes crystals have healing power. She gives you links to youtube videos with crystalologists explaining the various properties of crystals and their "energy fields." She gives you page after page of testimonials by people who say they have been healed by crystals. When you are skeptical, she demands you prove absolutely that they can't have any effect on the outcome of disease or injury.  You actually manage to find a study that shows no physiological effects of crystals; she claims it was biased or incomplete.  She shows you a manefesto signed by several scientists saying there should be more research about power of crystals.

On what basis do you, you yourself, believe or dismiss these claims? What would you need to be convinced?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/10/2014 22:45:20
I asked for one solid study as an example of the "over whelming body of evidence" you keep referring to.
As Yogi Berra said, "It's deja-vu all over again". We've been on this merry-go-round before.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 22/10/2014 01:30:39


Non-materialist scientists were /are and will be doing just that : you're just not aware of their work ,theories, models , data or evidence .


One good study.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 22/10/2014 07:37:19
Reminiscent of Einstein's quote. A paper had been signed by 100 Nazi professors, denouncing his "Jewish science". Asked what he thought of this massive consensus of experts he said "I am delighted. Had I been wrong, one student would have been able to prove it." 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 22/10/2014 09:52:01
Quote from: cheryl j
I asked for one solid study as an example of the "over whelming body of evidence" you keep referring to.
Hi Cheryl,

I read the first post of this thread and read the first link where it said this: The authors of the manifesto are all scientific mavericks whose viewpoints are not mainstream. There's another name for such mavericks, i.e. crackpots! LOL!!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 22/10/2014 14:25:36
Quote from: cheryl j
I asked for one solid study as an example of the "over whelming body of evidence" you keep referring to.
Hi Cheryl,

I read the first post of this thread and read the first link where it said this: The authors of the manifesto are all scientific mavericks whose viewpoints are not mainstream. There's another name for such mavericks, i.e. crackpots! LOL!!
Astute observation Pete...........crackpots are never in short supply.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 22/10/2014 17:21:01
There's a difference. Mavericks survive when the herd runs over a cliff. Crackpots generally selfdestruct, regardless of the circumstances.

In science, mavericks quietly point out the particular mistakes or inadequate observations of others, whilst crackpots shout about the supernatural and claim to have a Grand Solution to Everything, which they never actually demonstrate. Hence Galileo = maverick, Holy Office of the Pope = crackpots.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 17:27:47
I can't help but wonder, what if some new type of force involving consciousness , or some new form of  "stuff" was discovered? What difference would it make?
If quantum field theory (the Standard Model) is even a reasonable approximation to the way the world works (and the evidence suggests it is far more than that - particularly now the long-predicted Higgs particle has been found), then such a force doesn't exist, and any 'stuff' would have to be made of familiar material. No unknown forces or particles relevant to everyday human-scale interactions remain to be discovered - there are probably plenty at other scales and strengths, but the fundamentals of our everyday environment are all accounted for (gravity, electromagnetism, electrons, protons, and neutrons).

It's a strong claim, but QFT is a strong theory. For the full, exciting, entertaining details, see Sean Carroll's talk The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k). Skip to 33 minutes for the specific claim (although the whole thing is well worth watching). Please pay close attention to the caveats and limits that Carroll describes.

I have watched the video : it's quite impressive and very clear indeed, not to mention amusing too , from time to time  .

But , how come  that the standard model of quantum field theory cannot account for or rather detect the mental in nature ? if it is a good approximation of how the everyday -scale world works ?

Any materialist claims regarding the nature of reality should be a -priori dismissed as being false , since materialism is false .

Any materialist claims regarding how the world works should be also a -priori partly dismissed as being incomplete ,or as being just a distortion of the nature of the world or reality , since the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 17:32:20
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg442690#msg442690 date=1413845324]
... See also the entanglement phenomena in quantum physics : explain that instantaneous action from huge distances between particles through some material process of yours then ? I thought nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light .
Not quite. The rule is that nothing can accelerate to or past the speed of light (in vacuo), and that no information can travel faster than light (in vacuo).

Ok, then .
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Why can't consciousness work through entanglement also , via instantaneous action on  "matter" or via minds-minds interactions from a distance then ?
Decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence).

There are many interpretations of quantum physics , you know .

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    Do you think that the great physicist and mathematician Von Neumann did detect the role of consciousness in physics through any form of elimination, or direct detection  ?

    He concluded through rigorous maths that the measurement problem in quantum physics could not be solved but by concluding that there must be a process of some sort that collapses the wave function , a process outside of the laws of physics . He could not think of anythingelse than the consciousness of the observer , albeit reluctantly .
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In the 82(!) years since von Neumann's publication, physics has moved on. Wave function collapse is just one of a number of interpretations of QM, and the idea of conscious collapse is now a historical footnote (except for a few fringe woosters, like Stapp).

A historical footnote ? How come that many physicists , even today , still take it for granted as a physic's fact,  such as quantum physicist Amit Goswami and many others then ? :

See what Goswami says about the wave function collapse and more .He's an idealist monist .I don't necessarily agree with the latter philosophy though : The man is still alive and kicking : has he been deluded ? or is he no expert of quantum physics ? : lol :


As you know , there are many interpretations of quantum theory , what makes you then think that the materialist one is the approximately 'correct " one ?


Regarding Stapp's work in relation to ions : see this new discovery concerning potassium channels  :

Researchers reach 'paradigm shift' in understanding potassium channels :

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-10-paradigm-shift-potassium-channels.html

Not to mention Wilder Pnefield's and Eccles' work regarding the mind -body problem :


Excerpt from a book by Chris Carter :

Wilder Penfield started his career as a neurosurgeon trying to explain the mind in terms of physical processes in the brain. In the course of surgical treatment of patients who have temporal lobe seizures, Penfield stumbled upon the fact that electrical stimulation of certain areas of the cortex could activate a stream of memories that had been laid down years or even decades earlier. In fact, the patient would “relive” the earlier episode, recalling incidents in far greater detail than would be possible by voluntary recall, but during the flashback, the patient would remain completely aware of what was happening in the operating room. Penfield summed up the conclusions he formed on the basis of these experiments by stating:
The patient’s mind, which is considering the situation in such an aloof and critical manner, can only be something quite apart from neuronal reflex action. It is noteworthy that two streams of consciousness are flowing, the one driven by input from the environment, the other by an electrode delivering sixty pulses per second to the cortex. The fact that there should be no confusion in the conscious state suggests that, although the content of consciousness depends in large measure on neuronal activity, awareness itself does not.
On the basis of his experiments and examinations of patients with various forms of epilepsy, Penfield concluded that the mind interacts with the brain in the upper brain stem, an ancient structure that humans share with reptiles. Penfield, who won the Nobel Prize for his work, considers the rest of the brain to be a magnificent biological computer, programmed by the mind. He found that electrical stimulation of most parts of the brain resulted either in memories relived in vivid detail, involuntary movement of a part of the body, or paralysis of some function, such as speech. By contrast, injury to or epileptic discharge in the higher brain stem always simply resulted in loss of consciousness, leading Penfield to conclude, “Here is the meeting of mind and brain. The psychico-physical frontier is here.”
Penfield thought that the brain as a computer could accomplish a great deal by automatic mechanisms, but that “what the mind does is different. It is not to be accounted for by any neuronal mechanism that I can discover.” He also stated:
There is no area of gray matter, as far as my experience goes, in which local epileptic discharge brings to pass what could be called “mindaction” … there is no valid evidence that either epileptic discharge or electrical stimulation can activate the mind.
If one stops to consider it, this is an arresting fact. The record of consciousness can be set in motion, complicated though it is, by the electrode or by epileptic discharge. An illusion of interpretation can be produced in the same way. But none of the actions that we attribute to the mind has been initiated by electrode stimulation or epileptic discharge. If there were a mechanism in the brain that could do what the mind does, one might expect that the mechanism would betray its presence in a convincing manner by some better evidence of epileptic or electrode activation.
In other words, Penfield argues that if the brain produced or generated consciousness, then we would expect that consciousness itself could be influenced by epilepsy or electrical stimulation in some way other than simply being switched off; that is, we would expect beliefs or decisions to be produced. The complete absence of any such effect in Penfield’s experience led him to reject the production hypothesis in favor of dualistic interaction.
Edwards argues that the most Penfield has shown is that brain activity is not a sufficient condition of consciousness; Edwards argues that it may still be a necessary condition. Edwards refers to this alleged confusion of sufficient and necessary conditions as “the confusions of Penfield.” Edwards wrote, “The fact that Penfield could not produce beliefs or decisions by electrical stimulation of the brain in no way shows that they do not need what we may call a brain-base any less than memories and sensations.” But Penfield fully agrees that the brain might still be a necessary condition for consciousness. He wrote, “When death at last blows out the candle that was life … what can one really conclude? What is the reasonable hypothesis in regard to this matter, considering the physiological evidence? Only this: the brain has not explained the mind fully.Penfield’s point is simply that there is nothing in brain physiology that precludes the possibility of consciousness in the absence of a brain, contrary to what Edwards would have us believe. Once again it is Edwards who is confused—in this case, about what Penfield actually thought.
In direct contrast to Edwards’ statement that “the instrument theory is absurd,” Penfield writes: “To expect the highest brain-mechanism or any set of reflexes, however complicated, to carry out what the mind does, and thus perform all the functions of the mind, is quite absurd.”
Penfield sums up what he thinks the physiological evidence suggests for the relationship between mind and body.
On the basis of mind and brain as two semi-independent elements, one would still be forced to assume that the mind makes its impact upon the brain through the highest brain-mechanism. The mind must act upon it. The mind must also be acted upon by the highest brain-mechanism. The mind must remember by making use of the brain’s recording mechanisms… . And yet the mind seems to act independently of the brain in the same sense that a programmer acts independently of his computer, however much he may depend upon the action of that computer for certain purposes.
On the final pages of his book he states:
I worked as a scientist trying to prove that the brain accounted for the mind and demonstrating as many brain-mechanisms as possible hoping to show how the brain did so. In presenting this monograph I do not begin with a conclusion and I do not end by making a final and unalterable one. Instead, I reconsider the present-day neurophysiological evidence on the basis of two hypotheses: (a) that man’s being consists of one fundamental element, and (b) that it consists of two. In the end I conclude that there is no good evidence, in spite of new methods, such as the employment of stimulating electrodes, the study of conscious patients and the analysis of epileptic attacks, that the brain alone can carry out the work that the mind does. I conclude that it is easier to rationalize man’s being on the basis of two elements than on the basis of one.
The relevance of Penfield’s arguments can be summarized as this: if the neurophysiological evidence suggests that man’s being consists of two elements rather than one, then the separate existence of these two elements cannot be ruled out by consideration of this evidence.
A second prominent neuroscientist to endorse a dualistic model of mind-brain interaction was John Eccles, who found the conscious integration of visual experience impossible to account for in terms of known neurological processes because nerve impulses related to visual experience appear to be fragmented and sent to divergent areas of the brain. This difficulty led Eccles to postulate the existence of a conscious mind existing separate from and in addition to the physical brain, with the raison d’etre of the former being the integration of neural activity.
In addition to noting that there is a unitary character about the experiences of the self-conscious mind despite the fragmentary nature of brain activity, Eccles also held that there can be a temporal discrepancy between neural events and conscious experiences* and that there is a continual experience that the mind can act on brain events, which is most apparent in voluntary action or the attempt to recall a word or a memory. These considerations, combined with his lifelong study of the brain and its neurons, form the basis of his opinions on the mind-body relationship.
Eccles hypothesizes that the mind may influence the brain by exerting spatio-temporal patterns of influence on the brain, which operates as a detector of these fields of influence. In his book Facing Reality: Philosophical Adventures of a Brain Scientist, Eccles first discusses the structure and activity of the brain in great detail and then writes:
In this discussion of the functioning of the brain, it has initially been regarded as a “machine” operating according to the laws of physics and chemistry. In conscious states it has been shown that it could be in a state of extreme sensitivity as a detector of minute spatiotemporal fields of influence. The hypothesis is here developed that these spatio-temporal fields of influence are exerted by the mind on the brain in willed action. If one uses the expressive terminology of Ryle, the “ghost” operates a “machine,” not of ropes and pulleys, valves and pipes, but of microscopic spatio-temporal patterns of activity in the neuronal net woven by the synaptic connections of ten thousand million neurons, and even then only by operating on neurons that are momentarily poised close to a just threshold level of excitability. It would appear that it is the sort of machine a “ghost” could operate, if by ghost we mean in the first place an “agent” whose action has escaped detection even by the most delicate physical instruments. *
Eccles postulated a two-way interaction between brain and mind, with “brain receiving from conscious mind in a willed action and in turn transmitting to mind in a conscious experience.”
 It is not clear whether Eccles was convinced of the existence of an afterlife, but he did write, “Atleast I would maintain that this possibility of a future existence cannot be denied on scientific grounds.”
It needs to be stressed that the findings of modern neuroscience do not alter the argument one bit, as they are equally compatible with both production and transmission. Gary Schwartz, professor of psychology, neurology, psychiatry, medicine, and surgery at the University of Arizona, points out that among neuroscientists with a materialist bent, the belief that consciousness arises from physical processes in the brain is based on three kinds of investigation:
1. Correlation studies (e.g., electroencephalogram, or EEG, correlates of visual perception)
2. Stimulation studies (e.g., electrical or magnetic stimulation)
3. Ablation studies (e.g., the effect of brain lesions).
However, analogous methods are applied during television repair with parallel results, yet no one comes to the conclusion that pictures on the screen are created inside the television. Schwartz describes the brain as the “antenna-receiver” for the mind and points out that the evidence from neuroscience, like the evidence from television repair, is just as compatible with the hypothesis of reception-transmission as it is with the hypothesis of production.
Like Penfield and Eccles before him, Schwartz has also come to the conclusion that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, and that mental processes cannot be reduced to neurochemical brain processes but on the contrary direct them. Like Penfield and Eccles, he also thinks that a mind may conceivably exist without a brain. Since Edwards has not succeeded in showing that the possibility of survival is inconsistent with the facts of neurology, and since we have seen that three prominent neuroscientists do not share Edwards’ opinion that the transmission theory is “absurd,” we can now clearly see Edwards dismissal as what it is: dogmatic prejudice against an empirical possibility that does not coincide with his materialistic faith.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 18:12:09
Cheryl :

I thought i was clear enough .I have no time for silly games . Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 20:20:06
James A. Shapiro - Revisiting Evolution in The 21st Century :


Not a valid vimeo URL
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 20:45:59
"The Spiritual Brain , A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul  " By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

(Prior note : Cheryl : why didn't you download the audio version of this book for which i provided you with a link to download it from ? Why didn't you use the library's wifi for that then, lazy sis , since you pretend to be interested in what these scientists had to say ?  , not to mention your cameleon-like mood swings that make this discussion with you a very Kafkaian weird one .
Non-materialist cognitive therapy might help you with that , i guess .
I tried to fix the display of this excerpt , almost in vain ...sorry .)


Introduction :

When my doctoral student Vincent Paquette and I first began studying
the spiritual experiences of Carmelite nuns at the Université de Montréal,
we knew that our motives were quite likely to be misunderstood.
First, we had to convince the nuns that we were not trying to prove that
their religious experiences did not actually occur, that they were delusions,
or that a brain glitch explained them. Then we had to quiet both the
hopes of professional atheists and the fears of clergy about the possibility
that we were trying to reduce these experiences to some kind of “God
switch” in the brain.
Many neuroscientists want to do just that. But Vincent and I belong to
a minority—nonmaterialist neuroscientists. Most scientists today are materialists who believe that the physical world is the only reality. Absolutely everything else—including thought, feeling, mind, and will—can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena, leaving no room for the possibility that religious and spiritual experiences are anything but illusions.
Materialists are like Charles Dickens’s character Ebeneezer
Scrooge who dismisses his experience of Marley’s ghost as merely “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.”
Vincent and I, on the other hand, did not approach our research with
any such materialist presumption. As we are not materialists, we did not
doubt in principle that a contemplative might contact a reality outside
herself during a mystical experience. In fact, I went into neuroscience in
part because I knew experientially that such things can indeed happen.
Vincent and I simply wanted to know what the neural correlates—the activity of the neurons—during such an experience might be. Given the
overwhelming dominance of materialism in neuroscience today, we count
ourselves lucky that the nuns believed in our sincerity and agreed to help us and that the Templeton Foundation saw the value of funding our studies.
Of course, you may well ask, can neuroscience studies of contemplative
nuns demonstrate that God exists? No, but they can—and did—demonstrate
that the mystical state of consciousness really exists. In this state, the
contemplative likely experiences aspects of reality that are not available in
other states. These findings rule out various materialist theses that the
contemplative is faking or confabulating the experience. Vincent and I
also showed that mystical experiences are complex—a finding that challenges a vast variety of simplistic materialist explanations such as a “God gene,” “God spot,” or “God switch” in our brains.
Toronto-based journalist Denyse O’Leary and I have written this book to
discuss the significance of these studies, and more generally, to provide a neuroscientific approach to understanding religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences.
The discipline of neuroscience today is materialist. That is, it assumes
that the mind is quite simply the physical workings of the brain. To see what this means, consider a simple sentence: “I made up my mind to buy a bike.”
One would not say, “I made up my brain to buy a bike.” By contrast, one
might say, “Bike helmets prevent brain damage,” but not “Bike helmets prevent ideological system.
” But materialists think that the distinction you make between
your mind as an immaterial entity and your brain as a bodily organ
has no real basis. The mind is assumed to be a mere illusion generated by the workings of the brain. Some materialists even think you should not in fact use terminology that implies that your mind exists.
In this book, we intend to show you that your mind does exist, that it
is not merely your brain. Your thoughts and feelings cannot be dismissed
or explained away by firing synapses and physical phenomena alone. In a
solely material world, “will power” or “mind over matter” are illusions,
there is no such thing as purpose or meaning, there is no room for God.
Yet many people have experience of these things, and we present evidence
that these experiences are real.
In contrast, many materialists now argue that notions like meaning or
purpose do not correspond to reality; they are merely adaptations for
human survival. In other words, they have no existence beyond the evolution of circuits in our brains. As co-discoverer of the genetic code
Francis Crick writes in The Astonishing Hypothesis, “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive and leave descendants.”
But are questions about our meaning or purpose merely survival
mechanisms? If such an airy dismissal of the intellectual life of
thousands of years sounds vaguely unconvincing, well, perhaps it should.
Suppose, for example, a healthy man donates a kidney for free to a
dying stranger. The materialist may look for an analogy among moles,
rats, or chimpanzees, as the best way to understand the donor’s motives.
He believes that the donor’s mind can be completely explained by the hypothesis
that his brain evolved slowly and painstakingly from the brains of
creatures like these. Therefore, his mind is merely an illusion created by
the workings of an overdeveloped brain, and his consciousness of his situation is actually irrelevant as an explanation of his actions.
This book argues that the fact that the human brain evolves does not
show that the human mind can be dismissed in this way. Rather, the
human brain can enable a human mind, whereas the mole brain cannot
(with my apologies to the mole species). The brain, however, is not the
mind; it is an organ suitable for connecting a mind to the rest of the universe.
By analogy, Olympic swimming events require an Olympic class
swimming pool. But the pool does not create the Olympic events; it
makes them feasible at a given location.
From the materialist perspective, our human mind’s consciousness and
free will are problems to be explained away. To see what this means, consider Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker’s comments on consciousness in a recent piece in Time magazine entitled “The Mystery of
Consciousness” ( January 19, 2007). Addressing two key problems that
scientists face, he writes, Although neither problem has been solved, neuroscientists agree on many features of both of them, and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking.
Francis Crick called it “the astonishing hypothesis”—the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA [personal digital assistant]; consciousness is the activity of the brain.
Given that Pinker admits that neither problem concerning consciousness
is either solved or anywhere close to being solved, how can he be so
sure that consciousness is merely “the activity of the brain,” implying that
there is no soul? .
One convenient aspect of Pinker’s materialism is that any doubt can be
labeled “unscientific” in principle. That preempts a discussion of materialism’s plausibility .
 Certainly, materialism is a faith that many intellectuals
would never think of questioning. But the strength of their conviction
neither shows that it is a correct account of reality nor provides evidence
in its favor. A good case can be made for the opposite view, as this book
will demonstrate.
Yes, this book—departing from a general trend in books on neuroscience
aimed at the general public—does question materialism. Much more
than that, it presents evidence that materialism is not true. You will see for
yourself that the evidence for materialism is not nearly so good as Steven
Pinker would like you to believe. You can only retain your faith in materialism by assuming—on faith—that any contrary evidence you read about must be wrong.
For example, as we will show, a materialist readily believes—without
any reliable evidence whatsoever—that great spiritual leaders suffer from
temporal-lobe epilepsy rather than that they have spiritual experiences that
inspire others as well as themselves. Where spirituality is concerned, this
experiential data is an embarrassment to narrow materialism. That is because a system like materialism is severely damaged by any evidence against it.
Consequently, data that defy materialism are simply ignored by many
scientists. For instance, materialists have conducted a running war against
psi research (research on knowledge or action at a distance, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, or telekinesis) for decades,because any evidence of psi’s validity, no matter how minor, is fatal to their ideological system.
Recently, for example, self-professed skeptics have attacked atheist neuroscience grad student Sam Harris for having proposed,
in his book entitled The End of Faith (2004), that psi research has validity.
Harris is only following the evidence, as we shall see. But in doing so, he is
clearly violating an important tenet of materialism: materialist ideology
trumps evidence.
But other challenges to materialism exist. Materialists must believe that
their minds are simply an illusion created by the workings of the brain
and therefore that free will does not really exist and could have no influence in controlling any disorder. But nonmaterialist approaches have
clearly demonstrated mental health benefits. The following are a few examples discussed in this book.
Jeffrey Schwartz, a nonmaterialist UCLA neuropsychiatrist, treats
obsessive-compulsive disorder—a neuropsychiatric disease marked by distressing,intrusive, and unwanted thoughts—by getting patients to reprogram their brains. Their minds change their brains.
Similarly, some of my neuroscientist colleagues at the Université de
Montréal and I have demonstrated, via brain imaging techniques, the
following:
• Women and young girls can voluntarily control their level of
response to sad thoughts, though young girls found it more difficult
to do so.
• Men who view erotic films are quite able to control their responses
to them, when asked to do so.
• People who suffer from phobias such as spider phobia can
reorganize their brains so that they lose the fear.
Evidence of the mind’s control over the brain is actually captured in
these studies. There is such a thing as “mind over matter.” We do have will
power, consciousness, and emotions, and combined with a sense of purpose
and meaning, we can effect change.
At one time, materialist explanations of religion and spirituality were at
least worth considering. For example, Sigmund Freud argued that childhood
memories of a father figure led religious people to believe in God.
Freud’s explanation failed because Christianity is the only major religion
that emphasizes the fatherhood of God. But his idea, while wrong, was
not ridiculous. Relationships with fathers, happy or otherwise, are complex
human experiences, with some analogies to religion. Similarly, anthropologist
J. G. Frazer thought that modern religions grew out of primal
fertility cults and were only later spiritualized. Actually, the evidence
points more clearly to spiritual experiences as the source of later religious
beliefs and rituals. Still, Frazer’s idea was far from trivial. It derived from a
long and deep acquaintance with ancient belief systems.
But recently, materialistic explanations of religion and spirituality have
gotten out of hand. Influenced by this materialistic prejudice, popular
media jump at stories about the violence gene, the fat gene, the monogamy
gene, the infidelity gene, and now, even a God gene! The argument goes like this: evolutionary psychologists attempt to explain human spirituality and belief in God by insisting that cave dwellers in the remote past who believed in a supernatural reality were more likely to pass on their genes than cave dwellers who didn’t. Progress in genetics and neuroscience has encouraged some to look, quite seriously, for such a God gene, or else a God spot,module, factor, or switch in the human brain. By the time the amazing God helmet” (a snowmobile helmet modified with solenoids that purportedly could stimulate subjects to experience God) in Sudbury,Canada,
became a magnet for science journalists in the 1990s (the Decade of the
Brain), materialism was just about passing beyond parody. Nonetheless,
materialists continue to search for a God switch. Such comic diversions
aside, there is no escaping the nonmaterialism of the human mind.
Essentially, there is no God switch. As the studies with the Carmelite
nuns have demonstrated and this book will detail, spiritual experiences are
complex experiences, like our experiences of human relationships. They
leave signatures in many parts of the brain. That fact is consistent with
(though it does not by itself demonstrate) the notion that the experiencer
contacts a reality outside herself.
The fact is materialism is stalled. It neither has any useful hypotheses
for the human mind or spiritual experiences nor comes close to developing
any. Just beyond lies a great realm that cannot even be entered via
materialism, let alone explored. But the good news is that, in the absence
of materialism, there are hopeful signs that spirituality can indeed be entered and explored with modern neuroscience.
Nonmaterialist neuroscience is not compelled to reject, deny, explain
away, or treat as problems all evidence that defies materialism. That is
promising because current research is turning up a growing body of such
evidence. Three examples addressed in this book are the psi effect, near
death experiences (NDEs), and the placebo effect.
The psi effect, as seen in such phenomena as extrasensory perception
and psychokinesis, is a low-level effect, to be sure, but efforts to disconfirm it have failed. NDEs have also become a more frequent subject of research in recent years, probably because the spread of advanced resuscitation techniques has created a much larger population that survives
to recount them. As a result of the work of researchers such as Pim
van Lommel, Sam Parnia, Peter Fenwick, and Bruce Greyson, we now
have a growing base of information. The results do not support a materialist
view of mind and consciousness, as advanced by Pinker, who writes
in Time “when the physiological activity of the brain ceases, as far as
anyone can tell the person’s consciousness goes out of existence.”
Most of us have not experienced unusual effects like psi or NDE, but
we have all probably experienced the placebo effect: have you ever gone to your doctor to get a letter saying you can’t go to work because you have a bad cold—and suddenly begun to feel better while sitting in the clinic, leafing through magazines? It’s embarrassing, but easy to explain: your mind generates messages to begin the analgesic or healing processes when you accept that you have in fact started on a path to recovery.
Materialist neuroscience has long regarded the placebo effect as a problem, but it is one of the best attested phenomena in medicine. But for nonmaterialist neuroscience, it is a normal effect that can be of great therapeutic value when properly used.
Materialism is apparently unable to answer key questions about the
nature of being human and has little prospect of ever answering them intelligibly. It has also convinced millions of people that they should not seek to develop their spiritual nature because they have none.
Some think that the solution is to continue to uphold materialism a bit
more raucously than before. Currently, key materialist spokespersons have
launched a heavily publicized and somewhat puzzling “anti-God” crusade.
Antitheistic works such as Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (Daniel Dennett), The God Delusion (Richard Dawkins), God:
The Failed Hypothesis—How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist (Victor
J. Stenger), God Is Not Great (Christopher Hitchens), and Letters to a
Christian Nation (Sam Harris) are accompanied by conferences such as
the Science Network’s “Beyond Belief ” and campaigns such as the You-
Tube Blasphemy Challenge.
The remarkable thing is that there isn’t a single new idea in anything
they have to say. Eighteenth-century philosophes said it all long ago, to as
much or little purpose. Granted, recent works have been spiced with the
questionable assumptions of evolutionary psychology—the attempt to
derive religion and spirituality from the practices that may have enabled a
few of our Pleistocene ancestors to pass on their genes. But the Pleistocene ancestors are long gone, and not much can really be learned from a discipline that lacks a subject. There are also plenty of assurances about the illusory nature of mind, consciousness, and free will, and the uselessness or danger of spirituality.
A variety of experts of the mid-twentieth century had predicted that
spirituality would slowly but surely disappear. Once supplied with abundant
material goods, people would just stop thinking about God. But the
experts were wrong. Spirituality today is more varied, but it is growing all
over the world. Thus, its continuing vitality prompts speculations, fears,
and some pretty wild guesses—but most of all, a compelling curiosity, a
desire to investigate.
But how can we investigate spirituality scientifically? To start with, we
can rediscover our nonmaterialist inheritance. It has always been there,
just widely ignored. Famous neuroscientists such as Charles Sherrington,
Wilder Penfield, and John Eccles, were not in fact reductive materialists,
and they had good reasons for their position. Today, nonmaterialist neuroscience is thriving, despite the limitations imposed by widespread misunderstanding and, in a few cases, hostility. Readers are urged to approach all the questions and evidence presented in this book with an open mind.
This is a time for exploration, not dogma.
Our book will establish three key ideas. The nonmaterialist approach
to the human mind is a rich and vital tradition that accounts for the evidence much better than the currently stalled materialist one. Second,
nonmaterialist approaches to the mind result in practical benefits and
treatments, as well as promising approaches to phenomena that materialist
accounts cannot even address. Lastly—and this may be the most important
value for many readers—our book shows that when spiritual experiences
transform lives, the most reasonable explanation and the one that best accounts for all the evidence, is that the people who have such experiences have actually contacted a reality outside themselves, a reality that has brought them closer to the real nature of the universe.

Mario Beauregard
Montreal, Canada
March 4, 2007
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/10/2014 21:15:01
I did not really succeed in fixing the display of the above posted excerpt ,sorry .I didn't have enough time for that at my disposal either ,so .
For much more solid scientific non-materialist stuff, later then ,if i have time for that at least .Cheers.

P.S.:

dlorde :
See my replies to your posts here above .Thanks.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/10/2014 23:17:46
Quote
Decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence).

There are many interpretations of quantum physics , you know .
Decoherence isn't an interpretation, it's a central feature.

Quote
The man is still alive and kicking : has he been deluded ?
So it would seem.
 
Quote
As you know , there are many interpretations of quantum theory , what makes you then think that the materialist one is the approximately 'correct " one ?
There are many interpretations. It really doesn't matter which is 'correct', what matters is that the the field theory works - and it does, regardless of the presence of consciousness.

Quote
<book extract>
TL;DR. Try summarising in your own words.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 23/10/2014 00:02:36
"The Spiritual Brain , A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul  " By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

(Prior note : Cheryl : why didn't you download the audio version of this book for which i provided you with a link to download it from ? Why didn't you use the library's wifi for that then, lazy sis , since you pretend to be interested in what these scientists had to say ?  , not to mention your cameleon-like mood swings that make this discussion with you a very Kafkaian weird one .
Non-materialist cognitive therapy might help you with that , i guess .
I tried to fix the display of this excerpt , almost in vain ...sorry .)




How do you know what I did or didn't download? You said I was wasting your time with silly games, so I did not think you would be interested in my comments.

Now if you'll excuse me, I seem to have transformed inexplicably into an insect like creature with a large tail, and I am going down to the bureau to file some papers about it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 23/10/2014 03:38:17
"The Spiritual Brain , A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul  " By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

(Prior note : Cheryl : why didn't you download the audio version of this book ...

Don't bother downloading : their work is summarised on rationalwiki ...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience#Mario_Beauregard (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience#Mario_Beauregard.27s_quantum_mind)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O'Leary (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary)


[ also see  ... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo) ]

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 23/10/2014 11:19:17
OK, I had enough free time to read the extract from Carter's book.

The summary? three prominent neuroscientists use the argument from incredulity to espouse a dualist interpretation of mind-brain for which there is no empirical evidence. Is that a scientific approach? Clearly not.

However, Carter does say, "It needs to be stressed that the findings of modern neuroscience do not alter the argument one bit, as they are equally compatible with both production and transmission."

Although this is far from the impression I get from my reading, for the sake of argument, let's evaluate this statement as it stands. When two theories can't be distinguished on the evidence alone, Popper says we should prefer the one with the highest degree of empirical content (The Logic of Scientific Discovery). Poincare suggested simplicity (best expressed in Ockham's Razor); more contemporary criteria are to choose the theory which provides the best (and novel) predictions, the one with the highest explanatory potential, the one which offers better problems or the most elegant and simple one. Alternatively a theory may be preferable if it is better integrated into the rest of contemporary knowledge.

In each case, the dualist theory falls - it has no empirical content, requires additional unexplained entities, has no predictive power, no explanatory potential, has intractable problems (not least interaction itself), is neither elegant nor simple, nor does it integrate into contemporary knowledge.

However, we've only examined this in an isolated context - what does the rest of science tell us? thermodynamics and information theory tells us that persistent information patterns, such as an independent mind, require some persistent medium and energy source to maintain them. Interaction involves energy transfer. Quantum field theory tells us that only electromagnetism has the range and strength to support neural interaction. Extensive research involving the brain has shown no evidence of any such extraneous fields, no information supporting medium, no extraneous energy source or consumption, and no interaction; and EMF disruptions, such as MRI scanners, and Faraday cage shielding helmets have no effect on consciousness. If such a field and its interactions were too delicate to detect or measure, they'd be too delicate to influence the relatively crude (by modern measurement standards) electrochemical activity of neurons, and would be swamped and disrupted by the everyday fields of household wiring & electrical devices, not least mobile phones.

In short, it's a busted flush.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2014 17:38:03
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg442871#msg442871 date=1414018956]
"The Spiritual Brain , A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul  " By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

(Prior note : Cheryl : why didn't you download the audio version of this book for which i provided you with a link to download it from ? Why didn't you use the library's wifi for that then, lazy sis , since you pretend to be interested in what these scientists had to say ?  , not to mention your cameleon-like mood swings that make this discussion with you a very Kafkaian weird one .
Non-materialist cognitive therapy might help you with that , i guess .
I tried to fix the display of this excerpt , almost in vain ...sorry .)




How do you know what I did or didn't download?


Well, your strange cameleon-like mood swings make this discussion with you a very Kafkaian weird one , as i said earlier .
You kept asking me for what non-materialist scientists had to say , so, i replied to that on many occasions, while reminding you of the fact that i did provide a link  through which you could download the audio version of the book for free ,to see for yourself .

And since , you kept on asking me the same non-sense , i presumed thus that you did not download that audiobook .

Quote
You said I was wasting your time with silly games, so I did not think you would be interested in my comments.

I was just referring to yor repeated requests and mainly to that so-called crystal healing silly story ...

Quote
Now if you'll excuse me, I seem to have transformed inexplicably into an insect like creature with a large tail, and I am going down to the bureau to file some papers about it.

Very funny .
I was more referring to Kafka's "Trial " than to his "Metamorphosis " book .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2014 17:41:27
"The Spiritual Brain , A Neuroscientist's Case For The Existence of The Soul  " By Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

(Prior note : Cheryl : why didn't you download the audio version of this book ...

Don't bother downloading : their work is summarised on rationalwiki ...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience#Mario_Beauregard (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience#Mario_Beauregard.27s_quantum_mind)

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O'Leary (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Denyse_O%27Leary)


[ also see  ... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo) ]

We already dealt with that in one form or another through Cheryl 's  same link on the subject from rationalwiki .

The latter is just a materialist approach that has nothing rational about it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2014 18:14:06
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg442882#msg442882 date=1414059557]
OK, I had enough free time to read the extract from Carter's book.

The summary? three prominent neuroscientists use the argument from incredulity to espouse a dualist interpretation of mind-brain for which there is no empirical evidence. Is that a scientific approach? Clearly not.

Thanks for taking the time to read that excerpt of Carter .I give you credit for that at least,and for your related open-mindedness as well thus .I salute that .

That said :

Who says there is no empirical evidence whatsoever for that dualist interpretation ?, even though i am no longer a dualist myself .

And what arguments from incredulity are you talking about ?

Penfield and Eccless were nobel prize winners , i guess , eminent scientists : the least they should have known is what a scientific approach was / is  all about .

If you said : they made a mistake or that they were wrong at least , instead of saying that their approach was not scientific ,or that they argued from incredulity , you might have had an argument there , but , you did not .

Are you projecting , dlorde ? Guess so :

It is in fact the materialist theory of consciousness that's not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever : absolutely zero : absolutely no empirical evidence has been able to show conclusively that neural networks , or neurons 'firings ' patterns or those of groups of neurons can create or produce thought , consciousness or awareness , or subjective experiences ..., ever : correlations between mind and brain are no causations , and that materialist computational model regarding the activity of the brain, in order to explain consciousness or the mind  is also a false premise , since claculating the brain activity of the brain will never tell us much about the nature , function or origin of consciosuness or about those of the mind  ( I have read a scientific article lately regarding the fact that it takes supercomputers 20 mns to calculate just 1 sec of brain activity , and even if the capacity of those supercomputers gets improved exponentially ,which is highly likely of course , through quantum supercomputers or other , calculating the brain activity will not tell us almost anything at all about the nature ,function or origin of consciousness or about those of the mind  : it's a bit  like trying to know about the broadcasting channels ,stations , devices,satellites ...through calculating the electro-magnetic activity of a radio device or a tv set : just an analogy : in this case , both the broadcasting transmitters and receivers are material or physical devices ...not to mention the fact that those materialist machine , computer metaphors regarding the nature of life are also false , since  studying life has shown that it has its unique features , properties and qualities that computers or machines do lack , even though life seems to have an automatic ,reflexive instinctive dimesion as well .)

Quote
However, Carter does say, "It needs to be stressed that the findings of modern neuroscience do not alter the argument one bit, as they are equally compatible with both production and transmission."

I don't see how any findings of neuroscience can be compatible with the materialist production theory : correlations between brain and mind are no casations , once again, for example . Carter's above mentioned quote was puzzling to me at least .

Quote
Although this is far from the impression I get from my reading, for the sake of argument, let's evaluate this statement as it stands. When two theories can't be distinguished on the evidence alone, Popper says we should prefer the one with the highest degree of empirical content (The Logic of Scientific Discovery). Poincare suggested simplicity (best expressed in Ockham's Razor); more contemporary criteria are to choose the theory which provides the best (and novel) predictions, the one with the highest explanatory potential, the one which offers better problems or the most elegant and simple one. Alternatively a theory may be preferable if it is better integrated into the rest of contemporary knowledge.

Who can argue with that ?
What makes  you think the materialist theory of consciousness is the one that passes the above tests then ?

Let me remind you of the fact that the materialist theory of consciousness is not supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever : materialist belief assumptions regarding the mind-body relationship are no empirical evidence:  brain-mind  correlations  are , once again, no causations , to mention just that fact .


Quote
In each case, the dualist theory falls - it has no empirical content, requires additional unexplained entities, has no predictive power, no explanatory potential, has intractable problems (not least interaction itself), is neither elegant nor simple, nor does it integrate into contemporary knowledge.

Well, i am not a dualist anymore , as i said earlier , but , dualism is more scientific than materialist monism , to some extent at least (See below , in my next reply to your next quote ) .

How can the false materialist theory of consciousness account for all those "anomalies " such as psi phenmena , palcebo/nocebo effects and more ?

How can the materialist false theory of consciousness account for just your own daily conscious decisions and actions , dlorde ? ,since materialism assumes that the mind is just in the brain or just brain activity ,without any causal effects on matter brain or body whatsoever , let alone on the rest of the physical world , and hence consciousness and the mind are just side effects of evolution, just useless epiphenomena (absurd ) : we are just mindless machines or computers , hardware programmed by software ...Who's insane enough as to believe in that materialist non-sense ? Yeah, right , only materialists and fools would /do , i suppose , no offense .

Quote
However, we've only examined this in an isolated context - what does the rest of science tell us? thermodynamics and information theory tells us that persistent information patterns, such as an independent mind, require some persistent medium and energy source to maintain them. Interaction involves energy transfer. Quantum field theory tells us that only electromagnetism has the range and strength to support neural interaction. Extensive research involving the brain has shown no evidence of any such extraneous fields, no information supporting medium, no extraneous energy source or consumption, and no interaction; and EMF disruptions, such as MRI scanners, and Faraday cage shielding helmets have no effect on consciousness. If such a field and its interactions were too delicate to detect or measure, they'd be too delicate to influence the relatively crude (by modern measurement standards) electrochemical activity of neurons, and would be swamped and disrupted by the everyday fields of household wiring & electrical devices, not least mobile phones.

You would be right only if consciousness was just a product of the brain : a materialist assumption that has absolutely no empirical basis  whatsoever .

The study of , together with thousand of documented cases and experiments ,of psi pheniomena , placebo/nocebo effects , meditation , self-directed neuroplasticity , neurofeedback , the fact that our beliefs and expectations can even have impacts on our biology and even on our genes by turning them on or off (See biologist Bruce Lipton, for example , regarding the latter at least and more  ) , can change even the structure anantomy and physiology of the brain ,   the study of epigentics and its challenge to the materialist world view , and much more can only lead to the conclusion that consciousness and the mind are non-physical processes , and hence cannot be detected direcly through empirical evidence , just indirectly thus .

In the same Carter's book from which i quoted the man , he made the case for dualism ,(I am , personally , inclined to support the idea that was uttered by one founder of quantum physics at least , Pauli , who said that our "reality " is psycho-physical = there is no separate matter as such and no separate mind as such  : they are inseparable = 1 .
I don't believe anymore in substance dualism or in any other substance philosophy such as monist idealism , let alone in substance monistic materialism . I think that the universe is not made of any substance at all , but of information in the non-materialist sense , that is .) .

In the same carter's book, he made the case for dualism ,or so it seems at least , through dealing with the conservation of energy law by arguing that consciousness has instantanoeus effects on matter brain and body ,without any transfer of energy through the conscious collapse of the wave function (You don't agree with that ) ,by also raising the non-locality of quantum physics , entanglement , and by dealing with the false classical Newtonian causally closed universe argument  ,  by arguing that quantum physics shows that the universe is not causally closed , and hence consciousness or the mind can effect the physical world through instantaneous action ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever.

So, consciousness or its interaction (we can hardly speak of ineraction , since matter and mind are inseparable = 1 thus .) with matter seems to happen instantanoeusly without any transfer of energy ...so, it cannot be directly detected/detectable  empirically , just indirectly as some non-materialist scientists extrapolated or deduced from all the data , experiments ,documented cases relating to pis phenomena and more .....I don't know for sure, not even remotely close thus .Who does ?

Quote
In short, it's a busted flush.

No, it's not .

You can see it , as follows :

I-The materialist theory of consciousness is false .
II- Dealing with a non-physical and non-local process or phenomena through non-materialist science is an extremely unusal scientific endeavour , since science is just learning to deal with the non-physical ,while it has been confined to the materialist false version of the nature of reality for so long  and counting ,and hence , you can't expect from the newly born and unexperimented non-materialist science  to deliver results that would match how science deals with the physical level of reality .

The non-physical non-local nature , function and origin of consciousness are  of a totally different caliber issue ,than those relating to the physical level of reality ,so.

Maybe , the new science must ,and maybe will, develop novel innovative or creative scientific methods and tools to deal with the non-physical level of reality more efficientely than it is the case today . I don't know .

So, how can you expect the relatively still too primitive human science, the materialist and the non-materialist science alike ,  to be able to account for the mental scientifically and explain it completely (via predictions, falsifiability , verifiability ..scientific criterions ) , despite all that hi-tech technology ...?

Non-materialist science has been entering a totally new and unique "domain" ,almost blindly and fearfully , hesitantly , reluctantly ... (a non-local "one" in fact , a non-physical placeless timeless process or level of reality ) ,while also embracing the material or physical level of reality , so, the scientific study of the non-physical level of reality requires wholly new novel unique methods and tools that will most probably be developed by future scientists , so .

Current non-materialist science is thus still in its early infancy , but it has been going far beyond what materialist science can ever dream of  , so to speak , but , it has been nevertheless delivering some amazing results so far .
Imagine what that science can do in the future ,for the benefit of all mankind : our whole human history , evolution, history of earth , the big bang , our whole spirituality and what it really means to be human, our morality and ethics , our knowledge , societies , politics , economics ....will  be rewritten in radical unprecedented ways ...Who knows ...

The extended non-materialist theory of the nature of reality will be triggering so many radical and unprecedented changes like never before , while expanding the horizon of  science and all other human activity ...exponentially , you have no idea , dlorde .

Thanks .Best wishes.Cheers.




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 23/10/2014 19:28:03
How can the false materialist theory of consciousness account for all those "anomalies " such as psi phenmena , palcebo/nocebo effects and more ?
Psi phenomena don't exist. Placebo/nocebo effects are the autonomic nervous system at work.

Quote
... materialism assumes that the mind is just in the brain or just brain activity ,without any causal effects on matter brain or body , let alone on the rest of the physical world , and hence consciousness and the mind are just side effects of evolution, just useless epiphenomena (absurd ) : we are just mindless machines or computers , hardware programmed by software
That's either a deliberate strawman, or a lack of understanding of a level known in the trade as 'not even wrong'.
 
Quote
...Who's insane enough as to believe in that materialist non-sense ?
No-one, I would hope. It's a complete misrepresentation. If that's really what you think the materialist position is, it's no wonder you have difficulty with it. Personally, I think it's a deliberate misrepresentation intended to cover a depressing lack of reasoned argument against the real position.

I notice none of your post attempts to address any of my points with reasoned counter argument. Counterfactual assertions don't constitute argument. But you've been told about that many times in other threads, so it comes as no surprise.

ETA - oh wait, I see you quote Carter as suggesting an energyless and instantaneous transfer of information via quantum non-locality. Sadly that too is 'not even wrong'. Whatever the mechanism, information transfer requires state change; state change requires energy. Quantum mechanics and general relativity tell us that information transfer can not exceed the speed of light, i.e. cannot be instantaneous; and quantum entanglement is actually an example of that.

If Carter really made that argument, he's gone seriously off the rails in trying to use quantum mechanics to break the laws of quantum mechanics... [:o][:o)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/10/2014 20:00:48
dlorde :

(Prior note : One form of materialism says that .I was  referring to the so-called evolutionary emergent property theory regarding the origin ,nature and function of consciousness , grosso modo thus ...later , more on that ....
Furthermore , i wrote the above very quickly , since i have duties to attend to .I am already a bit late , so .)

I see that you have been raising  some important and legetimate issues and questions .Thanks .

We're getting somewhere ,after all,  i guess .

Unfortunately , duty calls right now .I have to go . See ya tomorrow then .

Cheers .

P.S . : Oh , yeah , oeps : I see i might have made a serious mistake .I am not sure Carter used that entanglement argument i talked about, to be honest (I am genuine regarding that ,take my word for it .Carter's arguments get mixed up with those of Dean Radin and others in my mind sometimes .I am referring here at least to Radin"s "Entangled minds " book  , i guess .This is no exit strategy or something like that )  . I felt i was not sure about that when i wrote it ,I will have to check out the Carter's book in question then .I will have to check out both Radin's and Carter's books in question in fact , just to be sure .
Bye.Thanks.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 23/10/2014 22:48:11


P.S . : Oh , yeah , oeps : I see i might have made a serious mistake .I am not sure Carter used that entanglement argument i talked about,
Now.........................that's very refreshing DonQ. There may be some hope for you yet. I'll give you credit for that sir, anyone that can admit to error has some genuine honesty hiding somewhere within.

Bravo my man,......................Bravo
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 24/10/2014 04:57:27

I was just referring to yor repeated requests and mainly to that so-called crystal healing silly story ...

"Silly" story or not, my request for one representative study was a reasonable request on a science forum,  I think my other question is valid as well - How do you, yourself, evaluate factual claims? Not broad general ones like materialism is false or democracy is good, but specific factual statements like "fluoridated water causes brain damage" or "Child vaccines cause autism" etc. Do replicated peer reviewed studies, mechanisms supported by evidence have any value at all in your estimation?

If you believe in psi, do you accept as true any and all claims about it? How do sort through them and decide which are reasonable and likely to be true, and which are hoaxes or delusions? What's your criteria for that? I'm genuinely curious.

Your repeated cries that correlation is not causation is basically an attempt to argue that no amount of empirical evidence, no number of successful predictions a theory makes, no functional utility, is ever sufficient to establish that something is more likely than not to be a "cause" of another thing - all knowledge is an irrational choice. (When all else fails, drag out Hume. ) That's the last gasp strategy for every discredited theory, and is completely disingenuous - "No Ebola antiserum for me, thanks, correlation does not prove causation after all!"
 And that is essentially Carter's position - "We can't know any thing for sure. That biological function and anatomy corresponds to mental activity is just some crazy coincidence, doesn't prove a thing." Bizarrely, Beauregard's own experiments are the best evidence that he's wrong. They are exactly what you'd expect to find if consciousness was a product of the brain, and not a receiver or transmitter of it.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 24/10/2014 08:19:13
Don: please provide one example where whatever system you are proposing has actually produced a more accurate prediction than the system you decry. Then, at least, as selfstyled scientists, we will have to consider that there is merit in your system. That's how Galileo, Newton, Planck, Einstein, Pasteur, Jenner, Lavoisier, maybe even Darwin.... got into the history books.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 15:01:40
... an attempt to argue that no amount of empirical evidence, no number of successful predictions a theory makes, no functional utility, is ever sufficient to establish that something is more likely than not to be a "cause" of another thing - all knowledge is an irrational choice. (When all else fails, drag out Hume. )
I love the counterpoint between Hume who said causation is just the experience of constant conjunction of events (just custom and habit); and Kant who said that without causation we would not experience constant conjunction...

Kant wins on statistical grounds  [;)] (although their arguments were deeper than that, and not really so directly opposed).

Quote
Bizarrely, Beauregard's own experiments are the best evidence that he's wrong. They are exactly what you'd expect to find if consciousness was a product of the brain, and not a receiver or transmitter of it.
Quite; the problem seems to be that if you start out with a dualist mindset, it's very hard to see things otherwise, e.g. that the mind is the physical activity of the brain, and so it's no surprise that such activity can have physical effects.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 17:22:43


P.S . : Oh , yeah , oeps : I see i might have made a serious mistake .I am not sure Carter used that entanglement argument i talked about,
Now.........................that's very refreshing DonQ. There may be some hope for you yet. I'll give you credit for that sir, anyone that can admit to error has some genuine honesty hiding somewhere within.

Bravo my man,......................Bravo

Error is human , you know .There is nothing fancy , glorifying  or honorable about admitting it when it happens.

Well, see what Dean radin says about entaglement in his "Entangled Minds ..." book :

"If you do not get schwindlig [dizzy] sometimes when you think about these
things then you have not really understood it [quantum theory]."
Niels Bohr

One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is that objects aren’t as separate as they may seem. When you drill down into the core of even the most solid-looking material, separateness dissolves. All that remains, like the smile of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, are relationships extending curiously throughout space and time. These connections were predicted by quantum theory and were called “spooky action at a distance” by Albert Einstein. One of the founders of quantum theory, Erwin Schrödinger, dubbed this peculiarity entanglement, and said “I would not call that one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics.”
The deeper reality suggested by the existence of entanglement is so unlike the world of everyday experience that until recently, many physicists believed it was interesting only for abstract theoretical reasons. They accepted that the microscopic world of elementary particles could become curiously entangled, but those entangled states were assumed to be fleeting and have no practical consequences for the world as we experience it. That view is rapidly changing.
Scientists are now finding that there are ways in which the effects of microscopic entanglements “scale up” into our macroscopic world. Entangled connections between carefully prepared atomic-sized objects can persist over many miles.
There are theoretical descriptions showing how tasks can be accomplished by entangled groups without the members of the group communicating with each other in any conventional way. Some scientists suggest that the remarkable degree of coherence displayed in living systems might depend in some fundamental way on quantum effects like entanglement. Others suggest that conscious awareness is caused or related in some important way to entangled particles in the brain. Some even propose that the entire universe is a single, self-entangled object.
If these speculations are correct, then what would human experience be like in such an interconnected universe? Would we occasionally have numinous feelings of connectedness with loved ones, even at a distance? Would such experiences evoke a feeling of awe that there’s more to reality than common sense implies? Could “entangled minds” be involved when you hear the telephone ring and somehow know—instantly—who’s calling? If we did have such experiences, could they be due to real information that somehow
bypassed the usual sensory channels? Or are such reports better understood as coincidences or delusions?
These are the types of questions explored in this book. We’ll find that there’s substantial experimental evidence for a few types of genuine psi phenomena.
And we’ll learn why, until very recently, science has largely ignored these
interesting effects. For centuries, scientists assumed that everything can be explained by mechanisms analogous to clockworks. Then, to everyone’s
surprise, over the course of the twentieth century we learned that this
commonsense assumption is wrong. When the fabric of reality is examined very closely, nothing resembling clockworks can be found. Instead, reality is woven from strange, “holistic” threads that aren’t located precisely in space or time. Tug on a dangling loose end from this fabric of reality, and the whole cloth twitches, instantly, throughout all space and time.
Science is at the very earliest stages of understanding entanglement, and there is much yet to learn. But what we’ve seen so far provides a new way of thinking about psi. No longer are psi experiences regarded as rare human talents, divine gifts, or “powers” that magically transcend ordinary physical boundaries.
Instead, psi becomes an unavoidable consequence of living in an
interconnected, entangled physical reality. Psi is reframed from a bizarre
anomaly that doesn’t fit into the normal world—and hence is labeled paranormal —into a natural phenomenon of physics.
The idea of the universe as an interconnected whole is not new; for millennia it’s been one of the core assumptions underlying Eastern philosophies.
What is new is that Western science is slowly beginning to realize that some elements of that ancient lore might have been correct. Of course, adopting a new ontology is not to be taken lightly. When it comes to serious topics like one’s view of
reality, it’s sensible to adopt the conservative maxim, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
So we’re obliged to carefully examine the evidence and see if psi is real or not.
If the conclusion is positive, then previous assumptions about the relationship between mind and matter are wrong and we’ll need to come up with alternatives.
As we explore the concept of psi as “entangled minds,” we’ll consider examples of psi experiences in life and lab, we’ll take a survey of the origins of psi research, we’ll explore the outcomes of thousands of controlled laboratory tests, and we’ll debunk some skeptical myths. Then we’ll explore the fabric of reality as revealed by modern physics and see why it’s becoming increasingly relevant to understanding why and how psi exists. At the end, we’ll find that the nineteenth century English poet Francis Thompson may have said it best:
All things by immortal power,
Near and Far
Hiddenly
To each other linked are,
That thou canst not stir a flower
Without troubling of a star



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 17:41:00
dlorde :

You said earlier , and i quote :
Quote
"Psi phenomena don't exist. Placebo/nocebo effects are the autonomic nervous system at work." .
End quote .

Well , see what Carter had to say about that :


PHENOMENA QUANTUM MECHANICAL MODELS OF MIND CAN EXPLAIN :

Does a dualistic, nonmaterialistic model of mind-brain interaction account for the observed facts better than a materialistic model? The answer is clearly yes: such a model can account for several phenomena that remain utterly inexplicable by materialism. These would include:
-The placebo effect
-Cognitive behavioral therapy
-Psychic abilities, also known as psi
-The NDE
The placebo effect is well known in medicine. It refers to the healing effect created by a sick person’s belief that a powerful remedy has been applied when the improvement could not have been the physical result of the remedy. It should not be confused with the body’s natural healing process, as it depends specifically on the patient’s mental belief that a specific remedy will work. Neuroscientist Mario Beauregard describes the well-known effectiveness of placebos:
Since the 1970’s, a proposed new drug’s effectiveness is routinely tested in controlled studies against placebos, not because placebos are useless but precisely because they are so useful.
Placebos usually help a percentage of patients enrolled in the control group of a study, perhaps 35 to 45 percent. Thus, in recent decades, if a drug’s effect is statistically significant, which means that it is at least 5 percent better than a placebo, it can be licensed for use.
In 2005, New Scientist, hardly known for its support of nonmaterialist neural theory, listed “ Things That Don’t Make Sense,” and the placebo effect was number one on the list. Of course, the placebo effect “doesn’t make sense” if you assume that the mind either does not exist or is powerless.
A nonmaterialist approach to the mind has also been instrumental in developing treatments for various psychiatric disorders. Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the assumption that directed, willed mental effort can reorganize a disordered brain and has been used to treat obsessivecompulsive disorder and various phobias. Jeffrey Schwartz, a nonmaterialist neuropsychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, routinely treats obsessive-compulsive disorder as a case of an intact mind troubled by a malfunctioning brain. Schwartz has developed a treatment designed to help patients realize that faulty brain messages cause the problem and to help the patients actually rewire their brains to bypass the problem. PET scans of the patients’ brains before and after treatment showed that the patients really had changed their brains. Schwartz writes, “The time has come for science to confront the serious implications of the fact that directed, willed mental activity can clearly and systematically alter brain function.
Reports of demonstrated psychic abilities are a persistent embarrassment to materialism.
Considered as a scientific hypothesis, materialism makes a bold and admirable prediction: psychic abilities such as telepathy simply do not exist. If they are shown to exist, then materialism is clearly refuted. But psychic abilities—or psi as they are called—have been demonstrated again and again under the most rigorously controlled experimental conditions.*28 However, as I have shown in my previous book, Parapsychology and the Skeptics, the materialists have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to dismiss, explain away, and even suppress the data.
 In any other field of inquiry, the collective evidence would have been considered extremely compelling decades ago. However, parapsychology is not like any other field of inquiry. The data of parapsychology challenge deeply held worldviews, worldviews that are concerned not only with science but also with religious and philosophical issues. As such, the data arouse strong passions and, for many, a strong desire to dismiss them.
Refusing to accept data that proves a scientific theory false turns the theory into an ideology, a belief held as an article of faith; in other words, a belief that simply must be true, because it is considered so important. Concerning this point, Beauregard writes:
Materialists have conducted a running war against psi research for decades, because any evidence of psi’s validity, no matter how minor, is fatal to their ideological system. Recently, for example, self-professed skeptics have attacked atheist neuroscience grad student Sam Harris for having proposed, in his book titled The End of Faith (2004), that psi research has validity. Harris is only following the evidence. But in doing so, he is clearly violating an important tenet of materialism: materialist ideology trumps evidence.
The NDE, in which people have reported clear memories of conscious experience at times when their brains did not seem to be functioning, also strongly challenges materialism. As you read through this book, you may come to realize that many of the arguments challenging a transcendental interpretation of these experiences are motivated by an a priori commitment to a materialist worldview.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 17:47:58
... see what Dean radin says about entaglement in his "Entangled Minds ..." book
Yeah, that's typical Radin guff alright. Invoking the counter-intuitive strangeness of quantum theory in support of ideas (e.g. psi) that contradict quantum theory. He's been publicly corrected many time over the years, but still promotes the same errors, judiciously scattering 'if's and 'maybe's around to claim plausible deniability. It's a living...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 17:48:39
dlorde :

See also the following regarding psi phenomena and science :


Modern Science versus Classical Science :

"A serious problem has arisen. Most of the fundamental assumptions underlying classical science have been severely challenged in recent years. As the old assumptions dissolve because of advancements in many disciplines, new assumptions are carrying us toward a conception of the world that is entirely compatible with psi. Few scientists have paid attention to this dramatic shift in scientific fundamentals, and the general public has heard almost nothing about it. . . . Thus, the persistent controversy over psi can be traced back to the founding assumptions of modern science."
DEAN RADIN, THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE

Many of the skeptical arguments are based on the assumptions that current scientific theories are complete and that they are in conflict with the existence of psi.
The former is laughable to anyone familiar with the history of science. Until about one hundred years ago, Newtonian physics was assumed to be correct and complete, and was based upon the metaphysical assumptions of localism, determinism, the assumption that an observer did not affect a system being observed, and on an absolute view of space and time. Then two new theories replaced Newtonian physics.
Quantum mechanics did so by abandoning the first three assumptions while retaining the fourth, and Einstein’s theory of relativity did so by abandoning the fourth while retaining the first three. Because relativity retained most of the assumptions of classical physics while introducing a new conception of space and time, it is considered to be the crowning achievement of classical physics.
The predictions of quantum mechanics differ from those of Newtonian physics primarily but not entirely at the level of the molecule and below. Relativity differs from Newtonian physics most noticeably on the scale of the very large and the very fast—it is a theory of space, time, and gravity, so most of its predictions are corroborated by astronomical observations. Yet the theories are inconsistent: relativity breaks down at the atomic level, and quantum mechanics cannot accommodate relativity’s assumptions regarding space and time. Each theory is incomplete and limited.
It is thought that the reason the theories conflict is because each retained and abandoned different assumptions from Newtonian physics. Some or all of these assumptions must be either wrong or incomplete, and if a unified theory of physics is someday developed, then quantum mechanics and relativity will both be considered special cases of the unified theory.
Let us now examine the assumptions of classical science, assumptions that seem to be in conflict with the existence of psi.
Determinism—the idea that the future states of isolated systems can be predicted precisely (at least in principle) from current states.
Observer independence—the assumption that the act of observing a system or particle does not alter the behavior or characteristics of the system or particle.
Localism—the assumption that everything interacts only with its closest neighbors and that, therefore, there is no action at a distance.
Reductionism—the idea that complex systems can be explained as the sum of their parts.
Upward causation exclusively—related to the idea of reductionism, this idea asserts that causation only flows upward, from the simpler to the more complex.
Materialism—the idea that everything in the universe can ultimately be explained in terms of the fundamental particles and the four forces of physics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 17:51:46
You said earlier , and i quote :
Quote
"Psi phenomena don't exist. Placebo/nocebo effects are the autonomic nervous system at work." .
End quote .

Well , see what Carter had to say about that :
<snip book extract>

What about it? what are the salient points you'd like me to address?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 17:54:38
... see what Dean radin says about entaglement in his "Entangled Minds ..." book
Yeah, that's typical Radin guff alright. Invoking the counter-intuitive strangeness of quantum theory in support of ideas (e.g. psi) that contradict quantum theory. He's been publicly corrected many time over the years, but still promotes the same errors, judiciously scattering 'if's and 'maybe's around to claim plausible deniability. It's a living...

What's exactly wrong about that particular above displayed Radin's excerpt regarding entanglement ? 

Well, I have been posting some relevant quotes from one or two of Carter's books to respond to your raised issues and arguments .
I request from you to try to pinpoint exactly what you think is wrong about Carter's arguments mainly , since almost all non-materialist scientists do rely heavily on one particular interpretation of quantum theory : the conscious collapse of the wave function .
Thanks , appreciate indeed . Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 17:58:03
dlorde :

See also the following regarding psi phenomena and science :
OK. What's your point?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:01:18
You said earlier , and i quote :
Quote
"Psi phenomena don't exist. Placebo/nocebo effects are the autonomic nervous system at work." .
End quote .

Well , see what Carter had to say about that :
<snip book extract>

What about it? what are the salient points you'd like me to address?

Well, Carter says , for example , through the work of many prominent scientists ...that QM has been opening the door to the existence of psi phenomena ....that QM can account for psi phenomena ...
Try to make time to read those excerpts , if you can at least .
I am afraid i would be just distorting Carter's arguments ,since i have read him quite some time ago , that's why i have been quoting him extensively on the subject .
Do , please , tell me what's exactly wrong about Carter's arguments then .
I don't know nearly enough of QM , so , i would be interested in what you have to  say on the subject .

Thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 18:02:37
What's exactly wrong about that particular above displayed Radin's excerpt regarding entanglement ?
He's claiming the support of quantum mechanics for things, such as psi, that quantum mechanics doesn't support - and has ruled out.   

Quote
I request from you to try to pinpoint exactly what you think is wrong about Carter's arguments mainly , since almost all non-materialist scientists do rely heavily on one particular interpretation of quantum theory : the conscious collapse of the wave function.
That's (bolded) quite enough on its own.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:03:57
dlorde :

See also the following regarding psi phenomena and science :
OK. What's your point?

That Caroll posted video of yours here above says that QM closes the door to the existence of any psi phenomena ,NDE , ....

Carter's book says the exact opposite .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:08:13
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443015#msg443015 date=1414170157]
What's exactly wrong about that particular above displayed Radin's excerpt regarding entanglement ?
He's claiming the support of quantum mechanics for things, such as psi, that quantum mechanics doesn't support - and has ruled out. 


Radin's and Carter's books say the exact oppposite .

Quote
Quote
I request from you to try to pinpoint exactly what you think is wrong about Carter's arguments mainly , since almost all non-materialist scientists do rely heavily on one particular interpretation of quantum theory : the conscious collapse of the wave function.
That's (bolded) quite enough on its own.

Carter's books prove the opposite of what Caroll 's video says .
Are all those scientists from whose work Carter  supported his claims are all worng ? Seriously , come on .

Classical physics also thought that no significant natural laws were left to be discovered , and that only the deatils remained to be filled in .

Caroll says almost the same regarding QM : that no significant detectable force remains to be discovered , just minor ones that are not relevant .

Well, see how  a minor "anomaly " toppled classical physics through the work of Max Planck.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:17:04

"The Dreaded Interaction Problem" :

Critics of dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties such as mind and matter could possibly interact (materialist philosopher William Lycan calls this the “dreaded” interaction problem).
 How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes:
The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind interact with the extended body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the physical theory that the universe is a closed system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event. This assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.
Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is of course based on classical physics.
By asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is making the implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in common in order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity or is it rather an empirical truth, a fact about nature? As philosopher and historian David Hume pointed out long ago, we form our idea of causation from observations of constant correlation; and since anything in principle could correlate with anything else, only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John Beloff considers the issue logically:
If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely want to say that the second event was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or not the two had anything else in common. As for such a principle being an empirical truth, how could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and matter, as candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are independent is to beg the question… .
 It says something about the desperation of those who want to dismiss radical dualism that such phony arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly reputable philosophers who should know better.
Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another, we have interaction between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality of different kinds of forces, and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles.
Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis that only like things can act upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields —by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and then the modified field acts upon another body.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:20:54
dlorde :

You also said earlier , and i quote :

Quote
"ETA - oh wait, I see you quote Carter as suggesting an energyless and instantaneous transfer of information via quantum non-locality. Sadly that too is 'not even wrong'. Whatever the mechanism, information transfer requires state change; state change requires energy. Quantum mechanics and general relativity tell us that information transfer can not exceed the speed of light, i.e. cannot be instantaneous; and quantum entanglement is actually an example of that.

If Carter really made that argument, he's gone seriously off the rails in trying to use quantum mechanics to break the laws of quantum mechanics..."
  End Quote.

I will let Carter respond to that in his own words in a moment .
After that , i will quote Carter's actual arguments on the subject whose content i have distorted yesterday ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 18:27:14
... Carter says , for example , through the work of many prominent scientists ...that QM has been opening the door to the existence of psi phenomena ....that QM can account for psi phenomena ...
It's simply false. There are no psi phenomena to account for, just magical and wishful thinking coupled with the capacity of the human brain for self-deception; As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

Further than that, the electromagnetic force can't play a role in any putative psi effects, and quantum field theory rules out any novel fields, particles, or forces relevant to human scale interactions. For full details, see my earlier post to cheryl in this thread, #139 - particularly the video link.

Quote
I am afraid i would be just distorting Carter's arguments ,since i have read him quite some time ago , that's why i have been quoting him extensively on the subject .
We want to hear your arguments, not arguments you don't understand or remember from someone else.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:30:22
Here You go : Carter says on the subject :


LOCALISM :

All interactions in classical physics are explicitly local. Interactions between a body at location A and another body at location B must be mediated by a force field that traverses the distance between A and B at a speed not exceeding that of light. Body A causes a change in the force field, and this change in the field is propagated at or below light speed to body B. For instance, the gravitational field of the sun exerts an influence on Earth: if the sun were to be pulled out of its orbit, the orbit of Earth would be affected about eight minutes later.
Localism implies that any information exchange must be mediated by a signal, and relativity implies that no such signal can travel faster than the speed of light. But experiments in quantum mechanics strongly suggest that we can in fact have instantaneous action at a distance, with no signal required to transmit information.
This is one example of such an experiment. Suppose a pair of electrons is split off from an atom.
Quantum theory tells us that when the spin of the electrons is measured along a chosen axis, they will be found to spin in opposite directions.
This does not mean that they started off spinning in opposite directions: direction of spin is a dynamic property, and according to quantum theory, dynamic properties do not exist with any definite value until they are measured. The electrons are in a state of opposite direction of spin, but both are without any particular direction of spin until the spin of one is measured.
Let the electrons travel light years apart and measure the spin of one.
 If it is found to be clockwise, then according to quantum theory the other electron is instantaneously determined to spin in the opposite direction, despite the lack of any force or signal linking them. The observation of the spin of one of the electrons instantaneously collapses the wave functions of both electrons to actual, opposite spins.
 If the spin of the second is measured before there is any time for a signal from the first to reach it, it will be found to spin in the opposite direction. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance” and rejected this on the grounds that there could be no harmony without some signal passing between the distant particles, a signal that in this case would have to travel faster than the speed of light, which his theory of relativity did not allow.
For years David Bohm and other physicists tried to determine whether the adjustment was truly instantaneous.
 These experiments are difficult to do with sufficient accuracy, but a series of early experiments, with two exceptions in the early 1970s, supported nonlocality. With progress in technology, more sophisticated experiments have become possible, usually using photons instead of electrons and measuring polarization (the direction of vibration of the electric field, which is totally polarized when it vibrates in only one direction) instead of spin.
 In the 1980s, a French team headed by Alain Aspect of the Institut d’ Optique Theorique et Appliquéadded to Bohm’s experiment an ultrafast switch to eliminate the possibility of any light-speed signal between the paired photons and found the nonlocal prediction of quantum mechanics to hold.
Einstein said that if quantum mechanics was correct, then the world would be crazy. Einstein was right—the world is crazy."

PHYSICIST DANIEL GREENBERGER

Several points about nonlocality are worth noting. First of all, non-locality does not seem to violate special relativity’s prohibition of faster-than-light signals, as no signals are sent.
The four known forces of nature are thought to operate with the exchange of particles, all of which obey the cosmic speed limit.
 In the cases discussed above, a change in the state at location A (due to measurement) instantaneously causes a change at location B, regardless of distance or barriers. Since no signal is sent through space, the quantum connection is immediate and is unaffected by barriers and distance.
Another important point is that nonlocality appears to have been established by arithmetic and experiment, and is thus a fact about the universe, independent of quantum mechanical theory.
This means that any theory that eventually supersedes quantum mechanics will have to incorporate nonlocality.
 Finally, it is worth noting that the quantum connection differs from ordinary forces in that it is very discriminating.
Ordinary forces reach out and affect every particle of a certain kind in the immediate vicinity. For instance, gravity affects all particles, electromagnetism all charged particles.
In contrast, the quantum connection only affects those systems that have interacted with each other since they were last measured (such systems are called “phase-entangled”).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:36:53
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443020#msg443020 date=1414171634]
... Carter says , for example , through the work of many prominent scientists ...that QM has been opening the door to the existence of psi phenomena ....that QM can account for psi phenomena ...
It's simply false. There are no psi phenomena to account for, just magical and wishful thinking coupled with the capacity of the human brain for self-deception; As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool."

Carter has also refuted both the physiological and psychological explanations of psi phenomena, Place/ nocebo effects , NDE ...

Clearly , many prominent scientists have also been saying that QM has been accounting for psi-phenomena , not ruling them out thus .

Quote
Further than that, the electromagnetic force can't play a role in any putative psi effects, and quantum field theory rules out any novel fields, particles, or forces relevant to human scale interactions. For full details, see my earlier post to cheryl in this thread, #139 - particularly the video link.

Well, i replied to that : Caroll in that video was just thinking in relation to QM like classical physicists used to do in relation to the classical Newtonian physics ,as i said above  , untill Max Planck came and toppled Classical physics ,as you know .

Quote
Quote
I am afraid i would be just distorting Carter's arguments ,since i have read him quite some time ago , that's why i have been quoting him extensively on the subject .
We want to hear your arguments, not arguments you don't understand or remember from someone else.
[/quote]

Well, read what Carter had to say on the subject .

I will give you some time to read all the above and a bit more .

I will not be active in this forum during the next days ,so .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 18:49:19
"Implications For Physics and Consciousness " : Schmidt's Experiments and more :


The REG devices pioneered by Schmidt are driven by purely random events at the quantum level.
 So the subjects in these experiments are not really shifting matter around, but rather shifting probabilities of events in desired directions.
 As we have seen, the role that consciousness plays in quantum mechanics is one of the burning issues in modern physics. And as we will see, one of Schmidt’s experiments may be able to settle this controversy.
If the observer can affect the outcome of the collapse, it should be possible to design an experiment to test at which point the wave function collapses.
The following paragraphs explain the variation of Schmidt’s standard experiment that is directly relevant to the choice between the von Neumann and Copenhagen interpretations.
First of all, Schmidt recorded signals (0’s and 1’s) from a binary REG simultaneously on two cassette tapes, without anyone listening to the signals or otherwise knowing the output of the REG.
One tape was kept in a secure location, the other was given to a subject with instructions to produce more 0’s or 1’s, usually distinguished as clicks in the left or right speaker of stereophonic headphones.
Results from these time-displaced PK experiments indicated that PK still operated and that the two records still agreed after the PK effort.
Some theorists have speculated that the PK effort reached back in time to when the random eventswere generated, but of course there is another possibility, one more consistent with the von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum physics. As Schmidt, Robert Morris, and Lou Rudolph point out:
Perhaps events are not physically real until there has been an observation. From this viewpoint, the PK effort would not have to reach into the past because nature had not yet decided on the outcome before the PK subject, the first observer, saw the result.
 Then, the PK effort should no longer succeed if we have some other observer look at the prerecorded data previous to the PK subject’s attempt.
[An] experiment to study this situation … has, indeed, reported a blocking of the PK effect by a previous observation.”
It appears that von Neumann, Wigner, and the others were right: prior to observation, even measuring instruments interacting with a quantum system must exist in an indefinite state.
Could Schmidt’s results be the result of fraud? Well, Schmidt has even used this time-independencefeature of PK to design a fraud-proof experiment involving skeptics. Essentially, it works like this:
one of the unobserved tapes is sent to an outside observer and the other is sent to a subject.
The outside observer decides whether she wants to see more 0’s or 1’s, and this decision is communicated to the subject, who then listens to the tape and attempts to exert an influence in the desired direction.
The observer then examines her copy of the tape and counts the number of 0’s and 1’s to see if the experiment was a success.
Obviously, there can be no possibility of fraud on the part of subject or experimenter, unless of course the skeptics are also in on the trick! Schmidt, Morris, and Rudolph performed this experiment: Morris is an active parapsychology researcher and Rudolph is a communications engineer, and both were skeptical with regard to PK effects on prerecorded events.
But the experiment was a success, with odds against chance of one hundred to one.
Quantum mechanics brings mind back into nature and eliminates the causal closure of the physical.
Conscious observation seems required to collapse the wave function; the choice of what type of observation to make determines what form a part of reality will take (wave or particle), and according to the experiments of Schmidt and others, conscious intent may bias in a desired direction the otherwise random collapse of the wave function.
The von Neumann/Wigner interpretation of quantum physics, supported now by the experiments of Schmidt and others, may bring to mind the idealism of Bishop Berkeley, who thought that ordinary objects such as trees and furniture did not exist unless observed. But this interpretation does not deny that an external reality exists independent of anyone observing it. Properties of quantum phenomena are divided into static and dynamic properties, with the former, such as mass and charge, having definite and constant values for any observation.
It is the dynamic properties, those that do not have constant values—such as position, momentum, and direction of spin—that are thought to exist as potentialities that become actualities only when observed.
But as Squires points out, this raises a very strange question:
The assumption we are considering appears even more weird when we realize that throughout much of the universe, and indeed throughout all of it in early times, there were presumably no conscious observers… .
 Even worse are the problems we meet if we accept the modern ideas on the early universe in which quantum decays (of the ‘vacuum,’ but this need not trouble us here) were necessary in order to obtain the conditions in which conscious observers could exist.
 Who, or what, did the observations necessary to create the observers?13
Squires enters the realm of theology with great trepidation and considers what seems to be the only possibility under this interpretation—that conscious observations can be made by minds outside of the physical universe.
This of course is one of the traditional roles of God, or of the gods.
Whether expressed in theological terms or not, the suggestion that conscious minds are in some way connected and that they might even be connected to a form of universal, collective consciousness appears to be a possible solution to the problem of quantum theory. It is not easy to see what it might mean, as we understand so little about consciousness.
That there are “connections” of some sort between conscious minds and physical matter is surely implied by the fact that conscious decisions have effects on matter. Thus there are links between conscious minds that go through the medium of physical systems. Whether there are others, that exploit the nonphysical and presumably non-localised nature of consciousness, it is not possible to say.
Some people might wish to mention here the “evidence” for telepathy and similar extra-sensory effects.
Squires concludes his discussion on the role of consciousness in physics with this remark:
It is remarkable that such ideas should arise from a study of the behavior of the most elementary of systems.
That such systems point to a world beyond themselves is a fact that will be loved by all who believe that there are truths of which we know little, that there are mysteries seen only by mystics, and that there are phenomena inexplicable within our normal view of what is possible.
There is no harm in this—physics indeed points to the unknown. The emphasis, however, must be on the unknown, on the mystery, on the truths dimly glimpsed, on things inexpressible except in the language of poetry, or religion, or metaphor.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 19:06:35
Is The Universe Causally Closed ? :


Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle: (On the famous double slit experiment ) :

Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.
However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the socalled measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
After you look it was in a single box. It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed.
 But it was not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation.
This hard-to-accept observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.
Up until the moment of measurement, certain properties of quantum phenomena, such as location, momentum, and direction of spin, simply exist as a collection of probabilities, known as the wave function, or state vector.
The wave function can be thought of as the probability distribution of all possible states, such as, for instance, the probability distribution of all possible locations for an electron.*
But this is not the probability that the electron is actually at certain locations, instead, it is the probability that the electron will be found at certain locations.
 The electron does not have a definite location until it is observed.
Upon measurement, this collection of all possible locations “collapses” to a single value—the location of the particle that is actually observed.
Physicist Nick Herbert expresses it this way:
The quantum physicist treats the atom as a wave of oscillating possibilities as long as it is not observed.
But whenever it is looked at, the atom stops vibrating and objectifies one of its many possibilities.
 Whenever someone chooses to look at it, the atom ceases its fuzzy dance and seems to “freeze” into a tiny object with definite attributes, only to dissolve once more into a quivering pool of possibilities as soon as the observer withdraws his attention from it. The apparent observer-induced change in an atom’s mode of existence is called the collapse of the wave function.
Measurements thus play a more positive role in quantum mechanics than in classical physics, because here they are not merely observations of something already present but actually help produce it.
According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics popular among many theorists, it is the existence of consciousness that introduces intrinsic probability into the quantum world.
This interpretation owes its origin to mathematician John von Neumann, one of the most important intellectual figures of the twentieth century.
 In addition to his contributions to pure mathematics, von Neumann also invented game theory, which models economic and social behavior as rational games, and made fundamental contributions to the development of the early computers. In the 1930s, von Neumann turned his restless mind to the task of expressing the newly developed theories of quantum mechanics in rigorous mathematical form, and the result was his classic book The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. In it he tackled the measurement problem head on and rejected the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which was becoming the orthodox position among physicists.
 Although it is somewhat vague, the central tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation seem to be (1) that all we have access to are the results of observations, and so it is simply pointless to ask questions about the quantum reality behind those observations, and (2) that although observation is necessary for establishing the reality of quantum phenomena, no form of consciousness, human or otherwise, is necessary for making an observation. Rather, an observer is anything that makes a record of an event, and so it is at the level of macroscopic measuring instruments (such as Geiger counters) that the actual values of quantum phenomena are randomly set from a range of statistical possibilities.
Von Neumann objected to the Copenhagen interpretation practice of dividing the world in two parts: indefinite quantum entities on the one side, and measuring instruments that obey the laws of classical mechanics on the other.
 He considered a measuring apparatus, a Geiger counter for example, in a room isolated from the rest of the world but in contact with a quantum system, such as an atom simultaneously in two boxes.
 The Geiger counter is set to fire if the atom is found in one box, but to remain unfired if it is found in the other. This Geiger counter is a physical instrument, hence subject to the rules of quantum mechanics.
Therefore, it should be expected to enter into a superposition state along with the atom, a state in which it is simultaneously fired and unfired.
Should the Geiger counter be in contact with a device that records whether the counter has fired, then logically, it too should enter a superposition state that records both situations as existing simultaneously.
 Should an observer walk into the room and examine the recording device, this logic can be continued up the “von Neumann chain” from the recording device, to photons, to the eyes and brain of the observer, which are also physical instruments that we have no reason to suppose are exempt from the rules of quantum mechanics.
The only peculiar link in the von Neumann chain is the process by which electrical signals in the brain of the observer become a conscious experience.
Von Neumann argued that the entire physical world is quantum mechanical, so the process that collapses the wave functions into actual facts cannot be a physical process; instead, the intervention of something from outside of physics is required. Something nonphysical, not subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, must account for the collapse of the wave function: the only nonphysical entity in the observation process that von Neumann could think of was the consciousness of the observer.
 He reluctantly concluded that this outside entity had to be consciousness and that prior to observation, even measuring instruments interacting with a quantum system must exist in an indefinite state.
Von Neumann extended the Copenhagen interpretation by requiring the measurement process to take place in a mind.
He was reluctantly driven to this conclusion by his relentless logic: the only process in the von Neumann chain that is not merely the motion of molecules is the consciousness of the observer.
His arguments were developed more completely by his illustrious followers, most notably Fritz London, Edmond Bauer, and Eugene Wigner. Wigner, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics, wrote, “When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena, through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again; it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”
The box-pair experiment also bears on the role of consciousness and free will. After all, you can choose to look in one of the boxes or to do an interference experiment, and you will get different “realities,” one being particle-like, the other wavelike. But your choice of which experiment to do is not determined, even statistically, by anything in the physical theory. Nothing in quantum mechanics says you must choose one experiment rather than the other. If you deny that consciousness collapses the wave function, then this means atoms prior to observation existed as either particle or wave.
Somehow you chose to only look in those boxes that contained particle atoms and you chose to only do an interference experiment with wave-form atoms. This would also deny free will, because then your illusion of choice is determined by a conspiracy of the physical universe with the state of your brain and your perceived choice.
 This replaces the deterministic universe with one that is deterministic and conspiratorial.
This is how von Neumann, Wigner, and others brought mind back into nature and made a strong case against the causal closure of the physical. As we will see, the case gets even stronger.
At this point, it should be stressed that this is only one interpretation of the facts of quantum mechanics: in addition to the Copenhagen interpretation, there are several other speculations about
what is really happening when quantum possibilities settle down into one actuality. Most attempt to rescue the determinism and observer independence of classical physics.
For instance, the hidden variable theory holds that the indeterminacy of quantum physics is an illusion due to our ignorance: if we knew more about the system in question—that is, if we knew the value of some “hidden variables”—then the indeterminacy would vanish. However, there are several reasons why the general community of quantum physicists never held the hidden-variable theory in high regard.
One reason, according to quantum physicist Euan Squires, is that the hidden variable theory is “extremely complicated and messy. We know the answers from quantum theory and then we construct a hidden-variable, deterministic theory specifically to give these answers. The resulting theory appears contrived and unnatural.”
Squires points out that the hidden variable theory never gained widespread acceptance because “the elegance, simplicity and economy of quantum theory contrasted sharply with the contrived nature of a hidden-variable theory which gave no new predictions in return for its increased complexity; the whole hidden-variable enterprise was easily dismissed as arising from a desire, in the minds of those too conservative to accept change, to return to the determinism of classical physics.”
 Another reason the general community of quantum physicists consider the hidden variable theory highly implausible is that it explains away indeterminacy by postulating the existence of an ad hoc quantum force that, unlike any of the other four forces in nature, behaves in a manner completely unaffected by distance.
The many worlds hypothesis is perhaps the strangest of all. It is the only one that denies the existence of nonlocality, but it does so by postulating that all possible values of a measured property exist simultaneously in coexisting universes. When a measurement is made, we are told, the universe we are in splits into multiple universes, with one of the possible results in each of them. For instance, if a measurement may yield two possible results, then at the instant of measurement the entire universe splits in two, with each possible result realized in each universe. If a measurement may yield a continuum of possible states—such as the position of an electron—then the instant such a measurement occurs, it is proposed that the universe splits into an infinite number of universes! Since
it is further assumed that these parallel universes cannot interact with each other, this hypothesis is completely untestable. Entities are being multiplied with incredible profusion.
William of Occam must be spinning in his grave.
In the opinion of many physicists, the last two interpretations are simply desperate, last-ditch attempts to rescue the classical assumptions of determinism and observer independence that have been abandoned by quantum mechanics.
 For instance, one interpretation salvages determinism from classical physics by postulating hidden variables and the other by speculating that everything that can happen does in fact happen in an infinite number of constantly splitting parallel universes, regardless of the way things may appear to any particular version of our constantly splitting selves.
At any rate, these four interpretations are all consistent with the observed facts. They are attempts to describe what reality is really like between observations, to account for the seemingly bizarre behavior of matter predicted so accurately by the theory of quantum physics.
They are not usually considered to be scientific theories about the nature of reality, but rather metaphysical theories, as within quantum mechanics there does not currently seem to be any obvious experiment that one could perform in order to choose between them.
Physicist J. C. Polkinghorne sums up the metaphysical confusion many quantum theorists feel when he writes:
It is a curious tale.
 All over the world measurements are continually being made on quantum mechanical systems. The theory triumphantly predicts, within its probabilistic limits, what their outcomes will be.
 It is all a great success. Yet we do not understand what is going on.
Does the fixity on a particular occasion set in as a purely mental act of knowledge? At a transition from small to large physical systems? At the interface of matter and mind that we call consciousness?
In one of the many subsequent worlds into which the universe has divided itself?
Perhaps one interpretation is simpler or more logically consistent, or perhaps one of the interpretations is more aesthetically pleasing than the others. These considerations may provide philosophical reasons for preferring one over the others, but such reasons can hardly be considered decisive.
However, a fascinating set of experiments performed by physicist Helmut Schmidt and others appears to show that conscious intent can affect the behavior of otherwise purely random quantum phenomena.
 Could an experiment be designed to test the von Neumann interpretation?
Consciousness is central to the von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics.
 According to this interpretation, some properties of quantum phenomena do not exist in any definite state except through the intervention of a conscious mind, at which point the wave function of possibilities collapses into a single state.
The usual form of this interpretation allows the observer to collapse the wave function to a unique outcome but not to have any effect on what outcome actually occurs:
 the actual outcome is assumed to be randomly chosen by nature from the range of values provided by the wave function.
But the experiments of German physicist Helmut Schmidt and other physicists indicate that the consciousness of the observer may not only collapse the wave function to a single outcome but may also help specify what outcome occurs by shifting the odds in a desired direction.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 19:11:32
Clearly :
This famous and simple double slit experiment shows clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function "

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 24/10/2014 19:11:55
Don, several times David Cooper has attempted to convince you that the only aspect of consciousness that isn't entirely explained is feeling and qualia. And you appear to accept that argument in the moment but then several conversations later drift back into including under your heading of consciousness every sort of mental activity that ever occurs - memory, recognition, language, attention, problem solving and learning, beliefs, perception, creativity, and so on. Not just our experience of events involving these processes, or feelings associated with them, but anything that be can be classified as "mental." All of the above processes, along with everything else, like personality traits and volition, emotion, feeling, qualia,  are in your view all carried out "somewhere else" by some other means, than the particles and forces described by Carroll. Like Stapp, you seem to take the position that none of that requires any explanation at all - it just "is." Then you look for some means like entanglement to shoe horn in a connection between your non local consciousness and the biological robot on earth, still without explaining anything about how those mental processes of non-local consciousness work. I fail to see the explanatory benefit of doing that, which is why I think that it is, deep down, a religiously motivated argument.

As far as whether entanglement does provide you with some kind cosmic information highway, Carroll doesn't seem to think so, given his discussion of entanglement in these excerpts. If I understand him correctly, entanglement establishes correlations between different possible measurement outcomes - you are not actually manipulating objects at a vast distance faster than the speed of light. Perhaps Dlorde can probably summarize his explanation of entanglement better than I have.

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/05/29/visualizing-entanglement-in-real-time/

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/quantum/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 19:26:10
Don, several times David Cooper has attempted to convince you that the only aspect of consciousness that isn't entirely explained is feeling and qualia. And you appear to accept that argument in the moment but then several conversations later drift back into including under your heading of consciousness every sort of mental activity that ever occurs - memory, recognition, language, attention, problem solving and learning, beliefs, perception, creativity, and so on. Not just our experience of events involving these processes, or feelings associated with them, but anything that be can be classified as "mental." All of the above processes, along with everything else, like personality traits and volition, emotion, feeling, qualia,  are in your view all carried out "somewhere else" by some other means, than the particles and forces described by Carroll. Like Stapp, you seem to take the position that none of that requires any explanation at all - it just "is." Then you look for some means like entanglement to shoe horn in a connection between your non local consciousness and the biological robot on earth, still without explaining anything about how those mental processes of non-local consciousness work. I fail to see the explanatory benefit of doing that, which is why I think that it is, deep down, a religiously motivated argument.

As far as whether entanglement does provide you with some kind cosmic information highway, Carroll doesn't seem to think so, given his discussion of entanglement in these excerpts. If I understand him correctly, entanglement establishes correlations between different possible measurement outcomes - you are not actually manipulating objects at a vast distance faster than the speed of light. Perhaps Dlorde can probably summarize his explanation of entanglement better than I have.

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2013/05/29/visualizing-entanglement-in-real-time/

http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/quantum/

Caroll thinks about the standard model of quantum field theory  a bit  like what classical physicists thought about classical Newtonian physics , in the sense that all significant natural laws or forces  were already discovered , and that only minor insignificant forces or details remain to be filled in ,untill Max Planck appeared in the picture .

I suspect the same might happen to Caroll's standard model of quantum field theory .

For the rest , see above .
See also that famous double slit experiment where it is shown clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function .
Carter says , through the work of many prominent scientists , that consciousness does collapse the wave function instantly thus and without any transfer of energy ,without violating any laws of QM , not to mention the fact that QM has shown that the universe is not causally closed ...unlike what classical Newtonian physics says on the subject .
The above displayed link in relation to that famous double slit experiment shows that : see the excerpts of Carter on the subject here above .

No time for the rest , sorry . Thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 19:30:03
Carter's books prove the opposite of what Caroll 's video says .
They don't 'prove' anything, they make speculative assertions. But this is the problem with the argument from authority - it eventually comes down to my authority's better then your authority. On which point, when it comes to quantum physics, I tend to rate the views of Sean Carroll, leading theoretical physicist and CERN collaborator, more highly than those of Chris Carter, author.

This is why we try to encourage you to have and argue your own opinions.

I'm happy to argue any of the relevant points Sean makes in his video (his presentation is better and more entertaining). If you can identify anything at all in that video that you disagree with, and explain why you disagree with it, I'll be more than happy to discuss it with you. If there's something you don't understand, just ask - who knows, I might be missing some fundamental flaw in Carroll's argument.

Quote
Are all those scientists from whose work Carter  supported his claims are all worng ? Seriously , come on .
They very probably are. There are a great number of scientists, and not all of them are right about everything. On the other hand, Carter may be mistaken about the applicability of their work to his theories.

Quote
Caroll says almost the same regarding QM : that no significant detectable force remains to be discovered , just minor ones that are not relevant .

Well, see how  a minor "anomaly " toppled classical physics through the work of Max Planck.
That's right, the interaction space of energies and frequencies relevant to biological systems has been thoroughly explored, both empirically and theoretically - by a theory that extends its accuracy far beyond that limited interaction space.

And yes, it's possible, even likely, that the theory is wrong, in the same way that classical mechanics is wrong, by being an approximation that's valid within a limited scope of applicability - in the limit, other physical models may more appropriate; but just as Newtonian physics is a sufficiently good approximation to rely on in everyday life, and even to send spacecraft round the solar system, so quantum field theory is a good enough approximation to fully account for human-scale interactions. It's predictions for that whole range of scales and energies, and far beyond, have been verified by experiment. When classical physics was discovered to be 'wrong', inertia didn't go away, mass still needed to be accelerated, and angular momentum was still conserved. Likewise, if QFT is found to be inaccurate in the limit, there still won't be any new particles, fields, or forces relevant to human scales. As was said - the experimental ground has been thoroughly raked over; if there was anything else that could interact with relevant effect at these scales, it would have been found, many times over.

If you want to throw out quantum field theory, go right ahead - but don't then try to use quantum theory to support psi or any other magical woo. And once you've disposed of it, introduce me to the theory that explains all the same stuff and also includes the paranormal or supernatural - because if you can find such a theory, you'll deserve a Nobel Prize.

But for now, if you can provide just one instance of a well controlled and blinded study that has produced unequivocal results that have been published and replicated, and which support your claims here, and we'll have something worth discussing.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 19:36:06
Here You go : Carter says on the subject :
...
Several points about nonlocality are worth noting. First of all, non-locality does not seem to violate special relativity’s prohibition of faster-than-light signals, as no signals are sent.
Cool - supports what I said previously, and contradicts Radin's pseudoscience.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 19:55:11
dlorde :

You have to read Carter's excerpts here above before attempting to refute them .I know they take time to read . I know that's not the way to conduct a debate .But , since i will be absent from this forum in the next days , and since i did not want to distort Carter's arguments , i had no choice but to display those relevant excerpts of his.
You will have time enough to read those excerpts , i hope , the same goes for me , and then ,we can discuss them through our own words ,afterwards , when i will come back to this forum after some days  .
My apologies for the inconvenience . I would appreciate it very much ,if you would then, afterwards , pinpoint to me where Carter and all those eminent scientists on whose work he based his consclusions were  wrong.Thanks, appreciate indeed .


Furthermore : You said earlier as a reply to my following quote :

Quote
      Who's insane enough as to believe in that materialist non-sense ?

You said the following thus :

Quote
No-one, I would hope. It's a complete misrepresentation. If that's really what you think the materialist position is, it's no wonder you have difficulty with it. Personally, I think it's a deliberate misrepresentation intended to cover a depressing lack of reasoned argument against the real position.

Well , here is what Carter had to say about just that :

   
MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND :

The doctrine of materialism is one of the implications of taking classical physics to be a complete description of all of nature, including human beings.
 It is essentially the idea that all events have a physical cause; in other words, that all events are caused by the interaction between particles of matter and force fields.
 It follows from this that mind has no causal role in nature but is at most merely a useless by-product produced by the brain, and so in short, all that matters is matter.
There are three basic materialist approaches: the mind does not exist, the mind is identical to the brain, or the mind is a useless by-product produced by the brain.
The eliminative materialists seriously argue that consciousness and the self do not exist, but that children are indoctrinated by “folk psychology” into believing that they exist as conscious, thinking beings. For instance, journalist Michael Lemonick writes, “Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not: some entity deep inside the brain that corresponds to the ‘self,’ some kernel of awareness that runs the show, as the ‘man behind the curtain’ manipulated the illusion of a powerful magician in The Wizard of Oz. After more than a century of looking for it, brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.
This may sound bizarre, but since materialism cannot account for consciousness, some materialists simply deny their own existence as conscious beings.
They are driven to this act of desperation by their conviction that science, which they understand as applied materialism, supports them.
 Note the self-refuting nature of this position: If I believe that consciousness does not exist, then how could my belief exist? If my consciousness does not exist, then neither does my belief. And if my professed belief is nothing more than a machine going through its motions, then you have no reason to accept it as correct.
The identity theory holds great attraction for many philosophers, as it seems to offer a simple and
easy solution to the problem.
 It says, for instance, that the subjective awareness of a red patch is objectively the movement of particles taking place in one’s brain. Some identity theorists hope that neuroscience will one day be able to map out the brain states that correspond to mental states, so that we will be able to simply describe mental activity as the activity of the brain.
 But Beauregard points out why this is a false hope:
Every human mind and brain moves through life differently, changing as it goes, so the information obtained for his brain would not apply to anyone else’s—or even to his own brain at a later time!
This point bears repeating because it is so contrary to materialist hopes that it is often ignored in public discussions. One outcome, for example, is that [Jean-Peirre] Changeux’s view that mind states and brain states are completely identical is untestable and lacks predictive value.
Any theory that is untestable and lacks predictive value does not belong to science, but rather to philosophy at best, ideology at worse. And it does get worse. How are we even to understand the assertion that thoughts and brain states are really one and the same? If they are the same, then every characteristic of one must be a characteristic of the other; but this leads to nonsense, as physicist and philosopher C. D. Broad pointed out.
There are some questions which can be raised about the characteristics of being a molecular movement, which it is nonsensical to raise about the characteristics of being an awareness of a red patch; and conversely. About a molecular movement it is perfectly reasonable to raise the
question: Is it swift or slow, straight or circular, and so on? About the awareness of a red patch it is nonsensical to ask whether it is a swift or slow awareness, a straight or a circular awareness, and so on. Conversely, it is reasonable to ask about an awareness of a red patch whether it is a clear or a confused awareness; but it is nonsense to ask of a molecular movement whether it is a clear or a confused movement. Thus the attempt to argue that “being a sensation of so and so” and “being a bit of bodily behavior of such and such a kind” are just two names for the same characteristic is evidently hopeless.
Eliminative materialism and identity theory are varieties of monism, the idea that only one kind of substance exists in the universe.
A materialist monist believes that matter is all that exists, in contrast to a dualist, who believes that reality contains two sorts of essences: psychical and physical.
 The materialist believes that the full authority of science supports his position and that dualism is an outmoded legacy of a prescientific era, but many modern scientists disagree. Astronomer V. A. Firsoff writes, “To assert there is only matter and no mind is the most illogical of propositions, quite apart from the findings of modern physics, which show that there is no matter in the traditional meaning of the term.”
 As we saw earlier, many quantum theorists were driven to the conclusion that prior to conscious observation, matter exists only in a half-real state as possibility waves, without definite values for dynamic attributes such as position or velocity. Hence Walker’s remark that “duality is already a part of physics.”
Wolfgang Pauli, one of the major contributors to quantum theory, concluded, “The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously.
Epiphenomenalism does not deny the existence of consciousness, but holds that the interaction between the brain and mind runs strictly one way, from brain to mind.
 This view was popularized by Darwin’s friend and colleague Thomas Huxley, who described the mind as a mere epiphenomena—a useless by-product of brain activity. According to this theory, free will and intent are only illusions.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Karl Popper rightly pointed out.
The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the onesided action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had been right, mind would be useless.
But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.
So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature.
 According to this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect.
And the more highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.
However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics, being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary theory. However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has eliminated the causal closure of the physical.
Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, pointed out that while biologists have been relentlessly moving toward the hard-core materialism that characterized nineteenth-century physics, “at the same time, physicists, faced with compelling experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly mechanical models of the universe to a view that sees the mind as playing an integral role in all physical events. It is as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the tracks.”
 For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline should rethink its position—physics or biology? On a practical note, can we reasonably expect much progress in neuroscience, given the problems, if we do not begin by reassessing the materialism that has characterized our hypotheses for decades?
Materialist theories of mind are based on the assumption that brain activity, and hence mental activity, is driven from below by the deterministic, observer-independent motions of elementary particles in the brain, as described by classical physics. But we have known since the early years of the twentieth century that classical physics fails drastically at the atomic and subatomic levels, and that the behavior of such particles is indeterministic and observer dependent.
 The irony here is that while materialists often describe themselves as promoting a scientific outlook, it is possible to be a materialist only by ignoring the most successful scientific theory of matter the world has yet seen.
The materialist believes that consciousness is created by matter, yet the best theory we have about the nature of matter seems to require that consciousness exists independently of matter.
And materialist models of mind utterly fail to answer the hard problem: why should consciousness exist in the first place and then constantly deceive us as to its function?
Materialist philosopher of mind John Searle has lamented the bankruptcy of most work in the philosophy of mind and has candidly suggested that the motivation behind acceptance of materialist views is more emotional than rational.
Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives. That is, the choice we are tacitly presented with is between a ‘scientific’ approach, as represented by one or another of the current versions of ‘materialism,’ and an ‘anti-scientific’ approach, as represented by Cartesianism or some other traditional religious conception of the mind.

 

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 24/10/2014 19:59:59
"Implications For Physics and Consciousness " : Schmidt's Experiments and more :




http://skepdic.com/pear.html

Attempts to replicate Schmidt's experiments do not appear to have been very successful. But I'm grateful that Don has provided at least one bone to chew on instead of mere "overwhelming evidence."

The effects, if not anomalies, or not connected to a lack of true randomness in the random generators, seem so minimal that I fail to see how it underlies or supports the entire structure of consciousness itself as a reliable and consistent mechanism. They are describing a force that only influences matter effectively - rarely, if at all, and yet is supposed to be (for Don's purposes, anyway) the vehicle through which consciousness communicates its objectives to the brain for every mental activity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 20:26:06
Ethos, dlorde, Cheryl, alancalverd :

Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :


Furthermore , I think that when Caroll says that the standard model of quantum field theory  that allegedly explains  how  the whole every-day -scale world works rules out any existence of psi-phenomena , NDE ....,since all major or significant natural laws  or forces were already discovered ,and even if physicists would discover in the future some too- insignificant -forces -to -be -detected / detectable- today , they would turn out to be irrelevant .
When caroll said that through  his wonderful and impressive lecture ,he maybe did not remember  the fact that classical physicists thought almost the same about classical Newtonian physics untill Max Planck showed up in the picture to topple classical Newtonian physics through his work that paved the way for quantum theory .

I suspect thus that the same might happen to that standard model of quantum field theory .

P.S.: I will be absent from this forum during a few days , so, i will be not active in this forum, just to give you and myself time enough to read all those excerpts of Carter , and then, afterwards , we can discuss them in an informed manner .

I know it takes time to read them , as i also know that posting lengthy excerpts from books is not the proper way to conduct constructive debates , but i had no choice but to do that , since i did not want to repeat the same mistake i committed yesterday by distorting Carter's arguments ...

My apologies for the inconvenience .

Thanks a lot for your understanding and cooperation, help ....time , efforts .., appreciate indeed .Best wishes .Cheers .

My apologies for not being able to reply to all your interesting posts here above , guys , since it took me so much time to target Carter's relevant excerpts on the subject and post them here , while fixing their display as well ...

dlorde :

Please , try to take some time to read those Carter's excerpts , and then, we will discuss them , after a few days , if you want to or have time enough for that at least . Thanks.

Since almost all those non-materialist scientists do rely heavily on one particular interpretation of quantum theory where consciousness seems to play a central or key role in physics : The conscious collapse of the wave function (I am well aware of your earlier critiques regarding that issue ) , i would, nevertheless,  appreciate it very much , if you would then pinpoint to me where all those eminent scientists on whose work Carter had based his conclusions , were wrong , since i do not know nearly enough about QM .I wish i did .I have been working on that .

Thanks . Best wishes.Cheers.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 20:35:03
Cheryl :

You will get what you were asking for , don't worry about that .
After a few days , and after finishing with the above , i will be providing you with that overwhelming body of evidence that has been supporting the claims of non-materialist scientists through their own work .

Carter , for example, had even deliverd some serious refutations of all those materialist physiological and psychological explanations of psi-phenomena, NDE , placebo/nocebo effects , so ..

You will also hear about the latter , in due time .

Thanks to all of you , guys , appreciate indeed .

Best wishes to you all and nice weekend as well .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 20:37:36
I was not able to post all the necessary and relevant Carter's excerpts , due to the lack of enough time , and due to the fact that the above posted excerpts were relatively enough anyway .

Thanks, guys .See ya in a few days, hopefully .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 20:41:24
Wow :
All of the above just robbed me of nearly 3 hours of my time .Unbelievable.I did not realise that untill now .
It was worth it though .A pleasure .
Thanks.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 20:53:55
Oh, wait : why not add the following , after all :


NONMECHANICAL CAUSATION :

In classical physics, all causation is by mechanical means, that is, by contact interactions between neighboring entities or neighboring regions of a field, analogous to the interaction of billiard balls or the motion of a wave in the ocean.
By contrast, quantum physics allows nonmechanical causation.
Thenonlocal, instantaneous influence discussed above is one example.
A second example would be the collapse of the wave function by an act of conscious observation.
 In the orthodox von Neumann interpretation, the actual outcome was assumed to be randomly determined from a range of values, but the experiments of Schmidt and others indicate that consciousness may in fact bias the outcome in a desired direction. This obviously adds another level of nonmechanical causation to conscious observation.
A third example would be the so-called quantum Zeno effect (named after the philosopher Zeno of Elea).
Physicists have found that if they continuously observe an unstable particle in its original state, it will never decay. That is, physicists can “freeze” the decay of the unstable system by measuring it frequently enough in its initial state.
This is what these phenomena led physicist John Wheeler to imagine when he looked to the future:
“There may be no such thing as the ‘glittering central mechanism of the universe’ to be seen behind a glass wall at the end of the trail.
Not machinery but magic may be the better description of the treasure that is waiting.”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:05:11
And the following as well :


THE OBJECTIONS OF DANIEL DENNETT :  ( Mind-body-interaction and energy transfer issues regarding dualism + The alleged causally closed universe issue ) :

Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained has a chapter titled “Why Dualism is Forlorn,” which begins with the following words: “The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of ordinary matter but of some other kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today… .
The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for is materialism: there is one sort of stuff, namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain.
Dennett then asks, “What, then, is so wrong with dualism? Why is it in such disfavor?” His answer:
A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of a particle is an acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy … this principle of conservation of energy … is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between standard physics and dualism has been endlessly discussed since Descartes’s own day, and is widely regarded as the inescapable flaw in dualism.
Shortly after this, he writes: “This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, it most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why in this book I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs.
Commenting on the argument Dennett presents, Stapp writes,
The argument depends on identifying ‘standard physics’ with classical physics.
The argument collapses when one goes over to contemporary physics, in which trajectories of particles are replaced by cloud-like structures, and in which conscious choices can influence physically described activity without violating the conservation laws or any other laws of quantum mechanics.
 Contemporary physical theory allows, and its orthodox von Neumann form entails, an interactive dualism that is fully in accord with all the laws of physics.(emphasis in original)
Rosenblum and Kuttner also reject Dennett’s arguments:
Some theorists deny the possibility of duality by arguing that a signal from a non-material mind could not carry energy and thus could not influence material brain cells. Because of this inability of a mind to supply energy to influence the neurons of the brain, it is claimed that physics demonstrates an inescapable flaw of dualism. However, no energy need be involved in determining to which particular situation a wave function collapses. Thus the determination of which of the physically possible conscious experiences becomes the actual experience is a process that need not involve energy transfer.
Quantum mechanics therefore allows an escape from the supposed fatal flaw of dualism.
 It is a mistake to think that dualism can be ruled out on the basis of physics.
Finally, as Broad pointed out decades ago, at a time when quantum mechanics was still in its infancy, even if all physical-to-physical causation involves transfer of energy, we have no reason to think that such transfer would also be required in mental-to-physical or physical-to-mental causation.
 This, of course, is completely consistent with the point made above by Rosenblum and Kuttner.

Concluding Remarks :

Cognitive scientist Roger Sperry has proposed that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
A simple example of an emergent property is the fluidity of water, which is nothing like any property of hydrogen and oxygen.
 Another example is the geometrical and optical properties of crystals, properties that the molecules that compose them do not possess. Sperry proposes that consciousness emerges from the configuration of the brain in the way that fluidity emerges from combining hydrogen and oxygen.
This is different from the materialist production theory, according to which the brain produces consciousness the way the liver produces bile. It is a temporal distinction: in the production theory, brain states precede the conscious states they produce, but if conscious states are emergent properties of brain states, then they occur simultaneously with them.
However, as philosopher of mind B. Alan Wallace notes,
A genuine emergent property of the cells of the brain is the brain’s semi-solid consistency, and that is something that objective, physical science can well comprehend … but they do notunderstand how the brain produces any state of consciousness.
 In other words, if mental phenomena are in fact nothing more than emergent properties and functions of the brain, their relation to the brain is fundamentally unlike every other emergent property and function found in
nature. (emphasis in original)
The von Neumann interpretation of reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an emergent but rather an elemental property, that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as energy and force fields.
This idea is seriously entertained by physicists such as Herbert, and in its favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox that is raised by the von Neumann interpretation: if consciousness depends on the physical world and if the value of many quantum physical properties depends on consciousness, then how did the physical world ever bring about consciousness in the first place?
 The solution to this puzzle is apparently what Jeans means when he writes, “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.
Quantum mechanics can thereby be considered as supporting an interactive dualism similar to that of Descartes.
Cartesian dualism holds that there are two kinds of entirely separate substances: mind and matter.
This theory fell into disrepute among many philosophers because classical physics provided no mechanism by which mind could influence material substance.
The classical idea of substance—self-sufficient, unchanging, with definite location, motion, and extension in space—has been replaced by the idea that physical reality is not made out of any material substance, but rather out of events and possibilities for those events to occur.
These possibilities, or potentials, for events to occur have a wavelike structure and can interfere with each other. They are not substance-like, that is, static or persisting in time. Rather than being concerned with “substances” in the classical sense of the term, modern interactive dualism conceives of two differently described aspects of reality: the psychical and the physical.
Stapp sums up how a modern interactive dualism based on quantum mechanics simplifies the conceptual relationship between the two aspects of reality.
This solution is in line with Descartes’ idea of two “substances,” that can interact in our brains, provided “substance” means merely a carrier of “essences.” The essence of the inhabitants of res cogitans is “felt experience.
 They are thoughts, ideas, and feelings: the realities that hang together to form our streams of conscious experiences. But the essence of the inhabitants of res extensa is not at all that sort of persisting stuff that classical physicists imagined the physical world to be made of … their essential nature is that of “potentialities for the psychophysical events to occur.
 Those events occur at the interface between the psychologically described and physically described aspects of nature. The causal connections between “potentialities for psychologically described events to occur” and the actual occurrence of such events are easier to comprehend and describe than causal connections between the mental and physical features of classical physics.
For, both sides of the quantum duality are conceptually more like “ideas” than like “rocks.”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 21:09:02
Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle: (On the famous double slit experiment ) :
Yow, more 'not even wrong' gibberish about quantum mechanics.

You don't provide proper attribution (please in future provide full attribution and/or reference, e.g. author, document title, etc., and/or link to an online source or reference), so it's not possible to verify your quote or its context.

Nevertheless, if it's the same Rosenblum and Kuttner who wrote “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters
Consciousness”, or even a quote from that work, you'll be interested to know that the errors and misattributions in that book were considered egregious enough to justify a detailed critique in rebuttal by Michael Nauenberg (http://physics.ucsc.edu/~michael/qefoundations.pdf).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:19:25
Finally , the following then, then i am gone :

Mr. Impressive and Funny Caroll : Beware of the next Max Planck lol :

What many people believe to be our “modern, scientific worldview” is in fact a legacy of classical, Newtonian physics, which has been known to be fundamentally flawed since the early years of the twentieth century.
 As we will see, many of the arguments of the materialists are based on classical physics and the worldview it spawned. However, many physicists now believe that modern physics supports a dualistic model of mind-brain interaction. It is to this issue we now turn.

................

Classical Physics :

Classical physics is a set of theories of nature that originated with the work of Isaac Newton in the seventeenth century, was advanced by many scientists through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and finally culminated in the relativity theories of Albert Einstein, the last great classical physicist.
Building on the earlier work of Galileo and Johannes Kepler, Newton developed a theory of gravity and three simple laws of motion that accurately predicted the motions of the planets as well as that of terrestrial objects here on Earth, such as cannonballs, falling apples, and the tides.
Newton assumed that all physical objects were composed of tiny versions of large visible objects,
which he described as “solid, massy, hard, impenetrable moveable particles.
These tiny objects were assumed to interact by means of direct contact, much like billiard balls. The only exception was the mysterious action at a distance called gravity: Newton’s theory of gravity proposed that every tiny particle in the solar system attracted every other one with a force inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
This deeply troubled Newton, who referred to this action at a distance as an “absurdity”; nevertheless, he formulated his theory of gravity as an equation and simply declined to speculate on how it was mediated, famously writing “hypotheses non fingo” (“I make no hypotheses”).
It was Einstein who finally proposed a mediating agent for gravity: a distortion in space and time caused by the mass of objects, with more massive objects causing greater distortion.
 This contribution made classical physics a local theory: there is no action at a distance. All influence is transmitted locally along a force field, and no influence—including that of gravity—propagates faster than the speed of light.
If, for instance, the sun were to be suddenly destroyed, Earth would drift out of its orbit about eight minutes later.
In classical physics, all interactions between particles are local and occur independent of anyone observing them.
Moreover, the interactions are assumed to be deterministic: that is, the future state of the physical world is completely determined by the state at an earlier time. According to classical physics, the complete history of the physical world was determined for all time at the origin of the universe.
 The universe was now seen as a great machine. God may have created the machine and set it running—according to Newton, the planets were originally hurled by the hand of God—but once started, the solar system was kept going by its own momentum and operated as a self-regulating machine in accordance with inviolable laws.
Classical physics had two ways of dealing with the problem of consciousness and free will.
The first, followed by Newton and René Descartes, was to assume that human consciousness and free will lay outside the domain of physics. Descartes taught that animals were mindless automatons, but humans had a soul and were thus the sole exceptions in an otherwise deterministic, mechanistic universe.
 The second way of dealing with free will, popularized by the eighteenth-century philosophes who were greatly inspired by Newton’s work, was to argue that classical physics was a complete description of the entire world, including human beings, and that free will was therefore an illusion.
The ancient philosophy of materialism was now thought to have a scientific foundation.
Scientists and philosophers now had good reasons to believe that the physical aspects of reality were causally closed: the physical could affect the mental via its affect on the brain, such as the experience of pain after touching a flame, but the mental could not affect the physical. Pulling one’s hand away from the flame was now seen by the materialists as the predetermined response of an automaton.
Thoughts, feelings, and intentions were now seen as causally redundant: it was now argued that consciousness serves no purpose and that our intuitive feeling of free will is only an illusion.
These views became prevalent in the eighteenth century, during what became known as the Enlightenment, which can be thought of as the ideological aftermath of the scientific revolution.
 Its most striking feature was the rejection of dogma and tradition in favor of the rule of reason in human affairs, and it was the precursor of modern secular humanism. Inspired by the dazzling success of the new physics, prominent spokesmen such as Denis Diderot and Voltaire argued for a new worldview based on an uncompromising mechanism and determinism that left no room for any intervention of mind in nature, whether human or divine.
In the eighteenth century, the horrors of the religious wars, the witch hunts, and the Inquisition were still fresh in peoples’ minds, and the new scientific worldview, spread by men such as Diderot and Voltaire, can be seen partly as a reaction against the ecclesiastical domination over thought that the Church held for centuries.
As we have seen, Bruno was burned at the stake for his opinions, and Galileo was persecuted for his but recanted.
Yet Galileo’s insistence that only observation and experimentation, not authority, were the arbiters of truth in science had launched a revolution in thinking.
When Newton’s Principia was published in 1687, it was not suppressed but instead reached a wide audience.
The Newtonian system predicted the orbits of the planets with astonishing accuracy and even reduced comets from portents of disaster to phenomena whose appearance in the sky couldbe predicted like clockwork.
The universe was now viewed as a gigantic clockwork mechanism.
 The so-called modern scientific worldview was thus born and has had enormous impact on philosophy for the last three hundred years.
For a philosopher whose thinking is tied to classical physics, there are two possible ways to understand the inability of the mental to influence the physical.
The first is to consider thoughts, feelings, and intentions as epiphenomena, that is, useless by-products that are somehow produced by the brain, but in turn exert no causal influence on the brain.
The second is to consider the mind as identical to the brain, that is, thoughts and feelings are the same thing as the motion of tiny particles inside the brain.

Quantum Mechanics :

Quantum mechanics was developed early in the twentieth century to explain the behavior of atoms.
The energy of an atom was found to change, not continuously, but by a discrete amount called a quantum. “Quantum mechanics” is the term that includes both the experimental observations and the
quantum theory that explains them.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, physics was thought to be nearly complete.
All the important discoveries had been made, many thought, and all that was left was to fill in some minor details.
One of these “details” was the hot-body problem concerning the colors of light given off by hot bodies.
Max Planck set about to solve it.
The problem was that classical physics gave the wrong answer: its predictions were wildly inaccurate.
Planck found that when he assumed, as an act of desperation, that energy could only be released from an atom in discrete packets, his formula gave predictions that matched the data perfectly.
 Quantum theory was born.
Classical physics assumed that a charged particle, such as an electron, would lose energy gradually and continuously over time.
Planck assumed that energy could only be radiated in discrete packets.
Each of these packets of energy would have an energy level equal to a tiny number (now called
Planck’s constant) times the frequency of the vibration of the particle. Energy at the atomic level would be measured in quanta (the plural of “quantum”), with one quantum being the lowest energy level possible, above zero.
It was found that an electron would vibrate for a while at a constant energy level without losing energy to radiation.
Then suddenly, unpredictably, randomly, it would jump to a lower energy level and in the process radiate a photon of light (the energy of the photon given by Planck’s constant times its frequency of vibration).
An electron could also gain energy by such “quantum jumps.
 A graph of an electron’s energy level over time was now given by a stepped function, not a smooth curve.
It was later realized that quantum theory should apply to all objects, large and small. However, the reason we don’t see children on swings suddenly change their energy level in quantum jumps is because Planck’s constant is far too small. Quantum effects are just far too tiny for us to notice them at the macroscopic level.
Quantum theory was rapidly developed in the decades to follow, with Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, and many others making major contributions. Classical mechanics is now seen as only an excellent approximation for the behavior of objects at the macroscopic level we normally deal with.
 Quantum mechanics can account for everything that classical mechanics can account for, and also for data that classical mechanics neither predicts nor explains. Modern physics is quantum mechanics.
 It also has many practical applications, such as the transistor, the laser, and the florescent light bulb.
 It has been estimated that one-third of our economy depends on devices that operate on quantum mechanical principles. Trying to understand what quantum mechanics means, however, brings us face-to-face with some of the most baffling mysteries ever confronted, and must profoundly change our worldview.
Newtonian physics was based on the metaphysical assumptions of determinism, the assumption that an observer did not affect a system being observed, and localism. But classical physics has been superseded by quantum physics, as classical physics has clearly been shown to be false.
 This implies that the mechanistic worldview based on it must also be false.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:22:53
Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle: (On the famous double slit experiment ) :
Yow, more 'not even wrong' gibberish about quantum mechanics.

You don't provide proper attribution (please in future provide full attribution and/or reference, e.g. author, document title, etc., and/or link to an online source or reference), so it's not possible to verify your quote or its context.

Nevertheless, if it's the same Rosenblum and Kuttner who wrote “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters
Consciousness”, or even a quote from that work, you'll be interested to know that the errors and misattributions in that book were considered egregious enough to justify a detailed critique in rebuttal by Michael Nauenberg (http://physics.ucsc.edu/~michael/qefoundations.pdf).

Ok, dlorde , taking note of that  .PDF downloaded .Thanks.Cheers.Nice weekend.
Damn , QM is key in all of this ...and more .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:27:25
Cheryl : See what subjectivity and our limited human perception and knowledge  + more can do to us,deceive us .... :

Franz Kafka :

The works of Franz Kafka, especially his two stories Das Urteil (1913; The Judgment) and Die Verwandlung (1915; The Metamorphosis), owe much to Expressionism and are often considered in the context of that movement. But his writing is better understood as an early phase of experimental Modernism. Kafka's central concern, like that of other 20th-century Modernists, is the problematic nature of human subjectivity and the limitations of individual perception and knowledge. His striking narrative technique, first developed in The Judgment, of presenting reality from a limited third-person point of view enables readers to identify with his oppressed and passive protagonists while also recognizing that their view is deeply flawed. Kafka's unfinished novels, especially Der Prozess (1925; The Trial) and Das Schloss (1926; The Castle), explore further aspects of the individual's inescapable entrapment in subjectivity. Like many other Modernists, Kafka also treated problems of authority and power. His characters feel hopelessly subjugated to inexplicable forces associated with patriarchal social structures and an overly mechanized and bureaucratic modern world. The Brief an den Vater (posthumously published, 1960; “Letter to His Father,” bilingual edition, 1966), written in 1919 but never actually delivered to his father, reveals the autobiographical background to the father-son conflict Kafka depicted in many of his stories, a thematic concern he shared with the Expressionists. The grotesque element in Kafka's writing stems from his tendency to take metaphors literally, as when the “spineless” Gregor Samsa, protagonist of The Metamorphosis, wakes up one morning to find he has become an insect, a creature without a spine. Kafka's love of paradoxes and logical puzzles gave rise to a highly symbolic style of writing that makes his works resistant to any single interpretive key.

Encyclopedia Britannica .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:32:51
Nearly 4 hours of my time are gone by now .Wow.
Sorry for burdening you, guys , with all these excerpts , but , they are worth yout time, believe me .Pleeeaaassseee, try to read them , please Thanks .

............

Ethos, dlorde, Cheryl, alancalverd :

Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :


Furthermore , I think that when Caroll says that the standard model of quantum field theory  that allegedly explains  how  the whole every-day -scale world works rules out any existence of psi-phenomena , NDE ....,since all major or significant natural laws  or forces were already discovered ,and even if physicists would discover in the future some too- insignificant -forces -to -be -detected / detectable- today , they would turn out to be irrelevant .
When caroll said that through  his wonderful and impressive lecture ,he maybe did not remember  the fact that classical physicists thought almost the same about classical Newtonian physics untill Max Planck showed up in the picture to topple classical Newtonian physics through his work that paved the way for quantum theory .

I suspect thus that the same might happen to that standard model of quantum field theory .

P.S.: I will be absent from this forum during a few days , so, i will be not active in this forum, just to give you and myself time enough to read all those excerpts of Carter , and then, afterwards , we can discuss them in an informed manner .

I know it takes time to read them , as i also know that posting lengthy excerpts from books is not the proper way to conduct constructive debates , but i had no choice but to do that , since i did not want to repeat the same mistake i committed yesterday by distorting Carter's arguments ...

My apologies for the inconvenience .

Thanks a lot for your understanding and cooperation, help ....time , efforts .., appreciate indeed .Best wishes .Cheers .

My apologies for not being able to reply to all your interesting posts here above , guys , since it took me so much time to target Carter's relevant excerpts on the subject and post them here , while fixing their display as well ...

dlorde :

Please , try to take some time to read those Carter's excerpts , and then, we will discuss them , after a few days , if you want to or have time enough for that at least . Thanks.

Since almost all those non-materialist scientists do rely heavily on one particular interpretation of quantum theory where consciousness seems to play a central or key role in physics : The conscious collapse of the wave function (I am well aware of your earlier critiques regarding that issue ) , i would, nevertheless,  appreciate it very much , if you would then pinpoint to me where all those eminent scientists on whose work Carter had based his conclusions , were wrong , since i do not know nearly enough about QM .I wish i did .I have been working on that .

Thanks . Best wishes.Cheers.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/10/2014 21:36:22
I have been through a 4 hours real marathon  ,wow .
Gone .Done.
Nice weekend and thanks, guys .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 22:05:24
Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :
No. Dr.Quantum's whacky popularisation goes a little awry at the end with his figures of speech - the electron doesn't 'know' anything and isn't 'aware' of anything, and the only thing that matters is the experimental setup - if it's setup to measure which slit the particle goes through, you don't get a diffraction pattern. This will happen whether anyone conscious is observing or not. An automatic system can perform the experiment, record the results on video, store the video for you to watch later, and you'll still see the same effect when you play it. An 'observer' in QM is anything that can interact - a person, a measuring device, or a single particle.

Quote
When caroll said that through  his wonderful and impressive lecture ,he maybe did not remember  the fact that classical physicists thought almost the same about classical Newtonian physics untill Max Planck showed up in the picture to topple classical Newtonian physics through his work that paved the way for quantum theory .

I suspect thus that the same might happen to that standard model of quantum field theory .
I already explained why this is not the case. The 'toppling' of Newtonian physics didn't stop NASA using it to send interplanetary probes on a tour of the solar system, and car crashes still happened because Newton's Laws still hold good at everyday scales and velocities. You have to approach relativistic speeds for the difference to be relevant and significant. The same principle holds for quantum field theory (only more so).

Quote
i would, nevertheless,  appreciate it very much , if you would then pinpoint to me where all those eminent scientists on whose work Carter had based his conclusions , were wrong , since i do not know nearly enough about QM
Lol! very amusing. Tell you what, first you learn enough about QM to understand the arguments you've been using(!), and then read back over the explanations you've been given here, and come back and ask about any parts of the work of those scientists on whom Carter had based his conclusions that you think haven't been covered here.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 24/10/2014 22:08:49
Quote from: cheryl j
As far as whether entanglement does provide you with some kind cosmic information highway, Carroll doesn't seem to think so, given his discussion of entanglement in these excerpts. If I understand him correctly, entanglement establishes correlations between different possible measurement outcomes - you are not actually manipulating objects at a vast distance faster than the speed of light. Perhaps Dlorde can probably summarize his explanation of entanglement better than I have.
That's correct, Cheryl. Quantum entanglement does not allow you to commute FTL.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/10/2014 23:02:36
As far as whether entanglement does provide you with some kind cosmic information highway, Carroll doesn't seem to think so, given his discussion of entanglement in these excerpts. If I understand him correctly, entanglement establishes correlations between different possible measurement outcomes - you are not actually manipulating objects at a vast distance faster than the speed of light. Perhaps Dlorde can probably summarize his explanation of entanglement better than I have.

I can pass on someone else's elegant summary - when two particles are entangled for some property, it's as if entanglement sets up two possible pairs of particles to select from (e.g. A-B and B-A) and a subsequent measurement randomly selects which pair you're using - even if the measurement occurs when the particles are far apart.

Everettian 'Many Worlds' interpretations make this explicit and say that when entangled, the pairs actually exist in separate universes, and when you make the measurement, you just discover which universe you happen to be in; i.e. in the other universe there's a you that sees the other measurement result. This interpretation may be weird in its own right, but it doesn't have any of the awkward problems of other interpretations, like wave-function 'collapse' and so-on. It's a long and complicated story...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 16:24:33
dlorde:

I have to make time for the following here below anyway , then i am gone :

Just try to pinpoint where Carter and all those eminent scientists on whose works he based his conclusions , where they were wrong .
Many eminent physicists talk about the conscious collapse of the wave function : see Carter's excerpts .

What kindda scientific mess or confusion is this then ? Science sounds like some sort of a religion regarding the interpretation of quantum theory at least  : so many scientific "sectes " lol telling different stories about the same theory and more ...not to mention that different theories of the nature of reality pretend to be scientific : the materialist monist one , the dualist one , the idealist one ...+ we have now materialist and non-materialist science ...

P.S.: I understand very well what Carter and those scientists say in his books about quantum theory ...and how it has been opening its wide doors to psi phenomena , NDE and more , and then i see materialist scientists saying the exact opposite things .

What's going on here ? since i am no expert of QM, not even remotely close thus .I wish ...

And how can Caroll say with such unscientific confidence that the standard model of quantum field theory rules out the existence of any psi phenomena ...? since the materialist theory of the nature of reality is certainly false . Thanks .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/10/2014 16:40:11
Ethos, dlorde, Cheryl, alancalverd :

Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :


No.

But if you want the long answer, note that G I Taylor's single-photon interference pattern (the one that gets everybody excited) used photographic film as the recording medium. To the best of my knowledge, photographic film has nothing that even  our friend Don Quichotte would describe as consciousness, is not imbued with the ability to anticipate that it might be viewed by a conscious being, and, when developed and fixed,  is unaffected retrospectively by the opinion or consciousness of the viewer. 

Thus the double slit experiment proves that the collapse of the wave function, if that is how you want to describe single photon interference, is NOT dependent on consciousness.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 16:51:11
Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle: (On the famous double slit experiment ) :
Yow, more 'not even wrong' gibberish about quantum mechanics.

You don't provide proper attribution (please in future provide full attribution and/or reference, e.g. author, document title, etc., and/or link to an online source or reference), so it's not possible to verify your quote or its context.

Nevertheless, if it's the same Rosenblum and Kuttner who wrote “Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters
Consciousness”, or even a quote from that work, you'll be interested to know that the errors and misattributions in that book were considered egregious enough to justify a detailed critique in rebuttal by Michael Nauenberg (http://physics.ucsc.edu/~michael/qefoundations.pdf).

Yes, indeed : Rosenblum and Kuttner were the ones who wrote " Quantum Enigma..." . I have that book too .I have read some parts of it some time ago .
How come that Michael Nauenberg says in his critique of that book that Wigner was the only eminent physicist who talked about the conscious collapse of the wave function ?
Haven't he heard of big claiber scientists such as Von Neumann and others who did the same and more ?
I will have to complete reading that "rebuttal " book anyway ....

It's the first time though that i hear someone saying that Wigner changed his mind radically about that at the end of his work or life .

There are many scientists physicists , even today , who support the conscious collapse of the wave function , to mention just that ...

To say that science has moved on regarding the work of Von Neumann, Wigner and others can't explain why many phsyicists even today , eminent ones at that , that is , still support the idea of the conscious collapse of the wave function .....still support the idea that QM opens its doors to psi phenomena ...unlike what Caroll and other materialist physicists say on the same subject ...

Who's right here and who's wrong then ?

Since materialist science is full of fairy tales , i can't take all   what materialist science says for granted as science ,as you can understand , i guess .

I should have studied QM indeed : working on that .

What's going on here exactly then ?

To say that only materialist physicists are right about the above sounds like being biased to your own dogmatic materialist tribe whose theory of nature is false anyway .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 16:57:19
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg443102#msg443102 date=1414251611]
Ethos, dlorde, Cheryl, alancalverd :

Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :


No.

But if you want the long answer, note that G I Taylor's single-photon interference pattern (the one that gets everybody excited) used photographic film as the recording medium. To the best of my knowledge, photographic film has nothing that even  our friend Don Quichotte would describe as consciousness, is not imbued with the ability to anticipate that it might be viewed by a conscious being, and, when developed and fixed,  is unaffected retrospectively by the opinion or consciousness of the viewer. 

Thus the double slit experiment proves that the collapse of the wave function, if that is how you want to describe single photon interference, is NOT dependent on consciousness.

I was not talking about the double slit experiment using light or photons , but about the other one using electrons . Halloo .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/10/2014 16:59:07

I should have studied QM indeed : working on that .


Good luck. It's not particularly difficult, as long as you stick to the  physics and don't read too much pseudoscientific New Age bunkum. Marijuana and LSD are no subsitute for elementary vector algebra.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/10/2014 17:01:38
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg443102#msg443102 date=1414251611]
Ethos, dlorde, Cheryl, alancalverd :

Does the following famous and simple double slit experiment not show clearly that consciousness does collapse the wave function ? (Dr.Quantum amusing version ) ,without any tranfer of energy whatsoever ? :


No.

But if you want the long answer, note that G I Taylor's single-photon interference pattern (the one that gets everybody excited) used photographic film as the recording medium. To the best of my knowledge, photographic film has nothing that even  our friend Don Quichotte would describe as consciousness, is not imbued with the ability to anticipate that it might be viewed by a conscious being, and, when developed and fixed,  is unaffected retrospectively by the opinion or consciousness of the viewer. 

Thus the double slit experiment proves that the collapse of the wave function, if that is how you want to describe single photon interference, is NOT dependent on consciousness.

I was not talking about the double slit experiment using light or photons , but about the other one using electrons . Halloo .


Same difference. No conscious being can detect a single-electron interference pattern, nor influence the appearance of a computer readout. Something to do with the irreversibility of time.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 17:07:23
dlorde :

I did mention the fact that Dr.Quantum video was the amusing version of the double slit experiment using electrons ,so, the metaphors used in it are just that ...metaphors ,but, it nevertheless shows that the consciousness of the observer does collapse the wave function .

Even many physicists , materialist ones at that , that is , like the one in the video below , say that the one who would explain what really happens in that double slit experiment with electrons should win the nobel prize : lol : while you were saying that the observer can be consciousness of the obsever , the measuring device ....But those devices are physical or material like electrons are ,so : how can they change the superposition of electrons then ? :


And then ,we have this :




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 17:18:47

I should have studied QM indeed : working on that .


Good luck. It's not particularly difficult, as long as you stick to the  physics and don't read too much pseudoscientific New Age bunkum. Marijuana and LSD are no subsitute for elementary vector algebra.

Yeah, right : Big caliber eminent scientists such as Von Neumann and most founders of quantum physics + many eminent physicists even today say that consciousness does collapse the wave function, and that QM has been accounting for psi and other phenomena 'anomalies " ...

They must be all deluded or high on some LSD indeed ...Only materialist physicists are right on the subject indeed , silly me .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 17:25:41
dlorde :

When i say Max Planck toppled classical Newtonian physics , i mean that he  paved the way for the birth of quantum physics that has more explanatory power than classical physics .The latter that's approximately correct and fundamentally false .

QM that explains all what classical physics explains and accounts for all those anomalies that classical physics could not / cannot account for as well .

So, who says that classical physics don't work .?

Stop telling me stories about NASA , planes ....that rely on classical physics then .Who denied that ?

The whole universe is quantum mechanical in fact , as you know .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/10/2014 18:10:36
Materialist scientists pretend to have refuted the works of non-materialist scientists , and vice versa = everybody has  refuted everybody = none has been refuted = a paradox . lol

Materialists assume (a materialist belief assumption ) that consciousness is a physical or material process , so, how can it collapse the wave function ? lol

Non-materialist scientists assume that consciousness is non -physical or non-material + non-local , so, how can it not collapse the wave function ...

Since materialism is false and since materialist science is full of fairy tales ...one should not take for granted all what materialist science says as science ...thus .

Better still : materialist science and materialists are the real science and real scientists lol , the rest is thus pseudo-science or pseudo-scientists at best , and bullshit at worse .  lol

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 25/10/2014 22:13:54
Many eminent physicists talk about the conscious collapse of the wave function : see Carter's excerpts .
It's an interpretation of what the means in physical terms; a wavefunction in superposition of states appears to collapse to a single state under interaction/measurement/observation. You can intepret this as a real wavefunction collapse or as one observer's view of a bigger picture where the wavefunction continues to evolve in superposition, but encompasses the observer in that superposition. The former has multiple difficulties explaining what 'wavefunction collapse' really means and precisely when it occurs, the latter says there really isn't a collapse, but has a large incredulity factor (because it involves the concept of a multiverse).

Quote
What kindda scientific mess or confusion is this then ? Science sounds like some sort of a religion regarding the interpretation of quantum theory at least  : so many scientific "sectes " lol telling different stories about the same theory and more
The theory is fine, it's the best theory ever devised, and works like a charm. The interpretations are ways to get you head around what's actually happening. Many physicists say 'forget the interpretations, just shut up and calculate'.

Quote
... how can Caroll say with such unscientific confidence that the standard model of quantum field theory rules out the existence of any psi phenomena ...? since the materialist theory of the nature of reality is certainly false .
He explains it in painstaking detail in the lecture. QFT does such a good job of predicting how the world behaves at levels and energies including, and way beyond, the everyday, and its predictions have been so thoroughly tested at everyday levels (and beyond) that it's beyond all reasonable doubt that its model of the everyday is correct; plus, if there were any novel interactions strong enough to be relevant to our everyday world, they would have been detected by tests sensitive enough to detect interactions way below the threshold of everyday molecular biology interactions. Either something interacts or it doesn't. If it does, you can see the results of the interaction; if it doesn't, it isn't relevant.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 25/10/2014 22:28:15
The whole universe is quantum mechanical in fact , as you know .
So accept what quantum field theory tells you. No unknown fields or forces that can influence your brain. No psi, or paranormal, or supernatural influences. Welcome to the real world.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 26/10/2014 00:24:29

Yeah, right : Big caliber eminent scientists such as Von Neumann and most founders of quantum physics + many eminent physicists even today say that consciousness does collapse the wave function,


But so far, the only experiment you have quoted clearly shows that it doesn't. Perhaps you have misinterpreted your many eminent scientists? You won't be the first to have done so.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 26/10/2014 02:27:45
Quote from: dlorde
So accept what quantum field theory tells you. No unknown fields or forces that can influence your brain. No psi, or paranormal, or supernatural influences. Welcome to the real world.
Don't be too sure of yourself. Have you ever heard of the Pear Engineering Anomalies Laboratory? If not then see:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

They did research in Human-Machine Anomalies and Remote Perception. This is not a crackpot operation and they did get positive experimental results! This work took place over a period of three decades. See:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 16:37:28
Quote from: dlorde
So accept what quantum field theory tells you. No unknown fields or forces that can influence your brain. No psi, or paranormal, or supernatural influences. Welcome to the real world.
Don't be too sure of yourself. Have you ever heard of the Pear Engineering Anomalies Laboratory? If not then see:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

They did research in Human-Machine Anomalies and Remote Perception. This is not a crackpot operation and they did get positive experimental results! This work took place over a period of three decades. See:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html

Thanks , man .I will take a look at that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 17:05:53
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443124#msg443124 date=1414271634]
Many eminent physicists talk about the conscious collapse of the wave function : see Carter's excerpts .
It's an interpretation of what the means in physical terms; a wavefunction in superposition of states appears to collapse to a single state under interaction/measurement/observation. You can intepret this as a real wavefunction collapse or as one observer's view of a bigger picture where the wavefunction continues to evolve in superposition, but encompasses the observer in that superposition. The former has multiple difficulties explaining what 'wavefunction collapse' really means and precisely when it occurs, the latter says there really isn't a collapse, but has a large incredulity factor (because it involves the concept of a multiverse).

(The multiverse theory is a clear and major violation of occam's razor : a desperate materialist attempt to ignore the scientific evidence that does not fit into the materialist belief or world view , just like that false materialist hidden variable theory .)

 Well, That's the  interpretation dilemma in science again, like how materialist and non-materialist scientists interpret the same data concerning mind -body relationship differently ,the same goes for the interpretation of quantum theory and the rest .

Why are you then so sure about the materialist interpretation of quantum theory,for example  ?

Since materialists assume so falsely that consciousness is a material process without any causal effects on matter , no wonder that you assume the above so blindly .

Well, go read what those scientists said about that through Carter's excerpts here above ,that cost me so much time to target or select for you guys , fix their display ....

And tell me why  all those scientists were so "deluded " or "biased " as to clearly say that the conscious collapse of the wave function is a physic's fact ?

From Von Neumann school through Wigner and all the founders of quantum physics , passing by modern physicists such Amit Goswami , John Gribbin and the rest .

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Quote
What kindda scientific mess or confusion is this then ? Science sounds like some sort of a religion regarding the interpretation of quantum theory at least  : so many scientific "sectes " lol telling different stories about the same theory and more
The theory is fine, it's the best theory ever devised, and works like a charm. The interpretations are ways to get you head around what's actually happening. Many physicists say 'forget the interpretations, just shut up and calculate'.

Quantum theory is the best tested and successful theory ever , yes .
But , i am talking about its interpretation which  has far -reaching philosophical and metaphysical implications : surely that's not nothing : that can help scientists get closer to what the nature of reality might be , scientist .Science is all about trying to find out about the nature of reality  .

How can physicists such as Caroll  then  dare talk about the nature of reality through the standard model of quantum field theory without dealing with that interpretation dilemma of quantum theory, in the first place to begin with ,  that's , in its turn, all about the approximation regarding the nature of reality : a paradox : can't you see that ? Come on .

Physicists cannot ignore that for ever , many of them have been doing just that .


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Quote
... how can Caroll say with such unscientific confidence that the standard model of quantum field theory rules out the existence of any psi phenomena ...? since the materialist theory of the nature of reality is certainly false .
He explains it in painstaking detail in the lecture. QFT does such a good job of predicting how the world behaves at levels and energies including, and way beyond, the everyday, and its predictions have been so thoroughly tested at everyday levels (and beyond) that it's beyond all reasonable doubt that its model of the everyday is correct; plus, if there were any novel interactions strong enough to be relevant to our everyday world, they would have been detected by tests sensitive enough to detect interactions way below the threshold of everyday molecular biology interactions. Either something interacts or it doesn't. If it does, you can see the results of the interaction; if it doesn't, it isn't relevant.

I watched the video .

What makes you think consciousness can be detected directly via empirical evidence through material devices ?

Consciousness has a non-mechanical causation , and is non-physical non -material + non-local : see Carter's excerpts here above , once again .

Caroll is just yet another materialist scientist who assumes so falsely that the nature of reality is exclusively material or physical , including consciousness .

A key component or a key "building block " of the universe such as consciousness , and a primary one at that , that is , cannot be overlooked , ignored or taken for granted as insiginificant or irrelevant , just because it cannot be detected direclty via material devices, or because materialist scientists such as Caroll assume so falsely that consciousness is a material process ....an insignificant irrelevant one at that , that is : a paradox = without consciousness, no science would have been possible  .

Von Neumann , for example , to mention just that one  thus , did detect the central role of consciousness in physics ,indirectly thus ,  through rigorous maths .
What can you say about just that then ?
Nothing , i presume, since ,as a materialist scientist yourself, you cannot but assume so faslely that consciousness is just a materials process without any causal effects on matter , let alone that you would even consider the fact that consciousness is a non-physical non-material and non-local process that acts through non-mechanical causation ...

Come on , get out of your false illusory materialist key hole box .

Read what all those scientists said in all those Carter's excerpts here above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 17:11:29
The whole universe is quantum mechanical in fact , as you know .
So accept what quantum field theory tells you. No unknown fields or forces that can influence your brain. No psi, or paranormal, or supernatural influences. Welcome to the real world.

Materialist Caroll started from a false premise that can lead him only to a false conclusion : the nature of reality is exclusively material : see above .

Since materialism is false , then any materialist theory regarding the nature of reality is also false , including that standard model of quantum field theory : One doesn't  have to be a brilliant physicist like Caroll to see that , on the contrary thus .One doesn't have to know anything at all about QM to know that , period .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 17:28:59
Quote
[quote =alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg443137#msg443137 date=1414279469]

Yeah, right : Big caliber eminent scientists such as Von Neumann and most founders of quantum physics + many eminent physicists even today say that consciousness does collapse the wave function,


But so far, the only experiment you have quoted clearly shows that it doesn't.


That experiment shows exactly the opposite of what you said here above ,come on : are you blind or what ? .
I have even provided another  link regarding the same double slit experiment on which a materialist scientist commented ,while concluding that the one who would be able to explain what happens in that experiment should deserve the nobel prize .
All modern physics is resumed or contained in that famous double slit experiment , in a nutshell .
He was honest and objective at least , since by assuming , as  a materialist , that consciousness is a material process like the measuring device is , he could not see how the behavior of those wave/particle electrons can be explained ,depending on the observation or not of that behavior .

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Perhaps you have misinterpreted your many eminent scientists? You won't be the first to have done so.

Don't insult  my intelligence , please . Even anyone with even a lower than average intelligence can clearly understand what those scientists were saying in Carter's excerpts here above .

One does not have to be a genius to understand all that , not even remotely close thus .One does not have to know anything at all for that matter about QM to understand that .

That's why i was just asking you , guys , to tell me why do you think those scientists were saying what they were saying in total contrast with what materialist scientists say on the same subject regarding the interpretation of quantum theory at least ....Come on .

In fact :
The very fact that quantum theory has many interpretations , the very fact that a-priori held beliefs or world views ,expectations do shape consciousness , and the very fact that science itself is just a human social activity , and to some extent a cultural one as well (See how the Eurocentric materialism has been taken for granted as science or as the scientific world view , without question , even by yourself as a scientist , for so long now and counting .) , all those above mentioned facts are evidence enough for the fact that our "reality " is observer -dependent : consciousness does collapse the wave function : the observed and observer are inseparable , but that does not mean that the ultimate or objective nature of reality out there is not out there .It is , we just can't approach it via science at least , let alone via reason , logic , ....simply because whenever we would look at or observe the objective reality out there , we instantly turn it into the illusory physical reality .

Got that , scientist ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 17:50:01
What's wrong with you , people ?
The famous and simple double slit experiment with electrons, for example, clearly shows , beyond the shadow of a doubt , that the consciousness of the observer does indeed collapse the wave function: the observer and observed are inseparable  , for every idiot to see , even for anyone who has even no prior knowledge whatsoever about QM , and you tell me : that's just an interpretation?  . You gotta be kidding me .

A-priori held beliefs or world views that shape consciousness can do that to people indeed lol . Amazing .

A-priori held beliefs and expectations do shape the consciousness of scientists as well , and shape the way they interpret and design experiments , data .... : that's a cristal-clear fact that has been shown over and over again by that famous and simple double slit experiment : our beliefs and expectations shape our consciousness through our perception : the observer and observed are inseparable .

See this famous psychology test , regarding how human perception gets easily mislead , becomes selective ...  : you materialists have been missing the gorilla in the room , so to speak, in relation to that double slit experiment at least :


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 26/10/2014 18:01:35
What's wrong with you , people ?
The famous and simple double slit experiment with electrons, for example, clearly shows , beyond the shadow of a doubt , that the consciousness of the observer does indeed collapse the wave function: the observer and observed are inseparable 


I have never met anyone who has observed an electron, nor an electron that was aware it was being observed by a conscious being. Perhaps you could elucidate? 

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our beliefs and expectations shape our consciousness through our perception : the observer and observed are inseparable .

Now there's a problem. The expectation of a rational man is that the electron, being stable and indivisible, must pass through one or other slit. Unfortunately the beliefs and expectations of a rational man, or even an idiot, are confounded by reality. And that is how science works. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/10/2014 18:20:00
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg443169#msg443169 date=1414346495]
What's wrong with you , people ?
The famous and simple double slit experiment with electrons, for example, clearly shows , beyond the shadow of a doubt , that the consciousness of the observer does indeed collapse the wave function: the observer and observed are inseparable 


I have never met anyone who has observed an electron, nor an electron that was aware it was being observed by a conscious being. Perhaps you could elucidate? 

Don't be silly : That was an amusing Dr.Quantum version of the famous double slit experiment that  has been conducted over and over again .The Dr.Quantum version just uses  metaphors like the electron knows it's being observed ...just amusing metaphors,  and it clearly shows through the measuring device and inference patterns ....,that the wave/particle duality of electrons depends on them being observed or not (Consciousness is the only non-material process involved in that experiment , so, consciousness does collapse the wave function, as Von Neumann showed through rigorous maths,albeit reluctantly thus . )

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Quote
our beliefs and expectations shape our consciousness through our perception : the observer and observed are inseparable .

Now there's a problem. The expectation of a rational man is that the electron, being stable and indivisible, must pass through one or other slit. Unfortunately the beliefs and expectations of a rational man, or even an idiot, are confounded by reality. And that is how science works.


I think you should look at that experiment again,without a-priori expectations or beliefs  .Don't forget that the weird cloudy quantum world appears absurd to us on our large every-day scale . It doesn't behave like our every-day experiences .

Why we don't see people accomplishing leaps lol, jumps , wave /particle duality in the big world ? Planck's constant is too small for this big world, i guess ,among other reasons i have been exploring .

The whole universe is in fact quantum mechanical, as Von Neumann used to say thus .
The wave/particle dual nature of particles depends on whethere or not they are observed .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 26/10/2014 20:04:21

Don't forget that the weird cloudy quantum world appears absurd to us on our large every-day scale . It doesn't behave like our every-day experiences .

Speak for yourself. I'm a radiation physicist and my everyday world is dominated by quantum effects. They pay my wages, except on large engineering projects where newtonian mechanics is easier.

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The whole universe is in fact quantum mechanical, as Von Neumann used to say thus .

True

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The wave/particle dual nature of particles depends on whethere or not they are observed .

Bollocks. There is no "duality", just two different mathematical models of reality.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2014 23:11:42
Don't be too sure of yourself. Have you ever heard of the Pear Engineering Anomalies Laboratory? If not then see:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

They did research in Human-Machine Anomalies and Remote Perception. This is not a crackpot operation and they did get positive experimental results! This work took place over a period of three decades. See:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html
Yes, Jahn and colleagues were pretty serious about it. However, their results were not unequivocal, being only marginally significant over huge numbers of trials, which makes it very difficult to distinguish real effects from unintentional low-level systematic bias; for example, of the kind that double or triple blinding attempts to address. I don't think they properly blinded their studies.  Their project has been criticised on experimental design, methodology, and analysis grounds, and several attempts to replicate them by various groups (including the PEAR team itself!) have failed.

Check out PEAR on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Engineering_Anomalies_Research_Lab) and this article on The Skeptic's Dictionary (http://skepdic.com/pear.html).

However, if you still feel they had something rea and interesting (I wouldn't blame you - I followed PEAR's original results with fascination), you'll need to find the hole in the QFT argument put forward by Carroll; i.e. if you accept QFT as even just a reasonable approximation to the physics of the everyday world (and it's shown itself to be far more than that), there are no novel human-scale interactions. To say otherwise is like saying Newtonian mechanics is an excellent everyday approximation, but there are consistent everyday cases where they don't apply. 

The only counter I can see is to find a major hole in QFT, which seems extremely unlikely, or unequivocal, replicable evidence of such a hole (i.e. high quality, replicable evidence of psi phenomena - preferably with some hypothesised mechanism) - which seems equally unlikely.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2014 23:48:44
...The multiverse theory is a clear and major violation of occam's razor...
That's a misinterpretation of the 'Many Worlds' interpretation; it doesn't really involve the creation of new material universes, if that's what you're thinking. What it suggests is that the Schrodinger wavefunction never collapses, it just continues to evolve. We already know that superpositions occur, e.g. an electron being at two positions at once (that's a simplification), and Many Worlds asks us to accept that this happens to everything, including us as observers. We become part of the evolving wavefunction involving a particular measurement once its influence has reached us, and we become part of that superposition, seeing multiple outcomes at once; but since the outcomes are non-interfering (they can't interact), the same applies to our multiple perceptions of them, etc. They're all part of the single same evolving wavefunction of the universe (Hawking & Hartle have done some serious work on the universal wavefunction), but to the different paths or branches or wavelets of that wavefunction they're effectively separate universes. Or something of the sort  [;)]  In this respect, it's actually the simplest interpretation, because it requires nothing more than taking the wavefunction as a literal description of the universe.

Quote
Why are you then so sure about the materialist interpretation of quantum theory,for example  ?
The interpretation doesn't really matter, I just happen to prefer Many Worlds because it doesn't have any of the major problems of other interpretations. What really matters is the theory itself and what it tells us, and its results are clear.

Quote
What makes you think consciousness can be detected directly via empirical evidence through material devices?
Because it has been. Consciousness is a process and has been shown to have clear and characteristic signatures in neural activity patterns that have been used in the real world to discover consciousness in patients with Locked-in Syndrome (i.e. in Persistent Vegetative State but conscious). It's also been established that in some comatose PVS patients if you trigger those activity patterns with transcranial magnetic stimulation, they regain temporary consciousness.

In other words, there is unequivocal empirical evidence for it, not least in some very happy real world outcomes  [^]

Quote
Consciousness has a non-mechanical causation , and is non-physical non -material + non-local : see Carter's excerpts here above , once again .

Caroll is just yet another materialist scientist who assumes so falsely that the nature of reality is exclusively material or physical , including consciousness .
“The moving Finger of science discovers; and, having discovered,
Moves on: nor all thy bluster nor assertion
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.” - apologies to Omar Khayyam  [;D]

Sorry Don, your bluster and bombast is entirely inconsequential. No amount of unsupported assertion counts as useful evidence.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/10/2014 23:59:18
Materialist Caroll started from a false premise that can lead him only to a false conclusion : the nature of reality is exclusively material : see above .
Er, no. He started from the idea that, with the discovery of the Higgs particle [long predicted by the Standard Model (quantum field theory) and the last major unfilled hole in that theory], the already extremely accurate Standard Model was confirmed to be complete within its bounds of applicability, and those bounds easily encompass human interaction scales. The Standard Model, and its empirical confirmation within its bounds, was all he needed.

If there is a non-material (whatever that means) aspect to the universe, it doesn't interact at human scales, so it's simply not relevant to us.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 16:34:53
Cheryl :

 You're gonna like the following :
Our dlorde here is gonna be delighted by this as well , since he thinks that the whole universe is quantum mechanical , in the non -Von Neumannian sense :
Von Neumann that demonstrated mathematically that the central or key role of the non-physical consciousness in physics has a non-mechanical causation though :
Not to mention the fact that the experiments conducted by  Schmidt and others had proved that Von Neumann , Wigner and others were right : consciousness does collapse the wave function : See Carter's excerpts on the subject here above :   


You’re powered by quantum mechanics. No, really…

For years biologists have been wary of applying the strange world of quantum mechanics, where particles can be in two places at once or connected over huge distances, to their own field. But it can help to explain some amazing natural phenomena we take for granted.

According to quantum biology, the European robin has a 'sixth sense' in the form of a protein in its eye sensitive to the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field, allowing it to 'see' which way to migrate.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/26/youre-powered-by-quantum-mechanics-biology
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 16:41:24
Cheryl , dlorde , alancalverd :

What do you have to say about this other scientific bombshell ? :


Quote from: dlorde
So accept what quantum field theory tells you. No unknown fields or forces that can influence your brain. No psi, or paranormal, or supernatural influences. Welcome to the real world.
Don't be too sure of yourself. Have you ever heard of the Pear Engineering Anomalies Laboratory? If not then see:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/

They did research in Human-Machine Anomalies and Remote Perception. This is not a crackpot operation and they did get positive experimental results! This work took place over a period of three decades. See:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 17:25:20
dlorde :

Your beloved and cherished standard model of quantum field theory is pulverized by the following :


Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research.
Scientific Study of Consciousness-Related Physical Phenomena.
Implications and Applications :


http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/implications.html


See the experiments and results there above .Enjoy .It will be devastating to you , but , well , science is not here to please anyone for that matter .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 17:30:01
Will be back after a while ...See above ...Thanks ...

I can't handle my excitement regarding the above lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 18:25:17
PmbPhy :

Thanks a lot  , appreciate indeed .You have no idea ...

I have downloaded all what there is to download there : a lots of PDF and more :

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/publications.html

Wow...

I will have to be absent from this forum for a while to try to read and study all that .

This is dynamite ....an understatement thus .

dlorde :

I hate to tell you : "I told you so " lol, Didin't i ?

Psi phenomena , remote viewing and the rest of the "paranormal " are real and normal  ...Consciousness is a key component or "building block " of the universe , and a primary one at that , that is , and acts through  non-mechanical causation regarding matter brain body and regarding the rest of the illusory physical reality ...

Carter , Von Neumann, Wigner and all those eminent scientists on whose work he based his consclusions + many other  scientists as well were /are right , after all : See Carter's excerpts : this above mentioned research is in line with its content , relatively speaking .

Intent , beliefs and expectations, desires , wishes ... do affect the interpretation of scientific data , the design of experiments and their outcome and much more ...Wow ...The observer and the observed are inseparable thus . Think about all the major and unprecedented implications of all that .The subjective cannot be separated from the "objective" , even in science itself .See the subjective science concept in that research ...

Science will never be the same again .Think about the spiritual philosophical ethical and other major implications of that research at all levels of human activity .You have no idea ....

David Cooper :

You will find there what you were looking for .That will be rocking your false mechanical world view .


Cheryl, alancalverd ,Ethos :

"Don't cry for me Argentina " ...  lol

Take a look at that research : mind-blowing : an understatement .

Best wishes to you all .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 27/10/2014 18:43:55
Will be back after a while ...See above ...Thanks ...

I can't handle my excitement regarding the above lol

I mentioned this a few posts back, but maybe you didn't notice.

http://skepdic.com/pear.html

Attempts to replicate Schmidt's experiments do not appear to have been very successful.
The effects, if not anomalies, or not connected to a lack of true randomness in the random number generators, could be interesting from a strictly psi point of view, and if you want to justify the need for more research, I wouldn't object to that at all, but I don't think it causes the whole "materialist house of cards" to come tumbling down for the following reasons:

The PEARS experiment stops right at the point most psi research does - proof by process of elimination. There is no way that we can think of this person could have access to that information, so it must be..... esp. There is no reason we can think of for why the computers wouldn't generate perfectly random numbers, so it must be....... telekinesis.

Every theory starts with a simple observation, the attempt to observe or measure it under controlled or known conditions. The next phase is usually manipulating variables to see what happens. At that point the scientist says, okay, we still don't know what "X" is, but it always occurs when "Y" is present, or never occurs if "Z" happens, or is enhanced by "B" and "C" or "B and "A". You begin to compile a list of descriptive traits and attributes, and a model is devised to make predictions in future experiments. If your predictions are all wrong, it's back to the drawing board.

But psi investigations never seem to progress through these stages. There's never any further experiment or observation that provides greater detail or insight into the possible mechanism. It just stops.

If anyone really wants to convince me that somebody's information was via esp, or the machine didn't generate a random number because of telekinesis, they have to provide a way to advance to that next level. 


Don't forget, too, that originally Don was looking for an immaterial force to explain all of consciousness. So it's hard to see the PEARS effect as a reliable and consistent mechanism through which consciousness communicates all of its ideas and objectives to the brain for every mental activity.  They are describing a force that only influences matter effectively - rarely, if at all, - its like suggesting a a postal service that only effectively delivers one letter out of thousands, and we don't even know how the letter gets there.   
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 18:53:24
Cheryl, dlorde , alancalverd :

My apologies for not being able to reply to your above displayed posts .I will have to be absent from this forum for a while to read and study all what i have downloaded from that above mentioned research concerning consciousness studies .

I am too excited and fascinated by that right now,so, see ya all in a few days , hopefully .

Best wishes to you all . Thanks .Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 27/10/2014 19:00:15

Intent , beliefs and expectations, desires , wishes ... do affect the interpretation of scientific data , the design of experiments and their outcome and much more ...Wow ...The observer and the observed are inseparable thus . Think about all the major and unprecedented implications of all that .The subjective cannot be separated from the "objective" , even in science itself .See the subjective science concept in that research ...


Don't start confusing or conflating subjectivity because of limited information, incorrect information, or bias, with indeterminacy. If my husband is at a friend's watching hockey when I think he is out shopping for a present for me, I am just simply wrong. He is not in a superpositioned state until I find out what has occurred, and  I cannot collapse a wave form and cause one or the other to have happened. What you're referring to is just magical thinking.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 19:32:03

Intent , beliefs and expectations, desires , wishes ... do affect the interpretation of scientific data , the design of experiments and their outcome and much more ...Wow ...The observer and the observed are inseparable thus . Think about all the major and unprecedented implications of all that .The subjective cannot be separated from the "objective" , even in science itself .See the subjective science concept in that research ...


Don't start confusing or conflating subjectivity because of limited information, incorrect information, or bias, with indeterminacy. If my husband is at a friend's watching hockey when I think he is out shopping for a present for me, I am just simply wrong. He is not in a superpositioned state until I find out what has occurred, and  I cannot collapse a wave form and cause one or the other to have happened. What you're referring to is just magical thinking.

What i meant is : the observer and the observed are inseparable:  in a nutshell , Cheryl : See that above mentioned scientific research , if you don't wanna read Carter : they are both in line .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 19:55:41
Cheryl : See this :

The Intellectual: Enhancement of Basic Science:

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/implications.html

The historical evolution of scientific instrumentation that has extended our observational faculties into the domains of increasingly large, or increasingly small, natural phenomena has often forced reformulations of the prevailing representations of reality. Usually these theoretical revisions have been driven by the discovery of empirical anomalies -- unexpected observations that were inconsistent with the established models of that era. The advent of the "Information Age" over the past several decades has brought its own class of such anomalies, typically those associated with meaning, context, and other subjective discriminators.
PEAR's contribution to this expansion of the scientific worldview has been its accumulation of huge bodies of consciousness-correlated empirical evidence that the subjective/objective dichotomy of Cartesian philosophy is no longer entirely viable

More comprehensive accommodation of these anomalies within a functional scientific framework will require the explicit inclusion of consciousness as an active agent in the establishment of physical reality, a generalization of the scientific paradigm demanding more courageous theoretical structures than are employed at present, guided by more extensive empirical data than are now available, acquired via more cooperative interdisciplinary collaborations than are currently practiced. It is our hope that by its proposition of a few possible conceptual models PEAR has established productive precedents for such representation of this formidable, but crucial, topical domain.

The Spiritual: Cultural Implications :

Beyond its revolutionary technological applications and scientific impact, the evidence of an active role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality holds profound implications for our view of ourselves, our relationships to others, and to the cosmos in which we exist. These, in turn, must inevitably impact our values, our priorities, our sense of responsibility, and our style of life. Our ability to acquire, or to generate tangible, measurable information independent of distance or time challenges the foundation of any reductionist brain-based model of consciousness that may be invoked. The lack of notable correlations in the data with standard learning curves or other recognizable cognitive patterns, combined with the repeatable and distinct gender-related differences, suggest that these abilities may stem from a more fundamental source than heretofore suspected.

Certainly, there is little doubt that integration of these changes in our understanding of ourselves can lead to a substantially superior human ethic, wherein the long-estranged siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of intellect and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of human experience can be productively reunited.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 27/10/2014 20:04:36
Cheryl : Enjoy :

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html

Theoretical Models:


I. Theoretical Models:


Nearly three decades of intense experimentation leave little doubt that the anomalous physical phenomena appearing in the PEAR studies are valid, and are significantly correlated with such subjective variables as intention, meaning, resonance, and uncertainty. The stark inconsistencies of these results with established physical and psychological presumptions place extraordinary demands on the development of competent new theoretical models for constructive dialogue with the empirical data. But since the contemporary scientific approach leaves little room for such subjective correlates in its mechanistic representations of reality, it follows that science as we know it either must exclude itself from study of such phenomena, even when they precipitate objectively observable physical effects, or broaden its methodology and conceptual vocabulary to embrace subjective experience in some systematic way.

The primary importance of operator intention and emotional resonance with the task at hand, along with the operator-specific structure evident in the data, the absence of traditional learning patterns, and the lack of explicit space and time dependence clearly predicate that no direct application or minor alteration of existing physical or psychological frameworks will suffice. Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded scientific model of reality, one that allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience of the physical world, will be required. The challenges and caveats of such a "Science of the Subjective" are explored in detail in several of our publications.

One such model has been proposed and developed in "On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, With Application to Anomalous Phenomena," under the major premise that the basic processes by which consciousness exchanges information with its environment, orders that information, and interprets it, also enable it to bias probabilistic systems and thereby to avail itself of some control over its reality. This model regards the concepts that underlie all physical models of reality, particularly those of observational quantum mechanics such as the principles of uncertainty, complementarity, exclusion, indistinguishability, and wave mechanical resonance, as fundamental characteristics of consciousness rather than as intrinsic features of an objective physical environment. In this view, the "anomalous" phenomena observed in the PEAR experiments become quite normal expectations of bonded human/machine and human/human systems, and the door is opened for all manner of creative consciousness/environment interactions.

In a complementary approach, a modular conceptual framework has been articulated, wherein direct attention of the conscious mind to observable physical processes is bypassed altogether. Instead, an alternative route is proposed, whereby the inherently probabilistic nature of unconscious mind and intangible physical mechanisms are invoked to achieve anomalous acquisition of information about, or anomalous influence upon, otherwise inaccessible material processes (see "A Modular Model of Mind/Matter Manifestations"). Theoretical requisites for its pursuit include better understanding of the dialogue between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind; more pragmatic formulations of the relations between tangible and intangible physical processes; and most importantly, cogent representation of the merging of mental and material dimensions into indistinguishability at their deepest levels.

A rudimentary attempt to represent this latter "subliminal seed space" has been attempted in the format of an array of complex vectors whose components embody the pre-objective and pre-subjective aspects of their interactions (M*: Vector Representation of the Subliminal Seed Regime of M5). Elementary algebraic arguments predict that the degree of anomalous correlation between the emergent conscious experiences and the corresponding tangible events depends only on the alignment of these interacting vectors, i.e., on the correspondence of the ratios of their individual "hard" and "soft" coordinates. This in turn suggests a subconscious alignment strategy based on need, desire, shared purpose, or personal resonance that is consistent with our empirical experience.

In another closely related approach, entitled "Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality," we speak of the need to elevate the subjective capacities of consciousness to complementary status with the more objective physical senses, along with recognition of the bi-directional capabilities of both, thereby allowing establishment of resonant channels of communication between the mind and its ultimate Source that can exceed conventional information processing. The key elements in tuning these channels to amplify such information creation are the physiological and psychological filters imposed upon them, some of which can be enhanced or altered by conscious or unconscious attention.

Although the concepts and mechanics presented in this array of specific models may seem somewhat disparate, their larger value may lie in the identification of certain common-denominator issues that arise in one form or another in all of them. Taken together, they can provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for an overarching "science of the subjective" that may one day support a yet more fundamental representation of the full panorama of human experience.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 27/10/2014 23:02:20
According to quantum biology, the European robin has a 'sixth sense' in the form of a protein in its eye sensitive to the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field, allowing it to 'see' which way to migrate.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/26/youre-powered-by-quantum-mechanics-biology
Where have you been, Don - this is old news (3 years old (http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.040503)). Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden have just got round to writing a book about it, that's all. Jovial Jim got his PhD at, and is Professor of Theroetical Physics at, my old university, Surrey.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 27/10/2014 23:06:39
What do you have to say about this other scientific bombshell ?
<sigh> Even older news, a damp squib. I refer you to my previous answer, post #239.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 27/10/2014 23:12:21
What makes this all very interesting is the notion that consciousness (for which we now have something approaching a definition, in another thread) is necessary in order for a subatomic particle to interact with matter. This inverts the entire concept of time because it implies that conscious life must have preceded the evolution of the universe, including conscious life itself. 

It raises further interesting questions.

For instance if the presence of a conscious being is required in order for an electron to excite a phosphor, how does the electron decide where to go in the presence of two or more conscious beings?

What happens to the electron in the absence of an observer? Does it disappear up its own anus, or are charge and mass conserved, as we used to think?

Neutrons approaching Earth from the sun, decay. That involves, in one model, the collapse of a couple of wavefunctions so it seems that the consciousness of beings on earth extends several million miles sunwards. But the sun radiates in all directions, so can we assume that neutrons do not decay en route to Mars or Pluto? If so, how do they know that they have passed beyond Earth's orbit?

And why, if we measure the solar particle spectrum from a space probe, do we find the halflife of neutrons to be constant? Surely if the conscious observer moves relative to the source, he should see the same spectrum of neutrons and decay products because his consciousness is moving with him, but we actually find the spectrum varies exactly as if consciousness had no effect. 

Sorry, Don, but your hypothesis fails the simplest of tests.

PS re: European robins. Although they are all the same species (and quite different from American robins) their migration behaviour varies according to where they live. Scandinavian robins migrate over significant distances, and north-south, as their main food sources are not available in wintertime. In the British Isles, and particularly Ireland, robins are very territorial and don't really migrate in a particular direction but spend more time closer to human habitation or in their warmer feeding grounds in winter. Mediterranean robins hardly move at all. Not sure about "quantum biology" but we have known for at least 50 years that pigeons have magnetic field sensors, and there is some weak evidence that humans do too. All of which points rather strongly to a conventional concept of evolution and adaptation.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 10:57:19
... Not sure about "quantum biology" but we have known for at least 50 years that pigeons have magnetic field sensors, and there is some weak evidence that humans do too. All of which points rather strongly to a conventional concept of evolution and adaptation.
Yes, quite. The fuss about electron transfer in photosynthesis and the magnetic navigation of robins at the time was due to surprise that any quantum effects persisted long enough in the noisy and warm environment of molecular biology to be used to advantage. Evolution had stumbled across a couple of unexpected optimisations.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/10/2014 15:35:03


What happens to the electron in the absence of an observer? Does it disappear up its own anus, or are charge and mass conserved, as we used to think?

Neutrons approaching Earth from the sun, decay. That involves, in one model, the collapse of a couple of wavefunctions so it seems that the consciousness of beings on earth extends several million miles sunwards. But the sun radiates in all directions, so can we assume that neutrons do not decay en route to Mars or Pluto? If so, how do they know that they have passed beyond Earth's orbit?
 

God.

He is that universal consciousness; that is where that argument ultimately leads. God has a lot of wave collapsing to do, which is why evil exists. After all, there's just one of Him, and he appears to have difficulty delegating authority,  and if He has to choose between maintaining the structure of the entire universe, or a few children with leukemia, the occasional psychopathic dictator, or a tsunami, well....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 28/10/2014 16:07:17
No choice involved. God created the child with leukemia, as well as the ebola virus, earthquakes, and Pol Pot. All the evil and suffering in the world was intentionally created by an omnipotnent, omniscient  being for whom one can only rationally feel utter loathing and contempt. The people who eradicted smallpox will rot in hell for destroying the beauty of His universe.

Or maybe it's quantum mechanics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/10/2014 16:52:13

Intent , beliefs and expectations, desires , wishes ... do affect the interpretation of scientific data , the design of experiments and their outcome and much more ...Wow ...The observer and the observed are inseparable thus . Think about all the major and unprecedented implications of all that .The subjective cannot be separated from the "objective" , even in science itself .See the subjective science concept in that research ...


Don't start confusing or conflating subjectivity because of limited information, incorrect information, or bias, with indeterminacy. If my husband is at a friend's watching hockey when I think he is out shopping for a present for me, I am just simply wrong. He is not in a superpositioned state until I find out what has occurred, and  I cannot collapse a wave form and cause one or the other to have happened. What you're referring to is just magical thinking.

What i meant is : the observer and the observed are inseparable:  in a nutshell , Cheryl : See that above mentioned scientific research , if you don't wanna read Carter : they are both in line .

You can dismiss my comment and redirect me to more physics, but it doesn't address the fact that you somehow think consciousness is a force that can change what happens on a macro level, that somehow by wanting or willing things to be different than they are, we can make that happen by non physical means. Or that some non material force underlies consciousness itself, is the primary mechanism for how it all works, when you have no theory or explanation to support it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 28/10/2014 17:29:52
Quote from: cheryl j
You can dismiss my comment and redirect me to more physics, but it doesn't address the fact that you somehow think consciousness is a force that can change what happens on a macro level, that somehow by wanting or willing things to be different than they are, we can make that happen by non physical means. Or that some non material force underlies consciousness itself, is the primary mechanism for how it all works, when you have no theory or explanation to support it.
Although there is no explanation for it as of yet the PEAR Lab at Princeton did get solid measurable effects when they ran those experiments on consciences. Did you read about them at http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/
Quote
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which flourished for nearly three decades under the aegis of Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, has completed its experimental agenda of studying the interaction of human consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes, and developing complementary theoretical models to enable better understanding of the role of consciousness in the establishment of physical reality.

There has even been a product which was created as a spin off of this research. See http://www.psyleron.com/
Quote
Discoveries made at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory have shown that consciousness and intention can influence the behavior of quantum electronic devices known as "Random Event Generators" (REGs) or "Random Number Generators." Psyleron was founded by PEAR scientists and associates for the purpose of providing tools that enable ongoing research and personal exploration of mind-matter effects.

One devices is called the Mind Lamp
Quote
The Mind Lamp is a color-changing ambient device that can respond to human intention and group consciousness. The lamp combines a Psyleron true random event generator with algorithms and visual feedback designed to elicit a response from human consciousness. Whether used as a decorative centerpiece, a meditation tool, or a group game, the lamp is an engaging yet relaxing way to explore mind-matter interaction.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 17:36:31
According to quantum biology, the European robin has a 'sixth sense' in the form of a protein in its eye sensitive to the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field, allowing it to 'see' which way to migrate.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/26/youre-powered-by-quantum-mechanics-biology
Where have you been, Don - this is old news (3 years old (http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.040503)). Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden have just got round to writing a book about it, that's all. Jovial Jim got his PhD at, and is Professor of Theroetical Physics at, my old university, Surrey.

I know , i know .I just wanted to tease you and Cheryl about the underpinning quantum "mechanics" behind "everything " , ironically speaking , while the key component or key "building block " of the universe : consciousness ,gets totally overlooked in that regard .
Don't you find that odd ?
No wonder that materialist science ignores the most important and key feature of the universe that way : consciousness .
Nice to know that you and Jim came from the same university , 'cause i am somehow a fan of the man , to some extent at least .I have some books of his , videos ....even though he's a bloody atheist lol .

He also has done a relatively good job regarding the Islam and science topic through one of his books , videos ...

By the way : Jim talks about the observer effect , wave/particle duality regarding the measurement problem in QM ...
What do you think about that , dlorde ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 17:43:28
PmbPhy:

These guys would just say : oh, look , PEAR was already refuted ,and made many errors in designing experiments , interpreting them ....and no one , including the PEAR team, is able to replicate those experiments which were not done properly lol

dlorde   would even add  that that materialist standard model of quantum field theory is "evidence " enough for the "fact " that PEAR was wrong , a -priori lol

Thanks, once again, for posting that link : I have been reading their work : awesome .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/10/2014 17:43:42
Cheryl : Enjoy :

http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/theory.html

Theoretical Models:


I. Theoretical Models:


Nearly three decades of intense experimentation leave little doubt that the anomalous physical phenomena appearing in the PEAR studies are valid, and are significantly correlated with such subjective variables as intention, meaning, resonance, and uncertainty. The stark inconsistencies of these results with established physical and psychological presumptions place extraordinary demands on the development of competent new theoretical models for constructive dialogue with the empirical data. But since the contemporary scientific approach leaves little room for such subjective correlates in its mechanistic representations of reality, it follows that science as we know it either must exclude itself from study of such phenomena, even when they precipitate objectively observable physical effects, or broaden its methodology and conceptual vocabulary to embrace subjective experience in some systematic way.



He's saying give up, ignore it, or change your research methods without suggestion of how they should be changed, what should be done differently.

Quote

The primary importance of operator intention and emotional resonance with the task at hand, along with the operator-specific structure evident in the data, the absence of traditional learning patterns, and the lack of explicit space and time dependence clearly predicate that no direct application or minor alteration of existing physical or psychological frameworks will suffice. Rather, nothing less than a generously expanded scientific model of reality, one that allows consciousness a proactive role in the establishment of its experience of the physical world, will be required. The challenges and caveats of such a "Science of the Subjective" are explored in detail in several of our publications.



He's saying you don't know how it works. But more importantly, he is also saying he doesn't know how it works.
Quote


One such model has been proposed and developed in "On the Quantum Mechanics of Consciousness, With Application to Anomalous Phenomena," under the major premise that the basic processes by which consciousness exchanges information with its environment, orders that information, and interprets it, also enable it to bias probabilistic systems and thereby to avail itself of some control over its reality. This model regards the concepts that underlie all physical models of reality, particularly those of observational quantum mechanics such as the principles of uncertainty, complementarity, exclusion, indistinguishability, and wave mechanical resonance, as fundamental characteristics of consciousness rather than as intrinsic features of an objective physical environment. In this view, the "anomalous" phenomena observed in the PEAR experiments become quite normal expectations of bonded human/machine and human/human systems, and the door is opened for all manner of creative consciousness/environment interactions.

He's saying it could have something to do with quantum mechanics, but he still can't explain how. He says he has a theory about how all this stuff is bonded together, or as David would say, interfaces, but he isn't telling us.

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In a complementary approach, a modular conceptual framework has been articulated, wherein direct attention of the conscious mind to observable physical processes is bypassed altogether. Instead, an alternative route is proposed, whereby the inherently probabilistic nature of unconscious mind and intangible physical mechanisms are invoked to achieve anomalous acquisition of information about, or anomalous influence upon, otherwise inaccessible material processes (see "A Modular Model of Mind/Matter Manifestations"). Theoretical requisites for its pursuit include better understanding of the dialogue between the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind; more pragmatic formulations of the relations between tangible and intangible physical processes; and most importantly, cogent representation of the merging of mental and material dimensions into indistinguishability at their deepest levels.


I have no idea here what he is saying. But since you posted it, Don, I'm sure you can explain it. This seems to be  the critical paragraph that proves everthing.
Quote

A rudimentary attempt to represent this latter "subliminal seed space" has been attempted in the format of an array of complex vectors whose components embody the pre-objective and pre-subjective aspects of their interactions (M*: Vector Representation of the Subliminal Seed Regime of M5). Elementary algebraic arguments predict that the degree of anomalous correlation between the emergent conscious experiences and the corresponding tangible events depends only on the alignment of these interacting vectors, i.e., on the correspondence of the ratios of their individual "hard" and "soft" coordinates. This in turn suggests a subconscious alignment strategy based on need, desire, shared purpose, or personal resonance that is consistent with our empirical experience.


What? a subconscious resonance that is consistent with our empirical experience??? He truly is pulling stuff out of his ass.

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In another closely related approach, entitled "Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality," we speak of the need to elevate the subjective capacities of consciousness to complementary status with the more objective physical senses, along with recognition of the bi-directional capabilities of both, thereby allowing establishment of resonant channels of communication between the mind and its ultimate Source that can exceed conventional information processing. The key elements in tuning these channels to amplify such information creation are the physiological and psychological filters imposed upon them, some of which can be enhanced or altered by conscious or unconscious attention.

Although the concepts and mechanics presented in this array of specific models may seem somewhat disparate, their larger value may lie in the identification of certain common-denominator issues that arise in one form or another in all of them. Taken together, they can provide a comprehensive conceptual framework for an overarching "science of the subjective" that may one day support a yet more fundamental representation of the full panorama of human experience.

um, okay, sure. the panorama of human experience is quite easily explained thus by your comprehensive over arching conceptual  frame work and common denominator issues. I totally get it now.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 17:46:32
I know , i know .I just wanted to tease you and Cheryl about the underpinning quantum "mechanics" behind "everything " , ironically speaking , while the key component or key "building block " of the universe : consciousness ,gets totally overlooked in that regard .
Don't you find that odd ?
Not at all; it's another straw man. Consciousness is the subject of a great deal of research.
 
Quote
By the way : Jim talks about the observer effect , wave/particle duality regarding the measurement problem in QM ...
What do you think about that , dlorde ?
Naturally he talks about it; it's his job - and he does it very well. Did you have any particular point you wish to make about it?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 17:58:34
< blart >
He's saying give up, ignore it, or change your research methods without suggestion of how they should be changed, what should be done differently.

<blart>
He's saying you don't know how it works. But more importantly, he is also saying he doesn't know how it works.

< blart >
He's saying it could have something to do with quantum mechanics, but he still can't explain how. He says he has a theory about how all this stuff is bonded together, or as David would say, interfaces, but he isn't telling us.

< blart >
I have no idea here what he is saying. But since you posted it, Don, I'm sure you can explain it. This seems to be  the critical paragraph that proves everthing.

< blart >
What? a subconscious resonance that is consistent with our empirical experience??? He truly is pulling stuff out of his ass.

< blart >
um, okay, sure. the panorama of human experience is quite easily explained thus by your comprehensive over arching conceptual  frame work and common denominator issues. I totally get it now.

They're understandably desperate to justify all the time and money they've spent (I won't say wasted, because a lot was learned about experimental design, methodology, and data analysis), and they want another round of funding, and more time in the spotlight.

Note how other scientists, keen to make headway in exploiting this scientific terra nova and stamp their claim to fame and a potential Nobel Prize, pulled out all the stops to replicate their work with full controls & blinding - and failed. And when the PEAR team tried the same thing, they... also failed. 

So what did these pioneers of the unknown do next? they produced a lamp that changes colour randomly, as a party piece... tugs at the heartstrings, don't it?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 18:01:28
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443274#msg443274 date=1414518392]
I know , i know .I just wanted to tease you and Cheryl about the underpinning quantum "mechanics" behind "everything " , ironically speaking , while the key component or key "building block " of the universe : consciousness ,gets totally overlooked in that regard .
Don't you find that odd ?
Not at all; it's another straw man. Consciousness is the subject of a great deal of research.

You don't get it : since consciousness is too insignificant and too irrelevant a 'force " to be detected by the standard model of quantum field theory, and since consciousness has no causal effects on matter , why would one bother give it a second thought lol , according to materialism at least .

Those materialist consciousness studies or materialist so-called models or theories of consciousness were just assuming that consciousness is either identical with the brain , just brain activity ,  a useless side effect of evolution , an epiphenomena , or that it does not exist as such : just an illusion .

Why study it then ?

Furthermore, neuroscience alone can never explain consciousness ,since the latter is neither identical with the brain, nor is it brain activity ...

Why stick to the false materialist so-called model or theory of consciousness , while you have better theories and models of consciousness , such as those  of PEAR ,and such as those of non-materialist scientists such as the ones Carter talked about and more ?
 
Quote
Quote
By the way : Jim talks about the observer effect , wave/particle duality regarding the measurement problem in QM ...
What do you think about that , dlorde ?
Naturally he talks about it; it's his job - and he does it very well. Did you have any particular point you wish to make about it?

Well, our self-declared quantum physicist alancalverd   here above denies the wave / particle duality as such , let alone the observer effect regarding the measurement paradox in QM .

Not to mention that Jim did acknowledge the existence of the observer effect in QM , observer effect  you yourself dismissed as such .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 18:10:36
< blart >
He's saying give up, ignore it, or change your research methods without suggestion of how they should be changed, what should be done differently.

<blart>
He's saying you don't know how it works. But more importantly, he is also saying he doesn't know how it works.

< blart >
He's saying it could have something to do with quantum mechanics, but he still can't explain how. He says he has a theory about how all this stuff is bonded together, or as David would say, interfaces, but he isn't telling us.

< blart >
I have no idea here what he is saying. But since you posted it, Don, I'm sure you can explain it. This seems to be  the critical paragraph that proves everthing.

< blart >
What? a subconscious resonance that is consistent with our empirical experience??? He truly is pulling stuff out of his ass.

< blart >
um, okay, sure. the panorama of human experience is quite easily explained thus by your comprehensive over arching conceptual  frame work and common denominator issues. I totally get it now.

They're understandably desperate to justify all the time and money they've spent (I won't say wasted, because a lot was learned about experimental design, methodology, and data analysis), and they want another round of funding, and more time in the spotlight.

Note how other scientists, keen to make headway in exploiting this scientific terra nova and stamp their claim to fame and a potential Nobel Prize, pulled out all the stops to replicate their work with full controls & blinding - and failed. And when the PEAR team tried the same thing, they... also failed. 

So what did these pioneers of the unknown do next? they produced a lamp that changes colour randomly, as a party piece... tugs at the heartstrings, don't it?

You can't be serious , dlorde :

There is no separation between the observer and the observed .We constantly interact with our inner and outer environment by exchanging information with them , energy , matter and more , come on .

How can science keep on ignoring that and the fact the whole universe is in fact interconnected ,so, the subjective and objective cannot be separated , and hence we cannot but influence and exchange information and more with our environment ,and vice versa .

To say the least ...

The dualist Cartesian old myth and its materialist monistic version regarding the observer -independence are no longer completely valid  .come on .

As Von Neumann used to say : the measurement problem in QM takes place in the mind . Our minds ' representations of reality have been taken for granted as reality .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 19:27:48
Cheryl :

I suggest re-reading those articles more carefully , while trying to take a closer look at the work and results of PEAR .
You misunderstood what they said completely .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 19:42:09

Intent , beliefs and expectations, desires , wishes ... do affect the interpretation of scientific data , the design of experiments and their outcome and much more ...Wow ...The observer and the observed are inseparable thus . Think about all the major and unprecedented implications of all that .The subjective cannot be separated from the "objective" , even in science itself .See the subjective science concept in that research ...


Don't start confusing or conflating subjectivity because of limited information, incorrect information, or bias, with indeterminacy. If my husband is at a friend's watching hockey when I think he is out shopping for a present for me, I am just simply wrong. He is not in a superpositioned state until I find out what has occurred, and  I cannot collapse a wave form and cause one or the other to have happened. What you're referring to is just magical thinking.

What i meant is : the observer and the observed are inseparable:  in a nutshell , Cheryl : See that above mentioned scientific research , if you don't wanna read Carter : they are both in line .

You can dismiss my comment and redirect me to more physics, but it doesn't address the fact that you somehow think consciousness is a force that can change what happens on a macro level, that somehow by wanting or willing things to be different than they are, we can make that happen by non physical means. Or that some non material force underlies consciousness itself, is the primary mechanism for how it all works, when you have no theory or explanation to support it.

Once again : the observer and the observed are inseparable : the subjective and objective are inseparable : the subjective interferes with the objective : or as Von Neumann used to say : the measurement paradox in QM takes place in the mind , so , we take the respresentations of the mind in that regard for the physical reality in QM , for example .

Take a closer look at the work and results of PEAR .

For example , even at the macro level : have you ever been so immersed in your creative work, or other life experiences , art ....to the extent that you "lost " yourself in that environment ?

When we do or feel, experience things through  our whole beings , we become inseparately one with our environment . Only when we think , try to analyze things , we get the illusion or impression , or perception that we are separate from our environment .
We are always immersed in our inner and outer environments , while exchanging information, energy , matter with our environments , consciously or sub-consciously .

Sometimes , we are not aware of that , so, we have the illusion that we are separate beings or separate individuals from our environment .

The whole universe is in fact interconnected = 1, whether we are aware of that fact or not  : this is no new age bullshit .

Even when you are working on your pc, or walking out your dog , you are interacting with them and with the rest of your environment at that time and place and beyond  , influencing them , and vice versa , by exchanging information with them, consciously or subcosnciously .

Only when you think, analyze things ...you get the impression or illusion that you are separate or independent from your environment in some way .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 20:06:43
What do you have to say about this other scientific bombshell ?
<sigh> Even older news, a damp squib. I refer you to my previous answer, post #239.

Yeah, i was so excited by PEAR that i missed your previous post,sorry  . I have never heard of PEAR before , to be honest , untill our friend here brought it up .

It may be old , but , it was a three -decades study , so .

You can't just dismiss what PEAR did and found out , just through saying that they made some errors here and there...

Everytime we talk about this or that , you , guys , always say : oh , it was refuted , or it was bullshit , or there was something wrong with the experiments or their interpretations , there was fraud , bias , confirmation bias , wishful thinking ...Come on .

Non -materialist scientists also say : we have refuted materialists .

So, everybody was refuted then lol = nobody was = a paradox .

That's no serious way to approach that .

PEAR just relied on QM mainly, and on the fact that science has been ignoring the central role of consciousness and its subjective experiences , inner life ...and their impacts on our environments with which we interact daily , by exchanging information with them , by influencing them ,and vice versa ....

All those interpretations of quantum theory , for example, do have subjective as well as objective elements in them ,so , or as Von Neumann used to say : the measurement paradox or problem in QM takes in fact place in the mind , so, what we take for granted as the physical reality in QM   takes partly place in the mind : our minds' representations of reality have been taken for granted as reality itself .

Even the very major fact that materialism has been taken for granted as science or as the scientific world view for relatively so long now  and counting  , without question , is evidence for the fact that science itself is driven by both subjective and objective elements or 'forces " .

The objective and subjective that are inseparable , as the observer and the observed also are : the old dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity , or that the mind is separate from matter , or that the objective reality is independent from the observer were/are just myths thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 20:28:35
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg443225#msg443225 date=1414451541]
What makes this all very interesting is the notion that consciousness (for which we now have something approaching a definition, in another thread) is necessary in order for a subatomic particle to interact with matter. This inverts the entire concept of time because it implies that conscious life must have preceded the evolution of the universe, including conscious life itself.


Well, some physicists say that nothing exists really without consciousness , and that the fact that the universe existed long before conscious life emerged on earth was due to the fact that there is some ultimate source of consciousness : call it cosmic consciousness , God , Zeus or whatever .

So, all conscious life on earth has an ultimat consciosu source , or so they say at least .
Quote
It raises further interesting questions.


Yeah,indeed .You have no idea .

Quote
For instance if the presence of a conscious being is required in order for an electron to excite a phosphor, how does the electron decide where to go in the presence of two or more conscious beings?

There is 1 ultimate source of consciousness , or so they say at least : there is thus no independent individual consciousness .

Before observed , particles existed only as waves of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ..waiting to be actualized , i guess , as quantum physicist idealist monist Amit Goswami and others say .



Quote
What happens to the electron in the absence of an observer? Does it disappear up its own anus, or are charge and mass conserved, as we used to think?

See above : it "pops in and out of existence " , so to speak ....When not observed , particles "exist " just as waves of possibilities , probabilities , ....

Quote
Neutrons approaching Earth from the sun, decay. That involves, in one model, the collapse of a couple of wavefunctions so it seems that the consciousness of beings on earth extends several million miles sunwards. But the sun radiates in all directions, so can we assume that neutrons do not decay en route to Mars or Pluto? If so, how do they know that they have passed beyond Earth's orbit?

Yeah, that's an interesting question indeed .
Physicists conducted experiments where the very act of observing particles through measuring devices of course , stop decaying or do not decay , as long as they are regularily measured ...

Maybe, THE ultimate source of all consciousness is behind all that .I don't know .

There are thus no chains of conscious observers , since there is only 1 ultimate source of consciousness, i guess. I don't know .

Quote
And why, if we measure the solar particle spectrum from a space probe, do we find the halflife of neutrons to be constant? Surely if the conscious observer moves relative to the source, he should see the same spectrum of neutrons and decay products because his consciousness is moving with him, but we actually find the spectrum varies exactly as if consciousness had no effect.
 

Maybe , the very act of checking out that data , changes it . I don't know .

Quote
Sorry, Don, but your hypothesis fails the simplest of tests.

That's not my hypothesis , i wish , but that of QM .

See what i said to dlorde   concerning the inseparable subjective and objective aspects of science itself as just a human social activity , and to some extent as a cultural one as well .

Quote
PS re: European robins. Although they are all the same species (and quite different from American robins) their migration behaviour varies according to where they live. Scandinavian robins migrate over significant distances, and north-south, as their main food sources are not available in wintertime. In the British Isles, and particularly Ireland, robins are very territorial and don't really migrate in a particular direction but spend more time closer to human habitation or in their warmer feeding grounds in winter. Mediterranean robins hardly move at all. Not sure about "quantum biology" but we have known for at least 50 years that pigeons have magnetic field sensors, and there is some weak evidence that humans do too. All of which points rather strongly to a conventional concept of evolution and adaptation.

Well, i brought that up just to give our dlorde   here the impression , illusion or perception that the entire universe is quantum mechanical , in the non -Von Neumann sense lol , just to allow him the futile and false pleasure regarding his cherished and beloved standard model of quantum field theory .

I think that since materialism is false , that materialist standard model of quantum field theory is just approximately correct , but fundamentally ...false , since the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical , and since the non-physical consciousness cannot but play a central or key role in QM and in the rest of the universe: See PEAR research .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 20:32:32
dlorde :

Multiverse theory, for example,  is in fact not  only a clear , major and grotesque violation of Occam's razor , but is also ...untestable , unfalsifiable , unverifiable....just a fantasy , a subjective fabrication , an easthetic subjective matter of taste ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 20:49:43
... Not sure about "quantum biology" but we have known for at least 50 years that pigeons have magnetic field sensors, and there is some weak evidence that humans do too. All of which points rather strongly to a conventional concept of evolution and adaptation.
Yes, quite. The fuss about electron transfer in photosynthesis and the magnetic navigation of robins at the time was due to surprise that any quantum effects persisted long enough in the noisy and warm environment of molecular biology to be used to advantage. Evolution had stumbled across a couple of unexpected optimisations.

Don't you realise the fact , dlorde , that you have just replaced the appearance of design in nature by yet another form of design ? , a highly implausible one at that , that is : that of the almighty lol unguided blind random gradual , step by step, highly unlikely , mathematically impossible , lottery lol of the mysterious( Like that mysterious invisible hand of the market lol )  so-called natural selection through random mutations ...(Even James A.Shapiro and others have already refuted that neo-Darwinian genetic determinism .) ...

May God bless the invisible mysterious magical hand of the evolution-god lol   that works through mysterious ways lol = materialist physics-metaphysics lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 20:58:14
Materialist "scientific " fairy tales or versions of the origin of life , the evolution of life , the origin of conscious life , regarding how the universe works , what the universe is made of , regarding the nature of reality ...were / are the most incredible  subjective-objective tragic -hilarious forms of fiction or fantasy the human mind has ever or will ever imagine or produce lol , the partly most implausible physics-metaphysics ever imagined ....

And you tell me that subjectivity and objectivity are not   inseparable in science and elsewhere , or that the observer is independent from the observed ? You gotta be kidding me lol

Descartes' legacy has been so devastating to both humanity and science ...

It's about time to get rid of that legacy , or just of its false aspects .

Once upon a time , ...........
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/10/2014 21:16:45
alancalverd :

As a quantum physicist yourself : can you replicate Schmidt's experiments Carter was talking about in one of his displayed excerpts here above ? or just some  experiments of PEAR ?

dlorde :   Can you do the latter at least ?

Seriously .Thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 23:10:30
You can't just dismiss what PEAR did and found out , just through saying that they made some errors here and there...
Who's dismissing them? - I already said what a service they've been to improving experimental methodology  [;)]

Sadly, sometimes the 'errors here and there' invalidate your results. When you set out to find some very small effect (you know it must be small because previous results have been equivocal), it's easy to fall prey to a number of biases, chiefly expectation bias. This involves the temptation to emphasise 'positive' results as successes and demphasise 'negative' results as failures (something must have been wrong), and to interpret runs in random data as significant, etc. This is the same bias that makes you want to ignore the PEAR errors and the failed replications because it looked like they got the results you wanted the first time. That's poor science, and why good studies use proper controls, double or triple blinding, and don't make a fuss until they've been replicated [8D]

If you look at the history of psi research (http://www.skepdic.com/essays/psihistory.html), you'll see consistent trends in the results - the more meticulous the design, methodology, controls,  blinding, and analysis, the less positive results are obtained. Over time, the relative numbers of positive results have dropped as experimental techniques and understanding of data analysis improved. The closer and more carefully you look, the less there is anything to see but random distribution [8]

Quote
Everytime we talk about this or that , you , guys , always say : oh , it was refuted , or it was bullshit , or there was something wrong with the experiments or their interpretations , there was fraud , bias , confirmation bias , wishful thinking ...Come on .
You can't blame us for their mistakes  [::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 23:13:00
... can you replicate ... some  experiments of PEAR ?

dlorde :   Can you do the latter at least ?
It's been tried - about four times at least. There was nothing to see.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 23:14:32
dlorde :

Multiverse theory, for example,  is in fact not  only a clear , major and grotesque violation of Occam's razor , but is also ...untestable , unfalsifiable , unverifiable....just a fantasy , a subjective fabrication , an easthetic subjective matter of taste ...
LOL! Nice one  [:o)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/10/2014 23:20:18
Don't you realise the fact , dlorde , that you have just replaced the appearance of design in nature by yet another form of design ? , a highly implausible one at that , that is : that of the almighty lol unguided blind random gradual , step by step, highly unlikely , mathematically impossible , lottery lol of the mysterious( Like that mysterious invisible hand of the market lol )  so-called natural selection through random mutations ...(Even James A.Shapiro and others have already refuted that neo-Darwinian genetic determinism .) ...

May God bless the invisible mysterious magical hand of the evolution-god lol   that works through mysterious ways lol = materialist physics-metaphysics lol
Just call it 'Evolution by Natural Selection'.

Don, your posts have started to become less rational and more childishly sarcastic.  Please get a grip, and don't let them degenerate into the pointless abuse and name-calling they did in other threads.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 29/10/2014 13:33:34

Once again : the observer and the observed are inseparable : the subjective and objective are inseparable : the subjective interferes with the objective : or as Von Neumann used to say : the measurement paradox in QM takes place in the mind , so , we take the respresentations of the mind in that regard for the physical reality in QM , for example .

Take a closer look at the work and results of PEAR .

For example , even at the macro level : have you ever been so immersed in your creative work, or other life experiences , art ....to the extent that you "lost " yourself in that environment ?


What???? You pull examples from ordinary experience to illustrate a scientific concept, and the examples are not at all causally related or relevant, only superficially similar. The fact that someone who is focused on an interesting activity pays less attention to other environmental stimuli does not prove anything about quantum mechanics or the observer effect or that consciousness is immaterial. It no more demonstrates that than my saying "Time flies while you're having fun" proves Special Relativity.

Quote
When we do or feel, experience things through  our whole beings , we become inseparately one with our environment . Only when we think , try to analyze things , we get the illusion or impression , or perception that we are separate from our environment .
We are always immersed in our inner and outer environments , while exchanging information, energy , matter with our environments , consciously or sub-consciously .

Sometimes , we are not aware of that , so, we have the illusion that we are separate beings or separate individuals from our environment .

The whole universe is in fact interconnected = 1, whether we are aware of that fact or not  : this is no new age bullshit .

Even when you are working on your pc, or walking out your dog , you are interacting with them and with the rest of your environment at that time and place and beyond  , influencing them , and vice versa , by exchanging information with them, consciously or subcosnciously .

Only when you think, analyze things ...you get the impression or illusion that you are separate or independent from your environment in some way .

Oh, absolutely we are connected and part of the environment, and exchange information, and transform energy, and obtain nutrients, and build things, - all through known physical processes, which for some reason you feel are inadequate. I can "affect things with my mind" however it requires other stuff like talking to people, moving parts of my body, manipulating objects, writing a book, etc.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 29/10/2014 14:04:09
I would like to add, though, that connections and interactions with the environment is something overlooked in discussions of consciousness and the experience of "being." There is a tendency to view the brain as an autonomous, isolated, machine. I sometimes wonder what would happen to a disembodied brain/mind completely disconnected from all sensory input, how long it would continue to think thoughts, ask itself questions, or replay memories on its own, or if conscious experience would slowly fade, even with a sufficient energy source.

Antonio Damasio's two books, Self Comes to Mind and The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, emphasize the importance of the body, sensation, emotion, and the environment in the experience of consciousness. Of all the books I've read so far about consciousness, his approach seems the most promising to me.

This link summarizes his work and views, if anyone is interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2014 14:56:42
... I sometimes wonder what would happen to a disembodied brain/mind completely disconnected from all sensory input, how long it would continue to think thoughts, ask itself questions, or replay memories on its own, or if conscious experience would slowly fade, even with a sufficient energy source.
In external sensory deprivation (e.g. body temp flotation tanks), hallucinations occur, presumably as neural system 'noise' is the only apparent input. But these systems only isolate external senses, all the internal ones remain as normal, so in the sense you're referring to, it's only partial sensory deprivation. I suspect that with full sensory deprivation (no input to the brain at all) brain activity would fairly quickly become chaotic, with no stable sense of identity or self, leading to complete dissociation. I doubt whether any meaningful consciousness would persist for long. I wouldn't want to be the first to find out!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 29/10/2014 15:13:14
alancalverd :

As a quantum physicist yourself : can you replicate Schmidt's experiments Carter was talking about in one of his displayed excerpts here above ? or just some  experiments of PEAR ?



Sorry, mate, far too busy using simple quantum physics to heal the sick.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 18:36:45
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443302#msg443302 date=1414537830]
You can't just dismiss what PEAR did and found out , just through saying that they made some errors here and there...
Who's dismissing them? - I already said what a service they've been to improving experimental methodology  [;)]

Yeah , great extended experimental methodology PEAR has been developing and using indeed .
I have been fascinated and impressed by that : awesome .
No wonder , simply because the very nature of  their research makes that extended methodology so necessary, since the universe is not impersonal , but personal : the subjective and the objective are inseparable : there is no independent -observer : PEAR's task in that regard was / is unprecedented and courageous , visionary ....not to mention extremely difficult  ,since the subjective part of their work cannot be ruled out either , logically, even though materialist science has been pretending to be able to exclude the subjective from science through applying strict analythical rigorous rational empiricism  .
PEAR's  core premise is that even science itself has been having both subjective as well as objective intrinsic elements , since science is just a human social activity thus,and since the mind is inseparable from matter ... .
The huge data they have been gathering was / is also impressive , to say the least : i have great respect for their hard work,integrity , patience , rigor, humility  ...wow .

Well, the very nature of that  research is reason enough for mainstream science to reject the findings of PEAR .The latter that was aware of that fact and rightly so : PEAR findings were /are rejected by mainstream scientific journals and community . No surprises there .
Physics' journals ,for example say : sorry, we don't do psychology , just physics , not realising the fact that our reality is psycho-physical: the subjective and the objective are inseparable , even in science : the observer is not independent from the observed : what we take for granted as the physical reality , even and mainly at the quantum level, is partly subjective : a mind's representation of reality .
That's why PEAR has been saying that science needs to expand its epistemology and methodology ....not to mention its vocabulary .

The latter reminds me of Rumi's following quote by the way :

" Speak a new language ,so the world will be a new world "


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Sadly, sometimes the 'errors here and there' invalidate your results. When you set out to find some very small effect (you know it must be small because previous results have been equivocal), it's easy to fall prey to a number of biases, chiefly expectation bias. This involves the temptation to emphasise 'positive' results as successes and demphasise 'negative' results as failures (something must have been wrong), and to interpret runs in random data as significant, etc. This is the same bias that makes you want to ignore the PEAR errors and the failed replications because it looked like they got the results you wanted the first time. That's poor science, and why good studies use proper controls, double or triple blinding, and don't make a fuss until they've been replicated [8

I can't tell yet what errors PEAR might or might not have made , since i am just still in the middle of reading and studying their work .
The very nature of their research , once again , cannot but have subjective elements in it also , since the subjective and the objective are inseparable , even at the level of science ,so,as PEAR say and rightly so  .

At the other hand , i have been impressed by their scientific rigor , integrity , the sense of detail , slef-critique, humility ,patience  ....while acknowledging the fact that the very nature of their research concerning the central role of consciousness in establishing the physical reality tend to resist any scientific rigorous approach , replication,conceptualization , models  ...since consciousness and its "interactions " with matter are  so elusive .But, PEAR had nevertheless developed serious scientific models regarding consciousness ...



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If you look at the history of psi research (http://www.skepdic.com/essays/psihistory.html), you'll see consistent trends in the results - the more meticulous the design, methodology, controls,  blinding, and analysis, the less positive results are obtained. Over time, the relative numbers of positive results have dropped as experimental techniques and understanding of data analysis improved. The closer and more carefully you look, the less there is anything to see but random distribution [8]

PEAR itself acknowledged the messy history of psi research where even fraud was not excluded sometimes .So, PEAR has been trying to avoid all that in their ersearch concerning psi phenomena ...

At the other hand , i am not really interested in psi phenomena . PEAR is not all about just that either . I am more intersted in their research concerning the active central role of consciousness in shaping the physical reality .PEAR relied mainly on QM to prove that .

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Everytime we talk about this or that , you , guys , always say : oh , it was refuted , or it was bullshit , or there was something wrong with the experiments or their interpretations , there was fraud , bias , confirmation bias , wishful thinking ...Come on .
You can't blame us for their mistakes  [::)]

What i meant is that mainstream science skeptics resort almost always to those tactics by discrediting their opponents , regardless of how much amount of evidence they might or might no deliver : that's a clear pattern now : everything that would not fit into the materialist "scientific world view " gets treated that way .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 19:32:11
... I sometimes wonder what would happen to a disembodied brain/mind completely disconnected from all sensory input, how long it would continue to think thoughts, ask itself questions, or replay memories on its own, or if conscious experience would slowly fade, even with a sufficient energy source.
In external sensory deprivation (e.g. body temp flotation tanks), hallucinations occur, presumably as neural system 'noise' is the only apparent input. But these systems only isolate external senses, all the internal ones remain as normal, so in the sense you're referring to, it's only partial sensory deprivation. I suspect that with full sensory deprivation (no input to the brain at all) brain activity would fairly quickly become chaotic, with no stable sense of identity or self, leading to complete dissociation. I doubt whether any meaningful consciousness would persist for long. I wouldn't want to be the first to find out!

The mind just expresses itself through its medium the brain, both ways : the mind interacts with its outer environment , the brain included , via both inserting in and extracting information from it .

So, if the mind gets deprived of that information , it does not mean the mind gets altered or that it disappears : it just gets blocked , since the brain acts a bit like a filter , a kindda valva for the mind through which the latter has to express itself , both ways .
That limitig capacity of the brain explains why certain drugs can expand consciousness or reduce it , and that if certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem  to be either reduced , or gone ...

When you will die , your consciousness will be liberated from your limiting brain and body , and then , it will be able to express itself fully , making you awake through higher and full levels of consciousness .

Let's feel free to talk about the following,for a change , since QM , or just one particular interpretation of it , has been opening its wide doors to some forms of spirituality or mysticism through its philosophical and metaphysical , and maybe theological and teleological , implications  :

Know yourself and you will get in touch somehow with the ultimate nature of reality that's both within and without , through knowledge , self-knowledge , experience , discipline ....through enlightenment thus .

Knowledge alone will not get you there , since knowledge , including the scientific one thus is both subjective and objective .
 Experience, or self-experience ,  is fundamental in achieving that : informed trained disciplined enlightenment .

You are just asleep in life thus , as most people are , death will wake us all up, soon enough , but , certain mystics or sufis try to wake up here and now ,before death , by trying to reach enlightenment .

They wanna get in touch with the ultimate nature of reality out there beyond space and time which is also within .

They try to get in touch with the ultimate nature of reality within thus  here and now , through experienced informed trained enlightenment via their whole being, not just via their minds  or just via acquiring empirical knowledge of the outer world .(Materialist science , for example deals only with the lowest level of reality , the illusory one : the physical reality .)
They try to reach beyond -thought enlightenment ,since thought is both subjective and objective .
They try to die before death (It takes less than death to "kill " a human being indeed ) by getting rid of their false subjective ego ,and by trying to reach higher levels of consciousness which correspond to higher levels of reality ,in order  to be united with the One Who's both within and without .

Our suffering in life comes from our separation from Home.That's why we long to return Home .  The latter  is both within and without , both here and now and beyond space and time .
The objective divine thus resides within each and every one of us ,and we can try to get in touch with that ultimate nature of reality within (which is also without , beyond space and time thus ) by trying to know the self , by getting rid of the subjective false ego ....

You may say that the self is an illusion : that's just a matter of opinion or rather a matter of degree of enlightenment .

Or as a famous Sufi once said :

" Live in this world as if you had never set foot here , and in the next as if you had never ...left it " .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 19:53:24
Don't you realise the fact , dlorde , that you have just replaced the appearance of design in nature by yet another form of design ? , a highly implausible one at that , that is : that of the almighty lol unguided blind random gradual , step by step, highly unlikely , mathematically impossible , lottery lol of the mysterious( Like that mysterious invisible hand of the market lol )  so-called natural selection through random mutations ...(Even James A.Shapiro and others have already refuted that neo-Darwinian genetic determinism .) ...

May God bless the invisible mysterious magical hand of the evolution-god lol   that works through mysterious ways lol = materialist physics-metaphysics lol
Just call it 'Evolution by Natural Selection'.

Don, your posts have started to become less rational and more childishly sarcastic.  Please get a grip, and don't let them degenerate into the pointless abuse and name-calling they did in other threads.

I was just trying to spice up this discussion through introducing some form of amusing humour , that's all, dlorde .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2014 19:55:21
When you will die , your consciousness will be liberated from your limiting brain and body , and then , it will be able to express itself fully , making you awake through higher and full levels of consciousness .
<snipped for brevity>

This is a science forum. Mysticism and/or religion forums are available elsewhere.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/10/2014 19:56:45
Don, your posts have started to become less rational and more childishly sarcastic.  Please get a grip, and don't let them degenerate into the pointless abuse and name-calling they did in other threads.

I was just trying to spice up this discussion through introducing some form of amusing humour , that's all, dlorde .
OK; if that's what passes for humour in your neck of the woods, colour me serious.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 29/10/2014 20:09:43


The mind just expresses itself through its medium the brain, both ways : the mind interacts with its outer environment , the brain included , via both inserting in and extracting information from it .

So, if the mind gets deprived of that information , it does not mean the mind gets altered or that it disappears : it just gets blocked , since the brain acts a bit like a filter , a kindda valva for the mind through which the latter has to express itself , both ways .
That limitig capacity of the brain explains why certain drugs can expand consciousness or reduce it , and that if certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem  to be either reduced , or gone ...

When you will die , your consciousness will be liberated from your limiting brain and body , and then , it will be able to express itself fully , making you awake through higher and full levels of consciousness .


You don't find it odd that damaging the brain appears to limit or alter consciousness, but completely destroying the brain restores or liberates it? And you know this true because.......? And a brain is necessary for receiving and processing information and expressing itself before death but not after?






[/quote]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 20:13:27
When you will die , your consciousness will be liberated from your limiting brain and body , and then , it will be able to express itself fully , making you awake through higher and full levels of consciousness .
<snipped for brevity>

This is a science forum. Mysticism and/or religion forums are available elsewhere.

I know , i know , dlorde .

I was just trying to introduce a personal falvor in this impersonal discussion and impersonal materialist science , since the universe is in fact personal, not impersonal as materialist science wanna makes us believe it is : the subjective and objective are inseparable in science and elsewhere ,as the observed and the observer are inseparable : there is no such a thing as the independent -observer thus .

QM has been revealing , or just one particular interpretation of it at least on which PEAR relied and developed its research , the central or key role of consciousness in shaping the physical reality ,so .

So , our reality is both subjective and objective : even the physical reality in physics is both subjective and objective ,so.

That's what i meant, through metaphors ... .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 20:16:32
Don, your posts have started to become less rational and more childishly sarcastic.  Please get a grip, and don't let them degenerate into the pointless abuse and name-calling they did in other threads.

I was just trying to spice up this discussion through introducing some form of amusing humour , that's all, dlorde .
OK; if that's what passes for humour in your neck of the woods, colour me serious.

That's a matter of taste then , dlorde .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 20:31:10
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443350#msg443350 date=1414613383]


The mind just expresses itself through its medium the brain, both ways : the mind interacts with its outer environment , the brain included , via both inserting in and extracting information from it .

So, if the mind gets deprived of that information , it does not mean the mind gets altered or that it disappears : it just gets blocked , since the brain acts a bit like a filter , a kindda valva for the mind through which the latter has to express itself , both ways .
That limitig capacity of the brain explains why certain drugs can expand consciousness or reduce it , and that if certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem  to be either reduced , or gone ...

When you will die , your consciousness will be liberated from your limiting brain and body , and then , it will be able to express itself fully , making you awake through higher and full levels of consciousness .


You don't find it odd that damaging the brain appears to limit or alter consciousness, but completely destroying the brain restores or liberates it? And you know this true because.......? And a brain is necessary for receiving and processing information and expressing itself before death but not after?

Well, Cheryl : mind and body or brain are inseparable ,in this life at least , so , the mind has to express itself through the brain as its medium, both ways : The brain 's limiting capacity regarding the scope of consciousness is no evidence for the materialist production theory : why do you think that certain drugs like LSD , MDMA ,cannabis, marijuana ...seem to "expand " consciousness by acting on the neurophysiology ?

I don't either take drugs nor drink though.

When the brain is damaged , that does not mean that consciousness gets altered , reduced or that it disappears : it is still there , it just gets blocked since its brain channels are damaged or disconnected .

It's like when a tv set or a radio device , a cell phone ....get damaged , they don't receive the signals , waves , images ...they used to do : Does that mean the latter were created by those devices ? : just an analogy , since the devices mentioned here are all material .

And since certain drugs or damaged brain areas seem to either expand , reduce or "destroy " consciousness , the sense of self or identity ...., then , i presume that when the body dies or ceases functioning , then , consciousness gets liberated from their limiting capacity , i don't know .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/10/2014 21:09:25
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443326#msg443326 date=1414589614]

Once again : the observer and the observed are inseparable : the subjective and objective are inseparable : the subjective interferes with the objective : or as Von Neumann used to say : the measurement paradox in QM takes place in the mind , so , we take the respresentations of the mind in that regard for the physical reality in QM , for example .

Take a closer look at the work and results of PEAR .

For example , even at the macro level : have you ever been so immersed in your creative work, or other life experiences , art ....to the extent that you "lost " yourself in that environment ?


What???? You pull examples from ordinary experience to illustrate a scientific concept, and the examples are not at all causally related or relevant, only superficially similar. The fact that someone who is focused on an interesting activity pays less attention to other environmental stimuli does not prove anything about quantum mechanics or the observer effect or that consciousness is immaterial. It no more demonstrates that than my saying "Time flies while you're having fun" proves Special Relativity.

I just used that analogy to illustrate the fact that consciousness is almost always immersed in its environment in one form or another ,and can thus not be separated from its environment , not to mention the role of the sub-conscious in shaping our consciousness .

So, when we achieve higher levels of cosciousness , we get aware of the fact that we are inseparable from our environment : the object and the subject are inseparable : we ,as observers and active agents through our consciousness , cannot be separated from the observed or from our environment with wich we interact daily .

Only when we think and analyze things , do we get the impression perception or illusion that we are separate individuals , separate from our observed environment or from our objects of study, not to mention other subjects or minds we interact with , be it friends , loved ones ,co-workers or total strangers  .

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When we do or feel, experience things through  our whole beings , we become inseparately one with our environment . Only when we think , try to analyze things , we get the illusion or impression , or perception that we are separate from our environment .
We are always immersed in our inner and outer environments , while exchanging information, energy , matter with our environments , consciously or sub-consciously .

Sometimes , we are not aware of that , so, we have the illusion that we are separate beings or separate individuals from our environment .
The whole universe is in fact interconnected = 1, whether we are aware of that fact or not  : this is no new age bullshit .

Even when you are working on your pc, or walking out your dog , you are interacting with them and with the rest of your environment at that time and place and beyond  , influencing them , and vice versa , by exchanging information with them, consciously or subcosnciously .

Only when you think, analyze things ...you get the impression or illusion that you are separate or independent from your environment in some way .

Oh, absolutely we are connected and part of the environment, and exchange information, and transform energy, and obtain nutrients, and build things, - all through known physical processes, which for some reason you feel are inadequate. I can "affect things with my mind" however it requires other stuff like talking to people, moving parts of my body, manipulating objects, writing a book, etc.
[/quote]

( Physical or material processes are not the whole picture , just a part of it : our reality is psycho-physical: a part of those physical processes , or a part of the physical reality , is  just a creation or a representation of our minds , and there are no physical or material processes that can account for the working or function of consciousness : see the following , especially " The science of the subjective " link , and "20th and 21st century science : reflections and projections " short 2 PDF from the link here below about the scholarly papers of PEAR : scroll all the way down when you get redirected to the following link :


http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/publications.html  ) .


That's not what i meant,  just a part of it , Cheryl : what i meant was :

We are inseparable from our environment : there is no independent -observer : our consciousnesses  shapes the observed we interact with , be it other consciousnesses or objects : we just get both a subjective and objective representations of our environment : even the physical reality in QM is partly subjective : a creation of our minds .That's why Von Neumann,for example,  said that the measurement paradox or problem in QM takes place in the mind ....partly thus: even what we call the physical reality is both objective and subjective  .

Science itself cannot but be both objective and subjective : see how materialism, for example , has been taken for granted as science or as the scientific world view ...

See those above mentioned relatively short PEAR scholarly papers on the subject .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/10/2014 00:09:09
When the brain is damaged , that does not mean that consciousness gets altered , reduced or that it disappears : it is still there , it just gets blocked since its brain channels are damaged or disconnected .
We've been through all this before, but to save looking out the posts, how does your theory account for brain damage causing personality changes? Is personality not part of consciousness?

If not, what is?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: jeffreyH on 30/10/2014 00:28:11
Why does DNA have the instructions to build a brain at all? At what point do a set of brain cells start thinking? How many are needed before this starts? How much information is hard wired? Is any information hard wired? Why is it hard wired? Is that because it is passed from mother to child? Have I asked enough questions yet? It is complicated and incomprehensible. Some things just are mysterious.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2014 01:27:01


See those above mentioned relatively short PEAR scholarly papers on the subject .

How does one get from 'PEARS seemed to generate some non random numbers' to 'my consciousness, including all my memories, ideas, beliefs, feelings, personality traits will continue to exist after my death without my brain for all of eternity.'

It would be one thing to claim that brain damage and drugs simply prevented other people from detecting my conscious experience, but if I myself am aware that I can no longer perform the mental functions that I desire to and could once do with ease (as stroke victims attest) that would seem, as you are so fond of saying, paradoxical to say the least.

While I am struggling in my robot body, is my "real" consciousness up there performing all these mental operations perfectly?  You're essentially saying that my own subjective experience of my consciousness is false, while  the one I cannot even access, control, communicate with, and am not aware of, is the "true" one.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 30/10/2014 10:20:40
It is complicated and incomprehensible. Some things just are mysterious.

Complicated, yes. Incomprehensible? I think not, but a lot depends on asking the right questions. For instance I don't think "why" belongs in the realm of evolutionary science as it implies an ulterior motive, for which there is no evidence. But "how" is an entirely scientific question, and worth asking, since it helps us diagnose and fix things that don't work properly.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 17:35:54
Why does DNA have the instructions to build a brain at all? At what point do a set of brain cells start thinking? How many are needed before this starts? How much information is hard wired? Is any information hard wired? Why is it hard wired? Is that because it is passed from mother to child? Have I asked enough questions yet? It is complicated and incomprehensible. Some things just are mysterious.

First of all :

Neo-Darwinian genetic determinism has been refuted by many prominent scientists such as James A.Shapiro : see this on the subject :


Second :

You forgot to ask where all that DNA or life biological information does come from, in the first place to begin with , how is the extra information  added to account for novel body plans and forms ? Where that extra or added biological information comes from ?

Not to mention how   quantitative neurophysiology can account for qualitative qualia , subjective experiences , mental states ...

The role of DNA has even been overrated . Not to mention epigenetics and more , no to mention how even beliefs and expectations can heal harm or change our biology, turn genes on or off : see this on the subject :


 Or how our minds can change our brains' structures, anatomy physiology through self-directed neuroplasticity   .

Concerning the latter ,see how this amazing woman was able to fix and overcome her severe disabilities through self-directed neuro-plasticity via the efforts of her informed mind and actions, thanks to the work of a Russian neuroscientist Alexander Luria mainly ,  and how she even designed brain excercises , techniques to help disabled kids get rid of or improve their disabilities and much more :


See her life work on her site :

http://www.barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com/

See this great book of hers on the subject :

http://www.barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com/book/

How meditation, mindfulness can do what they do , not to mention neurofeedback and the rest .

Clearly , no material process can account for all that and more .

Only materialist inexplicable mysterious magic can 'explain " the above thus lol

May God bless the evolution -god that works in mysterious ways through its invisible mysterious magical hand : that of the unguided blind random highly unlikely ,step by step ,gradual , mathematically impossible , lottery of the so-called natural selection lol: the materialist version of design in nature : the most implausible one at that , that is , that violates Occam's razor through a billion of ways .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 18:20:07
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443364#msg443364 date=1414632421]


See those above mentioned relatively short PEAR scholarly papers on the subject .

How does one get from 'PEARS seemed to generate some non random numbers' to 'my consciousness, including all my memories, ideas, beliefs, feelings, personality traits will continue to exist after my death without my brain for all of eternity.'

Who said that PEAR said that ?

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It would be one thing to claim that brain damage and drugs simply prevented other people from detecting my conscious experience, but if I myself am aware that I can no longer perform the mental functions that I desire to and could once do with ease (as stroke victims attest) that would seem, as you are so fond of saying, paradoxical to say the least.

I don't follow you here : what do you mean by saying that  if drugs and brain damage simply prevented other people from detecting your conscious experience ????

Stroke victims can no longer perform certain mental functions , certain of their body parts get paralyzed ....simply because their brain damaged areas prevent their minds from doing that .That's why they can recover from that through brain excercises and other therapies.

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While I am struggling in my robot body, is my "real" consciousness up there performing all these mental operations perfectly?  You're essentially saying that my own subjective experience of my consciousness is false, while  the one I cannot even access, control, communicate with, and am not aware of, is the "true" one.

I am not following you here either : can you be more specific ? I said : when certain brain areas are damaged , so , consciousness gets blocked from expressing itself at that level , since consciousness and brain are inseparable , so , consciousness has to "flow " , so to speak, through the brain and body ...

Consciousness is still fully intact of course , it just gets blocked from flowing or expressing itself through brain and body : the unfortunate people who become victims of brain injuries, damage , diseases , ....don't get access to certain aspects of their consciousness , even though the latter is still fully intact .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2014 18:49:33


May God bless the evolution -god that works in mysterious ways through its invisible mysterious magical hand : that of the unguided blind random highly unlikely ,step by step ,gradual , mathematically impossible , lottery of the so-called natural selection lol: the materialist version of design in nature : the most implausible one at that , that is , that violates Occam's razor through a billion of ways .



Natural Selection. And this.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 18:54:51
When the brain is damaged , that does not mean that consciousness gets altered , reduced or that it disappears : it is still there , it just gets blocked since its brain channels are damaged or disconnected .
We've been through all this before, but to save looking out the posts, how does your theory account for brain damage causing personality changes? Is personality not part of consciousness?

If not, what is?


(By the way : the idea that the brain and body have  a limiting capacity in relation to the scope of consciousness that can get through them is not new .It's as old as ancient civilizations and ancient wisdom , all the way back to/from  Egyptians, Babylonians , hinduism, buddhism , ...through ancient Greeks , passing by the Eurocentric 'enlightenment " philosophers such as Bergson and others .Even materialism itself is not new, not to mention its related atheism  .Ancient Greek atomists such as Democritus and others were materialists . It's just that modern materialism saw its chance of vindicating itself through classical determinist mechanical Newtonian physics upon which materialism was built  .But , QM did break the neck of materialism , later on, even though materialists persist in denying that fact as such , to mention just that one at least , by sweeping that under the carpet through inventing desperate theories and models that would help them get around that ...in vain.)

Well, once again, consciousness has to express itself through the brain channels , so to speak ,since brain and consciousness are inseparable , so, when certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem to be reduced , altered or gone . The same goes for the loss of self-identity or personality ...through brain damage ...so.

The limiting capacity of the brain in relation to the scope of consciousness is a fact that can also explain, for example , why or how meditation , mindfulness can  do to us what they do , and can explain how one can reach higher levels of consciousness through one form or another of enlightenment , meditation, mindfulness, yoga, relaxation music  ... It's as if the brain has different levels of frequencies that can be activated through the mind by those stimuli .I don't know .

No wonder that all major religions, mysticism, ancient wisdom , emphasize the fact that if one wants to reach enlightenment , one must go through some form of discipline training , experiences , enlighetenment that can reduce the limiting capacity of the brain and body and that of the physical reality ,  in relation to the scope of consciousness and expand its flow, so to speak, through the brain and body channels : the higher the enlightenment , the higher the frequencies of the brain through which consciousness flows ,which results in higher levels of consciousness, i guess.

Tja, if the brain is damaged : that's a serious impairment that goes beyond the normal limiting capacity of the brain : consciousness gets blocked at that level , gets prevented from expressing itself , but , fact is , even in the case of serious brain damage through stroke , Alzheimer ...some people can partly or fully overcome all that through strong belief and action in their healing possibility : the power of belief-action  and expectations in healing our bodies, changing our biology or  neurophysiology , turning genes on or off and more cannot be under-estimated .

By the way , materialism denies the very existence of the self , self-identity or personality , subjective experiences ...

It's odd that you , as a materialist , would bring those "illusions " up lol

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 19:21:52


May God bless the evolution -god that works in mysterious ways through its invisible mysterious magical hand : that of the unguided blind random highly unlikely ,step by step ,gradual , mathematically impossible , lottery of the so-called natural selection lol: the materialist version of design in nature : the most implausible one at that , that is , that violates Occam's razor through a billion of ways .



Natural Selection. And this.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist/

Oh, please : don't play the creationist card .Don't use it as an exit strategy or tactic to get around the real issues at hand, which are  :

Materialism cannot account for an increasing amount of anomalies .
The latter that are the raw material thanks to which science can progress by questioning the scientific prevailing "wisdom " of the moment .

Clearly materialism cannot account for all those anomalies , so, science must find other alternatives to materialism that have more explanatory power : Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research has been doing just that , for example, not to mention the work of  non-materialist scientists on the subject .

Instead of questioning materialism itself, you just try to refute its opponents : "refuting " the latter won't make those anomalies go away .

All materialist physiological and psychological "explanations " of those anomalies have been in fact refuted .

P.S.: You make it ,implicitly or explicitly ,sound as if materialism or materialists are the real science or the real scientists , the only valid science or valid scientists :

Don't forget that naturalism or naturalist methodology are no exclusive synonymous of materialism : there is also what can be called theistic naturalism that was even the heritage of modern science : Newton, Kepler , and many other stars of science were believers ,and that  did not prevent them from excelling in science .

In fact , science is all about methodology and there is nothing intrinsic in science that can prevent it from studying all those anomalies beyond the scope of materialism ,simply because naturalistic science does neither require materialism nor is it condemned to remain confined within its dogmatic belief system .

Science is no synonymous of materialism = material processes alone cannot account for all those anomalies .

Better still : the subjective is inseparable from the objective : there is no such a thing as the independent -observer : consciousness plays a central role in shaping the physical reality ,and can even change the objective by inserting in or extracting information from its environment : Our "reality " is just the product of the interaction of consciousness as an active and proactive agent with its environment .........

Even science itself must include the subjective in it that cannot be denied as such : in this information age ,it's highly relevant and important to acknowledge the fact that the subjective information cannot be quantized , in total contrast to the objective one , and that the former can even change the latter .

You don't listen to neither what i was saying all along , not to what PEAR , let alone to what non-materlialist scientists have to say on the subject : you just keep on sweeping all those anomalies for which materialism never can account under the carpet ...

What's the purpose or even relevance of this discussion then, if you can't acknowledge the existence of those anomalies and the fact thay are incompatible with materialism ?

Only materialist dogmatism prevents you from recognizing or seeing the facts that are in front of your very mind's eyes ...

Sticking to materialism, no matter what , despite the existence of all those anomalies that are clearly incompatible with materialism , sticking thus to the materialist false belief assumption that the whole universe can be explained only through material processes , while QM itself , to mention just that one, has been clearly showing to all of us the central and key role of consciousness in shaping the phsyical reality itself by also being able to change and influence its environment , including machines' output ... , objective data , including the design interpretation and outcome of experiments and much more , sticking to materialism thus despite all that is just plain and simple ...dogmatism , no science .

I thought this forum was all about science , not about some sort of a dogmatic secular religion : materialism .

Well, you need to check out the very definition of the nature of science then ....or that of naturalism or methodological naturalism , once again , here below :

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2014 19:25:24

I don't follow you here : what do you mean by saying that  if drugs and brain damage simply prevented other people from detecting your conscious experience ????

Stroke victims can no longer perform certain mental functions , certain of their body parts get paralyzed ....simply because their brain damaged areas prevent their minds from doing that .That's why they can recover from that through brain excercises and other therapies....
... I said : when certain brain areas are damaged , so , consciousness gets blocked from expressing itself at that level , since consciousness and brain are inseparable , so , consciousness has to "flow " , so to speak, through the brain and body ...

...Consciousness is still fully intact of course , it just gets blocked from flowing or expressing itself through brain and body : the unfortunate people who become victims of brain injuries, damage , diseases , ....don't get access to certain aspects of their consciousness , even though the latter is still fully intact .


Strokes do not just prevent people from moving an arm, or moving their mouth to form words. Depending on what part of the brain is damaged, it can change the experience of consciousness itself, disrupt memory, change personality, the ability to understand language, find words. What's more people are often aware that something has changed.

Your fractured version of consciousness, with part of it functionally perfectly non locally and another version functioning abnormally -but more importantly - experiencing an entirely different version of reality and conscious experience,  is absurd.

What ever happened to your hero Karl Popper and falsifiability? Is your theory not the best example of what he means by pseudoscience that one could possibly imagine? I could just as easily argue, with the same degree of evidence, that my consciousness originates and emanates from Alancalverd. That the reason we are not exactly alike is that my receiver is kind of old and dinged up; I can't access all his data, not all his consciousness is "getting through." We are all actually Alancalverd, we just don't know until we are reunited with him at death.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2014 19:33:40
It’s strange that even though Don has said the material and immaterial are inseparable, the world is psycho-phyical, he doesn’t seem to have much interest in the physical side of reality. I don't think I've seen him post on any topic that wasn't mystical in nature.

 Anti-materialists or mystics dismiss the brain as some uninteresting glob of protoplasm that contributes almost nothing to the understanding of consciousness. Neurological disorders do not provide any insight into the workings of the brain or mind for them, and inspire no more curiosity than a broken dishwasher abandoned at a dump. fMRI studies are no more intriguing than watching ones hairdryer go through the xray machine at the airport.  And that’s  too bad, in my estimation. They are missing some interesting, awe inspiring and just plain handy stuff.

One thing I would to know more about is how memories and other types of information are encoded in the brain. David Cooper points out that computers can do memory, they can process information; that is not consciousness and does not require it. Nevertheless, I think it is a primary reason some people have trouble believing that consciousness could be just a physical process carried out in the brain. They cannot imagine how something so abstract, and amorphous as a thought could be encoded and stored by cells or molecules, connections, or maps in the brain. Because images, ideas, thoughts, memories don’t seem “like" those things. For some reason people have no problem with information or images stored in zeros and ones in computers. Yet, there seems to be this unshakeable sense that our own memories or thoughts have to exist in some miniature, ephemeral, yet holistic format that resembles the way we experience them, not simply “code.” The Cartesian theatre will not die.

The second thing I’d like to learn more about is the neurological correlates of qualia. I don’t accept that qualia is nonphysical even though it is often defined as such. And I don’t accept that qualia is a useless and unfalsifiable concept as Dennett complains. VS Ramachadran  made admirable inroads to studying things that were once thought unstudiable, unverifiable and entirely subjective. His clinical research about phenomena like blind sight, synethesia, phatom limbs, akinetic mutism, Capgras delusion, etc and provides more insight than anything I’ve ever gotten from philosophers like David Chalmers or Thomas Nagel. An interesting line of study would be comparing neuro-correlates of sensory activated qualia, with those of internally generated qualia (dreams, memories and imagination) as they are somewhat experientially similar but have key differences, and these differences must reflect some underlying difference in structure or activity. Ramachandran discusses this as well.

Finally, as I mentioned, I like Damasio’s approach to consciousness, emphasizing things like body states and emotion.

That is what I would be more interested in discussing than astral projections of my true consciousness in some other dimension.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 19:43:23
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.

Naturalism presumes that nature is in principle completely knowable. There is in nature a regularity, unity, and wholeness that implies objective laws, without which the pursuit of scientific knowledge would be absurd. Man's endless search for concrete proofs of his beliefs is seen as a confirmation of naturalistic methodology. Naturalists point out that even when one scientific theory is abandoned in favour of another, man does not despair of knowing nature, nor does he repudiate the “natural method” in his search for truth. Theories change; methodology does not.

While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of developing a theistic naturalism.

Only rarely do naturalists give attention to metaphysics (which they deride), and they make no philosophical attempts to establish their position. Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it. There is nothing beyond, nothing “other than,” no “other world” of being.

Naturalism's greatest vogue occurred during the 1930s and '40s, chiefly in the United States among philosophers such as F.J.E. Woodbridge, Morris R. Cohen, John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and Sidney Hook.

Source :

    * MLA Style:   "naturalism." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.
    * APA Style:   naturalism. (2013). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/10/2014 20:07:45

Oh, please : don't play the creationist card .Don't use it as an exit strategy or tactic to get around the real issues at hand, which are  :

Lol.
I don't care what you call it Don, creationism, intelligent design, Natural Selection Denial, anti-Darwinism,  - the SA article addresses your complaints about evolution, as I have in the past. But you won't engage an discussion about specific points, so there's no point in providing any rebuttal.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 20:09:34
Cheryl :

Who said i am not interested in the physical reality then ? Am i some sort of a ghost or spirit with no physical body or physical brain ? with no interactions with the physical reality ? lol Come on .

Do i not live on earth ?  lol

I am just not interested in the materialist version of the nature of reality : not interested in the materialist version of science : that does not mean that i reject all what materialist science has been revealing so far regarding the physical reality  , needless to add : that's a nuance or a difference you're still not able to see , ironically enough , despite all those threads and posts i have been displaying on the subject , including those of this thread .

Don't you find that odd ?

I am interested in the fact that science has to progress through dealing with all those anomalies for which materialism can never account , in the fact that science must be liberated from materialism , in the fact that science has been held back by materialism , by getting imprisoned within the false materialist dogmatic belief system , in the fact that materialist science has been providing an approximately correct and fundamentally false version of the nature of reality , since science should be all about trying to deal with all the nature of reality with which it can deal , and not remain confined within the materialist false version of the nature of reality thus , otherwise science would  loose its credibility and relevance as a valid source of knowledge,and stagnate as a result  .

I have read and studied the works of a large number of materialist scientists , as well as those of non-materialist ones , not to mention that of PEAR .... .

You, guys , are the ones who can't seem to be able to get out of your materialist key hole box within which you have been deliberately confining yourselves .

Ironically enough , even the physical reality itself is shaped by consciousness , and even the objective empirical data can be changed, influenced and more  by consciousness : see above .

Enough discussing materialist dogmatism thus : i wanna discuss science that embraces both the material and the immaterial , that embraces the real nature of reality , the one level of it with which it can deal at least , science  whose methodology , epistemology and vocabulary that  cannot be restricted by any world view , not  dogmatic materialism thus .

I wanna discuss that real science , not dogmatic materialism or scientism :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/10/2014 21:08:16
Cheryl :

Sorry : no time left to reply to your above displayed posts .

See this great book that talks about all that materialist brainwash or non-sense in neuroscience : ( It cots about 21 $ , i can provide you with a link to download it for free , if you want to .All you have to do is ask+ other similar books and more .) :

http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless-Neuroscience/dp/0465018777/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414702986&sr=1-1&keywords=brainwashed+the+seductive+appeal+of+mindless+neuroscience
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 31/10/2014 00:38:14
how does your theory account for brain damage causing personality changes? Is personality not part of consciousness?

...Well, once again, consciousness has to express itself through the brain channels , so to speak ,since brain and consciousness are inseparable , so, when certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem to be reduced , altered or gone . The same goes for the loss of self-identity or personality ...through brain damage ...so.
<blather>

Vague, but I'll take that as a partial answer that suggesting that the brain handles those aspects.

OK, so we know that personality, identity, sense of self, memory, language, recognition, comprehension,  and all other recognisable attributes and adjuncts of what we usually recognise as consciousness can be significantly altered, disrupted, or destroyed by brain damage, in ways not consistent with the brain simply being a 'filter' (it must be doing more than filtering to be able to change your personality and behaviour) - and the suggestion is that they are things the brain does on behalf of this non-material consciousness.

So what is left for the non-material consciousness? it would seem to be nothing but an anonymous 'elan-vital', sans self, sans personality, sans identity; to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything".

The implication should be obvious - if it existed at all, it would be a waste of space. It would have no apparent functional contribution whatsoever; a redundant conceptual anachronism  [8D]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 31/10/2014 00:44:18
...One thing I would to know more about is how memories and other types of information are encoded in the brain. David Cooper points out that computers can do memory, they can process information; that is not consciousness and does not require it. Nevertheless, I think it is a primary reason some people have trouble believing that consciousness could be just a physical process carried out in the brain. They cannot imagine how something so abstract, and amorphous as a thought could be encoded and stored by cells or molecules, connections, or maps in the brain. Because images, ideas, thoughts, memories don’t seem “like" those things. For some reason people have no problem with information or images stored in zeros and ones in computers. Yet, there seems to be this unshakeable sense that our own memories or thoughts have to exist in some miniature, ephemeral, yet holistic format that resembles the way we experience them, not simply “code.” The Cartesian theatre will not die.
Perhaps they would be interested in some research that recorded brain activity in rats during learning a task, then chemically wiped that memory, and subsequently restored it by replaying the activity recording into the same brain pathways - demonstrating electronic storage of memory (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20590-rat-memory-restored-by-installing-replay-electronics.html#.VFLaUvmsV8E).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 31/10/2014 02:31:40
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.......

 

Well if Naturalism makes sense to you, I actually think you are in very good company.  Perhaps this will be of interest.

Moving Naturalism Forward
- Interdisciplinary Workshop
Sponsored by the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy and the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics, California Institute of Technology.

http://preposterousuniverse.com/naturalism2012/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 31/10/2014 02:57:54
...One thing I would to know more about is how memories and other types of information are encoded in the brain. David Cooper points out that computers can do memory, they can process information; that is not consciousness and does not require it. Nevertheless, I think it is a primary reason some people have trouble believing that consciousness could be just a physical process carried out in the brain. They cannot imagine how something so abstract, and amorphous as a thought could be encoded and stored by cells or molecules, connections, or maps in the brain. Because images, ideas, thoughts, memories don’t seem “like" those things. For some reason people have no problem with information or images stored in zeros and ones in computers. Yet, there seems to be this unshakeable sense that our own memories or thoughts have to exist in some miniature, ephemeral, yet holistic format that resembles the way we experience them, not simply “code.” The Cartesian theatre will not die.
Perhaps they would be interested in some research that recorded brain activity in rats during learning a task, then chemically wiped that memory, and subsequently restored it by replaying the activity recording into the same brain pathways - demonstrating electronic storage of memory (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20590-rat-memory-restored-by-installing-replay-electronics.html#.VFLaUvmsV8E).

That is impressive, really interesting. I also think optogenetics and other advances in neuron imaging will be helpful.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 31/10/2014 11:00:36
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.


This seems like a very complicated way of saying nothing at all. But then it is philosophy, after all.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 18:00:40
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.


This seems like a very complicated way of saying nothing at all. But then it is philosophy, after all.

Really ?

Science is naturalistic and is supposed to have a naturalistic methodology : that's what that article is all about : about the epistemology , methodology and philosophy behind science , where dualist , idealist and theistic naturalism are not excluded from science = idealist dualist and theistic naturalism can be also scientific naturalistic , not just materialism ,and hence there is also what can be called non-materialist science thus .

Naturalism that requires only that there is nothing other , nothing beyond nature : i see not why that last century naturalistic philosophy should be so ossified as to determin for science and scientists today or tomorrow what particular area of inquiry they should stick to and not cross : science that's all about free inquiry or should be so at least ,so, if scientists would discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature , why should science not explore that possibility freely then ?

Naturalistic science or scientific naturalistic methodology that are not exclusively materialistic = science does neither require materialism nor does it need to be materialistic = science is all about methodology , the naturalistic one that cannot be restricted by any world view like that of materialism .

PEAR has been extending the scientific methodology , as a response to all those consciousness -related anomalies for which materialism can never account , by trying to include the subjective in the scientific epistemology and methodology that can no longer remain just rational analytical empirical .

Empiricism must be extended as to integrate the subjective , since the subjective and the objective are inseparable = there is no such a thing as the independent -observer = consciousness shapes the physical reality ...and cannot thus be separated from it .

Better still , what we call reality is in fact just the product of the mutual interactions between consciousness and its environment ,where the active and proactive conscious agent plays a central role .

In this information age , only objective information can be quantified though , the subjective one is extremely difficult to quantify thus , but , the latter makes nonetheless an important and equal part of the information and must also be taken into consideration in science , if the latter wanna deliver a relatively accurate representation or reflection of the nature of reality .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 18:28:29
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.......

 

Well if Naturalism makes sense to you, I actually think you are in very good company.  Perhaps this will be of interest.

Moving Naturalism Forward
- Interdisciplinary Workshop
Sponsored by the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy and the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics, California Institute of Technology.

http://preposterousuniverse.com/naturalism2012/

That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus : that's just like implanting or replacing a missing component , or damaged tissue or damaged area of the brain by implants ,be it a device , a recording or whatever , no evidence for storage of memory in the brain : that's the deceptive simplistic naive realism  at work  : what you see is not what you get .

See ? You never seem to tire of claiming that non-materialist scientists , including PEAR , do design experiments as to confirm their expectations through confirmation bias : well , this above mentioned experiment is a clear example of materialistic confirmation bias , in the sense that since materialism assumes that consciousness and the mind , and their related memory ...are just brain activity , no wonder that they try to confirm that bias of theirs , by trying to "prove " that memory is stored in the brain, consciousness is encoded in or computed by the brain ...  lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 18:54:34
Cheryl : see the following :

"Brainwashed, The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience " : By Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld .

Epilogue:
MIND OVER GRAY MATTER :


Brain imaging, the iconic tool of neuroscience, finds itself at the
eye of a perfect storm of seduction.
 Riding one current is the glamour of a sophisticated and exciting new technology.
 Borne aloft on another is the brain itself, an organ of great moment and mystery.
On a third front floats an overly simplifi ed brain- to- behavior narrative,
all rendered in stunning biological portraiture. It is easy to see
how nonprofessionals, and an occasional expert, tossed by these powerful
swells, can get swept away.
We wrote this book to serve as an anchor. Our project is not a
critique of neuroscience or of its signature instrument, brain imaging.
It is foremost an exposé of mindless neuroscience: the oversimplifi cation,
interpretive license, and premature application of brain science
in the legal, commercial, clinical, and philosophical domains.1 Secondarily
but importantly, it is also a critique of the increasingly fashionable
assumption that the brain is the most important level of analysis for understanding human behavior, and that the mind— the psychological products of brain activity— is more or less expendable.
We are unreserved champions of neurotechnological progress.
We are certain that brain imaging techniques and other exciting
developments in neuroscience will further elucidate the relationship
between the brain and the mind. We deeply admire the neuroscientists
whose inquiries are yielding new discoveries and, perhaps soon,
much- needed treatments. In the preceding chapters, however, we
have tried to bring a circumspect view to real-world applications of
neuroscience and to speculations about where insights gleaned from
brain science may take our society. As we’ve seen, the illuminated
brain cannot be trusted to offer an unfi ltered view of the mind. Nor
is it logical to regard behavior as beyond an individual’s control
simply because the associated neural mechanisms can be shown to
be “in the brain.”
Scans alone cannot tell us whether a person is a shameless liar,
loyal to a product brand, compelled to use cocaine, or incapable of
resisting an urge to kill. In fact, brain- derived data currently add
little or nothing to the more ordinary sources of information we
rely on to make those determinations; mostly, they are neuroredundant.
At worst, neuroscientifi c information sometimes distort our
ability to distinguish good explanations of psychological phenomena
from bad ones.
We don’t foresee neuroscience prompting a legal revolution. We
agree with Stephen Morse that neuroscience will take its place along
with other sciences that had their moment in the courtroom: Freudian
analysis, behavioral psychology, the Chicago school of sociology,
and the promise of ge ne tic explanations. “The only thing different
about neuroscience,” according to Morse, “is that we have prettier
pictures and it appears more scientifi c. With the probable exception
of Freudianism, the other disciplines have indeed made courtroom
contributions to understanding why people act as they do. But they
have hardly supplanted the bread- and- butter tools of the law, such as
witness reports and cross- examination.
Neuroscientists cannot yet forge tight causal links between brain
data and behavior. Until they can shed light on the mea sur able attributes
that the law regards as important for culpability— who is and who isn’t responsive to reason— the rhetorical value of brain images will greatly outstrip their legal relevance.
Within the law, ascriptions of criminal and moral responsibility do not hinge on what caused the bad behavior, but on whether wrongdoers possessed sufficient rational capacity to have been influenced by foreseeable consequences and to alter their behavior accordingly. This is why it has
been said that “actions speak louder than images” in today’s courtrooms,
as well they ought to.
Brain- based explanations for excessive appetites and for social
behaviors that elide the crucial psychological, social, and cultural
levels of analysis fall into the trap of neurocentrism. Therefore, they
are virtually guaranteed to be impoverished explanations. Although
scientists can describe human behavior on a number of different
levels— the neuronal, the mental, the behavioral, the social— they
are not close to bridging the yawning gap between the physical and
psychological. The brain enables the mind and thus the person. But
neuroscience cannot yet, if ever, fully explain how this happens.
As brain science continues to permeate the culture, neuroliteracy
becomes ever more important. Neuroscience is one of the most important
intellectual achievements of the past half century, but it is
young and still getting its bearings. To demand the wrong things of
brain science, to overpromise on what it can deliver, and to apply its
technology prematurely will not only tarnish its credibility, it will
also risk diverting crucial and limited resources, including federal
funding for research, into less profi table ventures and blind alleys.
Skilled science journalists and bloggers, as well as neuroscientists
and phi los o phers who write for the public and neuroethicists (a hybrid
sort of scholar with training in both practical philosophy and
science), now see part of their jobs as protecting the integrity of neuroscience from the growing legion of brain overclaimers.
 Responsible translators of neuroscience encourage a healthy skepticism,
cautioning judges and policy makers in par tic u lar that brain activity
elicited under narrow experimental conditions cannot currently yield enough information to explain or predict human behavior in the real world, let alone inform the design of social policy.
Crucial lessons in neuroliteracy must also inculcate the importance
of distinguishing the questions that neuroscience is equipped
to answer from those that it is not. The job of neuroscience is to
elucidate the brain mechanisms associated with mental phenomena,
and when technical prowess is applied to the questions it can usefully
address, the prospects for conceptual breakthroughs and clinical
advances are bountiful. Asking the wrong questions of the brain,
however, is at best a dead end and at worst a misappropriation of
the mantle of science.
Recall neuroscientist Sam Harris, whom we cited early in this
book. “The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain,” he
wrote, “the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers
to questions of human values.”5 How so? Neuroscience can help
answer questions about the neural pro cesses involved in moral decision
making, but it is not at all evident how such discoverable facts
could ever constitute a prescription for how things should be. Surely,
empirical facts can help us act more effectively on our values— if we
want to rehabilitate prisoners more effectively, data on new therapies
are essential. And neuroscience may be able to offer guidance in this
regard. But whether we should jettison the practice of retribution on
moral grounds is not a question that science, neuroscience included,
can answer. Indeed, history is replete with feckless and at times
bloody attempts at social engineering through biology. Then and now,
it is a serious mistake to think that one can erect an ethical system
based on science alone; phi los o phers call this confusion between
“ought” and “is” the naturalistic fallacy.
Nonetheless, the great cultural authority of brain science renders it
vulnerable to conscription in the ser vice of one or another po liti cal or
social agenda. The framing of addiction as a brain disease to attract
more funding for research and better ser vices for drug abusers might
seem benign; in most cases it is surely well intentioned. But that
perspective sorely misrepresents the multilayered nature of addiction and
risks distracting clinicians from the most promising kinds of interventions.
The same is true to some extent for many other psychological
maladies (including psychopathy, the condition that likely affl icted
murderer Brian Dugan), which, although surely rooted in brain dysfunction
at some level, can be fully understood only by also accommodating
the idiom of motives, feelings, thoughts, and decisions.
Likewise, invoking brain science as a rationale for negating blame
and abandoning punishment practices is misguided. Neuroscience
itself is not a threat to personhood. It will help explain how human
agency works, but it will not explain it away. A strictly utilitarian
model of justice— one in which we punish people solely because
aversive stimuli make society work better, not because blame is truly
deserved— has its merits and its shortcomings, depending on your
view. But whether human beings who live in a material world can
also be moral agents is not a question that brain science can resolve.
Not unless, that is, investigators can show something truly spectacular:
that people are not conscious beings whose actions flow from
reasons and who are responsive to reason. True, we do not exert as
much conscious control over our actions as we think we do, but this
doesn’t mean that we are powerless.
In 1996, author Tom Wolfe penned a widely cited essay, “Sorry,
but Your Soul Just Died.” Neuroscience, he wrote, was on “the threshold
of a unifi ed theory that will have an impact as powerful as that
of Darwinism a hundred years ago.
 Almost two de cades later, the excitement surrounding neuroscience continues to grow, as well it should.
But the promise of a unifi ed theory in the foreseeable future
is an illusion. As with sociobiology and the genomic revolution—
two valuable conceptual legacies of Darwinism— we should extract
the wisdom neuroscience has to offer without asking it to explain all
of human nature.

In 2011, science writer David Dobbs recounted a sobering encounter
at a gathering of neuroscientists. He asked them, “Of what we need to know to fully understand the brain, what percentage do we know now? They all responded with fi gures in the single digits.
This humbling estimate will improve with time, of course.
Brain imaging will become more precise; new technologies are yet to be unveiled or even envisioned.
 Yet no matter how dazzling the fruits of inquiry or how clever the means by which they are obtained, it is our values that will guide us in implementing them for good or for bad.
The danger lies in muddling those values under the pretense of following
where neuroscience supposedly leads us.
To some neuroscientists and phi los o phers, you may be nothing
more than your brain— and of course, without a brain there is no
consciousness at all.
 But to you, you are a “self,” and to others you are a person— a person whose brain affords, at once, the capacity for decisions, the ability to study how decisions happen, and the wisdom to weigh the responsibilities and freedoms that these decision make possible.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 19:02:49
Naturalism :

Source : Encyclopædia Britannica ,Ultimate Reference Suite 2013 :

 In philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a detectable way.......

 

Well if Naturalism makes sense to you, I actually think you are in very good company.  Perhaps this will be of interest.

Moving Naturalism Forward
- Interdisciplinary Workshop
Sponsored by the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy and the Moore Center for Theoretical Cosmology and Physics, California Institute of Technology.

http://preposterousuniverse.com/naturalism2012/

You gotta be kidding me , Cheryl : materialists on naturalism ? : a joke :
Naturalism moving forward to be reduced to materialistic naturalism ?= scientism lol : See Britannica on naturalism, once again .

I wanted to download those video series from youtube on the subject , but , the moment i saw Dennett , Dawkins in it , i reconsidered lol

The latter figures are the most exclusive bigots fascists ever , who assume that science is "on their side " lol, come on .

They are perfect examples of scientism in science lol , the most narrow-minded versions of scientism ever .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 19:38:57
how does your theory account for brain damage causing personality changes? Is personality not part of consciousness?

...Well, once again, consciousness has to express itself through the brain channels , so to speak ,since brain and consciousness are inseparable , so, when certain areas of the brain are damaged , then certain aspects of consciousness seem to be reduced , altered or gone . The same goes for the loss of self-identity or personality ...through brain damage ...so.
<blather>

Vague, but I'll take that as a partial answer that suggesting that the brain handles those aspects.

OK, so we know that personality, identity, sense of self, memory, language, recognition, comprehension,  and all other recognisable attributes and adjuncts of what we usually recognise as consciousness can be significantly altered, disrupted, or destroyed by brain damage, in ways not consistent with the brain simply being a 'filter' (it must be doing more than filtering to be able to change your personality and behaviour) - and the suggestion is that they are things the brain does on behalf of this non-material consciousness.

So what is left for the non-material consciousness? it would seem to be nothing but an anonymous 'elan-vital', sans self, sans personality, sans identity; to paraphrase Shakespeare, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything".

The implication should be obvious - if it existed at all, it would be a waste of space. It would have no apparent functional contribution whatsoever; a redundant conceptual anachronism  [8D]

The physical brain is just a medium for consciousness , both ways : they are in fact inseparable and consciousness is the one that plays the central or key role in shaping the physical brain , not the other way around (see neuropalsticity or self-directed neuroplasticity at least ,neurofeedback...the effects of meditation , mindfulness , placebo/nocebo , beliefs ....on the brain and body through consciousness and uncosnciousness .) and on the rest of the physical reality .

What happens exactly when brain areas are damaged through injuries, traumas , brain diseases, mental illness, genetic defects ,stroke   ...so, all sorts of corresponding memory loss , loss of self-identity , loss of speech , and the rest take place ? : that 's still a big mystery for which the materialist production theory can never account  : consciousness-related anomalies , the mind -body mystery or hard problem in science , and other anomalies were /are and will be the ones that will be helping science to progress thanks to those anomalies' raw material : that's how science progresses when confornted with anomalies for which the prevailing wisdom cannot account for : see the history of science ...
That's the reason behind the birth of PEAR and behind the manifesto of this thread .

Neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness (It's good to know about the brain , how it works ...though ) , simply because consciousness and the mind are neither in the brain nor brain activity= these are just materialist extensions of the materialist dogmatic belief system in science , no empirical evidence , together with all those desperate materialistic attempts to confirm their materialistic expectations and bias through trying to "prove " that the mind is in or is computed by the brain, memory is stored in the brain ....in vain :

See the consciousness models that were developed by PEAR at least ,thanks to QM .

See what Carter said through all those prominent scientists regarding how consciousness shapes the physical reality , including the physical brain ...

The materialist model or theory of consciousness is false , so, we should try to find alternatives to that : PEAR and non-materialist scientists have been trying to do just that .

When Planck stumbled upon that anomaly that proved Newtonian physics to be approximately correct and fundamentally false , he or other scientists did not discard that evidence or just tried to sweep it under the carpet by sticking to the determinist classical mechanical world view , no matter what like you , guys , do regarding the false materialist world view in science that was built upon classical Physics , no , they moved on to give birth to ...QM .

That's what PEAR and non-materialist scientists have been doing to pave the way for the birth of the post-materialistic science where consciousness plays a central and key active and proactive role , where consciousness is inseparable from its physical reality with which it interacts , and which it shapes ...



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/10/2014 21:27:49
Cheryl :

Regarding neuroscience :

See an excerpt from this book here above : " Brainwashed : the seductive appeal of mindless neuroscience ." .

Not to mention that i have already posted an excerpt from "The spiritual Brain " and from " Brain wars " , i guess, by non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard + I have even offered you a link through which you could download his "Spiritual brain ..." audiobook for free , where he deals with all that materialistic production theory non-sense at the level of neuroscience and much more .

Regarding evolution :

I have already posted an excerpt from " Darwin's Doubt ..." By Stephen Meyer where you can also find out there about all those increasing numbers of even mainstream scientists who have been questioning some key tenets of Darwinism and much more  .

Not to mention the work of PEAR regarding consciousness related anomalies , and the works of many non-materialist scientists ...as the subject matter of this thread .

Or just watch : James A.Shapiro 's following lecture about his " Revisiting Evolution in the 21st century " book :


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 31/10/2014 22:57:04
That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus
Recent evidence (http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/june2014/06302014memories.htm) is consistent with, and strongly supportive of, that claim, if not conclusive. That, taken together with similarly supportive research results, including the rat memory experiments, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary and any plausible alternative hypothesis, means that the only reasonable position to take is the that memory is stored or encoded in the brain.

Of course, that position is provisional - if contrary evidence, and/or a plausible alternative hypothesis is forthcoming, the position can be reconsidered. That's how science operates - follow the evidence.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 31/10/2014 23:02:21
... That's what PEAR and non-materialist scientists have been doing to pave the way for the birth of the post-materialistic science where consciousness plays a central and key active and proactive role , where consciousness is inseparable from its physical reality with which it interacts , and which it shapes ...

Let PEAR go, Don, it's an interesting dud that failed replication. Like its namesake, it started unpromisingly, took a long time to ripen, then turned to mush when people tried to get serious with it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 31/10/2014 23:19:00
So the hypothesis is that consciousness is essential to the conduct of the physical universe. Therefore everything that has ever happened, anywhere, was driven by consciousness.

Now a lot of what goes on in the universe is inimical to life: black holes, stellar infernos, collapsing stars.... but it goes on. So either (a) consciousness is not a property of living things, or (b) living things can somehow make changes in distant galaxies, billions of years before living things existed.

If (a) then PEAR, Conan Doyle, and every other investigator of the paranormal, have been wasting their time playing with human subjects which can only introduce noise and bias into the system: they should be studying consciousness that is not embedded in the material, or the consciousness of rocks. If (b), their entire concept of causality is flawed because a conscious being may have affected the experiment some time before you even conceived of it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: jeffreyH on 01/11/2014 00:22:00
How do we know that the whole universe is not a single life form made of smaller components? That is galaxies, stars and planets. We are made of single cells unified into a larger organism all cooperating. We may be the equivalent of cell proteins. The womb is then the big bang singularity. The equivalent of DNA for universes creates the laws of physics for each new universe. There that's my theory. Bit like cosmic Gaia.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/11/2014 00:31:25
Cheryl :

Who said i am not interested in the physical reality then ?'......

........ that does not mean that i reject all what materialist science has been revealing so far regarding the physical reality  , needless to add : that's a nuance or a difference you're still not able to see , ironically enough , despite all those threads and posts i have been displaying on the subject , including those of this thread .

That's a completely disingenuous response. You've shown repeatedly no matter what the topic is, that you prefer the unproved mystical, immaterial explanation over a  physical one, even if that physical one is pretty obvious and straight forward, and has years and years of replicated evidence and models that make consistently make accurate predictions. I can't believe the way you bandy about the expression 'Occam's razor', because you will go to any length to shoe horn the immaterial into biological processes, even those without gaps in need of a God.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/11/2014 01:16:39


That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus : that's just like implanting or replacing a missing component , or damaged tissue or damaged area of the brain by implants ,be it a device , a recording or whatever , no evidence for storage of memory in the brain : that's the deceptive simplistic naive realism  at work  : what you see is not what you get .



No, that's  exactly the point Don. They didn't just interfere or block a process, anesthetize or damage part of brain, or even elicit certain behavior by tweaking a structure.  They coded the information in rat's memory and fed it back. "When fed scrambled versions of the code, the rats could no longer perform the task."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/11/2014 02:48:03
I can't believe the way you bandy about the expression 'Occam's razor', because you will go to any length to shoe horn the immaterial into biological processes, even those without gaps in need of a God.
And his methodology has scant chance of changing anytime soon. A dedicated scientist will weigh the results of the experiment and form his opinions based upon the resultant observations and change his opinion if a different interpretation is required. Don only chooses to believe those things which conform to his predisposed mystical persuasions and has proven to us all that he is not willing to budge from that platform.

A total waste of bandwidth..................................
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 17:51:19
That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus
Recent evidence (http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/june2014/06302014memories.htm) is consistent with, and strongly supportive of, that claim, if not conclusive. That, taken together with similarly supportive research results, including the rat memory experiments, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary and any plausible alternative hypothesis, means that the only reasonable position to take is the that memory is stored or encoded in the brain.

Of course, that position is provisional - if contrary evidence, and/or a plausible alternative hypothesis is forthcoming, the position can be reconsidered. That's how science operates - follow the evidence.

Oh, please , materialists following the evidence ? lol : you gotta be kidding me : materialists follow empirical evidence only whenever it would fit into their a-priori held materialist beliefs they have been taking for granted as "scientific " , come on , otherwise ,they would ignore it , deny it as such , or try to come up with theories , models or interpretations of the anomalous data , to get around the problem : see all those consciousness -related anomalies that are not only incompatible with the materialist production theory , but they have been also breaking its materialist dry neck lol

If materialists would really try to follow the evidence ,with scientific integrity and rigor ,  they will cease to be materialists , in the first place to begin with , since materialism has been proven to be false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related anomalies for which materialism can never account , let alone explain .

Those experiments have been providing no evidence whatsoever for the alleged memory storage in the brain : they just delivered interesting data that was materialistically mis-interpreted .


You , Mr. dlorde , and all those materialist scientists , including those who have conducted those experiments , are guilty lol  of simplistic naive unscientific realism in relation to the interpretation of the results or data of those above mentioned and other similar experiments , not to mention that they are guilty  lol of confirmation bias and more ,by intentionally and deliberately designing experiments as to confirm the materialist a-priori held belief assumptions on the subject : that's evidence enough for the fact that consciousness of the observer does shape the  interpretation or representation of the related  physical reality , through expectations, , confirmation and other bias : the observer and the observed are inseparable = there is no such a thing as the independent observer : our "reality " is just the product of the mutual interactions between consciousness and its environment ,and since the consciousnesses of materialist scientists are  shaped by materialism , consciously or unconsciouslty, no wonder that they try to design experiments in ways that would confirm their a-priori held materialist beliefs on the subject .

Have materialist scientists ever tried to falsify their production theory ? to see whether or not it can pass the tests , no , never : all those experiments of theirs were /are and will be designed as to try to corroborate or confirm their a-priori held materialist assumptions or beliefs on the subject .


Those experiments have delivered no conclusive evidence for memory storage in the brain , not even remotely close thus , once again :

You have to try to bridge the huge gap ( You cannot but fall through it lol ,poor lad ,  because there is no bridge in there , in the first place to begin with lol, just one in your imagination . ) between neurophysiological processes and mental states or subjective experiences , memory experiences ... untill you can do that = you will never be able to do that through materialism , ever thus , untill then , there can be no conclusive evidence for those scientists' claims regarding the alleged memory storage in the brain .

In other words : they should try to prove to us how quantitative neurophysiological processes can ever account for , let alone "produce ", qualitative mental states , subjective experiences , memory ....

Or as philosophers say : how can they jump from "is " to "ought " lol : the one does not lead to the other = They are incompatible .


Yeah, right : the only "reasonable position" to take is that memory is stored in the brain of course , since materialism a-priori assumes that consciousness ,the mind and their related memory are incoded in or computed by the brain = materialist confirmation bias ,in accordance with the materialist expectations on the subject .No wonder ...

If you would try to interpret that same data or the above mentioned experiments from a non-materialist perspective , the reasonable position to take regarding that is totally different :
The mind and consciousness + their related memories are neither in the brain, neither encoded in the brain nor computed by it , and hence ,there is no conclusive evidence regarding the materialist claim that memory can be or is  stored in the brain, since results of those experiments are no evidence for memory storage in the brain : the one does not lead to the other .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 18:07:17
Cheryl :

Who said i am not interested in the physical reality then ?'......

........ that does not mean that i reject all what materialist science has been revealing so far regarding the physical reality  , needless to add : that's a nuance or a difference you're still not able to see , ironically enough , despite all those threads and posts i have been displaying on the subject , including those of this thread .

That's a completely disingenuous response. You've shown repeatedly no matter what the topic is, that you prefer the unproved mystical, immaterial explanation over a  physical one, even if that physical one is pretty obvious and straight forward, and has years and years of replicated evidence and models that make consistently make accurate predictions. I can't believe the way you bandy about the expression 'Occam's razor', because you will go to any length to shoe horn the immaterial into biological processes, even those without gaps in need of a God.

( See the definition of naturalistic science or naturalistic methodology which are no exclusive synonymous of the materialist ones .Naturalistic science and methodology that can be non-materialistic also , and can even be theistic .Science that's all about methodology  and not about any particular world view or philosophy such as materialism .That's why PEAR , for example , developed an extended scientific naturalistic non-materialistic methodology and epistemology , not to mention vocabulary , that includes both the subjective and the empirical rational objectve in science .
I have been saying all the above and posting links and more about it , on many occasions , but , you behave as if i did not do that , by continuing to think and behave as if science cannot but be exclusively materialistic , and hence the whole universe cannot but be explained through material physical or biological processes only .)

You've got it all backward or upside down , Cheryl :

Post-materialistic science is all about embracing both the material and the immaterial in nature , since all those consciousness -related anomalies , to mention just those thus , have been proving materialism to be false , so, all materialist extensions of the materialist version of the nature of reality have been proven to be approximately correct and fundamentally false , including the materialist production theory and the rest, which means that the nature of reality is thus not exclusively material physical or biological , and hence material, biological  or physical processes alone cannot account for the nature of reality , let alone for  that of consciousness , memory , the mind ....

The rest of your post is irrelevant thus .

It's only through stumbling upon anomalies that science can progress by challenging the prevailing scientific wisdom of the moment , remember : see the history of science then , or just that major one regarding the birth of QM that has proven the classical determinist mechanical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built , to be approximately correct and fundamentally false ,and hence even QM has been proving materialism to be fundamentally false thus , despite all materialistic denials and gymnastics on the subject .

P.S.: I am looking ,as we speak, so to speak, for a certain link to a certain PDF whose  scientific content might turn out to be the dethroning of the materialist standard model of quantum field theory through reviving the old -new aether theory empirically : I will post that to our friend dlorde here below .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/11/2014 18:30:25
You , Mr. dlorde , and all those materialist scientists , including those who have conducted those experiments , are guilty lol  of simplistic naive unscientific realism in relation to the interpretation of the results or data of those above mentioned and other similar experiments...<blah>
As usual, no attempt to address the evidence presented or make a coherent argument; just unsupported assertion and bluster. It's a bit sad really.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 18:42:23
So the hypothesis is that consciousness is essential to the conduct of the physical universe. Therefore everything that has ever happened, anywhere, was driven by consciousness.

Now a lot of what goes on in the universe is inimical to life: black holes, stellar infernos, collapsing stars.... but it goes on. So either (a) consciousness is not a property of living things, or (b) living things can somehow make changes in distant galaxies, billions of years before living things existed.

If (a) then PEAR, Conan Doyle, and every other investigator of the paranormal, have been wasting their time playing with human subjects which can only introduce noise and bias into the system: they should be studying consciousness that is not embedded in the material, or the consciousness of rocks. If (b), their entire concept of causality is flawed because a conscious being may have affected the experiment some time before you even conceived of it.

Ironically enough ,of all the very few people here who have been so generously, interestingly and gracefully ,  participating to this thread , by sharing  some of their time , energy , knowledge and more , you , alancalverd , are the one who should know about the active and proactive central role of consciousness in shaping the physical reality , as a quantum physicist , aren't you ? ,was it not for materialism that has been  blinding you and clouding your scientific capacity of judgment and analysis , integrity , rigor .

As a materialist scientist , you are yet another  living proof of the fact that consciousness that gets shaped by world views such as materialism , consciously or unconsciously , is the one that shapes the physical reality,and that what we call the physical reality is just the product of the mutual interactions between consciousness and its environment where the former plays a central role in shaping the latter ,consciousness as an active and proactive agent  .

I hope that you can realise that fact by now . Thanks . Nice weekend .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 18:51:39
You , Mr. dlorde , and all those materialist scientists , including those who have conducted those experiments , are guilty lol  of simplistic naive unscientific realism in relation to the interpretation of the results or data of those above mentioned and other similar experiments...<blah>
As usual, no attempt to address the evidence presented or make a coherent argument; just unsupported assertion and bluster. It's a bit sad really.

What evidence ? Those are interesting experiments , but , they offer no conclusive evidence for the alleged storage of memory in the brain ...: that data is a matter of interpretation thus .

Only when you assume that consciousness and the mind +their related memories ...are encoded in or computed by the brain that you can make that unbridgeable leap or jump .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 18:57:35
dlorde :

The old-new revived aether theory in physics is on its way to dethrone the materialist standard model of quantum field theory : see this on the subject : New emprical experiments have proved the existence of aether : there is thus no empty space : aether is like a light-conductor fluid :

Physicists have been working on that , and it might take some generations to finish that work :

Secrets of the Aether by David W. Thomson.

This book sells on amazon.com .
Google search gives away a link to a free ebook version. I'd say grab it while you can.


Structures of the Aether:

The books' cover  is the Aether Unit. The "surface of distributed frequency” represents by the double sphere, and relates to electrostatic charge. Forward, linear time is but one aspect of quantum frequency. Forward time and space come together when dark matter enters the rotating magnetic field of the Aether, and produces the subatomic particles of visible matter. Subatomic "particles" exist at various levels of geometry. Mass has circular geometry. The electrostatic charge is spherical in geometry. The strong charge (or electromagnetic charge) has toroidal geometry. All physical existence comes together in the Aether, which has double loxodrome geometry.

Source: "Secrets of the Aether" by David W. Thomson.

eBook found online here: http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FDavid_Thomson%2Fpublication%2F233814697_Secrets_of_the_Aether%2Flinks%2F09e4150bd19786c5fb000000&ei=HAxSVNbzMeH6ygOG04DYDg&usg=AFQjCNFi1c46DgLbgsNiJPJs42L94pytTA&sig2=BUNocND3VBXEFS_9iNdA8g
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 19:15:26


That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus : that's just like implanting or replacing a missing component , or damaged tissue or damaged area of the brain by implants ,be it a device , a recording or whatever , no evidence for storage of memory in the brain : that's the deceptive simplistic naive realism  at work  : what you see is not what you get .



No, that's  exactly the point Don. They didn't just interfere or block a process, anesthetize or damage part of brain, or even elicit certain behavior by tweaking a structure.  They coded the information in rat's memory and fed it back. "When fed scrambled versions of the code, the rats could no longer perform the task."

So what ? That's no conclusive evidence for the alleged memory storage in the brain : the one does not necessarily lead to the other : those recordings are not memory itself , just its translated brain activity : see the difference ?

It's the same as when you damage a tv set or a radio device ,so they cease to broadcast sounds and/or images ,and then when you replace the damaged components in them by new or similar ones , they work again properly : does that mean that those devices used to produce those sounds and/or images ? = just an analogy = a material one at that , that is .

Life memory at least is a qualitative subjective non-physical process : how can the quantitative neurophysiology produce or store the subjective qualitative memory in the brain then ? How can you make that extraordinary jump ,leap or gymnastics from the quantitative to the subjective qualitative then ? , unless you are a materialist magician of course lol  who assumes a -priori that the human "machine ", or life in general,  is just like a computer or a machine : the latter materialist metaphors regarding the nature of life are false , so ... since machines or computers do lack many unique features and properties , capacities and more of ...life .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/11/2014 19:20:50




Those experiments have been providing no evidence whatsoever for the alleged memory storage in the brain : they just delivered interesting data that was materialistically mis-interpreted .

So what's the correct interpretation of what happened in that experiment? How do you explain what occurred with your non-material, non-local model of consciousness? How did they manage to code memories from the rat's brain, if memories were not encoded in the rat's brain? That doesn't really sound like a matter of interpretation. They either did it or they didn't.

Quote


Have materialist scientists ever tried to falsify their production theory ? to see whether or not it can pass the tests , no , never : all those experiments of theirs were /are and will be designed as to try to corroborate or confirm their a-priori held materialist assumptions or beliefs on the subject .
It wasn't because of any a-priori belief. If they had gotten a different result - if the scrambled code had the same result, for example, the experiment would have had an entirely different conclusion.
Quote
If you would try to interpret that same data or the above mentioned experiments from a non-materialist perspective , the reasonable position to take regarding that is totally different :


Be my guest.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 19:23:18
Try to record the memories , or rather their translated brain activity , of some species , including those of humans , and let us hear and watch them then on some sort of a screen . lol

Recordings of neuronal patterns, or neuronal chemical and electrical brain activity ,  of memory are not memory itself ,just its neurophysiological translations , so to speak, just their chemical and electrical brain activity  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/11/2014 19:33:46


That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus : that's just like implanting or replacing a missing component , or damaged tissue or damaged area of the brain by implants ,be it a device , a recording or whatever , no evidence for storage of memory in the brain : that's the deceptive simplistic naive realism  at work  : what you see is not what you get .



No, that's  exactly the point Don. They didn't just interfere or block a process, anesthetize or damage part of brain, or even elicit certain behavior by tweaking a structure.  They coded the information in rat's memory and fed it back. "When fed scrambled versions of the code, the rats could no longer perform the task."

So what ? That's no conclusive evidence for the alleged memory storage in the brain : the one does not necessarily lead to the other : those recordings are not memory itself , just its translated brain activity : see the difference ?


No, you're wrong Don. It wasn't just "brain activity" or some instinctive behavioral response. As the article says, it was the ability to operate the levers in the correct sequence - something they learned, something they couldn't do before. And they did it with the code, and not without.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 19:51:24
... That's what PEAR and non-materialist scientists have been doing to pave the way for the birth of the post-materialistic science where consciousness plays a central and key active and proactive role , where consciousness is inseparable from its physical reality with which it interacts , and which it shapes ...

Let PEAR go, Don, it's an interesting dud that failed replication. Like its namesake, it started unpromisingly, took a long time to ripen, then turned to mush when people tried to get serious with it.

That's a matter of vision or lack of it , a matter of either accepting the evidence or not , a matter of interpretation or perspective in relation to  the consciousness -related anomalies that have been challenging the current materialist science : PEAR's work can be compared to that of Planck, metaphorically speaking (just a metaphorical analogy thus )   =  will be paving the way for the birth of a new non-materialist science,as Planck paved the way for the birth for the revolutionary QM that superseded the approximately correct and fundamentally false Newtonian physics upon which materialism was built , ironically enough  :

You still do not get the core essence of PEAR's work ,dlorde, that challenges the materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " (That's mainly why it is rejected by mainstream science .No wonder .No surprises there . That's no reason for me to reject it , on the contrary thus )  : the subjective and objective information are inseparable = the subjective and the objective are inseparable = the observer and the observed are inseparable = what we call the physical reality is just the product of the inseparable mutual interactions of consciousness with its environment where consciousness does play a central key active and proactive role in shaping its environment  = the universe is not impersonal , as materialist science wanna make people believe it is = the universe is personal = interconnected = there is no such a thing as the independent observer = the observer and the observed are inseparable = scientific naturalistic rational analytical empiricism must be extened as to include the subjective information that's inseparable from the rational objective one= scientific naturalistic methodology and epistemology must be extended in accordance with the above , not to mention its vocabulary  .


PEAR itself acknowledged the fact that it is extremely difficult to replicate some specific experiments of theirs , because of their almost impossible to quantify subjective information part ,since the subjective and the objective are inseparable .

Try to quantify your conscious subjective inner life and experiences then in their inseparable and mutual interactions with your environment then .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 20:00:26


That's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic claim that memory can be stored or encoded in the brain , not even remotely close thus : that's just like implanting or replacing a missing component , or damaged tissue or damaged area of the brain by implants ,be it a device , a recording or whatever , no evidence for storage of memory in the brain : that's the deceptive simplistic naive realism  at work  : what you see is not what you get .



No, that's  exactly the point Don. They didn't just interfere or block a process, anesthetize or damage part of brain, or even elicit certain behavior by tweaking a structure.  They coded the information in rat's memory and fed it back. "When fed scrambled versions of the code, the rats could no longer perform the task."

So what ? That's no conclusive evidence for the alleged memory storage in the brain : the one does not necessarily lead to the other : those recordings are not memory itself , just its translated brain activity : see the difference ?


No, you're wrong Don. It wasn't just "brain activity" or some instinctive behavioral response. As the article says, it was the ability to operate the levers in the correct sequence - something they learned, something they couldn't do before. And they did it with the code, and not without.

I know : new learned memorized skills : the recordings of their related brain activity or of their related neurophysiological chemical and electrical activity are not that new acquired memory itself , just its electrical chemical neurophysiological translations : see the difference ? .

So, one cannot jump from that to the conclusion that memory is stored in the brain : the one does not lead to the other : logical fallacy , to say the least .

Otherwise , try to record some of my memories lol , and show them to me on a screen in real life as i have experienced them , to the last detail, , including their sounds smells , colors , images , tastes , joy ,sadness and the rest lol

Some of my memories are not pretty to watch ,smell, hear , taste , feel , pciture , see , imagine , ......though lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 20:05:50
dlorde :

See a serious challenge to the standard model of quantum field theory here above , and do , please , tell me about it , since i am not that into or at least not versed in QM .

Maybe ,our quantum physicist here alancalverd can do that instead .Thanks .Nice weekend to you all .

Here below  is that particular  link ,once again :

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FDavid_Thomson%2Fpublication%2F233814697_Secrets_of_the_Aether%2Flinks%2F09e4150bd19786c5fb000000&ei=HAxSVNbzMeH6ygOG04DYDg&usg=AFQjCNFi1c46DgLbgsNiJPJs42L94pytTA&sig2=BUNocND3VBXEFS_9iNdA8g
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/11/2014 20:10:03
The old-new revived aether theory in physics is on its way to dethrone the materialist standard model of quantum field theory : see this on the subject : New emprical experiments have proved the existence of aether : there is thus no empty space : aether is like a light-conductor fluid : ... Secrets of the Aether by David W. Thomson.
If this theory is consistent with the available evidence, explains everything that the existing theories explain, and has more explanatory and/or predictive power, or is simpler, it is likely to eventually be adopted.

The fact that it is at least 10 years old and hasn't been taken up or even aroused significant interest suggests that it doesn't meet those criteria. There are thousands of people proposing ideas outside the mainstream - they can't all be right, but maybe he'll turn out to be the one in thousands that is. I wish him luck - new ideas that work are always welcome.

However, I fail to see what it has to do with your ham-fisted appeals to mysticism.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/11/2014 20:40:31
PEAR itself acknowledged the fact that it is extremely difficult to replicate some specific experiments of theirs , because of their almost impossible to quantify subjective information part ,since the subjective and the objective are inseparable .
Wow, that's classic Special Pleading - last recourse of the desperate. One wonders how you can be so sure it wasn't the other experiments that showed no effects that were the valid ones. If you accept every experiment that show anomalous results, even if replications fail to show those results, you'll end up with a cupboard full of contradictory results that you're obliged to accept. Oh wait - you can just ignore the ones that don't agree with your pre-existing belief system. Right on.

OK, whatever; you carry on believing in the PEAR fantasy while the rest of us continue in the real world.  Good luck with that.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/11/2014 21:49:54
dlorde :

Sorry , almost no time left but for the following ,very quickly then :

I - There was no mysticism involved in what i was saying : our reality is psycho-physical where consciousness is inseparable from its environment and physical brain and body ,and where it does play a central key active and proactive role in shaping it .

II - That aether theory seems to involve the role of consciousness in the physical reality ....I have to try to read that related PDF ,so .

Maybe, our mate alancalverd   here can help in telling us about the relevance or lack of it of that eather theory .

P.S.: PEAR is  a fantasy only according to materialists , since it challenges the materialist mainstream "scientific world view " .

Thanks, guys  .Nice weekend .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 02/11/2014 00:48:49
Gee, for something that can't be done or doesn't exist, scientists seem to be making rather good progress with it.

This looks interesting:
Real-time neural coding of memory.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17925242
Abstract

Recent identification of network-level functional coding units, termed neural cliques, in the hippocampus has allowed real-time patterns of memory traces to be mathematically described, intuitively visualized, and dynamically deciphered. Any given episodic event is represented and encoded by the activation of a set of neural clique assemblies that are organized in a categorical and hierarchical manner. This hierarchical feature-encoding pyramid is invariantly composed of the general feature-encoding clique at the bottom, sub-general feature-encoding cliques in the middle, and highly specific feature-encoding cliques at the top. This hierarchical and categorical organization of neural clique assemblies provides the network-level mechanism the capability of not only achieving vast storage capacity, but also generating commonalities from the individual behavioral episodes and converting them to the abstract concepts and generalized knowledge that are essential for intelligence and adaptive behaviors. Furthermore, activation patterns of the neural clique assemblies can be mathematically converted to strings of binary codes that would permit universal categorizations of the brain's internal representations across individuals and species. Such universal brain codes can also potentially facilitate the unprecedented brain-machine interface communications.


or

Organizing principles of real-time memory encoding: neural clique assemblies and universal neural codes
http://www2.gsu.edu/~rosan/Lin_Osan_Tsien_Trends_Neurosciences_2006.pdf

Or this

Neural coding for the retrieval of multiple memory patterns
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264706000712
Abstract


We investigate the retrieval dynamics in a feature-based semantic memory model, in which the features are coded by neurons of the Hindmarsh–Rose type in the chaotic regime. We consider the retrieval process as consisting of the synchronized firing activity of the neurons coding for the same memory pattern. The retrieval dynamics is investigated for multiple patterns, with particular attention to the case of overlapping memories. In this case, we hypothesize a dynamical nontransitive mechanism based on synchronization, that allows for a shared feature to participate in multiple memory representations. The problem of the choice of a cognitive plausible time-scale for the retrieval analysis is investigated by analyzing the information that can be inferred from finite-time analyses. Different types of indicators are proposed in order to evaluate the temporal dynamics of the neurons engaged in the retrieval process. We interpret the simulation results as suggestive of a role for chaotic dynamics in allowing for flexible composition of elementary meaningful units in memory representations.


Sparse coding
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Sparse_coding
Mammalian brains consist of billions of neurons, each capable of independent electrical activity. Information in the brain is represented by the pattern of activation of this large neural population, forming a neural code. The neural code defines what pattern of neural activity corresponds to each represented information item. In the sensory system, such items may indicate the presence of a stimulus object or the value of some stimulus parameter, assuming that each time this item is represented the neural activity pattern will be the same or at least similar.....

Abstract
The hippocampus and declarative memory: cognitive mechanisms and neural codes
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432801003655

It is widely accepted that the hippocampus and related brain areas mediate declarative (or explicit) memory in humans. However, little is known about the fundamental cognitive mechanisms of hippocampal dependent memory or about the nature of hippocampal neural representations that underlie properties of declarative memory. Here, it is proposed that the hippocampus plays a critical role, when distinct personal experiences must be encoded in relation to one another and linked within an organization that supports flexible, inferential memory expression. This set of fundamental cognitive mechanisms is consistent with key properties of declarative memory as observed in humans. Furthermore, emerging evidence from recordings of hippocampal neural activity shows that hippocampal networks encode episodic memories as sequences of events and the places, where they occur. In addition, hippocampal neuronal networks encode events and places that are common across related episodes. This combination of coding properties suggests that the hippocampus contributes to declarative memory by mediating the construction of a ‘memory space’ composed of a network of linked episodic representations.

Exploring the neural coding in behaving animals by novel optogenetic, high-density microrecordings and computational approaches: Towards cognitive Brain-Computer Interfaces
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/102559_en.html


Information theory and neural coding
http://www.cnd.mcgill.ca/~ivan/neuro%20information%20theory/BorstTheunissen99.pdf
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/11/2014 13:10:34
Gee, for something that can't be done or doesn't exist, scientists seem to be making rather good progress with it.

Thanks for those links Cheryl, some interesting stuff there I hadn't seen.

Although I'm not as confident as the authors about this aspiration: "...In addition, activation patterns of the neural clique assemblies can be converted to strings of binary codes that would permit universal categorizations of internal brain representations across individuals and species". I can see the possibility of broad categorizations, but limited specificity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 02/11/2014 14:39:05
If consciousness has a role in shaping events, we need to explain why the double-slit experiment gives the same result regardless of who makes the observation or how they do it. The only explanation can be that every observer's consciousness is the same, so either every person, strip of film, photomultiplier, and electron cascade amplifier shares the same consciousness, or consciousness is invariant between material objects and all-pervasive, which rather suggests that it is of material origin and by no means an emergent property of anything. Frankly, I prefer the suggestion that "self-interference" happens, whether anyone observes it or not.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/11/2014 17:53:21
If consciousness has a role in shaping events, we need to explain why the double-slit experiment gives the same result regardless of who makes the observation or how they do it. The only explanation can be that every observer's consciousness is the same, so either every person, strip of film, photomultiplier, and electron cascade amplifier shares the same consciousness, or consciousness is invariant between material objects and all-pervasive, which rather suggests that it is of material origin and by no means an emergent property of anything.
Yes. I find ideas of panpsychism eliminate functionalist descriptions and explanations of consciousness by redefining it as something independent of particular physical properties, moving it out of the physical into the solely metaphysical.

It leaves unanswered questions about the nature of what we used to call consciousness - what we see in the more complex living things and not in inanimate things and less complex living things, that seems to vary according to complexity & sophistication; and it doesn't explain why there is such a close relationship between this and the organisation and complexity of the brain, and why its various observable attributes seem to be so specifically localised in the brain. 

 
Quote
Frankly, I prefer the suggestion that "self-interference" happens, whether anyone observes it or not.
You and me both.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/11/2014 18:33:07
alancalverd, dlorde :

I- What do you think about that PDF regarding the eather theory in physics ? : Is it based on solid physics and maths or not ? You can get that PDF for free through the above displayed links .Normally it costs about $ 75 on amazon.com,so .

It asserts that there is an underlying non-material  5th and more fundamental than the rest force in nature that's behind keeping the universe together and that permeates everything from elementary particles all the way up to the macro -universe . A force that's huge : if that non-physical underlying force does exist : how can that it's not been accounted for by the standard model of quantum field theory ? How could it not be detected ? since it seems to be the most significant force of them all in nature by far .

II - See how Robert Lanza has developed his biocentrism theory that's based on the central role of consciousness and life in the universe :

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/biocentrism/

III- Many physicists think otherwise in relation to the double slit experiment and its related collapse of the wave function ,including PEAR , including the manifesto of this thread , and including many quantum physicists such as Amit Goswami and others .

IV- How can you quantify the subjective information of memory , consciousness ...? since materialism assumes that they are encoded in or computed by the brain .

Cheryl :

Consciousness , the mind and their related memories are non-physical processes+ non-local , and hence they are neither in the brain nor are they the product of brain activity : so , searching for consciousness , the mind , memories ... in the brain is a dead -end street : neuroscience will never be able to explain consciousness , the mind , memories ...thus : it can only try to study how the brain works , how the mind ,consciousness, memories ...work through it , but can never tell us much , if anything at all, about either the nature of consciousness, that of the the mind , or that of memories ...

Otherwise , tell me how the subjective information of our inner lives , subjective experiences , subjective memories can be encoded in or computed by the brain ?

Thanks for those above displayed links of yours by the way .

They can calculate the brain activity all they want,that will not tell us much , if anything at all , about the nature of consciousness, the mind , memories , imagination, intelligence , inner life , creativity ... ( I have  read a scientific article about supercomputers that take 20 mns to calculate just 1 sec of brain activity ,and even if the capacity of those computers gets improved  exponentially through quantum supercomputers,that would tell us only about how the brain relatively works .)

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/11/2014 19:49:43
Cheryl, dlorde : You're gonna like the following , but , don't jump to premature conclusions yet :

" Mind-Reading Device Invented By Scientists To Eave-drop On ...Inner voice lol :


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11199031/Mind-reading-device-invented-by-scientists-to-eavesdrop-on-inner-voice.html



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 02/11/2014 22:19:04



IV- How can you quantify the subjective information of memory , consciousness ...? since materialism assumes that they are encoded in or computed by the brain .


You use the word subjective like it's some trump card, a barrier you are 100% certain we will never be able to cross. You are more than willing to accept any "indirect" evidence of psi - that doesn't bother you in the least - but indirect and replicable evidence of subjective experience is outlandish to you. This is despite the fact that we've already made considerable progress. A mere 50-60 years ago, Behaviorists said most of mental activity couldn't be studied, because it couldn't be observed or measured - only behavior was suitable subject matter for science. That has changed with neuro-imaging and ingenious study designs, like those of Ramachandran's, who proved that subjective experiences like synesthesia were real sensory phenomena. We are starting to decode the language of neurons. We can reconstruct the visual images of things a person is looking at with surprising accuracy. All of this was once considered an impossibility because it was "subjective" internal human experience. And the technology just keeps getting better and better.

Quote

Consciousness , the mind and their related memories are non-physical processes+ non-local , and hence they are neither in the brain nor are they the product of brain activity :

Well, that's your theory, but not most scientist's. Tell me how this non local, immaterial consciousness interfaces with matter. Tell me what field or particle carries the information in your consciousness or immortal soul from place to place. If you are proposing something like this, as Carroll pointed out in his lecture, you are not simply "adding" something extra to what is already known about physics - the standard model would  actually have to be wrong, almost all of it, and there's just too much evidence that it's not. Which is not to say that someone is not free to chuck science completely out the window and believe whatever he likes. But you can't hedge your bets anymore, and say okay, physics is right about certain things but there's still room for souls, and telekinesis -I can make machines generate certain numbers with my thoughts,and see into the future, and read minds, etc. No, you can't, and dark matter and aether will not help you do it.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/11/2014 22:50:54
alancalverd, dlorde :

I- What do you think about that PDF regarding the eather theory in physics ? : Is it based on solid physics and maths or not ? You can get that PDF for free through the above displayed links

I speed-read the document, and though I can't comment on the quality of the mathematical physics (not my forte), they claim testability only through a couple of simple tests of magnetic properties, which may make it falsifiable. Nevertheless, proof of the pudding will come in the eating - if it really does a better  job than the Standard Model, it's different enough that it should be fairly obvious (although I don't see it, and nor, apparently do most other people actually working in the field). The suggestion of infinite free energy being available doesn't inspire confidence [:o)].

However, the discussion section on 'Ontological Foundation' (pp.27-28) is ful of misleading and apparent misunderstandings of current theory, and the 'Philosophy' section covering Orgonomy, Health & Healing, Form & Beauty (e.g. geometric numerology  [:o)]), God (Universal Mind of God  [::)]), Consciousness, Truth, War & Peace, etc., is so full of dippy mystic woo, that I have very little confidence that the physics of this aether theory is likely to be sound. A solid theory doesn't need a smokescreen of distracting nonsense.

I'll be convinced when they verifiably out-predict the current model, or when I see an aether physics free energy generator running over-unity.

Other than that, it was a waste of five minutes of life I'll never get back. Thanks.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 18:42:05
alancalverd, dlorde :

I- What do you think about that PDF regarding the eather theory in physics ? : Is it based on solid physics and maths or not ? You can get that PDF for free through the above displayed links

I speed-read the document, and though I can't comment on the quality of the mathematical physics (not my forte), they claim testability only through a couple of simple tests of magnetic properties, which may make it falsifiable. Nevertheless, proof of the pudding will come in the eating - if it really does a better  job than the Standard Model, it's different enough that it should be fairly obvious (although I don't see it, and nor, apparently do most other people actually working in the field). The suggestion of infinite free energy being available doesn't inspire confidence [:o)].

However, the discussion section on 'Ontological Foundation' (pp.27-28) is ful of misleading and apparent misunderstandings of current theory, and the 'Philosophy' section covering Orgonomy, Health & Healing, Form & Beauty (e.g. geometric numerology  [:o)]), God (Universal Mind of God  [::)]), Consciousness, Truth, War & Peace, etc., is so full of dippy mystic woo, that I have very little confidence that the physics of this aether theory is likely to be sound. A solid theory doesn't need a smokescreen of distracting nonsense.

I'll be convinced when they verifiably out-predict the current model, or when I see an aether physics free energy generator running over-unity.

Other than that, it was a waste of five minutes of life I'll never get back. Thanks.

OK, thanks anyway . See this : they say that the maths in that book are correct , and that the physics is not only consistent with the standard model, but also presents a paradigm shift :

Regarding the link below : when you get redirected to it , just go to the left side and click on the secrets of the aether , because whenever i try to post its direct url , i get the message that i have used a black listed term, whatever the latter  might be :

http://www.16pi2.com/



http://softaether.blogspot.com/

https://sites.google.com/site/qadi16pi2//home/secrets-of-the-aether

The standard model of quantum field theory cannot but be approximately correct and fundamentally false anyway ,simply because it cannot account for consciousness that's a key component or a key "building block " of the universe .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 03/11/2014 18:42:37
alancalverd, dlorde :

I- What do you think about that PDF regarding the eather theory in physics ? : Is it based on solid physics and maths or not ? You can get that PDF for free through the above displayed links .


As you have read it, and I have a business to run and a life to lead, perhaps you can tell us in not more than 100 words what it explains that is not explained by any other theory, and what it testably predicts.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 03/11/2014 18:45:30

...... consciousness that's a key component or a key "building block " of the universe .

An assertion that has no foundation or demonstration, other than as a deliberate misinterpretation of "observation" in some oversimplistic descriptions of quantum mechanics and indeterminacy.   
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 19:07:27

...... consciousness that's a key component or a key "building block " of the universe .

An assertion that has no foundation or demonstration, other than as a deliberate misinterpretation of "observation" in some oversimplistic descriptions of quantum mechanics and indeterminacy.


Many prominent physicists ' interpretations of QM , through the double slit experiment , for example, say that consciousness does play a central and key role in shaping the physical reality , not to mention Von Neumann school , almost all founders of QM , many modern physicists ...  :

Materialists cannot but deny that fact , since they assume that consciousness is a material process , a product of the brain :

So, consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of the universe :

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/05/01/scientific-study-shows-meditators-collapsing-quantum-systems-at-a-distance/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 19:09:42
alancalverd, dlorde :

I- What do you think about that PDF regarding the eather theory in physics ? : Is it based on solid physics and maths or not ? You can get that PDF for free through the above displayed links .


As you have read it, and I have a business to run and a life to lead, perhaps you can tell us in not more than 100 words what it explains that is not explained by any other theory, and what it testably predicts.

I have already talked about that aether theory : see the above displayed links on the subject in my reply to dlorde
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 19:23:00
10 Scientific Studies That prove Consciousness Can Alter Our Physical Material World :

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/03/08/10-scientific-studies-that-prove-consciousness-can-alter-our-physical-material-world/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 19:44:29
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443591#msg443591 date=1414966744]



IV- How can you quantify the subjective information of memory , consciousness ...? since materialism assumes that they are encoded in or computed by the brain .


You use the word subjective like it's some trump card, a barrier you are 100% certain we will never be able to cross. You are more than willing to accept any "indirect" evidence of psi - that doesn't bother you in the least - but indirect and replicable evidence of subjective experience is outlandish to you. This is despite the fact that we've already made considerable progress. A mere 50-60 years ago, Behaviorists said most of mental activity couldn't be studied, because it couldn't be observed or measured - only behavior was suitable subject matter for science. That has changed with neuro-imaging and ingenious study designs, like those of Ramachandran's, who proved that subjective experiences like synesthesia were real sensory phenomena. We are starting to decode the language of neurons. We can reconstruct the visual images of things a person is looking at with surprising accuracy. All of this was once considered an impossibility because it was "subjective" internal human experience. And the technology just keeps getting better and better.

Just answer the question , please :

How can one quantify the subjective information ? How can the quantitative neurophysiology produce the subjective qualitative mental states , memories , inner experiences by "storing them in the brain , via  encoding them or computing them " = quantifying them ?

The related brain activity of consciousness , memories , the mind , ....are not the latter themselves : the former is just the result of the latter working through the brain .

Quote

Consciousness , the mind and their related memories are non-physical processes+ non-local , and hence they are neither in the brain nor are they the product of brain activity :

Quote
Well, that's your theory, but not most scientist's. Tell me how this non local, immaterial consciousness interfaces with matter. Tell me what field or particle carries the information in your consciousness or immortal soul from place to place. If you are proposing something like this, as Carroll pointed out in his lecture, you are not simply "adding" something extra to what is already known about physics - the standard model would  actually have to be wrong, almost all of it, and there's just too much evidence that it's not. Which is not to say that someone is not free to chuck science completely out the window and believe whatever he likes. But you can't hedge your bets anymore, and say okay, physics is right about certain things but there's still room for souls, and telekinesis -I can make machines generate certain numbers with my thoughts,and see into the future, and read minds, etc. No, you can't, and dark matter and aether will not help you do it.

I-Consciousness -related anomalies studies  have proved consciousness to be a non -physical and a non-local process, that's mainly why there is an urgent need of a new post-materialistic science ,as the subject matter of this thread  .

II- One particular interpretation of quantum theory says that consciousness collapses the wave function instantaneously without any transfer of energy whatsoever .

III- What we call reality is psycho-physical = matter and mind are inseparable = 1 , so ,there is no interface between matter and mind ,since they are inseparable , and since there is no separate matter or separate mind as such .

IV- The standard model of quantum field theory cannot but be approximately correct and fundamentally false , since it cannot account for the central and key component or "building block " of the universe : consciousness as the anomaly that breaks the neck of that standard model , together with that of materialism  .

V- The aether theory in physics is not new , it goes all the way back to the 19th century , and it have been proved to exist empirically ,finally :

"The Aether Field Exists : Just as it had been predicted !!

Michelson and Morley Interferometer experiment failed due to lack of equipment . US Air Force repeated the experiment in 1986 and discovered that the field actually exists . Not only that, The field measured the same way Michelson and Morley predicted !! Our Science was wrong all along !!!

Checkout for yourself : E.W Silvertooth , " Special Relativity ," Nature Magazine Vol 322 (August 1986): p.590 ."




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment


http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/michelsonmorley.html


http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.hasslberger.com%2Fdocs%2FAETHER_FURTHER_PROOF-THIS_CHANGES_THE_GAME-3.pdf&ei=rd5XVKbcBuPlsASB2YKIDA&usg=AFQjCNE2SBQEZg9qPHb86epxlUNYT8Jzeg





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/11/2014 22:40:38
See this : they say that the maths in that book are correct , and that the physics is not only consistent with the standard model, but also presents a paradigm shift :
Well they would, wouldn't they?

Quote
Regarding the link below : when you get redirected to it , just go to the left side and click on the secrets of the aether...
Nah. If you want to discuss or argue something, go ahead - make your argument (and an argument isn't just the assertions you usually make). You're welcome to post links for reference to the points you argue, but I'm not just going to follow links for the hell of it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/11/2014 22:49:48
IV- How can you quantify the subjective information of memory , consciousness ...?
...
How can one quantify the subjective information ?
Tononi's  'Integrated Information Theory (http://www.biolbull.org/content/215/3/216.full)' of consciousness covers this. Look for the section called 'A Mathematical Analysis: Quantifying Integrated Information'.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/11/2014 23:01:11
So, consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of the universe :

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/05/01/scientific-study-shows-meditators-collapsing-quantum-systems-at-a-distance/
The study quoted there was a mess (Dean Radin again - why am I not surprised?); the results don't jibe with the experiment described (http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/mind-matter-interaction-at-distance-effects-on-a-random-event-generator-reg.1307/page-2#post-36786).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/11/2014 04:20:24

Just answer the question , please :

How can one quantify the subjective information ? How can the quantitative neurophysiology produce the subjective qualitative mental states , memories , inner experiences by "storing them in the brain , via  encoding them or computing them " = quantifying them ?


Well, that's not one question, it's several. But "subjective" doesn't mean totally off limits as far as science is concerned.

Synthesia is not an important or significant neurological phenomena. But it was once considered totally subjective. Patients came to Ramachandran and said they saw, for example, numbers as colors. He said, do you mean that metaphorically, as in the number 5 seems like it is "yellowish" or because you played with colored, magnetic letters on a board when you were first learning to read and the number 5 was yelllow?

No, they said. When I see the number 5, I see the color yellow.

You can't prove what someone else says they are experiencing. You don't know if they are lying or imagining something. But he figured out a test. He showed them a field with scattered 5s and 2s and other numbers all in black ink. The fives made a triangle on a background of 2s and other numbers. A normal person would have to look really hard for several minutes to see it. They'd have to hunt really hard for the 5's. But a person with synesthesia would spot the triangle in seconds, just like anyone else would if the 5's were actually a different color.  That is an example of an experimental design that can prove a totally subjective experience is real, without someone physically experiencing the same thing themselves.

That is how the subjective can be proven, but it is probably of little interest to you since it doesn't involve anything magical or mystical.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 04/11/2014 11:32:08
The contention that the human mind can affect matter (unlikely) is quite different from the assertion that all quantum phenomena require consciousness to initiate them (ridiculous).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 18:17:21

Just answer the question , please :

How can one quantify the subjective information ? How can the quantitative neurophysiology produce the subjective qualitative mental states , memories , inner experiences by "storing them in the brain , via  encoding them or computing them " = quantifying them ?


Well, that's not one question, it's several. But "subjective" doesn't mean totally off limits as far as science is concerned.

Synthesia is not an important or significant neurological phenomena. But it was once considered totally subjective. Patients came to Ramachandran and said they saw, for example, numbers as colors. He said, do you mean that metaphorically, as in the number 5 seems like it is "yellowish" or because you played with colored, magnetic letters on a board when you were first learning to read and the number 5 was yelllow?

No, they said. When I see the number 5, I see the color yellow.

You can't prove what someone else says they are experiencing. You don't know if they are lying or imagining something. But he figured out a test. He showed them a field with scattered 5s and 2s and other numbers all in black ink. The fives made a triangle on a background of 2s and other numbers. A normal person would have to look really hard for several minutes to see it. They'd have to hunt really hard for the 5's. But a person with synesthesia would spot the triangle in seconds, just like anyone else would if the 5's were actually a different color.  That is an example of an experimental design that can prove a totally subjective experience is real, without someone physically experiencing the same thing themselves.

That is how the subjective can be proven, but it is probably of little interest to you since it doesn't involve anything magical or mystical.

When you mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon earlier on , i went on to look it up again in Ramachandran's " The tell tale brain " book : I have some  books of his , videos , lectures ...
The man is a brilliant  neuroscientist , but , his main problem is that he , like the rest of materialist scientists , reduces everything , including consciousness and its related phenomena and qualia , to just material processes ,while they are irreducible to the latter : he mistakes the neural correlates of consciousness and its qualia , memory , ...for the latter, like the man who mistook his wife for a hat lol (I love Oliver Sacks books by the way )  .

I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .

Mainly artists do have that : some  even see sounds , hear colors , taste images ....think in images , forms ...

Einstein, for example , was known about his developed imagery imagination , that 's why , maybe , he said : " Imagination is more important than knowledge " .He knew that first hand of course .Without imagery creative imagination, he could not have come up with his famous theories .

Imagination that's behind many scientific discoveries ,behind many  great  works of art and music ,  literature ...

Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself lol , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain  and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities  ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where  the story was  told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head and hence suffered from almost the same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's  detailed mapping of those specific  damaged regions  of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain exercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore  overcome her disabilities ... :

http://www.barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com/  ).

In that above mentioned Doidge's book thus ,  some great neuroscientists who were early pioneers regarding neuroplasticiy, self-directed neuroplasticity ... like Michael Merzenich and Edward Taub did deliver some amazing insights on the subject by proving that when some areas of the brains of some patients are damaged ,and then , they loose the capacity of speech , sight , or even balance, touch .....that  they can be trained as to make the brain replace those damaged areas by other healthy ones : the damaged auditory system can be taken over by the olfactory system ,for example ...(there is an amazing story of a woman who felt that she was always falling .She had no sense of balance .She always fell . From what i can recall from that story is that she underwent some sort of a surgery , earlier on, where a certain drug was prescribed to her that  did cause those nasty side effects by infecting her cochlea and the rest of her auditory system , and then her auditory region in the brain was no longer working , i guess. Merzenich "fixed" that by replacing her  damaged cochlea by a device that relied on her sense of taste through training her to literally hear through her tongue by connecting her tongue to that implanted artificial cochlea,and so ,  her damaged auditory system in the brain were taken over by her olfactory system ...something like that .) , which means that sensory systems can get mixed up with each other , get replaced by each other to deliver the same function if one of them gets damaged ...

The damaged auditory system can be taken over by the olfactory one , or overlap with it, the same goes for other sensory systems  ...that's how i understand synesthesia , i don't know .


https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/557215-the-brain-that-changes-itself-stories-of-personal-triumph-from-the-fron

http://www.normandoidge.com/

But , that's not what i was talking about anyway .

I was just asking you to tell me how one can quantify the subjective information , since materialists assume that they can turn the activity of certain neural correlates of consciousness regarding the speech ability and visual memory.... into their original  words and images .

I see dlorde here above referring me to a certain integrated information theory on the subject the content of which i will have to take a close look at , later one .

I do not see how subjective information can be quantified though , subjective information that 's about meaning , purpose ,easthetics ,ideals , values , morality , ethics ....

How can one quantify the latter ?

Let's dlorde   here try to quantify for us the subjective smell of a flower , the wonder , beauty , ecstacy ....we experience while watching a sunset , while listening to nice music , while watching a breath-taking piece of landscape , while experiencing love , joy , sadness , ....



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 19:01:13
dlorde :

Tesla was a real genius : he predicted, among many other scientific achievements of his ,  that neutrinos traveled  faster than the speed of light , as he believed in the existence of aether through which he tried to explain the laws of physics ,including gravity, and hence disagreed with Einstein. CERN did discover that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of  light , for example : see this and the related short video here below :

"Classical physics sees the force of gravity as some type of almost magical attractive force between stars and planets. Ether theory has a totally different view. The reason we fall back to the Earth when we jump up is not this mystical force of gravity, but rather it is because the Earth is constantly absorbing a tremendous amount of ether to keep all of its elementary particles spinning. We are just in the way of this influx. This view explains what gravity is, and also explains Tesla's seemingly odd statement that the Sun is absorbing more energy than it is radiating. The more you think about it, the more this seemingly nutty idea makes perfect sense. The Sun requires a gargantuan amount of etheric energy to keep it's integrity.
Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said they have clocked neutrinos travelling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity -- the famous E (equals) mc2 equation -- just doesn't happen . . .
CERN now reports that they've clocked neutrinos exceeding the speed of light."
:



The Aether Field  Does Exist :

The most famous failed experiment ever : the  Michelson and Morley Interferometer experiment has been replicated by the US air force in 1986 with success ,and published in the prestigious Nature scientific magazine :

That changes everything in physics :


"The Aether Field Exists : Just as it had been predicted !!

Michelson and Morley Interferometer experiment failed due to lack of equipment . US Air Force repeated the experiment in 1986 and discovered that the field actually exists . Not only that, The field measured the same way Michelson and Morley predicted !! Our Science was wrong all along !!!

Checkout for yourself : E.W Silvertooth , " Special Relativity ," Nature Magazine Vol 322 (Augest 1986): p.590 "


How come the standard model does not account for that ?

Extended Michelson-Morley Interferometer experiment. English version :

See the extra info below the video :


P.S.: I will take a look at your above displayed links, later on .Thanks .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/11/2014 19:11:21
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=52526.msg443710#msg443710
When you mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon earlier on , i went to look it up again in Ramachandran's " The tell tale brain " book : I have some  books of his , videos , lectures ...
The man is a brilliant  neuroscientist , but , his main problem is that he , like the rest of materialist scientists , reduces everything , including consciousness and its related phenomena and qualia , to just material processes....

I'd argue that he's not a reductionist at. But regardless, it's not a "problem" unless you don't get any kind of a solution at all, or completely unexpected results that can't be explained by your theory. If I can figure out how photosynthesis works without somehow incorporating plate tectonics (or angels or God or the possible consciousness of plants) or into my experimental design, why is it necessary for me to do that? What can I reasonably leave out as not relevant to the specific question I am asking?

Quote
Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain  and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities  ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where  the story was  told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head suffered from almost same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's  detailed mapping of the damaged regions  of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain excercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore  overcome her disabilities ...).


I think those events actually make a lot more sense from a neuroscience perspective than one involving immaterial consciousness. If most or even part of the brain is still functioning adequately, and if neuroplasticity happens (eg cells can form new connections with practice) why shouldn't it be possible for the brain to self diagnosis a problem and do things to try to fix itself or compensate for the damaged area. That's essentially what learning is, even in non-damaged brains.

But if consciousness is some indivisible entity that just "is," what mechanism would allow it to fix part of itself? Or - why should it matter what percentage of the brain, or which areas are still functioning, if immaterial consciousness can just jump in there and fix and transform whatever it needs to? That only makes sense from an anatomical/physiological perspective.

The examples you give, about rewiring sensory systems, or one part of the brain compensating for another, actually appear to contradict the argument you are making.






Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/11/2014 19:17:56
The more you think about it, the more this seemingly nutty idea makes perfect sense.

I think I'm going to have that statement engraved on something. Maybe embroider it on to a wall hanging or a pillow.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 19:45:40
The contention that the human mind can affect matter (unlikely) is quite different from the assertion that all quantum phenomena require consciousness to initiate them (ridiculous).

Actually :

I- It's no secret to any one of us that consciousness can shape or alter the physical reality at will : see how some thoughts or ideas have been changing and revolutionizing science itself, technology , societies , cultures and all the rest of human activity and history : it all starts with ideas in the head , oh lol, or rather in the mind through mutual interactions with the environment via the sensory systems to the brain to the mind and back and more .

How do you think science works ? through the work of our atoms ? lol , through upward deterministic mindless mechanical causation , instead of through that downward non-mechanical causation of the mind that shapes reality and gets influenced by it  through upward causation ?

Do your atoms, molecules , cells , organs, ...make you type what you do through your physical brain , that materialist deterministic mechanical mindless way ?

See how you ,as a human being , a scientist , a lover , and maybe a father ....can shape and alter and get influenced by your environment through your mindful decisions and actions .

II- The double slit experiment , or quantum theory, or just 1 particular interpretation of it , revolutionized our classical or conventional conception of the nature of reality and matter : our reality is just the product of the mutual interactions between consciousness , unconsciousness and their related environment , including the brain and body : the mind or consciousness do intervene actively and proactively in the physical reality by shaping it ,and by getting influenced by it .

Most of what we call the physical reality thus is just a representation or reflection of our minds : that's why Von Neumann , for example, said that the measurement paradox or problem in QM takes place in the ...mind .

And since the whole universe is quantum "mechanical " in the non -Von Neumann sense , where consciousness plays  a central active and proactive role in shaping the physical reality through non-mechanical instantaneous energyless downward causation, and gets influenced by its environment through upward causation , then why should consciousness not be able to alter or shape the physical reality at all levels , including at the macro one ?

Otherwise , how can you account for , let alone explain, the above and all those consciousness -related anomalies , not to mention psi-phenomena , including remote viewing ....

All materialist physiological and psychological "explanations " of the above have been refuted .

Some say that even our bodies are just projections of our minds : the holographic notion of the universe :

Evidence That the Human Body is a Projection of Consciousness :

http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/proof-human-body-projection-consciousness.html

P.S.: How can the standard model of quantum field theory account for the existence of aether ? The latter that seems to be the most  fundamental field or force of them all , and that seems to be able to explain all what the standard model explains  and also account for and explain what the standard model can neither explain nor account for ? : can explain and account for gravity , electro-magnetism and the rest better than the standard model also...

The eather that seems to underlie all laws of physics ,and seems to permeate everything from the elementary particles of the micro -world  all the way up to the macro-universe  : there is thus no empty space or vacuum , to say the least thus .

The authors of "The secrets of the aether " also assert , through solid maths and physics , some say , i don't know, that are consistent  with what the standard model says , that the the non-material aether field that underlies all the rest has even a huge force that holds the whole universe together .

How could the standard model not account for or detect that huge force or field then ? since it asserts that there are no significant or relevant forces or fields left to be discovered ,and hence it rules out the existence of psi and other consciousness -related anomalies .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 20:32:01
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443713#msg443713 date=1415128281]
Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=52526.msg443710#msg443710
When you mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon earlier on , i went to look it up again in Ramachandran's " The tell tale brain " book : I have some  books of his , videos , lectures ...
The man is a brilliant  neuroscientist , but , his main problem is that he , like the rest of materialist scientists , reduces everything , including consciousness and its related phenomena and qualia , to just material processes....

I'd argue that he's not a reductionist at. But regardless, it's not a "problem" unless you don't get any kind of a solution at all, or completely unexpected results that can't be explained by your theory. If I can figure out how photosynthesis works without somehow incorporating plate tectonics (or angels or God or the possible consciousness of plants) or into my experimental design, why is it necessary for me to do that? What can I reasonably leave out as not relevant to the specific question I am asking?


I am talking here only about the many consciousness -related anomalies studies that have proved consciousness to be an irreducible to matter or to material processes phenomenon ,so, don't introduce your usual straw man arguments or red herrings in this discussion , by telling me about photosynthesis ...

And yes, Ramachandran is a reductionist materialist , a deluded one who reduces everything , including consciousness, the mind , memories , ...to just material processes , unfortunately enough , despite his brilliant work from which i have been learning a lot .Too bad for his brilliant mind he has been reducing to just deterministic mechanical mindless material processes, ironically enough .

And yes, consciousness has a downward non-mechanical causation , an instantaneous energyless one (see how even CERN had discovered that even neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light , by violating Einstein's assumptions on the subject . Why can't consciousness work through entanglement , for example , i mean in the same way entangled particles do or even better ?by a non-mechanical instantaneous energyless action  ) .

Finally , don't mistake the neural correlates of consciousness, the mind and their related qualia, memories ...for the latter , as materialists do , don't mistake your husband for a hat lol


Quote
[
Quote
quote]
Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain  and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities  ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where  the story was  told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head suffered from almost same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's  detailed mapping of the damaged regions  of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain excercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore  overcome her disabilities ...).


I think those events actually make a lot more sense from a neuroscience perspective than one involving immaterial consciousness. If most or even part of the brain is still functioning adequately, and if neuroplasticity happens (eg cells can form new connections with practice) why shouldn't it be possible for the brain to self diagnosis a problem and do things to try to fix itself or compensate for the damaged area. That's essentially what learning is, even in non-damaged brains.
[/quote]

How ? through materialist inexplicable deterministic mechanical mindless magic ?

Are you the one who learns ,or do your physical brain and atoms through upward deterministic mechanical mindless causation do the work for you ?

There is what can be called downward causation and upward causation : see my post to alancalverd on the subject .

Quote
But if consciousness is some indivisible entity that just "is," what mechanism would allow it to fix part of itself? Or - why should it matter what percentage of the brain, or which areas are still functioning, if immaterial consciousness can just jump in there and fix and transform whatever it needs to? That only makes sense from an anatomical/physiological perspective.

Don't be illogical or inconsistent incoherent :

Consciousness works through healthy brains ,both ways , through upward and through non-mechanical downward causation (= consciousness shapes its environment , including brain and body , through downward non-mechanical causation ,and gets influenced by its environment through the senses to the brain to the mind via upward causation thus )  and hence can't "flow " or express itself through damaged areas of the brain : it can though make the brain's anatomy or structure and physiology change as to take over the functions of some damaged areas of the brain through mindful informed insights , ideas or knowledge and action through the power of the informed determined will : that explains and accounts for all what the materialist production theory cannot either explain or account for like : meditation, mindfulness, placebo , neurofeedback , the power of belief , and other effects .



Quote
The examples you give, about rewiring sensory systems, or one part of the brain compensating for another, actually appear to contradict the argument you are making.

That's a matter of interpretation or  perspective :

The informed determined mind through the power of the will actions can explain that better in fact , through brain exercises or mental training ,... and actions.

If Barbara Arrowsmith Young was not determined and passionate enough about and if she did not believe in the possibility of overcoming her own disabilities through the informed insights she gleaned from the work of Luria  ,as willingly and actively to try to develop brain or mental exercises  that enabled her to change her brain , do you think that her brain would have done all that by itself , if she was lacking that power of the will and knowledge , that determination, that strong belief in the possibility of healing ...?

Come on, get real, Cheryl : we are no mindless determined powerless mechanical computers , machines or robots driven by upward causation , no hardware driven by software : we have a powerful consciousness that both shapes the physical reality, including brain and body ,via non-mechanical downward causation,  and gets  influenced by that upward causation = our "reality " is mostly mental = a product of the mutual "interactions" between consciousness and its environment , including the physical brain and physical body , where consciousness plays a central downward role in shaping them , and gets influenced by them via upward causation .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 20:54:13
dlorde, alancalverd :

What do you say about the real and major "hidden variable " whose existence has been discovered and proved as such ? : the aether field .That's a real and major game changer , see above .

There is thus no empty space or vacuum .

CERN had also discovered that there is 'something " that can travel faster than the speed of light , after all : neutrinos , to mention just that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 04/11/2014 23:31:50
I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .
You might be interested to know that there are two areas of the brain (different levels of sensory processing) where colour processing areas are adjacent to the areas processing numbers; in people with number/colour synesthesia, it has been show that in one or other of these areas there is abnormal activity - i.e. when the number area is active, activity can be detected in the adjacent colour area. In other words, there appears to be abnormal crosstalk between these areas. This is thought to be due to connections between them not being pruned as usual during early development (when the vast connectivity of the early brain is massively pruned down as different areas become more specialised).

Quote
Let's dlorde   here try to quantify for us the subjective smell of a flower , the wonder , beauty , ecstacy ....we experience while watching a sunset , while listening to nice music , while watching a breath-taking piece of landscape , while experiencing love , joy , sadness , ....
Why? how do you think quantifying these sensations is going to help your unsupportable assertions?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 04/11/2014 23:52:28
Tesla was a real genius : he predicted, among many other scientific achievements of his ,  that neutrinos traveled  faster than the speed of light , as he believed in the existence of aether through which he tried to explain the laws of physics ,including gravity, and hence disagreed with Einstein. CERN did discover that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of  light , for example : see this and the related short video here below ...
Tesla didn't say that (http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/09/26/no-tesla-did-not-predict-faster-than-light-neutrinos/), and if he did think some known particle travelled FTL, he was wrong. There was some brief excitement three years ago when an experiment measured faster than light neutrino speed - the researchers appealed for help to discover the reason for this, and after 6 months of thorough investigation and testing, two equipment flaws were found. Meanwhile, an independent measurement showed neutrinos behaving as expected. You could have discovered this for yourself just by reading the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly), but you couldn't even do that minimal research.

If you have any sensible questions about what I've posted up to now, I'll consider them; if you want to make a coherent argument, make it and I'll consider it. Apart from that, I've had my fill of your lazy assertions and careless links.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 05/11/2014 00:47:58

CERN had also discovered that there is 'something " that can travel faster than the speed of light , after all : neutrinos , to mention just that .

It turned out, as I suggested, to be a faulty wiring connection. Boring engineering, not bombshell physics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 05/11/2014 00:59:25

II- The double slit experiment , or quantum theory, or just 1 particular interpretation of it , revolutionized our classical or conventional conception of the nature of reality and matter


Less of the "our" if you please. Some of us had a proper scientific education and were brought up knowing that quantum mechanics degenerates to classical mechanics on a large scale, but classical mechanics doesn't turn into quantum mechanics on a small scale. So what? It may have been news 100 years ago, but it's elementary school stuff nowadays, and far from "revolutionising" anything, it merely explained a number of puzzling observations.

I've never understood why philosophers get so excited about old ideas, such as quantum mechanics and relativity, that educated people take for granted.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2014 18:53:16
New Scientist : Time to Turn Cause and Effect on their Heads :  :

The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis :

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VFpxsWfvZ-w
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 05/11/2014 22:17:28
New Scientist : Time to Turn Cause and Effect on their Heads :  :

The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis :

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VFpxsWfvZ-w
Yes, top-down causation is a very useful way to view the influence of large-scale or emergent effects on the smaller scales in many systems. It can often radically simplify analysis compared to bottom-up approaches. They are complementary views; you choose according to the context. So what?

I hope you don't think the article is somehow questioning causality itself, because it isn't; you'll need to learn a lot more about quantum mechanics before you can get involved in that debate.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/11/2014 17:53:15
I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .
You might be interested to know that there are two areas of the brain (different levels of sensory processing) where colour processing areas are adjacent to the areas processing numbers; in people with number/colour synesthesia, it has been show that in one or other of these areas there is abnormal activity - i.e. when the number area is active, activity can be detected in the adjacent colour area. In other words, there appears to be abnormal crosstalk between these areas. This is thought to be due to connections between them not being pruned as usual during early development (when the vast connectivity of the early brain is massively pruned down as different areas become more specialised).



He goes a step further and explains that just as cross activation in the angular gyrus may be responsible for the sensory experiences like synesthsia, cross activation between other brain areas may be the mechanism behind analogy and metaphors, how we can understand qualitative similarities between very different objects or events.  The ability to understand metaphor can be selectively lost in certain neurological disorders, even though other things like memory or vocabulary remain intact, and people become very literal minded. Even if you tell them something is a proverb or saying, they can only give you a literal interpretation of something like "All that glitters is not gold" or "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."
Ramachandran sees cross activation as a mechanism behind other kinds of imagination and creativity, which Don claims cannot happen in a deterministic brain. Excessive and uncontrolled cross activation might be the cause of bizarre associations in disorders like schizophrenia.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 18:05:55
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443775#msg443775 date=1415225848]
New Scientist : Time to Turn Cause and Effect on their Heads :  :

The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis :

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VFpxsWfvZ-w
Yes, top-down causation is a very useful way to view the influence of large-scale or emergent effects on the smaller scales in many systems. It can often radically simplify analysis compared to bottom-up approaches. They are complementary views; you choose according to the context. So what?

Well,mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation, so, materialist science has been delivering a distorted version of the real world (an understatement thus )  : that's what that article is all about .

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I hope you don't think the article is somehow questioning causality itself, because it isn't; you'll need to learn a lot more about quantum mechanics before you can get involved in that debate.

Ho, ho , hold your wild horses , cowboy :

0- I have just brought that article up , in order to show you that even a mainstream materialist scientist does talk about his  own materialist version of top-down causation, since mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation .

Since there is what can be called top-down causation, after all (we don't need that scientist to know that fact ) , why not assume that consciousness must be the one that's been responsible for that top-down causation  mainly and not the brain , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false ?

Not to mention that complex systems do indeed have another kind of top-down causation in relation to their sub-systems indeed ,so, why can consciousness not have a top-down causation in relation to its physical environment , including brain and body ?

I-It never crossed my mind that causality could be questioned (how can science exist , let alone function ,without causation ? ) : i did talk about upward and downward or top-down causation , in my previous posts , didn't i ? The top-down causation i was referring to was quite different from that of the above mentioned article though indeed .

II- There is also what can be called non-mechanical causation , that of consciousness that's a non-physical process thus ,which means that the materialist production theory regarding mind and brain that's just an extension of materialism is thus also false , since materialism is false .

III- The materialist interpretation of quantum theory and the materialist standard model of quantum field theory ,regarding the nature of reality are in fact approximately correct and fundamentally false , since materialism is false , thanks to all those consciousness -related anomalies .
Not to mention the fact that some physicists even say that there is what can be called the most fundamental field of them all : aether which is a non-material field .

P.S.: Even your beloved Caroll says in one of his videos that it is an embarrassment to science that physicists still can't resolve that interpretation or measurement paradox in QM , while you have been making it sound , together with our alancalverd , that the interpretation dilemma or paradox of quantum theory was already solved.






Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 18:25:57
dlorde : See the following : What i call voodoo materialism : magical materialism or materialist new age lol ;


An integration of integrated information theory with fundamental physics :

Adam B. Barrett .

    Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00063/full

Adam B.Barrett tries here to explain what he calls his own reformulation or "improvement " of that integrated information theory regarding the origin nature and function of consciousness you referred to , earlier on , in the sense that consciousness as information  is just a property of matter : property materialism , or rather property dualism like that of David Chalmers,a kindda materialist panpsychism : materialism desperately flirting with dualism, ironically enough .

I thought that materialism says that all is matter ,including the mind .Now, materialists say there is also what can be called information that's just a property of matter that originates from the physical fundamental fields such as electromagnetism : all power plants must be not only conscious , but , conscious exactly like us lol .

Consciousness arises thus from the so-called intrinsic information of the fundamental physical fields , such as  electromagnetism or gravity , from fundamental energy fields : a kindda materialist version of new age lol .

What about the most fundamental field of them all : the aether field that's non -material then ?

The materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , so, materialists cannot but try to come up with such extraordinary or ridiculous or highly speculative theories or models that would fit into materialism, instead of confronting the evidence regarding the intrinsic false nature of materialism : pathetic , not to say tragic-hilarious .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 06/11/2014 18:57:11
Can you name a nonmaterial object that is provably conscious?

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Even your beloved Caroll says in one of his videos that it is an embarrassment to science that physicists still can't resolve that interpretation or measurement paradox in QM , while you have been making it sound , together with our alancalverd , that the interpretation dilemma or paradox of quantum theory was already solved.

The so-called "paradox" lies not in nature, which behaves consistently, but only in the fact that we use two different mathematical models to predict what it will do. It isn't a paradox at all, just a statement that neither model is complete. So what? Both are good enough, which is the best you can say of any model. I have no idea what you are going to eat at your next meal, but I am pretty sure that you will eat, and it will contain either meat or vegetable protein. Paradox, or just a statement that I don't know your food preferences? 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 19:24:49
I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .
You might be interested to know that there are two areas of the brain (different levels of sensory processing) where colour processing areas are adjacent to the areas processing numbers; in people with number/colour synesthesia, it has been show that in one or other of these areas there is abnormal activity - i.e. when the number area is active, activity can be detected in the adjacent colour area. In other words, there appears to be abnormal crosstalk between these areas. This is thought to be due to connections between them not being pruned as usual during early development (when the vast connectivity of the early brain is massively pruned down as different areas become more specialised).



He goes a step further and explains that just as cross activation in the angular gyrus may be responsible for the sensory experiences like synesthsia, cross activation between other brain areas may be the mechanism behind analogy and metaphors, how we can understand qualitative similarities between very different objects or events.  The ability to understand metaphor can be selectively lost in certain neurological disorders, even though other things like memory or vocabulary remain intact, and people become very literal minded. Even if you tell them something is a proverb or saying, they can only give you a literal interpretation of something like "All that glitters is not gold" or "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."
Ramachandran sees cross activation as a mechanism behind other kinds of imagination and creativity, which Don claims cannot happen in a deterministic brain. Excessive and uncontrolled cross activation might be the cause of bizarre associations in disorders like schizophrenia.

I have read that part,some of it at least  : cross-activation ,instead of cross-wiring of the related neural correlates in question .

If you only  , once , just once , would try to look at all the above from the non-materialist perspective , in the sense that consciousness , the mind and their related subjective inner lives and experiences , creativity ...are non-physical processes that rely on their related physical neural correlates , you would see all that from a totally different perspective or angle  , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related phenomena , but , if you prefer to stick to the materialist false theory of consciousness , no wonder that you would agree with  Ramachandran's interpretations on the subject .

Well, as a reductionist materialist neuroscientist , Ramachandran  cannot but reduce consciousness, the mind, memory , synesthesia , creativity , imagination, metaphors, intelligence , aesthetics , the subject inner life in general , and the rest  ...to just neurophysiological processes , that does not mean that he's right : don't take his word for it : that's a matter of interpretation .
That's an argument from authority , sis .You mistake Ramachandran's interpretations for the real thing : you just take his word for it : use your mind then : don't mistake consciousness, the mind and their related processes for their related neural correlates : don't mistake the tree for the forest , so to speak .

How can neurophysiological processes account for all that ? Absurd .

Once again, consciousness or the mind and their related subjective inner lives or experiences , creativity , intelligence , aesthetics , imagination , meaning ....do work through the brain as their physical medium, both ways : they need a healthy physical brain to do that , so, if some related areas  of the brain or if some related neural correlates are damaged , are not functioning properly ....their consciousness , mind ...correlates can't but express themselves accordignly , since they rely on the brain , that does not mean that creativity, intelligence , mental illnesses , metaphors ...are products of the brain : see the difference ?

Otherwise , just tell me , for example, how that deterministic mechanical upward causation from your elementary particles , all the way to your physical brain, through your molecules, cells , organs ....and  how that deterministic mechanical top-down causation about which the above mentioned article from New Scientist talked , how that mechanical top-down causation and mechanical upward causation make you do what you do, type what you do , how do they generate your thoughts , emotions, intelligence , creativity , .....on your behalf ? , without you having any say or choice in the matter , as if you were some sort of a mindless determined mechanical mindless machine, computer or robot .

When you are driving your car , for example , and suddenly you wanna take a turn ,due to this reason or that , what makes you do that ? : just your sub-atomic particles through through the laws of physics all the way up to your brain  ,and back to your hands from your brain through that mechanical determined top-down causation ? The latter that is powered all the way from that so-called intrinsic information of those fundamental physical fields that allegedly do generate your consciousness , via some inexplicable voodoo magic ?

What kindda consciousness is that then anyway ? = a "consciousness" that's just a property of the determined matter ,and that poriginates , allegedly , from the intrinsic information of those physical fundamental fields   such as electromagnetism ? = a determined "consciousness " is no consciousness = a paradox .

Well, since the brain is governed by electromagnetism ...then, your consciousness originates from those physical fundamental fields such as electromagnetism ...= bullshit = materialist bullshit = materialist flirting with dualism and new age = materialist voodoo .

Where is your so-called free will then, for example, without which you can't think , feel , behave , ...consciously : how can electromagnetism create consciousness ? = all power plants ,and all machines that rely on electricity ...must be conscious then, and exactly like the way we are at that , that is : your microwave , tv set , pc , car , refrigerator , ....are conscious thus , and exactly the way you are lol .

This is materialist madness - materialist desperate attempts to rescue their refuted determinism that was replaced by the probabilistic universe , thanks to quantum physics .The latter that has been encountering consciousness all along , ironically enough , consciousness that acts through non-mechanical   causation, that is .

Think about that .




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 19:55:29
Can you name a nonmaterial object that is provably conscious?

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Even your beloved Caroll says in one of his videos that it is an embarrassment to science that physicists still can't resolve that interpretation or measurement paradox in QM , while you have been making it sound , together with our alancalverd , that the interpretation dilemma or paradox of quantum theory was already solved.

The so-called "paradox" lies not in nature, which behaves consistently, but only in the fact that we use two different mathematical models to predict what it will do. It isn't a paradox at all, just a statement that neither model is complete. So what? Both are good enough, which is the best you can say of any model. I have no idea what you are going to eat at your next meal, but I am pretty sure that you will eat, and it will contain either meat or vegetable protein. Paradox, or just a statement that I don't know your food preferences?

Oh, please : Don't try to walk your way around the problem by denying its very existence that has been acknowledged and recognized as such by almost all physicists , the materialist and the non-materialist ones alike :

Stop hiding that skeleton in the closet ,as many physicists do .

Don't shut up and calculate , try to see the far -reaching implications of quantum theory that go way beyond physics to encompass the very nature of the universe itself , including that of yourself, as a human being .

 Even Sean Caroll was honest enough as to admit that fact , by saying that it is an embarrassment to science that the measurement paradox or problem, or the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory has not be solved yet , even though quantum theory is relatively so old now :

Caroll even added that it's pretty ironical that since quantum theory is all about the nature of reality , what can be more important than the nature of reality in science , but , nevertheless , the interpretation paradox of quantum theory has not been solved yet = a paradox = the paradox of the paradox .

In short :

You can't solve the problem by sweeping it under the carpet , by hiding it in your closet or by denying its very existence as such , simply because the far -reaching implications of that problem regarding the very nature of  the universe , of ourselves , including what it means to be a human ,and much more ,  won't go away by themselves : they are way too fundamental and too important to be ignored , denied as such , or set aside : they will continue screaming for a solution, no matter what you would do or say on the subject .

Ironically enough , science is all about trying to explore the nature of the universe , or the nature of reality , through free inquiry , while the most important and successful theory of them all ever ,quantum theory , which is all about the nature of reality has not been solved yet . Isn't that an odd embarrassment to science , to say the least ?

For my part , i stick to the interpretation of quantum theory that's been delivered by Von Neumann school , by all founders of quantum theory , as well as by many other prominent physicists , yesterday and today : that particular interpretation of quantum theory is way more plausible than the rest , and no materialist "hidden variable , decoherence ...theory " desperate attempts to rescue determinism and its materialism will be able to challenge that , on the contrary .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 20:07:25
In other words :

In total contrast with that materialist voodoo or materialist magical new age , in the form of that so-called integrated information theory , i presume and assume that there might  be what can be called the most fundamental field of them all that has been underlying all laws ,forces and fields of physics , including electromagnetism, gravity , relativity and the rest , that most fundamental field of them all might be ...consciousness, the non -physical and non-local one at that , that is , through probably ...the aether non-material field .

That's way more plausible than that materialist voodoo , in the sense that consciousness allegedly arises from the so-called intrinsic information of the fundamental physical fields such as electromagnetism ... consciousness as just a property of matter bullshit lol

Bye bye materialist so-called standard model of quantum field theory that's highly likely approximately correct and fundamentally ...false , like the classical deterministic  mechanical Newtonian physics were /are .

Time for a new and revolutionary theory , for a new and revolutionary physics , that would have to integrate the non-physical aether field or the non-physical and non-local consciousness as its most fundamental underlying fields that might underlie all laws , forces and fields of physics, including electromagnetism, gravity and the rest   : physics will never be the same again , will not even be called physics , ironically enough .

Physics will be opening its wide doors to a universe or reality way beyond physics .

All sciences in fact , all human knowledge , activity and more will never be the same again .

Awesome ,mind -blowing and breath-taking ...., beyond imagination , that would be , an understatement , you have no idea .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/11/2014 21:12:44


0- I have just brought that article up , in order to show you that even a mainstream materialist scientist does talk about his  own materialist version of top-down causation, since mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation .


Wow, you really do have a poor memory. Both dlorde and I have talked extensively about top down control in the past. Go back and re-read the 70 pages in the What on Earth is Consciousness thread.

Not all materialists/Naturalists are reductionists, and there is no contradiction in the idea of the whole constraining the parts. Feed back loops are a prime mechanism for this and rife in biology. 

Top down control in the brain is already known to function in decision making processes.  There is a wealth of two way tracts, up and down communication in the brain, and I am not referring to sensory/motor tracts in the nervous system, but those involved in the processing of information in the brain.
Complex information that is represented at higher stages of processing influences - changes the outcome - the processes occurring at antecedent stages.

 "The role of top-down influences is then to set the cortex in a specific working mode according to behavioral requirements that are updated dynamically. In effect, these ideas reverse the central dogma of sensory processing, with a flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas playing a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. The construction of a subjective percept involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences. Conversely, the top-down expectations and hypotheses are set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. Under this view, there is no starting point for information flow.” (Gilbert and Sigman, journal Neuron)


Quote

Since there is what can be called top-down causation, after all (we don't need that scientist to know that fact ) , why not assume that consciousness must be the one that's been responsible for that top-down causation  mainly and not the brain , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false ?

Not necessarily. As the author points out, there is no place in the loop you can point to and say, the stimulus is here, the response is there. There is no point in the flow of information that you can designate as the cause or the effect. What's already going on in the brain changes what it pays attention to, what it ignores, how it perceives, and processes information, and makes certain responses somewhat more likely than others. What's already going on the brain is the result of expectations, hypotheses based on past experience, as well as emotions/body state etc.

  It doesn't require any immaterial kick start.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2014 22:01:39
Well,mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation...
No, it doesn't. As the article points out, top-down causation has always been around in the sciences of systems, particularly emergent systems, - biological, environmental, geological, cosmological, sociological, meterological, physical, and more. Bottom-up causality finds more utility in explaining function in closed systems, constrained contexts, narrow scales & scopes, or limited levels of abstraction. Top-down causality is more useful in explaining the influence of systems on their constituents, involving open systems, broad contexts, multiple levels of abstraction, emergence, feedback, etc. Top-down causality is an emergent feature of bottom-up causality.

The popular and media emphasis has tended to be on bottom-up causality because applying the scientific method at lab scales encourages focus on it, by involving simplification, contextual isolation, the removal of extraneous influences, limiting scales, scopes and levels of abstraction, etc. This has led to a  public sense that the larger scale systems sciences are somehow less scientific because those criteria are less obviously evident (e.g. they may come at the data analysis stage).

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... why not assume that consciousness must be the one that's been responsible for that top-down causation  mainly and not the brain... ?
Because it's not relevant. Whether you have a dualist or monist view, top-down causation is important to understand how the system operates. The dualist view makes it impossible to explain with either bottom-up or top-down causality because of the interaction 'firewall'. The monist view allows bottom-up and top-down causality viewpoints to cross over around the neural network level, the interface between neuroscience and behavioural science.

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I-It never crossed my mind that causality could be questioned (how can science exist , let alone function ,without causation ? )
I'll leave you to google it. There's a whole band-wagon of woosters who think acausality is just what they need to prove their pet theory is right - you'll fit right in.

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There is also what can be called non-mechanical causation , that of consciousness that's a non-physical process.
There's no such thing.

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P.S.: Even your beloved Caroll says in one of his videos that it is an embarrassment to science that physicists still can't resolve that interpretation or measurement paradox in QM , while you have been making it sound , together with our alancalverd , that the interpretation dilemma or paradox of quantum theory was already solved.
Not at all - you haven't been listening. I always make a point of explaining that there are multiple interpretations of QM, including the null option, 'shut up and calculate'. The theory itself is solid though.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 06/11/2014 22:51:36
Physics will be opening its wide doors to a universe or reality way beyond physics .

All sciences in fact , all human knowledge , activity and more will never be the same again .

Awesome ,mind -blowing and breath-taking ...., beyond imagination , that would be , an understatement , you have no idea .

Gosh,  the physics of a reality way beyond physics; that makes sense (not).

I can't wait... don't forget to let us know when you've got something useful to show us  [::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/11/2014 05:15:27


If you only  , once , just once , would try to look at all the above from the non-materialist perspective , in the sense that consciousness , the mind and their related subjective inner lives and experiences , creativity ...are non-physical processes that rely on their related physical neural correlates , you would see all that from a totally different perspective or angle  , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related phenomena , but , if you prefer to stick to the materialist false theory of consciousness , no wonder that you would agree with  Ramachandran's interpretations on the subject .


It's not about "sticking" to something, or a preferring it, as in wanting it to be true. And believe me, I really have to tried to view it from your perspective, if only because you seem so totally convinced of it, that I feel compelled to try to figure out why you do.

There's just this huge gaping lack of an explanation for how your immaterial "thing" operates or acts causally, which I find completely pointless, as well as the fact that it adds no insight into any particular detail about consciousness experience or human behavior.

Do you understand what I mean by that? Your immaterial theory doesn't tell me anything specific about perception, optical illusions, hallucinations. It doesn't explain anything about memory or why memories fade, or false memories. It doesn't tell me anything about the origin or acquisition of language.  It doesn't tell me anything about the developmental stages of babies. It has nothing to say about attention, why or how we manage to ignore extraneous information, and focus on certain things. It tells me nothing about the reasons for addictions or compulsive behavior, autism or dementia. It tells me nothing about how we sense the passage of time or make judgements about spacial relationships. It tells me nothing about how or why our mental experience or ability is different from other animals. I could go on and on - there are thousands of interesting questions about mental activity, and your theory contributes absolutely nothing concrete or specific to their answers. With your model, all mental activity just inexplicably "happens" in some vague, undetectable way.

Secondly, your dismissal of neural correlates to consciousness as some kind of irrelevant coincidence or epiphenomenon stretches credibility, in my eyes. It's like claiming that the changes in my muscles when I take up weight lifting has nothing to do at all with my increase in strength; the sliding of actin and myosin filaments isn't really contracting the muscles, it just coincidentally happens at the same time, a "by product" of the process.
 
This month's issue of Scientific American has an article about the effect of meditation on plasticity in the brain, brain mass, and conscious experience. But their findings make no sense with your interpretation. If meditation is just an action of immaterial conscious will, why would it need to cause physical changes in the brain in order to facilitate other changes in immaterial, conscious will? Do you see how that interpretation makes absolutely no sense?




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 07/11/2014 07:56:37

Don't shut up and calculate , try to see the far -reaching implications of quantum theory that go way beyond physics to encompass the very nature of the universe itself , including that of yourself, as a human being .



Exactly. That's what physics is about - how everything works and what it is made of. So far, we haven't seen anything that isn't made of material stuff, and doesn't work the same way as everything else.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 17:29:05
"The End of Materialism ...." By Charles T.Tart :


Wake up, guys : materialism is false , and must be thus kicked out of science :


http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/about-dr-tart/the-end-of-materialism/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/11/2014 18:29:31
"The End of Materialism ...." By Charles T.Tart :Wake up, guys : materialism is false , and must be thus kicked out of science : http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/about-dr-tart/the-end-of-materialism/
Unsupported assertion and a link plugging some Tart's book are of no value or interest whatsoever.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 19:54:20
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443826#msg443826 date=1415337327]


If you only  , once , just once , would try to look at all the above from the non-materialist perspective , in the sense that consciousness , the mind and their related subjective inner lives and experiences , creativity ...are non-physical processes that rely on their related physical neural correlates , you would see all that from a totally different perspective or angle  , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related phenomena , but , if you prefer to stick to the materialist false theory of consciousness , no wonder that you would agree with  Ramachandran's interpretations on the subject .


It's not about "sticking" to something, or a preferring it, as in wanting it to be true. And believe me, I really have to tried to view it from your perspective, if only because you seem so totally convinced of it, that I feel compelled to try to figure out why you do.

Well, good to know that you can think outside of the materialist key hole box .
But, fact is , you have been assuming , like all materialists have been doing , that materialism was / is "true", or that materialism is 'scientific "  , while there is no such a thing in science ,as the truth , science that's not about the truth either , not to mention that materialism is just a world view , a belief = unscientific ,per definition , like all beliefs are by the way , but, not all beliefs are necessarily false , as materialism most certainly is without a shadow of a doubt, that is  , once again .

You have been starting from a false premise , that materialism , or the materialist theory of the nature of reality, and all its extensions , including the materialist theory or model of consciousness are "true " .

Science is not about any world view or belief such as materialism , even though science has been materialist = has been basically based on the false  materialist 19th century ideology ,secular religion , philosophy , conception of nature  ...as a response to the supremacy and absolute authority of the medieval church .

Science is all about methodology , epistemology and free inquiry .Science that's all about dispelling and refuting all those dogmas and falsehood such as those of materialism, ironically enough .

How can electromagnetism or the rest of neurophysiology account for or produce , let alone explain consciousness, the mind and their related anomalies and processes ? ????

All those materialist computational or other materialist theories on the subject are too magical and too unscientific to be taken seriously .

Consciousness itself, the mind and their related processes and anomalies are evidence enough for the falsehood of materialism ,so, when science encounters or stumbles upon anomalies like that , it has to question its prevailing wisdom of the moment or meta/ paradigms .

As a non-westerner , i don't really need that to reject materialism a -priori , i must add , since materialism has been just an Eurocentric world view ( NOT universal, not even remotely close thus ) , philosophy , conception of nature , ideology ...that was built upon the approximately correct and fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view .The latter that has been superseded by quantum theory .

The problem is all yours , as westerners , who have been taking materialism for granted as science or as the scientific world view , for relatively so long now , without question, not to mention that it is the problem also of all those non-westerners who have been doing the same  .

You have thus to try to undo that materialist brainwash , conditioning or indoctrination .

I know it's hard to undo just that , but , you can try at least .

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There's just this huge gaping lack of an explanation for how your immaterial "thing" operates or acts causally, which I find completely pointless, as well as the fact that it adds no insight into any particular detail about consciousness experience or human behavior.

(PEAR and many non-materialist scientists have been developing models of consciousness, remember ) .

When Planck stumbled upon that anomaly of his (just an analogy ) that paved the way to the birth of QM , he did not sit back and argue like you have just did here above . He tried to explain that anomaly ,and he had no choice but to reject that classical Newtonian world view as a result .

Once again , materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness , so, the nature of reality is not  exclusively material, and hence  the whole universe cannot be explained just by material processes .

At the other hand , quantum theory , or just 1 particular interpretation of it , says that consciousness as a non-physical process shapes its environment , including the physical brain and body , through instantaneous energyless action ,and that our "reality " is mostly a mental construct = the product of the mutual "interactions " between consciousness and its environment = our "reality " is psycho-physical = mind and matter are inseparable = the observer is inseparable from the observed = whenever we try to observe or look at the objective reality , we sort of change it via our minds = consciousness and the mind are the key components or key "building blocks " of the universe , so , the physical brain and body + the rest of their environment are shaped by consciousness and the mind , mostly thus .

In short :

What we mistake for the objective reality is mostly a mental construct, despite the objective side of the latter without which there could be no science , knowledge in general , let alone survival or progress of our species ...

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Do you understand what I mean by that? Your immaterial theory doesn't tell me anything specific about perception, optical illusions, hallucinations. It doesn't explain anything about memory or why memories fade, or false memories. It doesn't tell me anything about the origin or acquisition of language.  It doesn't tell me anything about the developmental stages of babies. It has nothing to say about attention, why or how we manage to ignore extraneous information, and focus on certain things. It tells me nothing about the reasons for addictions or compulsive behavior, autism or dementia. It tells me nothing about how we sense the passage of time or make judgements about spacial relationships. It tells me nothing about how or why our mental experience or ability is different from other animals. I could go on and on - there are thousands of interesting questions about mental activity, and your theory contributes absolutely nothing concrete or specific to their answers. With your model, all mental activity just inexplicably "happens" in some vague, undetectable way.

That's not my theory , but a hard fact you have to try to deal with .

PEAR and many non-materialist scientists have been developing models of consciousness , remember .

Why do you think that the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness, the mind and their related processes can't tell us anything about the above ? What makes you say that ?

On the contrary , acknowledging the real non-physical and non-local nature of those processes would put science and humanity on the right path to try to explain our very human nature and that of the universe .

We can integrate all what science has been telling us about our physical side , including brain and body , and about the physical reality in general , with the non-physical non-local nature of consciousness, the mind and their related processes , in such ways as to try to understand them better .

And since the physical brain  is just a medium for consciousness, the mind and their related processes , both ways , that would account for and try to explain all those consciousness -related anomalies and much more .

And the fact that consciousness and the mind are non-physical and non-local does not mean we should discard studying the brain, body and the rest of the physical environment,needless to add  .

We are both physical and mental  or spiritual beings , so .

We depend on our physical environment thus , including the physical brain and body , so, whatever knowledge , insights ...we would gather about the physical reality ,that can tell us a lot about ourselves and this universe , improve our lives ,societies and much more , needless to add , but , reducing all that to just material processes is a far-reaching and devastating distortion of our reality ,since science should try to tell us about the nature of ourselves and this universe with which we interact , in order to understand ourselves and the universe we inhabit , otherwise , science would just be delivering approximately correct and fundamentally false knowledge about all that ,and hence loose its credibility and reliability as a valid source of knowledge .

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Secondly, your dismissal of neural correlates to consciousness as some kind of irrelevant coincidence or epiphenomenon stretches credibility, in my eyes. It's like claiming that the changes in my muscles when I take up weight lifting has nothing to do at all with my increase in strength; the sliding of actin and myosin filaments isn't really contracting the muscles, it just coincidentally happens at the same time, a "by product" of the process.
 
Who said that ? See above .
The scientific knowledge regarding how the physical brain , body and the rest of the physical reality , not to mention regarding nature and the rest of the universe ,work  is a great achievement for humanity and an important part of understanding ourselves and this universe , but , to reduce all the latter to just material processes is not only false , but also an unscientific thing to do , to say the least thus .


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This month's issue of Scientific American has an article about the effect of meditation on plasticity in the brain, brain mass, and conscious experience. But their findings make no sense with your interpretation. If meditation is just an action of immaterial conscious will, why would it need to cause physical changes in the brain in order to facilitate other changes in immaterial, conscious will? Do you see how that interpretation makes absolutely no sense?

The brain does not change itself through brain exercises (who's doing that ? , the brain or you ? ) , neurofeedback, palcebo/ nocebo effects , meditation, learning , activity , mindfulness, beliefs  ....you do , through your conscious will that shapes your brain and body , not the other way around .

Not to mention the role of the unconscious as well in all that ,and that of the laws of physics in general .

It's materialism that makes no sense , to say the least...

The fact that we have a limited perception , that we are easily deceived by our perception through our senses , the existence of optical illusions, hallucinations, mental illnesses , the effects of meditation , learning and the rest  on our brains and bodies ...can be better explained by assuming that your consciousness, unconsciousness , the mind , the physical brain through the laws of physics , get shaped by their mutual interactions with each other and with the rest of their environment .

That's a whole system , so, when some parts of it get affected  , altered ...the whole system suffers accordingly , if the system can't cope with that through adaptation ...or due to irreversible damage ...

So, all parts of the system must be studied scientifically , the physical and the non-physical ones alike , in a holistic synthetical way , not through reductionism that reduces everything to just material processes .

Inter-disciplinary feedbacks and studies from all sciences must deliver a holistic synthesis , and materialist reductionism must be expelled from science , as scientists must stop assuming that psychology is just applied biology , biology is just applied chemistry , and chemistry is just applied physics ...

http://www.opensciences.org/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 20:42:52
dlorde, Cheryl :

You're lousy readers of that New Scientist''s article :

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VF0v-WfvZ-y

Maybe , you haven't even read that article .I don't know .

Well, if Mohammed can't go to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to Mohammed :

Quote :

"The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world.

LOOK at the complex world around you. There's a basic assumption that the things you see – be it humans, computers or trees – can ultimately be boiled down to the behaviour of the particles they are composed of. Biology is determined by chemistry, which is in turn governed by the underlying physics. Much of modern science is rooted in this bottom-up, reductionist view of cause and effect, which has been an excellent way of explaining many phenomena. But can all things be understood just by looking at their constituent parts?.

Consider a computer. You want to type a document, so you press the keys to give the sequence of letters "I love this machine because it is so obedient". Electrons in the transistors in the central processing unit obligingly flow in such a way as to make these letters appear on the screen. The underlying physics – governed by the Schrödinger equation for electrons and Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic field – doesn't control what happens. On the contrary, the physics obligingly does your bidding by making electrons flow to the screen in precisely the right way to achieve your desired outcome. That's top-down causation from your brain to the fingers that press the keys, then down to the level of electrons flowing in the processor and onwards to the screen.


And what about the way that social influences act on the brain? If you are brought up in an English-language environment, for example, society shapes your neural connections in such a way as to let you think in English. This is the result of top-down causation from the social environment to the synaptic connections in your brain.

Physicists don't usually think in terms of top-down causation, as they tend to assume that everything flows from micro to macro scales, but neuroscientists must in order to make sense of brain processes such as vision. As Chris Frith explains in his book Making Up the Mind, what we see is determined by what our brains predict we ought to see, rather than simply by the signals reaching our brain from the retina.

Indeed, this kind of causation is all around when you look for it. For example, it's a central feature of Darwinian evolution. The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is brown because it lives in Canadian forests. The specific sequences in its genes have been selected through evolution so that brown fur will be the outcome of developmental processes. Its polar cousin Ursus maritimus has different sequences in its genes that give it white fur, which is better for survival in the Arctic. The environment is a key feature influencing genetic structure. It obviously makes sense to label this a top-down effect. The gene sequence didn't make the polar environment white – the flow of causation went the other way.

Indeed, this kind of causation is all around when you look for it. For example, it's a central feature of Darwinian evolution. The brown bear, Ursus arctos, is brown because it lives in Canadian forests. The specific sequences in its genes have been selected through evolution so that brown fur will be the outcome of developmental processes. Its polar cousin Ursus maritimus has different sequences in its genes that give it white fur, which is better for survival in the Arctic. The environment is a key feature influencing genetic structure. It obviously makes sense to label this a top-down effect. The gene sequence didn't make the polar environment white – the flow of causation went the other way.


I first became aware of top-down causation through the work of Dennis Sciama, a key figure in modern cosmology, who outlined how cosmology influences local physical laws. My ideas developed through conversations with biochemists and philosophers, and since then it has become clear to me how ubiquitous and important top-down causation is. It is also a counter to strong reductionist ideas, which I believe misrepresent the way causation works in the real world. As scientists focus more on the emergence of complexity, taking this into account will become increasingly important.



Top-down causation provides a foundation for genuine emergence, where complex systems with new kinds of behaviour emerge from combinations of simple ones. It also underlies how entities such as computers and brains can have causal power in their own right, despite being made up of transistors or neurons, themselves made of molecules comprised of protons, neutrons and electrons. When my muscles do what I want them to do, it is because signals from my brain have genuine causal powers: they coordinate the way electrons move in my muscles.


However, many reductionists say that in the end, this is nothing but disguised bottom-up effects, because the physics at the bottom is causally closed: there is nothing but interactions between particles such as protons and electrons at that level, leaving no room for any other causal effect and no causal slack to allow top-down effects to take place.


This is mistaken. Firstly, it omits the crucial way in which a higher-level structure channels lower-level interactions. Paradoxically, when the wiring in a computer constrains the motion of electrons, this creates new possibilities that do not exist when the electron flow is unconstrained, as in a charged plasma. Such constraints underlie emergence of higher-level computational capacities. What then occurs depends on what software is loaded into the computer. The physics makes things happen, but the context determines what will happen.


Secondly, such critics are thinking in terms of the billiard-ball model that was so successful in the kinetic theory of gases: unchanging lower-level entities with fixed behaviour interact with each other through deterministic laws, and so determine higher-level behaviour. The pressure of the gas results from the motion of molecules, for instance. But that's not what happens in biology, or in quantum physics. The lower-level entities are not unchanging: context affects their nature and shapes how they behave. A neutron decays in about 15 minutes when free, but lasts for billions of years when bound in a nucleus.


But things are even more radical than this. Sometimes the lower-level entities only exist because of the nature of the higher-level structures. This is the case for all symbiotic relationships, where the partners are unable to survive when separated. They can only exist in the context of the interacting whole. An example from physics is the Cooper pairs that underlie superconductors. These are pairs of electrons that would normally repel each other. But the lattice structure of the metal gets distorted by the electron charges in such a way that it modifies the interaction, and the electrons form bound pairs. So the existence of the entities that enable superconductivity (Cooper pairs) is due to the nature of the context (the metallic lattice). This is why it is impossible to deduce superconductivity in a purely bottom-up way, as emphatically pointed out by physicist Robert Laughlin in his 1998 Nobel prize lecture.

Also, during the process of evolution, adaptive selection deletes lower-level elements, leaving behind only those better suited to higher-level purposes – genes coding for greater strength, for example. This deletion of unsuitable entities is the way order arises from disorder. It is central to biology but it also occurs in physics, for instance when optical filters cut out unwanted polarised light.

The case for top-down causation seems to me to be pretty conclusive, but not everyone agrees. Even today many scientists concur with the bottom-up, reductionist view strongly expressed by the late Nobel prize-winning biochemist Francis Crick in his book The Astonishing Hypothesis: "You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."

However, hard-line reductionists would question why Crick assigned causal powers to nerve cells when their behaviour is no more than that of the electrons that convey neural signals. If you really believe in bottom-up causation, you can't assign causal powers to an intermediate level like this – it's the electrons that are doing the real work, or perhaps not even electrons but superstrings, fundamental building blocks of matter predicted by string theory. The higher levels like electrons and neurons are mere passengers carried along by this underlying causation.

But neuroscientists believe that neurons do indeed do real work. This is only possible if they act to channel and control the flow of electrons in neural axons – that is, if top-down causation takes place from the neuron to the electron level. And if that is so, the case for top-down causation is vindicated." End quote .


George Ellis is a cosmologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, focusing on general relativity and the structure of the universe. He co-authored the seminal 1973 book The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking.


P.S.: Since consciousness is part of the system , and a non-physical process at that , that is , that has been proven as such by many consciousness -related anomalies ' studies ( http://www.opensciences.org/ )  , and since the materialist assumption that consciousness is just a material process is false , then why can't consciousness have a top-down causation also , a non-mechanical one at that , that is , since all complex systems do have top-down causation in relation to their sub-systems , and since quantum theory , or just 1 most plausible interpretation of it at least , says that consciousness plays a central and key role in shaping the physical reality ...

How can you, folks, deny the very fact that your own consciousness, mind and their related processes can have top-down causation on your own brain and body , not to mention on the rest of the physical reality , since you do experience that fact daily , through your own daily decision-making and more that affect both your brains bodies ,and the rest of your environment , including your loved ones , co-workers , ....while your above mentioned non-physical processes also get influenced , in their turn , by their environment ,as mentioned above , including by your senses , brains and bodies  through the laws of physics  ......Not to mention  the role of the unconscious in all that ? 






Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 21:24:16
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However, many reductionists say that in the end, this is nothing but disguised bottom-up effects, because the physics at the bottom is causally closed: there is nothing but interactions between particles such as protons and electrons at that level, leaving no room for any other causal effect and no causal slack to allow top-down effects to take place.

Quote from the above displayed article thus .


That  hard-core reductionist assumption that the physics at the bottom at the level of sub-atomic elementary particles thus is causally closed , or that the universe is causally closed , has been just the legacy of classical physics upon which materialism was built .
A false assumption that was refuted by QM that shows that consciousness can shape the physical reality through non-mechanical instantaneous energyless causation ...or just  by  1 interpretation of quantum theory at least , that's way more plausible than the rest .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/11/2014 08:56:03

That  hard-core reductionist assumption that the physics at the bottom at the level of sub-atomic elementary particles thus is causally closed , or that the universe is causally closed , has been just the legacy of classical physics upon which materialism was built .


What you deride as materialism is built on observation. What is your hobbyhorse made of?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/11/2014 13:42:35
dlorde, Cheryl :

You're lousy readers of that New Scientist''s article
Ad-hominem insults only detract from your assertions. The NS article is a popular-interest piece, and exaggerates accordingly. The hard-core reductionists mentioned in the article are no more representative of the scientific community than the hard-core fringe who believe consciousness collapses the wave function.

Top-down and bottom-up causality are different ways of looking at exactly the same processes. That some people choose to keep one eye shut changes nothing.

Maybe a trivially simple example will help you understand. Consider Conway's Game of Life; if you want to discover whether a particular cell will change state and when that will occur, you can use bottom-up or top-down methods. Using bottom-up methods, you have to iterate through the cycles, potentially indefinitely, until either the state changes or you die of old age. Using top-down methods, you can examine the patterns of cell states on the grid and predict in advance whether a particular cell will change state and when it will do so, just by knowing how the patterns develop.

However, CGL is a perfectly deterministic system about which you have complete knowledge, so bottom-up methods can, in principle, get you the answers, given enough time. Real life isn't usually like that. Many large-scale real-world systems are complex, and may be sensitively dependent on initial conditions (i.e. have chaotic characteristics). It is often impossible to measure all the contributing factors with sufficient precision or resolution to make reliable bottom-up predictions, so top-down analysis is often more productive & predictive.

I refer you to my previous post for a partial list of fields where this is often the case.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 17:06:05
The Mental Universe By Richard Conn Henry:

Source : Nature , Vol 436|7 July 2005.


The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things..

Historically, we have looked to our religious leaders to understand the meaning of our lives; the nature of our world.

With Galileo Galilei, this changed. In establishing that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo not only succeeded in believing the unbelievable himself, but also convinced almost everyone else to do the same.
 This was a stunning accomplishment in ‘physics outreach’ and, with the subsequent work of Isaac Newton, physics joined religion in seeking to explain our place in the Universe.

The more recent physics revolution of the past 80 years has yet to transform general public understanding in a similar way. And yet a correct understanding of physics was accessible even to Pythagoras.
According to Pythagoras, “number is all things”, and numbers are mental, not mechanical. Likewise, Newton called light “particles”, knowing the concept to be an ‘effective theory’ — useful, not true.

As noted by Newton’s biographer Richard Westfall: “The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is ‘this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.’” Newton knew of Newton’s rings and was untroubled by what is shallowly called ‘wave/particle duality’.

The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe’s nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time, that the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.
Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” But physicists have not yet followed Galileo’s example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics.
As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character.”

In his play Copenhagen, which brings quantum mechanics to a wider audience,Michael Frayn gives these word to Niels Bohr: “we discover that... the Universe exists... only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.” Bohr’s wife replies, “this man you’ve put at the centre of the Universe — is it you, or is it Heisenberg?” This is what sticks in the craw of Eddington’s “matter-of-fact” physicists.

Discussing the play, John H. Marburger III, President George W. Bush’s science adviser, observes that “in the Copenhagen interpretation of microscopic nature, there are neither waves nor particles”, but then frames his remarks in terms of a non-existent “underlying stuff ”. He points out that it is not true that matter “sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle... The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks...

We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles. This is where the particle language comes from.
 It does not come from the underlying stuff, but from our psychological predisposition to associate localized phenomena with particles.”
In place of “underlying stuff ” there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world — but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion.

Scientists have sadly left it to nonphysicist Frayn to note the Emperor’s lack of clothes: “it seems to me that the view which [Murray] Gell-Mann favours, and which involves what he calls alternative ‘histories’ or ‘narratives’, is precisely as anthropocentric as Bohr’s, since histories and narratives are not freestanding elements of the Universe, but human constructs, as subjective and as restricted in their viewpoint as the act of observation.”
Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics.

 A common way to evade the mental Universe is to invoke ‘decoherence’ — the notion that ‘the physical environment’ is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in ‘Renninger-type’ experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The Universe is entirely mental.
In the tenth century, Ibn al-Haytham initiated the view that light proceeds from a source, enters the eye, and is perceived.
This picture is incorrect but is still what most people think occurs, including, unless pressed, most physicists.

To come to terms with the Universe, we must abandon such views. The world is quantum mechanical: we must learn to perceive it as such.
One benefit of switching humanity to a correct perception of the world is the resulting joy of discovering the mental nature of the Universe. We have no idea what this mental nature implies, but — the great thing is — it is true. Beyond the acquisition of this perception, physics can no longer help. You may descend into solipsism, expand to deism, or something else if you can justify it — just don’t ask physics for help.

There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out ‘what things are’. If we can ‘pull a Galileo,’ and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze.
The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. ■



Richard Conn Henry is a Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns HopkinUniversity, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 17:18:49

That  hard-core reductionist assumption that the physics at the bottom at the level of sub-atomic elementary particles thus is causally closed , or that the universe is causally closed , has been just the legacy of classical physics upon which materialism was built .


What you deride as materialism is built on observation. What is your hobbyhorse made of?

On which observation is materialist built then , according to you then ? = zero .


Materialism is just a belief , a philosophy , a 19th century ideology , a false conception of nature, a world view that was rather built upon the mechanical classical deterministic Newtonian world view  that was superseded by quantum theory ...and since the classical Newtonian world view is false , then , materialism is also false .

While science is all about methodology and epistemology , the naturalistic ones at that , that is .

And there is nothing intrinsic in the naturalistic scientific methodology that prevents it from going beyond materialism thus.

Naturalistic science and its scientific naturalistic methodology that can even  be  non -materialistic  : dualist , idealist,and even theist  .....

There can be even what can be called the theistic naturalistic science and its naturalistic theistic methodology , not just the atheistic naturalistic materialistic ones .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/11/2014 17:49:50

And there is nothing intrinsic in the naturalistic scientific methodology that prevents it from going beyond materialism thus.
There's nothing that prevents it all. That's exactly the point. You're free to conduct whatever experiments about telekinesis or consciousness fields or life after death or astrology or homeopathy or angels or ghosts that you like. No one is stopping you, and naturalistic methodology should be completely applicable to any such experiment. 
Quote


There can be even what can be called the theistic naturalistic science and its naturalistic theistic methodology , not just the atheistic naturalistic materialistic ones .
Again, absolutely.  Just provide proponents of naturalism with incontrovertible evidence of a God, and they'll have no problem with it at all. What could be easier or more straight forward?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 17:58:26
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443897#msg443897 date=1415454155]
dlorde, Cheryl :

You're lousy readers of that New Scientist''s article
Ad-hominem insults only detract from your assertions. The NS article is a popular-interest piece, and exaggerates accordingly. The hard-core reductionists mentioned in the article are no more representative of the scientific community than the hard-core fringe who believe consciousness collapses the wave function.

That's no ad-hominem attack , just a fact , deduced from your own replies on the subject .

A popular piece was that ? I don't think so .

Materialism does require reductionism, so, those materialists who claim they are non-reductionists are deluding themselves .



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Top-down and bottom-up causality are different ways of looking at exactly the same processes. That some people choose to keep one eye shut changes nothing.

Different ways of looking at the same processes ? Like saying it' s raining ,and water is evaporating ?  lol

 I think those hard-core reductionists are right , in the sense that deterministic reductionistic materialism can't intrinsically but not allow any kind of top-down causation .

It all comes down to the weird exotic dances and cloudy "rituals " of sub-atomic particles , or in fact to all those underlying fundamental physical fields .

Atoms made everything up lol, (Cheryl ) almost thus : physical fundamental fields or rather super strings were /are the ones who made everything up in fact .  lol

Did you forget about the fact  how  the materialistic reductionistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory can apply to the macro -world , including to our large -scale everyday world ? , and hence  rules out any top-down causation of consciousness and its related phenomena processes or anomalies ...psi phenomena ...

How can any sort of top-down causation for that matter , including the physical ones , like that of the brain , be allowed by the  almighty omnipotent standard model then ?

Think about that .

Quote
Maybe a trivially simple example will help you understand. Consider Conway's Game of Life; if you want to discover whether a particular cell will change state and when that will occur, you can use bottom-up or top-down methods. Using bottom-up methods, you have to iterate through the cycles, potentially indefinitely, until either the state changes or you die of old age. Using top-down methods, you can examine the patterns of cell states on the grid and predict in advance whether a particular cell will change state and when it will do so, just by knowing how the patterns develop.

According to reductionist materialism, that top-down causation cannot but be that fundamental bottom-up causation in disguise ,all the way down to strings, or to the not-yet-discovered underlying ghosts aliens  ...that might be underlying all fundamental physical fields,laws or forces  ... .

How can reductionist materialism allow any top-down causation for that matter ?

Materialists just integrate new evidence into their materialistic deterministic reductionist materialist world view , in order to go around the incompatible character of that new evidence with materialism, like when materialists say that free will can exist in a deterministic world  (Absurd paradox ) , or like when materialists try to rescue their refuted determinism that was shattered by the notion of probabilistic universe that was delivered by quantum physics , or like when materialists talk about information as a property of matter .

Regarding the latter , materialists just try to incorporate information into their materialistic deterministic reductionistic world view ,while materialism was all about claiming that all is matter and  energy ,so, when the existence of life and other information was discovered , like in the case of DNA ... then, materialists try to make that fit into materialism , by claiming that information is an intrinsnic property of matter or of those physical fundamental fields = materialist voodoo . Where does that information come from , in the first place to begin with ? What is its nature ?

There is indeed top-down causation in complex systems in relation to their sub-systems , but ,that's a fact that's incompatible with the reductionist deterministic materialistic world view, no matter what kindda or how many sexy strip-tease  dances, gymnastics  or performances  you're trying to accomplish  on the subject to deny that fact .

Quote
However, CGL is a perfectly deterministic system about which you have complete knowledge, so bottom-up methods can, in principle, get you the answers, given enough time. Real life isn't usually like that. Many large-scale real-world systems are complex, and may be sensitively dependent on initial conditions (i.e. have chaotic characteristics). It is often impossible to measure all the contributing factors with sufficient precision or resolution to make reliable bottom-up predictions, so top-down analysis is often more productive & predictive.

I thought that the whole universe was / is quantum "mechanical " , in the probabilistic sense , a probabilistic universe , not to mention that the Von Neumann's quantum "mechanical " world was all about the non-mechanical top-down causation of consciousness , from outside of the laws of physics , and hence the universe is not  causally closed .

See : " The Mental Universe " above displayed article from Nature : that's a totally different version of the notion of quantum "mechanical " universe from that of deterministic materialism .

Real life is usually not like that indeed . Materialist models are just approximations that might turn out to have not much to do with reality , since they exclude the most important component or "building block " of the universe from their speculations : consciousness : talking about your "...we have complete knowledge of .." assertion , ironically enough,since cells and other complex systems might be also ...conscious, their own degree of consciousness  .

Biologist Bruce Lipton ,biochemist  James A.Shapiro , and others do talk about the hypersensitivity and "awareness " of cells , for example, in relation to their environment , and how biological information is crucial in that ,and in the "hierarchical" organization of the cell ...

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I refer you to my previous post for a partial list of fields where this is often the case.

Like the fundamental physical electromagnetic fields from which consciousness arises ? lol : why did i not detect the  major  fact that my tv set , microwave , car , pc , cell phones , fridges....are conscious , silly me .

I see now how they have been playing silly tricks on me , consciously thus , the bastards ,

That's a real bombshell you've just targeted my head , or rather my mind with : my mind is blown away , as a result .  lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 19:26:43
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443910#msg443910 date=1415468990]

And there is nothing intrinsic in the naturalistic scientific methodology that prevents it from going beyond materialism thus.
There's nothing that prevents it all. That's exactly the point. You're free to conduct whatever experiments about telekinesis or consciousness fields or life after death or astrology or homeopathy or angels or ghosts that you like. No one is stopping you, and naturalistic methodology should be completely applicable to any such experiment. 

Funny Straw man arguments again,and red herrings as well , to mention just that  .

Kafkaian subjective stuff again .

You still don't get what naturalism means , sis , (odd) despite your misplaced sarcasm , derision, or irony : the latter can't help you hide  your obvious ignorance about the former .

( Naturalism ,as it clearly implies , means , in short : within nature : there is nothing beyond, or other than nature as the nature of reality,so, all naturalistic forms of science ,and all naturalistic forms of the scientific methodology and epistemology , be it the materialist , dualist , idealist or even theistic ones must deliver naturalistic explanations of the universe : see my post regarding that ,from Encyclopedia Britannica   .)

The mainstream materialist "scientific world view " , or 'consensus ", rejects a -priori any non-materialist scientific world view , research, experiments , approaches , let alone evidence on the subject .

The real science and the real scientists are thus materialist science and the materialist scientists  only : that implicit or explicit claim was even repeated explicitly,and even in those explicit terms also (Real science , real scientists ...)  by your earlier link from rationalwiki regarding the work of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard who relied on that of physicist Henry P.Stapp ...

Better still : even your earlier provided link to that materialist conference : " Moving naturalism forward " , where the champions of hard core materialist scientism in science (Dennett , Dawkins ...) were taking a part in it , was just a desperate materialistic attempt to reduce naturalism or naturalistic science and naturalistic methodology and epistemology to just the materialist ones , ironically enough . lol

Worse : many scientists who dare to think outside of the materialist key hole box , by challenging 1 or more of its entrenched dogmas like that of Darwinism , have been persecuted , their careers and reputations ruined ,and much more : This is no conspiracy theory , but hard facts :


Not to mention how the work of biologist Sheldrake and the man behind it have been treated by mainstream materialist science , scientific journals , the media ....to mention just that poor lad .

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There can be even what can be called the theistic naturalistic science and its naturalistic theistic methodology , not just the atheistic naturalistic materialistic ones .
Again, absolutely.  Just provide proponents of naturalism with incontrovertible evidence of a God, and they'll have no problem with it at all. What could be easier or more straight forward?

You haven't done your homework well ,regarding what naturalism implies , sis, once again  .

The majority of scientists today are materialists first , and scientists only second : anything that might contradict or disprove, refute the 'scientific " materialism, would be a -priori rejected as some sort of pseudo-science at best , and supernatural medieval non-sense at worse .

Any attempts to try to explain the universe in no exclusive material processes terms , would be a -priori rejected .

Only material processes can explain the universe , according to the materialist mainstream dogma that pretends to be 'scientific " thus .

Any attempts to challenge the mainstream materialist "scientific " dogma that the universe can be reduced to just material processes thus ,would be a -priori rejected .

Consciousness on earth at least lol, and all its related processes and anomalies are perfectly natural in fact , not supernatural, including psi and other phenomena thus  .

That said :

Naturalistic science or its naturalistic methodology , be it materialist , dualist , idealist or theist , have to be naturalistic , needless to add = there is nothing beyond or other than nature as the nature of reality .

Theistic science is no synonymous thus of involving God in science , let alone of trying either to prove or disprove the existence of God , needless to add .

But ,then again , there is nothing intrinsic in  science or in its methodology , let alone  in  its evolving epistemology, that prevents it from going beyond nature itself, if some scientist would ,some day , stumble upon or discover that the nature of reality goes beyond nature ,since science is all about methodology and epistemology that can be restricted by no naturalistic or other philosophy, world view , conception of nature ....from the last century or the next .

Better still : The very non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness itself is evidence enough against the naturalistic philosophy that was developed in the last century .

Otherwise , just tell me how can nature account for or "produce " consciousness ?

Atheist Thomas Nagel tried to find a "solution " to the above , without much success ,needless to add,  the poor lad : he just resorted to concluding that nature might be intrinsically conscious and teleological from the very start of it lol : that conscious life and purpose were intrinsic "properties " of nature ,from the very beginning, waiting to emerge ,later on, thus   : this magic of Nagel sounds like that of the materialism he was trying to refute , ironically enough : consciousness is just a property of matter.

And then, afterwards , as if he was aware of his above mentioned own non-sensical belief assumption , he said that any future alternatives to materialism in science might turn out to be false , in their turn as well, who knows , and then he concluded in that book of his by saying :

" The human will to believe is inexhaustible "


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/11/2014 19:57:23

In his play Copenhagen, which brings quantum mechanics to a wider audience,Michael Frayn gives these word to Niels Bohr: “we discover that... the Universe exists... only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.”

There are two ways of delivering that sentence

we discover that the Universe exists [or indeed anything else that we discover]... only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.

or

we discover that... the Universe exists only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.”

Frayn is a clever wordsmith, not a scientist. The first delivery is obviously true. The second is obvious nonsense. Not a unique problem for an actor: the majority still say

"whether tis nobler in the mind // to suffer the slings and arrows..." because that is how the blank verse is written, but it doesn't actually make sense, whereas
"whether 'tis nobler// in the mind to suffer....or to take arms...." is a balanced sentence that does indeed make sense.

Amateur jazz singers have the same problem. It's very easy to stress the words to fit the bar lines, and accent them one two three four, but it doesn''t swing or tell a story. Sinatra stresses the words as though he is saying sentences - it swings like crazy (leave the strict 4/4 to the bass player and the dancers - that's what we get paid for) and makes literal sense.

Physics, jazz, it's all the same: if you don't understand it, you can't convey it to another person by just repeating the words.
 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 20:05:24
alancalverd :

Why do you have to take everything so literally,and so seriously  ?

I have just brought that above displayed article up (The mental universe ) as some sort of food for the mind that reflects yet another way of how some physicists, artists and others see the nature of reality, via metaphors , through their own interpretation of quantum theory , not as a matter of fact .

But, fact is , our "reality " is mostly ...a mental  psychological cultural environmental biological construct .

Quantum theory has kissed goodbye most of that old and false Cartesian dichotomy between the subjective and the objective : there is no independent observer from the observed objective reality : the objective and subjective are inseparable : consciousness , the mind and their related processes shape our physical reality ...: our "reality " is mostly mental .

Our "reality " is just the product of the mutual interactions between consciousness , the mind ...and their environment , including the physical brain and body ...

The nature of reality might elude us for ever thus  , who knows .

I am pretty relatively sure it will in fact ,through science at least , since our "reality " is mostly mental thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/11/2014 20:14:27
Fair enough Don; I've been reasonably patient, but you clearly have no intention of making any reasoned argument or discussion, and your posts are becoming increasingly puerile - as in previous threads - so I'll leave you to it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 20:45:12
Fair enough Don; I've been reasonably patient, but you clearly have no intention of making any reasoned argument or discussion, and your posts are becoming increasingly puerile - as in previous threads - so I'll leave you to it.

Well, that's too bad then .

You're too fragile to take some serious or funny , ironic , sarcastic , metaphorical , matter of facts "blows" , i see . No harm intended though .

You can't just expect me to go along with your materialist magical voodoo , regarding the materialist theory of consciousness at least , or regarding the  intrinsic reductionist and deterministic nature of materialism ,can you ?

Using metaphors , irony , sarcasm, metaphors ...+ counter-arguments  ....in relation to your posts is no synonymous of puerile behavior ,so , unless you have no sense of humor , metaphors ....no backbones ...

Telling me that consciousness or information is an intrinsic property of matter , that electromagnetism and other neurophysiological processes ...produce consciousness , the mind and their related anomalies and processes , how can i not conclude from that that my tv sets , car , fridges, cell phones ...are conscious also ,and exactly the way i am also , not to mention power plants ....

Or that deterministic materialism that does intrinsically require reductionism anyway , does allow top-down causation , while that almighty and omnipotent so-called standard model clearly "forbids " such a heretic top-down causation ...or that free will can exist within a deterministic world ...and all that tragic -hilarious non-sense ...

To mention just that .

In other words :

You have to try to come up with some solid stuff ,if you want me to be completely serious with you , and hence take you seriously , instead of insulting my intelligence by bombarding me with all that materialist magical voodoo, regarding the materialist theory of consciousness at least ,  for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever , not to mention the obvious incompatibility between the intrinsic reductionist and deterministic nature of materialism and between the top-down causation ...

Nice weekend : Try to find out about   how those materialistically incompatible with each other deterministic physical top-down and bottom-up causations can make you do what you do , without you having any say or choice whatsoever on the matter ,while assuming that you have some sort of a "free will " within all that . Insane ...not to say ...puerile in fact , after all : a ridiculous insane and puerile materialistic 'scientific " view of the real world .

Take care .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/11/2014 20:46:02
Quote from: DonQuichotte


Funny Straw man arguments again,and red herrings as well , to mention just that  .
Why is that a straw man argument? You are free to conduct all of those those experiments, and apply naturalistic methodology. To say otherwise is a contradiction of your own definition of naturalism. I'm agreeing with you, which is probably what has you confused.

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You still don't get what naturalism means , sis , (odd) despite your misplaced sarcasm , derision, or irony : the latter can't help you hide  your obvious ignorance about the former .
( Naturalism ,as it clearly implies , means , in short : within nature : there is nothing beyond, or other than nature as the nature of reality,so, all naturalistic forms of science ,and all naturalistic forms of the scientific methodology and epistemology , be it the materialist , dualist , idealist or even theistic ones must deliver naturalistic explanations of the universe : see my post regarding that ,from Encyclopedia Britannica   .)

I do understand the idea. What you still don't understand is relevancy. It doesn't matter whether God exists or doesn't exists if it's irrelevant either way to the particular question I am trying to answer. But once you claim, for example that a demon causes a particular disease, or angels make photosynthesis work, then it's incumbent on you to provide the natural evidence that it does.  Once you designate any material or non material thing as the specific mechanism for a natural phenomenon, proof of its existence is now relevant and fair game. It has nothing to do with "world views" or a priori beliefs, and it's utterly compatible with everything you and Encyclopedia Britannica say about naturalism.

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The mainstream materialist "scientific world view " , or 'consensus ", rejects a -priori any non-materialist scientific world view , research, experiments , approaches , let alone evidence on the subject .

So what?

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Worse : many scientists who dare to think outside of the materialist key hole box , by challenging 1 or more of its entrenched dogmas like that of Darwinism , have been persecuted , their careers and reputations ruined ,and much more : This is no conspiracy theory , but hard facts :
Not to mention how the work of biologist Sheldrake and the man behind it have been treated by mainstream materialist science , scientific journals , the media ....to mention just that poor lad .
No, his career was ruined because he couldn't deliver the natural evidence to substantiate his natural claims, and he wouldn't let go of his failed natural theory. But psuedoscience sometimes pays the bills anyway, if you can publish a book and get some speaking gigs.




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Theistic science is no synonymous thus of involving God in science , let alone of trying either to prove or disprove the existence of God , needless to add .

Really? Because pretty much every definition of theism in every dictionary involves God. The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning "god", which might be a bit of a clue.

"Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures." - Oxford English Dictionary

"Theism, in the field of comparative religion, is the belief that at least one deity exists. In popular parlance, the term theism often describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism." - wikipedia

 "Belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically :  belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world" - Merriam-Webster

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But ,the again , there is nothing intrinsic in  science or in its methodology , let alone  in  its evolving epistemology, that prevents it from going beyond nature itself...

Yeah, I had a feeling you'd start to realize the "naturalism" thing wasn't going to play in your favour. Which is why I think ultimately your argument is religious or mystical in nature, and it's pointless to even try to discuss it terms of the scientific method.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 21:00:09
Cheryl :

Almost no time left to reply to your latest post here above , sorry , but for the following very quickly then : I have already spent way too much time and energy here than usual, you have no idea  :

I have just tried to tell you about the nature of science and about that of its methodology and evolving epistemology , and that neither science nor its methodology and epistemology can be restricted by any world view such as materialism , or by any philosophy whatsoever , be it naturalistic or otherwise, that's all  .

I was not trying to involve any Zeus , God, ghosts  or aliens in science , needless to add .

That you choose to argue with me via strange Kafkaian absurd and subjective ways ,and via many straw man arguments , red herrings , ad-hominem false accusations about my alleged motives .....won't change nothing about the real content, meaning , purpose ... of my posts .

I suggest you try to re-read me more carefully then , while trying to avoid all those above mentioned meaningless false accusations and straw man , red herrings , ad-hominem attacks ....

That's all i have time left for thus .Thanks anyway .

Nice weekend .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/11/2014 23:41:47
alancalverd :

Why do you have to take everything so literally,and so seriously  ?

Because I am a scientist who can smell bullshit a mile away, I loathe it, and I get paid to rid the world of it (when I'm not playing jazz).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2014 17:31:59
alancalverd :

Why do you have to take everything so literally,and so seriously  ?

Because I am a scientist who can smell bullshit a mile away, I loathe it, and I get paid to rid the world of it (when I'm not playing jazz).

Sure about that , Alan ?
How come you still can't smell all that materialist bullshit at the heart of current science then ? ,all that materialist pseudo-science at the very heart of current science , all that materialist dogmatic belief system at the very hart of current science ...? , even when it is right in front of your very eyes, let alone from a distance .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2014 17:50:52
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443931#msg443931 date=1415479562]
Quote from: DonQuichotte


Funny Straw man arguments again,and red herrings as well , to mention just that  .
Why is that a straw man argument? You are free to conduct all of those those experiments, and apply naturalistic methodology. To say otherwise is a contradiction of your own definition of naturalism. I'm agreeing with you, which is probably what has you confused.

Theistic naturalism ,together with all other forms of naturalism, be it the materialist   atheist , dualist or idealist ones, as the very definition of naturalism implies thus , have to come up with natural explanations regarding the universe , by assuming that there is nothingelse out there , nothing other , nothing beyond nature ,as the nature of reality .

All your above straw man arguments ,red herrings , ...are thus just that .

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You still don't get what naturalism means , sis , (odd) despite your misplaced sarcasm , derision, or irony : the latter can't help you hide  your obvious ignorance about the former .
( Naturalism ,as it clearly implies , means , in short : within nature : there is nothing beyond, or other than nature as the nature of reality,so, all naturalistic forms of science ,and all naturalistic forms of the scientific methodology and epistemology , be it the materialist , dualist , idealist or even theistic ones must deliver naturalistic explanations of the universe : see my post regarding that ,from Encyclopedia Britannica   .)

I do understand the idea. What you still don't understand is relevancy. It doesn't matter whether God exists or doesn't exists if it's irrelevant either way to the particular question I am trying to answer. But once you claim, for example that a demon causes a particular disease, or angels make photosynthesis work, then it's incumbent on you to provide the natural evidence that it does.  Once you designate any material or non material thing as the specific mechanism for a natural phenomenon, proof of its existence is now relevant and fair game. It has nothing to do with "world views" or a priori beliefs, and it's utterly compatible with everything you and Encyclopedia Britannica say about naturalism.

See above : you still do not understand what naturalism is , obviously , despite your above mentioned straw man arguments , red herring, and misplaced irony , sarcasm, derision ...once again .

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The mainstream materialist "scientific world view " , or 'consensus ", rejects a -priori any non-materialist scientific world view , research, experiments , approaches , let alone evidence on the subject .

So what?

What do you mean by so what ? Naturalistic science , its naturalistic methodology and its naturalistic epistemology cannot be equated with the materialist ones .

Materialism can be thus naturalistic , but the converse is not necessarily true : naturalism goes beyond materialism : naturalistic science , its naturalistic methodology and its naturalistic epistemology can be either materialist atheist , dualist , idealist , or even theistic , remember .

Science, its methodology and epistemology  are no exclusive synonymous of the materialist ones  thus : science cannot be restricted by any world view for that matter : science that's all about methodology , epistemology.....


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Worse : many scientists who dare to think outside of the materialist key hole box , by challenging 1 or more of its entrenched dogmas like that of Darwinism , have been persecuted , their careers and reputations ruined ,and much more : This is no conspiracy theory , but hard facts :
Not to mention how the work of biologist Sheldrake and the man behind it have been treated by mainstream materialist science , scientific journals , the media ....to mention just that poor lad .
No, his career was ruined because he couldn't deliver the natural evidence to substantiate his natural claims, and he wouldn't let go of his failed natural theory. But psuedoscience sometimes pays the bills anyway, if you can publish a book and get some speaking gigs.

No, that's not true : see the video in question .


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Theistic science is no synonymous thus of involving God in science , let alone of trying either to prove or disprove the existence of God , needless to add .

Really? Because pretty much every definition of theism in every dictionary involves God. The term theism derives from the Greek theos meaning "god", which might be a bit of a clue.

"Belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures." - Oxford English Dictionary

"Theism, in the field of comparative religion, is the belief that at least one deity exists. In popular parlance, the term theism often describes the classical conception of God that is found in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism." - wikipedia

 "Belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically :  belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world" - Merriam-Webster



I was talking just about naturalistic theism : see what that means .

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But ,the again , there is nothing intrinsic in  science or in its methodology , let alone  in  its evolving epistemology, that prevents it from going beyond nature itself...

Yeah, I had a feeling you'd start to realize the "naturalism" thing wasn't going to play in your favour. Which is why I think ultimately your argument is religious or mystical in nature, and it's pointless to even try to discuss it terms of the scientific method.

Your feeling is irrelevant .

I was just pushing the logic of naturalism to its limits that go beyond naturalism itself thus , since science is thus all about methodology and epistemology , not about any philosophy ,world view,  naturalistic or otherwise , from the last century or the next ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/11/2014 21:00:56
"The Quantum Enigma " :

http://quantumenigma.com/book-description/

The Enigma in a Nutshell :

All of physics is based on quantum theory. It’s the most battle-tested theory in all of science. And one-third of our economy involves products designed with it. Quantum theory works for fundamental science and for practical applications.

However, this reliable and useful physics challenges any reasonable worldview. It actually denies the existence of a physically real world independent of its observation. It also tells of a strange connectedness.

Demonstrating quantum strangeness is practical only for small objects, though as technology improves, it’s being displayed for larger and larger things. Quantum theory is presumed to be valid for everything. Quantum cosmologists apply it for the whole of the early universe.

Here are quantum theory’s reality and connectedness problems in a nutshell:

Reality: By your free choice you could demonstrate either of two contradictory physical realities. You can, for example, demonstrate an object to be someplace. But you could have chosen to demonstrate the opposite: that it was not in that place. Observation created the object’s position. Quantum theory has all properties created by their observation.

Connectedness: Quantum theory tells that any things that have ever interacted are forever connected, “entangled.” For example, your friend’s freely made decision of what to do in Moscow (or on Mars) can instantaneously (though randomly) influence what happens to you in Manhattan. And this happens without any physical force involved. Einstein called such influences “spooky actions.” They’ve now been demonstrated to exist. But for human-scale things, the effect is impossible to detect, for all practical purposes. It is “averaged out” by all the other things that are happening. But nevertheless…

Two more comments:

The quantum weirdness is not hard to “understand”–even with zero physics background. But it’s almost impossible to believe . When someone tells you something you can’t believe, you might well think you don’t understand. But believing might be the real problem. It’s best to approach the subject with an open mind. That’s not easy.

The experimental facts basic to the quantum enigma are undisputed.
 But talking of the encounter of physics with “non-physical” stuff like consciousness is controversial. It’s been called our “skeleton in the closet.” You can look at the undisputed facts, and ponder for yourself what they mean.

Notable Quotes on Quantum Physics :

http://quantumenigma.com/nutshell/notable-quotes-on-quantum-physics/?phpMyAdmin=54029d98ba071eec0c69ff5c106b9539#einstein
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 10/11/2014 01:14:32


All of physics is based on quantum theory.

No. All physics is based on observation. Quantum mechanics is one (very successful) way of explaining what we see and predicting what we will see next.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 10/11/2014 14:23:00

I was talking just about naturalistic theism : see what that means .

Well, that's the problem. Theistic naturalism or naturalistic thesim doesn't actually exist, because it's contradiction of how naturalism is defined.  If naturalism is defined as having  "no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it"  you can't invent a special category of naturalism that does have a preference. That is exactly the same error you are claiming materialist naturalism makes.

But since you have now decided that naturalism isn't much help to you either and have abandoned it as well, I suppose it's neither here nor there.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2014 18:02:27


All of physics is based on quantum theory.

No. All physics is based on observation. Quantum mechanics is one (very successful) way of explaining what we see and predicting what we will see next.

No, modern physics is quantum physics .

Police work is also based on observation lol , not to mention the sex industry ...

What do you think of that above mentioned book ?, Mr.physicist , and about the one below , both talk about the central role of consciousness in shaping the physical reality through QM :

"Biocentrism " By Robert Lanza :

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2014 18:35:34

I was talking just about naturalistic theism : see what that means .

Well, that's the problem. Theistic naturalism or naturalistic thesim doesn't actually exist, because it's contradiction of how naturalism is defined.  If naturalism is defined as having  "no ontological preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it"  you can't invent a special category of naturalism that does have a preference. That is exactly the same error you are claiming materialist naturalism makes.

But since you have now decided that naturalism isn't much help to you either and have abandoned it as well, I suppose it's neither here nor there.

(Prior note :

Let's get it over with , once and for all then , hopefully ,and then return to the subject matter of this thread .

All world views, philosophies , beliefs , thoughtstreams ,cultures...do all have ontological roots , needless to add, including materialism ,theism, dualism , idealism ...mumbo-jumboism lol, shamanism ...

There is also what can be called ontological materialism = all is matter .

So, materialism can be naturalistic , but the converse is not necessarily true .

 Naturalism goes beyond materialism, once again ...which means all forms of naturalism, including the theistic one, must deliver natural explanations for natural phenomena  , nature as the alleged nature of reality , as naturalism implies .

So, naturalism does not give a cent lol , not to use a vulgar word lol, or care for the ontological roots of any form of naturalism , as long as they would stick to what naturalism is all about : nature is the one and only reality, that can be explained only by natural explanations thus :

 You may believe in aliens ,ghosts ,  Sint-Claus , fairies , genies, the boogy man ....and be a naturalist at the same time, as long as you can stick to what naturalism is all about ...as you have religious, agnostic .... and atheist scientists nowadays ...)



Never mind : I am not gonna repeat myself , sorry .

Well, just the following then,since you like to open some irrelevant Pandora's boxes, instead of focussing on the main issues at hand   :

 ( The christian theistic naturalism , to which you might be referring , is another story.I am not referring to that , There are also other definitions of theistic naturalism , and spiritual naturalism ...I am not referring to that either  ,not to mention that there is also what can be called non-religious theistic naturalism , or non-religious theism, + pantheism ......It's a real messy maze soup or wild forest from which i don't wanna neither drink, nor eat , let alone  explore either : not my cup of tea  ...) .

The theistic naturalism i am talking about is the one that can try to come up with natural explanations of the universe , while believing in its creator at the same time, and that without involving God in science , needless to add , and without even concerning itself either by proving or disproving the existence of God : that's how science used to be practiced by its early inventors (muslims ) : they came up with natural explanations of phenomena , while believing in God as the creator of all things and beings at the same time : the one does not exclude the other , to the contrary (The historical schism or conflict between religion and science was just an Eurocentric thing , not universal , not even remotely close thus , since the origin of modern science itself originated from some aspects of the Qur'anic epistemology ,but, that's another story about  which i had opened a whole thread , earlier on .I have thus no intention , desire or time for that neither ).

The inception of science was mainly ancient Greek ,but its real birth and practice on the reality ground was due to muslims ...

Anyway : just drop all the above . I am not gonna argue about all that , since that's not our topic .

The bottom line is :

Naturalistic science , its naturalistic methodology and epistemology cannot be restricted by any world view, philosophy or belief ...

Science is all about methodology and epistemology thus : all about free inquiry ,while materialism has been confining science to its dogmatic belief system prison , by holding it back , so , science must be set free from materialism, since the latter is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related anomalies for which materialism can intrinsically never account  , and hence consciousness is no material process ,and therefore , time for a post -materialistic science  that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature ,as the subject matter of this thread .

In short :

Real   science and real   scientists are the ones that stick to the scientific methodology and epistemology , not to some  ontological preferences  , while trying to extend the scientific methodology and epistemology  whenever they would stumble upon anomalies  that would challenge them....

For example : Quantum theory has shown that consciousness plays a central role in shaping the physical reality: consciousness enters the realm of physics : there is no independent observer  , so, rational analytical empiricism must be extended as to integrate that subjective mental feature  in its epistemology ,empiricism, and methodology ,as PEAR and non-materialist scientists have been doing ...

P.S.: What do you think about the above mentioned books, especially "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness " .

I recommend reading it : it's written by brilliant physicists with impressive credentials .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2014 19:20:45
alancalverd :

Why do you have to take everything so literally,and so seriously  ?

Because I am a scientist who can smell bullshit a mile away, I loathe it, and I get paid to rid the world of it (when I'm not playing jazz).

Sure about that , Alan ?
How come you still can't smell all that materialist bullshit at the heart of current science then ? ,all that materialist pseudo-science at the very heart of current science , all that materialist dogmatic belief system at the very hart of current science ...? , even when it is right in front of your very eyes, let alone from a distance .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2014 19:27:13


All of physics is based on quantum theory.

No. All physics is based on observation. Quantum mechanics is one (very successful) way of explaining what we see and predicting what we will see next.

No, modern physics is quantum physics .

Police work is also based on observation lol , not to mention the sex industry ...

What do you think of that above mentioned book ?, Mr.physicist , and about the one below , both talk about the central role of consciousness in shaping the physical reality through QM :

"Biocentrism " By Robert Lanza :

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/


P.S.: You said there is no problem concerning the interpretation of quantum theory : see this on the subject :

http://quantumenigma.com/controversy/

See this relevant part of the above :

First, Arguing that here is no problem:

Tom Banks: “I think there have been clear mathematical arguments given, which show that macroscopic objects (including Schrodinger’s poor cat) made of constituents with local interactions, obey the rules of classical probability theory.  There is nothing more mysterious in QM than that.”

Murray Gell-Mann: “The universe presumably couldn’t care less whether human beings evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists.”

N. G. van Kampen: “Quantum mechanics provides a complete and adequate description of the observed physical phenomena on the atomic scale. What else can one wish?…The scandal is that there are still many articles, discussions, and textbooks, which advertise various interpretations and philosophical profundities…Many physicists have not yet learned that they should adjust their ideas to the observed reality rather than the other way round.

Christopher Fuchs and Asher Peres: “Quantum theory needs no ‘interpretation.’”…We need nothing more than the fully consistent theory we already have.”

On the other hand, arguing that there is a problem:

J. M. Jauch: “The interpretation [of quantum mechanics] has remained a source of conflict from its inception. . . . For many thoughtful physicists, it has remained a kind of ’skeleton in the closet.’”

Albert Einstein: “I cannot seriously believe in [quantum theory] because. . . physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.”

Frank Wilczek: “The relevant literature [on the meaning of quantum theory] is famously contentious and obscure.  I believe it will remain so until someone constructs, within the formalism of quantum mechanics, an ‘observer,’ that is, a model entity whose states correspond to a recognizable caricature of conscious awareness.”

John Bell: “It is likely that the new way of seeing things will astonish us.”

Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”


This argument on whether or not there is a problem brings up an analogy that accords with our own bias. A couple is in marriage counseling. The wife says, “There’s a problem in our marriage.” Her husband disagrees, saying, “There’s no problem in our marriage.” The marriage counselor knows who’s right.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/11/2014 20:22:50
World-first evidence suggests that meditation alters cancer survivors’ cells :

Source : Science alert/ Cancer Journal :


http://www.sciencealert.com/world-first-evidence-suggests-that-meditation-alters-cancer-survivors-cells

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.29063/full


"God Particle" Findings Were Inconclusive, According To New Analysis :

November 9, 2014 .

http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113275750/higgs-boson-findings-from-cern-inconclusive-110914/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 11/11/2014 00:04:08


All of physics is based on quantum theory.

No. All physics is based on observation. Quantum mechanics is one (very successful) way of explaining what we see and predicting what we will see next.

No, modern physics is quantum physics .

Some of "modern" physics is quantum physics, but that's far from "all of physics". The common factor in all that we do in physics, whether quantum or continuum, solid state or relativistic, is observation of the material universe.
 
Quote
Albert Einstein: “I cannot seriously believe in [quantum theory] because. . . physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.”
Yes, even Einstein had problems getting his head round it, but you can't dispute the material facts of photoelectricity, black body radiation, line spectra, etc.

Quote
John Bell: “It is likely that the new way of seeing things will astonish us.”
takes the biscuit for a content-free statement of the obvious. Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation. There is no reason why the next big thing should be any less astonishing that the last.


*typhoid, oxygen, newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, the Hall effect, evolution, thermodynamics.....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 11/11/2014 00:32:52
... Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation.

A very good point. In fact, you could probably make a passable definition of 'understanding' around that point  [8D]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 11/11/2014 03:49:23
... Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation.

A very good point. In fact, you could probably make a passable definition of 'understanding' around that point  [8D]
I agree as well dlorde that alan has described perfectly the aim of the honest scientist. If Don has his way, we will all be expected to use simple material observations to give credibility to a mysterious immaterial cause. I think alan has made an excellent material observation that should convince every honest scientist that the mysterious immaterial only has it's proper place in science fiction. But alas, not everyone here is interested in honest science.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/11/2014 16:30:33


So, materialism can be naturalistic , but the converse is not necessarily true .
So would you also agree that "theism can be naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true" ? 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 16:47:14
... Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation.

A very good point. In fact, you could probably make a passable definition of 'understanding' around that point  [8D]
I agree as well dlorde that alan has described perfectly the aim of the honest scientist. If Don has his way, we will all be expected to use simple material observations to give credibility to a mysterious immaterial cause. I think alan has made an excellent material observation that should convince every honest scientist that the mysterious immaterial only has it's proper place in science fiction. But alas, not everyone here is interested in honest science.

There is no such a thing as   honest  science : the latter is neither about judgments of value like honesty nor about motives , let alone about morality or ethics , even though scientists have to take into consideration ,  respect  and apply certain ethics regarding their work, experiments , methods....

Regarding the claim that science has replaced  some mysterious  immaterial cause with a simple material or rather natural explanation, is thus partly true ,simply because the universe cannot be reduced to just material causes , processes or explanations  :

Materialism is false , mainly because it can intrinsically never account for  the nature origin and function of consciousness itself and its related anomalies and processes ,so, consciousness is a non -material, non-physical and non-local process that's irreducible to material processes , causes or explanations , let alone that consciousness can be explained by the latter : there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever  for the materialist theory or model of consciousness .

In short :

The intrinsic materialist claim (since materialism says that all is matter ) that the whole universe can be explained by material causes , processes or explanations only is false , thanks mainly to the major anomaly that broke the neck of materialism : consciousness .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 16:57:29
... Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation.

A very good point. In fact, you could probably make a passable definition of 'understanding' around that point  [8D]

That was not a very good point : see my reply to the " honest science " of Ethos :

That was just a partly true assertion , since the whole universe can neither be reduced to nor explained by material causes , processes or explanations only : the very nature of consciousness itself and its related anomalies and processes are evidence enough for that fact , not to mention the fact that the materialist theory or model of consciousness is absolutely and certainly not supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 17:20:00
Cheryl, Ethos, alancalverd , dlorde :

Naturalism can be either materialist atheist , dualist , idealist , or even theistic .

So, material explanations of the universe  are just a part of the pic , not the whole pic , not to mention the fact that  reductionist materialism that reduces everything to just material processes , causes, or explanations is ...false , mainly because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness and its related anomalies and processes ...see the difference between material causes , processes or explanations and between the reductionist materialism ? : the former is a part of explaining the universe , and the latter just reduces the universe to the former .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 17:41:55
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg444085#msg444085 date=1415664248]


All of physics is based on quantum theory.

No. All physics is based on observation. Quantum mechanics is one (very successful) way of explaining what we see and predicting what we will see next.

No, modern physics is quantum physics .

Some of "modern" physics is quantum physics, but that's far from "all of physics". The common factor in all that we do in physics, whether quantum or continuum, solid state or relativistic, is observation of the material universe.

First :

96 % of the universe is made of dark matter and dark energy the nature of which science is totally silent about .

Second :

Quantum "mechanics" is just 1 of the 3 great pillars upon which modern physics is based .  The others being Einstein's theories of special and general relativity .Einstein's theories deal with the nature of space and time ,and the force of gravity ,

Quantum "mechanics " deals with everythingelse .

But , nevertheless , the whole universe is quantum "mechanical " , in the Von-Neumannian sense that is , where consciousness plays a central role in physics, the latter that's just an excellent approximation of reality : not complete , if ever  . 

Not to mention the fact that physics gets rewritten now and then :

Why a Physics Revolution Might Be on Its Way :

http://www.livescience.com/48685-physics-field-revolution.html


 
Quote
Quote
Albert Einstein: “I cannot seriously believe in [quantum theory] because. . . physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.”
Yes, even Einstein had problems getting his head round it, but you can't dispute the material facts of photoelectricity, black body radiation, line spectra, etc.

Quantum physics has moved on beyond Einstein though . Half of his life was spent on trying to find a unifying physical theory , in vain : the latter can never be accounted for through just material physical processes : one can never do that without making reference to the mind : life and consciousness as no accidents or side effects of evolution must be taken into consideration also ,if one wanna try to come up with a unifying theory ...

Quote :

"Biocentrism (theory of everything) from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center” — also known as the biocentric universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza. In this view, life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos. Biocentrism asserts that current theories of the physical world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness. – From WIKIPEDIA" End quote .

See the rest of the above displayed quote in the link below :

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

Quote
Quote
John Bell: “It is likely that the new way of seeing things will astonish us.”
takes the biscuit for a content-free statement of the obvious. Every advance in science has been astonishing, because it replaced some mysterious immaterial cause* with a simple material explanation. There is no reason why the next big thing should be any less astonishing that the last.

That's not what Bell meant : As Richard Feynman said "Nobody understands quantum physics " : that's what Bell meant : an astonishing theory where weird events occur ...

"If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize." R,Feynman .

These brilliant non-Nobelists physicists with impeccable credentials did succeed in explaining it to the average man though :

http://quantumenigma.com/


See also my replies here below to Ethos, dlorde , Cheryl ,and to you as well ...  on the subject of your assertion that " ...science replaced some mysterious immaterial cause with a simple material explanation ."

By the way , ironically enough , the interpretation of quantum theory has a very simple explanation : consciousness interacting with elementary particles : Occam's razor .


Quote
*typhoid, oxygen, newtonian mechanics, quantum mechanics, the Hall effect, evolution, thermodynamics.....

Quantum theory is impossible to understand without reference to the ...mind, ironically enough .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 17:43:47
Why a Physics Revolution Might Be on Its Way :

http://www.livescience.com/48685-physics-field-revolution.html
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/11/2014 18:20:27
alancalverd : See the following :


Robert Lanza, MD - BIOCENTRISM :

Source :  http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/


Biocentrism (cosmology) :


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as the biocentric universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza. In this view, life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos — life creates the universe rather than the other way around. Biocentrism asserts that current theories of the physical world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness.

Lanza’s biocentric theory builds on quantum physics. While physics is considered fundamental to the study of the universe, and chemistry fundamental to the study of life, biocentrism places biology before the other sciences to produce a theory of everything. Critics have questioned whether the theory is falsifiable. Lanza has argued that future experiments, such as scaled-up quantum superposition, will either support or contradict the theory.


Theory:

Lanza argues that the primacy of consciousness features in the work of Descartes, Kant, Leibniz, Berkeley, Schopenhauer, and Bergson.

He sees this as supporting the central claim that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense perception, rather than external physical objects. Lanza argues that biocentrism offers insight into several major puzzles of science, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle principle, the double-slit experiment, and the fine tuning of the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe as we perceive it.

 According to a Discover magazine article adapted from Lanza’s book, “biocentrism offers a more promising way to bring together all of physics, as scientists have been trying to do since Einstein’s unsuccessful unified field theories of eight decades ago.”

Lanza’s theory of Biocentrism has seven principles:

    1. What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.

   2- Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined.
They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

   3- The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

    4-Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

    5-The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.

   6- Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

   7- Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

Reception :

David Thompson, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that Lanza’s “work is a wake-up call.” Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas said, “Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work.

 The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole.” Wake Forest University scientist and professor of medicine Anthony Atala stated, “This new theory is certain to revolutionize our concepts of the laws of nature for centuries to come.” Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, pointed out that Lanza’s theory is consistent with quantum mechanics: “What Lanza says in this book is not new.

Then why does Robert have to say it at all? It is because we, the physicists, do NOT say it––or if we do say it, we only whisper it, and in private––furiously blushing as we mouth the words.

 True, yes; politically correct, hell no!” Indian physician and writer Deepak Chopra stated that “Lanza’s insights into the nature of consciousness [are] original and exciting” and that “his theory of biocentrism is consistent with the most ancient wisdom traditions of the world which says that consciousness conceives, governs, and becomes a physical world.

 It is the ground of our Being in which both subjective and objective reality come into existence.”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/11/2014 21:17:42
http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/14/biocentrism-demystified-a-response-to-deepak-chopra-and-robert-lanzas-notion-of-a-conscious-universe/

Sorry if it seems I am just being lazy by posting this link to a rebuttal, Don. If there is a particular point or counter point you want to discuss in depth, let me know.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/11/2014 21:32:54
Sean Carrolls comments on biocentrism:

    Like Chopra, Lanza mixes (1) completely legitimate (but strange sounding) statements about quantum mechanics, (2) tendentious interpretations of what quantum mechanics says that are defensible only because they are so vague, and (3) outright craziness. Quantum effects aren’t usually perceptible on the macro level, but of course they can be. So that part is legitimate.

    Things like “these waves of probability are not waves of material” are somewhat reminiscent of the truth—but sufficiently nebulous that they allow him to say things like “outside of that idea, the wave is not there” and “nothing is real unless it’s perceived,” which are just nonsense. The real problem with the Chopra/Lanza attempt to put “life” at the center of how we understand quantum mechanics is that no definition of “life” is ever offered. In physics, our theories map formal mathematical structures onto observable reality. The quantum state is a vector in Hilbert space, a well-defined mathematical object. It evolves according to the Schrödinger equation, a well-defined differential equation. What is “life,” or “consciousness,” from this perspective? What mathematical space is it an element of? What equations tell us how it evolves? These “theories” are hard to attack because there’s no there there, all you have are some fuzzy words and fast talk.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/11/2014 09:35:29
Sean Carrolls comments on biocentrism:
...These “theories” are hard to attack because there’s no there there, all you have are some fuzzy words and fast talk.
Pretty much sums up the whole 'quantum consciousness' schtick.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 12/11/2014 14:38:33


Robert Lanza, MD - BIOCENTRISM :

Source :  http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/


Biocentrism (cosmology) :



Lanza’s theory of Biocentrism has seven principles:

    1. What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An “external” reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.

   2- Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined.
They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.

   3- The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.

    4-Without consciousness, “matter” dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.

    5-The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The “universe” is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.

   6- Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.

   7- Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.




Don - Since you are unlikely to have made it to the end of the article, I thought I would post the summarizing points at the end.

10. Conclusions

Let us recapitulate the main points:

(a) Space and time exist, even though they are relative and not absolute.

(b) Modern quantum theory, long after the now-discredited Copenhagen interpretation, is consistent with the idea of an objective universe that exists without a conscious observer.

(c) Lanza and Chopra misunderstand and misuse the anthropic principle.

(d) The biocentrism approach does not provide any new information about the nature of consciousness, and relies on ignoring recent advances in understanding consciousness from a scientific perspective.

(e) Both authors show thinly-veiled disdain for Darwin, while not actually addressing his science in the article. Chopra has demonstrated his utter ignorance of evolution multiple times.

Modern physics is a vast and multi-layered web that stretches over the entire deck of cards. All other natural sciences – all truths that exist in the material world- are interrelated, held together by the mathematical reality of physics. Fundamental theories in physics are supported by multiple lines of evidence from many different scientific disciplines, developed and tested over decades. Clearly, those who propose new theories that purport to redefine fundamental assumptions or paradigms in physics have their work cut out for them. Our contention is that the theory of biocentrism, if analysed properly, does not hold up to scrutiny. It is not the paradigm change that it claims to be. It is also our view that one can find much meaning, beauty and purpose in a naturalistic view of the universe, without having to resort to mystical notions of reality.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/11/2014 17:26:03
Physicist Proposes New Theory of Gravity—Gravity Does Not Exist :


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/20006-physicist-proposes-new-theory-of-gravity-gravity-does-not-exist/

Quote from the above displayed link :

"Professor Eric Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and a professor of physics at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam, proposed a new theory of gravity as reported by the New York Times on July 12, 2010. He argued in a paper, titled “On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton” that gravity is a consequence of the laws of thermodynamics.

“For me, gravity doesn’t exist,” Dr. Verlinde told the Times. Of course, the apple will fall to the ground, but the physical laws governing that action may not be the way science has viewed it for the past 300 years.

The core of the theory may be relevant to the lack of order in physical systems. The Times describes his argument as the “bad hair day” theory of gravity. Hair frizzles in the heat because there are more ways for it to curl than to remain straight. Dr. Verlinde postulates that the force we call gravity works in a similar way."  End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/11/2014 18:15:03
Cheryl :

(Prior note : 96 % of the universe is made of unknown dark matter and dark energy , as physicists don't really even know much about the remaining 4 % , despite all their sophisticated theories ,maths, ...including quantum theory and relativity : the latter that are incompatible with each other in fact .

So, physicists are not even close to approaching the nature of reality , if ever , not even remotely close thus : see also that link of mine to "Why a physics revolution might be on its way " here above .

In short : what you mentioned here above , through the words of Caroll or others for that matter , about the alleged fact that physics has been delivering an excellent approximation for  understanding the universe and our place in it , is  simply a hilarious joke.

Reminds me , in another similar context then, of that British physicist in the 1900 who said that there was nothing left to be discovered in physics .All that was needed was more and more precise measurements .

Caroll says basically almost the same thing : there are no significant or relevant forces , fields or laws of physics left to be discovered : yeah, right : he does not know much about that 4% of the universe ,and he dares say non-sense like that through the standard model that's highly likely to be dethroned by the next revolution in physics . 

Not only that , on top of the above : since materialism is false and can thus intrinsically never account for either life or consciousness just through material processes only , let alone  for the origin of life that way , or for the evolution of conscious life ....life and consciousness that are no accidents or side effects or by-products of evolution , for example, to mention just that , then any understanding of the nature of reality , the origin of conscious life , the evolution of conscious life , the beginning of the universe ....any unified theory thus can intrinsically  never be accounted for  by material processes or physics only : Life and consciousness must be integrated in any future so-called unified theory as the key and major players in it . )



What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory anyway ? Nothing : he just commented on it .

Lanza is a prominent biologist and astronomer with impeccable credentials , not some sort of a new age lunatic or something like that :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lanza

Chopra is not my cup of tea either , needless to add .


I expect you to comment on  Lanza's theory yourself ,on "Quantum Enigma " ....,  via  your own words , not just make an appeal to authority , like to that of materialist Caroll .

The latter cannot but a-priori reject any non-materialist interpretation of quantum theory , any non-materialist theory or model of consciousness and life , let alone that he can even consider  any non-materialist theory of nature,simply because he's so entrenched  in his materialist dogmas which he has been mistaking for science , like the man who mistook his wife for a hat , or like someone who looks at or observes the world through that materialist key hole , while assuming that that materialist key hole version of reality is the real reality  .

Caroll has even admitted (He has no choice but to admit that , otherwise he would be a vulgar liar , a bad scientist ,on top of being a materialist deluded one ) that the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory has not been solved yet , so, how can he say that Lanza's interpretation of quantum theory is false then ? , while Lanza and others have been offering a simple explanation of quantum theory : consciousness interacting with sub-atomic particles ...: Occam's razor .

To be honest , i have no respect whatsoever for materialist scientists in fact , since they have been ignoring and denying the overwhelming evidence against materialism ,or they would just try to go around that evidence  by inventing unfalsifiable bullshit theories like the hidden variable  theory ,decoherence theory , multiverse and parallel  universes theories , string theories and the rest .... and the fact that the major anomaly of them all :consciousness , not to mention the latter's related anomalies and processes , can never be intrinsically accounted for by materialism is evidence enough for the fact that materialism is false , including all its extensions like the materialist theory or model of consciousness .

Even Einstein's special and general relativity theories , regarding the nature of space and time and regarding the "force " of gravity are in fact incompatible with that simple explanation of quantum theory that has been delivered by many prominent physicists like by Von Neumann school, like by all founders of quantum theory and by many other physicists yesterday and today like Amit Goswami , like the authors of "Quantum Enigma : physics encounters consciousness " and many others, that's why Einstein could not bring himself to accept quantum theory ,while so unsuccessfully trying to come up with a unified physical theory during the last half of his life  .

Ironically enough , the original interpretation of quantum theory to which Einstein was exposed at that time could not but be incompatible with his own relativity theories .

Why should one listen to a materialist scientist on the subject then, since he /she would just be a-priori assuming that consciousness is just a material process like the rest of them all in the universe ? .

That Caroll would say such astonishing things about Lanza's theory , for example , is pretty predictable , since he's a materialist first , and a scientist only second .

Caroll should in fact know better than throwing stones at his opponents since he 's been living within a false and fragile materialist key hole sand "made of glass " sand castle , where all extensions of materialism are false .Not only that , they represent such an insane puerile and ridiculous distortion of the nature of reality .

So, as you can understand as a result of the above :  i do not see any worth or value in anything materialists like Caroll can say about non-materialist theories , models , experiments , ....since they would just have to reject them, otherwise they would be ceasing to be materialists , no mater how much evidence or lack of it those non-materialist theories , models ...would or would not deliver .


Furthermore , since materialism is false , then the nature of reality cannot be exclusively material or physical, and hence consciousness that's irreducible to the former , and life that cannot be accounted for by just material processes , have to be integrated in any so-called unified theory of the universe, not to mention the fact that any exclusively physical so-called unified theory  is doomed to fail ,taking into consideration all the above .

Inter-disciplinary synthesis of all sciences must in fact be the answer , where life and consciousness must be integrated in that synthesis ,life and consciousness as key and major players in any future so-called unified theory that hence cannot be just physical : most of current physics will have to be abandoned ,including that materialist so-called standard model +relativity theories ...and physics alone can no longer be assumed to be able to deliver a so-called unified theory , since materialism is false , and hence the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical ....

Lanza , Goswami , Fred Kuttner , Bruce Rosenblum and others were /are the ones whose conceptions of the nature of reality might be paving the way for a totally new science on the subject, not that insane puerile and ridiculous key hole distortion  or materialist version of the nature of reality .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/11/2014 19:03:44
"Imagination is more important than Knowledge " Einstein .

Imagination that was behind many scientific discoveries, works of art , literature ...and much more .

You have thus to have a creative and healthy imagination, not to mention vision + some trained experienced informed enlightened intuition to be able to understand the above , or just what Lanza and others were saying on the subject .

Materialism has been killing and reducing your imagination, vision ,creativity, intelligence  ....no wonder, you have no idea  .

Materialism that says that they are just the product of electromagnetism, neurophysiology , chemistry and physics , paradoxically enough : absurd puerile insane ridiculous unscientific materialist bullshit,for which there is of course , needless to add , absolutely and certainly no empirical evidence whatsoever  .

So, your imagination , thoughts ,creativity, intelligence ,the rest of your consciousness  and  mind,not to mention your unconsciousness or sub-consciousness ,  not to mention the self -identity    ...do not exist as such = just illusions = just pragmatic survival strategies = paradoxical bullshit , in the name of ...science .

Materialism that says that consciousness and life are just accidental side effects or by-products of evolution through the so-called unguided blind and random natural selection, that can be explained through material processes only .....

And you dare call all that materialist bullshit and fairy tales ...science ?

Materialism is , metaphorically , a bit like this following virus as the subject matter of the following scientific experiment , that makes people  ... stupid :

Only materialists would be 'intelligent' enough as to claim that this following scientific experiment supports their false production theory of consciousness :

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/virus-that-makes-humans-more-stupid-discovered-9849920.html

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/11/2014 20:31:38
The science or physics behind "Quantum Enigma : Physics Encounters Consciousness " , and behind Lanza's Biocentrism are solid though ,despite the obvious materialist "reasons " behind those materialist gymnastics denials on the subject :

Quantum Enigma ...  :

Controversy :

For some, this is a controversial book. Why? After all, the experimental results we report are completely undisputed. And the explanations of them with quantum theory are completely standard. It’s the book’s focus on the quantum enigma, the mystery beyond the physics, that’s controversial.

Many physicists dismiss this mystery as irrelevant for all practical purposes, and best not emphasized. It displays physics’ encounter with consciousness. Its discussion can be embarrassing. It’s been called our “skeleton in the closet.”

One concern is that some people, seeing the solid science of physics linked to the mystery of the conscious mind, might become susceptible to all sorts of pseudo-scientific nonsense. We physicists can also be uncomfortable seeing our discipline involved with anything so “unphysical.”

What’s unphysical? From its inception, quantum theory involved the observer. To account for the demonstrated facts, quantum theory has the observation of an object instantaneously influencing the behavior of other distant objects–even if no physical force connects them. Quantum theory also has the existence of an object at the particular place where it is observed become an actuality only upon its observation.

But what constitutes an “observation”? It’s not clear. Moreover, as quantum phenomena are now being demonstrated with ever-larger objects, this “quantum measurement problem” gets increasing attention, both by physicists and in popular treatments.

“Observation” cannot be separated from “awareness,” and therefore from “consciousness.” These two concepts themselves involve some mystery. We must be careful. Any broad-ranging discussion of physics’ encounter with consciousness walks the edge of a slippery slope. We therefore work to distinguish the demonstrated facts from speculation (and, of course, from pseudo-science).

But the issues raised by the demonstrated facts intrigue and invite speculation beyond the established physics. Several interpretations of what quantum mechanics is telling us about our world (and about us?) currently contend. Some interpretations are wild.

Since quantum mechanics works well for all practical purposes, some physicists vociferously argue that the mysteries are irrelevant. They should therefore not be emphasized to a lay audience–or even to physics students. Remarkably, the demonstrated facts are quite understandable without any background in physics. Non-physicists can decide, and even speculate, for themselves.

…….

Here are some comments by experts in the foundations of quantum mechanics illustrating the controversy. Some, on both sides, have Nobel Prizes in physics.

First, Arguing that there is no problem:

Tom Banks: “I think there have been clear mathematical arguments given, which show that macroscopic objects (including Schrodinger’s poor cat) made of constituents with local interactions, obey the rules of classical probability theory.  There is nothing more mysterious in QM than that.”

Murray Gell-Mann: “The universe presumably couldn’t care less whether human beings evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists.”

N. G. van Kampen: “Quantum mechanics provides a complete and adequate description of the observed physical phenomena on the atomic scale. What else can one wish?…The scandal is that there are still many articles, discussions, and textbooks, which advertise various interpretations and philosophical profundities…Many physicists have not yet learned that they should adjust their ideas to the observed reality rather than the other way round.

Christopher Fuchs and Asher Peres: “Quantum theory needs no ‘interpretation.’”…We need nothing more than the fully consistent theory we already have.”

On the other hand, arguing that there is a problem:

J. M. Jauch: “The interpretation [of quantum mechanics] has remained a source of conflict from its inception. . . . For many thoughtful physicists, it has remained a kind of ’skeleton in the closet.’”

Albert Einstein: “I cannot seriously believe in [quantum theory] because. . . physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.”

Frank Wilczek: “The relevant literature [on the meaning of quantum theory] is famously contentious and obscure.  I believe it will remain so until someone constructs, within the formalism of quantum mechanics, an ‘observer,’ that is, a model entity whose states correspond to a recognizable caricature of conscious awareness.”

John Bell: “It is likely that the new way of seeing things will astonish us.”

Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”


This argument on whether or not there is a problem brings up an analogy that accords with our own bias. A couple is in marriage counseling. The wife says, “There’s a problem in our marriage.” Her husband disagrees, saying, “There’s no problem in our marriage.” The marriage counselor knows who’s right.


...............................

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/11/2014 20:49:25
Cheryl :

The science or physics behind "Quantum Enigma ..." ,as well as behind Lanza's Biocentrism are solid , despite those predictable materialist denials or gymnastics on the subject , for obvious reasons .

See my replies to you here above ,in my own words , as well as what the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." say about the solid physics behind their controversial book ...

Not to mention the fact that "Biocentrism " is also based on solid science as well .

You can detect that , if you only would  read that book (s) from which i can provide you with some relevant excerpts  on the subject .

And since life and consciousness (Not to mention the origin of  conscious life , the evolution of conscious life ...) cannot be reduced to just material processes ,and since materialism is false ,  they would have to be integrated in any future unified theory that cannot be just physical thus , as major or key players in it .

Materialists cannot but deny all that , otherwise , they would be ceasing to be materialists ...They can only come up with a -priori false materialist refutations that have been already intrinsically refuted ...

Stop arguing with me then from the false materialistic perspective, please  . Thanks.Cheers.

Try then to refute Lanza's theory , for example, from his own scientific non-materialistic perspective then, through his theory's 7 points , point per point  .

P.S.: Don't you realise the obvious and elementary fact that you are a -priori refuting yourself through the self-refuting "arguments " of materialist scientists ,since materialism is absolutely and certainly false ,without a shadow or a ghost lol of a doubt , thanks mainly to the very nature of consciousness itself and its related anomalies and processes ?





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/11/2014 22:23:33
Physicist Proposes New Theory of Gravity—Gravity Does Not Exist :


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/20006-physicist-proposes-new-theory-of-gravity-gravity-does-not-exist/
Once again, an old paper that has been experimentally falsified (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425220/experiments-show-gravity-is-not-an-emergent-phenomenon/) (also, gravity as an entropic force is not Verlinde's idea, it's actually been around for a while). But an interesting idea.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/11/2014 22:27:24
Why a Physics Revolution Might Be on Its Way :

http://www.livescience.com/48685-physics-field-revolution.html
Nothing new here - so?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 12/11/2014 22:34:12


What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory anyway ? Nothing : he just commented on it .Lanza is a prominent biologist and astronomer with impeccable credentials , not some sort of a new age lunatic or something like that :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lanza

Chopra is not my cup of tea either , needless to add .

Lanza and the new age lunatic have co-authored articles on biocentrism and evolution.

Quote
I expect you to comment on  Lanza's theory yourself ,on "Quantum Enigma " ....,  via  your own words , not just make an appeal to authority....

Hahahahahahahaa.
 That's pretty funny coming from the person who has posted reams and reams of excerpts, book jacket praise, youtube videos, etc. and almost never bothers to summarize, support or explain the main ideas in any of it ("I'm just the messenger. Don't be lazy.")
When I do take the time and effort to address your excerpts point by point, you ignore all of it, and then restate your same unsubstantiated claims. I'd be insulted, but that is how you engage everyone who bothers to respond to your posts.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 12/11/2014 23:24:08
Quote
Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “center”) — also known as the biocentric universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza. In this view, life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos — life creates the universe rather than the other way around. Biocentrism asserts that current theories of the physical world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness.

Crap. The universe, indeed even this planet, is older than life. Assertion is not proof, or even evidence. It's just mumbo jumbo.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 13/11/2014 15:11:25
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 13/11/2014 15:51:46
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."
I wouldn't be holding my breath waiting for that request to be honored Cheryl. Don assumes that endless paragraphs of his opinions will stand as proof. People get turned off very rapidly when confronted with this behavior.

When I was in college, my literature Professor gave me some valuable advice concerning how one should present information to others.

He said: "It is always best to present your material in short but concise relevant sentences resisting the tendency to overelaborate. You will have better luck at maintaining the attention of your audience if you do so. If you go on and on with semi relevant or irrelevant information, you will loose your audience very quickly."

Don lost my interest early on.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 17:32:34
Cheryl :

(Prior note : 96 % of the universe is made of unknown dark matter and dark energy , as physicists don't really even know much about the remaining 4 % , despite all their sophisticated theories ,maths, ...including quantum theory and relativity : the latter that are incompatible with each other in fact .

So, physicists are not even close to approaching the nature of reality , if ever , not even remotely close thus : see also that link of mine to "Why a physics revolution might be on its way " here above .

In short : what you mentioned here above , through the words of Caroll or others for that matter , about the alleged fact that physics has been delivering an excellent approximation for  understanding the universe and our place in it , is  simply a hilarious joke.

Reminds me , in another similar context then, of that British physicist in the 1900 who said that there was nothing left to be discovered in physics .All that was needed was more and more precise measurements .

Caroll says basically almost the same thing : there are no significant or relevant forces , fields or laws of physics left to be discovered : yeah, right : he does not know much about that 4% of the universe ,and he dares say non-sense like that through the standard model that's highly likely to be dethroned by the next revolution in physics . 

Not only that , on top of the above : since materialism is false and can thus intrinsically never account for either life or consciousness just through material processes only , let alone  for the origin of life that way , or for the evolution of conscious life ....life and consciousness that are no accidents or side effects or by-products of evolution , for example, to mention just that , then any understanding of the nature of reality , the origin of conscious life , the evolution of conscious life , the beginning of the universe ....any unified theory thus can intrinsically  never be accounted for  by material processes or physics only : Life and consciousness must be integrated in any future so-called unified theory as the key and major players in it . )



What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory anyway ? Nothing : he just commented on it .

Lanza is a prominent biologist and astronomer with impeccable credentials , not some sort of a new age lunatic or something like that :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lanza

Chopra is not my cup of tea either , needless to add .


I expect you to comment on  Lanza's theory yourself ,on "Quantum Enigma " ....,  via  your own words , not just make an appeal to authority , like to that of materialist Caroll .

The latter cannot but a-priori reject any non-materialist interpretation of quantum theory , any non-materialist theory or model of consciousness and life , let alone that he can even consider  any non-materialist theory of nature,simply because he's so entrenched  in his materialist dogmas which he has been mistaking for science , like the man who mistook his wife for a hat , or like someone who looks at or observes the world through that materialist key hole , while assuming that that materialist key hole version of reality is the real reality  .

Caroll has even admitted (He has no choice but to admit that , otherwise he would be a vulgar liar , a bad scientist ,on top of being a materialist deluded one ) that the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory has not been solved yet , so, how can he say that Lanza's interpretation of quantum theory is false then ? , while Lanza and others have been offering a simple explanation of quantum theory : consciousness interacting with sub-atomic particles ...: Occam's razor .

To be honest , i have no respect whatsoever for materialist scientists in fact , since they have been ignoring and denying the overwhelming evidence against materialism ,or they would just try to go around that evidence  by inventing unfalsifiable bullshit theories like the hidden variable  theory ,decoherence theory , multiverse and parallel  universes theories , string theories and the rest .... and the fact that the major anomaly of them all :consciousness , not to mention the latter's related anomalies and processes , can never be intrinsically accounted for by materialism is evidence enough for the fact that materialism is false , including all its extensions like the materialist theory or model of consciousness .

Even Einstein's special and general relativity theories , regarding the nature of space and time and regarding the "force " of gravity are in fact incompatible with that simple explanation of quantum theory that has been delivered by many prominent physicists like by Von Neumann school, like by all founders of quantum theory and by many other physicists yesterday and today like Amit Goswami , like the authors of "Quantum Enigma : physics encounters consciousness " and many others, that's why Einstein could not bring himself to accept quantum theory ,while so unsuccessfully trying to come up with a unified physical theory during the last half of his life  .

Ironically enough , the original interpretation of quantum theory to which Einstein was exposed at that time could not but be incompatible with his own relativity theories .

Why should one listen to a materialist scientist on the subject then, since he /she would just be a-priori assuming that consciousness is just a material process like the rest of them all in the universe ? .

That Caroll would say such astonishing things about Lanza's theory , for example , is pretty predictable , since he's a materialist first , and a scientist only second .

Caroll should in fact know better than throwing stones at his opponents since he 's been living within a false and fragile materialist key hole sand "made of glass " sand castle , where all extensions of materialism are false .Not only that , they represent such an insane puerile and ridiculous distortion of the nature of reality .

So, as you can understand as a result of the above :  i do not see any worth or value in anything materialists like Caroll can say about non-materialist theories , models , experiments , ....since they would just have to reject them, otherwise they would be ceasing to be materialists , no mater how much evidence or lack of it those non-materialist theories , models ...would or would not deliver .


Furthermore , since materialism is false , then the nature of reality cannot be exclusively material or physical, and hence consciousness that's irreducible to the former , and life that cannot be accounted for by just material processes , have to be integrated in any so-called unified theory of the universe, not to mention the fact that any exclusively physical so-called unified theory  is doomed to fail ,taking into consideration all the above .

Inter-disciplinary synthesis of all sciences must in fact be the answer , where life and consciousness must be integrated in that synthesis ,life and consciousness as key and major players in any future so-called unified theory that hence cannot be just physical : most of current physics will have to be abandoned ,including that materialist so-called standard model +relativity theories ...and physics alone can no longer be assumed to be able to deliver a so-called unified theory , since materialism is false , and hence the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical ....

Lanza , Goswami , Fred Kuttner , Bruce Rosenblum and others were /are the ones whose conceptions of the nature of reality might be paving the way for a totally new science on the subject, not that insane puerile and ridiculous key hole distortion  or materialist version of the nature of reality .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 17:39:44
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."

Did you read Biocentrism ? No .

What do you know about it other than what you heard from Caroll on the subject ? Nothing

What do you know about quantum theory ? Not much , i guess  .

What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory ? Nothing .

Who said Chopra was / is a new age lunatic ? Not me .

Can you think outside of the materialist key hole box ? I don't think so .

So, what are you talking about then ?

What makes you feel or think that you might be so qualified as to pretend to be able to deliver what you said above ? Nothing .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 13/11/2014 17:55:41


Did you read Biocentrism ? No .



Why bother? If Don's summary is correct, it's drivel. And who are we to doubt Don?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 19:26:34


Did you read Biocentrism ? No .



Why bother? If Don's summary is correct, it's drivel. And who are we to doubt Don?

Really ? You don't know what you're missing .

Check it out for yourself then , physicist : you might learn something from it , who knows ?

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

If you want to , i can display here some relevant excerpts from Lanza's book in question .

Don't be a narrow-minded materialist : science is all about methodology and epistemology , about free inquiry , not about some ontological biased preferences like that of the false materialist conception of nature , or false materialistic naturalism ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:07:28
Physicist Proposes New Theory of Gravity—Gravity Does Not Exist :


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/20006-physicist-proposes-new-theory-of-gravity-gravity-does-not-exist/
Once again, an old paper that has been experimentally falsified (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425220/experiments-show-gravity-is-not-an-emergent-phenomenon/) (also, gravity as an entropic force is not Verlinde's idea, it's actually been around for a while). But an interesting idea.

Einstein's general relativity theory that explains the "force " of gravity via  the curvature of space-time might likely be false , otherwise , the universe would be shrinking ,thanks to all that curvature of spacetime.

Not to mention his special relativity theory regarding the nature of space and time that's also incompatible with that simple explanation of quantum theory: consciousness interacting instantaneously with sub-atomic particles , with all particles and objects in fact , large and small .

Excerpt from "Biocentrism " :

When Tomorrow Comes before Yesterday, Chapter 7  :

I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum
mechanics. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you
can possibly avoid it, “But how can it be like that?”
because you will go “down the drain” into a blind
alley from which nobody has yet escaped.
—Nobel physicist Richard Feynman
Quantum mechanics describes the tiny world of the atom and
its constituents, and their behavior, with stunning if probabilistic
accuracy. It is used to design and build much of the
technology that drives modern society, such as lasers and advanced
computers. But quantum mechanics in many ways threatens not
only our essential and absolute notions of space and time but all
Newtonian-type conceptions of order and secure prediction.
It is worthwhile to consider here the old maxim of Sherlock
Holmes, that “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” In this chapter,
we will sift through the evidence of quantum theory as deliberately
as Holmes might without being thrown off the trail by the prejudices
of three hundred years of science. The reason scientists go “down
the drain into a blind alley,” is that they refuse to accept the immediate
and obvious implications of the experiments. Biocentrism is the
only humanly comprehensible explanation for how the world can be
like that, and we are unlikely to shed any tears when we leave the
conventional ways of thinking. As Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg
put it, “It’s an unpleasant thing to bring people into the basic laws of
physics.”
In order to account for why space and time are relative to the
observer, Einstein assigned tortuous mathematical properties to
the changing warpages of space-time, an invisible, intangible entity
that cannot be seen or touched. Although this was indeed successful
in showing how objects move, especially in extreme conditions
of strong gravity or fast motion, it resulted in many people assuming
that space-time is an actual entity, like cheddar cheese, rather
than a mathematical figment that serves the specific purpose of
letting us calculate motion. Space-time, of course, was hardly the
first time that mathematical tools have been confused with tangible
reality: the square root of minus one and the symbol for infinity
are just two of the many mathematically indispensable entities
that exist only conceptually—neither has an analog in the physical
universe.
This dichotomy between conceptual and physical reality continued
with a vengeance with the advent of quantum mechanics.
Despite the central role of the observer in this theory—extending it
from space and time to the very properties of matter itself—some scientists
still dismiss the observer as an inconvenience, a non-entity.

In the quantum world, even Einstein’s updated version of Newton’s
clock—the solar system as predictable if complex timekeeper—
fails to work. The very concept that independent events can happen
in separate non-linked locations—a cherished notion often called
locality—fails to hold at the atomic level and below, and there’s
increasing evidence it extends fully into the macroscopic as well. In
Einstein’s theory, events in space-time can be measured in relation
to each other, but quantum mechanics calls greater attention to the
nature of measurement itself, one that threatens the very bedrock of
objectivity.
When studying subatomic particles, the observer appears to
alter and determine what is perceived. The presence and methodology
of the experimenter is hopelessly entangled with whatever he is
attempting to observe and what results he gets. An electron turns
out to be both a particle and a wave, but how and, more importantly,
where such a particle will be located remains dependent upon the
very act of observation.
This was new indeed. Pre-quantum physicists, reasonably
assuming an external, objective universe, expected to be able to
determine the trajectory and position of individual particles with
certainty—the way we do with planets. They assumed the behavior
of particles would be completely predictable if everything was
known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with
which they could measure the physical properties of an object of any
size, given adequate technology.
In addition to quantum uncertainty, another aspect of modern
physics also strikes at the core of Einstein’s concept of discrete entities
and space-time. Einstein held that the speed of light is constant
and that events in one place cannot influence events in another
place simultaneously. In the relativity theories, the speed of light
has to be taken into account for information to travel from one particle
to another. This has been demonstrated to be true for nearly a
century, even when it comes to gravity spreading its influence. In a
vacuum, 186,282.4 miles per second was the law. However, recent
experiments have shown that this is not the case with every kind of
information propagation.
Perhaps the true weirdness started in 1935 when physicists Einstein,
Podolsky, and Rosen dealt with the strange quantum curiosity
of particle entanglement, in a paper so famous that the phenomenon
is still often called an “EPR correlation.” The trio dismissed quantum
theory’s prediction that a particle can somehow “know” what another
one that is thoroughly separated in space is doing, and attributed
any observations along such lines to some as-yet-unidentified local
contamination rather than to what Einstein derisively called “spooky
action at a distance.”
This was a great one-liner, right up there with the small handful
of sayings the great physicist had popularized, such as “God does
not play dice.” It was yet another jab at quantum theory, this time at
its growing insistence that some things only existed as probabilities,
not as actual objects in real locations. This phrase, “spooky action
at a distance,” was repeated in physics classrooms for decades. It
helped keep the true weirdnesses of quantum theory buried below
the public consciousness. Given that experimental apparatuses were
still relatively crude, who dared to say that Einstein was wrong?
But Einstein was wrong. In 1964, Irish physicist John Bell proposed
an experiment that could show if separate particles can influence
each other instantaneously over great distances. First, it is
necessary to create two bits of matter or light that share the same
wave-function (recalling that even solid particles have an energy–
wave nature). With light, this is easily done by sending light into a
special kind of crystal; two photons of light then emerge, each with
half the energy (twice the wavelength) of the one that went in, so
there is no violation of the conservation of energy. The same amount
of total power goes out as went in.

Now, because quantum theory tells us that everything in nature
has a particle nature and a wave nature, and that the object’s behavior
exists only as probabilities, no small object actually assumes a
particular place or motion until its wave-function collapses. What
accomplishes this collapse? Messing with it in any way. Hitting it with a bit of light in order to “take its picture” would instantly do the job.

 But it became increasingly clear that any possible way the
experimenter could take a look at the object would collapse the
wave-function. At first, this look was assumed to be the need to, say,
shoot a photon at an electron in order to measure where it is, and
the realization that the resulting interaction between the two would
naturally collapse the wave-function. In a sense, the experiment had
been contaminated. But as more sophisticated experiments were
devised (see the next chapter), it became obvious that mere knowledge
in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to cause the wave-function
to collapse.
That was freaky, but it got worse. When entangled particles are
created, the pair share a wave-function. When one member’s wavefunction
collapses, so will the other’s—even if they are separated by
the width of the universe. This means that if one particle is observed
to have an “up spin,” the other instantly goes from being a mere
probability wave to an actual particle with the opposite spin. They
are intimately linked, and in a way that acts as if there’s no space
between them, and no time influencing their behavior.
Experiments from 1997 to 2007 have shown that this is indeed
the case, as if tiny objects created together are endowed with a kind
of ESP. If a particle is observed to make a random choice to go one
way instead of another, its twin will always exhibit the same behavior
(actually the complementary action) at the same moment—even
if the pair are widely separated.
In 1997, Swiss researcher Nicholas Gisin truly started the ball
rolling down this peculiar bowling lane by concocting a particularly
startling demonstration. His team created entangled photons
or bits of light and sent them flying seven miles apart along optical
fibers. One encountered an interferometer where it could take one
of two paths, always chosen randomly. Gisin found that whichever
option a photon took, its twin would always make the other choice
instantaneously.
The momentous adjective here is instantaneous. The second photon’s
reaction was not even delayed by the time light could have
traversed those seven miles (about twenty-six milliseconds) but
instead occurred less than three ten-billionths of a second later, the
limit of the testing apparatus’s accuracy. The behavior is presumed
to be simultaneous.
Although predicted by quantum mechanics, the results continue
to astonish even the very physicists doing the experiments.
It substantiates the startling theory that an entangled twin should
instantly echo the action or state of the other, even if separated by
any distance whatsoever, no matter how great.
This is so outrageous that some have sought an escape clause. A
prominent candidate has been the “detector deficiency loophole,” the
argument that experiments to date had not caught sufficient numbers
of photon-twins. Too small a percentage had been observed by
the equipment, critics suggested, somehow preferentially revealing
just those twins that behaved in synch. But a newer experiment in
2002 effectively closed that loophole. In a paper published in Nature
by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and
Technology led by Dr. David Wineland, entangled pairs of beryllium
ions and a high-efficiency detector proved that, yes, each really does
simultaneously echo the actions of its twin.
Few believe that some new, unknown force or interaction is
being transmitted with zero travel time from one particle to its twin.
Rather, Wineland told one of the authors, “There is some spooky
action at a distance.” Of course, he knew that this is no explanation
at all.
Most physicists argue that relativity’s insuperable lightspeed
limit is not being violated because nobody can use EPR correlations
to send information because the behavior of the sending particle is
always random. Current research is directed toward practical rather
than philosophical concerns: the aim is to harness this bizarre
behavior to create new ultra-powerful quantum computers that, as
Wineland put it, “carry all the weird baggage that comes with quantum
mechanics.”
Through it all, the experiments of the past decade truly seem to
prove that Einstein’s insistence on “locality”—meaning that nothing
can influence anything else at superluminal speeds—is wrong.
Rather, the entities we observe are floating in a field—a field of
mind, biocentrism maintains—that is not limited by the external
space-time Einstein theorized a century ago.
No one should imagine that when biocentrism points to quantum
theory as one major area of support, it is just a single aspect of
quantum phenomena. Bell’s Theorem of 1964, shown experimentally
to be true over and over in the intervening years, does more
than merely demolish all vestiges of Einstein’s (and others’) hopes
that locality can be maintained.
Before Bell, it was still considered possible (though increasingly
iffy) that local realism—an objective independent universe—
could be the truth. Before Bell, many still clung to the millennia-old
assumption that physical states exist before they are measured. Before
Bell, it was still widely believed that particles have definite attributes
and values independent of the act of measuring. And, finally,
thanks to Einstein’s demonstrations that no information can travel
faster than light, it was assumed that if observers are sufficiently far
apart, a measurement by one has no effect on the measurement by
the other.
All of the above are now finished, for keeps.
In addition to the above, three separate major areas of quantum
theory make sense biocentrically but are bewildering otherwise.
We’ll discuss much of this at greater length in a moment, but let’s
begin simply by listing them. The first is the entanglement just cited,
which is a connectedness between two objects so intimate that they
behave as one, instantaneously and forever, even if they are separated
by the width of galaxies. Its spookiness becomes clearer in the
classical two-slit experiment.
The second is complementarity. This means that small objects
can display themselves in one way or another but not both, depending
on what the observer does; indeed, the object doesn’t have an
existence in a specific location and with a particular motion. Only
the observer’s knowledge and actions cause it to come into existence
in some place or with some particular animation.
 Many pairs of such complementary attributes exist. An object can be a wave or a particle but not both, it can inhabit a specific position or display motion but not both, and so on. Its reality depends solely on the observer and his experiment.
The third quantum theory attribute that supports biocentrism
is wave-function collapse, that is, the idea that a physical particle or
bit of light only exists in a blurry state of possibility until its wavefunction
collapses at the time of observation, and only then actually
assumes a definite existence. This is the standard understanding
of what goes on in quantum theory experiments according to the
Copenhagen interpretation, although competing ideas still exist, as
we’ll see shortly.
The experiments of Heisenberg, Bell, Gisin, and Wineland, fortunately,
call us back to experience itself, the immediacy of the here
and now. Before matter can peep forth—as a pebble, a snowflake, or
even a subatomic particle—it has to be observed by a living creature.
This “act of observation” becomes vivid in the famous two-hole
experiment, which in turn goes straight to the core of quantum physics.
It’s been performed so many times, with so many variations, it’s
conclusively proven that if one watches a subatomic particle or a bit
of light pass through slits on a barrier, it behaves like a particle, and
creates solid-looking bam-bam-bam hits behind the individual slits
on the final barrier that measures the impacts. Like a tiny bullet, it
logically passes through one or the other hole. But if the scientists
do not observe the particle, then it exhibits the behavior of waves
that retain the right to exhibit all possibilities, including somehow passing
through both holes at the same time (even though it cannot split
itself up)—and then creating the kind of rippling pattern that only
waves produce.
Dubbed quantum weirdness, this wave–particle duality has befuddled
scientists for decades. Some of the greatest physicists have
described it as impossible to intuit, impossible to formulate into
words, impossible to visualize, and as invalidating common sense
and ordinary perception. Science has essentially conceded that quantum
physics is incomprehensible outside of complex mathematics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:09:07

How can quantum physics be so impervious to metaphor, visualization,
and language?
Amazingly, if we accept a life-created reality at face value, it all
becomes simple and straightforward to understand. The key question
is “waves of what?” Back in 1926, German physicist Max Born
demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability, not waves
of material, as his colleague Schrödinger had theorized. They are
statistical predictions. Thus, a wave of probability is nothing but a
likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, the wave is not there!
It’s intangible. As Nobel physicist John Wheeler once said, “No phenomenon
is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.”
Note that we are talking about discrete objects like photons or
electrons, rather than collections of myriad objects, such as, say, a
train. Obviously, we can get a schedule and arrive to pick up a friend
at a station and be fairly confident that his train actually existed
during our absence, even if we did not personally observe it. (One
reason for this is that as the considered object gets bigger, its wavelength
gets smaller. Once we get into the macroscopic realm, the
waves are too close together to be noticed or measured. They are still
there, however.)
With small discrete particles, however, if they are not being
observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence—
either duration or a position in space. Until the mind sets the scaffolding
of an object in place, until it actually lays down the threads
(somewhere in the haze of probabilities that represent the object’s
range of possible values), it cannot be thought of as being either here
or there. Thus, quantum waves merely define the potential location
a particle can occupy. When a scientist observes a particle, it will
be found within the statistical probability for that event to occur.
That’s what the wave defines. A wave of probability isn’t an event
or a phenomenon, it is a description of the likelihood of an event or
phenomenon occurring. Nothing happens until the event is actually
observed.
In our double-slit experiment, it is easy to insist that each photon
or electron—because both these objects are indivisible—must
go through one slit or the other and ask, which way does a particular
photon really go? Many brilliant physicists have devised experiments
that proposed to measure the “which-way” information of a
particle’s path on its route to contributing to an interference pattern.
They all arrived at the astonishing conclusion, however, that it is not
possible to observe both which-way information and the interference
pattern. One can set up a measurement to watch which slit a photon
goes through, and find that the photon goes through one slit and
not the other. However, once this is kind of measurement is set up,
the photons instead strike the screen in one spot, and totally lack
the ripple-interference design; in short, they will demonstrate themselves
to be particles, not waves. The entire double-slit experiment
and all its true amazing weirdness will be laid out with illustrations
in the next chapter.
Apparently, watching it go through the barrier makes the wavefunction
collapse then and there, and the particle loses its freedom
to probabilistically take both choices available to it instead of having
to choose one or the other.
And it still gets screwier. Once we accept that it is not possible to
gain both the which-way information and the interference pattern,
we might take it even further. Let’s say we now work with sets of
photons that are entangled. They can travel far from each other, but
their behavior will never lose their correlation.
So now we let the two photons, call them y and z, go off in
two different directions, and we’ll set up the double-slit experiment
again. We already know that photon y will mysteriously pass
through both slits and create an interference pattern if we measure
nothing about it before it reaches the detection screen. Except, in
our new setup, we’ve created an apparatus that lets us measure the
which-way path of its twin, photon z, miles away. Bingo: As soon as
we activate this apparatus for measuring its twin, photon y instantly
“knows” that we can deduce its own path (because it will always do
the opposite or complementary thing as its twin). Photon y suddenly
stops showing an interference pattern the instant we turn on the
measuring apparatus for far-away photon z, even though we didn’t
bother y in the least. And this would be true—instantly, in real
time—even if y and z lay on opposite sides of the galaxy.
And, though it doesn’t seem possible, it gets spookier still. If we
now let photon y hit the slits and the measuring screen first, and a
split second later measure its twin far away, we should have fooled
the quantum laws. The first photon already ran its course before
we troubled its distant twin. We should therefore be able to learn
both photons’ polarization and been treated to an interference pattern.
Right? Wrong. When this experiment is performed, we get a
non-interference pattern. The y-photon stops taking paths through
both slits retroactively; the interference is gone. Apparently, photon
y somehow knew that we would eventually find out its polarization,
even though its twin had not yet encountered our polarizationdetection
apparatus.
What gives? What does this say about time, about any real existence
of sequence, about present and future? What does it say about
space and separation? What must we conclude about our own roles
and how our knowledge influences actual events miles away, without
any passage of time? How can these bits of light know what will
happen in their future? How can they communicate instantaneously,
faster than light? Obviously, the twins are connected in a special
way that doesn’t break no matter how far apart they are, and in a
way that is independent of time, space, or even causality. And, more
to our point, what does this say about observation and the “field of
mind” in which all these experiments occur?

Meaning . . . ? :

The Copenhagen interpretation, born in the 1920s in the feverish
minds of Heisenberg and Bohr, bravely set out to explain the
bizarre results of the quantum theory experiments, sort of. But, for
most, it was too unsettling a shift in worldview to accept in full.
In a nutshell, the Copenhagen interpretation was the first to claim
what John Bell and others substantiated some forty years later: that
before a measurement is made, a subatomic particle doesn’t really

exist in a definite place or have an actual motion. Instead, it dwells
in a strange nether realm without actually being anywhere in particular.
This blurry indeterminate existence ends only when its wavefunction
collapses. It took only a few years before Copenhagen adherents
were realizing that nothing is real unless it’s perceived. Copenhagen
makes perfect sense if biocentrism is reality; otherwise, it’s a
total enigma.
If we want some sort of alternative to the idea of an object’s wavefunction
collapsing just because someone looked at it, and avoid that
kind of spooky action at a distance, we might jump aboard Copenhagen’s
competitor, the “Many Worlds Interpretation” (MWI), which
says that everything that can happen, does happen. The universe
continually branches out like budding yeast into an infinitude of
universes that contain every possibility, no matter how remote. You
now occupy one of the universes. But there are innumerable other
universes in which another “you,” who once studied photography
instead of accounting, did indeed move to Paris and marry that girl
you once met while hitchhiking. According to this view, embraced
by such modern theorists as Stephen Hawking, our universe has no
superpositions or contradictions at all, no spooky action, and no
non-locality: seemingly contradictory quantum phenomena, along
with all the personal choices you think you didn’t make, exist today
in countless parallel universes.
Which is true? All the entangled experiments of the past decades
point increasingly toward confirming Copenhagen more than anything
else. And this, as we’ve said, strongly supports biocentrism.
Some physicists, like Einstein, have suggested that “hidden variables”
(that is, things not yet discovered or understood) might ultimately
explain the strange counterlogical quantum behavior. Maybe
the experimental apparatus itself contaminates the behavior of the
objects being observed, in ways no one has yet conceived. Obviously,
there’s no possible rebuttal to a suggestion that an unknown variable
is producing some result because the phrase itself is as unhelpful as
a politician’s election promise.

At present, the implications of these experiments are conveniently
downplayed in the public mind because, until recently,
quantum behavior was limited to the microscopic world. However,
this has no basis in reason, and more importantly, it is starting to
be challenged in laboratories around the world. New experiments
carried out with huge molecules called buckyballs show that quantum
reality extends into the macroscopic world we live in. In 2005,
KHCO3 crystals exhibited quantum entanglement ridges one-half
inch high—visible signs of behavior nudging into everyday levels
of discernment. In fact, an exciting new experiment has just been
proposed (so-called scaled-up superposition) that would furnish the
most powerful evidence to date that the biocentric view of the world
is correct at the level of living organisms.
To which we would say—of course.
And so we add a third principle of Biocentrism:
First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a
process that involves our consciousness.
Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions
are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the
same coin and cannot be separated.
Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic
particles—indeed all particles and objects—is inextricably
linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a
conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state
of probability waves.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:11:49


Did you read Biocentrism ? No .



Why bother? If Don's summary is correct, it's drivel. And who are we to doubt Don?

Really ? You don't know what you're missing .

Check it out for yourself then , physicist : you might learn something from it , who knows ?

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

If you want to , i can display here some relevant excerpts from Lanza's book in question .

Don't be a narrow-minded materialist : science is all about methodology and epistemology , about free inquiry , not about some ontological biased preferences like that of the false materialist conception of nature , or false materialistic naturalism ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:14:46
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."

Did you read Biocentrism ? No .

What do you know about it other than what you heard from Caroll on the subject ? Nothing

What do you know about quantum theory ? Not much , i guess  .

What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory ? Nothing .

Who said Chopra was / is a new age lunatic ? Not me .

Can you think outside of the materialist key hole box ? I don't think so .

So, what are you talking about then ?

What makes you feel or think that you might be so qualified as to pretend to be able to deliver what you said above ? Nothing .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:18:44
Physicist Proposes New Theory of Gravity—Gravity Does Not Exist :


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/20006-physicist-proposes-new-theory-of-gravity-gravity-does-not-exist/
Once again, an old paper that has been experimentally falsified (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/425220/experiments-show-gravity-is-not-an-emergent-phenomenon/) (also, gravity as an entropic force is not Verlinde's idea, it's actually been around for a while). But an interesting idea.

Einstein's general relativity theory that explains the "force " of gravity via  the curvature of space-time might likely be false , otherwise , the universe would be shrinking ,thanks to all that curvature of spacetime.

Not to mention his special relativity theory regarding the nature of space and time that's also incompatible with that simple explanation of quantum theory: consciousness interacting instantaneously with sub-atomic particles , with all particles and objects in fact , large and small .

See above :

Lanza was so kind and cool enough as to dedicate a whole chapter (7) from his "Biocentrism " to you , dlorde , on the subject .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:23:22
Cheryl :

(Prior note : 96 % of the universe is made of unknown dark matter and dark energy , as physicists don't really even know much about the remaining 4 % , despite all their sophisticated theories ,maths, ...including quantum theory and relativity : the latter that are incompatible with each other in fact .

So, physicists are not even close to approaching the nature of reality , if ever , not even remotely close thus : see also that link of mine to "Why a physics revolution might be on its way " here above .

In short : what you mentioned here above , through the words of Caroll or others for that matter , about the alleged fact that physics has been delivering an excellent approximation for  understanding the universe and our place in it , is  simply a hilarious joke.

Reminds me , in another similar context then, of that British physicist in the 1900 who said that there was nothing left to be discovered in physics .All that was needed was more and more precise measurements .

Caroll says basically almost the same thing : there are no significant or relevant forces , fields or laws of physics left to be discovered : yeah, right : he does not know much about that 4% of the universe ,and he dares say non-sense like that through the standard model that's highly likely to be dethroned by the next revolution in physics . 

Not only that , on top of the above : since materialism is false and can thus intrinsically never account for either life or consciousness just through material processes only , let alone  for the origin of life that way , or for the evolution of conscious life ....life and consciousness that are no accidents or side effects or by-products of evolution , for example, to mention just that , then any understanding of the nature of reality , the origin of conscious life , the evolution of conscious life , the beginning of the universe ....any unified theory thus can intrinsically  never be accounted for  by material processes or physics only : Life and consciousness must be integrated in any future so-called unified theory as the key and major players in it . )



What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory anyway ? Nothing : he just commented on it .

Lanza is a prominent biologist and astronomer with impeccable credentials , not some sort of a new age lunatic or something like that :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lanza

Chopra is not my cup of tea either , needless to add .


I expect you to comment on  Lanza's theory yourself ,on "Quantum Enigma " ....,  via  your own words , not just make an appeal to authority , like to that of materialist Caroll .

The latter cannot but a-priori reject any non-materialist interpretation of quantum theory , any non-materialist theory or model of consciousness and life , let alone that he can even consider  any non-materialist theory of nature,simply because he's so entrenched  in his materialist dogmas which he has been mistaking for science , like the man who mistook his wife for a hat , or like someone who looks at or observes the world through that materialist key hole , while assuming that that materialist key hole version of reality is the real reality  .

Caroll has even admitted (He has no choice but to admit that , otherwise he would be a vulgar liar , a bad scientist ,on top of being a materialist deluded one ) that the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory has not been solved yet , so, how can he say that Lanza's interpretation of quantum theory is false then ? , while Lanza and others have been offering a simple explanation of quantum theory : consciousness interacting with sub-atomic particles ...: Occam's razor .

To be honest , i have no respect whatsoever for materialist scientists in fact , since they have been ignoring and denying the overwhelming evidence against materialism ,or they would just try to go around that evidence  by inventing unfalsifiable bullshit theories like the hidden variable  theory ,decoherence theory , multiverse and parallel  universes theories , string theories and the rest .... and the fact that the major anomaly of them all :consciousness , not to mention the latter's related anomalies and processes , can never be intrinsically accounted for by materialism is evidence enough for the fact that materialism is false , including all its extensions like the materialist theory or model of consciousness .

Even Einstein's special and general relativity theories , regarding the nature of space and time and regarding the "force " of gravity are in fact incompatible with that simple explanation of quantum theory that has been delivered by many prominent physicists like by Von Neumann school, like by all founders of quantum theory and by many other physicists yesterday and today like Amit Goswami , like the authors of "Quantum Enigma : physics encounters consciousness " and many others, that's why Einstein could not bring himself to accept quantum theory ,while so unsuccessfully trying to come up with a unified physical theory during the last half of his life  .

Ironically enough , the original interpretation of quantum theory to which Einstein was exposed at that time could not but be incompatible with his own relativity theories .

Why should one listen to a materialist scientist on the subject then, since he /she would just be a-priori assuming that consciousness is just a material process like the rest of them all in the universe ? .

That Caroll would say such astonishing things about Lanza's theory , for example , is pretty predictable , since he's a materialist first , and a scientist only second .

Caroll should in fact know better than throwing stones at his opponents since he 's been living within a false and fragile materialist key hole sand "made of glass " sand castle , where all extensions of materialism are false .Not only that , they represent such an insane puerile and ridiculous distortion of the nature of reality .

So, as you can understand as a result of the above :  i do not see any worth or value in anything materialists like Caroll can say about non-materialist theories , models , experiments , ....since they would just have to reject them, otherwise they would be ceasing to be materialists , no mater how much evidence or lack of it those non-materialist theories , models ...would or would not deliver .


Furthermore , since materialism is false , then the nature of reality cannot be exclusively material or physical, and hence consciousness that's irreducible to the former , and life that cannot be accounted for by just material processes , have to be integrated in any so-called unified theory of the universe, not to mention the fact that any exclusively physical so-called unified theory  is doomed to fail ,taking into consideration all the above .

Inter-disciplinary synthesis of all sciences must in fact be the answer , where life and consciousness must be integrated in that synthesis ,life and consciousness as key and major players in any future so-called unified theory that hence cannot be just physical : most of current physics will have to be abandoned ,including that materialist so-called standard model +relativity theories ...and physics alone can no longer be assumed to be able to deliver a so-called unified theory , since materialism is false , and hence the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical ....

Lanza , Goswami , Fred Kuttner , Bruce Rosenblum and others were /are the ones whose conceptions of the nature of reality might be paving the way for a totally new science on the subject, not that insane puerile and ridiculous key hole distortion  or materialist version of the nature of reality .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:26:14


Did you read Biocentrism ? No .



Why bother? If Don's summary is correct, it's drivel. And who are we to doubt Don?

Really ? You don't know what you're missing .

Check it out for yourself then , physicist : you might learn something from it , who knows ?

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

If you want to , i can display here some relevant excerpts from Lanza's book in question .

Don't be a narrow-minded materialist : science is all about methodology and epistemology , about free inquiry , not about some ontological biased preferences like that of the false materialist conception of nature , or false materialistic naturalism ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 13/11/2014 20:28:47
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."

Did you read Biocentrism ? No .

What do you know about it other than what you heard from Caroll on the subject ? Nothing

What do you know about quantum theory ? Not much , i guess  .

What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory ? Nothing .

Who said Chopra was / is a new age lunatic ? Not me .

Can you think outside of the materialist key hole box ? I don't think so .

So, what are you talking about then ?

What makes you feel or think that you might be so qualified as to pretend to be able to deliver what you said above ? Nothing .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 13/11/2014 22:29:01


Did you read Biocentrism ? No .



Why bother? If Don's summary is correct, it's drivel. And who are we to doubt Don?

Really ? You don't know what you're missing .
I'm sure alan is not missing very much, seeing that he is much more logical than you Don. But as for me, I know what I'm missing. I'm missing; Spending my time involved with this pointless thread. And I'm quite content missing the next volume of vomit that Don chooses to infect these pages with!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 13/11/2014 22:40:48
I'm sure alan is not missing very much, seeing that he is much more logical than you Don. But as for me, I know what I'm missing. I'm missing; Spending my time involved with this pointless thread. And I'm quite content missing the next volume of vomit that Don chooses to infect these pages with!
Yup, Don's gone into pure copypasta mode. If he really feels we're not qualified to opine on the drivel he posts, and he's not prepared to make his own arguments or attempt rational refutations of ours, one wonders why he's here at all.

From past experience, the next stage he'll progress to will be school-yard insults. He's funny - and a bit sad.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 14/11/2014 15:20:32
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."

Did you read Biocentrism ? No .

What do you know about it other than what you heard from Caroll on the subject ? Nothing

What do you know about quantum theory ? Not much , i guess  .

What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory ? Nothing .

Who said Chopra was / is a new age lunatic ? Not me .

Can you think outside of the materialist key hole box ? I don't think so .

So, what are you talking about then ?

What makes you feel or think that you might be so qualified as to pretend to be able to deliver what you said above ? Nothing .

I'm not claiming any credentials or special abilities. I think it makes for a more effective and clearer exchange of ideas to look at the specific points, rather than fling broad generalizations back and forth, but if you feel I'm under-qualified, I have polar bears to paint.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 17:40:40
I'm sure alan is not missing very much, seeing that he is much more logical than you Don. But as for me, I know what I'm missing. I'm missing; Spending my time involved with this pointless thread. And I'm quite content missing the next volume of vomit that Don chooses to infect these pages with!
Yup, Don's gone into pure copypasta mode. If he really feels we're not qualified to opine on the drivel he posts, and he's not prepared to make his own arguments or attempt rational refutations of ours, one wonders why he's here at all.

From past experience, the next stage he'll progress to will be school-yard insults. He's funny - and a bit sad.

What do you think i was doing then ? See my long post above .

What i posted was  no drivel either .

Regarding the qualified part of your post : i just responded to what Cheryl said , specifically,within that specific context  ,that's all .

As for the rest of your post : irrelevant speculations .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 14/11/2014 17:56:29
If it wasn't drivel, why did you say it was, by insisting that the consequence of biocentrism is that life preceded the universe in which it clearly didn't exist for several billion years?

That's the problem with science - if you make a statement, it has to be consistent with observation.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:04:57
As, I said earlier, Don, if there is a particular point in Biocentrism you'd like to discuss or examine more closely, I'm more than willing. But don't just hand me a homework assignment, as in  "read all this, and write a 5 page essay that I will promptly ignore if you don't agree with me."

Did you read Biocentrism ? No .

What do you know about it other than what you heard from Caroll on the subject ? Nothing

What do you know about quantum theory ? Not much , i guess  .

What has Chopra to do with Lanza's theory ? Nothing .

Who said Chopra was / is a new age lunatic ? Not me .

Can you think outside of the materialist key hole box ? I don't think so .

So, what are you talking about then ?

What makes you feel or think that you might be so qualified as to pretend to be able to deliver what you said above ? Nothing .

I'm not claiming any credentials or special abilities. I think it makes for a more effective and clearer exchange of ideas to look at the specific points, rather than fling broad generalizations back and forth, but if you feel I'm under-qualified, I have polar bears to paint.

I have just responded to your specific words , earlier on ,within that  specific context only,  that's all .

( "Quantum Enigma ..."  can be relatively understood  , even with zero prior knowledge of physics,as its authors claim ,  the same goes for Biocentrism ... .)

That was neither an offense , nor was it a kindda belittling of your own person or qualifications ..., needless to add , to the contrary , Cheryl .

You can't "take a closer look " at something about which you have almost no idea  .
Reading what a narrow-minded materialist like Caroll said about Biocentrism is not my idea of addressing Lanza's theory .

If i wanted to hear about what Caroll would have said about that theory , i would have   gone directly to its source , not that i would bother to do so , since materialist scientists like that are very predictable through  their boring materialist outdated false songs .

That's why i posted Lanza's  7 points theory ,so, you can address that via your own words , without relying on any 'authority " on the subject ,for that matter .

Painting polar bears sounds like fun . You can do both : when you're not painting , i would love to hear about your own thoughts concerning Lanza's theory and "Quantum Enigma ..." regarding which i have already posted relevant summaries  from their own sites on the subject  ,since none of you, guys , seems to have made the slightest effort to check out what those sites have to say on the subject through my provided links .

I am not interested much in dlorde's replies , since he's a die-hard materialist who can't think but materialistically .

No offense , dlorde . I can learn nothing new from him, i guess , since he would be only repeating those materialist outdated false songs .

I hope i am wrong about that .

alancalverd doesn't go beyond judgments of value , and can't go beyond his textbooks .

Not to mention Ethos ' hit and run funny and strange empty posts .

On the other hand , you seem to be more open-minded than the rest here , so .

Don't offer that relative freedom of thought of yours on the altar of those narrow-minded materialist scientists who are so dogmatic and ossified as to deliberately ignore and deny as such all that overwhelming evidence against materialism .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:10:46
If it wasn't drivel, why did you say it was, by insisting that the consequence of biocentrism is that life preceded the universe in which it clearly didn't exist for several billion years?

That's the problem with science - if you make a statement, it has to be consistent with observation.

Consciousness was the one that preceded the universe  , not life , needless to add .

That's why the universe is so fine -tuned , for example , to allow conscious life on this tiny planet at least .

There is nothing more important in this universe than consciousness and life that cannot be accidents or by-products or side effects of evolution .

Life and consciousness that can never intrinsically be accounted for by materialism just via material processes only , and hence any unified theory must integrate life and consciousness as the major and key players in it , since the nature of reality is not exclusively material or physical , which means that physics alone can no longer be assumed to be able to come up with a unified theory .

The latter cannot  thus be just physical , ever.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:23:17
Cheryl, dlorde , alancalverd :

"When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."

Eugene Wigner

Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”

Let's try to tackle lanza's theory , step by step, by trying to address some of his raised issues and arguments ,some at a time , like the following :

Regarding Einstein's relativity theories that are obviously incompatible with the simple explanation of quantum theory that asserts that the latter is impossible to understand without making reference to the mind :

Quote : "...

In order to account for why space and time are relative to the
observer, Einstein assigned tortuous mathematical properties to
the changing warpages of space-time, an invisible, intangible entity
that cannot be seen or touched. Although this was indeed successful
in showing how objects move, especially in extreme conditions of strong gravity or fast motion, it resulted in many people assuming that space-time is an actual entity, like cheddar cheese, rather than a mathematical figment that serves the specific purpose of letting us calculate motion. Space-time, of course, was hardly the first time that mathematical tools have been confused with tangible reality: the square root of minus one and the symbol for infinity are just two of the many mathematically indispensable entities that exist only conceptually—neither has an analog in the physical universe.

This dichotomy between conceptual and physical reality continued
with a vengeance with the advent of quantum mechanics.
Despite the central role of the observer in this theory—extending it
from space and time to the very properties of matter itself—some scientists
still dismiss the observer as an inconvenience, a non-entity.

In the quantum world, even Einstein’s updated version of Newton’s
clock—the solar system as predictable if complex timekeeper—
fails to work. The very concept that independent events can happen
in separate non-linked locations—a cherished notion often called
locality—fails to hold at the atomic level and below, and there’s
increasing evidence it extends fully into the macroscopic as well. In
Einstein’s theory, events in space-time can be measured in relation
to each other, but quantum mechanics calls greater attention to the
nature of measurement itself, one that threatens the very bedrock of
objectivity.

When studying subatomic particles, the observer appears to
alter and determine what is perceived. The presence and methodology
of the experimenter is hopelessly entangled with whatever he is
attempting to observe and what results he gets. An electron turns
out to be both a particle and a wave, but how and, more importantly,
where such a particle will be located remains dependent upon the
very act of observation.

This was new indeed. Pre-quantum physicists, reasonably
assuming an external, objective universe, expected to be able to
determine the trajectory and position of individual particles with
certainty—the way we do with planets. They assumed the behavior
of particles would be completely predictable if everything was
known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with
which they could measure the physical properties of an object of any
size, given adequate technology...."

End quote .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 14/11/2014 18:28:04


Consciousness preceded the universe  , not life , needless to add .


Your definition of consciousness being....?

Quote
They assumed the behavior
of particles would be completely predictable if everything was
known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with
which they could measure the physical properties of an object of any
size, given adequate technology...."

No, Zeno's Paradox has been around for a very long time. Heisenberg puts numbers to it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:39:00
"When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness."

Eugene Wigner




Regarding thus the non-materialist simple explanation or simple interpretation of quantum theory, the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." said , and i quote :

"...The quantum weirdness is not hard to “understand”–even with zero physics background. But it’s almost impossible to believe . When someone tells you something you can’t believe, you might well think you don’t understand. But believing might be the real problem. It’s best to approach the subject with an open mind. That’s not easy.

The experimental facts basic to the quantum enigma are undisputed.
 But talking of the encounter of physics with “non-physical” stuff like consciousness is controversial. It’s been called our “skeleton in the closet.” You can look at the undisputed facts, and ponder for yourself what they mean."  End quote .


The above mentioned authors also said :

Quote :



"...About an experimental demonstration of the quantum enigma.
No theory can ever resolve the enigma without encountering the conscious observer..." End quote .

 Richard Feynman said on the subject :

Quote :
"The two-slit experiment] contains the only mystery.
We cannot make the mystery go away by ‘explaining’
how it works…In telling you how it works we will have
told you about the basic peculiarities of all quantum mechanics.” End Quote .



  Quote :   “The interpretation [of quantum mechanics] has remained a source of conflict from its inception… For many thoughtful physicists, it has remained a kind of "skeleton in the closet."” End quote .

    – J. M. Jauch



Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:51:55
Notable Quotes on Quantum Physics :

http://quantumenigma.com/nutshell/notable-quotes-on-quantum-physics/?phpMyAdmin=54029d98ba071eec0c69ff5c106b9539#einstein
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 18:58:44
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg444409#msg444409 date=1415989684]


Consciousness was the one that preceded the universe  , not life , needless to add .


Your definition of consciousness being....?

Can you define what electricity is , what aether is , what dark matter and dark energy are ...., what energy is , ...what magnetism is , ...what physical fields are ,what gravity really is , what space- time or space -and- time really are .....

Are the latter real entities or real things , or just concepts ?  ...to mention just that ?

I am not talking about their usual explanations . I am talking about you telling me what their real nature is .Try to do just that then .

96% of the universe is made of unknown dark matter and unknown dark energy .

All modern physics doesn't even know enough about the remaining 4 % , not even remotely close thus , despite its  bombastic talk about "the nature of reality " ,ironically enough,  like that of Caroll through the so-called standard model that allegedly can account for even all our daily human-scale world ...where our most important ,and that of the universe , most key and major feature of them all ,consciousness,not to mention life ,  is totally discarded as insiginificant or irrelevant processes, the latter in physics at least , while physics is assumed to be the basis upon which all sciences are built : psychology is just applied biology, biology just applied chemistry and chemistry is just applied physics  .

Tell me about the nature of the above , then , and only then , you can pretend to be able to approach what consciousness or life might be all about , if ever thus .

Modern science has been enabling scientists to explore the universe , without even being able to explore the most important and key major universe of them all , the one within each one of us , ironically enough : consciousness .

But , quantum theory has been showing that the study of the universe and that of consciousness are intrinsically and inseparably intertwined : the one is impossible to do without the other : quantum theory that can never be understood without making reference to the mind or to consciousness, ironically enough .

How can then quantum theory be compatible with relativity theories , with the usual explanations of gravity.... with the so-called standard model , let alone with the old and false Cartesian notion of separate mind and separate so-called external objective reality, or old and false Cartesian dichotomy  : a separate  mind  and the so-called separate external objective reality , or just with the materialistic monistic false and old notions of the so-called independent observer , independent observed so-called external objective reality ,  and insignificant irrelevant mind and consciousness ...(which are  the products of the physical brain through evolution via the natural selection : that of  the observed so-called external objective reality , that is ) upon which all materialist science has been built ...?

Yet , without a mind or consciousness, there could be no science , ironically enough .

How can consciousness and  the mind + their related processes and anomalies ,needless to add,  the observer thus (note that the physical brain is supposed to have been the product of evolution through natural selection , the brain that has also to obey the laws of physics thus . To assume that consciousness and  the mind ....are the products of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain is also assuming that the observed so-called external objective reality has produced consciousness and  the mind , the observer thus , through the physical brain ... ) , how can consciousness and the mind thus , the observer thus, be just the products of the observed so-called external objective reality ????

How can the 'tool " through which one observes or tries to apprehend the so-called objective external reality, the observed thus ,  be the product of the latter ????

The observer produced by the observed to observe the observed ....lol

The observer produced by the observed to observe itself lol , not only that , on top of that , to observe itself independently of itself : to observe itself independently of the observer that 's just the product of the observed lol


Insane materialistic paradoxical bullshit ...

How can consciousness and  the mind , the observer thus , be just the products of the observed physical laws ,forces and fields ????? = a real paradox .

Not only that , on top of all that , once again : there is the materialist notion of the independent observer and independent observed so-called external objective reality : the former as just the product of the latter , and yet , they are assumed to be independent of  each other ....

Is there any insane puerile absurd ridiculous paradoxical non-sense like that , ever ???????

Materialistic naturalistic monism is thus almost the exact opposite of what the simple explanation of quantum theory is all about, to say the least thus  : reudctionist materialism is thus incompatible with quantum theory , to say the least thus .

No wonder that materialists would never accept that simple explanation of quantum theory that has been delivered by Von Neumann school, by almost all founders of quantum theory , by many other prominent and less -prominent physicists , yesterday and today , like Lanza , like the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." , like Amit Goswami and many many others ...

Quote
Quote
They assumed the behavior
of particles would be completely predictable if everything was
known at the outset—that there was no limit to the accuracy with
which they could measure the physical properties of an object of any
size, given adequate technology...."

No, Zeno's Paradox has been around for a very long time. Heisenberg puts numbers to it.

Can you elaborate on that, please  ?

Can you try to comment on the more relevant issues raised by the above displayed quotes or excerpts , please , instead of focussing on less relevant ones ? Thanks .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/11/2014 21:25:59
Not Particles, But Chunks: Dark Matter Gets Stranger :


http://m.livescience.com/48740-dark-matter-large-chunks-macros.html?adbid=z133jblodozyf3iho04chpy5grymshlhny40k&adbpl=gp&adbpr=101164570444913213957&cmpid=514636_20141113_35538527
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 15/11/2014 00:47:02

Can you try to comment on the more relevant issues raised by the above displayed quotes or excerpts , please , instead of focussing on less relevant ones ? Thanks .



Indeed I will, as soon as I spot anything remotely relevant or interesting. Ranting without supporting evidence isn't worth a response.

But when you have a lucid moment, you might consider this:

Photographic film doesn't record single photons. You need two photons to interact with a silver halide crystal within a fairly short time (before the first interaction relaxes) in order to produce persistent blackening.

So in Taylor's famous single-photon double-slit experiment, the second photon has to "observe" the first one in order to collapse its wavefunction and record an interference pattern. No conscious observer can be involved because a conscious observer can only see the result, after the second photon has arrived, not the process by which the first photon decides where to go. Or are photons self-conscious? Or are silver halide crystals conscious?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 15/11/2014 01:47:34
Quote from: alancalverd
But when you have a lucid moment, you might consider this:

Photographic film doesn't record single photons. You need two photons to interact with a silver halide crystal within a fairly short time (before the first interaction relaxes) in order to produce persistent blackening.

So in Taylor's famous single-photon double-slit experiment, the second photon has to "observe" the first one in order to collapse its wavefunction and record an interference pattern.
This doesn't make a lot of sense for the modern version of this experiment. For example; what were the results of this experiment when the source of light is so dim that only one photon is emitted per second?

In any case you're referring to the very old (200 years) version of this experiment (circa ~ 1803). Now the experiment can be done us  using a CCD instead of a photographic film/plate. CCDs can record single photons at a time.

Quote from: alancalverd
No conscious observer can be involved because a conscious observer can only see the result, after the second photon has arrived, not the process by which the first photon decides where to go. Or are photons self-conscious? Or are silver halide crystals conscious?
Quantum mechanics does not require the use of conscious observers at all. That's a common misconception in quantum mechanics.

As John Wheeler once said (http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness139.html
Quote
Caution: "Consciousness" has nothing whatsoever to do with the quantum process. We are dealing with an event that makes itself known by an irreversible act of amplification, by an indelible record, an act of registration. Does that record subsequently enter into the "consciousness" of some person, some animal or some computer? Is that the first step into translating the measurement into "meaning" meaning regarded as "the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate." Then that is a separate part of the story, important but not to be confused with "quantum phenomena." (Wheeler, 1983).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 15/11/2014 08:28:07
Taylor's single photon double slit experiment was conducted around 1900, not 200 years ago, and involved one photon at a time, not one per second.

The point I'm trying to make is that quantum selfinterference has been demonstrated in the absence of any conscious observer. I think Don's problem, whioch seems to be shared by a number of deluded mystics, is taking a rather literal - indeed literary - interpretation of Heisenberg and Schrodinger's  use of "observe": what they are getting at is that we don't know anything about a particle until it has interacted with something else, and in doing so, no longer possesses the properties it had before the interaction - Wheeler's "irreversible act of amplification". This statement of the obvious applies to all objects but clearly the minimum "observable" (bouncing one photon off the object) has less effect on a moving car than it does on an electron, so it's only important for very small things, and you can use doppler radar for measuring the speed of  car with adequate precision, without endangering its occupants.   

IIRC the double-slit experiment has now been done with buckyballs.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 15/11/2014 12:51:51
I think Don's problem, whioch seems to be shared by a number of deluded mystics, is taking a rather literal - indeed literary - interpretation of Heisenberg and Schrodinger's  use of "observe": what they are getting at is that we don't know anything about a particle until it has interacted with something else, and in doing so, no longer possesses the properties it had before the interaction - Wheeler's "irreversible act of amplification".
I think Don's problem is more fundamental than that; this particular misinterpretation (and others) has been explained to him many times in this and other threads. But he clings to anything to anything he feels supports his desired worldview, misinterpreted or not; any refutation, correction, explanation, or falsification is, to him, simply wrong. The more inescapable the contradiction, the more incoherent his response. To all intents and purposes it's a matter of faith - his error is in hoping to use science to support it, because it contradicts his view at every turn; so he must rely on misinterpretation, pseudoscience, and mysticism rather than coherent argument.

Just my opinion, of course.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 15/11/2014 13:16:45
Quote from: alancalverd
Taylor's single photon double slit experiment was conducted around 1900, not 200 years ago, and involved one photon at a time, not one per second.
Sorry. I confused this with Young's experiment.

Quote from: alancalverd
The point I'm trying to make is that quantum selfinterference has been demonstrated in the absence of any conscious observer.
Absolutely! I'm right there with you then.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 16:58:41
Folks :

Did you at least read what i posted here above on the subject ? I don't think so .

So, what's the relevance of this thread then, if you would only listen to your own materialistic outdated and false music then ? None.

Here is another "mystical deluded " quantum physicist who thinks that quantum theory can never be understood without reference to the mind  :

http://www.amitgoswami.org/

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

Not to mention the non-computational nature of consciousness ,according to Roger Penrose :

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 15/11/2014 17:19:36

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."


which makes perfect sense in the context of Wheeler's definition of observation, but not yours.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 18:01:08

Penrose hypothesizes that quantum mechanics plays an essential role in the understanding of human consciousness. The collapse of the quantum wavefunction is seen as playing an important role in brain function.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Mind
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 18:11:30

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."


which makes perfect sense in the context of Wheeler's definition of observation, but not yours.

Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006). He also coined the term "Participatory Anthropic Principle" (PAP), a version of a Strong Anthropic Principle. From a transcript of a radio interview on "The anthropic universe":[18]

    Wheeler: We are participators in bringing into being not only the near and here but the far away and long ago. We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past and if we have one explanation for what's happening in the distant past why should we need more?
    Martin Redfern: Many don't agree with John Wheeler, but if he's right then we and presumably other conscious observers throughout the universe, are the creators — or at least the minds that make the universe manifest..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 15/11/2014 19:18:30

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

Sir Don.......You're not understanding the point Wheeler was making with that remark.

Translation: No phenomenon can become a reality to our understanding unless we can observe empirical evidence of it's occurrence. Wheeler's statement does not mean that our observation of it somehow influences it's course or function. Please reread it keeping mind that Wheeler is only giving credence to the observation as a vehicle for our anticipated enlightenment.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 19:23:08

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

Sir Don.......You're not understanding the point Wheeler was making with that remark.

Translation: No phenomenon can become a reality to our understanding unless we can observe empirical evidence of it's occurrence. Wheeler's statement does not mean that our observation of it somehow influences it's course or function. Please reread it keeping mind that Wheeler is only giving credence to the observation as a vehicle for our anticipated enlightenment.

See above : you're the ones who misunderstood or rather misinterpreted what the man said .

Can you observe your own consciousness or unconsciousness empirically ?

By the way , can you observe your own subjective inner life ...empirically ? lol

Is all what cannot be observed empirically a synonymous of it being non-existent , or not a part of reality ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 15/11/2014 19:36:51

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

Sir Don.......You're not understanding the point Wheeler was making with that remark.

Translation: No phenomenon can become a reality to our understanding unless we can observe empirical evidence of it's occurrence. Wheeler's statement does not mean that our observation of it somehow influences it's course or function. Please reread it keeping mind that Wheeler is only giving credence to the observation as a vehicle for our anticipated enlightenment.

See above
You're reading way too much into those remarks Don. What I take from his statements is this: Our existence is made reality in our minds thru the things we experience. However, our experiences are not the creators of true reality, only the reality which our mind understands. One can create any mental reality they choose to but true reality is the result that empirical experiment obtains.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 19:58:50

Even John  Wheeler said once , to mention just that :

" No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon."

Sir Don.......You're not understanding the point Wheeler was making with that remark.

Translation: No phenomenon can become a reality to our understanding unless we can observe empirical evidence of it's occurrence. Wheeler's statement does not mean that our observation of it somehow influences it's course or function. Please reread it keeping mind that Wheeler is only giving credence to the observation as a vehicle for our anticipated enlightenment.

See above
You're reading way too much into those remarks Don. What I take from his statements is this: Our existence is made reality in our minds thru the things we experience. However, our experiences are not the creators of true reality, only the reality which our mind understands. One can create any mental reality they choose to but true reality is the result that empirical experiment obtains.

What are you exactly talking about , Ethos ?

It's all perception : we are just perceivers , no conceivers .

The observer cannot be separated from the observed .

Regarding the rest of your post :

See the many forms of scientism :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

Let's get back to Wheeler : did you read the above , from wiki ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 15/11/2014 20:24:39


What are you exactly talking about , Ethos ?
The point I'm making is this:

There are facts about reality which are very unpleasant, such as the inevitability of death, but like taxes, death is inescapable. Even though I, along with many others would prefer a different reality, I prefer to know how things really are and not how I would prefer them to be. If one chooses to ignore reality and construct a make believe world suitable for themselves,  they risk being labeled as insane.

Your position in this thread parallels that risk Don because you keep insisting that we can influence physical reality thru observation only. I choose to know the true physical reality and will not be satisfied with delusion. And to insist that one's simple observation of an event is capable of influencing it is delusional. No such evidence exists!



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 20:47:17
Quote
author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg444561#msg444561 date=1416083079]


What are you exactly talking about , Ethos ?
The point I'm making is this:

There are facts about reality which are very unpleasant, such as the inevitability of death, but like taxes, death is inescapable. Even though I, along with many others would prefer a different reality, I prefer to know how things really are and not how I would prefer them to be. If one chooses to ignore reality and construct a make believe world suitable for themselves,  they risk being labeled as insane.


You're very funny , Ethos :

Well, what you're talking about here above is totally different  from what i was mentioning . What you mentioned here above is thus a   matter of psychology .

On the other hand : What is reality ? What is the nature of reality ? That's a question all religions, philosophies, ancient wisdom ...and even science itself try to approach , their own different ways ,that is .

But , fact is : the  observed "reality " is inseparably and inescapably intertwined and linked with the observer . You cannot separate the one from the other .
So, the old  Cartesian dichotomy between the subjective and the objective , between the observer and the observed , and that they allegedly are separate from each other is false , thanks to quantum theory mainly .

And the materialist notion of the independent observer and independent observed so-called external objective reality is also false ,for the same reasons .

Quote
Your position in this thread parallels that risk Don because you keep insisting that we can influence physical reality thru observation only. I choose to know the true physical reality and will not be satisfied with delusion. And to insist that one's simple observation of an event is capable of influencing it is delusional. No such evidence exists!

I should see  a shrink  then  lol 

I was not saying that . All i was saying is that the observer and the observed cannot be separated from each other .

Even quantum theory can never be understood without reference to the mind ...

See my posts , posted quotes and short excerpts on the subject in the previous page .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 20:51:32
Ethos : See the following on the subject :

Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg444409#msg444409 date=1415989684]


Consciousness was the one that preceded the universe  , not life , needless to add .


Your definition of consciousness being....?

Can you define what electricity is , what aether is , what dark matter and dark energy are ...., what energy is , ...what magnetism is , ...what physical fields are ,what gravity really is , what space- time or space -and- time really are .....

Are the latter real entities or real things , or just concepts ?  ...to mention just that ?

I am not talking about their usual explanations . I am talking about you telling me what their real nature is .Try to do just that then .

96% of the universe is made of unknown dark matter and unknown dark energy .

All modern physics doesn't even know enough about the remaining 4 % , not even remotely close thus , despite its  bombastic talk about "the nature of reality " ,ironically enough,  like that of Caroll through the so-called standard model that allegedly can account for even all our daily human-scale world ...where our most important ,and that of the universe , most key and major feature of them all ,consciousness,not to mention life ,  is totally discarded as insiginificant or irrelevant processes, the latter in physics at least , while physics is assumed to be the basis upon which all sciences are built : psychology is just applied biology, biology just applied chemistry and chemistry is just applied physics  .

Tell me about the nature of the above , then , and only then , you can pretend to be able to approach what consciousness or life might be all about , if ever thus .

Modern science has been enabling scientists to explore the universe , without even being able to explore the most important and key major universe of them all , the one within each one of us , ironically enough : consciousness .

But , quantum theory has been showing that the study of the universe and that of consciousness are intrinsically and inseparably intertwined : the one is impossible to do without the other : quantum theory that can never be understood without making reference to the mind or to consciousness, ironically enough .

How can then quantum theory be compatible with relativity theories , with the usual explanations of gravity.... with the so-called standard model , let alone with the old and false Cartesian notion of separate mind and separate so-called external objective reality, or old and false Cartesian dichotomy  : a separate  mind  and the so-called separate external objective reality , or just with the materialistic monistic false and old notions of the so-called independent observer , independent observed so-called external objective reality ,  and insignificant irrelevant mind and consciousness ...(which are  the products of the physical brain through evolution via the natural selection : that of  the observed so-called external objective reality , that is ) upon which all materialist science has been built ...?

Yet , without a mind or consciousness, there could be no science , ironically enough .

How can consciousness and  the mind + their related processes and anomalies ,needless to add,  the observer thus (note that the physical brain is supposed to have been the product of evolution through natural selection , the brain that has also to obey the laws of physics thus . To assume that consciousness and  the mind ....are the products of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain is also assuming that the observed so-called external objective reality has produced consciousness and  the mind , the observer thus , through the physical brain ... ) , how can consciousness and the mind thus , the observer thus, be just the products of the observed so-called external objective reality ????

How can the 'tool " through which one observes or tries to apprehend the so-called objective external reality, the observed thus ,  be the product of the latter ????

The observer produced by the observed to observe the observed ....lol

The observer produced by the observed to observe itself lol , not only that , on top of that , to observe itself independently of itself : to observe itself independently of the observer that 's just the product of the observed lol


Insane materialistic paradoxical bullshit ...

How can consciousness and  the mind , the observer thus , be just the products of the observed physical laws ,forces and fields ????? = a real paradox .

Not only that , on top of all that , once again : there is the materialist notion of the independent observer and independent observed so-called external objective reality : the former as just the product of the latter , and yet , they are assumed to be independent of  each other ....

Is there any insane puerile absurd ridiculous paradoxical non-sense like that , ever ???????

Materialistic naturalistic monism is thus almost the exact opposite of what the simple explanation of quantum theory is all about, to say the least thus  : reudctionist materialism is thus incompatible with quantum theory , to say the least thus .

No wonder that materialists would never accept that simple explanation of quantum theory that has been delivered by Von Neumann school, by almost all founders of quantum theory , by many other prominent and less -prominent physicists , yesterday and today ,  like the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." , like Amit Goswami and many many others ...





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 15/11/2014 20:52:24

I should see  a shrink  then  lol 

A word to the wise is sufficient!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/11/2014 20:56:10

I should see  a shrink  then  lol 

A word to the wise is sufficient!

lol

All revolutionary scientists who revolutionized science , all revolutionary thinkers ....must go together with me to see a shrink indeed .

Maybe , i should lol

Try to read the above , Ethos .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/11/2014 00:22:29
If consciousness creates reality, not just our private subjective experience of it, but literally creates physical reality, how is it possible to ever be wrong about anything? How would you explain something as simple as an optical illusion? The idea sounds infantile to me.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 16/11/2014 01:01:22

Can you define what electricity is , what aether is , what dark matter and dark energy are ...., what energy is , ...what magnetism is , ...what physical fields are ,what gravity really is , what space- time or space -and- time really are .....


Yes. And when we look for evidence of their existence, some turn out not to exist. In some cases such as "electricity" it turns out to be a weakly defined cause of an observed phenomenon and in others such as "aether" it turns out to be wholly unnecessary as the phenomena are fully explicable without it.

The problem with defining consciousness as the primordial cause of everything is that it doesn't align with the common usage of the word as an emergent property of some living things. You would do well to choose another word, and thus resolve some of the conflicts in your own mind.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 16/11/2014 01:02:38
If consciousness creates reality, not just our private subjective experience of it, but literally creates physical reality, how is it possible to ever be wrong about anything? How would you explain something as simple as an optical illusion? The idea sounds infantile to me.
It is.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 16/11/2014 01:04:24
The problem with defining consciousness as the primordial cause of everything is that it doesn't align with the common usage of the word as an emergent property of some living things. You would do well to choose another word, and thus resolve some of the conflicts in your own mind.
The closest word that comes to mind for what he's suggesting is 'magic'.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 16/11/2014 03:07:03
The problem with defining consciousness as the primordial cause of everything is that it doesn't align with the common usage of the word as an emergent property of some living things. You would do well to choose another word, and thus resolve some of the conflicts in your own mind.
The closest word that comes to mind for what he's suggesting is 'magic'.
Indeed,..........akin to a miracle as in the miraculous.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 16/11/2014 07:48:04
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006).
Well, what can I say. Nobodies perfect. I particularly disagree with Wheeler on that point. Thanks for mentioning it. However I don't believe that he meant it in the sense that you interpreted it. Here is what I believe that he meant.

Quote from: Peter M. Brown
I think that a universe that exists all by itself without a concept to grasp it is a very odd thing. Then when a concept was established a reality then existed to grasp it. Is this in the ball park. It's almost enough to make be believe that God exists.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/11/2014 15:42:52
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006).
Well, what can I say. Nobodies perfect. I particularly disagree with Wheeler on that point. Thanks for mentioning it. However I don't believe that he meant it in the sense that you interpreted it. Here is what I believe that he meant.

Quote from: Peter M. Brown
I think that a universe that exists all by itself without a concept to grasp it is a very odd thing. Then when a concept was established a reality then existed to grasp it. Is this in the ball park. It's almost enough to make be believe that God exists.




It's still hard to tell in the second quote whether by "reality' he is referring to the literal physical existence of things, or our subjective experience of them. The idea of the physical world existing unobserved may seem peculiar, like a movie running for billions of years in an empty theater. But the idea that consciousness creates reality, and that our consciousness even "reaches back" and constructs the past results in so many absurd inconsistencies on the human scale, not just in very small or very large scales for which we arguably have no intuitive understanding or practical experience.

When I read the second quote I think of early humans, or other primates, observing the world, plants and animals, things falling to the ground, weather, the workings of their own bodies, disease, the sun, the moon, the stars.  And I don't see how a "concept," connected to any of it, or lack of one, or the rightness or wrongness of it,  would have altered or diminished their sensory experience of it, or the physical processes themselves.

If the type of consciousness does not matter (whether its a scientist, a medieval peasant, an orangutan, or a lizard) and what that consciousness actually believes about that phenomena does not matter (one observer says the sun goes around the earth, another says the earth goes around the sun, another is completely blind can't see it at all) then why should I think consciousness has any effect at all in creating physical, non-subjective reality? What aspect of consciousness does matter causually if its neither of those? 

It's entirely different things to say we are dependent on, or even trapped by, brain and sensory processes in our selective filtering and interpretation of information about the physical world, and Wheeler's claim that those processes, and their limitations, actually alter that world in some way.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 16/11/2014 17:31:56
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/11/2014 18:02:45
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?

Exactly.
And if Lanza can't address even the most simple, logical problems with his theory, I don't see the point in wading through his personal version of quantum mechanics or his tangents about evolution. It is, as several critics have called it, a "shaggy dog" story.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 18:57:45
Quote
author=PmbPhy link=topic=52526.msg444605#msg444605 date=1416124084]
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006).
Well, what can I say. Nobodies perfect. I particularly disagree with Wheeler on that point. Thanks for mentioning it. However I don't believe that he meant it in the sense that you interpreted it. Here is what I believe that he meant.

You're welcome .
What do you mean nobody is perfect ? : just because Wheeler says something you don't agree with ?

For your information : the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet, if ever  : so, all interpretations of QM  are "equally " valid , to some extent at least ,but, i think that the most simple explanation of them all of quantum theory is the one involving the observer in it : : Occam's razor : that's the most valid one .

You don't believe Wheeler meant that ? :see this on the subject :

Quote : " ...He grappled with the interpretation of quantum mechanics and was an early proponent of the anthropic principle- in John L Casti's magnificent book Paradigms Lost, Casti quotes Wheeler analogizing observer-created reality with the game in which a group of people asks someone else to guess an object they have in mind by asking questions, except that in the modified version of this game, they let the object be created during the process of questioning. With his mentor Bohr's enduring principle of complementarity as a guide, Wheeler produced esoteric ideas that nonetheless questioned the bedrock of reality...." End quote .

Source : http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2008/04/magic-without-magic-john-archibald.html

Not enough ? : see the following from Scientific American :

Quote : " ....In the 1950s Wheeler grew increasingly intrigued by the philosophical implications of quantum physics. According to quantum theory, a particle such as an electron occupies numerous positions in space until we observe it, when it abruptly "collapses" into a single position. Wheeler was one of the first prominent physicists seriously to propose that reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself; it is "participatory."..."   End quote .

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pioneering-physicist-john-wheeler-dies/


Quote from: Peter M. Brown
I think that a universe that exists all by itself without a concept to grasp it is a very odd thing. Then when a concept was established a reality then existed to grasp it. Is this in the ball park. It's almost enough to make be believe that God exists.
 
Gymnastics .

See above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 19:35:36
dlorde , alancalverd , Cheryl, Ethos ,PmbPhy : 

The interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , so, all its interpretations are relatively "equally " valid ,since none of them has been proven conclusively .

But , the most simple interpretation of quantum theory of them all has been the one that involves the role of the observer in it : Occam's razor : that 's the most valid one .

dlorde : See what  professor  Jim Al -Khalili said about the elusive interpretation dilemma of quantum theory in his  " Quantum , A Guide For  The Perplexed ", A Short Excerpt From Chapter 6 : " The Great Debate " :

Jim says he subscribes to the " Shut up and calculate " view , which makes him free to explore all interpretations of QM . I did even post a short video of his ,once , on the subject , through the double slit experiment , where he said that the one who would be able to interpret just that should deserve the Nobel prize , while i see you all , guys ,here dismissing or a-priori rejecting the most simple and most valid explanation of them all of quantum theory, while you should in fact a -priori reject none  of those interpretations of quantum theory , including the former , that's the most simple and valid one of them all : the one where consciousness of the observer plays a central role ..

Let's see what our friend Jim says on the subject :

Quote :

"Formalism versus interpretation :

"An appreciation of many of the quantum concepts, such as the wavefunction and its strange properties, as well as the postulates that tell us how to extract information from it about then subatomic world, are essential for the success and understanding of the theory.

And yet we have seen in the first half of this book how difficult it is to translate what is essentially advanced mathematics into words that make sense, to both physicists and non-physicists. Another way of putting it is that while the formalism of quantum mechanics is not in doubt, nobody has yet found a satisfactory explanation, or interpretation, of the theory that is agreeable to everyone.
For the two-slit experiment, we are able to predict very precisely the form of the interference pattern seen on the screen (even though we cannot predict where any particular atom will land).

 Much more impressive is that quantum mechanics predicts very precisely the properties of atoms and molecules and their constituent particles, as well as the nature of the forces that hold them together to give the richness and variety of structures we see around us. This predictive power is a sign of a successful scientific theory.
 What is so amazing is that we can do all this without knowing why we arrive at the results we do. It seems we can manage perfectly well without having a picture in our heads of just how the atom gets through the two slits.
The majority of practising physicists have learned to use the theory without understanding why it works.

 In fact, some of the most prominent scientists of our age have admitted openly that no one really understands quantum mechanics! Should this not be a cause for concern? We will investigate in this chapter the differing attitudes and views that physicists have held, and still hold, regarding the issue of interpretation.

I am sure I will displease many physicists with what I will say in this chapter, since I plan to adopt an agnostic attitude towards the various views held. After all, my aim in this book is to explain what quantum mechanics is and why it is so strange. But it would be extremely dishonest and arrogant of me to pretend that all is rosy in the quantum garden.

 Many physicists, some of them close colleagues and research collaborators of mine, feel strongly that there is no problem. They would argue that drawing attention to the conflicts between different interpretations of what is, after all, a perfectly well understood, logically consistent, and successful mathematical theory is unnecessary and pointless.

But I would be equally dishonest, and probably make this book a less interesting read, if I did not climb off the fence on certain occasions to make my personal views clear.
Let me begin with a strong but nevertheless accurate statement: No one interpretation of the quantum formalism has been proven to be any better than the rest, other than on aesthetic grounds or personal taste.
This has therefore suggested to many that it is a futile exercise to argue the relative merits and shortcomings of the various interpretations. Worse still, many believe that there is no true interpretation and that they are all equally valid ways of thinking about what is going on.

This view is embodied in the widely quoted ‘shut up and calculate’ interpretation, which suggests that since it has proven (so far at least) impossible to find the right interpretation, it is a waste of time talking about it. Let the philosophers worry about such issues while physicists get on with using the quantum mechanical formalism to learn about nature.

For over half a century most serious physicists frowned upon issues of interpretation. They argued that quantum mechanics is unique among scientific theories in that, while it has tremendous predictive power, all that it can comment upon, by definition, are the results of measurements. That should be all we need concern ourselves with, and not worry about requiring a unique interpretation in order to make progress. Such a pragmatic, or ‘instrumentalist’, view is rooted in the philosophy of ‘logical positivism’ that happened to be popular in Europe at the time that quantum mechanics was born.
 Of course I do not want to stray from physics into philosophy, but I’ll give the basic gist of this view: if two people have differing opinions but no way of settling their differences through empirical facts then their conflicting statements are meaningless and they should go and have a beer instead.

And my position on the matter? I subscribe to what I call the ‘shut up while you calculate’ view which leaves me free to contemplate the relative merits of the different interpretations of quantum mechanics when I am not thinking about Greek symbols, writing computer code, or scribbling algebra on my blackboard. Unfortunately, I have yet to settle on one interpretation after almost twenty years of worrying.
 I would say that quantum mechanics allows us to communicate with nature fluently by following well-understood rules of mathematical grammar, but we still lack a unique translation of what is being said!

In saying that, I must admit that like most other physicists I am burdened with the legacy of Bohr and what is regarded as the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics.
 It is the interpretation favoured in quantum textbooks and taught to physics undergraduates as though it were the only conceivable explanation of what is going on, although this attitude has been changing in recent years.
In its favour is the fact that it is the simplest interpretation. In providing recipes for carrying out calculations in quantum mechanics, it is the ultimate tool of the pragmatist and is known simply as the Copenhagen interpretation.
 Unfortunately, it has nothing to say about some of the deepest quantum mysteries and instead simply side-steps many of the issues. However, the name covers a whole spectrum of views, albeit with a common core.

To give you an example of how ingrained the Copenhagen view is in the teaching of the subject, many of the statements I made earlier in the book are ones that would not feature in some of the alternative, equally valid, interpretations. For instance: I went to great lengths to explain how the wavefunction is not a real physical entity but merely a set of numbers that allow us to make predictions about measurements. This is only according to the Copenhagen view and is not a feature shared by others you will meet, in which the wavefunction represents something physically real.
 Even more surprisingly, I need not have insisted in the two-slit trick that the atom must ‘somehow’ go through both slits at once.

It turns out that such a statement is not forced upon us by either the quantum formalism or experimental observation. In the de Broglie-Bohmian interpretation we will see how it is perfectly reasonable to assume the atom only went through one or other of the slits, and yet we can still end up with the interference pattern........." End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 19:37:25
Quote
author=PmbPhy link=topic=52526.msg444605#msg444605 date=1416124084]
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006).
Well, what can I say. Nobodies perfect. I particularly disagree with Wheeler on that point. Thanks for mentioning it. However I don't believe that he meant it in the sense that you interpreted it. Here is what I believe that he meant.

You're welcome .
What do you mean nobody is perfect ? : just because Wheeler says something you don't agree with ?

For your information : the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet, if ever  : so, all interpretations of QM  are "equally " valid , to some extent at least ,but, i think that the most simple explanation of them all of quantum theory is the one involving the observer in it : : Occam's razor : that's the most valid one .

You don't believe Wheeler meant that ? :see this on the subject :

Quote : " ...He grappled with the interpretation of quantum mechanics and was an early proponent of the anthropic principle- in John L Casti's magnificent book Paradigms Lost, Casti quotes Wheeler analogizing observer-created reality with the game in which a group of people asks someone else to guess an object they have in mind by asking questions, except that in the modified version of this game, they let the object be created during the process of questioning. With his mentor Bohr's enduring principle of complementarity as a guide, Wheeler produced esoteric ideas that nonetheless questioned the bedrock of reality...." End quote .

Source : http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2008/04/magic-without-magic-john-archibald.html

Not enough ? : see the following from Scientific American :

Quote : " ....In the 1950s Wheeler grew increasingly intrigued by the philosophical implications of quantum physics. According to quantum theory, a particle such as an electron occupies numerous positions in space until we observe it, when it abruptly "collapses" into a single position. Wheeler was one of the first prominent physicists seriously to propose that reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself; it is "participatory."..."   End quote .

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pioneering-physicist-john-wheeler-dies/


Quote from: Peter M. Brown
I think that a universe that exists all by itself without a concept to grasp it is a very odd thing. Then when a concept was established a reality then existed to grasp it. Is this in the ball park. It's almost enough to make be believe that God exists.
 
Gymnastics .

See above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:01:16
If consciousness creates reality, not just our private subjective experience of it, but literally creates physical reality, how is it possible to ever be wrong about anything? How would you explain something as simple as an optical illusion? The idea sounds infantile to me.


I don't subscribe to either Wheeler's or to its  similar new age interpretation  of QM , in the sense that "we create our reality " (A false  new age adage by the way ) , or that we "create our physical reality " ....

We do not create our reality or the physical reality ....The very word "create " implies producing something from nothing : that's not the proper of man , i guess .

I do subscribe to the view of the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." and to that same one of many other physicists on the subject : the so-called physical reality exists only in wave-like forms of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ... until it "freezes " or it gets actualized by the very act of observation .

Idealist monistic quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example , goes even further , thanks to that philosophy of his at least , by saying that  the so-called objective reality out there is not out there , does not exist as such ...at all :

http://www.amitgoswami.org/

I don't agree with the idealistic monistic interpretation of quantum theory .

I think that  the ultimate or objective reality out there is really out there  (as well as within , but, that's another story ) in fact , but, we can never approach it through science at least , simply because whenever we would look at it, so to speak,  or observe it , we instantly turn it into the illusory physical reality , i guess, i don't know .Who does ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:08:07
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?

I have already responded to that , earlier on : there must be only one ultimate source of all consciousnesses ,so, as Von Neumann , or Wigner or some other prominent physicist said  .

Call it cosmic consciousness, Zeus , God , or whatever ....

I am not sure that's the answer to your question though .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/11/2014 20:13:22
the so-called physical reality exists only in wave-like forms of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ... until it "freezes " or it gets actualized by the very act of observation .


Is there any other type of interaction or situation that can freeze or select among these probabilities other than consciousness of a (presumed) human observer? 

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:15:48
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?

Exactly.
And if Lanza can't address even the most simple, logical problems with his theory, I don't see the point in wading through his personal version of quantum mechanics or his tangents about evolution. It is, as several critics have called it, a "shaggy dog" story.

See my reply to alancalverd on the subject here above .

I don't know what Lanza said about that , and neither do you , since i haven't finished that book of his yet ...

Lanza does rely though on the most simple and valid interpretation of quantum theory of them all : that where consciousness of the observer plays a central role .

The majority of physicists today do not share that view , since most , if not all , of them are materialists (materialism assumes that consciousness is just a material process ,so .) , so, that simple explanation of quantum theory is totally incompatible with materialism .

No wonder that materialist scientists would not accept that simple explanation or interpretation of quantum theory ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:27:42
the so-called physical reality exists only in wave-like forms of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ... until it "freezes " or it gets actualized by the very act of observation .


Is there any other type of interaction or situation that can freeze or select among these probabilities other than consciousness of a (presumed) human observer?

Von Neumann , for example,to mention just that genius ,  already responded to that through rigorous maths , albeit reluctantly, in the sense that the measurement problem or paradox in QM can be solved only by assuming that there is a non-physical process that might be collapsing the wave function, a non-physical process outside of the laws of physics , that is  .He couldn't think of any other process thus than  the consciousness of the observer , since the physical brain , body and the measurement devices ...are all material processes ....and ones that have to obey the laws of physics also ....

No material process can collapse the wave function thus ,be it the physical brain, photons , material measurement devices ...,  since matter does exist only in wave-like forms of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ...and thus "becomes " material only when observed : wave-like probabilities , possibilities , eventualities ... cannot collapse the  wave functions of other wave-like possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ..thus , needless to add .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:39:37
PmbPhy :

See my reply to your post  and my relevant links , especially the one from Scientific American, regarding John Wheeler's interpretation of quantum theory , in the previous page .

dlorde :

See what Jim Al-Khalili said about the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory , in the previous page .

He's at least honest enough as to admit that his position is that of the 'shut up while you calculate " view , which makes him free to explore the relative merits of all interpretations of quantum theory , as he claims ...

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 16/11/2014 20:51:25
.. the most simple interpretation of quantum theory of them all has been the one that involves the role of the observer in it : Occam's razor : that 's the most valid one .
Ah, no. Including the observer is adding an entity, and Ockham advises against the unnecessary multiplication of entities (incidentally, a multiverse interpretation is not a multiplication of entities for this purpose). More specifically, the razor advises selecting the hypothesis with fewest assumptions, and the conscious collapse hypothesis is riddled with assumptions not present in other interpretations, which raise more questions than they answer, and which is precisely why it is no longer in favour except among a small minority.

Quote
dlorde : See what  professor  Jim Al -Khalili said about the elusive interpretation dilemma of quantum theory
... <snip copypasta>
Yeah, he says his personal view is that the jury is still out on QM interpretations. Which is fine, he's entitled to have a personal view.

I note that elsewhere he says, "..hardly anyone still takes seriously the notion of consciousness being a requirement for collapse of the wavefunction". Even Roger Penrose, in 'The Emperor's New Mind', says "Is the presence of a conscious being necessary for a 'measurement' actually to take place? I think that only a small minority of quantum physicists would affirm such a view". Why should this be the case? a conspiracy or a consensus that it's probably nonsense?

Incidentally, as I have pointed out before, the conscious collapse interpretation is very much a minor subset of the Copenhagen interpretation (which says an unspecified 'observer' makes a 'measurement' that collapses the wavefunction). Conscious collapse is the 'von Neumann–Wigner interpretation', now generally abandoned because it's been shown that a 'measurement' is any interaction with the system, and that an 'observer' is the interacting entity - usually a particle. A moment's thought should tell you that to make a measurement, particles must interact, whether for the benefit of a conscious entity, a robotic probe, or for no-one's benefit.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 20:54:04
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg444589#msg444589 date=1416099682]

Can you define what electricity is , what aether is , what dark matter and dark energy are ...., what energy is , ...what magnetism is , ...what physical fields are ,what gravity really is , what space- time or space -and- time really are .....


Yes. And when we look for evidence of their existence, some turn out not to exist. In some cases such as "electricity" it turns out to be a weakly defined cause of an observed phenomenon and in others such as "aether" it turns out to be wholly unnecessary as the phenomena are fully explicable without it.

What in Zeus ' name are you talking about ,Alan ? I ask you one thing and you tell me about another . odd.

So, you already know the nature of all those processes .Way to go, physicist , while quantum theory that's supposed to be all about the nature of reality has not been solved yet ...conclusively, that is , yet .

Quote
The problem with defining consciousness as the primordial cause of everything is that it doesn't align with the common usage of the word as an emergent property of some living things. You would do well to choose another word, and thus resolve some of the conflicts in your own mind.

Who said consciousness is an emergent property of living things ? Not me : that's just materialist inexplicable magic , ironically enough , that's been rejected by even our mechanical friend David Cooper ..

How can consciousness emerge from matter then ? Yeah , right .

Consciousness can emerge from fundamental physical fields such electromagnetism lol : check out whether or not your tv set , car , fridge , microwave , pc, ...are  conscious.

Consciousness might have preceded the universe itself , i told you once , didn't i ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/11/2014 21:18:55
dlorde :

Gotta go, sorry .I will try to respond to your above displayed post another time thus .

Before i do, the following :

You missed the essence of what Jim was saying,as well as the reason why i posted his own words on the subject  : he's entitled to his own opinions indeed, or to his own exploration of the merits of all interpretations of QM  , but that's not the point .

The point is :

Since the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , Jim or any other physicist for that matter , cannot a -priori reject any kind of interpretation of QM , including the one that involves the observer's role in it , simply because none of all those interpretations of QM has been proven conclusively ...

Jim and other physicists may have their own interpretations of QM, and may also say that this or that interpretation is not valid, and vice versa  ...but, they can prove neither claims of theirs conclusively, either way  .

It all comes down to the mind -body hard problem in fact : all interpretations of quantum theory , be it the dualistic , idealistic monistic , the materialistic monistic or other ones ... do all depend of their own a-priori held conceptions regarding the mind -body problem :

Materialists assume consciousness to be just a material process , so, how can it collapse the wave function ?

Non-materialists assume consciousness to be a non-physical process , so, how can it not collapse the wave function ...?,simply put .

And the very fact that the majority of scientists today who happen to be materialists , ironically enough , the very fact that they claim that the observer effect interpretation of quantum theory is not valid , is no evidence of their claim on the subject .

On the other hand , the simple explanation of QM where the role of consciousness is central just means that the physical reality is " an illusion , albeit a persistent one " as Einstein said , even though the latter was against that interpretation of QM , but , he was nevertheless convinced of the illusory nature of the physical reality as his above mentioned quote implies , despite his relativity theories ....(space -time and gravity might be just mathematical concepts , not entities ) ...

In short :

The study of consciousness and that of the universe are inseparably and inescapably linked or intertwined ,as Verlinde said , or in other words to that same effect then .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 16/11/2014 23:09:37
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?

I have already responded to that , earlier on : there must be only one ultimate source of all consciousnesses ,so, as Von Neumann , or Wigner or some other prominent physicist said  .

Call it cosmic consciousness, Zeus , God , or whatever ....

I am not sure that's the answer to your question though .


Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/11/2014 10:00:10
Since the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , Jim or any other physicist for that matter , cannot a -priori reject any kind of interpretation of QM , including the one that involves the observer's role in it , simply because none of all those interpretations of QM has been proven conclusively ...

Jim and other physicists may have their own interpretations of QM, and may also say that this or that interpretation is not valid, and vice versa  ...but, they can prove neither claims of theirs conclusively, either way  .
You've had the explanations of why some interpretations are preferred to others by some physicists. I have my own preference (as previously explained) and respect any expression of preference based on rational scientific argument. I don't respect mystical mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience. YMMV.

Quote
Materialists assume consciousness to be just a material process , so, how can it collapse the wave function ?
It doesn't have to. We know wavefunction collapse occurs in the absence of consciousness (as previously explained).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 17:29:05
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg444697#msg444697 date=1416218410]
Since the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , Jim or any other physicist for that matter , cannot a -priori reject any kind of interpretation of QM , including the one that involves the observer's role in it , simply because none of all those interpretations of QM has been proven conclusively ...

Jim and other physicists may have their own interpretations of QM, and may also say that this or that interpretation is not valid, and vice versa  ...but, they can prove neither claims of theirs conclusively, either way  .
You've had the explanations of why some interpretations are preferred to others by some physicists. I have my own preference (as previously explained) and respect any expression of preference based on rational scientific argument. I don't respect mystical mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience. YMMV.

You mean that almost all interpretations of QM are just a matter of taste or aesthetics , a matter of prefered philosophies or world views ,as Jim said .

Wow : No single interpretation of quantum theory is based on scientific rational arguments ,come on, dlorde : you haven't read well what Jim was saying .

Tell me what rational scientific arguments are supporting that insane multiverse or parallel universes theories , to mention just those ? None .

Not to mention the rest,while the simplest interpretation of quantum theory of them all is the one that makes sense ,since the observer who cannot but  make part of the universe he/she observes , cannot be separated from the observed universe  : Occam's razor  .

Furthermore , the greatest scientific minds ever , today and yesterday , have been supporting that simple explanation of QM ,the one you call pseudo-science or mumbo-jumbo .

Ironically enough , the most simple definition of materialism is the latter: pseudo-science or mumbo-jumbo.

Who can have any respect whatsoever for that materialist magical voodoo that pretends to be 'scientific " even ...

Better still , i don't think the interpretation dilemma of QM can ever be solved conclusively , that is ,simply because we will never know what happens ,at the quantum level  at least , when we are not looking,so to speak  ...

To try to know just that ,one has to invent some sort of human caricature of consciousness to do the job : cannot be done .


Quote
Quote
Materialists assume consciousness to be just a material process , so, how can it collapse the wave function ?
It doesn't have to. We know wavefunction collapse occurs in the absence of consciousness (as previously explained).

If that was the case , then the observer effect interpretation of QM had to be refuted a long time ago,and from its very inception  : why do you think many prominent physicists even today do still stick to that interpretation ? , if the wavefunction collapse does indeed occur in the absence of consciousness . Don't make things up .

Yeah , right : like the "fact " that consciousness is just an emergent property of matter , a "fact " for which there is absolutely and certainly no empirical evidence whatsoever to support  it : just materialist thin air or materialist inexplicable magical voodoo .

Someone should try to replicate Schmidt's experiments some day ...successfully , that is .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 17:43:05
If two people observe the same phenomenon, whose consciousness precipitated it?

I have already responded to that , earlier on : there must be only one ultimate source of all consciousnesses ,so, as Von Neumann , or Wigner or some other prominent physicist said  .

Call it cosmic consciousness, Zeus , God , or whatever ....

I am not sure that's the answer to your question though .


Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool.

Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .

Neither you nor the rest of the other materialist scientists would admit that dogmatic ignorance of theirs,despite all that overwhelming evidence against materialism  .

" A fool thinks himself to be wise , but a wise man knows himself to be a fool "   Shakespeare .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 17/11/2014 18:39:09



Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool.

Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .


The only pseudo-scientific inexplicable magical voodoo science being offered here is coming from your posts Sir Don. You must have been looking in the mirror when you wrote that line.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 19:19:17



Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool.

Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .


The only pseudo-scientific inexplicable magical voodoo science being offered here is coming from your posts Sir Don. You must have been looking in the mirror when you wrote that line.

Well , maybe lol : you're just projecting , sir Ethos.

Materialism and science are 2 totally different "things " or processes : can you tell the difference ? Guess not .

http://harmoniaphilosophica.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-ridiculousness-of-materialism/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 19:48:11
dlorde , alancalverd , Cheryl, Ethos ,PmbPhy : 

The interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , so, all its interpretations are relatively "equally " valid ,since none of them has been proven conclusively .

But , the most simple interpretation of quantum theory of them all has been the one that involves the role of the observer in it : Occam's razor : that 's the most valid one .

dlorde : See what  professor  Jim Al -Khalili said about the elusive interpretation dilemma of quantum theory in his  " Quantum , A Guide For  The Perplexed ", A Short Excerpt From Chapter 6 : " The Great Debate " :

Jim says he subscribes to the " Shut up and calculate " view , which makes him free to explore all interpretations of QM . I did even post a short video of his ,once , on the subject , through the double slit experiment , where he said that the one who would be able to interpret just that should deserve the Nobel prize , while i see you all , guys ,here dismissing or a-priori rejecting the most simple and most valid explanation of them all of quantum theory, while you should in fact a -priori reject none  of those interpretations of quantum theory , including the former , that's the most simple and valid one of them all : the one where consciousness of the observer plays a central role ..

Let's see what our friend Jim says on the subject :

Quote :

"Formalism versus interpretation :

"An appreciation of many of the quantum concepts, such as the wavefunction and its strange properties, as well as the postulates that tell us how to extract information from it about then subatomic world, are essential for the success and understanding of the theory.

And yet we have seen in the first half of this book how difficult it is to translate what is essentially advanced mathematics into words that make sense, to both physicists and non-physicists. Another way of putting it is that while the formalism of quantum mechanics is not in doubt, nobody has yet found a satisfactory explanation, or interpretation, of the theory that is agreeable to everyone.
For the two-slit experiment, we are able to predict very precisely the form of the interference pattern seen on the screen (even though we cannot predict where any particular atom will land).

 Much more impressive is that quantum mechanics predicts very precisely the properties of atoms and molecules and their constituent particles, as well as the nature of the forces that hold them together to give the richness and variety of structures we see around us. This predictive power is a sign of a successful scientific theory.
 What is so amazing is that we can do all this without knowing why we arrive at the results we do. It seems we can manage perfectly well without having a picture in our heads of just how the atom gets through the two slits.
The majority of practising physicists have learned to use the theory without understanding why it works.

 In fact, some of the most prominent scientists of our age have admitted openly that no one really understands quantum mechanics! Should this not be a cause for concern? We will investigate in this chapter the differing attitudes and views that physicists have held, and still hold, regarding the issue of interpretation.

I am sure I will displease many physicists with what I will say in this chapter, since I plan to adopt an agnostic attitude towards the various views held. After all, my aim in this book is to explain what quantum mechanics is and why it is so strange. But it would be extremely dishonest and arrogant of me to pretend that all is rosy in the quantum garden.

 Many physicists, some of them close colleagues and research collaborators of mine, feel strongly that there is no problem. They would argue that drawing attention to the conflicts between different interpretations of what is, after all, a perfectly well understood, logically consistent, and successful mathematical theory is unnecessary and pointless.

But I would be equally dishonest, and probably make this book a less interesting read, if I did not climb off the fence on certain occasions to make my personal views clear.
Let me begin with a strong but nevertheless accurate statement: No one interpretation of the quantum formalism has been proven to be any better than the rest, other than on aesthetic grounds or personal taste.
This has therefore suggested to many that it is a futile exercise to argue the relative merits and shortcomings of the various interpretations. Worse still, many believe that there is no true interpretation and that they are all equally valid ways of thinking about what is going on.

This view is embodied in the widely quoted ‘shut up and calculate’ interpretation, which suggests that since it has proven (so far at least) impossible to find the right interpretation, it is a waste of time talking about it. Let the philosophers worry about such issues while physicists get on with using the quantum mechanical formalism to learn about nature.

For over half a century most serious physicists frowned upon issues of interpretation. They argued that quantum mechanics is unique among scientific theories in that, while it has tremendous predictive power, all that it can comment upon, by definition, are the results of measurements. That should be all we need concern ourselves with, and not worry about requiring a unique interpretation in order to make progress. Such a pragmatic, or ‘instrumentalist’, view is rooted in the philosophy of ‘logical positivism’ that happened to be popular in Europe at the time that quantum mechanics was born.
 Of course I do not want to stray from physics into philosophy, but I’ll give the basic gist of this view: if two people have differing opinions but no way of settling their differences through empirical facts then their conflicting statements are meaningless and they should go and have a beer instead.

And my position on the matter? I subscribe to what I call the ‘shut up while you calculate’ view which leaves me free to contemplate the relative merits of the different interpretations of quantum mechanics when I am not thinking about Greek symbols, writing computer code, or scribbling algebra on my blackboard. Unfortunately, I have yet to settle on one interpretation after almost twenty years of worrying.
 I would say that quantum mechanics allows us to communicate with nature fluently by following well-understood rules of mathematical grammar, but we still lack a unique translation of what is being said!

In saying that, I must admit that like most other physicists I am burdened with the legacy of Bohr and what is regarded as the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics.
 It is the interpretation favoured in quantum textbooks and taught to physics undergraduates as though it were the only conceivable explanation of what is going on, although this attitude has been changing in recent years.
In its favour is the fact that it is the simplest interpretation. In providing recipes for carrying out calculations in quantum mechanics, it is the ultimate tool of the pragmatist and is known simply as the Copenhagen interpretation.
 Unfortunately, it has nothing to say about some of the deepest quantum mysteries and instead simply side-steps many of the issues. However, the name covers a whole spectrum of views, albeit with a common core.

To give you an example of how ingrained the Copenhagen view is in the teaching of the subject, many of the statements I made earlier in the book are ones that would not feature in some of the alternative, equally valid, interpretations. For instance: I went to great lengths to explain how the wavefunction is not a real physical entity but merely a set of numbers that allow us to make predictions about measurements. This is only according to the Copenhagen view and is not a feature shared by others you will meet, in which the wavefunction represents something physically real.
 Even more surprisingly, I need not have insisted in the two-slit trick that the atom must ‘somehow’ go through both slits at once.

It turns out that such a statement is not forced upon us by either the quantum formalism or experimental observation. In the de Broglie-Bohmian interpretation we will see how it is perfectly reasonable to assume the atom only went through one or other of the slits, and yet we can still end up with the interference pattern........." End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 19:50:08
Quote
author=PmbPhy link=topic=52526.msg444605#msg444605 date=1416124084]
Quote from: DonQuichotte
Really ?

"...Wheeler has speculated that reality is created by observers in the universe. "How does something arise from nothing?", he asks about the existence of space and time (Princeton Physics News, 2006).
Well, what can I say. Nobodies perfect. I particularly disagree with Wheeler on that point. Thanks for mentioning it. However I don't believe that he meant it in the sense that you interpreted it. Here is what I believe that he meant.

You're welcome .
What do you mean nobody is perfect ? : just because Wheeler says something you don't agree with ?

For your information : the interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet, if ever  : so, all interpretations of QM  are "equally " valid , to some extent at least ,but, i think that the most simple explanation of them all of quantum theory is the one involving the observer in it : : Occam's razor : that's the most valid one .

You don't believe Wheeler meant that ? :see this on the subject :

Quote : " ...He grappled with the interpretation of quantum mechanics and was an early proponent of the anthropic principle- in John L Casti's magnificent book Paradigms Lost, Casti quotes Wheeler analogizing observer-created reality with the game in which a group of people asks someone else to guess an object they have in mind by asking questions, except that in the modified version of this game, they let the object be created during the process of questioning. With his mentor Bohr's enduring principle of complementarity as a guide, Wheeler produced esoteric ideas that nonetheless questioned the bedrock of reality...." End quote .

Source : http://wavefunction.fieldofscience.com/2008/04/magic-without-magic-john-archibald.html

Not enough ? : see the following from Scientific American :

Quote : " ....In the 1950s Wheeler grew increasingly intrigued by the philosophical implications of quantum physics. According to quantum theory, a particle such as an electron occupies numerous positions in space until we observe it, when it abruptly "collapses" into a single position. Wheeler was one of the first prominent physicists seriously to propose that reality might not be a wholly physical phenomenon. In some sense, Wheeler suggested, reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself; it is "participatory."..."   End quote .

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pioneering-physicist-john-wheeler-dies/


Quote from: Peter M. Brown
I think that a universe that exists all by itself without a concept to grasp it is a very odd thing. Then when a concept was established a reality then existed to grasp it. Is this in the ball park. It's almost enough to make be believe that God exists.
 
Gymnastics .

See above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/11/2014 19:51:34
If consciousness creates reality, not just our private subjective experience of it, but literally creates physical reality, how is it possible to ever be wrong about anything? How would you explain something as simple as an optical illusion? The idea sounds infantile to me.


I don't subscribe to either Wheeler's or to its  similar new age interpretation  of QM , in the sense that "we create our reality " (A false  new age adage by the way ) , or that we "create our physical reality " ....

We do not create our reality or the physical reality ....The very word "create " implies producing something from nothing : that's not the proper of man , i guess .

I do subscribe to the view of the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." and to that same one of many other physicists on the subject : the so-called physical reality exists only in wave-like forms of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ... until it "freezes " or it gets actualized by the very act of observation .

Idealist monistic quantum physicist Amit Goswami, for example , goes even further , thanks to that philosophy of his at least , by saying that  the so-called objective reality out there is not out there , does not exist as such ...at all :

http://www.amitgoswami.org/

I don't agree with the idealistic monistic interpretation of quantum theory .

I think that  the ultimate or objective reality out there is really out there  (as well as within , but, that's another story ) in fact , but, we can never approach it through science at least , simply because whenever we would look at it, so to speak,  or observe it , we instantly turn it into the illusory physical reality , i guess, i don't know .Who does ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 17/11/2014 23:19:58
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg444589#msg444589 date=1416099682]

Can you define what electricity is , what aether is , what dark matter and dark energy are ...., what energy is , ...what magnetism is , ...what physical fields are ,what gravity really is , what space- time or space -and- time really are .....


Yes. And when we look for evidence of their existence, some turn out not to exist. In some cases such as "electricity" it turns out to be a weakly defined cause of an observed phenomenon and in others such as "aether" it turns out to be wholly unnecessary as the phenomena are fully explicable without it.

What in Zeus ' name are you talking about ,Alan ? I ask you one thing and you tell me about another . odd.

Alas, you are blinded by your own arrogance. You asked about the definition of electricity and aether, and I discussed them.

If you stop shouting for a bit and start listening, others may think you less foolish than you appear. 

Quote
Consciousness might have preceded the universe itself , i told you once , didn't i ?


You did indeed, but you failed to define consciousness or explain why you think this, aprt, that is, from your over-literal interpretation of "observe". Genesis is wrong in many respects, and indeed has changed over the centuries to accommodate prevailing philosophies: it has no more validity than any other creation myth.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 17/11/2014 23:24:01

Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool.

Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .

Neither you nor the rest of the other materialist scientists would admit that dogmatic ignorance of theirs,despite all that overwhelming evidence against materialism  . 

and now you've gone and spoilt it with a silly rant. Maybe I'll communicate again when you have grown up.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 18/11/2014 16:28:11
The interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , so, all its interpretations are relatively "equally " valid ,since none of them has been proven conclusively .

But , the most simple interpretation of quantum theory of them all has been the one that involves the role of the observer in it : Occam's razor : that 's the most valid one .
If you can bring yourself to read it, this article may help you understand why the 'Many Worlds' interpretation becoming increasingly popular, and why it has the fewest assumptions (Ockham's Razor). I don't expect you to agree with it, but perhaps it will correct some of your misapprehensions about it: Why 'Many Worlds' Is Probably Correct' (http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-many-worlds-formulation-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/).

Incidentally, in his new book 'Life on the Edge', in a chapter about quantum consciousness theories, Jim Al-Khalili says (p.270), "There is actually no evidence that quantum mechanics is needed at all to account for consciousness".
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 18/11/2014 16:30:15
If you stop shouting for a bit and start listening, others may think you less foolish than you appear.
Neither seems very likely.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 18/11/2014 17:02:43
Incidentally, in his new book 'Life on the Edge', in a chapter about quantum consciousness theories, Jim Al-Khalili says (p.270), "There is actually no evidence that quantum mechanics is needed at all to account for consciousness".

That's worrying. AFAIK any useful definition of consciousness involves a nervous system or some other means of receiving stimuli, so demands the presence of a material object, whose existence and functions are entirely  moderated by quantum mechanics.   
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 18/11/2014 17:22:47

That's worrying. AFAIK any useful definition of consciousness involves a nervous system or some other means of receiving stimuli, so demands the presence of a material object, whose existence and functions are entirely  moderated by quantum mechanics.
Exactly alan,........and what would existence be like without material things like: electrons, protons, neutrons, ect. Existence is all about the environment and it's relationship to us MATERIAL BEINGS. If we eliminate material objects from the equation, nothing is left. No universe, no earth to live on, no people to inhabit the missing earth, nada, zero, zilch.

And this is exactly how much value Don's perception of reality is worth;..... nada, zero, zilch......................end of story!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 18/11/2014 20:46:38
That's worrying. AFAIK any useful definition of consciousness involves a nervous system or some other means of receiving stimuli, so demands the presence of a material object, whose existence and functions are entirely  moderated by quantum mechanics.
[;D]

I suspect he means macro-scale quantum mechanical effects such as those proposed by the quantum-consciousness enthusiasts.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 18/11/2014 23:41:02
IMHO it is not a good idea to try to guess what Don means. That way madness lies.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 18/11/2014 23:57:58
IMHO it is not a good idea to try to guess what Don means. That way madness lies.
[?] If that was a comment on my last post, I was guessing (explaining) what Jim Al-Khalili meant in the quote I'd posted that you said was 'worrying'.

But you're right anyway!  [;)]



Something To Crow About
I sometimes think I'd rather crow
And be a rooster than to roost
And be a crow. But I dunno.

A rooster he can roost also,
Which don't seem fair when crows can't crow.
Which may help some. Still I dunno.

Crows should be glad of one thing though;
Nobody thinks of eating crow,
While roosters they are good enough
For anyone unless they're tough.

There're lots of tough old roosters though,
And anyway a crow can't crow,
So mebby roosters stand more show.
It looks that way. But I dunno.

Anon.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2014 17:51:58

Thank you for this scintilla of intellectual honesty. Admitting ignorance is the first step towards being a scientist, or at least the first step away from being thought a fool.

Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .

Neither you nor the rest of the other materialist scientists would admit that dogmatic ignorance of theirs,despite all that overwhelming evidence against materialism  . 

and now you've gone and spoilt it with a silly rant. Maybe I'll communicate again when you have grown up.

That was no rant , just a fact : Instead of pretending to be able to lecture people about their foolish or unscientific rant , you'd better  try  to detect all that materialistic pseudo-scientific inexplicable magical voodoo at the very heart of materialist science , Alan .

Good luck with that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2014 18:13:38
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg444800#msg444800 date=1416328091]
The interpretation of quantum theory has not been solved yet , if ever , so, all its interpretations are relatively "equally " valid ,since none of them has been proven conclusively .

But , the most simple interpretation of quantum theory of them all has been the one that involves the role of the observer in it : Occam's razor : that 's the most valid one .
If you can bring yourself to read it, this article may help you understand why the 'Many Worlds' interpretation becoming increasingly popular, and why it has the fewest assumptions (Ockham's Razor). I don't expect you to agree with it, but perhaps it will correct some of your misapprehensions about it: Why 'Many Worlds' Is Probably Correct' (http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2014/06/30/why-the-many-worlds-formulation-of-quantum-mechanics-is-probably-correct/).

Yeah, right : that fictitious many worlds' interpretation is an obvious  major violation of Occam's razor, no matter how you or others would try to make it look or sound otherwise .If that's not a major and cristal -clear violation of Occam's razor, i don't know what is . (Why multiply the universe itself into multiverses or parallel universes , just to 'explain " the universe  ? lol : that's a totally unnecessary plurality of assumptions, not to mention its obvious complexity , beyond necessity ...instead of simplicity ...) .Not only that , on top of that ,it is just a matter of taste , aesthetics , not to mention that it is just an unfalsifiable fantasy= unscientific bullshit  , like that hidden variable theory ....

Worse : just a materialist desperate attempt to walk around the interpretation dilemma of quantum theory , in vain ,instead of looking for a simple explanation .

The latter cannot in fact be found in materialistic terms, since the universe is not exclusively physical or material ,as Wheeler said,  that's why materialists cannot but deliver such unscientific and unfalsifiable bullshit theories ...instead of confronting the fact that materialism is false, in the first place to begin with , thanks to consciousness and all its related anomalies and processes that can never be intrinsically accounted for, let alone explained , by materialism  .

Quote
Incidentally, in his new book 'Life on the Edge', in a chapter about quantum consciousness theories, Jim Al-Khalili says (p.270), "There is actually no evidence that quantum mechanics is needed at all to account for consciousness".

(Prior note :
Actually , we don't even need quantum theory to acknowledge the simple fact that the observer and the observed are inseparable ,or that they affect each other , not to mention the simple fact that consciousness plays a central and key role in shaping reality .QM just brings that old and simple fact back to science or to physics .
Just tell me, dlorde : since the observer cannot but make an intrinsic and inescapable  part of the universe or reality he/she is observing , how can he/she be assumed to be separated from that observed reality ? ,as if he/she's observing the universe or reality from outside of the universe or outside of reality ,if such a 'thing " would 'exist " or make any sense at all ...as if the observer is independent from the universe or reality .

Reminds me of what Newton, once said , on the subject of atheism whose main flaw or logical fallacy is to assume that objects or people are independent entities ...

The latter don't exist as such ,since the universe is one and interconnected .) .

I know that : that's just his opinion or preferred interpretation , after exploring the relative merits of all interpretations of QM , that "agnostic " way ,as he claims at least  .

As a materialist , he cannot be a-priori that "agnostic " in fact ,as he claims ( That would be like a believer who would claim to take an a-priori atheistic or agnostic position .  lol ) ,since his materialism cannot but make him  a-priori rule out any active or proactive role , let alone a central role , of consciousness in physics .

But, if Jim would acknowledge the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness , while ceasing to be a materialist as a result ,since materialism is false,  then , he cannot but revoke that claim of his regarding the "fact " that there is no evidence that QM can  account for consciousness ...

Well, daaahhh : there is no conclusive evidence for the rest of the interpretations of QM either ,and hence they are all  "equally valid " , as he claimed . Why single out just that particular interpretation then that happens to be totally incompatible with materialism ?

In other words , why say that that particular interpretation is hardly "valid " ? or that it is not valid at all ....while Jim's views on the subject are as "valid " as those of other physicists who hold totally different views from  his by the way ...according to the very logic of Jim lol

Actually , Jim contradicts himself , big time, thus , first by pretending to be able to take an "agnostic " position regarding the measurement paradox in QM,second by admitting that the interpretation of QM has not been solved yet conclusively , if ever ,which means that all interpretations of QM are 'equally " valid ,and hence  just a matter of taste or aesthetics , and third   by saying that hardly any physicists take the observer effect interpretation seriously , or that there is no evidence for the observer effect interpretation ...

The guy is full of contradictions thus , and his "Quantum : Guide for the perplexed " turns out to be a lost perplexed and confused "guide " in need of a guide itself : it just added to my confusion on the subject exponentially . I could have been totally lost thanks to Jim's book in question , was it not for other physicists who hold other views on the subject .

Nevertheless, QM is still a big mystery to me ,and to all  physicists,and to most people,  including Jim himself  , regardless of whether or not they would acknowledge that fact ,as Jim partly did .

Even Feynman himself said , and rightly so, i guess ,that "I can safely say that nobody understands quantum physics ..." .

To say the contrary is a plain and simple display of dishonesty and lack of integrity , to say the least .

Even many physicists , as Jim said by the way , including our alancalverd   here , even claim there is no problem or mystery , let alone a paradox, regarding the interpretation of QM.

alancalverd   even denied the very existence of the wave/particle duality itself  as such , ironically enough .

How can he explain the wave/particle duality of light and that of the rest of the  'particles " then ?

P.S.: QM set aside , even simple logics would tell you that the observer and the observed cannot be separated or independent from each other , no way , cannot but affect each other , including at the level of science .

Simple logics would tell you that the so-called objectivity even in science is a myth : see all those different interpretations of QM .See how the Eurocentric materialism has been taken for granted as science or as the scientific world view for relatively so long now ,and counting, , without a question, by the majority of scientists and other people as well , including yourselves ...

Science that's just a human social activity , and to some extent just a cultural one as well (See how the Eurocentric materialism has been taken for granted as science ....) .

Come on, the observer cannot be separated from the observed , cannot but affect and get affected by the latter ...
Even the very design of experiments , development of theories, the interpretation of data and empirical evidence  ...cannot but be affected by the  a -priori held beliefs or world views, expectations ...of the scientists observers in question ...

Otherwise , there would be no interpretation dilemma or problem at all ,either in science or elsewhere.

Our representations of reality cannot but be mostly mental ...mental constructs (Even science says so ) , through a-priori held beliefs or world views that shape consciousness  through cultures , environment , education, nurture , perception...not to mention the role of the unconscious in all that ,and that of the collective consciousness and collective unconsciousness or collective sub-consciousness as well, as Carl G.Jung used to say ...

In short :

Try to rid yourselves of that old and false Cartesian dichotomy between the subjective and the objective , between the observer and the observed ,and of the false alleged notion of the independent observer and independent observed reality .... not to mention their  materialistic reductionistic monistic versions...

Regarding the latter , how can the observed external objective reality produce the observer through evolution thus , simply put , while  they are assumed to be independent from each other : the observed allegedly producing the observer to observe the observed : to observe itself , not only that , on top of that , to observe itself independently of itself ...  Insane puerile absurd paradoxical pseudo-scientific materialistic bullshit that pretends to be "scientific " ....wow ....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 19/11/2014 19:18:14


Tell that to materialist scientists mainly , Alan , like yourself, ironically enough, who have been taking their materialistic pseudo-scientific  inexplicable magical voodoo for granted as science or as the scientific world view ,without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least,and counting ... .

Neither you nor the rest of the other materialist scientists would admit that dogmatic ignorance of theirs,despite all that overwhelming evidence against materialism  . 

and now you've gone and spoilt it with a silly rant. Maybe I'll communicate again when you have grown up.

That was no rant , just a fact : Instead of pretending to be able to lecture people about their foolish or unscientific rant , you'd be try to to detect all that materialistic pseudo-scientific inexplicable magical voodoo at the very heart of materialist science , Alan .

Good luck with that .

Tha hallmark of scientific writing is an absence of adjectives. If you have numbers, you show them. If you don't, you don't have a case. To my mind, concatenated adjectives are the sign of the ranter. Though I'll grant you that voodoo is probably being used here as a noun, however inappropriately.


Quote
alancalverd   even denied the very existence of the wave/particle duality itself, ironically enough .

I wasn't being ironic. The problem is that some people used to think that scientific "laws" were imposed on the universe by holy statute, and we knew all about them, so everything ought to behave as some aspect of a classical continuum. Hence the behaviour of light must be describable by either wave or particle equations because we know everything about wave and particle equations.  But annoyingly it turns out not to be the case, so rather than admit ignorance, people invented "duality" and blamed nature for being inconsistent.

But if we set intellectual arrogance aside and accept that scientific laws are discovered approximations, not imposed requirements, it all becomes a lot clearer: the world behaves as it does, and it is up to us to choose the most appropriate model if we want to predict what it will do next. Or we can investigate further and see if there is a more comprehensive formula. For the time being it seems that wave and particle models work pretty well, and we know which to use and when.  No paradox, just incomplete mathematics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2014 20:01:10
Andrei Linde: Quote :

 “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”  End quote .

Indeed : how can there be any science , let alone the rest , without consciousness ? How can the latter not affect the observed reality and get affected by it as well , let alone be independent of it ... ? since the observer cannot but make an intrinsic , inseparable and inescapable part of the observed universe...

Can you observe the observed universe or observed reality from outside of the latter ? lol : Yes, that's what materialist science is basically saying, implicitly that is  : absurd ... paradox .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2014 20:21:33
alancalverd : No time left , sorry , almost :

Did you or did you not deny the wave/particle duality of light and that of other 'particles " as such , earlier on ? Yes, you did .

You said there is no duality .

Did you or did you not deny the interpretation paradox  ,dilemma or problem of quantum theory as such , and their intrinsic mystery and weirdness ? Yes, you did .

Regarding the latter at least , you said : there is no problem ,as many other physicists did/do .

Both you and other physicists are wrong thus .

Did you or did you not deny the very fact that while using the extremely successful quantum theory , you don't understand why it works the way it does ? Yes, you did ...or as Jim said in that book of his :  Quote :  "...The majority of practicing physicists have learned to use the theory without understanding why it works ..." End quote : source : "Quantum, a guide for the perplexed " Chapter 6  "The great debate " .

The list is relatively long .I will remind you of all that , another time thus .

Even Feynman himself said ,and rightly so, that "I can safely say that nobody understands QM.... ", nobody does indeed , including yourself ,  ,while you said to me , earlier on : oh , it's very simple , just algebra ...

Way to go , physicist .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/11/2014 21:15:58
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality : By Manjit Kumar :

I have just started listening to this amazing book : wow : return to the source ,if you wanna "understand" QM , i guess , before it got infected by the materialistic reductionistic dogmatic  lethal disease  , that is lol :

http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Einstein-Debate-Nature-Reality/dp/0393339882
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 19/11/2014 21:59:55
I have explained why the notions of duality and paradox exist only in the mind, and indeed only in the minds of the arrogant. There's a lot of Zen in good science.

There is no "why" in the cosmos as a whole. Why is a construct of mortal beings who require or desire motive and order in their lives. The scientific question is "how" - at least as far as physics is concerned - and although we don't have a full understanding of how quantum effects occur, we have a good handle on what to expect when they do. 

Anyway, enough from my side of the fence. Let's hear the sales pitch for your product. What does your nonmaterialist science predict more accurately or more efficiently than the methods you decry? If there are paradoxes, which ones does it unravel? I'm quite prepared to believe it is a superior approach if you can show rather than tell. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 19/11/2014 23:28:42
... Just tell me, dlorde : since the observer cannot but make an intrinsic and inescapable  part of the universe or reality he/she is observing , how can he/she be assumed to be separated from that observed reality ?

Ah. Clearly you either didn't read the article or you didn't understand it. If there's something in particular you didn't follow, just ask, and I'll try to help you understand it.

The whole point of 'Many Worlds' is that the observer becomes part of the system being observed. When a system in quantum superposition is measured by interaction with some apparatus (or observer), the interacting apparatus becomes part of the superposition (the superposed wavefunction encompasses both system & apparatus), and when the apparatus interacts further with the environment, the environment becomes part of the superposition too. By this point, the initial superposition is said to have decohered because it has spread irretrievably into the environment. Each 'aspect' of the superposition sees one outcome of the measurement. This is just an extended evolution of the overall wavefunction of the whole ensemble - no magical 'collapse' involved. What part of this do you find difficult to follow?

If it will help you see the reality of superposition, here's the first undergraduate MIT lecture in quantum mechanics, called 'Introduction to Superposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc)', which explains very simply and clearly the empirical evidence for superposition, which is all the 'Many Worlds' interpretation relies on.

By all means object to the interpretation, but for your objection to be worth anything, it must be based on what the interpretation actually says, not a misunderstanding of what it says. So what are your particular grounds for objecting to it ? (bearing in mind that the superposition at the core of QM has been empirically confirmed many times).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 17:33:04
... Just tell me, dlorde : since the observer cannot but make an intrinsic and inescapable  part of the universe or reality he/she is observing , how can he/she be assumed to be separated from that observed reality ?

Ah. Clearly you either didn't read the article or you didn't understand it. If there's something in particular you didn't follow, just ask, and I'll try to help you understand it.

The whole point of 'Many Worlds' is that the observer becomes part of the system being observed. When a system in quantum superposition is measured by interaction with some apparatus (or observer), the interacting apparatus becomes part of the superposition (the superposed wavefunction encompasses both system & apparatus), and when the apparatus interacts further with the environment, the environment becomes part of the superposition too. By this point, the initial superposition is said to have decohered because it has spread irretrievably into the environment. Each 'aspect' of the superposition sees one outcome of the measurement. This is just an extended evolution of the overall wavefunction of the whole ensemble - no magical 'collapse' involved. What part of this do you find difficult to follow?

If it will help you see the reality of superposition, here's the first undergraduate MIT lecture in quantum mechanics, called 'Introduction to Superposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc)', which explains very simply and clearly the empirical evidence for superposition, which is all the 'Many Worlds' interpretation relies on.

By all means object to the interpretation, but for your objection to be worth anything, it must be based on what the interpretation actually says, not a misunderstanding of what it says. So what are your particular grounds for objecting to it ? (bearing in mind that the superposition at the core of QM has been empirically confirmed many times).

Ok,I did not read that article , to be honest ,so .

I will just refer you to what the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." said about  that many worlds' interpretation , as follows :

Excerpt from Chapter 15 : "What’s Going On? Interpreting the Quantum  Enigma: "

Quote :

"
Many Worlds :

The Many Worlds interpretation accepts what quantum theory says
literally . Where the Copenhagen interpretation has observation mysteriously collapsing the atom’s wavefunction into a single box, and Schrödinger’s cat into the living or dead state, the Many Worlds interpretation just says “no” to collapse. Quantum theory says the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. So be it! In one world, Schrödinger’s cat is alive, and in another it is dead.

Hugh Everett came up with the Many Worlds idea in the 1950s to
allow cosmologists to deal with a wavefunction for the entire universe.
With no need for “observers” to collapse the wavefunction, the Many
Worlds interpretation presumes to resolve the quantum enigma by the
sensible-seeming ploy of including consciousness as part of the physical
universe described by quantum mechanics.

In the Many Worlds interpretation, you are part of the universal wavefunction.
 Consider our box pairs. Looking into one of the boxes, you
entangle with the atom’s superposition state. You go into a superposition
state both of having seen the atom in the box you looked in and also of
having seen that box empty. There are now two of you, one in each of two
parallel worlds. The consciousness of each one of you is unaware of
the other “you.” Instead of looking in a box, yet another “you” did an interference experiment. Nothing we actually experience conflicts with this
bizarre view.

To bring more than one observer into the picture, let’s go back to
Schrödinger’s cat. Alice looks in the box while Bob is far away. In one
world Alice, call her Alice 1 , sees a live cat. In the other, Alice 2 sees a dead cat.
At this point Bob is also in both worlds, but Bob 1 and Bob 2 are essentially identical.

Should Bob 1 meet Alice 1 , he would help her get milk for the hungry cat. Bob 2 would help Alice 2 bury the dead cat. Macroscopic objects Alice 2 and Bob 1 exist in different worlds and, for all practical purposes, never encounter each other.

After Bell’s theorem and the experiments it allowed, we know that our
actual world perhaps cannot have reality and, certainly cannot have separability.
In the Many Worlds interpretation there is no separability. In that
world in which Alice finds the cat alive, Bob instantly becomes a person in
the cat-alive world. And there is clearly no single reality, which seems
equivalent to no reality.

The Many Worlds interpretation stirs strong feelings. One academic
author decries it as “profligate” and refers to its proposer as a “chain-smoking, horned-Cadillac-driving, multimillionaire weapons research analyst.”
(At the time Everett proposed it, he was just a graduate student.)

On the other hand, a leader in quantum computing writes that the Many Worlds interpretation “makes more sense in so many ways than any previous world-view, and certainly more than the cynical pragmatism which too often nowadays serves as a surrogate for a world-view among scientists.”
(By “cynical pragmatism” he surely means the unquestioning acceptance
of Copenhagen.).

The Many Worlds interpretation is today the favorite interpretation of
many quantum cosmologists for the early universe they consider.
 They can ignore the observer problem. No observers around then. Since the universe includes everything, it is by definition isolated from any external “environment.”

Decoherence thus need not be an issue. A quantum cosmologist colleague tells us that the Many Worlds interpretation is his favorite, although he doesn’t like it.

There’s an unresolved problem with the Many Worlds interpretation:
What constitutes an observation? When does the world split? The splitting
into two worlds is presumably just a way of speaking. Are infinitely many
worlds continuously created?.

In any event, the Many Worlds interpretation vastly extends what
Copernicus started. Not only are we removed from the center of the cosmos to a tiny spot in a limitless universe, but the world we experience is just a minute fraction of all worlds. However, “we” exist in many of them. Many Worlds, the most bizarre description of reality ever seriously proposed, provides a fascinating base for speculation, and for science fiction." End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 17:58:40
I have explained why the notions of duality and paradox exist only in the mind, and indeed only in the minds of the arrogant. There's a lot of Zen in good science.

There is no "why" in the cosmos as a whole. Why is a construct of mortal beings who require or desire motive and order in their lives. The scientific question is "how" - at least as far as physics is concerned - and although we don't have a full understanding of how quantum effects occur, we have a good handle on what to expect when they do. 

Anyway, enough from my side of the fence. Let's hear the sales pitch for your product. What does your nonmaterialist science predict more accurately or more efficiently than the methods you decry? If there are paradoxes, which ones does it unravel? I'm quite prepared to believe it is a superior approach if you can show rather than tell.

( Prior note :

How can you deny the wave /particle duality a such ? ,while it has been demonstrated to occur even at the level of some large molecules ...Many experiments have shown that , not to mention the famous double slit experiment ...Many physicists even say that the whole universe is quantum "mechanical " ,so , the wave/particle duality might exist even at the level of our relatively large-scale human world : it just can't be detected as such ..yet , that is . )

Ok, the "Why " was used even by Jim in that quote of his . He should have used the word " how " indeed , in the sense that " ...The majority of practicing physicists have learned to use the theory without understanding why (how )  it works ..." .

What about Bell's theorem ? See the following on the subject :

From "Quantum Enigma ..." , Excerpt from Chapter 14 : " Experimental metaphysics" :

Quote :



Experimental Metaphysics :


"All men suppose that what is called wisdom deals with the first causes and the principles of things."

— Aristotle, in Metaphysics

Metaphysics , literally, “after physics,” is the title a fi rst-century editor gave to a collection of Aristotle’s philosophical works that came after his book Physics .

 Were Aristotle around today, he would surely explore “fi rst causes” by trying to understand what quantum mechanics is telling us about the world, and about us.
Our title for this chapter, “Experimental Metaphysics,” was inspired by
a recent collection of essays by that name discussing laboratory experiments exploring the foundations of quantum mechanics.

The book’s first chapter (by John Clauser) has the provocative title “De Broglie Wave Interference of Small Rocks and Live Viruses,” which are the experiments Clauser is proposing.

Because the microscopic realm of atoms differs by so many orders of
magnitude from the macroscopic realm of humans, some argue that quantum mechanics has little implication for our human-scale view of Nature, “what’s really going on.” That was not the attitude of Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and the other developers of quantum theory. In later years, however, as the quantum enigma remained unresolved, and the theory worked so well for all practical purposes, the early concerns waned.
That’s changed. There’s lots of agreement today that we fundamentally
don’t understand what’s going on. At least there’s lots of dis agreement about what’s going on, which is pretty much the same thing.

Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible.
They did more than confirm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a
world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their
own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all
objects. Even to us?

From a classical physics point of view, some argue that we are just
objects governed by biology and chemistry, and therefore ultimately
by deterministic physics. However, since Bell’s theorem, the human
element, free choice, for example, is seen as an issue in fundamental
physics questions.

While the free choice of the experimenter was implicit in classical
physics there is no classical physics experiment where free choice, a human
element, becomes problematic. Although it may never be practical to do a
quantum experiment critically involving free choice, a suggested one
discussed below comes close.
In the rest of this chapter, we touch on several experiments and proposed
experiments that ever more tightly, but mysteriously, connect the
strange microscopic world with the “reasonable” macroscopic world we
experience.

Macroscopic Realizations :

So far, in our telling of an object’s existence in two places at once, or its
entanglement with another object, the objects were photons, electrons, or
atoms, objects small enough to be physically isolated from their macroscopic surroundings.

 In recent years, quantum phenomena have been extended to
larger objects, and even more signifi cantly, to objects with substantial contact with the macroscopic environment. By the time this book is in print there will surely be dramatic phenomena we would have included...." End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 18:16:14
dlorde :

What about Bell's theorem ? : See my  post to alancalverd on the subject here above .

Bohr was right , after all , and Einstein wrong , regarding that famous dispute of theirs at least .

http://arxiv.org/abs/0810.4974

Take a look at the following quote from what i posted to alancalverd here above on the subject : Quote :

"....

The book’s first chapter (by John Clauser) has the provocative title “De Broglie Wave Interference of Small Rocks and Live Viruses,” which are the experiments Clauser is proposing.

Because the microscopic realm of atoms differs by so many orders of
magnitude from the macroscopic realm of humans, some argue that quantum mechanics has little implication for our human-scale view of Nature, “what’s really going on.” That was not the attitude of Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and the other developers of quantum theory.

 In later years, however, as the quantum enigma remained unresolved, and the theory worked so well for all practical purposes, the early concerns waned.

That’s changed. There’s lots of agreement today that we fundamentally
don’t understand what’s going on. At least there’s lots of dis agreement about what’s going on, which is pretty much the same thing.

Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible.

They did more than confirm the weird predictions of quantum theory.

 The experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual world as a “reasonable” one.
 Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?
  End quote .

P.S.: Whenever i try to fix the display of the above quotes , they just appear as they do here above , sorry .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 20:10:12
The nature of reality is this: It is hidden, and it is hidden, and it is hidden.

–Rumi

........................

Wonderful, Wonderful
Copenhagen:


Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen . . .
Salty old queen of the sea
Once I sailed away
But I’m home today
Singing Copenhagen, wonderful, wonderful
Copenhagen for me.
— “Wonderful Copenhagen,” by Frank Loesser
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 20/11/2014 20:29:16

Quote
How can you deny the wave /particle duality a such ? ,while it has been demonstrated to occur even at the level of some large molecules ...Many experiments have shown that , not to mention the famous double slit experiment ...Many physicists even say that the whole universe is quantum "mechanical " ,so , the wave/particle duality might exist even at the level of our relatively large-scale human world : it just can't be detected as such ..yet , that is . )

Decry rather than deny. Duality is the construct of an arrogant and lazy mind, that thinks it knows everything, so the world must be made of classical waves or classical particles,or things that can be either. Fact is the world is made of things that are neither, but can be modelled as either.

Previous generations of scientists, brought up on classical mechanics, can be forgiven for talkijng about dality wen addressing a lay audience, but for the last 50 years at least, chemistry and physics have been taught from a quantum perspective, so most current professionals don't waste their lives arguing about duality.

OK, I've now convinced myself. Duality is nonsense. The quantum world is a lot more subtle than that.   

And I'm still waiting for an example of something predicted by this nonmaterial physics that turns out to be more true than anything predicted by material physics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/11/2014 21:09:28
I will just refer you to what the authors of "Quantum Enigma ..." said about  that many worlds' interpretation
<snipped long copypasta>
Yup, that's pretty much it. It simply accepts the empirical evidence that quantum mechanics is real, and doesn't try to hack it to conform to our intuitive view of reality.
 
Quote
There’s an unresolved problem with the Many Worlds interpretation:
What constitutes an observation? When does the world split? The splitting
into two worlds is presumably just a way of speaking. Are infinitely many
worlds continuously created?
Not really unresolved - an observation is any interaction with the quantum system. The result is that whatever interacts with it joins the superposition. In that sense, the world doesn't really split at all. The original superposition extends to encompass the measuring apparatus and, through further interactions, the environment. What is called a 'world' is just one state of that superposition. This 'sharing' of superposition is going on continually in Hilbert space, there's plenty of room and no interaction between superposed outcome states ('worlds').

It may seem bizarre, unintuitive, and unexpected, but that's just a consequence of it depending on the confirmed reality of quantum superposition, which is itself bizarre, unintuitive, and unexpected - as clearly described in the MIT tutorial video which you presumably didn't watch either.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 21:24:55
dlorde,alancalverd :

Infinite realities  is equal to no reality : many worlds' interpretation belongs more to sci-fi than to science , even though the former can become the latter sometimes , but not in this case .

What makes the universe 'split " ,and how ? How can one falsify that fantasy ?

Why did you ignore that yet another game changer : Bell's theorem , i wonder .

"Your perception is your reality " i say , almost thus .

alancalverd :

Chill, man : the Nobel prize winner son of Bohr and others do even say that there is no atomic or sub-atomic world as such even, through their extreme Copenhagen interpretation ...

For the rest , later then .

Thanks. Cheers.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 20/11/2014 21:36:17
Still no predictions or explanations. I'm beginning to suspect he hasn't got any, which means it isn't science.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/11/2014 21:39:34
Still no predictions or explanations. I'm beginning to suspect he hasn't got any, which means it isn't science.

Don't worry , Alan : I will provide you with way more than you can ever handle .Take care .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/11/2014 22:20:18
dlorde :
What about Bell's theorem ?
What about it? Bell gave the criteria for demonstrating whether quantum entanglement could be explained classically or was something quite different. The experiments that have been done to date appear to violate Bell's criteria (Bell's inequalities) for being consistent with classical mechanics. IOW, they are consistent with QM, and it looks like the world doesn't follow classical rules. Some say the experiments aren't definitive, but their case is looking weaker by the day.

As usual, one should follow the evidence with an open mind. We know, both empirically and theoretically, very precisely what QM does and what it doesn't do; but we don't know what's going on 'behind the scenes' - or even if there is a 'behind the scenes'.

The violation of Bell's inequalities is consistent with the 'Many Worlds' interpretation, which doesn't include counterfactual definiteness (definite knowledge of unmeasured properties), but is otherwise realist, deterministic, and local, in the manner of classical mechanics. This makes it more like classical mechanics than collapse interpretations, e.g. the Copenhagen interpretation, which introduce the indeterministic and non-local collapse of the wavefunction.

Since, in the MW interpretation, the unitary, deterministic dynamics of the evolution of the wavefunction results in the appearance of wavefunction collapse for each superposed state, the problematic inclusion of an actual collapse in the theory is unnecessary - Ockham's razor suggests we remove it, (and, incidentally, Einstein's criticism of QM is thereby resolved).

So it is the collapse interpretations, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, which introduce non-determinism and non-localism when they introduce the unnecessary wavefunction collapse.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/11/2014 22:33:11
What makes the universe 'split " ,and how ? How can one falsify that fantasy ?
I already answered that above. Sadly for you, superposition isn't a fantasy - just watch the MIT 'Introduction to QM' lecture I linked above. You'll notice that the lecturer goes to great pains to emphasise how apparently illogical and unreasonable superposition is - yet it is clearly established empirical fact.

Quote
Why did you ignore that yet another game changer : Bell's theorem , i wonder .
Violation of Bell's inequalities is consistent with MW as mentioned above.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 21/11/2014 07:26:05
Still no predictions or explanations. I'm beginning to suspect he hasn't got any, which means it isn't science.

Don't worry , Alan : I will provide you with way more than you can ever handle .Take care .

Just one will suffice. But hurry before I lose interest.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 18:03:23
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg444884#msg444884 date=1416439722]
... Just tell me, dlorde : since the observer cannot but make an intrinsic and inescapable  part of the universe or reality he/she is observing , how can he/she be assumed to be separated from that observed reality ?

Ah. Clearly you either didn't read the article or you didn't understand it. If there's something in particular you didn't follow, just ask, and I'll try to help you understand it.

Well, i have just read some parts of it ,after all (I will read the rest of it as well , later on, and will watch those MIT lectures as well , whenever i would have time for just that , thanks .) .It's an easy one to grasp : that's its most appealing part , i guess . Caroll is a clear materialist bastard lol : it's quite a fascinating and elegant theory , but,it makes sense only from the materialistic perspective ,that is , not to mention that it belongs more to sci-fic than to science :

0- Its main and most lethal flaw that's largely sufficient in or by itself to declare it as irreversibly false is that it is just a materialistic theory , in the sense that it assumes that consciousness is just a material process that cannot but make part of the physical universe,so, consciousness cannot but get entangled with its environment and remain in a superposition state, while the non-local and non-physical nature of consciousness is synonymous of the fact that consciousness can never be in a superposition state , since it is not material ,as Von Neumann proved  .

1-Takes QM literally .

2 - Violates Bell's theorem , not regarding separability or locality , but regarding reality or realism . That theorem and all those related experiments done by Bell, Aspect, Clauser ,Freedman ... clearly show that there is no separability or locality and no reality as such , proving Bohr to be right and Einstein to be wrong on the subject .

3_ Doesn't resolve the observation problem, since conscious observation has to be made after all , at the end of the measurement chain , as Von Neumann used to say .

To mention just the above , for the time being at least .


Quote
The whole point of 'Many Worlds' is that the observer becomes part of the system being observed. When a system in quantum superposition is measured by interaction with some apparatus (or observer), the interacting apparatus becomes part of the superposition (the superposed wavefunction encompasses both system & apparatus), and when the apparatus interacts further with the environment, the environment becomes part of the superposition too. By this point, the initial superposition is said to have decohered because it has spread irretrievably into the environment. Each 'aspect' of the superposition sees one outcome of the measurement. This is just an extended evolution of the overall wavefunction of the whole ensemble - no magical 'collapse' involved. What part of this do you find difficult to follow?

See above : that whole point of that theory is built upon sand castles , since consciousness is a non-physical and non-local process , and hence can never be in a superposition state .



Quote
If it will help you see the reality of superposition, here's the first undergraduate MIT lecture in quantum mechanics, called 'Introduction to Superposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc)', which explains very simply and clearly the empirical evidence for superposition, which is all the 'Many Worlds' interpretation relies on.

I will watch that , thanks .

Consciousness as a non-material and non -local process can never be in a superposition state , once again , since it is not material at least .

Quote
By all means object to the interpretation, but for your objection to be worth anything, it must be based on what the interpretation actually says, not a misunderstanding of what it says. So what are your particular grounds for objecting to it ? (bearing in mind that the superposition at the core of QM has been empirically confirmed many times).

See above .

Consciousness is no part of the physical universe , it shapes it , from outside of the laws of physics , from outside of space and time , as Von Neumann proved ,so, consciousness as a non-physical and non -local process can never be in a superposition state .

Since materialism assumes that consciousness is just a material process ( a materialist claim or production theory for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever to support it .) ,then , no wonder that materialists assume that consciousness is just a part of the physical universe , no wonder that that false materialist premise is the backbone of many worlds theory , a broken backbone that is : that's more than enough to prove many worlds' interpretation of quantum theory or of its measurement problem to be ...false irreversibly .


In short :

If there is some process that can collapse the wave function , then consciousness is the only   serious candidate for that , as Von Neumann proved .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 18:25:51
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg444946#msg444946 date=1416522791]
What makes the universe 'split " ,and how ? How can one falsify that fantasy ?
I already answered that above. Sadly for you, superposition isn't a fantasy - just watch the MIT 'Introduction to QM' lecture I linked above. You'll notice that the lecturer goes to great pains to emphasise how apparently illogical and unreasonable superposition is - yet it is clearly established empirical fact.


When i wrote the above , i had not read that Caroll's article ,so .

I have never  questioned  the superposition state though , i am just saying that since consciousness is not a material process that makes part of the physical universe (see above ) , so it can never be in a superposition state , since consciousness is a non-local and a non-physical process that might be the one that collapses the wave function from outside of the laws of physics , from outside of space and time, as Von Neumann proved .

Quote
Quote
Why did you ignore that yet another game changer : Bell's theorem , i wonder .
Violation of Bell's inequalities is consistent with MW as mentioned above.

MW is consistent only with the part of Bell's theorem that proves there is no separability or locality , but it is inconsistent with that theorem 's part that proves reality to be a kind of illusion .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem

"After Bell’s theorem and the experiments it allowed, we know that our
actual world perhaps cannot have reality and, certainly cannot have separability.In the Many Worlds interpretation there is no separability, and there is clearly no single reality, which seems equivalent to no reality.
" Quote from "Quantum Enigma ..." .

But , i disagree with the latter sentence from the above mentioned quote , in the sense that since materialism or its positivism or realism assume that there is an observed objective external reality out there that's independent of  the observer ,as there is locality or separability ,at the macroscopic classical  level at least , and since  that materialistic MW theory says almost the opposite at the quantum level : there is no separability and many realities as well (many realities is no synonymous of no reality ) , then materialism is contradicting itself thus , while the whole universe is supposed to be quantum "mechanical " : See the paradox ?

In other words :

Materialism says there is an observed external objective reality out there ,at the macroscopic or classical level at least , that's supposed to be independent of or separated from the observer : there is both separability or locality and reality as such , but  at the quantum level , the materialistic MW theory says almost  the very opposite : there is no separability (there is non-locality ) and there are many worlds or realities ,while the whole universe is supposed to be quantum "mechanical " in fact : see the contradictions of materialism ?

How can materialism "unify " its MW theory at the quantum level which says that there is no separability and there are many realities , with its materialistic assumptions of locality and separability at the macroscopic level then ? ,since the whole universe is supposed to be quantum "mechanical " .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 19:07:11
"I have thought a hundred times as much about the quantum problem as I have about general relativity theory."

— Albert Einstein

"I cannot seriously believe in [quantum theory] because . . . physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky action at a distance."
 
— Albert Einstein


Bell, Aspect , Clauser and others proved Bohr to be right and Einstein to be wrong : there are both "spooky actions at a distance " = non-locality or non-separability ,as well as no reality as such .

Quote : "...Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory.
We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events
at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of
your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable
in any normally complex situation.
Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement,
now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."
End quote : "Quantum Enigma ..." .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/11/2014 19:09:16
Don, your repeated statement "since consciousness is not a material process..." isn't a proven statement. Every thing you say after that hinges on an assertion you can't prove. There's also no meaning in your complaint about the "separation" of the observer and observed in materialism or naturalism.  If anything, materialism is more inclusive because in that view, everything is made of the same stuff,and is subject to the same physical laws. You're the one making a special case for consciousness and  separating it from the rest of the physical world. All that materialism denies is that subject experience is the same reality. If my thermostat in my house is broken, there is a not another reality in which my house is actually warm. The thermostat is just wrong. If my thermostat cannot detects sound waves, that doesn't mean they aren't there. Likewise our subject experience, what aspects of reality we can detect, has limitations. What is so confusing to you about that?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 19:58:03
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg444997#msg444997 date=1416596956]
Don, your repeated statement "since consciousness is not a material process..." isn't a proven statement. Every thing you say after that hinges on an assertion you can't prove.

Ok, It's the other way around : Many worlds theory is all built upon the materialistic  assumption or false premise that the consciousness of the observer makes part of the physical reality (consciousness as just a material process : materialist production theory for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever to support it .) ,so, consciousness of the observer cannot but get entangled with its environment and remain in a superposition state .

On the other hand , there is an indirect overwhelming evidence for the non-local and non-physical nature of consciousness ,as Von Neumann and others proved .

Better still : Bell's theorem and other related experiments proved the non-locality or no separability as well as the non-reality at the quantum level , and since the whole universe is supposed to be quantum "mechanical ", then that non-locality and no reality do apply also to our human -scale world , since non-locality or entanglement has been proved even at the level of some large molecules  also ....so, the non-local and non-physical non-materialist conception  of consciousness is the one that can account for consciousness and all its related anomalies and processes , not to mention that the Von Neumannian fact that consciousness as a non-physical process that acts from outside of the laws of physics or outside of space and time is the only serious candidate for the collapse of the wave function, since consciousness as a non-physical process can thus never be in a superposition state ...

Quote
There's also no meaning in your complaint about the "separation" of the observer and observed in materialism or naturalism.


Naturalism is not only materialistic , remember : goes beyond that .Naturalism that's all about methodology and epistemology , not about the alleged separation between the observer and the observed .The latter is the materialistic realism or positivism ...

Materialism is so full of intrinsic inescapable contradictions : here is a sample , so to speak :

The materialistic MW theory that allegedly can account for the interpretation of quantum theory or for its measurement problem says that the observer and the observed are inseparable : consciousness of the observer makes part of the physical reality : there is no separability thus , as there are many worlds or realities .

On the other hand , materialism also says that there is what can be called the observed objective external reality out there that's allegedly independent or separated from the observer ,at the macroscopic level at least , which means there is separability or locality ,and there is reality as such .

Compare between the above 2 : the materialist MW theory says there is no  separability between  the  observer and between the observed ,since they all make part of the same physical universe , and there are many realities as well , which some say is equal to no reality .

On the other hand , at the macroscopic level, materialism says almost the opposite : there is separability ,as well as 1 reality : that of the physical universe .


Quote
If anything, materialism is more inclusive because in that view, everything is made of the same stuff,and is subject to the same physical laws.


Everything ? Sure about that ? What makes you think that everything is made up of atoms ? lol ,consciousness ,for example, is not .

Quote
You're the one making a special case for consciousness and  separating it from the rest of the physical world.

See above : consciousness is non-physical ,and hence cannot make part of the physical universe , it even shapes it .It's almost all mind : Bell's theorem and its related experiments which were done by Bell, Aspect , Clauser , Freedman and others have proved that the so-called properties of particles might be just in the mind of the observer (not real ) ,since there is no separability between the observed objects and between the mind of the observer : there might be no external objective reality out there that can be independent of the mind of the observer .

In other words :

As that posted quote to our physicist alancalverd shows : Bell's theorem proves clearly the observer effect at the quantum level, by proving Bohr to be right ,and Einstein to be wrong on both accounts : on the subject of reality and separability  .

Quote
All that materialism denies is that subject experience is the same reality. If my thermostat in my house is broken, there is a not another reality in which my house is actually warm. The thermostat is just wrong. If my thermostat cannot detects sound waves, that doesn't mean they aren't there. Likewise our subject experience, what aspects of reality we can detect, has limitations. What is so confusing to you about that?

Bell's theorem and its related experiments have shown that there is no separability or locality , in the sense that the whole universe is interconnected ,so "spooky action at a distance " does occur : distant objects or minds do affect each other ,as there is no reality as such : it's almost all mind .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 20:07:49
alancalverd :

Quote :

"According to Bell:

In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics." End Quote from "Quantum Enigma ..." :

 Even though Einstein was wrong about separability and reality , he nevertheless was somehow right about the philosophy of physics ,which means that science in general cannot do without philosophy of science . Philosophy is not   dead as Hawking said .On the contrary , it is necessary to science and to its progress ...

" In the beginning there were only probabilities. The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it."

— Martin Rees

That might have answered your earlier question about consciousness and the observed universe .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/11/2014 20:18:09
Quote From "Quantum Enigma ..." :

"
Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in the last half of the twentieth century.”

It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.

Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication.

Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness.
" End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/11/2014 23:03:32
...In short :

If there is some process that can collapse the wave function , then consciousness is the only   serious candidate for that , as Von Neumann proved .
In short, if you start out with the conclusion you want and work backwards, ignoring the evidence, you can believe whatever pleases you.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 21/11/2014 23:37:49
Still waiting, Don.

Just one piece of evidence, please, that nonmaterialist science or whatever snake oil you are peddling, predicts something that isn't predicted by whatever it is you are objecting to.

Don't waste your time with blather or long irrelevant quotes from other authors, just give us one actual fact.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2014 17:04:34
...In short :

If there is some process that can collapse the wave function , then consciousness is the only   serious candidate for that , as Von Neumann proved .
In short, if you start out with the conclusion you want and work backwards, ignoring the evidence, you can believe whatever pleases you.

What evidence ?

There is absolutely and certainly , without a shadow of a doubt , no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports the materialist production theory , in the sense that consciousness is just a material process, and hence it makes part of the physical universe .The latter claim upon which  the MW theory is based .

Once again , materialism is false , mainly because it can intrinsically never account for the very nature of consciousness and all its related anomalies and processes ,let alone explain them, and hence consciousness cannot be but non- material  ,and thus can never be in a superposition state ,which means that consciousness is the only serious candidate for the collapse of the wave function at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann,for example,  proved  .

Only the non-materialist non-physical and non-local conception of consciousness is the one that can account for consciousness and all its related anomalies and processes .

Any interpretation of QM thus must account for the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness , otherwise it is false .

P.S.: Even Bell's theorem and its related experiments have displayed physics' encounter with consciousness ,thanks to Bell, Aspect , Clauser , Freedman and others ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 23/11/2014 17:35:59
Still waiting, Don. Just one example....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2014 18:31:56
Still waiting, Don. Just one example....

Bell's theorem that has been relatively supporting  Von Neumann's work (on consciousness and quantum theory) , the Copenhagen interpretation ..........

Not to mention the works of many non-materialist scientists regarding the indirect evidence for the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness , and hence any interpretation of QM that cannot account for the latter is a -priori false .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2014 19:39:10
Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 23/11/2014 19:50:39
Come on, just one example of a prediction that was more accurate than the best materialistic prediction.

Don't waste your time quoting fluff and hypothesis, just one number will do.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/11/2014 20:19:53
Come on, just one example of a prediction that was more accurate than the best materialistic prediction.

Don't waste your time quoting fluff and hypothesis, just one number will do.

The bottom line is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, let alone for its related anomalies and processes , so, any interpretation of QM  that cannot account for consciousness as a non-physical and a non -local process  ....is fundamentally false :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

You don't understand Bell's theorem or what ? :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_theorem
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 24/11/2014 00:27:32
Just one example, not a theorem, not a repetition of the ranting drivel you have been peddling for so long.....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 24/11/2014 01:24:14



The bottom line is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness,
False..........................The brain which is material, the neurotransmission of chemo-electrical signals across the synapse resulting in the experience of thought. It's very materialistic my friend, without the brain and the neural networks, we would all be unconscious. If you can't understand that simple fact, we might begin to wonder about how conscious you are.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 24/11/2014 05:34:28


The bottom line is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, let alone for its related anomalies and processes , so, any interpretation of QM  that cannot account for consciousness as a non-physical and a non -local process  ....is fundamentally false :




I’ve used up all my data this month but pop in occasionally, and keep wondering where this extensive debate on the different interpretations of quantum mechanics is headed. Like the past lengthy discussion of Stapp’s quantum consciousness, it leaves me with the same question. If Don felt that materialist mechanisms failed to “fully” explain the “related anomalies and processes” of consciousness, you would think he’d find quantum mechanics even more bereft. The yes or no option of a collapsed wave form offers no additional insight into the richness and variety of conscious experience itself.  The long list of mental phenomena that Don regularly cites as proof of materialism’s shortcoming remain still  unaccounted for, actually even more so.
Arguing as Don does that “consciousness is no part of the physical universe , it shapes it  from outside of the laws of physics , from outside of space and time”  is just, as David Cooper pointed out pages ago,  relocating it to another realm, and fails to explain it any better. It accomplishes nothing, unless the goal is to assert that consciousness, being exempt from all physical laws and predictions, is irretrievably beyond human understanding forever.
Relocating consciousness to this realm outside physics hugely complicates its interaction with biological systems and brains, and should be a big problem for fans of Ockham’s razor. What's more, physicists don’t really feel obligated to explain, or even attempt to define, consciousness for their own purposes, which is why neuroscientists don’t pay a whole lot of attention to how physicists reference or incorporate consciousness into their theories.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2014 17:42:36



The bottom line is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness,
False..........................The brain which is material, the neurotransmission of chemo-electrical signals across the synapse resulting in the experience of thought. It's very materialistic my friend, without the brain and the neural networks, we would all be unconscious. If you can't understand that simple fact, we might begin to wonder about how conscious you are.

Yeah , right :

You don't even understand what i have been  talking about all along and all this time , while being so derisive , ironically enough :

Materialism is just  the false   belief assumption that all is matter , including the mind , and hence everything can be reduced to or explained just by material processes ,while the universe , including ourselves thus , is not   exclusively material .

The major anomaly of them all : consciousness which is non-physical , non-local and thus irreducible to matter is the major proof of the falsehood of materialism .

Not to mention the fact that the materialist production theory , in the sense that consciousness or the mind are just in the brain , products of the brain , or just brain activity has not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever ....

If you can't understand the simple above mentioned facts , i wonder why you hang out on a scientific forum .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2014 18:53:32


The bottom line is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, let alone for its related anomalies and processes , so, any interpretation of QM  that cannot account for consciousness as a non-physical and a non -local process  ....is fundamentally false :




I’ve used up all my data this month but pop in occasionally, and keep wondering where this extensive debate on the different interpretations of quantum mechanics is headed. Like the past lengthy discussion of Stapp’s quantum consciousness, it leaves me with the same question. If Don felt that materialist mechanisms failed to “fully” explain the “related anomalies and processes” of consciousness, you would think he’d find quantum mechanics even more bereft. The yes or no option of a collapsed wave form offers no additional insight into the richness and variety of conscious experience itself.  The long list of mental phenomena that Don regularly cites as proof of materialism’s shortcoming remain still  unaccounted for, actually even more so.
Arguing as Don does that “consciousness is no part of the physical universe , it shapes it  from outside of the laws of physics , from outside of space and time”  is just, as David Cooper pointed out pages ago,  relocating it to another realm, and fails to explain it any better. It accomplishes nothing, unless the goal is to assert that consciousness, being exempt from all physical laws and predictions, is irretrievably beyond human understanding forever.
Relocating consciousness to this realm outside physics hugely complicates its interaction with biological systems and brains, and should be a big problem for fans of Ockham’s razor. What's more, physicists don’t really feel obligated to explain, or even attempt to define, consciousness for their own purposes, which is why neuroscientists don’t pay a whole lot of attention to how physicists reference or incorporate consciousness into their theories.

( Prior note : Since consciousness ,the mind and all their related anomalies and processes have been proven indirectly to be non-local and non-physical ,  thanks to an overwhelming body of evidence , that means that the universe , including ourselves, cannot be just physical or material as materialism has been assuming it  to be ,and hence all those non-physical and non-local processes  do not make part of the physical universe , since they are not physical and non-local , simply put ,as they don't have to obey the laws of physics ...and thus any unified theory or "theory of everything " cannot be just physical .)

All i was doing is following the evidence ,that's all :

Even Einstein himself and many others were /are and will be puzzled by  physics' encounter with consciousness .I did not invent the latter lol, i wish : The Copenhagen interpretation did .

Einstein ,for example,  accepted Bohr's suggestion to ignore the alleged physics' encounter with consciousness , and  move on ,by using QTheory without understanding what it actually means .

But , Einstein could not but remain puzzled by the Copenhagen interpretation  , and he even  tried to demonstrate that QM must be incomplete, together with Podolsky and Rosen , collectively EPR  .

The following is a mind-blowing and fascinating book on the subject to which i have been listening lately : there is a summary of the book in question on wiki :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_%28book%29

Bell's theorem and its related experiments proved Einstein wrong and Bohr right in that great debate of theirs ,relatively speaking :

Furthermore , despite the quantum enigma and its dramatic encounter with consciousness that have been revolutionizing and superseding the  deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built , ironically enough , materialist scientists and philosophers went on ignoring the deepest meaning of  all that  ,as if quantum theory and its related interpretation or measurement problem never existed,so to speak  :

Materialist neuroscientists , for example, continued studying the brain through the classical view , as materialist philosophers remained stuck in the latter , while materialist behaviorism in psychology went on denying the very existence of consciousness ,the mind or their related processes and subjective inner lives , not to mention the other sciences , including human sciences and including anthropology , history writing , sociology , politics , economy ...that remained confined within the materialist classical world view ,despite all the above .

That said :

It's not the task of physicists to "explain " consciousness that goes way beyond physics itself ,due mainly to its non-physical nature indeed.

They can't 'explain " consciousness even if they wished to , but , nevertheless there are many so-called quantum theories of consciousness , like that of Stapp you have mentioned , like that of Penrose-Hameroff  and others ...

Penrose , for example, suggests that consciousness can be explained via quantum theory ,in the sense that it allegedly "resides" in the microtubules of the brain as some sort of energy ..blablabla ...

In short : Penrose -Hameroff  controversial so-called quantum theory of consciousness tries to 'explain " consciousness through a physical mechanism, while acknowledging the fact that consciousness cannot be computable  :

http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/orchor.html

On the other hand , Henry Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness says, grosso-modo , that the non-physical consciousness can influence the brain at the level of ions through  what he calls the Zeno -effect and Hebb's law ...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6602972-mindful-universe

The materialist theories of consciousness either deny the existence of consciousness as such , or just reduce it to a material process  ...

Some of them just basically say that consciousness is just a property of matter , like mass , charge , velocity ....  are , and that consciousness arises from the fundamental physical electromagnetic fields ...

In short :

There are plenty of theories of consciousness and none of which are based on any "direct " empirical evidence whatsoever (How can the ever be ? ) : they are all just more or less wild speculations that belong more to the field of philosophy than to that of science , even though " There is no such thing as  philosophy -free science ..." as lunatic Dennett said and rightly so .

But ,as Godel proved : there are rational premises in a  logical  system the truth of which cannot be proved as such ,so, even though we can't say what consciousness is (my emphasis ) , we can infer its role ,nature and existence from other related objective or empirical evidence :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

All that renewed interest in consciousness , all those consciousness studies and theories ... were triggered mainly by the interpretation problem of or by the measurement problem in quantum theory through the Copenhagen interpretation that has been bringing consciousness back to science or to physics ,in the sense that quantum theory can never be understood without reference to the mind or consciousness of the observer.

Quantum theory is unique in this : no interpretation of any other scientific theory has ever required such a psychological or subjective element .

 And since materialistic realism is based on the assumption that there is an independent external objective reality out there that's independent of the fact of whether it is observed or not : objects in nature are supposed to have their own intrinsic properties that are independent of whether or not they are observed ,so,  when the mind of the observer or the subject got "entangled ", so to speak , with the observed objects in nature under scientific study , through quantum theory , "hell broke loose " , so to speak :

The very existence of an independent objective reality + locality or separability ( No distant objects can influence or interact with each other instantly without physical causes that cannot exceed the speed of light .) were threatened by quantum theory , that's why Einstein spoke of that "spooky action at a distance " which he couldn't bring himself to accept , and that's why he said so derisively to a colleague " Is the moon still there when you are not looking " ...which sparked a hot debate with Bohr and others .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments that were conducted by Bell, Aspect , Clauser , Freedman and others seem to have proved Einstein wrong on the subject and Bohr right , in the sense that there is indeed no locality or separability at the quantum level at least : particles can get entangled with each other : that spooky action at a distance does exist : entangled distant particles can influence each other instantly from a distance , not to mention that reality might be an illusion .

As technology gets more advanced  , many  sophisticated experiments are expected to be conducted on the subject , so, let's just wait and see .

Furthermore, Physicists still don't know whether or not there is indeed a conscious collapse of the wave function , but , that's the most simple and plausible interpretation of quantum theory so far : Von Neumann even proved that mathematically through what's known as the Von Neumann chain of measurements at the end of which a conscious observation has to be made , after all , that inspired Schrodinger in developing his famous thought experiment : dead or alive cat , dead -alive cat ... .

And since materialists cannot accept that alleged conscious collapse of the wave function that's totally incompatible with materialism , well , they just try to go around that enigma through the many worlds ' theory,for example,  where there is no need at all of any collapse of the wave function ...since materialism assumes that consciousness is just a material process that makes part of the physical universe:

 MW theory is based thus on a false materialistic premise or sand -castle for which there is absolutely and certainly no empirical evidence whatsoever to support its claims , not to mention that MW theory is unfalsifiable = unscientific + the fact that it violates Occam's razor ... .

There are also other other interpretations of QM as well ...

For example , Nobel prize winner Ilya Grigogene tried to use the concept of irreversibility -reversibility in the second law of thermodynamics to 'explain " away the physicists ' "illusion " of collapse of the wave function,since the quantum world ,as the rest of the world , is constantly changing , through the concept of becoming instead of being ,so, whenever physicists would try to measure the system ,they disturb it or "freeze"  it  in a certain time-location , pretty much like when biologists literally freeze cells to study them (The cells are then no longer alive in real time ...so, all the data which biologists might gather that way cannot but be incomplete or just distortions of the functioning of the cell in real life ...) :

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process

In other words :

The old and false Cartesian dichotomy between the mind and matter , and that they are allegedly separate from each other : the body and brain as just complex and determined machines which are allegedly separated from the mind is false : Descartes ' attempt to elude the terrible wrath of the inquisition by leaving the mind to the church , and the physical reality , including the body and brain , to science .

Descartes was thus the first scientist and philosopher who introduced the deterministic materialism to the natural sciences and to philosophy  .

Materialism that was ,later on, built upon classical physics did extend deterministic materialism to the mind itself , by claiming that the mind is just a material process , a product of the brain , without any causal effects on the physical reality as a whole including the brain and body .

Materialism that requires reductionism anyway has been trying since then to reduce everything to just material processes through the working of fundamental particles,fields and forces ( The very existence of CERN , for example, is a major futile example of the elusive reductionism,despite its relative achievements  : every time they think they found the most fundamental particles,fields..., other more fundamental ones get discovered and so on.They don't know that a holistic approach is the key to explaining the universe where consciousness plays a central role , not matter . )  : it all went "good " untill Max Planck showed up and started the quantum revolution that superseded classical physics .

The mind or consciousness of the observer seemed intertwined and inseparable from the interpretation of quantum theory : no real understanding of QM could ever be accomplished without introducing consciousness or the mind into the realm of physics : that's a quite mind-blowing and revolutionary fact .

Not to mention the fact that there is now an overwhelming body of evidence that has been proving consciousness , indirectly thus , to be a non-physical and non-local process , which basically means that the universe is not   exclusively material , and hence materialism is false and must be replaced by a non-materialist conception of nature that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

Those are the hard facts with which science has to deal  by integrating consciousness in science,which means that any scientific understanding of the universe must incorporate consciousness or the mind in any scientific theories or models of nature and the universe: nothing less would do   .

The same goes for any so-called unifying theory that hence cannot be just physical : goes beyond physics .

In short :

Andrei Linde: “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”

How the non-local and non-physical consciousness or the mind shape the physical reality and get influenced by it ? That's a question worth way more than just a Nobel prize .

Two major enigmas have been  encountering each other : QM and consciousness : the one cannot be solved without solving the other ,since they seem to be inseparably and inescapably linked to each other or intertwined with each other .

That's the current state of affairs , i guess , where materialism cannot be more beneficial and less harmful to science and to humanity than by exiting their doors or by getting kicked out of existence .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/11/2014 20:59:19
Yeah , right :

How can the qualitative subjective experience or consciousness be generated by the quantitative neural correlates ?

Only reductionist materialists can accomplish such an inexplicable paradoxical and absurd magical leap , jump or performance :

Maybe our Ethos   here can explain just the above  to us : even his uncles Penrose-Hameroff would "refute" the following inexplicable magical "computation " lol  :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuronal-superhub-might-generate-consciousness/

Well, finally , Penrose-Hameroff so-called quantum theory of consciousness has been corroborated : Eureka lol :

Science and fairy tales have been becoming less and less  indistinguishable from each other than ever :

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 24/11/2014 23:03:17
Thank you for a nice phys.org article, clearly implying that consciousness derives from material structures, as everyone apart from you thinks.

Come on, Don, just give us one example of a "nonmaterial science" prediction that turns out to be more accurate than a material one. That's all it takes - just one! Then you can save yourself the tedium of copying out screeds of stuff than nobody takes seriously.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 25/11/2014 02:41:33
Yeah , right :

How can the qualitative subjective experience or consciousness be generated by the quantitative neural correlates ?

Only reductionist materialists can accomplish such an inexplicable paradoxical and absurd magical leap , jump or performance :

Maybe our Ethos   here can explain just the above  to us : even his uncles Penrose-Hameroff would "refute" the following inexplicable magical "computation " lol  :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuronal-superhub-might-generate-consciousness/

Well, finally , Penrose-Hameroff so-called quantum theory of consciousness has been corroborated : Eureka lol :

Science and fairy tales have been becoming less and less  indistinguishable from each other than ever :

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html

I’ve looked at Hammeroff’s work, and it sounds interesting and promising. But it also sounds quite materialistic, in that consciousness might be caused or expedited by quantum mechanical processes in the brain. I didn’t see anything about consciousness existing outside time and space, or being an as yet undetected field. I didn’t read anything about consciousness creating or changing or determining events outside the brain. I didn’t read anything about the brain being a mechanical receiver for yet undetected consciousness waves. I didn’t read anything about how quantum mechanical effects in micro-tubules, by themselves, create the content, or transmit the content of  thought, ideas, memories, logic, creativity, emotions, or the other aspects of mental activity from some non-local source of consciousness. Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/11/2014 04:29:35
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/11/2014 11:03:29
"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God."

Probably the best-publicised creation myth, but no more validated by experiment than turtles or string theory.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 25/11/2014 13:55:54
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?
Quantum Islam, given his postings on threads here.

Like Cheryl, I don't know why he keeps posting materialist explanations for consciousness, quantum mechanical or otherwise, in support of a non-materialist, dualist external consciousness (and how does that work?).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 17:14:11
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?
Quantum Islam, given his postings on threads here.

Like Cheryl, I don't know why he keeps posting materialist explanations for consciousness, quantum mechanical or otherwise, in support of a non-materialist, dualist external consciousness (and how does that work?).

(Quantum Islam lol : that's a funny one,whatever that might mean = means nothing  . Islamic "God particle " . Kidding )

Why i have been posting some materialistic  "explanations " of consciousness ? : isn't that obvious to you by now ? Odd .

 I posted that just to show you,if you haven't noticed yet (You still haven't done that , i see )  how inexplicably magical they are without any empirical evidence to support their claims whatsoever : quantitative neuronal oscillations or vibrations sexy strip-tease dances ,in the microtubules of the brain or elsewhere in the brain , can never account for the qualitative subjective experiences, like Chalmers said in other  words : a kindda materialist panpsychism flirting with dualism ,ironically enough  : they basically and actually sound like that dualistic one of Descartes , in the sense that consciousness allegedly 'resides " in the pineal gland as some sort of magical fluid of some inexplicably magical kind .

It would be entertaining to read what the following idealist said on the subject in a similar context : I am neither an idealist monist nor a dualist , once again,needless to add  : I am more of a supporter of the manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,as the subject matter of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet .Post-materialistic science  that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature through the observer effect interpretation of QM :

http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/05/raving-materialists-and-their-nonsense.html

Not to mention this following attempt by a Nobel laureate to "solve ' the measurement problem in QM through irreversibility-reversibility in the 2d law of thermodynamics : an attractive one that makes at least some sense , but was nonetheless refuted by Alastair Rae  in his " Quantum physics , illusion or reality " book :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine


+ This  is yet another materialistic tragic -hilarious so-called theory of consciousness by neuroscientist Michael S.A.Graziano : You might like it lol :

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 17:38:21
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?

You should have noticed by now that i have been motivated only by the following and by its prior form ,as the subject matter of this thread , instead of projecting your own religious background on me :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

In short :

In order to make things even more clearer to you , since you don't seem to be able to figure that out for yourself ,despite my countless repetitions on the subject :

Science must be set free from the false materialist conception of nature , philosophy , old , outdated and superseded ideology or world view that was built upon the approximately correct and fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view .

alancalverd :

As lunatic Dennett said , and rightly so : " There is no such thing as  philosophy -free science ..." : science has thus been based on  the 19th century  outdated , false and superseded materialistic philosophy .

There is even what can be called the philosophy of physics also (see Einstein on the subject in relation to his great debate with Bohr ...) .

I have posted that to you , earlier on .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 17:52:52
"In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God."

Probably the best-publicised creation myth, but no more validated by experiment than turtles or string theory.

That's just a christian thing .

Ironically enough , even science itself has been based on a mythical false ,outdated and superseded 19th century belief or secular dogmatic orthodox religion : the materialistic one that has been pretending to be 'scientific "  , to be more precise .

That's even been called the 'scientific world view " .

But, then again : All beliefs or world views , either the religious or the secular ones , the theistic or the atheistic ones , are ,per definition , unfalsifiable = unscientific , which does not   necessarily means that they are all false , like materialism most certainly is .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 18:27:52
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg445229#msg445229 date=1416870197]
Thank you for a nice phys.org article, clearly implying that consciousness derives from material structures, as everyone apart from you thinks.

You're welcome , Alan .
There is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports any of those materialistic theories of consciousness, once again : it has never been proved conclusively (How can that ever happen ? ) that the quantitative activity of the neuronal correlates can give rise to the qualitative subjective experiences ,as Chalmers and others said : only materialists are "capable" of making such an  inexplicably  magical jump ,leap or performance from the quantitative to the qualitative that way , nobodyelse is lol  .

Even our mechanical friend here David Cooper   does reject such inexplicable magical materialistic jump or leap ,in the sense that consciousness allegedly emerges from the sexy lol oscillations or vibrations of neuronal correlates , from their microtubules ....

Quote
Come on, Don, just give us one example of a "nonmaterial science" prediction that turns out to be more accurate than a material one. That's all it takes - just one! Then you can save yourself the tedium of copying out screeds of stuff than nobody takes seriously.

You still do not understand the major difference between materialism as a world view, philosophy , ideology or conception of nature upon which current science has been based , and between what the material or physical reality means ( I don't have to explain to you what the physical or material reality is , do i ? ) : they are not   identical or synonymous of each other .

Materialism is just the false belief assumption that assumes that everything , the whole universe or nature , is material or physical , including the mind thus (There is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever for the latter materialistic claim .) , which basically and actually means that everything can be explained by just material processes or physical causes ...

The major anomaly of them all : consciousness , the mind and their related anomalies and processes can thus intrinsically never be accounted for by materialism that reduces everything to just matter or to just material processes or physical causes , let alone that they can be explained by materialism  , since there has been an overwhelming body of evidence that had been proving the above mentioned consciousness and mind processes to be non-local and non -physical or non-material , and that indirectly , since that cannot be proved directly , and hence  the universe , including ourselves , including you and me , is not  exclusively material or physical = materialism is false and must be thus kicked out of science and replaced by a non-materialistic conception of nature that embraces both the material and the immaterial alike in nature ,as the subject matter of the manifesto of this thread .

In short :

Materialist science has been delivering a relatively distorted version of the nature of reality , despite science's enormous success at the level of matter at least ,science's overwhelming success thus with which materialism has been having nothing to do at all : all that scientific success was /is and will be accomplished only through the scientific method , since science is all about methodology and epistemology , not about any world view or philosophy like that of materialism that has been equated with science or with the scientific world view ...

The post-materialistic science has thus more explanatory and predictability power than the materialist one : see the works of non-materialist scientists  :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

Only the non-materialist science can, for example, resolve the interpretation of QM and that of consciousness maybe : the 2 major enigmas that have been encountering each other .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/11/2014 18:29:43
So are you admitting that nonmaterialist science doesn't actually predict anything? 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 18:42:54
Yeah , right :

How can the qualitative subjective experience or consciousness be generated by the quantitative neural correlates ?

Only reductionist materialists can accomplish such an inexplicable paradoxical and absurd magical leap , jump or performance :

Maybe our Ethos   here can explain just the above  to us : even his uncles Penrose-Hameroff would "refute" the following inexplicable magical "computation " lol  :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuronal-superhub-might-generate-consciousness/

Well, finally , Penrose-Hameroff so-called quantum theory of consciousness has been corroborated : Eureka lol :

Science and fairy tales have been becoming less and less  indistinguishable from each other than ever :

http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery-quantum-vibrations-microtubules-corroborates.html

I’ve looked at Hammeroff’s work, and it sounds interesting and promising. But it also sounds quite materialistic, in that consciousness might be caused or expedited by quantum mechanical processes in the brain. I didn’t see anything about consciousness existing outside time and space, or being an as yet undetected field. I didn’t read anything about consciousness creating or changing or determining events outside the brain. I didn’t read anything about the brain being a mechanical receiver for yet undetected consciousness waves. I didn’t read anything about how quantum mechanical effects in micro-tubules, by themselves, create the content, or transmit the content of  thought, ideas, memories, logic, creativity, emotions, or the other aspects of mental activity from some non-local source of consciousness. Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.

Well, daaah : Haven't you noticed my explicit derisive comments on the subject ?
How could you miss that ?

Even David Chalmers and others ,not to mention our mechanistic friend here David Cooper   by the way, except die-hard materialists of course , would laugh loudly at all those materialistic so-called theories or models of consciousness , the quantum ones or otherwise , including Penrose-Hameroff 's ,that can't tell us how they can make such an inexplicable magical jump or leap from the quantitative to the qualitative : how the quantitative activity of the neuronal correlates of consciousness through their sexy strip-tease oscillations or vibrations "ritual " dances can give rise to the qualitative subjective experiences ???????

Quantitative oscillations vibrations of neurons at the level of their microtubules or otherwise , giving rise to the qualitative subjective experiences : that sounds more like inexplicable magic lol : how can they make such an extraordinary jump or leap from the one to the other : correlations between consciousness and neurons or ensemble of neurons are no causations = no proof of the one causing the rise of the other : do i have to take out that tv set ,radio device , cell phone ...analogy from my dusty attic once again , to illustrate what i am saying here above ? Guess not , since you are an intelligent person that can understand the above without further illustrations or drawings ...

I am quite sure i don't have to make a drawing for  you to make you grasp the above : Drawings or cartoons on the subject might not even work on our Ethos , for example, no offense for the guy  .

In short :

The physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness 'flows " or expresses itself , the brain as a transceiver ,so when certain areas of the brain are damaged or don't work properly due to diseases , genetic defects , ... consciousness gets disconnected at those levels ... and hence does not get through : that does absolutely not mean that the physical brain produces consciousness .

Got it ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 19:03:43
So are you admitting that nonmaterialist science doesn't actually predict anything?

I am rather actually saying that you are such a lazy scientist without any imagination whatsoever ,let alone any sense of humour,  Alan ,sorry , that's no insult , just a fact deduced from your silly behaviour : check out the works of  non-materialist scientists on the subject : I spend so much time and energy trying to explain simple things to you ,and what do i get in return ? : just silly remarks from you .Thanks a lot for nothing :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

"Imagination is more important than knowledge " Einstein .

Imagination that has been behind many scientific discoveries ,if not behind all of them, behind works of art , literature...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 19:12:41
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?
Quantum Islam, given his postings on threads here.

Like Cheryl, I don't know why he keeps posting materialist explanations for consciousness, quantum mechanical or otherwise, in support of a non-materialist, dualist external consciousness (and how does that work?).

(Quantum Islam lol : that's a funny one,whatever that might mean = means nothing  . Islamic "God particle " . Kidding )

Why i have been posting some materialistic  "explanations " of consciousness ? : isn't that obvious to you by now ? Odd .

 I posted that just to show you,if you haven't noticed yet (You still haven't done that , i see )  how inexplicably magical they are without any empirical evidence to support their claims whatsoever : quantitative neuronal oscillations or vibrations sexy strip-tease dances ,in the microtubules of the brain or elsewhere in the brain , can never account for the qualitative subjective experiences, like Chalmers said in other  words : a kindda materialist panpsychism flirting with dualism ,ironically enough  : they basically and actually sound like that dualistic one of Descartes , in the sense that consciousness allegedly 'resides " in the pineal gland as some sort of magical fluid of some inexplicably magical kind .

It would be entertaining to read what the following idealist said on the subject in a similar context : I am neither an idealist monist nor a dualist , once again,needless to add  : I am more of a supporter of the manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,as the subject matter of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet .Post-materialistic science  that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature through the observer effect interpretation of QM :

http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/05/raving-materialists-and-their-nonsense.html

Not to mention this following attempt by a Nobel laureate to "solve ' the measurement problem in QM through irreversibility-reversibility in the 2d law of thermodynamics : an attractive one that makes at least some sense , but was nonetheless refuted by Alastair Rae  in his " Quantum physics , illusion or reality " book :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine


+ This  is yet another materialistic tragic -hilarious so-called theory of consciousness by neuroscientist Michael S.A.Graziano : You might like it lol :

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 19:22:35
Once again, you are barking up the wrong tree, as far as finding support for your mystical or religious theory.
I believe if we correctly analyze Don's motives here, we'll find it has more to do with his religious persuasion and very little to do with science. If he is the least bit successful in persuading anyone to buy into his sermons, his next step will be an attempt to convert them to his preferred religion. Let me guess, is he Catholic, Protestant, or maybe........Muslim?

You should have noticed by now that i have been motivated only by the following and by its prior form ,as the subject matter of this thread , instead of projecting your own religious background on me :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

In short :

In order to make things even more clearer to you , since you don't seem to be able to figure that out for yourself ,despite my countless repetitions on the subject :

Science must be set free from the false materialist conception of nature , philosophy , old , outdated and superseded ideology or world view that was built upon the approximately correct and fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view .

alancalverd :

As lunatic Dennett said , and rightly so : " There is no such thing as  philosophy -free science ..." : science has thus been based on  the 19th century  outdated , false and superseded materialistic philosophy .

There is even what can be called the philosophy of physics also (see Einstein on the subject in relation to his great debate with Bohr ...) .

I have posted that to you , earlier on .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 25/11/2014 19:34:49


In short :

The physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness 'flows " or expresses itself , the brain as a transceiver ,so when certain areas of the brain are damaged or don't work properly due to diseases , genetic defects , ... consciousness gets disconnected at those levels ... and hence does not get through : that does absolutely not mean that the physical brain produces consciousness .

Got it ?

I "get" that you're basing your theory on a bad analogy about the brain being a receiver, for which there is not a shred of evidence in support, and a great deal of evidence that indicates it's not true, not even "metaphorically." I can repost the evidence if you need to review it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 25/11/2014 20:50:06


In short :

The physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness 'flows " or expresses itself , the brain as a transceiver ,so when certain areas of the brain are damaged or don't work properly due to diseases , genetic defects , ... consciousness gets disconnected at those levels ... and hence does not get through : that does absolutely not mean that the physical brain produces consciousness .

Got it ?

I "get" that you're basing your theory on a bad analogy about the brain being a receiver, for which there is not a shred of evidence in support, and a great deal of evidence that indicates it's not true, not even "metaphorically." I can repost the evidence if you need to review it.

I said : the physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness expresses itself , both ways : the brain as a transceiver = transmitter-receiver = transmits information from the external environment through the senses to the mind or consciousness , and receives the corresponding feedback from the mind or consciousness : that's the only logical or rational explanation of the mind-brain relationship .

The physical brain is just the vehicle through which the consciousness driver ,so to speak, expresses itself by driving its vehicle :  the brain : both the vehicle and the driver are inseparable though : they can't function without each other , although the driver remains intact despite the damaged vehicle : the driver just can't express itself through the damaged vehicle ,simply because it gets disconnected from it : in the case of brain damage thus ,brain diseases , malfunction ....the brain vehicle behaves accordingly ,so, the driver is prevented  from driving its brain vehicle : that's no ghost in the machine , since the brain and body are no machines , but living organisms that have to be driven by consciousness or the mind ....

The activity of the neuronal correlates of consciousness is just the physical "translation " of that of the 'corresponding " consciousness : just the image of the process , not the cause of the process .

Mind states , thoughts ...get "translated " into physical neuronal electrochemical activity or brainwaves , and vice versa : information from the external environment through the senses get sent by the brain to the mind or consciousness :

Don't misinterpret the following from the false  materialistic perspective , a link from The Scientist :

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/41416/title/Mind-Controlled-Gene-Expression/


P.S.:

In fact , since consciousness or the mind cannot but be non-physical and non-local , then the only simple explanation or interpretation of QM is that of the observer effect on the measured or observed particles : that changes the whole nature of reality , in the sense that the physical reality, including the brain and body , do get shaped by consciousness and the mind while getting influenced by the information from the physical environment : most of what we call the physical reality is just the product of the mind's perception : most of our reality is thus ...mental .

If you wanna talk about the mind-brain relationship thus , you cannot but involve quantum physics in that ...........since the whole universe seems to be quantum "mechanical " where consciousness plays a central role ,as Von Neumann proved .

Don't remain stuck in the classical Newtonian approximately correct and fundamentally false deterministic mechanical world view thus .

No absurd , paradoxical or insane MW or other materialistic theories that attempt to solve the interpretation problem  of QM can be compatible with the working of the brain and mind in real life within this universe, not to mention that of the rest of life and the rest in this universe  (To multiply this universe by an infinite numbers of imaginary universes just makes the problem infinitely complex , paradoxical and absurd ) ,since the materialistic belief assumption that consciousness or the mind are just material processes can hold no water and is thus false ...

In short :

The so-called physical reality might be just an elaborate  illusion , a "tree  " that hides the real "forest ", thanks to the mind .

The physical reality or the physical universe  ,including the brain and body ,might be just some sort of a hologram, i don't know :

http://www.iflscience.com/physics/universe-hologram

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 25/11/2014 22:47:09


In short :


Funny, you keep using that expression but you never keep your word.

In short: Constant repetition will never overcome good science and logical reasoning.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/11/2014 22:54:55
So are you admitting that nonmaterialist science doesn't actually predict anything?

I am rather actually saying that you are such a lazy scientist without any imagination whatsoever ,let alone any sense of humour,  Alan ,sorry , that's no insult , just a fact deduced from your silly behaviour : check out the works of  non-materialist scientists on the subject : I spend so much time and energy trying to explain simple things to you ,and what do i get in return ? : just silly remarks from you .Thanks a lot for nothing :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

"Imagination is more important than knowledge " Einstein .

Imagination that has been behind many scientific discoveries ,if not behind all of them, behind works of art , literature...

And still not one single example. I'm tired of this repetitious bullshit, so I'll conclude that within the limits of detectability of this investigation, there is  no evidence to support your hypothesis.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 25/11/2014 23:43:21
+ This  is yet another materialistic tragic -hilarious so-called theory of consciousness by neuroscientist Michael S.A.Graziano : You might like it lol :

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/
Thanks for that - I hadn't seen that article, and yes, I do like it. It's pretty much the way I currently view the generation and role of consciousness and the sense of self  [8D]

Good to see your posts aren't always a complete waste of time  [;)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 26/11/2014 02:28:48



I said : the physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness expresses itself , both ways : the brain as a transceiver = transmitter-receiver = transmits information from the external environment through the senses to the mind or consciousness , and receives the corresponding feedback from the mind or consciousness : that's the only logical or rational explanation of the mind-brain relationship .

The physical brain is just the vehicle through which the consciousness driver ,so to speak, expresses itself by driving its vehicle :  the brain : both the vehicle and the driver are inseparable though : they can't function without each other , although the driver remains intact despite the damaged vehicle : the driver just can't express itself through the damaged vehicle ,simply because it gets disconnected from it : in the case of brain damage thus ,brain diseases , malfunction ....the brain vehicle behaves accordingly ,so, the driver is prevented  from driving its brain vehicle : that's no ghost in the machine , since the brain and body are no machines , but living organisms that have to be driven by consciousness or the mind ....

The activity of the neuronal correlates of consciousness is just the physical "translation " of that of the 'corresponding " consciousness : just the image of the process , not the cause of the process ......



That’s groovy, Don. But sort of meaningless, when you think about it. Not only is it untestable, but you can apply it to anything and everything with the same meaningless result.
  It’s like saying that water isn’t really H2O molecules, water just “uses” the molecules to “express” its watery-ness. And infectious diseases are not caused by bacteria and viruses, but are actually caused by demons that always possess certain species of bacteria and viruses. The mircoorganisms are just the "medium", not the cause. And wind is not air molecules moving from an area of high pressure to low pressure (do not confuse the image with the process!) That is just the “vehicle” through which the wind spirit acts. Occasionally, wind gets “stuck” and cannot “flow properly” and that is what causes it to seem “not so windy outside.”

You could invent any number of scenarios about how a physical manifestation is just a “correlation” and not the thing itself. Since there are no examples of disembodied consciousness just floating around by itself, Ockham’s razor would suggest that you are needlessly complicating things by saying X isn’t really X. It’s really Y, even though it always takes the form of X, and never appears just as Y. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 26/11/2014 05:28:15

Quote
As lunatic Dennett said , and rightly so : " There is no such thing as  philosophy -free science ..." : science has thus been based on  the 19th century  outdated , false and superseded materialistic philosophy .

There is even what can be called the philosophy of physics also (see Einstein on the subject in relation to his great debate with Bohr ...) .

Outdated nonsense. Science is a simple iterative process: observe, hypothesise, test, observe.... "Philosophy of science" is harmless intellectual masturbation at best,  a dangerous parasitic infection at worst.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2014 09:03:52
You could invent any number of scenarios about how a physical manifestation is just a “correlation” and not the thing itself. Since there are no examples of disembodied consciousness just floating around by itself, Ockham’s razor would suggest that you are needlessly complicating things by saying X isn’t really X. It’s really Y, even though it always takes the form of X, and never appears just as Y. 
It can't appear as Y and can't be falsified because, by definition, it's 'immaterial'. Not only does it introduce the interaction problem, but it requires an entire immaterial universe (or 'realm' as the mystics like to call it). It's special pleading of the most egregious kind, and Ockham would be spinning in his grave.

Given that damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, there is no substantive function for this supposed 'immaterial consciousness' to fulfil - he's inventing an entire immaterial realm to support some sort of simple, undifferentiated, undetectable 'elan vital' that has no discernable function. It's absurd and irrational (and I suspect he realises that).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2014 17:19:15
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445303#msg445303 date=1416959001]
+ This  is yet another materialistic tragic -hilarious so-called theory of consciousness by neuroscientist Michael S.A.Graziano : You might like it lol :

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/
Thanks for that - I hadn't seen that article, and yes, I do like it. It's pretty much the way I currently view the generation and role of consciousness and the sense of self  [8D]

You're welcome, dlorde .
I expected you to like that indeed :very predictable .
We all tend to be inclined to fall for what we're predisposed to like,regardless of whether or not it is "true " : a matter of taste or aesthetics,psyche....

Well, unfortunately enough for you and for Graziano , there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports the materialist production theory regarding consciousness and the brain,and the idea that consciousness is just some sort of information or integrated information ,well, we have already  "dealt " with that in another form all the way down to the physical fundamental electromagnetic fields lol ....

Regarding its attention part and the rest , see the links below that deal with that .

It's pretty odd how materialists never question their a -priori held belief assumption that consciousness is just a product of the brain, just a material process (They can't do otherwise in fact , since materialism allows intrinsically nothing but that : materialists are trapped within their materialist prison .).

Worse : materialists take that assumption of theirs as some sort of an axiom that can never be questioned upon which they have been building all their sand castles, including the MW theory .

For the rest , most of Graziano's talk (I have his book in question ) was just speculations full of logical fallacies  : his theory belongs more to philosophy and psychology than to science , but then again , there is no such thing as philosophy-free science,as there is no such thing as the independent observer and independent observed either , the more when one would try to study the subject through one's biased subject that's shaped by one's a-priori held materialistic beliefs or otherwise .

I did also post a kindda relevant critique of what Graziano said through a certain idealist : you missed that too .Here you go again :

Raving materialists and their nonsense :

http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/05/raving-materialists-and-their-nonsense.html?m=1

Not to mention that you also did miss the attempt of Nobel laureate Ilya Grigogene to "solve " the interpretation problem of QM through the 2d law of thermodynamics : see above .

Alastair Rae did refute that in his "Quantum physics , illusion or reality " book (I have that one too ) .

Quote
Good to see your posts aren't always a complete waste of time  [;)]

That's a matter of opinion , taste , perspective ...
I am quite sure you would "worship" my posts ,if i happened to be a ...materialist lol .

I can be whatever you want me to be though , dlorde .

I will make you even happier by posting this review of Graziano's theory that worships the latter :

Believe in whatever would make you happy , dlorde,or in whatever  you think would  work  : This instrumental utilitarianist or pragmatic state of mind and the truth are not synonymous of each other : the intrinsic self-deceit capacity or property of the human mind never ceases to amaze me indeed, not to mention our intrinsic human tendency to rationalize our a-priori held psychological ,aesthetical or belief assumptions  :

https://elusiveself.wordpress.com/2014/10/12/a-theory-of-consciousness-worth-attending-to/

It would be also useful to remind you of the following famous psychological test or selective attention test by the authors of "The invisible gorilla ..." (I have that book too .), a book that talks about how our perception is so misleading , so deceptive , so limited , and sometimes so illusory  :

Materialists have been missing the gorilla in the room, so to speak :


Graziano's theory is so full of intellectual optical illusions  and self-deceit too  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2014 18:57:53
You could invent any number of scenarios about how a physical manifestation is just a “correlation” and not the thing itself. Since there are no examples of disembodied consciousness just floating around by itself, Ockham’s razor would suggest that you are needlessly complicating things by saying X isn’t really X. It’s really Y, even though it always takes the form of X, and never appears just as Y. 
It can't appear as Y and can't be falsified because, by definition, it's 'immaterial'. Not only does it introduce the interaction problem, but it requires an entire immaterial universe (or 'realm' as the mystics like to call it). It's special pleading of the most egregious kind, and Ockham would be spinning in his grave.

Given that damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, there is no substantive function for this supposed 'immaterial consciousness' to fulfil - he's inventing an entire immaterial realm to support some sort of simple, undifferentiated, undetectable 'elan vital' that has no discernable function. It's absurd and irrational (and I suspect he realises that).

(Occam's razor is more compatible with the fact that the qualitative  can never rise from the quantitative: it's absurd , illogical and irrational to assume that the former can be the product of the latter  ,not to mention that mutually -interacting- with- each- other processes don't have to be both physical , as Popper used to say .)

So, you reduce the very existence of the non-physical nature of consciousness to just that old and refuted elan vital ? Odd, despite all the indirect overwhelming empirical evidence proving consciousness to be a non-physical and non-local process ?.


Way to go , scientist .

I am not introducing any inexplicable dualistic Cartesian magical fluid in the pineal gland ,metaphorically speaking : materialists do in fact , ironically enough by asserting that those quantitative sexy oscillations or vibrations of neurons or ensemble of neurons do give rise to somethingelse totally different from themselves , somethingelse totally different from themselves qua kind ,not just qua genre as the latter happens in the usual physical emergent phenomena in nature   ( The wetness of water,for example,  is still something material , even though it's totally different, qua genre , not qua kind , from its original components .The same goes for the ocean's waves ...) : the qualitative subjective experiences or consciousness : isn't that a kindda weird and odd materialist flirt with Cartesian dualism and panpsychism ? : sounds like that .

Godel proved the fact that there are propositions  in a logical system the truth of which cannot be proved as such from the axioms , but can be nevertheless inferred from other logical truths in the system  : similarly : the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness can be inferred indirectly from the  related empirical evidence on the subject of matter and brain through all those consciousness anomalies for which materialism can intrinsically never account .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

Are anomalies that cannot be accounted for by the prevailing scientific "wisdom" of the moment or (meta) paradigms not sufficient enough by themselves to question and challenge that prevailing and dominating mainstream materialistic "wisdom " in science ?

I thought anomalies are the raw material through which science is supposed to progress ...

You can't just ignore or deny the available data and empirical indirect evidence regarding the non-material nature of consciousness just because it does not suit you , does not fit into your a -priori held materialistic beliefs ,or just because it seems inexplicable awkward weird or complex to you .

Well, QM has been seeing the light of the day thanks to just a minor anomaly that proved classical physics to be fundamentally false , QM which is the epitome of enigma , paradox, complexity weirdness , uncertainty , probability , perplexity and much more .

Nobody understands QM even : physicists have been using it without being able to understand what it actually means ,but that does not prevent quantum theory from being a highly successful theory , the best ever so far .

Should we reject QM because of all that ? : similarly : that's what you're exactly basically and actually saying regarding that other enigma : consciousness.

ironically enough : the 2 major enigmas have been encountering each other : QM and consciousness ,despite all other interpretation theories of QM that try to elude that fact ,which basically and actually means that it will turn out that with the development of science , any progress in the study of the universe will tun out to be impossible without that in the study of consciousness since they are both so inseparably and inescapably linked to and intertwined with each other .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2014 19:16:06



I said : the physical brain is just a medium through which consciousness expresses itself , both ways : the brain as a transceiver = transmitter-receiver = transmits information from the external environment through the senses to the mind or consciousness , and receives the corresponding feedback from the mind or consciousness : that's the only logical or rational explanation of the mind-brain relationship .

The physical brain is just the vehicle through which the consciousness driver ,so to speak, expresses itself by driving its vehicle :  the brain : both the vehicle and the driver are inseparable though : they can't function without each other , although the driver remains intact despite the damaged vehicle : the driver just can't express itself through the damaged vehicle ,simply because it gets disconnected from it : in the case of brain damage thus ,brain diseases , malfunction ....the brain vehicle behaves accordingly ,so, the driver is prevented  from driving its brain vehicle : that's no ghost in the machine , since the brain and body are no machines , but living organisms that have to be driven by consciousness or the mind ....

The activity of the neuronal correlates of consciousness is just the physical "translation " of that of the 'corresponding " consciousness : just the image of the process , not the cause of the process ......



That’s groovy, Don. But sort of meaningless, when you think about it. Not only is it untestable, but you can apply it to anything and everything with the same meaningless result.
  It’s like saying that water isn’t really H2O molecules, water just “uses” the molecules to “express” its watery-ness. And infectious diseases are not caused by bacteria and viruses, but are actually caused by demons that always possess certain species of bacteria and viruses. The mircoorganisms are just the "medium", not the cause. And wind is not air molecules moving from an area of high pressure to low pressure (do not confuse the image with the process!) That is just the “vehicle” through which the wind spirit acts. Occasionally, wind gets “stuck” and cannot “flow properly” and that is what causes it to seem “not so windy outside.”

You could invent any number of scenarios about how a physical manifestation is just a “correlation” and not the thing itself. Since there are no examples of disembodied consciousness just floating around by itself, Ockham’s razor would suggest that you are needlessly complicating things by saying X isn’t really X. It’s really Y, even though it always takes the form of X, and never appears just as Y.

(Occam's razor can be twisted in any irrational way to make it fit into whatever we a -priori believe in ...that does not mean that razor supports what you're saying , to the contrary : it cuts through your fallacious reasoning, by spilling the latter's "blood " , aye lol  .)

Well , see my latest post here above to dlorde on the subject and more .

Correlation and causality have been hotly debated and still , but nevertheless correlation does not necessarily imply causation : there is a very thin line between the 2 , but that does not mean they are synonymous of each other , even though the correlation concept can be sometimes misused  and extended beyond its limits , the same goes for causality ......

Furthermore , for example, cold  weather can "cause " you to dress and behave accordingly ,that does not mean that there is a direct or actual causality between the 2 propositions : you can of course decide to be or just be foolish enough as to defy the bad weather and go naked on the streets and suffer the results of your behaviour ....

Hume even denied the very existence of causality as such : no 1 thing causes the other   , but that's another story .

See what Popper says on the subject :

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lse.ac.uk%2FCPNSS%2Fpdf%2FDP_withCover_Causality%2FCTR02-02-C.pdf&ei=TSl2VK_HOOr7ygOj9YCoBQ&usg=AFQjCNEQju5u1sSYnRikdJTSeQNGnNvlyQ&sig2=rRWkCllwgLCK_VhiXaR41g

In short, in order to keep things more simple  : correlation does not necessarily imply causation "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2014 21:24:09
Given that damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, there is no substantive function for this supposed 'immaterial consciousness' to fulfil...
So, you reduce the very existence of the non-physical nature of consciousness to just that old and refuted elan vital ? Odd, despite all the indirect overwhelming empirical evidence proving consciousness to be a non-physical and non-local process ?.
Well, no; I see no evidence whatsoever for non-physical consciousness. I was exploring the implications of such a hypothesis.

By all means enlighten me - how does your non-physical consciousness hypothesis account for the observations I outlined above? (I asked you this previously, but you declined to respond).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2014 21:29:37
Quantum physics is showing  its weird head  everywhere :


"Free Will and Quantum Physics " By Corey MacCarren :

http://titanovo.com/free-will-quantum-physics/

The Quantum Physics of Free Will By Goerge Musser :

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-physics-free-will/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/11/2014 21:43:52
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445346#msg445346 date=1417037049]
Given that damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, there is no substantive function for this supposed 'immaterial consciousness' to fulfil...
So, you reduce the very existence of the non-physical nature of consciousness to just that old and refuted elan vital ? Odd, despite all the indirect overwhelming empirical evidence proving consciousness to be a non-physical and non-local process ?.
Well, no; I see no evidence whatsoever for non-physical consciousness. I was exploring the implications of such a hypothesis.

Gotta go , quickly then , later more :

Well, that does not mean there is no evidence for that .
Better still : there is plenty of evidence or an overwhelming body of empirical evidence proving . indirectly that is , consciousness to be non-physical and non-local : that fact can be inferred from the related experiments , data , empirical evidence on the subject :  take a look at their consciousness studies here below , for the time being at least then :

http://opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

Quote
By all means enlighten me - how does your non-physical consciousness hypothesis account for the observations I outlined above? (I asked you this previously, but you declined to respond).

I have already responded to that , dlorde :

In short : consciousness gets disconnected from its damaged neuronal correlates and hence does not get through , i guess,since consciousness has to work through the brain  .

Later more .Take care .Thanks .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 26/11/2014 22:46:02
Quote from: dlorde
... damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness...
how does your non-physical consciousness hypothesis account for the observations I outlined above?
I have already responded to that , dlorde :
Link to the post please.

Quote
In short : consciousness gets disconnected from its damaged neuronal correlates and hence does not get through , i guess...
Odd that after pasting reams of non-materialist rants, you so often run out of time when asked specific questions.

Once more - how does your non-material consciousness hypothesis account for brain damage causing changes to personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, unless those features are actually all functions of the brain? What is left for this proposed non-material consciousness to do?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 26/11/2014 23:59:58


Once more - how does your non-material consciousness hypothesis account for brain damage causing changes to personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, unless those features are actually all functions of the brain? What is left for this proposed non-material consciousness to do?
Excellent point dlorde,.....If consciousness is somehow extra-dependent from the material character of the brain as Don would have us believe, why would material damage to the physical brain cause relative changes to said consciousness?

Either consciousness is connected directly to the material function of the electro-chemical processes within the physical brain or it is not. You can't have it both ways Don.

The reason I use the term: "extra-dependent" is because none of us believes that consciousness is completely "independent" from the physical brain. However, considering how Don's logic works, he might even believe that.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 27/11/2014 01:17:11
... Gotta go ...
That's now over a year Don's been saying "gotta go" ...
https://www.google.com/search?q="Gotta+go"++DonQuichotte+site:www.thenakedscientists.com (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Gotta+go%22++DonQuichotte+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com)

Yet he's still here , repeating himself ad nauseam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 27/11/2014 05:55:14
(Occam's razor can be twisted in any irrational way to make it fit into whatever we a -priori believe in ...

......Correlation and causality have been hotly debated and still , but nevertheless correlation does not necessarily imply causation : there is a very thin line between the 2 , but that does not mean they are synonymous of each other , even though the correlation concept can be sometimes misused  and extended beyond its limits , the same goes for causality ......

......there is plenty of evidence or an overwhelming body of empirical evidence proving . indirectly that is , consciousness to be non-physical and non-local : that fact can be inferred from the related experiment...

.....In short : consciousness gets disconnected from its damaged neuronal correlates and hence does not get through , i guess,since consciousness has to work through the brain  .



Somehow when it comes to your own theory, big gaps are perfectly acceptable, guesses are good enough, direct evidence unnecessary, and Ockham’s razor is just  a nuisance.  Hume is dragged out and paraded around for a while, because if there’s no causality, then you really don’t need any evidence at all for your theory.

 There’s no explanation given of how the immaterial interacts with the material brain. There’s no explanation of how information is stored, sent, or received back by the non local conscious agency, other than vague references to entanglement, but of course, no explanation of what exactly is being entangled. When the brain is incapacitated by damage or disease, there's no explanation of  why the content of thought and the quality of subjective experience itself should be affected, despite your insisting above that "qualitative subjective experience or consciousness" isn't "generated by the quantitative neural correlates."
And also no answers to questions which almost seem too ridiculous to bring up, such as how the fractured non local consciousness processes sensory information when  his robot body/brain is having technical difficulties.




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2014 06:37:21
A few more comments:
Don, Your explanation of what happens when the brain is damaged suggests that you think the problem is mainly with the outside observer's inability to determine that a person's consciousness is still operating perfectly fine, but that the brain damaged patient is just unable to communicate his wishes or direct his body to carry them out. But it’s not the opinion of the outside observer that really matters - the patient himself often reports significant changes in his subjective experience, or loss of an ability he knows he once had.

If you claim that consciousness is perfectly fine; it just "isn’t getting through", you are essentially telling the patient that his own subjective experience of his own subjective experience is invalid. He’s not really confused, he just thinks he his. He’s not really frightened or depressed  or hallucinating, or unable to remember things or recall words, he just thinks he is, but the real him is doing just fine, elsewhere. This is quite a paradox, considering our own subjective experience is considered the primary means of proof that we actually have consciousness, and it exists in the first place. Now suddenly it has absolutely no authority at all regarding its own qualitative existence. 

Finally, if brain damage results in “consciousness being blocked”, or unable to flow through the brain, logically it’s a two way street, and the nonlocal consciousness is also deprived of whatever information comes via the damaged brain and related sensory systems. Nonlocal consciousness is deprived of the ability to make choices or form opinions about the world that depend on being updated continuously by information that comes through the senses.  It must therefore sit twiddling its immaterial thumbs all day, unless you attribute certain omniscient abilities to it.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 18:14:52
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445354#msg445354 date=1417041962]
Quote from: dlorde
... damage to the brain can change, disrupt, or destroy all the known attributes of consciousness, including personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness...
how does your non-physical consciousness hypothesis account for the observations I outlined above?
I have already responded to that , dlorde :
Link to the post please.

I have repeated the reply in question to you anyway , the one you quoted here below , grosso modo .

Quote
Quote
In short : consciousness gets disconnected from its damaged neuronal correlates and hence does not get through , i guess...
Odd that after pasting reams of non-materialist rants, you so often run out of time when asked specific questions.

Once more - how does your non-material consciousness hypothesis account for brain damage causing changes to personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, unless those features are actually all functions of the brain? What is left for this proposed non-material consciousness to do?

( If you see how many replies i posted before addressing your post in question, you would notice  that i have spent quite some time on all that , prior to addressing that  particular post of yours  , so, my time is limited as that of everyoneelse is .)

Once again, all i can do is repeat or rather refer you to what i said on the subject here above .

That's all i can say on the subject .I don't pretend to have all answers regarding the relationship between consciousness and its brain , nobody does .

Similarly , go tell physicists to explain to you why they don't understand QM while using it so successfully .

The non-physical nature of consciousness is more  consistent with the available evidence , than that Graziano's non-sense , in the sense that consciousness as information is computed by the brain as some sort of simulation: an illusion that feels real , replacing the consciousness enigma by yet another enigma : information, not only that , on top of that , information as a so-called property of matter : that's property dualism by the way applied by the materialist Graziano to explain his materialist theory = a paradox   .

Worse : that's a kind of panpsychism in disguise also : the physical brain or its physical neuronal activity producing or constructing an illusory simulation that feels real : consciousness ,via some sort of inexplicable magic .

Graziano  conflates the false and illusory ego with the true self in fact (few people are capable of finding their true selves by the way .Most of people are just some sort of automatons driven by their illusory false egos or automatic  pilot ). His attempt is similar to that of the church that tries to adjust its dogmas under pressure of the secular "scientific " modern world's thought .


The new Pope of materialism, Graziano ,in order to try to rescue his false materialism  thus ,  bases also his theory on what he calls attention schema that's similar to the so-called brain computed body schema (John Searle, David Chalmers and others would be laughing out loud about that jump .) , while trying to explain away all those consciousness  related anomalies as just pragmatic survival strategies...just useful illusions that feel real .

Ironically enough , Stapp and many others did base their own theories of consciousness on attention too  .Even the whole non-materialistic cognitive psychology or therapy is based on the power of attention : it's all in the focus ,conscious trained informed attention that's behind even the self-directed neuroplasticity and more ...

Ach, this is leading nowhere , i see : we always return back to square zero over and over again , unfortunately enough .

Once again , the fact that we don't know how the non-physical consciousness interacts mutually with its brain (see also the works of Karl Popper and Eccles on the subject : The self and its brain :  http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2106325?uid=3738512&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21105316218643, that of Stapp ...) .

The fact that we don't know how the non-physical consciousness interacts mutually with its brain is no reason to dismiss the non-physical nature of consciousness : similarly,  nobody understands QM : is that a reason enough to reject it ? of course not , so : don't be so irrational as to use that fallacious reasoning of yours .

We should all start from what we know , not otherwise : we know that consciousness is not a product of the brain (how can it be ? ) , not a material process, and hence materialism is false and must be replaced by a non-materialist conception of nature that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature , and then go on from there to check out what non-materialist scientists say on the subject , not the other way around .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 18:40:33
... Gotta go ...
That's now over a year Don's been saying "gotta go" ...
https://www.google.com/search?q="Gotta+go"++DonQuichotte+site:www.thenakedscientists.com (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Gotta+go%22++DonQuichotte+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com)

Yet he's still here , repeating himself ad nauseam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam).

Hi, RD : how are you ? Thanks for your valuable information or contribution lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 18:52:03


Once more - how does your non-material consciousness hypothesis account for brain damage causing changes to personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, unless those features are actually all functions of the brain? What is left for this proposed non-material consciousness to do?
Excellent point dlorde,.....If consciousness is somehow extra-dependent from the material character of the brain as Don would have us believe, why would material damage to the physical brain cause relative changes to said consciousness?

Either consciousness is connected directly to the material function of the electro-chemical processes within the physical brain or it is not. You can't have it both ways Don.

The reason I use the term: "extra-dependent" is because none of us believes that consciousness is completely "independent" from the physical brain. However, considering how Don's logic works, he might even believe that.

Who said that consciousness is independent from the brain, let alone that it is completely independent from it ?  Not me, that's for sure .

Read what i said carefully, please : there is a mutual interaction between consciousness and the brain , as they can't function without each other , consciousness and the brain are inseparable, in this life at least , needless to add , and consciousness has to work through its brain as well thus , has to have some sort of interaction with its brain , both ways , the brain as a transceiver (transmitter-receiver ) for consciousness , consciousness interacting with its brain via some sort of a non-mechanical causation  at that , that is,an instantaneous one at that  ,that is ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ,as QM or just 1 particular interpretation of the latter that's more simple and plausible than the rest shows ....

When you pay attention to something or to someone , when you focus on that , you instantaneously get aware of that.

The conscious awareness part is thus instantaneous without any transfer of energy , the mediating brain in that has to obey the laws of physics of course , needless to add , conscious awareness not .

In short : what you focus on is your reality , almost .What you focus on is what you get : our reality is mostly mental .

Not to mention the fact that  9,99999999...% of the universe is "empty space " ,and the remaining 0,00000000000000001  ... % is "matter " : do the maths  :  "matter " is almost nothing in the universe, to say nothing about its wave / particle duality  , and materialist lunatic scientists tell us that matter produces the mind lol = almost nothing produces the key "component or key building block " of the universe : consciousness which is non-material   and hence undetectable directly ,that is ............

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 20:08:25
alancalverd :

What do you think about the following ? :

Nassim Haramein's unified theory enters mainstream science!

http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1563&mobile=on

99,999999... % of the universe is "empty space " ,while physicists do focus only on the remaining 0,0000000000001 %  "matter " .

Space might be the answer .Nassim Haramein says he has discovered a unifying theory that unifies relativity with QM .

http://resonance.is/event/the-unified-field-theory-of-nassim-haramein-beyond-4/

http://resonance.is/


Or see the video : Don't pay attention to the "sacred " thing in the title : irrelevant :

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 20:09:24
Cheryl :

Thanks for your posts , appreciate indeed .
Unfortunately enough , no time left to respond to that : duty calls ,sorry.

I have in a way already responded to your posts through those of dlorde and Ethos  here above .

Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2014 20:51:34

Similarly , go tell physicists to explain to you why they don't understand QM while using it so successfully .
The fact that we don't know how the non-physical consciousness interacts mutually with its brain is no reason to dismiss the non-physical nature of consciousness : similarly,  nobody understands QM : is that a reason enough to reject it ?
The critical difference would be that QM has predictive ability,  but your theory has none.





[/quote]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/11/2014 20:55:49
Cheryl :

Thanks for your posts , appreciate indeed .
Unfortunately enough , no time left to respond to that : duty calls ,sorry.

I have in a way already responded to your posts through those of dlorde and Ethos  here above .


No, not really. They were pretty simple questions about a theory you've been promoting for quite sometime.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 21:03:24

Similarly , go tell physicists to explain to you why they don't understand QM while using it so successfully .
The fact that we don't know how the non-physical consciousness interacts mutually with its brain is no reason to dismiss the non-physical nature of consciousness : similarly,  nobody understands QM : is that a reason enough to reject it ?
The critical difference would be that QM has predictive ability,  but your theory has none.





[/quote]

Yet without the mind , no QM or science .

Without the mind or consciousness ,we can't understand or be aware of the universe .

Better still : QM can never be understood without reference to the mind = they are both inescapably and inseparably intertwined with each other : no silly or insane absurd paradoxical MW interpretation of QM can make that fact go away .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 21:05:55
Cheryl :

Thanks for your posts , appreciate indeed .
Unfortunately enough , no time left to respond to that : duty calls ,sorry.

I have in a way already responded to your posts through those of dlorde and Ethos  here above .


No, not really. They were pretty simple questions about a theory you've been promoting for quite sometime.

I couldn't resist checking out this forum from work .

I have already responded to your posts through those of dlorde and Ethos .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/11/2014 21:18:46
We should all start from what we know , not otherwise : we know that consciousness is not a product of the brain (how can it be ? )
The only thing we know is what our observations reveal. The observations (including those given above) are entirely consistent with, and support the hypothesis that consciousness is a product of brain activity. Any competing hypothesis must also at least be consistent with and account for what we observe.

Your introduction of a non-material consciousness appears entirely redundant given the observations above, and you seem incapable of providing any plausible explanation or reason why it is necessary - just the unsupported assertion that something indescribable, unknown, inexplicable, and undetectable must nevertheless interact with our brains in some unknown and inexplicable way that is indistinguishable from no interaction at all. It's so far beyond useless it's 'not even wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)'.

Hitchen's Razor is appropriate: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 28/11/2014 21:45:39
We should all start from what we know , not otherwise : we know that consciousness is not a product of the brain (how can it be ? )
The only thing we know is what our observations reveal. The observations (including those given above) are entirely consistent with, and support the hypothesis that consciousness is a product of brain activity. Any competing hypothesis must also at least be consistent with and account for what we observe.

Your introduction of a non-material consciousness appears entirely redundant given the observations above, and you seem incapable of providing any plausible explanation or reason why it is necessary - just the unsupported assertion that something indescribable, unknown, inexplicable, and undetectable must nevertheless interact with our brains in some unknown and inexplicable way that is indistinguishable from no interaction at all. It's so far beyond useless it's 'not even wrong (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong)'.

Hitchen's Razor is appropriate: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Bullshit , sorry .

Positivism holds no water either .

This wiki link of yours is almost a good description of Graziano's theory :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

Well, since i am working , i will just repost the following :

99,9999999999999 ..% of the universe,including you and me,  is made of 'empty space " and the rest is "matter " , not to mention "matter's" wave/particle duality , and you are telling me that almost nothing  (matter )  produces the key feature of the universe which is undetectable ,directly , that is : consciousness : You gotta be kidding me : even a kid wouldn't buy that .(Don't misuse this latter metaphorical  analogy for your own materialistic purposes , in the sense that kids believe in imaginary friends and other myths .)





Once more - how does your non-material consciousness hypothesis account for brain damage causing changes to personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness, unless those features are actually all functions of the brain? What is left for this proposed non-material consciousness to do?
Excellent point dlorde,.....If consciousness is somehow extra-dependent from the material character of the brain as Don would have us believe, why would material damage to the physical brain cause relative changes to said consciousness?

Either consciousness is connected directly to the material function of the electro-chemical processes within the physical brain or it is not. You can't have it both ways Don.

The reason I use the term: "extra-dependent" is because none of us believes that consciousness is completely "independent" from the physical brain. However, considering how Don's logic works, he might even believe that.

Who said that consciousness is independent from the brain, let alone that it is completely independent from it ?  Not me, that's for sure .

Read what i said carefully, please : there is a mutual interaction between consciousness and the brain , as they can't function without each other , consciousness and the brain are inseparable, in this life at least , needless to add , and consciousness has to work through its brain as well thus , has to have some sort of interaction with its brain , both ways , the brain as a transceiver (transmitter-receiver ) for consciousness , consciousness interacting with its brain via some sort of a non-mechanical causation  at that , that is,an instantaneous one at that  ,that is ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ,as QM or just 1 particular interpretation of the latter that's more simple and plausible than the rest shows ....

When you pay attention to something or to someone , when you focus on that , you instantaneously get aware of that.

The conscious awareness part is thus instantaneous without any transfer of energy , the mediating brain in that has to obey the laws of physics of course , needless to add , conscious awareness not .

In short : what you focus on is your reality , almost .What you focus on is what you get : our reality is mostly mental .

Not to mention the fact that  9,99999999...% of the universe is "empty space " ,and the remaining 0,00000000000000001  ... % is "matter " : do the maths  :  "matter " is almost nothing in the universe, to say nothing about its wave / particle duality  , and materialist lunatic scientists tell us that matter produces the mind lol = almost nothing produces the key "component or key building block " of the universe : consciousness which is non-material   and hence undetectable directly ,that is ............

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 28/11/2014 23:29:49
Bullshit , sorry .
LOL!  [:o)]

Nice argument  [::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 28/11/2014 23:39:00
Bullshit , sorry .
LOL!  [:o)]

Nice argument  [::)]
Pretending that he's sorry is a bit disingenuous IMHO. I'll submit that 99% of his copied and pasted crap is indeed bullshit. And I will not pretend to be sorry for calling him out on it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 29/11/2014 00:08:48
alancalverd :

What do you think about the following ? :

Nassim Haramein's unified theory enters mainstream science!


I'll look at the theory when you have produced some experimental  evidence. This is a science chatroom.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 29/11/2014 00:22:44
Here's a simple question for anyone interested. Setting the "complete" or all inclusive consciousness enchilada  aside for a moment, do you consider the sensory processes - seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting, touching, and orientation in space - to be material processes? Do they have any immaterial component?

A slightly different take on things:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201401/consciousness-explained
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 17:33:01
Cheryl :

Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences  and it does work too  : i have tried it myself with success :  The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy :

Excerpt From " The Mind and The Brain " By Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley : Epilogue :

Quote :

"It is telling that the Decade of the Brain, as (the first) President Bush designated the 1990s, had that name rather than the Decade of the Mind. For it was in the brain rather than the mind that scientists and laypeople alike sought answers, probing the folds and crevasses of our gray matter for the roots of personality and temperament, mental illness and mood, sexual identity and even a predilection for fine food.

In my own profession of neuropsychiatry, this attitude is encapsulated in the maxim “For every twisted thought, a twisted molecule.” Any mood, preference, or behavior once ascribed to the way we were raised, or even to freely willed volition, instead came to be viewed as the child of our genes and our neurotransmitters, over which we had little, if any, control.
The brain, to be sure, is indeed the physical embodiment of the mind, the organ through which the mind finds expression and through which it acts in the world.

Within the brain, ensembles of neurons represent the world beyond, recording both the perceptions of our five senses and the world of mind alone: internally generated imagery produces no less real and measurable a neuronal activation than images of the outside world. But the brain is more than a reflection of our genes. As we saw in Chapter 3, the paltry 35,000 or so genes in the human genome fall woefully short of the task of prescribing the wiring of our 100-trillion-synapse brain. The brain is therefore shaped by and etched with the traces of our experiences—the barrage of sensory stimulation that our peripheral nerves pass along to our brain, the skills we acquire, the knowledge we store, the patterns our thoughts and attention make. All these, and much more, leave their mark.
A mere twenty years ago neuroscientists thought that the brain was structurally immutable by early childhood, and that its functions and abilities were programmed by genes. We now know that that is not so.

 To the contrary: the brain’s ensembles of neurons change over time, forming new connections that become stronger with use, and letting unused synapses weaken until they are able to carry signals no better than a frayed string between two tin cans in the old game of telephone. The neurons that pack our brain at the moment of birth continue to weave themselves into circuits throughout our lives. The real estate that the brain devotes to this activity rather than that one, to this part of the body rather than that one, even to this mental habit rather than that one, is as mutable as a map of congressional districts in the hands of gerrymanderers. The life we lead, in other words, leaves its mark in the form of enduring changes in the complex circuitry of the brain—footprints of the experiences we have had, the actions we have taken. This is neuroplasticity. As Mike Merzenich asserted, the mechanisms of neuroplasticity “account for cortical contributions to our idiosyncratic behavioral abilities and, in extension, for the geniuses, the fools, and the idiot savants among us.”

Yet even this perspective assumes a brain more passive than we now understand it to be. It reflects an outdated, classical-physics view of the relationship between mind and matter. For above and beyond the “cortical contributions” to our uniqueness are the choices, decisions, and active will that both propel our actions and, through directed mental force, shape our very brain circuitry.

In the decade since Merzenich’s insight, our appreciation of the power of neuroplasticity to reshape the brain has only deepened. We now know that the circuits of our minds change when our fingers fly over the strings of a violin; they change when we suffer an amputation, or a stroke; they change when our ears become tuned to the sounds of our native language and deaf to the phonemes of a foreign one. They change, in short, when the flow of inputs from our senses changes. This much, the Silver Spring monkeys showed us. But the brain—true to its role as the place where Descartes’s two realms, the material and the mental, meet and find expression—reflects more than the changing inputs from the body.

 Neuronal circuits also change when something as gossamer as our thoughts changes, when something as inchoate as mental effort becomes engaged—when, in short, we choose to attend with mindfulness. The power of attention not only allows us to choose what mental direction we will take. It also allows us, by actively focusing attention on one rivulet in the stream of consciousness, to change—in scientifically demonstrable ways—the systematic functioning of our own neural circuitry.

The passive side of mental life, which is generated solely and completely by brain mechanisms, dominates the tone and tenor of our day-to-day, even our second-to-second, experience. During the quotidian business of daily life, the brain does indeed operate very much as a machine does. The brain registers sensory information, processes it, connects it with previously stored sensory experience, and generates an output. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that this much of life is nothing but the brain’s going its merry way, running on default awareness.

 The kind of attention-driven neuroplasticity that Merzenich and his team documented occurs during a mere fraction of our normal experience (more, perhaps, if we are young, and spend many of our waking hours in formal and informal learning); the kind of focused effort that Taub’s stroke patients exert is the exception rather than the rule. In general, even the rigorous practice of mindfulness takes up but a few hours in the day of all but the most dedicated practitioners. And even in these cases, when attention is brought to bear, the content of our conscious experience remains largely determined by the inner workings of the brain. But the content of our character does not, for the amount and quality of attention we focus on this or that aspect of our passive experience as it arises are determined by an active process—one for which brain mechanisms alone provide insufficient explanation. In treating OCD, the capacity to distinguish between passive and active mental processes has turned out to be clinically crucial. When an obsessive thought or compulsive urge enters a patient’s mind, the feelings of fear and anxiety it generates are biologically determined. But, as clinical data and PET scans show, patients can willfully change the amount and quality of attention that they focus on those cerebrally generated feelings of anxiety and stress, changing in turn the way the brain works.

The willful focusing of attention is not only a psychological intervention. It is also a biological one. Through changes in the way we focus attention, we have the capacity to make choices about what mental direction we will take; more than that, we also change, in scientifically demonstrable ways, the systematic functioning of neural circuitry. Nowhere is this more clear than among patients with OCD who practice the mindfulness-based Four Step therapy. By Refocusing attention in a mindful fashion, patients change their neurochemistry.

How? By volitional effort, which is effort of attention. Though OCD symptoms may be generated, passively, by the brain, the choice of whether to view those symptoms as “me” or “OCD,” whether to become ensnared by them or to focus on a nonpathological behavior, is active. That choice is generated by a patient’s mind, and it changes his brain. Mindfulness, as applied in the Four Steps, alters how the connections between the orbital frontal cortex and the caudate nucleus function. The power of attention, and thus the power of mind, reshapes neural circuitry and cortical maps—and does so by means of what I call Directed Mental Force. We now have a scientific basis for asserting that the exercise of the will, the effort of attention, can systematically change the way the brain works.

 The act of focusing attention has both clinical efficacy (in the treatment of patients besieged by troubling neuropsychiatric symptoms) and biological efficacy (in its power to change the underlying chemistry of the brain). Mind, we now see, has the power to alter biological matter significantly; that threepound lump of gelatinous ooze within our skulls is truly the mind’s brain.
Our will, our volition, our karma, constitutes the essential core of the active part of mental experience. It is the most important, if not the only important, active part of consciousness.

We generally think of will as being expressed in the behaviors we exhibit: whether we choose this path or that one, whether we make this decision or that. Even when will is viewed introspectively, we often conceptualize it in terms of an externally pursued goal. But I think the truly important manifestation of will, the one from which our decisions and behaviors flow, is the choice we make about the quality and direction of attentional focus. Mindful or unmindful, wise or unwise—no choice we make is more basic, or important, than this one.

At the end of the nineteenth century, William James recognized that the array of things we can attend to is determined passively by neural conditions—but the amount of attention an aspect of consciousness receives after it has caught our mental eye is determined by active mental processes, by what he called “spiritual force.” One’s choice of what aspect of experience to focus on is an expression of the active part of mental life. “This strain of attention is the fundamental act of will,” James observed in Psychology: A Briefer Course. This active component can contribute as much as, and even more than, cerebral conditions in determining where and how attention is directed, and certainly what kind of attention—mindful or unmindful, wise or unwise, diligent or default—is engaged. The feeling that we can make more or less mental effort, as we choose, is not an illusion.

 Nor is the sense that we have the power to decide, from one moment to another, which aspect of consciousness to attend to. In this critical respect, Jamesian psychology, Buddhist philosophy, and contemporary physics are in total accord. Whereas the contents of consciousness are largely determined by passive processes, the amount and type of attention we pay to those contents are subject to active input via willful mental effort. Cerebral conditions may determine the nature of what’s thrown into our minds, but we have the power to choose which aspects of that experience to focus on.

The brain may determine the content of our experience, but mind chooses which aspect of that experience receives attention. To repeat: “Volitional effort is effort of attention,” James said. And attention—holding before the mind that which, if left to itself, would slip out of consciousness—is the essential achievement of will. This is why effort of attention is, it seems to me, the essential core of any moral act.
What does mind choose to attend to? Buddhist philosophy offers one avenue to understanding this.

 The traditional practice of Buddhist meditation is based on two broad categories of mental activity: samatha, translated as “calmness,” “tranquillity,” or “quiescence” and vipassana, or “insight.” In the beginning stages of training in samatha, attention plays a crucial role by focusing on a single tranquil object, such as the surface of a calm lake or the sensation of breath passing through the nose. The goal is to develop the level of concentration required for attaining a quality of Bare Attention that is steady, powerful, and intense enough to achieve vipassana.

Buddhist philosophy teaches that the power of habit can greatly increase the functional effects of the power of karma (which in Buddhist philosophy always means volitional action). Thus the great monk-scholar Ledi Sayadaw (1846–1923) states that “habituating by constant repetition” causes the effects of the subsequent karma to “gain greater and greater proficiency, energy and force—just as one who reads a lesson many times becomes more proficient with each new reading.” The will has powers that, at least in the West, have been radically underestimated in an ever more technological and materialist culture.

The Law of Karma holds that actions have consequences, and its stress on the vital importance of the state of the will can serve as a counterweight to the materialist bent of Western society, one that has become too credulous about the causal power of material conditions over the human mind. We have been blinded to the power of will to direct attention in ways that can alter the brain. Perhaps, as the discoveries about the power of directed mental effort systematically to alter brain structure and function attract public awareness, we will give greater weight, instead, to the role of volition.

The discovery that the mind can change the brain, momentous as it is both for our image of ourselves and for such practical matters as helping stroke patients, is only the beginning. Finally, after a generation or more in which biological materialism has had neuroscience—indeed, all the life sciences—in a chokehold, we may at last be breaking free. It is said that philosophy is an esoteric, ivory-tower pursuit with no relevance to the world we live in or the way we live. Would that that had been so for the prejudice in favor of biological materialism and its central image, Man the Machine.

But biological materialism did, and does, have real-world consequences. We feel its reach every time a pharmaceutical company tells us that, to cure shyness (or “social phobia”), we need only reach for a little pill; every time we fall prey to depression, or anxiety, or inability to sustain attention, and are soothed with the advice that we merely have to get our neurochemicals back into balance to enjoy full mental health. Biological materialism is nothing if not appealing.

We need not address the emotional or spiritual causes of our sadness to have the cloud of depression lift; we need not question the way we teach our children before we can rid them of attention deficit disorder. I do not disparage the astounding advances in our understanding of the biochemical and even genetic roots of behavior and illness. Some of those discoveries have been made by my closest friends. But those findings are not the whole story.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 17:33:39
Though a substantial majority of the scientists who have done the work leading to those findings agree that there is significantly more to the story than just biology, there has been, up to now, a morbid silence surrounding the moral vacuum created by a worldview dominated by materialist preconceptions. I vividly recall a conversation in which one close and prominent colleague of mine was bemoaning the fact that, according to the dominant materialist view of science, his love for his wife could be explained “solely in terms of the biochemistry of my brain and my viscera.” But, because he is a true gentleman who shuns controversy, nothing he does or says in his professional life would give any hint of this demurral. It is my sincere hope that an evolving neurobiology of Directed Mental Force will help rectify this situation.
Human beings are only partially understandable when viewed as the product of material processes.

 Human beings think, make judgments, and exert effort on the basis of those judgments and  in so doing change the material aspects of both their inner and outer worlds in ways that defy the narrow categories of materialist modes of analysis. Understanding our capacity to systematically alter our own neurobiology requires welcoming such concepts as choice and effort into the vocabulary of science. In this new century, questions about the mind-brain interface will become increasingly important as we try to understand how humans function in fields ranging from medicine to economics and political science. Knowing that the mind can, through knowledge and effort, reshape neurobiological processes must powerfully inform that effort.

It is the perspective of what we might call biological humanism, not biological materialism, that fits with the findings of neuroplasticity. It’s a mental striving, not a deterministic physical process, that best describes the clinical data on directed neuroplasticity. This may seem to be wishful, even reckless, thinking; after all, to pronounce oneself a skeptic on the subject of biological determinism is to court ridicule, to risk being tarred with the brush of “nonscientific thinking” or even “New Age nonsense.”

 But it seems to me that what we have learned about neuroplasticity and, especially, selfdirected neuroplasticity—even this early in our understanding—is that our physical brain alone does not shape our destiny. How can it, when the experiences we undergo, the choices we make, and the acts we undertake inscribe a diary on the living matter of our cortex? The brain continually refines its processing capacities to meet the challenges we present it, increasing the communicative power of neurons and circuits that respond to oft-received inputs or that are tapped for habitual outputs. It is the brain’s astonishing power to learn and unlearn, to adapt and change, to carry with it the inscriptions of our experiences, that allows us to throw off the shackles of biological materialism, for it is the life we lead that creates the brain we have. Our new understanding of the power of mind to shape brain can advance not only our knowledge, but also our wisdom. Radical attempts to view the world as a merely material domain, devoid of mind as an active force, neglect the very powers that define humankind.

The reality of the mind-shaped brain encourages a cultural climate in which scientific research not only yields advancements in our knowledge, but also adds to our wisdom as an evolving species. By harnessing the power of Directed Mental Force we may yet live up to our taxonomic designation and truly become deserving of the name Homo sapiens.

I began, in Chapter 1, with an exploration of the dilemma posed by the notion of a mind’s arising from matter, and with Descartes’s separation of nature into the material and the mental. Cartesian dualism served science well, at first: by ceding matters of the spirit to men of the cloth, it got the Church off the back of science, which for centuries afterward was perceived as less of a threat to religion’s domain than it would otherwise have been (pace, Galileo). But Cartesian dualism was a disaster for moral philosophy, setting in motion a process that ultimately reduced human beings to automatons.

 If all our actions, past and present, can be completely understood as the passive results of machinelike physical mechanisms, without acknowledgment of the existence of consciousness, much less will, then moral responsibility becomes meaningless. If our conscious thoughts matter nothing to the choices we make, and the behavior we engage in, then it is difficult to see how we are any more responsible for our actions than a robot is. That’s why the question of whether the mind is capable of real activity (and thus capable of generating a physically effective mental force) is, at its core, an ethical one. “I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad,” James wrote in The Dilemma of Determinism. The notion that the mind and the attention it focuses are merely passive effects of material causes, he wrote, “violates my sense of moral reality through and through.”

But this conflict between science and moral philosophy vanishes like fog in the light of dawn if, instead of continuing to apply to minds and brains a theory of matter and reality that has been superseded—that is, classical physics—we adopt the most accurate theory of the world advanced so far: quantum theory. In quantum theory, matter and consciousness do not stare at each other across an unbridgeable divide. Rather, they are connected by well-defined and exhaustively tested mathematical rules.

 “Quantum theory,” says Henry Stapp, “rehabilitates the basic premise of moral philosophy. It entails that certain actions that a person can take are influenced by his stream of consciousness, which is not strictly controlled by any known law of nature.” A quantum theory of mind, incorporating the discoveries of nonlocality and the Quantum Zeno Effect, offers the hope of mending the breach between science and moral philosophy. It states definitively that real, active, causally efficacious mind operates in the material world.

The shift in understanding inspired by neuroplasticity and the power of mind to shape brain undermines the claim of materialist determinism that humans are essentially nothing more than fleshy computers spitting out the behavioral results of some inescapable neurogenetic program. “The brain is going to do what the brain was always going to do,” say the materialists. Both modern physics and contemporary neuroscience reply that they are wrong. The teachings of faith have long railed against the perils of the materialist mind-set. Now neuroscience and physics have joined them at the barricades.

 The science emerging with the new century tells us that we are not the children of matter alone, nor its slaves. As we establish ourselves in the third millennium, the Law of Karma elaborated so eloquently by Gotama five hundred years before the first millennium still resonates: “All Beings are owners of their Karma. Whatever volitional actions they do, good or evil, of those they shall become the heir." " End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 18:12:19
Here's a simple question for anyone interested. Setting the "complete" or all inclusive consciousness enchilada  aside for a moment, do you consider the sensory processes - seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting, touching, and orientation in space - to be material processes? Do they have any immaterial component?

A slightly different take on things:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201401/consciousness-explained

lol : Nothing is explained .


Odd that you try to revive that old refuted and mindless corpse of Skinner's behaviorism, Cheryl : are you that desperate ?

You might "succeed " in doing just that , since there is now what can be called the "scientific technological ability to reverse the process of death itself lol " : (Got that book in question too ) : It wouldn't be possible to  resuscitate behaviorism though , since it was dead and buried a long time ago : unless you are Jesus lol, you can't do that :

http://www.amazon.com/Erasing-Death-Science-Rewriting-Boundaries-ebook/dp/B0089LOFWG



See also above : an excerpt from "The mind and the brain " By Jeffery Schwartz and Sharon Begley : fascinating read and an excellent conception of the mind -brain relationship that's consistent with the available evidence , that has been demonstrated scientifically , that restores our "lost" confidence in the reality of causal volition through informed trained and active focus ,and it does work as well , believe me + much more .

That said :

The working of the physical brain through the senses to the mind and back is not the one that "generates " the feeling or state of awareness,does it ? 

Not to mention that many aspects of our behavior or perception fall outside of consciousness ,partly or totally then,  like when you are driving your car while engaging in a discussion with your passenger(s) , like when while talking to someone at a party and suddenly your hear your name mentioned by some people to  whom you were not talking (you get aware of that fact only afterwards , after hearing it ...) + We don't know much about how our unconsciousness shapes our conscious or unconscious behavior : have you ever experienced sleep-walk, for example, or have you seen a relative , a friend...experience that , while the person who experiences that is not  able to recall that event afterwards when getting awake ? Are you aware of  the subliminal nature of unconsciousness ? ....

Even though he's a materialist scientist , this guy has some interesting things to say on the subject : when one can filter materialist non-sense from it though : (got both the book and audiobook in question ) :

http://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-Behavior/dp/0307472256

Or just watch the video :


You have to take the following comment on the video with a significant piece of salt too lol :

Quote : "Every aspect of our mental lives plays out in two versions: one conscious, which we are constantly aware of, and the other unconscious, which remains hidden from us. Over the past two decades researchers have developed remarkable new tools for probing the unconscious, or subliminal, workings of the mind. This explosion of research has led to a sea change in our understanding of how the mind affects the way we live. As a result, scientists are becoming increasingly convinced that how we experience the world--our perception, behavior, memory, and social judgment--is largely driven by the mind's subliminal processes and not by the conscious ones, as we have long believed."  End quote .

P.S.: You said earlier on that since i think that consciousness remains intact after brain damage , brain diseases , genetic defects , ....and that it just doesn't get through , how come then that the related consciousness aspects of the victims of those calamities are not experienced by those victims ?

Well : it all depends on what kindda brain injury , disease , ...that those victims suffer from ,and since consciousness and the brain are inseparable , so, any damage to the brain affects the experience of the related aspects of consciousness , but , there are cases of people who were diagnosed as  being in a vegetative state after a car crash or something like that ,and whose extensive brains' damage was confirmed , but nevertheless , when they were scanned by fMRI scans while being asked to try to picture themselves playing tennis or exploring the rooms and furniture of their homes ....., scientists discovered that their related brain regions were activated in the same way that happens to healthy people who would try to picture the above .

As technology gets more advanced , maybe scientists will be able to detect any awareness, if any , in comatose cases , vegetative states ...Alzheimer patients ...Who knows ?

Not to mention that there are also disorders of consciousness , not just those of the brain .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 18:19:40
alancalverd :

What do you think about the following ? :

Nassim Haramein's unified theory enters mainstream science!


I'll look at the theory when you have produced some experimental  evidence. This is a science chatroom.

Check it out then : seems original, mathematically solid ,and makes a lots of physics' sense as well , or just watch that entertaining and educative video of his where he talks about his theory , equations and more .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 18:34:14
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445474#msg445474 date=1417217389]
Bullshit , sorry .
LOL!  [:o)]

Nice argument  [::)]


Well, that was not all what i said .See above .
Your positivism is as "water-proof" as any other ideology , belief or world view is , as "water -proof " as materialism is ,for example + There is absolutely and certainly no empirical evidence whatsoever for any of those materialist so-called theories or models of consciousness, needless to add .

Better still, consciousness , the mind and their  related anomalies and processes that can never be accounted for intrinsically, let alone be explained , by materialism, are the ones that have been breaking the false neck or backbone  of materialism by proving it to be false .

On the other hand , there is plenty of indirect empirical evidence that has been supporting the hypothesis of the  non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness .......

See the posted excerpt above to our lovely, charming and sympathetic Cheryl .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2014 19:07:15
On the other hand , there is plenty of indirect empirical evidence that has been supporting the hypothesis of the  non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness .......

Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).

We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you:

What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?

If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?

 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 19:34:11
On the other hand , there is plenty of indirect empirical evidence that has been supporting the hypothesis of the  non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness .......

Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).

We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you:

What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?

If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?

See the above displayed excerpt then .
 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 19:37:13
Is there any purpose to life ? Don't worry , these depressing nihillistic and desperate materialist lunatics tell you that you don't even have a life , you're just an app :


Is Life an Illusion ? :

http://yournewswire.com/is-life-an-illusion/




Oh , yeah , wait a sec : We are just star dust of course , just star nuclear waste lol :  (while the universe is made of 99,999999... % "empty space " , and the remaining 0,00000000...1 % is "matter " ,not to mention the latter's wave/particle duality ...) :

dlorde :

I remember Jim Al - Khalili saying that we are just stars' nuclear waste at the end of his BBC "Atom " videos lol

There is nothing charming about the following in fact :

We Are All  Stardust: Connected: A Charming Stop-Motion Papercraft Music Video Inspired by the Universe:   

 A depressing nihillistic and desperate materialist form of new age lol

http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/12/09/connected-luke-dick-music-video/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2014 20:00:51
Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).

We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you:

What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?

If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?

See the above displayed excerpt then .

Which excerpt of what? I'm asking you what you think your supposed non-physical, non-local consciousness does, and why you think it's necessary.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 20:25:08
Great! - so with that evidence you should be able to tell me what this non-physical and non-local consciousness is doing that the brain doesn't do anyway (as evinced by the brain damage examples I provided earlier).

We now know the brain generates personality, character, emotion, attention, recognition, understanding, sense of self, focus, and awareness - because we know the structures and pathways involved, we know that interfering with them in specific ways and at various scales causes correspondingly specific changes in the generated characteristics. So once again, I ask you:

What else is there for your non-physical, non-local consciousness to do? what do you think it does that the brain isn't demonstrably doing itself?

If you can't answer that, why on Earth do you think it's necessary?

See the above displayed excerpt then .

Which excerpt of what? I'm asking you what you think your supposed non-physical, non-local consciousness does, and why you think it's necessary.

Well, my posted excerpt to Cheryl here above of course from "The mind and the brain " by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, that can explain all that to you better than i can do .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/11/2014 20:29:49
Guys :
You can't access the full version of this  following amazing article of the new scientist unless you subscribe to the latter :

Quantum weirdness: The battle for the basis of reality :

It shatters our view or perception of what reality might be :

http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg21929282.100/0-quantum-weirdness-the-battle-for-the-basis-of-reality.html?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot&cmpid=SOC|NSNS|2014-GLOBAL-hoot

Here below you can download  its full PDF version for free though :

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CD4QFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftwileshare.com%2Fuploads%2FQuantum_weirdness__The_battle_for_the_basis_of_reality_-_physics-math_-_05_August_2013_-_New_Scientist.pdf&ei=_yl6VK_-NYLjywO31IDgBQ&usg=AFQjCNEK6mmejb-U2urIkiaTeiQ5gGAKDw&sig2=m8pmVcJRWsCuFwFUK-B4gw
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2014 22:06:53
Well, my posted excerpt to Cheryl here above of course from "The mind and the brain " by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, that can explain all that to you better than i can do .
Seriously? You do know neuroplasticity is an entirely material property, right? it occurs as a result of changes in the firing patterns of groups of neurons. You're aware you can't just 'will' yourself to know stuff and have new abilities, right? You have to actually learn the stuff, you have to practice, repeatedly exercise those neural circuits so they change and grow (much in the way a muscle will change & grow with exercise).

The 'will' to learn stuff and do the practice is just as material - a result of your low-level drives and biases filtered and modified by the higher level processes based on life experience and reflective feedbacks.

None of that stuff requires any non-physical or non-material influences; you can certainly describe it all in terms of non-material processes, and in a top-down causal sense, if that helps you understand the high level behaviour, but those processes and emergent interacting patterns of activity are all expressions of physical, material neuronal activity.

Nor is there any reason to believe, or evidence to suggest, that exotic quantum physics is involved or necessary, although it is conceivable that QM might help optimize critical paths (as in photosynthesis or avian navigation).

Looking for a non-physical, non-local consciousness, you're just chasing redundant phantasmic figments. You're not in a dark room looking for a black cat; neuroscience has turned the light on and there's no cat there; a few dark shadows, perhaps, but nowhere for a cat to hide. If you take off your dark glasses, you can see that for yourself.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 29/11/2014 22:31:34
Guys :
You can't access the full version of this  following amazing article of the new scientist unless you subscribe to the latter :

Meh - read it when it was first published. It's just a melodramatic popular science version of the MIT introduction to quantum superposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc) lecture I posted earlier. Isn't QM weird?  [::)] (yeah, we know).

The argument from incredulity is a persistent human failing - as continually demonstrated by the new knowledge we acquire. Likewise the associated magical thinking, e.g. the attribution of magical ('non-physical') influences to account for poorly understood mechanisms. Together they account for too much nonsense and too many fantasy belief systems. Discovering the real world is far more interesting.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2014 01:35:16
Cheryl :

Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences  and it does work too  : i have tried it myself with success :  The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy :





You missed the point entirely. Not surprised.

He was not denying the "existence" of consciousness. His argument was that if the sensory processes are material, the mapping of them to the brain certainly can be as well; that everything we think "about" is ultimately derived from them and replicates them. His second point is that thinking is a process, an event, something I've argued as well.  When an anti-materialist says "point to an idea in the brain," one could just as easily say, "show me where walking is in the legs" or explain how a bird can fly when none of its individual cells can. Tell me where a tornado goes when it's finished being a tornado. States and processes are material based, even if they are less tangible.

And cognitive therapy can be explained, (actually better explained,) from a neuroscience perspective. If the brain does have modules that approach or solve problems in different ways, like a team of rivals, there is no reason why one part cannot, with practice, compensate for the deficiencies, or over ride the impulses of another part. But that actually makes no sense if you view immaterial consciousness as a discrete, uniform entity, in which case it really is boot strapping.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 18:29:06
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445553#msg445553 date=1417298813]
Well, my posted excerpt to Cheryl here above of course from "The mind and the brain " by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley, that can explain all that to you better than i can do .
Seriously? You do know neuroplasticity is an entirely material property, right? it occurs as a result of changes in the firing patterns of groups of neurons. You're aware you can't just 'will' yourself to know stuff and have new abilities, right? You have to actually learn the stuff, you have to practice, repeatedly exercise those neural circuits so they change and grow (much in the way a muscle will change & grow with exercise).

How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training  ...without mindful focus or  attention and action of your conscious  will ? : you're just talking rubbish , dlorde ,and i am not  gonna say sorry this time,not even out of politeness or courtesy,  simply because you are ,big time, as a matter of fact .

How did you get your degree , do your work , lead your life , ...without any existence of your human capacity of mindful attention and focus through your active will and corresponding action?

We're not determined computers or machines , no hardware run by software .Materialism cannot intrinsically but say we are , but that's no empirical fact , just materialist bullshit : see the difference ?

Yeah , right : who   practices  brain training or brain exercises to make the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain change ?: does the brain do that all by itself ,by changing itself , or is that done through the active mindful  will of the person in question who changes his/her brain that way , through brain exercises , meditation, mindfulness ...(Would ordinary muscles ,for example , just develop by themselves without active will and action of the person in question to train his /her muscles , or do the brain and muscles do that all by themselves on behalf of  the lazy person in question who doesn't have to do anything at all then to become  a body builder,for example  : he /she can just let his /her brain and muscles do the job all  by themselves on his behalf lol )

See the amazing story of this woman who could change her brain in significant ways through informed trained determined active action of her own will to overcome her severe disabilities with which she was born :

http://www.barbaraarrowsmithyoung.com/

You should read her book (Go that 1 too ) .

What about biofeedback training ? ,when one can voluntarily take control of some aspects of one's own  autonomic nervous system:

Biofeedback : Source :    Encyclopædia Britannica (2013).

 Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite :

Quote :

"Information supplied instantaneously about an individual's own physiological processes.
 Data concerning a person's cardiovascular activity (blood pressure and heart rate), temperature, brain waves, or muscle tension is monitored electronically and returned, or “fed back,” to that person by a gauge on a meter, a light, or a sound. Though such activity of the autonomic nervous system was once thought to be beyond an individual's control,  it has been shown that an individual can be taught to use  the biological data to learn how to voluntarily control  the body's reactions to stress or “outside-the-skin” events.
An individual learns through biofeedback training to detect  his physical reactions (inside-the-skin events) and establish control over them.
Biofeedback training is a type of behaviour therapy that attempts  to change learned responses to stressors.  It can be very successful in alleviating symptoms (e.g., pain and muscle tension) of a disorder, and its effects can be especially lasting if used  in combination with psychotherapy to help the patient understand his reactions to stress.
Complaints that have been treated by biofeedback training include migraine headaches,gastrointestinal cramping (e.g., colitis), high blood pressure, tics, and the frequency and severity of epileptic seizures. Theoretically,many psychologists believe it possible to bring under partial control  any physiological process that can be continuously monitored and displayed,including electrophysiological activity of the limbic system and other homeostatic processes.
Biofeedback training with brain waves has also been useful in enhancing mental functioning. “Alpha (wave) training” elicits the calming and  integrative effects of meditation. Theta wave training has led to more focused attention, the control of “mental blocks” during examinations, and the control of anxiety." End quote .


Quote
The 'will' to learn stuff and do the practice is just as material - a result of your low-level drives and biases filtered and modified by the higher level processes based on life experience and reflective feedbacks.

Learning and practice or training cannot be accomplished without the focused active attention of the will , the related (neuro) physiological processes are driven by the former .


Quote
None of that stuff requires any non-physical or non-material influences; you can certainly describe it all in terms of non-material processes, and in a top-down causal sense, if that helps you understand the high level behaviour, but those processes and emergent interacting patterns of activity are all expressions of physical, material neuronal activity.

You're just talking non-sense : without the top-down non-mechanical causation of the mind through the attention focus and action of the will , those physiological processes relating to neuroplasticity and to self-directed neuroplasticity through brain training , learning ...wouldn't take place : the latter are just the image of the process , not the process itself , let alone that they are the cause of the process .

Quote
Nor is there any reason to believe, or evidence to suggest, that exotic quantum physics is involved or necessary, although it is conceivable that QM might help optimize critical paths (as in photosynthesis or avian navigation).

How do you know that then ? Nobody understands QM .Better still : no interpretation of QM can be proved yet conclusively , although one particular interpretation of QM is way more simple and plausible than all the rest : the observer effect one that's consistent with what Schwartz and other non-materialist scientists have been saying on the subject ,and that's consistent also with our daily experiences also, to mention just that .

Quote
Looking for a non-physical, non-local consciousness, you're just chasing redundant phantasmic figments. You're not in a dark room looking for a black cat; neuroscience has turned the light on and there's no cat there; a few dark shadows, perhaps, but nowhere for a cat to hide. If you take off your dark glasses, you can see that for yourself.

Sweet dreams, Alice in your own materialistic magical wonderland .

That's just a matter of opinion or interpretation of what neuroscience has been saying , neuroscience that's been more consistent with the above than with that materialistic non-sense .

Materialistic neuroscience has been just stuck within the fundamentally false and superseded by QM deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view , while the non-materialist neuroscience is more consistent with QM ...


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2014 18:43:25
How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training  ...without mindful focus or  attention and action of your conscious  will ? : you're just talking rubbish , dlorde ,and i am not  gonna say sorry this time,not even out of politeness or courtesy,  simply because you are ,big time, as a matter of fact .
LOL! the argument from incredulity and insult... yet again. Sadly predictable.

Quote
We're not determined computers or machines , no hardware run by software .Materialism cannot intrinsically but say we are , but that's no empirical fact , just materialist bullshit : see the difference ?
I can see that you find the idea that you are the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences distressing, but, ironically, that's the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences  [;)]
New life experiences can help you get over it.

Quote
What about biofeedback training ? ,when one can voluntarily take control of some aspects of one's own  autonomic nervous system:
That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.

[hint: when trying to rebut or refute an argument, it helps to understand that argument. If you don't understand it, ask questions until you do. Unsupported assertion is just childish and reflects lack of understanding.]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 18:49:05
dlorde, Cheryl :

Watch this 2014 movie : perfectly in line with materialism lol :

"We will be able" to upload lol consciousness and the mind of deceased loved ones to a computer : bullshit : nice movie though :

Trailer :
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 19:01:01
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445591#msg445591 date=1417373005]
How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training  ...without mindful focus or  attention and action of your conscious  will ? : you're just talking rubbish , dlorde ,and i am not  gonna say sorry this time,not even out of politeness or courtesy,  simply because you are ,big time, as a matter of fact .
LOL! the argument from incredulity and insult... yet again. Sadly predictable.

Wrong on all accounts : see above .

Quote
Quote
We're not determined computers or machines , no hardware run by software .Materialism cannot intrinsically but say we are , but that's no empirical fact , just materialist bullshit : see the difference ?
I can see that you find the idea that you are the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences distressing, but, ironically, that's the complex product of your genetic endowment and your life experiences  [;)]
New life experiences can help you get over it.

Genetic determinism has been refuted and it does make no biological sense whatsoever either , not to mention epigenetics ....
As for the rest of this post of yours , i see you still can't make the difference between deterministic mechanical materialism (that was built upon the fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view )and between science yet , if ever .

New life experiences might make you reject your false materialism someday , who knows , if ever ,

Quote
Quote
What about biofeedback training ? ,when one can voluntarily take control of some aspects of one's own  autonomic nervous system:
That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.

Yeah, right ...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical  universe that is : we don't .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 19:06:13
Guys :
You can't access the full version of this  following amazing article of the new scientist unless you subscribe to the latter :

Meh - read it when it was first published. It's just a melodramatic popular science version of the MIT introduction to quantum superposition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc) lecture I posted earlier. Isn't QM weird?  [::)] (yeah, we know).

The argument from incredulity is a persistent human failing - as continually demonstrated by the new knowledge we acquire. Likewise the associated magical thinking, e.g. the attribution of magical ('non-physical') influences to account for poorly understood mechanisms. Together they account for too much nonsense and too many fantasy belief systems. Discovering the real world is far more interesting.

Yeah , right :
Whenever something wouldn't fit into your absurd outdated paradoxical superseded and false materialistic secular dogmatic  religion , well, just ignore it , deny it as such or just try to explain it away that way .

Way to go, scientist.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2014 19:13:03
"We will be able" to upload lol consciousness and the mind of deceased loved ones to a computer : bullshit : nice movie though :
Theoretically this could be done - it's the same level of technology as the Star Trek transporter, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. I used to think it might be achievable someday, but I now think it's technically near-as-dammit impossible (to capture a sufficiently detailed snapshot of all the relevant information in a specific human brain, potentially to molecular level). However, I'm pretty sure it will be possible to create a generic neuromorphic computer emulation of a human brain - the US and European Union are funding just such a project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/).

However, as a thought experiment, like the Star Trek transporter, it is a rich and fascinating source of Ship-of-Theseus-type philosophical puzzles about the nature of identity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 19:22:38
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445559#msg445559 date=1417311316]
Cheryl :

Here is a totally different conception of the mind-brain relationship ( In total contrast with that outdated and refuted mindless Skinner's behaviorism that used to deny the very existence of consciousness or the mind as such .) , that's consistent with the available data , that has been scientifically demonstrated as well ,that's close to our own awareness of our daily experiences  and it does work too  : i have tried it myself with success :  The non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy :





You missed the point entirely. Not surprised.

He was not denying the "existence" of consciousness. His argument was that if the sensory processes are material, the mapping of them to the brain certainly can be as well; that everything we think "about" is ultimately derived from them and replicates them. His second point is that thinking is a process, an event, something I've argued as well.  When an anti-materialist says "point to an idea in the brain," one could just as easily say, "show me where walking is in the legs" or explain how a bird can fly when none of its individual cells can. Tell me where a tornado goes when it's finished being a tornado. States and processes are material based, even if they are less tangible.

And cognitive therapy can be explained, (actually better explained,) from a neuroscience perspective. If the brain does have modules that approach or solve problems in different ways, like a team of rivals, there is no reason why one part cannot, with practice, compensate for the deficiencies, or over ride the impulses of another part. But that actually makes no sense if you view immaterial consciousness as a discrete, uniform entity, in which case it really is boot strapping.
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Does Skinner's behaviourism not deny the very existence of the subjective inner experiences, emotions , will ,consciousness ,the mind ...as such ? Get real.

Furthermore, you're just confusing materialism with science still : non-materialist neuroscience and non-materialist cognitive psychology , the latter that relies on the former , are  both consistent with QM ,not to mention that the non-materialist neuroscience is the best interpretation so far of the empirical evidence that has been delivered by neuroscience and is consistent with the latter's findings  , while the materialistic neuroscience 's model or theory of consciousness has been supported by absolutely no =zero  empirical evidence whatsoever, and while materialistic neuroscience is still stuck within the fundamentally false and superseded outdated deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built , ironically enough .

In short :

What conclusive empirical evidence is  there that  proves that the universe,including ourselves , is just exclusively physical or material , and hence it can be explained and accounted for by just material processes ? None = a big zero : that's just materialism , no science .

Better still , and once again to ad nausea lol as RD said , i repeat the following for the millionth time :

The major anomaly of them all : consciousness , has been breaking the classical dry deterministic mechanical neck of materialism by proving it to be false , simply because materialism can never intrinsically account for consciousness and all its related processes and anomalies , let alone explain them, and hence the universe , including ourselves , is not exclusively material or physical = it cannot be accounted for , let alone explained , by just material processes .

Better still : the 2 major enigmas ever : consciousness and QM have been encountering each other : none of them can be understood , accounted for or explained without reference to the other ,since they are both inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other,which means that any scientific understanding of the universe , including ourselves , is inseparable from the nature and role of consciousness in it ,and cannot be done without it as well  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2014 19:35:35
Genetic determinism has been refuted and it does make no biological sense whatsoever either , not to mention epigenetics ....
Epigenetics is the influence of the environment on gene expression - didn't you know?  [;)]

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As for the rest of this post of yours , i see you still can't make the difference between deterministic mechanical materialism (that was built upon the fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view )and between science yet , if ever .
Although the Many Worlds interpretation resolves the apparently stochastic nature of QM, I'm happy to concede QM uncertainty until we can be sure which interpretation is the best model of reality. But there's no doubt that, at a macro scale, the world is deterministic to a high-level approximation - if it wasn't, neither our modern technology nor biology, nor the cosmological universe itself, would function as it does. As noted elsewhere, this doesn't mean it's predictable; chaos and emergence sees to that.

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New life experiences might make you reject your false materialism someday
Possible, but unlikely.

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That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.

Yeah, right ...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical  universe that is : we don't .
Strictly speaking perhaps not, but see above. Furthermore, we know very precisely what QM predicts about our observations - its not a wild card, which is why the world around us behaves so deterministically at macro scales - and why Newton's Laws still apply at everyday human scales (after all, he derived them from empirical grounds).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 20:06:44
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445600#msg445600 date=1417376135]
Genetic determinism has been refuted and it does make no biological sense whatsoever either , not to mention epigenetics ....
Epigenetics is the influence of the environment on gene expression - didn't you know?  [;)]

I know : The refuted genetic determinism (See the lecture ,for example, of James A.Shapiro on the subject on youtube : "21st century evolution revisited " ) cannot be reconciled with epigenetics and with the fact that we can even turn our genes off and on,change or physiology,  just via placebo effects or beliefs thoughts , with the fact that we can change our brains through self-directed neuroplasticity , through meditation , brain training ,...and cannot be reconciled with the fact that we can control some aspects of the autonomic brain .....

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As for the rest of this post of yours , i see you still can't make the difference between deterministic mechanical materialism (that was built upon the fundamentally false deterministic mechanical classical Newtonian world view )and between science yet , if ever .
Although the Many Worlds interpretation resolves the apparently stochastic nature of QM, I'm happy to concede QM uncertainty until we can be sure which interpretation is the best model of reality. But there's no doubt that, at a macro scale, the world is deterministic to a high-level approximation - if it wasn't, neither our modern technology nor biology, nor the cosmological universe itself, would function as it does. As noted elsewhere, this doesn't mean it's predictable; chaos and emergence sees to that.

Yeah right : the observer effect interpretation of QM is the most simple , the best and most plausible one so far ,and thus makes room for relative free will: see also Bell's theorem and all its related experiments  (relative free will in relation to the kinds of measurements  ,experiments , experiments' design ...scientists can decide to conduct regarding  the quantum level at least )  in total contrast with that absurd untestable MW theory that's just a materialistic desperate attempt to rescue the  deterministic false materialism  ,and hence since the conscious active power of the human will through the power of attention focus and action cannot but be relatively free , then, the universe cannot be deterministic or mechanical.

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New life experiences might make you reject your false materialism someday
Possible, but unlikely.

Unlikely ?: you know that already he lol .No need for new life experiences for you then . lol

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That's a great example of what I was talking about - you just need to think through the chain of motivations behind that voluntary control.

Yeah, right ...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical  universe that is : we don't .
Strictly speaking perhaps not, but see above. Furthermore, we know very precisely what QM predicts about our observations - its not a wild card, which is why the world around us behaves so deterministically at macro scales - and why Newton's Laws still apply at everyday human scales (after all, he derived them from empirical grounds).

I thought the whole universe was/is quantum "mechanical " ,that physicists  still can't understand QM while using it so successfully ,and that both relativity theories still can't be unified with QM , not to mention that  99,99999999 % of the universe is made of "empty space " and the remaining 0,00000000000 1 % is made of cloudy spooky weird wave/particle duality , not to mention that so-called renormalization of QM maths just to make room for the alleged existence of the unknown dark matter and unknown dark energy which  allegedly  "occupy " 96 % of the universe .

What makes you so sure of yourself then as to assert the above ? Nothing , just a -priori held materialistic thin-air beliefs, no empirical evidence  .

Way to go, scientist.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 30/11/2014 20:17:45
... and once again to ad nausea lol as RD said ...

However I did spell it correctly : "ad nauseam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam)" , ( in Reply #595 ).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 20:40:51
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445598#msg445598 date=1417374783]
"We will be able" to upload lol consciousness and the mind of deceased loved ones to a computer : bullshit : nice movie though :
Theoretically this could be done - it's the same level of technology as the Star Trek transporter, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't break any fundamental laws of physics. I used to think it might be achievable someday, but I now think it's technically near-as-dammit impossible (to capture a sufficiently detailed snapshot of all the relevant information in a specific human brain, potentially to molecular level). However, I'm pretty sure it will be possible to create a generic neuromorphic computer emulation of a human brain - the US and European Union are funding just such a project (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/).

Beware of confusing sci-fic with science , even though the former can sometimes become the latter :

Ok, they can create a s-emulation of the human brain , that can be done , simply because the brain is a physical or material process , but that will not tell them much about how consciousness shapes the brain , work through it ,how consciousness shapes the illusory physical reality ...., let alone about the origin or emergence of consciousness , simply because consciousness is a non-capturable non-local and non-physical process that can neither be s-emulated nor "uploaded " to any computer or machine , let alone to any other man's brain  lol .

Concerning the latter , we all "upload-download " to-from each other some aspects of our consciousnesses lol by communicating with each other , exchanging ideas with each other ...

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However, as a thought experiment, like the Star Trek transporter, it is a rich and fascinating source of Ship-of-Theseus-type philosophical puzzles about the nature of identity.

Maybe .
Identity or self-identity is an elusive dynamic process that might turn out to be fully illusory .
Teleportation is yet another fascinating subject : some say some ancient civilizations could do that , i don't know .Scientists have even succeeded in teleporting some particles lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 20:44:59
... and once again to ad nausea lol as RD said ...

However I did spell it correctly : "ad nauseam (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam)" , ( in Reply #595 ).

Ok, whatever grammar-vocabulary teacher . Have something relevant to say ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 20:52:13
dlorde :

Maybe ,the blue brain project will be delivering just what the genome project and the decade of the brain have been delivering , despite their bombastic talk ,i don't know .
I hope they can come up with something enlightening and useful .

P.S.: I had a relatively bad day today , sorry .Thanks for your interesting replies and time .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/11/2014 21:03:17
What makes you so sure of yourself then as to assert the above ? Nothing , just a -priori held materialistic thin-air beliefs, no empirical evidence  .

Way to go, scientist.
Ask NASA - they used Newtonian dynamics to direct their tours of the solar system. Are you suggesting they didn't happen?

The large-scale electronics in the device you use to post to these forums uses deterministic electronics, the microprocessor uses that and the precise predictability of quantum mechanics to function reliably. Your own body's biochemistry relies on predictable, repeatable reactions. The structure and behaviour of matter itself is determined by the interacting forces so precisely modelled by quantum field theory.

By all means carry on believing it's all down to immaterial, non-physical magic. That's entirely your decision. You've been given enough information to understand should you wish to. The universe doesn't care what you believe, and science and the acquisition of knowledge will continue happily on its way without any need to invoke your redundant hypothesis.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/11/2014 21:08:58
There he goes again with his NASA and classical physics lol
Gotta go, bye ,good night , thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/11/2014 23:21:27

Does Skinner's behaviourism not deny the very existence of the subjective inner experiences, emotions , will ,consciousness ,the mind ...as such ? Get real.



Uh no, he never did. At the time he did his research, there weren't MRIs, PETs, and much less was known about brain anatomy and biochemistry. Skinner just focused on what he could measure and test, which was observable behavior. But every new science has to start somewhere and his decision to start with that was a reasonable one. Even when models change, good data is still good data.
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Furthermore, you're just confusing materialism with science still : non-materialist neuroscience and non-materialist cognitive psychology , the latter that relies on the former , are  both consistent with QM ,not to mention that the non-materialist neuroscience is the best interpretation.....



"Non materialist neuroscience"?? Did I really just read that????
That's hilarious, Don.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 30/11/2014 23:41:03


"Non materialist neuroscience"?? Did I really just read that????
That's hilarious, Don.
LOL,.................I'd appreciate an explanation for that one myself!!!

Come on Don!! Define "Non materialist neuroscience" without referencing the human nervous system. I double dog dare you!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 01/12/2014 00:12:07
Still waiting, Don. Just one piece of evidence, please, that whatever you advocate delivers a more accurate prediction than whatever it is that you decry.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2014 00:45:11

How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training  ...without mindful focus or  attention and action of your conscious  will ?



There's nothing about attention that makes it extra magical or incompatible with neuroscience. Is though, an interesting topic, if you'd like to discuss it more in detail.
For starters, here's some comments from wikipedia:

Neural correlates

Most experiments show that one neural correlate of attention is enhanced firing. If a neuron has a certain response to a stimulus when the animal is not attending to the stimulus, then when the animal does attend to the stimulus, the neuron's response will be enhanced even if the physical characteristics of the stimulus remain the same.

In a 2007 review, Knudsen[46] describes a more general model which identifies four core processes of attention, with working memory at the center:

    Working memory temporarily stores information for detailed analysis.
    Competitive selection is the process that determines which information gains access to working memory.
    Through top-down sensitivity control, higher cognitive processes can regulate signal intensity in information channels that compete for access to working memory, and thus give them an advantage in the process of competitive selection. Through top-down sensitivity control, the momentary content of working memory can influence the selection of new information, and thus mediate voluntary control of attention in a recurrent loop (endogenous attention).[47]
    Bottom-up saliency filters automatically enhance the response to infrequent stimuli, or stimuli of instinctive or learned biological relevance (exogenous attention).[47]

Neutrally, at different hierarchical levels spatial maps can enhance or inhibit activity in sensory areas, and induce orienting behaviors like eye movement.

    At the top of the hierarchy, the frontal eye fields (FEF) on the dorsolateral frontal cortex contain a retinocentric spatial map. Microstimulation in the FEF induces monkeys to make a saccade to the relevant location. Stimulation at levels too low to induce a saccade will nonetheless enhance cortical responses to stimuli located in the relevant area.
    At the next lower level, a variety of spatial maps are found in the parietal cortex. In particular, the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) contains a saliency map and is interconnected both with the FEF and with sensory areas.
    Certain automatic responses that influence attention, like orienting to a highly salient stimulus, are mediated subcortically by the superior colliculi.
    At the neural network level, it is thought that processes like lateral inhibition mediate the process of competitive selection.

In many cases attention produces changes in the EEG. Many animals, including humans, produce gamma waves (40–60 Hz) when focusing attention on a particular object or activity.[48][49][50][51]

Another commonly used model for the attention system has been put forth by researchers such as Michael Posner divides attention into three functional components: alerting, orienting, and executive attention.[52][53]

    Alerting is the process involved in becoming and staying attentive toward the surroundings. It appears to exist in the frontal and parietal lobes of the right hemisphere, and is modulated by norepinephrine.[54][55]
    Orienting is the directing of attention to a specific stimulus.
    Executive attention is used when there is a conflict between multiple attention cues. It is essentially the same as the central executive in Baddeley's model of working memory. The Eriksen flanker task has shown that the executive control of attention may take place in the anterior cingulate cortex[56]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 17:37:44
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445609#msg445609 date=1417381397]
What makes you so sure of yourself then as to assert the above ? Nothing , just a -priori held materialistic thin-air beliefs, no empirical evidence  .

Way to go, scientist.
Ask NASA - they used Newtonian dynamics to direct their tours of the solar system. Are you suggesting they didn't happen?

I've already explained  to you, earlier on, that the fact that the classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view or classical physics,the fact that it  is approximately correct and fundamentally false does not mean that it doesn't work on the large scale .

Any idiot who would say otherwise must try to jump from a building  to "test " gravity lol

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The large-scale electronics in the device you use to post to these forums uses deterministic electronics, the microprocessor uses that and the precise predictability of quantum mechanics to function reliably. Your own body's biochemistry relies on predictable, repeatable reactions. The structure and behaviour of matter itself is determined by the interacting forces so precisely modelled by quantum field theory.

That's all about the physical universe ,who said otherwise ?

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By all means carry on believing it's all down to immaterial, non-physical magic. That's entirely your decision.

I was talking about the top-down active non-mechanical causation of the human mindful  will through the power of attention and focus only in that context , and in the context that QM can never be understood without reference to the mind , because they seem so inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other ,and in the context that ,as science gets more advanced , it will turn out that any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness , as a certain prominent physicist said whose similar quote i have posted , on many occasions .


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You've been given enough information to understand should you wish to. The universe doesn't care what you believe, and science and the acquisition of knowledge will continue happily on its way without any need to invoke your redundant hypothesis.

Ironically enough , this thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,since materialism is false ,and hence the universe cannot be just physical or material = the universe , including ourselves cannot be explained by material processes only .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 17:47:36
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author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg445613#msg445613 date=1417390863]


"Non materialist neuroscience"?? Did I really just read that????
That's hilarious, Don.
LOL,.................I'd appreciate an explanation for that one myself!!!

Ironically enough , this whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature , since materialism is false ,and hence the universe , including ourselves ,cannot be just physical or material = the universe , including ourselves thus , cannot be explained by material processes only,that's why all sciences for that matter must become non-materialist in the above mentioned sense ,by rejecting materialism,  including neuroscience  .

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Come on Don!! Define "Non materialist neuroscience" without referencing the human nervous system. I double dog dare you!

See above : the non-materialist neuroscience embraces both the material or physical brain and body , together with the rest of the physical environment or reality + embraces the  non-physical and non-local consciousness ,the mind and their related anomalies and processes as well .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2014 18:20:32


Don't behave as if you have just heard that,don't be silly  :  (This whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,including for a post-materialistic neuroscience , remember .) i have even posted some excerpts of some books of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard ,an excerpt from "The brain and the mind " by Jeffrey Schwatrz and Sharon Begley : a non-materialist cognitive psychology approach , to mention just that  .


Yeah, and it's identical to dualism. They've just renamed it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 18:37:56
Cheryl :


You haven't done your homework well , Cheryl :

The following is a very short excerpt from Encyclopedia Britannica regarding behaviourism :  no need to display the whole long text thus :

Quote : " a highly influential academic school of psychology that dominated psychological theory between the two world wars. Classical behaviourism, prevalent in the first third of the 20th century, was concerned exclusively with measurable and observable data and excluded ideas, emotions, and the consideration of inner mental experience and activity in general. In behaviourism, the organism is seen as “responding” to conditions (stimuli) set by the outer environment and by inner biological processes." End quote .

Not to mention that positivism that 's all about just observable phenomena does hold no water either,as i said to dlorde , earlier on .

Try to apply positivism to QM lol

By the way , reductionist materialism does not only deny the very existence of human subjective experiences or psyche , emotions , the mind ....as such , it does worse than that : materialism reduces all that to just (neuro) physiological processes .Worst : that materialist production theory regarding brain and mind has not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever .

If you have paid attention to what Graziano's theory was all about , for example, you would have noticed that he basically says that consciousness ,psyche ,the mind , free will , ...are just elaborate illusions : just computed by the brain simulations : useful illusions or useful illusory pragmatic survival strategies : illusions or brain simulations that feel real though : that's what the materialist logic says in fact when pushed to its limits .

Furthermore ,Skinner's mechanistic behaviourism school of psychology was mainly influenced by the work of Pavlov ,in the sense that one can know all about animal and human behaviour through only stimuli and response , without having to pay attention , to take into consideration , or to acknowledge the existence or relevance of the human inner subjective experiences or psyche or that of the mind ...: it concerns itself only with the observable behaviour through stimuli and response  .

Behaviourism does in fact see no difference between man and the brute ,simply put : they are all allegedly just deterministic physiology interacting with the physical world  , nothingelse .

Behaviourism was already rejected and refuted by the advances of neuroscience , by its related cognitive psychology ....

............


Don't behave as if you have just heard that,don't be silly  :  (This whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,including for a post-materialistic neuroscience , remember .) i have even posted some excerpts of some books of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard ,an excerpt from "The brain and the mind " by Jeffrey Schwatrz and Sharon Begley : a non-materialist cognitive psychology approach , to mention just that  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 18:45:37


Don't behave as if you have just heard that,don't be silly  :  (This whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,including for a post-materialistic neuroscience , remember .) i have even posted some excerpts of some books of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard ,an excerpt from "The brain and the mind " by Jeffrey Schwatrz and Sharon Begley : a non-materialist cognitive psychology approach , to mention just that  .


Yeah, and it's identical to dualism. They've just renamed it.

Call it whatever you wanna call it (Irrelevant )  , but fact is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, and hence the universe , including ourselves, is not exclusively physical or material = cannot be explained just by material processes only , so , all sciences for that matter , including neuroscience thus , must reject materialism and become non-materialistic by both embracing the material and the immaterial in nature ,basta , period.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 18:51:56

Does Skinner's behaviourism not deny the very existence of the subjective inner experiences, emotions , will ,consciousness ,the mind ...as such ? Get real.



Uh no, he never did. At the time he did his research, there weren't MRIs, PETs, and much less was known about brain anatomy and biochemistry. Skinner just focused on what he could measure and test, which was observable behavior. But every new science has to start somewhere and his decision to start with that was a reasonable one. Even when models change, good data is still good data.
Quote

Furthermore, you're just confusing materialism with science still : non-materialist neuroscience and non-materialist cognitive psychology , the latter that relies on the former , are  both consistent with QM ,not to mention that the non-materialist neuroscience is the best interpretation.....



"Non materialist neuroscience"?? Did I really just read that????
That's hilarious, Don.


You haven't done your homework well , Cheryl :

The following is a very short excerpt from Encyclopedia Britannica regarding behaviourism :  no need to display the whole long text thus :

Quote : " a highly influential academic school of psychology that dominated psychological theory between the two world wars. Classical behaviourism, prevalent in the first third of the 20th century, was concerned exclusively with measurable and observable data and excluded ideas, emotions, and the consideration of inner mental experience and activity in general. In behaviourism, the organism is seen as “responding” to conditions (stimuli) set by the outer environment and by inner biological processes." End quote .

Not to mention that positivism that 's all about just observable phenomena does hold no water either,as i said to dlorde , earlier on .

Try to apply positivism to QM lol

By the way , reductionist materialism does not only deny the very existence of human subjective experiences or psyche , emotions , the mind ....as such , it does worse than that : materialism reduces all that to just (neuro) physiological processes .Worst : that materialist production theory regarding brain and mind has not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever .

If you have paid attention to what Graziano's theory was all about , for example, you would have noticed that he basically says that consciousness ,psyche ,the mind , free will , ...are just elaborate illusions : just computed by the brain simulations : useful illusions or useful illusory pragmatic survival strategies : illusions or brain simulations that feel real though : that's what the materialist logic says in fact when pushed to its limits .

Furthermore ,Skinner's mechanistic behaviourism school of psychology was mainly influenced by the work of Pavlov ,in the sense that one can know all about animal and human behaviour through only stimuli and response , without having to pay attention , to take into consideration , or to acknowledge the existence or relevance of the human inner subjective experiences or psyche or that of the mind ...: it concerns itself only with the observable behaviour through stimuli and response  .

Behaviourism does in fact see no difference between man and the brute ,simply put : they are all allegedly just deterministic physiology interacting with the physical world  , nothingelse .

Behaviourism was already rejected and refuted by the advances of neuroscience , by its related cognitive psychology ....

............


Don't behave as if you have just heard that,don't be silly  :  (This whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,including for a post-materialistic neuroscience , remember .) i have even posted some excerpts of some books of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard ,an excerpt from "The brain and the mind " by Jeffrey Schwatrz and Sharon Begley : a non-materialist cognitive psychology approach , to mention just that  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/12/2014 18:52:25


Call it whatever you wanna call it (Irrelevant )  , but fact is : materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness,

First define consciousness, then provide evidence why it can't be understood thru the workings of the nervous system.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 19:10:55

How can you learn , practice exercises or training, meditation, mindfulness, brain training , brain exercises , biofeedback training  ...without mindful focus or  attention and action of your conscious  will ?



There's nothing about attention that makes it extra magical or incompatible with neuroscience. Is though, an interesting topic, if you'd like to discuss it more in detail.


Read that posted excerpt to you from " The mind and the brain " book by Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley on the subject, in the previous page , i guess  : the whole non-materialist cognitive psychology or therapy is based on  the mindful and active power of attention or focus through the conscious mindful power of the will and action : that therapy has been demonstrated scientifically. Scanning the brains of patients who underwent that therapy, before and after the therapy showed that it worked significantly by rewiring the brain accordingly .I have tried it myself ,once again , together with millions of other people with enormous success  .

That's a totally drug-free therapy without any side effects whatsoever thus .Only severely mentally  ill patients should combine that drug-free therapy with their medication and in combination with the help of their therapists .

David D.Burns is yet another scientist who applies that therapy successfully :

Watch the following on the subject then : 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=david+d.burns

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jeffrey+schwartz

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jeffrey+schwartz+the+mind+and+the+brain


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 19:16:52
Quote
author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg445613#msg445613 date=1417390863]


"Non materialist neuroscience"?? Did I really just read that????
That's hilarious, Don.
LOL,.................I'd appreciate an explanation for that one myself!!!

Ironically enough , this whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature , since materialism is false ,and hence the universe , including ourselves ,cannot be just physical or material = the universe , including ourselves thus , cannot be explained by material processes only,that's why all sciences for that matter must become non-materialist in the above mentioned sense ,by rejecting materialism,  including neuroscience  .

Quote
Come on Don!! Define "Non materialist neuroscience" without referencing the human nervous system. I double dog dare you!

See above : the non-materialist neuroscience embraces both the material or physical brain and body , together with the rest of the physical environment or reality + embraces the  non-physical and non-local consciousness ,the mind and their related anomalies and processes as well .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/12/2014 19:18:32
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445609#msg445609 date=1417381397]
What makes you so sure of yourself then as to assert the above ? Nothing , just a -priori held materialistic thin-air beliefs, no empirical evidence  .

Way to go, scientist.
Ask NASA - they used Newtonian dynamics to direct their tours of the solar system. Are you suggesting they didn't happen?

I've already explained  to you, earlier on, that the fact that the classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view or classical physics,the fact that it  is approximately correct and fundamentally false does not mean that it doesn't work on the large scale .

Any idiot who would say otherwise must try to jump from a building  to "test " gravity lol

Quote
The large-scale electronics in the device you use to post to these forums uses deterministic electronics, the microprocessor uses that and the precise predictability of quantum mechanics to function reliably. Your own body's biochemistry relies on predictable, repeatable reactions. The structure and behaviour of matter itself is determined by the interacting forces so precisely modelled by quantum field theory.

That's all about the physical universe ,who said otherwise ?

Quote
By all means carry on believing it's all down to immaterial, non-physical magic. That's entirely your decision.

I was talking about the top-down active non-mechanical causation of the human mindful  will through the power of attention and focus only in that context , and in the context that QM can never be understood without reference to the mind , because they seem so inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other ,and in the context that ,as science gets more advanced , it will turn out that any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness , as a certain prominent physicist said whose similar quote i have posted , on many occasions .


Quote
You've been given enough information to understand should you wish to. The universe doesn't care what you believe, and science and the acquisition of knowledge will continue happily on its way without any need to invoke your redundant hypothesis.

Ironically enough , the very progress of science itself is at stake here , since the false materialism has been holding it back ,to say the least thus ,  that's mainly why i posted this thread , in the first place to begin with , a whole thread that is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,since materialism is false ,and hence the universe cannot be just physical or material = the universe , including ourselves, cannot be explained by material processes only ,so all sciences for that matter must reject materialism and become non-materialistic by embracing both the material and the immaterial in nature .The immaterial that's irreducible to the material ,that is .

Is that so hard to understand , Mr.scientist ? .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/12/2014 22:10:23
I've already explained  to you, earlier on, that the fact that the classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view or classical physics,the fact that it  is approximately correct and fundamentally false does not mean that it doesn't work on the large scale .
Lol! I think I mentioned that too:
...at a macro scale, the world is deterministic to a high-level approximation...
Quote
...only if we would live in a deterministic mechanical  universe that is : we don't .
Strictly speaking perhaps not, but see above.

Quote
...QM can never be understood without reference to the mind , because they seem so inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other, as a certain prominent physicist said...
Things are not always as they seem - and even certain prominent physicists can be mistaken (in fact, it happens a lot - particularly as they get older). Intuition is a poor guide to reality, and it's no coincidence that QM interpretations involving consciousness are now reduced to a tiny fringe minority among the experts in the field (I've told you this before).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 01/12/2014 23:28:15



Don't behave as if you have just heard that,don't be silly  :  (This whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science ,including for a post-materialistic neuroscience , remember .) i have even posted some excerpts of some books of non-materialist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard ,an excerpt from "The brain and the mind " by Jeffrey Schwatrz and Sharon Begley : a non-materialist cognitive psychology approach , to mention just that  .

You're skirting the issue. If immaterial consciousness is a uniform, discrete entity, then immaterial consciousness acting on the physical brain in order to produce a change in immaterial consciousness, makes absolutely no sense.

That's why your ideas about immaterial neuroscience or immaterial cognitive psychology are contradictory and substance-less.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 02/12/2014 00:26:37


Ironically enough , this whole thread is all about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science


Apparently not. Science allows you to make predictions from explanatory hypotheses. Whatever it is that you are advocating, seems not to do so. So whatever it is, it isn't a science. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 02/12/2014 16:48:08
Once again, your theory provides  no explanation given of how the immaterial interacts with the material brain, no explanation of how information is stored, sent, or received back by the non local conscious agency, other than vague references to entanglement, but of course, no explanation of what exactly is being entangled. When the brain is incapacitated by damage or disease, there's no explanation of  why the content of thought and the quality of subjective experience itself should be affected, and no explanation as to how the fractured non local consciousness processes sensory information when  his robot body/brain is having technical difficulties.

Which one of these aspects of immaterial consciousness would you like to discuss? As you pointed out above, this thread was about post materialism science, but there's been very little description from you about how any of it works, just more ranting about what you see lacking in material mechanisms.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 20:25:11
Volitional effort is effort of attention :

I have spoken as if our attention were wholly determined by neural conditions. I believe that the array of things we can attend to is so determined. No object can catch our attention except by the neural machinery. But the amount of the attention which an object receives after it has caught our mental eye is another question. It often takes effort to keep the mind upon it. We feel that we can make more or less of the effort as we choose. If this feeling be not deceptive, if our effort be a spiritual force, then of course it contributes coequally with the cerebral conditions to the result.

Though it introduce no new idea, it will deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more quickly away…. t is often a matter of but a second more or less of attention at the outset, whether one system shall gain force to occupy the field and develop itself, and exclude the other, or be excluded itself by the other…. [T]he whole drama of the voluntary life hinges on the amount of attention, slightly more or slightly less, which rival motor ideas may receive…. Effort may be an original force and not a mere effect, and it may be indeterminate in amount.

Source : Psychology : A Briefer Course by William James
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 20:31:00
“The function of the effort is…to keep affirming and adopting a thought which, if left to itself, would slip away.”

“To sustain a representation, to think, is, in short, the only moral act.” Here we got to the nub of it, the conviction that the act of focusing attention so that one thought, one possible action, prevails over all the other possible ones competing for dominance in consciousness—this is the true moral act, the point where volition enters into what James had just called “the cerebral conditions” and, moreover, “contributes coequally” to them in determining which of those competing thoughts and actions will be chosen. It is this power of attention—to select one possibility over all others—that invests us with an efficacious will."

 From the same above mentioned source through " The mind and the brain , Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force". By Jeffrey M.Schwartz and Sharon Begley.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 20:35:10
“It’s uncanny,” I repeated. “It’s unbelievable,” Henry said. A man of the nineteenth century had described in detail the connection between the quantum-based theory of attention and volition that we described in our “Volitional Brain” papers. The causal efficacy of will, James had intuited more than one hundred years ago, is a higher-level manifestation of the causal efficacy of attention. To focus attention on one idea, on one possible course of action among the many bubbling up inchoate in our consciousness, is precisely what we mean by an act of volition, James was saying; volition acts through attention, which magnifies, stabilizes, clarifies, and otherwise makes predominant one thought out of many. The essential achievement of the will is to attend to one object and hold it clear and strong before the mind, letting all others—its rivals for attention and subsequent action—fade away like starlight swamped by the radiance of the Sun. That was just the idea that had emerged from the quantum approach.”

  From the same above mentioned source (Henry P.Stapp and Schwartz discussing the above .)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 20:37:19
Given James’s strong philosophical bent, it’s hardly surprising these twin concepts, attention and will, were of such tremendous importance to him. He was well aware, especially given his goal of placing psychology squarely within natural science, that thickets of controversy awaited anyone willing to tackle the question of free will. But on the key point of the causal efficacy of attention, and its relation to will, James held fast to his belief—one he suspected could not be proved conclusively on scientific grounds, but to which he clung tenaciously on ethical grounds—that the effort to focus attention is an active, primary, and causal force, and not solely the result of properties of a stimulus that acts on a passive brain. Between his 1,300-plus-page Principles and the 443-page Briefer Course published fifteen months later, he did not budge from (indeed, he elaborated on) the statement that effortful attention “would deepen and prolong the stay in consciousness of innumerable ideas which else would fade more quickly away.” If we can but understand the effort of attention, James believed, we will have gone a very long way toward understanding the nature of will."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 20:43:57
.....What particularly struck me was James’s recognition of the high stakes involved. The question of whether attention (and therefore will) follows deterministically upon the predictable response of brain cells to stimuli, or whether the amount of attention can be (at least sometimes) freely chosen and causally efficacious, “is in fact the pivotal question of metaphysics, the very hinge on which our picture of the world shall swing from materialism, fatalism, monism, towards spiritualism, freedom, pluralism,—or else the other way.” James was scrupulously fair in giving equal time to the view that attention is a fully determined result of brain function rather than a causally efficacious force. As he notes, it is entirely plausible that attention may be “fatally predetermined” by purely material laws. In this view, the amount of attention we pay a stimulus, be it one from the world outside or an internally generated thought or image, is determined solely by the properties of that stimulus and their interaction with our brain’s circuits. If the words you hear or the images you see are associated with a poignant memory, for instance, then they trigger—automatically and without any active effort by you —more attention than stimuli that lack such associations. In this case, “attention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association bring ‘before the footlights’ of consciousness,” as James put it.
That is, the stimuli themselves provoke neural mechanisms that cause them to be attended to and fixed on.
 This is the attention-as-effect school of thinking.
But James did not think that attention was always and only a fully determined effect of the stimuli that are its object. On the flight back to Los Angeles, I went over in my own mind what we knew about attention, and why it mattered.
We go through our lives “seeing” countless objects that we do not pay attention to. Without attention, the image (or the sound, or the feel—attention plays a role in every sense) does not register in the mind and may not be stored even briefly in memory. I can guarantee that if you were to scan every square centimeter of a crowd scene in a photograph, visual information about every person depicted would reach your visual cortex. But if I asked you, after you had scanned the photo of the crowd, where the man in the fedora and vest was, you would doubtless be flummoxed. Our minds have a limited ability to process information about multiple objects at any given time. “Because of limited processing resources,” as the neuroscientists Sabine Kastner and Leslie Ungerleider of NIH wrote in a 2000 review of attention, “multiple objects present at the same time in the visual field compete for neural representation…. Two stimuli present at the same time within a neuron’s receptive field are not processed independently. [R]ather,…they interact with each other in a mutually suppressive way.”
They compete for neural representation. The key question for attention is, What determines the winner?"

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 21:17:30
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about  many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain :

How the mindful effort of volition through the power of focus or attention can change the brain ....

In short :

How the mind or mental force can change the brain through the dynamic effort of volition via the power of focus .

In other words :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/549

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3281.The_Mind_and_the_Brain
Comment on "The mind and the brain " :

"Conventional science has long held the position that "the mind" is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. This work argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own. The authors demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain. Their work has its basis in our emerging understanding of adult plasticity--the brain's ability to be rewired not just in childhood, but throughout life, a trait only recently established by scientists. But in this paradigm-shifting work, the authors take neuroplasticity one critical step further. Through decades of work treating patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, J. M. Schwarts made an extraordinary finding: while following the therapy he developed, his patients were effecting significant and lasting changes in their own neural pathways. This book follows Schwartz as he investigates this newly discovered power, which he calls self-directed neural plasticity, or, more simply, mental force. The authors suggest boldly that we human beings are more than mere automatons--that with the ability to shape our brains comes the power to shape our destiny."


Another comment on amazon.com :

"A groundbreaking work of science that confirms, for the first time, the independent existence of the mind–and demonstrates the possibilities for human control over the workings of the brain.

Conventional science has long held the position that 'the mind' is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. Now in paperback, Dr Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley's groundbreaking work, The Mind and the Brain, argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own.Dr Schwartz, a leading researcher in brain dysfunctions, and Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain. Their work has its basis in our emerging understanding of adult neuroplasticity–the brain's ability to be rewired not just in childhood, but throughout life, a trait only recently established by neuroscientists.

Through decades of work treating patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), Schwartz made an extraordinary finding: while following the therapy he developed, his patients were effecting significant and lasting changes in their own neural pathways. It was a scientific first: by actively focusing their attention away from negative behaviors and toward more positive ones, Schwartz's patients were using their minds to reshape their brains–and discovering a thrilling new dimension to the concept of neuroplasticity.

The Mind and the Brain follows Schwartz as he investigates this newly discovered power, which he calls self–directed neuroplasticity or, more simply, mental force. It describes his work with noted physicist Henry Stapp and connects the concept of 'mental force' with the ancient practice of mindfulness in Buddhist tradition. And it points to potential new applications that could transform the treatment of almost every variety of neurological dysfunction, from dyslexia to stroke–and could lead to new strategies to help us harness our mental powers. Yet as wondrous as these implications are, perhaps even more important is the philosophical dimension of Schwartz's work. For the existence of mental force offers convincing scientific evidence of human free will, and thus of man's inherent capacity for moral choice. "

http://www.amazon.com/The-Mind-Brain-Neuroplasticity-Mental/dp/0060988479

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 21:33:26
Final thought for today at least :

'I admit that thoughts influence the body.' - Albert Einstein
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 02/12/2014 21:47:07
alancalverd :

Haven't seen your reply yet ,concerning Nassim Haramein's work : How come ? :

http://holofractal.net/the-holofractographic-universe/
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 02/12/2014 23:01:19
Yep. Plenty of "promises to unify" but not a single testable prediction.

And so another day passes.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2014 23:36:09
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about  many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain
Even by 2007 (prompted by specific volitional deficits due to brain impairments), sufficient specific studies of volition had been done to demonstrate that the sense of volition, free-will, and agency are (to many people's surprise) retrospective and post-hoc introspective. For example: Volitional Control of Movement: The Physiology of Free Will (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950571/). Since then decision pathways have been traced at a neuronal level, and the origins of decision have also been extensively modeled, for example, Neuronal correlates of decisions to speak and act (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888926/), or Selection and inhibition mechanisms for human voluntary action decisions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445813/) to pick a couple of relevant papers at random.

These discoveries and ideas are no longer controversial in neurophysiology. As already mentioned, the empirical evidence that brain activity alone generates these behaviours and that the sense of agency, volition, self, etc., is not what it subjectively seems, is overwhelming. Regardless of the number of incredulous articles and papers you post, the evidence speaks for itself (a little ironic joke there). There are still gaps in our knowledge, but no space for magical immaterial volitional agencies. There's no need or place for any such influence - to paraphrase Laplace, 'We have no need of that hypothesis'.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/12/2014 23:45:26
Haven't seen your reply yet ,concerning Nassim Haramein's work : How come ?
Probably because it's not worth commenting on: Nassim Haramein (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nassim_Haramein), Holofractographic universe theory (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=141534), What's so misleading about Nassim Haramein? (http://azureworld.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/whats-so-misleading-about-nassim.html), etc., etc.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/12/2014 23:47:38
- to paraphrase Laplace, 'We have no need of that hypothesis'.
Precisely..................

Don's persistence is the only evidence presented here, and the evidence is that Don is trying to prove the existence of the human soul. His arguments are faith based and as such will not meet the criterion for good  science.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 15:43:59
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about  many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain :

How the mindful effort of volition through the power of focus or attention can change the brain ....

In short :

How the mind or mental force can change the brain through the dynamic effort of volition via the power of focus .

In other words :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.




As magical as will or volition might seem, there are disorders that interfere with volition and motivation (akinetic mutism, apraxia,)  as well structures in the brain associated with volition. According to Ramachandran, "Wanting, it turns out, is crucially dependent on the anterior cingulate."

And we've also discussed Libet's studies that show a choice has been made in the brain before a person becomes consciously aware of making it.

Or Beuregards studies that ironically showed the opposite of what he set out to demonstrate, as explained below:

For review:
Lets break down one of his studies, where he showed a series of erotic images to males and imaged the brain's response to these images. Unsurprisingly he found activation primarily in the limbic and paralimbic regions (amygdala, right anterior temporal pole and the hypothalamus). This region of the brain is long known to be associated with reward assessment and baser drives such as sex, hunger, thirst, fear, and anger. He then asked subjects to repress any sort of sexual thoughts or feelings in regard to the images and showed them again. This time he showed little to no activation in the paralimbic and limbic system, but saw extensive activation in prefrontal regions such as the superior frontal gyrus.[15] The prefrontal regions are associated with what many of us refer to as the normal day-to-day consciousness of ourselves. It is the executive controller and one of its primary roles is that of an inhibitor. It's the part of your brain that tells you when something is really not a good idea, and lets you control yourself; it's the part you use when you are "biting your tongue" to keep from saying what you really want to say.[17]

Working from the theory that it is the material constructs of the brain itself that alters firing patterns this is exactly what we would expect. We see an area of the brain that is activated by stimuli that are known to cause excitation in that region. When asked to inhibit that excitation subjects show brain activation in regions that have been demonstrated to be involved in inhibition. This is one area of the brain putting the brakes on another area of the brain. If we were working from the posit that it is the "psychological space" that is putting the brakes on the limbic system, why would we posit any other area of the brain needing to be activated? If Beauregard had shown that the only change when actively suppressing a response was that the previously activated regions did not show any activation it would be a lot more problematic to explain.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 16:41:02
Answering the chicken-and -egg question : question of what's causing what ? : Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition , or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? : Evidence I :


"...Selectively focusing attention on target images significantly enhances neuronal responses to them. This is especially true when nearby stimuli, if not for the power of attention, would distract us. In general, when two images are presented simultaneously, each suppresses the neuronal activity that the other triggers. But selective focusing of attention can override this effect and thereby filter out distractions. How do we know? When physiologists record electrical activity in the brains of monkeys doing tasks that require selective attention, they find that the firing of neurons activated by a target image becomes significantly enhanced when the monkeys selectively focus attention on it, effectively eliminating the suppressive influence of nearby images.

 Human brains act the same way, according to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) : neurons that respond to a target (the image attracting your attention) fire more strongly than neurons that respond to a distraction. The act of paying attention, then, physically counteracts the suppressive influences of nearby distractions. Robert Desimone of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the country’s leading researchers into the physiology of attention, explains it this way: “Attention seems to work by biasing the brain circuit for the important stimuli. When you attend to a stimulus, the suppression that distracters otherwise cause is reduced.”

In other words, selective attention can strengthen or weaken neural processing in the visual cortex. This seems to happen in at least two ways. In the first, the neural response to the object of attention becomes stronger. In one fascinating series of experiments, monkeys were trained to look for the color of an object that flashed on a screen. When they did, neurons that respond to color became more active.

Similarly, when the monkeys were trained to keep an eagle eye on the direction an object was moving, or on its orientation, neurons that perform those tasks became more active. Attention to shape and color pumps up the volume of neuronal activity in the region of the visual cortex that processes information about shape and color; attention to speed turns up the activity of neurons in the region that processes information about speed. In people, paying attention to faces turns up activity in the region whose job it is to scan and analyze faces.

If this seems somewhat self-evident, it’s worth another look: the visual information reaching the brain hasn’t changed. What has changed—what is under the observer’s control—is the brain’s response to that information. Just as visual information about the color of this book’s cover reached your brain as you opened it, so every aspect of the objects on the screen (their shape, color, movements, etc.) reached the monkey’s brain. The aspect of the image that monkey pays attention to determines the way its brain responds. Hard-wired mechanisms in different brain areas get activated, or not, depending on what the monkey is interested in observing. An activity usually deemed to be a property of the mind—paying attention—determines the activity of the brain.
Attention can do more than enhance the responses of selected neurons.

 It can also turn down the volume in competing regions. Ordinarily—that is, in the absence of attention—distractions suppress the processing of a target stimulus (which is why it’s tough to concentrate on a difficult bit of prose when people are screaming on the other side of a thin wall). It’s all well and good for a bunch of neurons to take in sounds at a boisterous party, but you can’t make out a damn thing until you pay attention. Paying attention to one conversation can suppress the distracting ones. Neurons that used to vibrate with the noise of those other conversations are literally damped down and no longer suppress the response of neurons trying to hear the conversation you’re interested in.

Anyone who has ever had the bad luck to search for a dropped contact lens has also had the experience of paying attention to one object (the lens) and thus suppressing neuronal responses to other objects (bits of lint in a rug). If you are searching for a contact lens on a Persian rug, you can thank this effect for hushing the neurons that respond to those flowers and colors, and turning up the responses of neurons that respond to the glimmer of light reflecting off little clear disks. Specifically, it is the activity of neurons deep in the brain’s visual pathway, rather than in the primary visual cortex, that is damped down or turned up by attention.

It often takes real effort to maintain the appropriate focus, which is why it takes so much concentration to get into the proper exit lane at a complicated freeway interchange. But once you muster the appropriate focus, you can literally direct your brain to filter out the suppressive effects of distracting signals. Willfully directed attention can filter out unwanted information—another example of how directed mental force, generated by the effort of directed attention, can modulate neuronal function.

When it comes to determining what the brain will process, the mind (through the mechanism of selective attention) is at least as strong as the novelty or relevance of the stimulus itself. In fact, attention can even work its magic in the total absence of sensory stimuli. If an experimenter teaches a monkey to pay attention to a certain quadrant of a video screen, then single-cell recordings find that neurons responsible for that area will fire 30 to 40 percent more often than otherwise, even when there is no there there—even, that is, when that quadrant is empty. So here again we have the mental act of paying attention acting on the activity of brain circuits, in this case turning them up before the appearance of a stimulus. fMRIs find that activity spikes in human brains, too, when volunteers wait expectantly for an object to appear in a portion of a video monitor.

 Even before an object appears, attention has already stacked the neuronal deck, activating the visual cortex and, even more strongly, the frontal and parietal lobes—the regions of the brain where attention seems to originate. As a result, when the stimulus finally shows up it evokes an even greater response in the visual cortex than if attention had not primed the brain. This, says Robert Desimone (who happens to also be Leslie Ungerleider’s husband), “is the most interesting finding. In attention without a visual stimulus, you get activation in the same cells that would respond to that stimulus, as if the cells are primed. You also get activation in the prefrontal cortex and parietal lobes. That seems like strong evidence that these lobes exert top-down control on what the sensory system processes.” To summarize, then, selective attention—reflecting willful activation of one circuit over another—can nudge the brain into processing one signal and not another." Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 16:49:09
Evidence II : For The Causal Efficacy of Human Volition Through The Effort of focus :


" ...Much of what neuroscientists have learned about attention lately has come from brain imaging.
As in so many other areas of neurobiology, imaging beckons with the siren call of finding “the neural correlates of…”: that is, pinpointing activity in some part of the brain that corresponds to a mental activity. And although I am the last person to equate brain states, or areas of neuronal activity, with attention or any other mental act or experience, it is worth exploring the results of imaging for what they tell us about what is happening in the brain (and where it’s taking place) when we pay attention.

Briefly, these imaging studies have shown that there is no single attention center in the brain. Rather, there are multiple distributed systems, including those in the prefrontal cortex (involved in taskrelated memory and planning), parietal cortex (bodily and environmental awareness), and anterior cingulate (motivation). Also activated are the underlying cerebellum and basal ganglia (habit formation and coordination of movement). That’s all very nice, but it doesn’t really tell us much about how attention works (that’s the trouble with the neural-correlates approach). Fortunately some brain imaging studies have gone beyond this, to reveal some truly interesting things about attention.

In 1990, researchers led by Maurizio Corbetta at Washington University went beyond the monkey work to study attention in humans, showing that when you pay attention to something, the part of your brain that processes that something becomes more active. The scientists’ subjects watched a computer screen while an array of a dozen identical little boxes appeared for 400 milliseconds.

After a 200-millisecond pause, another screen, also filled with geometric shapes, appeared. Half the time, the first and second frames were identical; half the time they differed in one feature or more, such as color or shape or motion of the elements. The volunteers were sometimes told to determine whether the two succeeding images differed at all, and sometimes told to determine whether the images differed specifically in color, in shape, or in motion. Looking for any old difference is an example of “divided attention,” in that subjects have to pay attention to more than a single attribute in their visual field, searching and scanning to find a difference. Focusing on a specific attribute, on the other hand, requires “selective attention.”

As you might expect, when the volunteers focused attention on a single attribute (“Are the colors of these objects different from the ones you just saw?”), they did much better at identifying how the second screen differed from the first than when they divided their attention among several attributes (“What’s different here?”). But then the study turned up what has become a key finding in the science of attention. Active, focused attention to a specific attribute such as color, they discovered, ramps up the activity of brain regions that process color.

In other words, the parts of the brain that process color in an automatic, “hard-wired” way are significantly and specifically activated by the willful act of focusing on color. Activity in brain areas that passively process motion are amplified when volunteers focus attention on motion; areas that passively process shape get ramped up when the volunteers focus on shape. Brain activity in a circuit that is physiologically dedicated to a particular task is markedly amplified by the mental act of focusing attention on the feature that the circuit is hard-wired tprocess. In addition, during the directing of such selective attention, the prefrontal cortex is activated.
As we saw in Chapter 9, this is also the brain region implicated in volition or, as we are seeing, in directing and focusing attention’s beam."

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 16:54:28
Evidence III : For How The Mind Can Change The Brain Through The Will via The Effort of Attention ::

"...The following year, another team of neuroscientists confirmed that attention exerts real, physical effects. This time, they looked not for increased neuronal activity but for something that often goes along with it: blood flow.

 After all, blood carries oxygen to neurons just as it does to every other cell in the body. Just as a muscle engaged in strenuous aerobic activity is a glutton for oxygen, so a neuron that’s firing away needs a voluminous supply of the stuff. In the 1991 experiment, some subjects were instructed to pay attention to vibrations applied to the tips of their fingers, while others were not. The researchers found that, in the subjects paying attention to the vibrations, activation in the somatosensory cortex region representing the fingertips increased 13 percent compared to activation in subjects receiving the identical stimulation but not paying attention. It was another early hint that paying attention to some attribute of the sensed world—colors, movements, shapes, faces, feels, or anything else—affects the regions of the brain that passively process that stimulus. Attention, then, is not some fuzzy, ethereal concept. It acts back on the physical structure and activity of the brain. Attending to one sense, such as vision, does not simply kick up the activity in the region of the brain in charge of that sense. It also reduces activity in regions responsible for other senses.

 If you are really concentrating on the little black lines and curves on this white page, you are less likely to feel someone brush against you, or to hear someone speaking in the background. When you watch a ballet, if you’re focusing on the choreography, you don’t hear the music so well. If you’re deep in conversation at a noisy party and your partner in dialogue has a deep baritone voice, it is probable that those parts of your auditory cortex that are tuned to low frequency will get an extra activation boost; at the same time, regions of the auditory cortex that process sopranos are likely turned down, with the result that you may literally not hear (that is, be conscious of) a high-pitched voice across the room.
Attention, as the neuroscientist Ian Robertson of Trinity College Dublin says, “can sculpt brain activity by turning up or down the rate at which particular sets of synapses fire.

And since we know that firing a set of synapses again and again makes [them] grow…stronger, it follows that attention is an important ingredient” for neuroplasticity, a point we will return to later. For now, it is enough simply to emphasize that paying attention to a particular mode of sensation increases cerebral activity in the brain region that registers that sensation. More generally, the way an individual willfully focuses attention has systematic effects on brain function, amplifying activity in particular brain circuits." 

Same source .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 16:59:19
Evidence IV :

"....A growing body of evidence demonstrates that mindfulness itself may be a key factor in the activating process. In one fascinating experiment, Dick Passingham of Oxford University and colleagues at London’s Institute of Neurology compared the brain activity of a young man as he tried to figure out a mystery sequence on a keypad, to the brain activity after he had mastered it.

All the man was told was that he had to figure out which sequence of eight keys was correct. He did it by trial and error: when he pressed an incorrect key, a low-pitched tone sounded, much as hearing a sour note tells you that you have hit the wrong key on a piano. When he pressed a correct one, a high-pitched tone sounded. Now he both had to remember the correct key and figure out the next one, and the next six after that. Throughout his trial-and-error ordeal, PET scans showed, the man’s brain was ablaze with activity. In particular, the prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, caudate, and cerebellum were very active; all are involved in planning, thinking, and moving.

When the young man finally worked out the correct sequence, he was instructed to keep tapping it out until he could do so effortlessly and without error. After an hour, though he was beginning to rebel at the boredom of it all, his fingers could fly over the keypad as if on automatic pilot. In fact, they were: he could tap out the sequence flawlessly while verbally repeating strings of six digits, or even while generating lists of verbs.

The effortless automaticity was reflected in a marked change in his brain: according to the PET scan, the man’s brain had shut off the lights in numerous regions as if they were offices at quitting time. Although his brain was still remembering the eight keys in order, and signaling the fingers how to move, the mental and cerebral activity behind that output had diminished dramatically. Only motor regions, which command the fingers to move, remained active.

Passingham then took the experimental step that really caught my eye because of its implications for my own nascent theory of directed mental force. What happens in the brain, he asked, if the person carrying out an automatic task suddenly makes a special effort to pay attention to that task? The PET scan kicked out the answer. When the young man again focused on the now-automatic keypad movements, his prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate jerked awake, becoming metabolically active once again. This is a finding of tremendous importance, for it shows that mindful awareness has an activating effect on the brain, lighting it up.

The take-home message of Passingham’s studies is that willfully engaging in mindful awareness while performing an automatic task activates the actionmonitoring circuitry of the prefrontal cortex. It is this activation that can transform us from automatons to members in good standing of the species Homo sapiens (from Latin sapere, “to be wise”). Given the strong evidence for the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in the willful selection of self-initiated responses, the importance of knowing we can modulate the brain activity in that very area with a healthy dose of mindfulness can’t be overstated."

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:03:29
Evidence V:


"....More evidence for the capacity of willfully directed attention to activate a specialized brain region has come from Nancy Kanwisher’s lab at MIT. She and others had already demonstrated that a specific brain area, located where the temporal and occipital lobes meet, is specialized for processing the appearance of faces.

Kanwisher had named this the fusiform face area. Does the appearance of a face activate this area automatically, or can you modulate that activity through attention? To find out, Kanwisher’s team had eight volunteers view a screen that briefly displayed two faces and two houses simultaneously. Before the images appeared, the researchers told each volunteer to take note of the faces in some trials, or of the houses in others. All four images appeared each time but stayed on the screen for a mere one-fifth of a second. Then the volunteers had to determine whether the cued items (faces or houses) were a matching pair. They were able to do this accurately a little more than three quarters of the time.

The key finding: the brain’s specialized face-detecting area was significantly more activated when the subjects were actively looking at faces to see whether they matched than when the faces were only viewed passively because the houses were the cued target. In other words,although both the faces and the houses impinged on the retina and the rest of the visual system (including the fusiform face area), choosing actively to focus attention on the face instantly ramped up activity in the brain’s specialized face-recognition area. Its activity, that is, is not strictly automatic, “but depends instead on the allocation of voluntary attention,” as the MIT team stated it.

Their subsequent work has shown that attention can also ramp up activity in the brain’s specialized area for recognizing places, including houses and buildings. And it’s not only attention to the outside world that reaches us through our senses that causes such increased activity. Similar activations occur when you conjure up an image in your mind’s eye. Thus the willful act of forming a mental image of a familiar face or place with your eyes closed selectively activates the very same face or place area of the brain that seeing the face or place with your eyes does. “We are not passive recipients but active participants in our own process of perception,” Kanwisher summed up."

Same source .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:06:43
Further Comment :



"...It is pretty clear, then, that attention can control the brain’s sensory processing. But it can do something else, too, something that we only hinted at in our discussion of neuroplasticity. It is a commonplace observation that our perceptions and actions do not take place in a vacuum. Rather, they occur on a stage set that has been concocted from the furniture of our minds.

If your mind has been primed with the theory of pointillism (the use of tiny dots of primary colors to generate secondary colors), then you will see a Seurat painting in a very different way than if you are ignorant of his technique. Yet the photons of light reflecting off the Seurat and impinging on your retina, there to be conveyed as electrical impulses into your visual cortex, are identical to the photons striking the retina of a less knowledgeable viewer, as well as of one whose mind is distracted. The three viewers “see” very different paintings. Information reaches the brain from the outside world, yes—but in “an everchanging context of internal representations,” as Mike Merzenich put it. Mental states matter.

 Every stimulus from the world outside impinges on a consciousness that is predisposed to accept it, or to ignore it. We can therefore go further: not only do mental states matter to the physical activity of the brain, but they can contribute to the final perception even more powerfully than the stimulus itself.

Neuroscientists are (sometimes reluctantly) admitting mental states into their models for a simple reason: the induction of cortical plasticity discussed in the previous chapters is no more the simple and direct product of particular cortical stimuli than the perception of the Seurat painting is unequivocally determined by the objective pattern of photons emitted from its oil colors: quite the contrary."

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:12:06
Evidence VI :



"....I happened on a paper by Mike Merzenich and Rob deCharms that fortified my belief that attention is the mechanism by which the mind effects the expression of volition. The two UCSF scientists noted that when an individual pays attention to some stimulus, the neurons in the cerebral cortex that represent this object show increased activation.

But Merzenich and deCharms took this observation further. In addition, they noted, “the pattern of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention, leading to measured shifts in receptive fields or tuning of individual neurons.” If individual neurons can be tuned to different stimuli, depending on the mind’s attentional state, they concluded, then “entire spatial maps across the cortical surface are systematically distorted by attention…[which] implies a rapid remapping of the representational functions of the cortex.”

The cortex, that is, is as subject to remapping through attention as it is through the changes in sensory input described in our survey of neuroplasticity. In addition, in all three of the cortical systems where scientists have documented neuroplasticity—the primary auditory cortex, somatosensory cortex, and motor cortex—the variable determining whether or not the brain changes is not the sensory input itself but, crucially, the attentional state of the animal.

 In 1993 Merzenich showed that passive stimulation alone simply did not cut it. He and his students repeatedly exposed monkeys to specific sound frequencies. When the monkeys were trained to pay attention, the result was the expected tonotopic reorganization of the auditory cortex: the representation of the repeatedly heard frequency expanded.

But when the monkeys were distracted by another task, and so were paying little or no attention to the tones piped into their ears, no such tonotopic expansion occurred. Inputs that the monkey does not pay attention to fail to produce long-term cortical changes; closely attended behaviors and inputs do. Let me repeat: when stimuli identical to those that induce plastic changes in an attending brain are instead delivered to a nonattending brain, there is no induction of cortical plasticity. Attention, in other words, must be paid.


Since attention is generally considered an internally generated state, it seems that neuroscience has tiptoed up to a conclusion that would be right at home in the canon of some of the Eastern philosophies: introspection, willed attention, subjective state—pick your favorite description of an internal mental state—can redraw the contours of the mind, and in so doing can rewire the circuits of the brain, for it is attention that makes neuroplasticity possible. The role of attention throws into stark relief the power of mind over brain, for it is a mental state (attention) that has the ability to direct neuroplasticity. In so doing, it has the power to alter the very landscape of the brain.

 “Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system,” Merzenich and deCharms concluded. “This leaves us with a clear physiological fact… moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work, we choose who we will be the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form on
our material selves.” "

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:14:51
Evidence VII :



"...Similarly, Ed Taub had shown that the more stroke patients concentrated on their tasks—the more they paid attention—the greater their functional reorganization and recovery. In stroke patients who sustain damage to the prefrontal cortex, and whose attention systems are therefore impaired, recovery is much less likely. Two months after the stroke, a simple measure of attention, such as the patient’s ability to count tones presented through headphones, predicts almost uncannily how well the patient will recover motor function.

The power of attention, that is, determines whether a stroke patient will remain incapacitated or not. Ian Robertson’s research group at Trinity College found much the same thing: “How well people can pay attention just after a right-brain stroke predicts how well they can use their left hands two years later.” If the attention circuits in the frontal lobes are damaged by the stroke, the patient recovers less well from injury to other regions of the brain than if the frontal lobes are spared."

Same source .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:28:11
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about  many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain
Even by 2007 (prompted by specific volitional deficits due to brain impairments), sufficient specific studies of volition had been done to demonstrate that the sense of volition, free-will, and agency are (to many people's surprise) retrospective and post-hoc introspective. For example: Volitional Control of Movement: The Physiology of Free Will (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950571/). Since then decision pathways have been traced at a neuronal level, and the origins of decision have also been extensively modeled, for example, Neuronal correlates of decisions to speak and act (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888926/), or Selection and inhibition mechanisms for human voluntary action decisions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445813/) to pick a couple of relevant papers at random.

These discoveries and ideas are no longer controversial in neurophysiology. As already mentioned, the empirical evidence that brain activity alone generates these behaviours and that the sense of agency, volition, self, etc., is not what it subjectively seems, is overwhelming. Regardless of the number of incredulous articles and papers you post, the evidence speaks for itself (a little ironic joke there). There are still gaps in our knowledge, but no space for magical immaterial volitional agencies. There's no need or place for any such influence - to paraphrase Laplace, 'We have no need of that hypothesis'.


Well, then read my above posted evidence to the contrary of what you were saying here above , to see for yourself : prepare yourself for a surprise, big time  :

Your baseless and blind confidence in all that related materialistic  non-sense on the subject will be shaken, big time :

It has been proved ,via many experiments mentioned here above and more , that the mind can alter the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain through the effort of volition via the effort of attention or focus : that's called self-directed neuroplasticity .

Volitional effort is effort of attention thus .

That evidence that supports Schwartz' prior discovery in relation to the causal and active role of the effort of the mindful will through the effort of the focus or attention (It's all in the power of  focus ) , that Schwartz ' discovery thus in relation to the causal efficacy of the will through the effort of focus in changing the brain, has been used to help patients who suffer from obsessive-compulsory  disorder , for example , (OCD ) , or who suffer from anxiety , depression , phobias and many other disorders , in order to help them learn how to rewire their brains in healthy ways ,by using Schwartz' developed steps -therapy to relabel their intrusive or compulsory , habitual thoughts for what they actually are (just brain disorders )  , to learn to refocus away from them on healthier thoughts and action , to revalue them for what they are (brain disorders without reality or power ) ...

By regularily practicing those steps , for example, patients can rewire their brains in healthy ways  by strengthening the new neural pathways via the effort of mindful volitional focus away from those intrusive or compulsory thoughts ,and therefore by weakening the wired habitual old ones ...

Brain scans of those patients who underwent that therapy ,before and after the therapy thus, showed significant changes in their brains accordingly .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 17:47:31
Answering the chicken-and -egg question : question of what's causing what ? : Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition , or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? : Evidence I :


"...Selectively focusing attention on target images significantly enhances neuronal responses to them. This is especially true when nearby stimuli, if not for the power of attention, would distract us....

Selective attention is a great example of top down control, and doesn't require any immaterial element.

The brain is set in a specific state or working mode according to requirements that are updated from the outside world dynamically.  The construction of a subjective percept (what am I looking for and why am I looking for it? ) involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences.

Top-down expectations and hypotheses are initially set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. The brain has an abundance of two way tracts that allows complex information at higher stages of processing to influence processing, or select for information information to attend to, from lower stages. The flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas plays a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. There is no starting point for information flow. You can't point to any part of the loop and say the cause is here, and the effect is there.

Criticism of material mechanisms in neuroscience always seem to be wildly neglectful of the dynamic nature of mental activity, and approach the material construction of the brain as if it were as unmodifiable and unvarying as a household appliance, ignoring learning, ignoring our constant interaction with a changing environment.

What's more, the immaterial version of will or volition that seems to exist in some acausal vacuum while violating all sorts of physical laws, is never specifically explained, either.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 17:49:13
Answering the chicken-and -egg question : question of what's causing what ? : Does activity in the frontal lobes cause volition , or does volition trigger activity in the frontal lobes? : Evidence I :


"...Selectively focusing attention on target images significantly enhances neuronal responses to them. This is especially true when nearby stimuli, if not for the power of attention, would distract us....

Selective attention is a great example of top down control, and doesn't require any immaterial element.

The brain is set in a specific state or working mode according to requirements that are updated from the outside world dynamically.  The construction of a subjective percept (what am I looking for and why am I looking for it? ) involves making the best sense of sensory inputs based on a set of hypotheses or constraints derived by prior knowledge and contextual influences.

Top-down expectations and hypotheses are initially set by feedforward information, the sensory evidence. The brain has an abundance of two way tracts that allows complex information at higher stages of processing to influence processing, or select for information information to attend to, from lower stages. The flow of information from higher- to lower-order cortical areas plays a role equal in importance to the feedforward pathways. There is no starting point for information flow. You can't point to any part of the loop and say the cause is here, and the effect is there.

Criticism of material mechanisms in neuroscience always seem to be wildly neglectful of the dynamic nature of mental activity, and approach the material construction of the brain as if it were as unmodifiable and unvarying as a household appliance, ignoring learning, ignoring our constant interaction with a changing environment.

What's more, the immaterial version of will or volition that seems to exist in some acausal vacuum while violating all sorts of physical laws, is never specifically explained, either.

Don't jump to premature conclusions , sis : Just try to read the above carefully first , please .Thanks .

Nothing happens in or comes from a vacuum : the effort of volition through the effort of focus triggers a physical force that changes the related activity of neurons accordingly by strengthening the related activity of the related neural correlates through the mindful volitional effort of focus , and by weakening the ones that don't get much attention ,simply put .

Many experiments mentioned here above and more proved that fact .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:06:33


Don't jump to premature conclusions , sis : Just try to read the above carefully first , please .Thanks .


It's not a premature conclusion. By attributing thought or mindful effort or attention a priori to an immaterial element, the article blatantly begs the question. You can't use as proof that which you are trying to prove.

What's more, why should the immaterial need to produce a physical change in the brain in order to produce another change in the immaterial? Why should the OCD patient referred to above need to "rewire his brain" in order to express his already existing will to act or not act? It's just one contradiction after another, Don.
And how does the immaterial interact with the material?


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:07:07
Read the above displayed short quotes and comments , guys ,and then i will be talking about  many scientific experiments ,afterwards , that showed /show the causal effect of the human volition through focus or attention -effort , the causal effect of volition on the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain :

How the mindful effort of volition through the power of focus or attention can change the brain ....

In short :

How the mind or mental force can change the brain through the dynamic effort of volition via the power of focus .

In other words :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.




As magical as will or volition might seem, there are disorders that interfere with volition and motivation (akinetic mutism, apraxia,)  as well structures in the brain associated with volition. According to Ramachandran, "Wanting, it turns out, is crucially dependent on the anterior cingulate."

And we've also discussed Libet's studies that show a choice has been made in the brain before a person becomes consciously aware of making it.

Or Beuregards studies that ironically showed the opposite of what he set out to demonstrate, as explained below:

For review:
Lets break down one of his studies, where he showed a series of erotic images to males and imaged the brain's response to these images. Unsurprisingly he found activation primarily in the limbic and paralimbic regions (amygdala, right anterior temporal pole and the hypothalamus). This region of the brain is long known to be associated with reward assessment and baser drives such as sex, hunger, thirst, fear, and anger. He then asked subjects to repress any sort of sexual thoughts or feelings in regard to the images and showed them again. This time he showed little to no activation in the paralimbic and limbic system, but saw extensive activation in prefrontal regions such as the superior frontal gyrus.[15] The prefrontal regions are associated with what many of us refer to as the normal day-to-day consciousness of ourselves. It is the executive controller and one of its primary roles is that of an inhibitor. It's the part of your brain that tells you when something is really not a good idea, and lets you control yourself; it's the part you use when you are "biting your tongue" to keep from saying what you really want to say.[17]

Working from the theory that it is the material constructs of the brain itself that alters firing patterns this is exactly what we would expect. We see an area of the brain that is activated by stimuli that are known to cause excitation in that region. When asked to inhibit that excitation subjects show brain activation in regions that have been demonstrated to be involved in inhibition. This is one area of the brain putting the brakes on another area of the brain. If we were working from the posit that it is the "psychological space" that is putting the brakes on the limbic system, why would we posit any other area of the brain needing to be activated? If Beauregard had shown that the only change when actively suppressing a response was that the previously activated regions did not show any activation it would be a lot more problematic to explain.


Read about the above mentioned empirical evidence through all those displayed experiments here above and more, that prove the active causal role of the effort of the human mindful will  through the effort of focus or attention in  changing  the brain accordingly , to see for yourself, Cheryl .

Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact  .

Once again : volitional effort is effort of focus or attention .

Not to mention the major example ( My emphasis  ) of the woman who changed her brain through informed determined trained mindful self-directed neuroplasticity , a woman who was born with severe brain disabilities , you have no idea : Barbara Arrowsmith Young .

The latter example was not a part of the above displayed experiments .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 18:17:44
Cheryl :

Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .

Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .

You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by  all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .

Schwartz ' work thus cannot be refuted by refuting that of Stapp : The former does not even need the latter ...

Read the above then : you're in for a major surprise , big time . Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:44:32
Cheryl :

Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .

Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .

You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by  all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .

I'm not rejecting the findings themselves, but your interpretation of them. They indicate that people can act to change what they attend to, but your authors don't prove that the shift in attention or "mindful effort" is non-biological or immaterial. In fact, their findings really suggest otherwise. Shift is always accompanied by a change in activity in another area of the brain, not just simple suppression by will acting in the "psychological space." Like Stapp, they completely ignore the question altogether, and assume will or volition is immaterial from the start. Stapp concedes this in his own articles.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 18:47:20


"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "




And what does that tell you?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 19:01:45


"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "




And what does that tell you?

lol

That says that self-directed neuroplasticity through the mindful and active causal effect of volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain cannot be accomplished by stroke patients whose brain regions that are related to  attention are damaged ,and vice versa:  it's only through the maintained volitional effort of focus or attention that self-directed neuroplasticity can be accomplished .

In short :

The materialistic intrinsic belief assumption (for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever to support it, needless to add  ) that the mind and consciousness +their related processes and anomalies , like memory  and the rest  ...are just products of  brain activity , without any causal effects on the latter whatsoever , or that the mind and consciousness ...are just illusions, or just useful survival strategies illusions or computed by the brain simulations illusions that feel real though  is false : that's what all those above mentioned experiments and other ones as well  have been showing and proving : the mind can change the physical brain through volitional effort via  the effort of attention or focus thus  .

Mainstream materialistic epiphenomalism is a materialistic intrinsic joke that's just yet another extension of materialism = no empirical fact .

No wonder , since materialism was built upon the superseded approximately correct and fundamentally false classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments showed that locality or separability do not exist as such , and proved that "spooky action at a distance " to exist as well + make room for free will through the kind of measurements , experiments , experiments' design , expectations or intentions held and applied by physicists at the quantum level at least .

Schrödinger called entanglement, for example,  the very essence, “the essential characteristic,” of quantum physics.

Entanglement that has been proved to occur even at the level of some large molecules ,not to mention wave/particle duality as well ,  and as the advance of technology will be allowing many further scientific experiments on the subject at the larger scale , entanglement and wave/particle duality might turn out to occur even at the larger scale thus,who knows .

Even cosmologists do treat, so to speak,  the whole universe as a whole or a big superposition state ( observation has to be made at the end of the measurement chain anyway , as Von Neumann showed , so : that's an inescapable fact .) , thanks to that absurd materialistic desperate attempt to rescue the false deterministic materialism : the MW interpretation theory of QM .

Nevertheless , and once again , Schwartz ' work has been supported by many experiments , like the ones mentioned above and many others as well , so, the fact that the mind can change the brain, can shape it ,and can   shape and alter the rest of the physical reality does not even need QM to support it thus .

QM that might get superseded in its turn too someday , who knows .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 19:29:37
Cheryl :

Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .

Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .

You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by  all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .

I'm not rejecting the findings themselves, but your interpretation of them. They indicate that people can act to change what they attend to, but your authors don't prove that the shift in attention or "mindful effort" is non-biological or immaterial. In fact, their findings really suggest otherwise. Shift is always accompanied by a change in activity in another area of the brain, not just simple suppression by will acting in the "psychological space." Like Stapp, they completely ignore the question altogether, and assume will or volition is immaterial from the start. Stapp concedes this in his own articles.

You couldn't have possibly read all what i posted on the subject on  such  a relatively short notice , unless you have some sort of a sophisticated scan implanted in your head lol :

One can choose intentionally and voluntarily either to make the necessary conscious mindful volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention or not : that's what actually makes the difference, either way thus = Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.. .

Those above mentioned experiments do speak for themselves in unmistakable ,cristal-clear and "eloquent " ways,so ,read them,and then try to report back on that , please , thanks .Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 19:51:36


"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "




And what does that tell you?

lol

That says that self-directed neuroplasticity through the mindful and active causal effect of volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain cannot be accomplished by stroke patients whose brain regions that are related to  attention are damaged ,and vice versa:  it's only through the maintained volitional effort of focus or attention that self-directed neuroplasticity can be accomplished .


And yet, strangely, that volitional effort is completely ineffective and nonexistant without those intact structures, which again, tells you what?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 20:17:40


"Stroke patients , for example, whose brain regions are damaged that are correlated with attention cannot make any recovery progress, unlike those whose same brain regions are intact "




And what does that tell you?

lol

That says that self-directed neuroplasticity through the mindful and active causal effect of volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain cannot be accomplished by stroke patients whose brain regions that are related to  attention are damaged ,and vice versa:  it's only through the maintained volitional effort of focus or attention that self-directed neuroplasticity can be accomplished .


And yet, strangely, that volitional effort is completely ineffective and nonexistant without those intact structures, which again, tells you what?

Don't be silly , Cheryl, please : that proves that without active determined sustained volitional effort of attention ,no dynamic self-directed neuroplasticity :

In other words :

No neural correlates of attention , no volitional effort of attention ,needless to add ,  and vice versa , since the mind has to work through its brain correlates .

See if you can see without your biological eyes , even though it is the mind that actually sees , not the eyes or the brain .

See if you can function at all without a brain or body ,in this life at least : consciousness or the mind do have to work through the brain and body , needless to add ,once again .

You should rather better concentrate or focus lol on the relevant issues at hand here through the above displayed experiments , instead of paying attention to minor ones that can be explained easily ,since they are no questions or issues .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 20:23:46
Cheryl :

Once again : read the above first , please .Thanks .

Schwartz discovered the active role of the effort of the mindful volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the brain accordingly ( we already intuit and experience that fact on a daily basis ) , via what he called a mental force that triggers a physical force , before working with Henry Stapp who delivered that physical mechanism through which the mindful and active effort of volition through the effort of focus or attention , a physical mechanism through which volition acts on the neural correlates via what Stapp's called the quantum Zeno effect ("observed " or focused-on mental states or thoughts ...do not "decay " or fade, they stay in place , so to speak . ) that 'works " together with Hebb's law ( neurons that fire together connect together ) ..., grosso -modo .

You may reject Stapp's quantum theory of consciousness of course , but you cannot reject the empirical evidence that was delivered by  all those mentioned experiments here above and more that prove the causal and active efficacy of the mindful effort of volition through the effort of focus in changing the brain .

I'm not rejecting the findings themselves, but your interpretation of them. They indicate that people can act to change what they attend to, but your authors don't prove that the shift in attention or "mindful effort" is non-biological or immaterial. In fact, their findings really suggest otherwise. Shift is always accompanied by a change in activity in another area of the brain, not just simple suppression by will acting in the "psychological space." Like Stapp, they completely ignore the question altogether, and assume will or volition is immaterial from the start. Stapp concedes this in his own articles.

You couldn't have possibly read all what i posted on the subject on  such  a relatively short notice , unless you have some sort of a sophisticated scan implanted in your head lol :

One can choose intentionally and voluntarily either to make the necessary conscious mindful volitional effort through the effort of focus or attention or not : that's what actually makes the difference, either way thus = Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will.. .

Those above mentioned experiments do speak for themselves in unmistakable ,cristal-clear and "eloquent " ways,so ,read them,and then try to report back on that , please , thanks .Cheers .

I will happily discuss any particular example or experiment your authors refer to, and it is an area I am not wholly unfamiliar with already. But do not hand me a lengthy homework assignment just to ignore all my responses anyway, as you typically do. It's a waste of my time.

You speak as though these experiments in attention, perception, or learning is somehow new, uncharted territory and can't be explained without invoking the immaterial. It's been studied extensively for years.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 20:29:41
dlorde :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will :

My take on the free will issue can be inferred from the above , in the sense that we do choose from all those existing infinite possibilities , eventualities, probabilities ...out there,and each chosen one of the latter opens up other infinite ones to us  (we do not create them from a vacuum : there is no such  thing as the latter ) ,which means basically that we deliberately ,voluntarily or intentionally choose to  pay attention to or focus on certain possibilities , eventualities , probabilities, thoughts , ideas  ... via the volitional effort of focus and action , or we just remain passive by not making the necessary choice , in the above mentioned sense at least , by not choosing is also a form of a choice .

Passivity turns us into some sort of mindless automatons, even though our related external behaviors would seem mindful , i don't know .

In short :

It's all in the power and effort of volitional focus or attention and action .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/12/2014 20:57:25
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445828#msg445828 date=1417638226]

I will happily discuss any particular example or experiment your authors refer to, and it is an area I am not wholly unfamiliar with already. But do not hand me a lengthy homework assignment just to ignore all my responses anyway, as you typically do. It's a waste of my time.


Cheryl, You were just repeating the refuted materialistic stuff on the subject ,and that before reading my posted evidence also .

Well, you were asking for evidence , weren't you ?There it is then .
If i say things without evidence , you tell me : give me just 1 evidence , i just gave you some .

But , when i give you evidence , you say the above .
So, make up your mind , Cheryl .
What is it actually that you want ?

Quote
You speak as though these experiments in attention, perception, or learning is somehow new, uncharted territory and can't be explained without invoking the immaterial. It's been studied extensively for years

You haven't read about all those mentioned experiments here above yet , so, how can you tell then ?
Those experiments just prove the causal efficacy of the effort of mindful and active volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the neuronal correlates  accordingly (The mind can change the brain , can have causal effects on the brain ...) , a fact that has been denied as such by the intrinsic reductionistic epiphenomalism of materialism , in the sense that the mind cannot have any causal effects on the physical brain , let alone on the rest of the physical reality .

And since materialism assumes that the mind and consciousness + their related anomalies and processes are just products of the brain, just products of the activity of the brain , without any causal effects whatsoever on the brain( There  is ,once again, no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports those materialistic claims , but , you do behave and think as if there is .) , then, no wonder that materialist scientists would deny the fact that the mind can change the brain via the active volitional effort of attention .

That's why , guys , i have been telling you that you have been confusing materialism with science all along .

In short :

The evidence for which you were asking all along is there above : you can either deliberately choose to check it out while  paying the necessary effort of attention to it through your mindful effort of volition , or not .

That's entirely up to you then .

I know it takes quite some time to read all that , but it's worth it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 21:03:38
.....James was scrupulously fair in giving equal time to the view that attention is a fully determined result of brain function rather than a causally efficacious force. As he notes, it is entirely plausible that attention may be “fatally predetermined” by purely material laws. In this view, the amount of attention we pay a stimulus, be it one from the world outside or an internally generated thought or image, is determined solely by the properties of that stimulus and their interaction with our brain’s circuits. If the words you hear or the images you see are associated with a poignant memory, for instance, then they trigger—automatically and without any active effort by you —more attention than stimuli that lack such associations. In this case, “attention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association bring ‘before the footlights’ of consciousness,” as James put it.
That is, the stimuli themselves provoke neural mechanisms that cause them to be attended to and fixed on.
 This is the attention-as-effect school of thinking.
But James did not think that attention was always and only a fully determined effect of the stimuli that are its object...." 

Same source .

This paragraph would seem to illustrate the difference in interpretation quite well. Anti-materialists falsely attribute to neuroscience the view that the brain is a uniform, unvarying, unmodifiable structure, that should respond to the exact same stimulus the exact same way every time. It falsely assumes a materialist model of the brain that should only respond to the strongest stimuli without determining the significance or relevance of stimuli, based on prior knowledge or experience. It ignores prior knowledge and new information from the outside world which is updated continuously. It ignores the influence of transient emotional states on perception, or makes one response more likely than another.

When actually, neuroscience does not posit this static model at all, as I've already explained earlier. Topdown flow of information is as important as feed-forward pathways in the brain.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/12/2014 21:54:23

Cheryl, You were just repeating the refuted materialistic stuff on the subject ,and that before reading my posted evidence also .

You haven't read about all those mentioned experiments here above yet , so, how can you tell then ?
Those experiments just prove the causal efficacy of the effort of mindful and active volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the neuronal correlates  accordingly (The mind can change the brain , can have causal effects on the brain ...) , a fact that has been denied as such by the intrinsic reductionistic epiphenomalism of materialism , in the sense that the mind cannot have any causal effects on the physical brain , let alone on the rest of the physical reality .

The evidence for which you were asking all along is there above : you can either deliberately choose to check it out while  paying the necessary effort of attention to it through your mindful effort of volition , or not .

That's entirely up to you then .

I know it takes quite some time to read all that , but it's worth it .


You are implying that I am rejecting a claim without adequately looking at your evidence, or not reading "carefully" enough, but what you don't seem to understand is that I am not rejecting the evidence itself. I am not rejecting the author's assertion that volitional acts can alter how information is perceived, or saying that the events observed in the experiments did not occur. I am objecting to the axiomatic assumption that volition requires the immaterial. As with Stapp, it's just assumed, not explained.
And oddly so, since their findings keep indicating that volition requires specific intact brain structures to effect any changes in neuroplasticity which are also required to create other changes in the expression of  will.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2014 00:15:53
Well, then read my above posted evidence to the contrary of what you were saying here above , to see for yourself : prepare yourself for a surprise, big time  :

Your baseless and blind confidence in all that related materialistic  non-sense on the subject will be shaken, big time :

It has been proved ,via many experiments mentioned here above and more , that the mind can alter the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain through the effort of volition via the effort of attention or focus : that's called self-directed neuroplasticity .
All those studies are quite consistent with what I posted already. The areas of the brain controlling attention, focus, and volition have been identified and some of the mechanisms and pathways by which they effect their influence on other areas of the brain have been identified and, in some cases, traced. As already mentioned, the research was originally prompted by the observation of specific deficits of those functions by damage to the areas concerned or to their connectivity.

That you are unable to conceive that your will and volition is neural activity in those executive areas of your brain is something we can't help you with. It is a counter-intuitive realisation on a par with that of the strangeness of quantum mechanics, but in both cases we must follow the evidence rather than intuition.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 04/12/2014 00:59:21
dlorde :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.
Attention and volition are the effects of activity in particular (executive) areas of the brain.

Quote
Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will :
Therefore will is neural activity. You, as a conscious aware individual, are the activity of your brain. That's what the evidence tells us.

Quote
My take on the free will issue can be inferred from the above , in the sense that we do choose from all those existing infinite possibilities...
That's a reasonable interpretation. Ironically, like quantum mechanics, free will is a matter of interpretation. Consider why you make a particular choice - you have some reason or preference. Such reasons and preferences are the unique result of the person you are at the time you make the choice; and the person you are is the unique result of a lifetime of experiences, perceptions, memories; filtered and assimilated, having their dynamic influence on the development and organisation of your brain.

If, by accident or design, relevant parts of your brain are damaged, stimulated or suppressed, your choices can change. Your preferences may change, your reasons may change, your personality may change, your morals and ethics may change (this kind of damage has been observed and these experiments have been done).

Whether the results of all this complex neural activity can be considered deterministic is dubious - a certain degree of reliability and repeatability is necessary for effective function, but QM apart, the brain uses noise in its processing which can introduce a degree of randomness. It's certainly inherently unpredictable (despite the surprisingly high general predictability of human activity) due to the complexity of the system and its multiple feedbacks (and a degree of chaotic activity).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 19:11:00
Cheryl :

Schwartz and Ben Libet : Volition as veto power:

  "...The mechanism that allows volition to be physically efficacious  is the one i called mental force .Similarly to what has been called  "mind as a force field " ,mental force also echoes what Ben Libet ,a
pioneer in the study of the neurobiology of volition , has named the "conscious mental field ".
I proposed in the final version of my JCS paper that mental force is a physical force generated  by mental effort.

 It is the physical expression of will,And it is physically efficacious.At the moment an OCD patient actively changes how he responds to the obsessive thoughts and compulsions that besiege him  , the volitional effort and refocusing of attention away from the passively experienced sympthoms of OCD and toward alternative thoughts and behaviors generate mental force.
Mental force acts on the physical brain by amplifying the new emerging brain circuitry responsible for healthy behavior and quieting the OCD circuit.

We know that directed mental effort causes measurable  changes in brain function ,the self-directed neuroplasticity discussed earlier .And we know that mental force is not reducible to brain action : hence the need for a new actor -mental force.

This notion of mental force fit an idea bout free will that Libet had long propounded ,one known  as the "free won't" version of volition.In a nutshell, "free won't " refers to the mind's veto power over brain generated urges -exactly what happens when OCD patients follow the four steps.

Since Libet served as a guest editor for the JCS volume , it didn't hurt that i was able to  acknowledge my intellectual debt to him .But it was hardly a stretch to make the connection to his  work : OCD symptoms can be viewed as high-powered , painfully persistent versions of the desultory mental events that pop into consciousness countless times each day.

.Most of these thoughts do not insist on action, because the will can ignore them rather easily,Libet  had argued.But in OCD patients the thoughts  aren't nearly this well mannered : they are as insistent as a nagging toddler.The discomfort they cause  demands attention.Making that attention mindful and wise  requires effort of the highest degree .That effort , i suspected , becomes causally efficacious on brain action through the mechanism of mental force .

I had discussed this possibility with Libet ,and now  it became part of my argument .The fact that willful refocusing of attention caused brain changes in patients with OCD had exciting  implications for the physics of mind-brain ...." End quote

Same source
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 19:24:11
Cheryl :

OCD Faulty but well established circuitry :

In the case of OCD patients , the brain sends deceptive messages to the mind that takes them for granted as real and acts upon them (The origin of those deceptive messages can be traced back to childhood or later history of OCD patients) .OCD patients can then learn how to make the necessary effort to ignore those intrusive compulsory thoughts by trying to refocus away from them, relabel them , revalue them for what they are ( Brain faulty circuitry without any real power or reality ), through Schwartz' four -steps therapy :


Quote : "...A major question now arises. How does the OCD patient focus attention away from the false messages transmitted by the faulty but well-established OCD circuit (“Count the cans in the pantry again!”) and toward the barely whispered “true” messages (“No, go feed the roses instead”) that are being transmitted by the still-frail circuits that therapy is coaxing into existence? Later on, once the “true” messages have been attended to and acted on for several weeks, they will probably have affected the gating of messages through the caudate and be ever-easier to act on.

 But early in therapy this process is weak, even nonexistent. It is not at all obvious how a patient heeds the healthy signal, which is just taking shape in his cortex and beginning to forge a new neural pathway through his caudate, and ignores the much more insistent one being generated incessantly by his firmly entrenched and blazingly hyperactive orbital frontal cortex–basal ganglia “error message” circuitry.

And once appropriate attention has been paid, how does he activate the motor circuitry that will take him away from the pantry and toward the rose garden? This last is an especially high hurdle, given that movement toward the pantry followed by obsessive counting has been the patient’s habitual response to the OCD urge for years. As a result, the maladaptive motor response has its own very well established brain circuitry in the basal ganglia." End quote.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 19:34:55
OCD as a Brain State :

Quote : "...In the buzz of cerebral activity inside the brain, our subjective sense tells us that there arise countless choices, some of them barely breaking through to consciousness. If only for an instant, we hold in our mind a representation of those possible future states—washing our hands or walking into the garden to do battle with the weeds. Those representations have real, physical correlates in different brain states. As researchers such as Stephen Kosslyn of Harvard University have shown, mental imagery activates the same regions of the brain that actual perception does.

Thus thinking about washing one’s hands, for instance, activates some of the same critical brain structures that actual washing activates, especially at those critical moments when the patient forms the mental image of standing at the sink and washing. “The intended action is represented…as a mental image of the intended action, and as a corresponding representation in the brain,” says Stapp. In a quantum brain, all the constituents that make up a thought—the diffusion of calcium ions, the propagation of electrons, the release of neurotransmitter—exist as quantum superpositions.

 Thus the brain itself is characterized by a whole slew of quantum superpositions of possible brain events. The result is a buzzing confusion of alternatives, a more complex version of Schrödinger’s alternative (alive or dead) cats. The alternative that persists longer in attention is the one that is caught by a sequence of rapid consents that activates the Quantum Zeno Effect." End quote .

Same source.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 04/12/2014 19:48:39
Still waiting, Don. Just one example.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 20:31:00
Quote
[author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445841#msg445841 date=1417654761]
dlorde :

Volitional effort is effort of attention.
Attention and volition are the effects of activity in particular (executive) areas of the brain.

I am talking here about the effort of attention that's the essence of volition .You have to make the difference between passive determined attention and the volitional one through effort thus .

Quote
Quote
Effort of attention is thus the essential phenomenon of will :
Therefore will is neural activity. You, as a conscious aware individual, are the activity of your brain. That's what the evidence tells us.

The effort of attention is a conscious aware act of the will that  cannot be determined by neurophysiology , come on .

The effort of the will through the effort of attention that acts like some sort of a veto action that chooses which brain states , thoughts ...to focus on through sustained effort .

Quote
Quote
My take on the free will issue can be inferred from the above , in the sense that we do choose from all those existing infinite possibilities...
That's a reasonable interpretation. Ironically, like quantum mechanics, free will is a matter of interpretation. Consider why you make a particular choice - you have some reason or preference. Such reasons and preferences are the unique result of the person you are at the time you make the choice; and the person you are is the unique result of a lifetime of experiences, perceptions, memories; filtered and assimilated, having their dynamic influence on the development and organisation of your brain.


After thinking some more about the above , i think that the essence of volition is the veto power : the will can choose to focus through the effort of attention on particular brain states , thoughts , ideas , feelings , emotions ...or not .

Quote
If, by accident or design, relevant parts of your brain are damaged, stimulated or suppressed, your choices can change. Your preferences may change, your reasons may change, your personality may change, your morals and ethics may change (this kind of damage has been observed and these experiments have been done).

Well, that's just because the brain correlates in question are damaged ,and hence the related changes can be explained by a faulty brain circuitry , i guess .

Quote
Whether the results of all this complex neural activity can be considered deterministic is dubious - a certain degree of reliability and repeatability is necessary for effective function, but QM apart, the brain uses noise in its processing which can introduce a degree of randomness. It's certainly inherently unpredictable (despite the surprisingly high general predictability of human activity) due to the complexity of the system and its multiple feedbacks (and a degree of chaotic activity).

I am only concerned here about the volitional effort of attention that cannot be determined by neurophysiology .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 20:41:29
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445839#msg445839 date=1417652153]
Well, then read my above posted evidence to the contrary of what you were saying here above , to see for yourself : prepare yourself for a surprise, big time  :

Your baseless and blind confidence in all that related materialistic  non-sense on the subject will be shaken, big time :

It has been proved ,via many experiments mentioned here above and more , that the mind can alter the structure or anatomy and physiology of the brain through the effort of volition via the effort of attention or focus : that's called self-directed neuroplasticity .
All those studies are quite consistent with what I posted already. The areas of the brain controlling attention, focus, and volition have been identified and some of the mechanisms and pathways by which they effect their influence on other areas of the brain have been identified and, in some cases, traced. As already mentioned, the research was originally prompted by the observation of specific deficits of those functions by damage to the areas concerned or to their connectivity.

The conscious aware effort of attention cannot be determined by neurophysiology , as you have to make the difference between passive and active attention through effort .

The brain correlates such as those concerning attention (There is single center of attention in the brain ) are just brain states.The mindful volitional effort of attention can decide whether or not to pay effortful attention through them or not .

Quote
That you are unable to conceive that your will and volition is neural activity in those executive areas of your brain is something we can't help you with. It is a counter-intuitive realisation on a par with that of the strangeness of quantum mechanics, but in both cases we must follow the evidence rather than intuition.

That's just materialistic non-sense , no empirical facts : the mind is no product of the brain or brain activity , and hence the brain correaltes of the mind are just that : brain correlates or brain states to which the mind can pay the necessary effortful volitional attention or not .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 20:49:37

Cheryl, You were just repeating the refuted materialistic stuff on the subject ,and that before reading my posted evidence also .

You haven't read about all those mentioned experiments here above yet , so, how can you tell then ?
Those experiments just prove the causal efficacy of the effort of mindful and active volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the neuronal correlates  accordingly (The mind can change the brain , can have causal effects on the brain ...) , a fact that has been denied as such by the intrinsic reductionistic epiphenomalism of materialism , in the sense that the mind cannot have any causal effects on the physical brain , let alone on the rest of the physical reality .

The evidence for which you were asking all along is there above : you can either deliberately choose to check it out while  paying the necessary effort of attention to it through your mindful effort of volition , or not .

That's entirely up to you then .

I know it takes quite some time to read all that , but it's worth it .


You are implying that I am rejecting a claim without adequately looking at your evidence, or not reading "carefully" enough, but what you don't seem to understand is that I am not rejecting the evidence itself. I am not rejecting the author's assertion that volitional acts can alter how information is perceived, or saying that the events observed in the experiments did not occur. I am objecting to the axiomatic assumption that volition requires the immaterial. As with Stapp, it's just assumed, not explained.
And oddly so, since their findings keep indicating that volition requires specific intact brain structures to effect any changes in neuroplasticity which are also required to create other changes in the expression of  will.

You just don't understand what they were saying , i guess .

Since the mind and consciousness cannot be the products of the brain or brain activity , and since the brain correlates are just the physical "circuitry " through which the mind and consciousness work , then , you can't assume that that "circuitry " is all what there is .

See my short new posted excerpts regarding how OCD patients can change their brains and hence their consciousness accordingly through volitional effort and more .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 20:54:29
.....James was scrupulously fair in giving equal time to the view that attention is a fully determined result of brain function rather than a causally efficacious force. As he notes, it is entirely plausible that attention may be “fatally predetermined” by purely material laws. In this view, the amount of attention we pay a stimulus, be it one from the world outside or an internally generated thought or image, is determined solely by the properties of that stimulus and their interaction with our brain’s circuits. If the words you hear or the images you see are associated with a poignant memory, for instance, then they trigger—automatically and without any active effort by you —more attention than stimuli that lack such associations. In this case, “attention only fixes and retains what the ordinary laws of association bring ‘before the footlights’ of consciousness,” as James put it.
That is, the stimuli themselves provoke neural mechanisms that cause them to be attended to and fixed on.
 This is the attention-as-effect school of thinking.
But James did not think that attention was always and only a fully determined effect of the stimuli that are its object...." 

Same source .

This paragraph would seem to illustrate the difference in interpretation quite well. Anti-materialists falsely attribute to neuroscience the view that the brain is a uniform, unvarying, unmodifiable structure, that should respond to the exact same stimulus the exact same way every time. It falsely assumes a materialist model of the brain that should only respond to the strongest stimuli without determining the significance or relevance of stimuli, based on prior knowledge or experience. It ignores prior knowledge and new information from the outside world which is updated continuously. It ignores the influence of transient emotional states on perception, or makes one response more likely than another.

When actually, neuroscience does not posit this static model at all, as I've already explained earlier. Topdown flow of information is as important as feed-forward pathways in the brain.

That 's just a simple way of addressing the issue of volitional effort of attention that needs not to talk about all what the brain does  .They know pretty well that the brain is exposed to a storm of "information " from the outside world as well as from the inside , via   the senses , via the inner biology , via the feedbacks of the mind ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2014 21:04:49

Cheryl, You were just repeating the refuted materialistic stuff on the subject ,and that before reading my posted evidence also .

You haven't read about all those mentioned experiments here above yet , so, how can you tell then ?
Those experiments just prove the causal efficacy of the effort of mindful and active volition through the effort of focus or attention in changing the neuronal correlates  accordingly (The mind can change the brain , can have causal effects on the brain ...) , a fact that has been denied as such by the intrinsic reductionistic epiphenomalism of materialism , in the sense that the mind cannot have any causal effects on the physical brain , let alone on the rest of the physical reality .

The evidence for which you were asking all along is there above : you can either deliberately choose to check it out while  paying the necessary effort of attention to it through your mindful effort of volition , or not .

That's entirely up to you then .

I know it takes quite some time to read all that , but it's worth it .


You are implying that I am rejecting a claim without adequately looking at your evidence, or not reading "carefully" enough, but what you don't seem to understand is that I am not rejecting the evidence itself. I am not rejecting the author's assertion that volitional acts can alter how information is perceived, or saying that the events observed in the experiments did not occur. I am objecting to the axiomatic assumption that volition requires the immaterial. As with Stapp, it's just assumed, not explained.
And oddly so, since their findings keep indicating that volition requires specific intact brain structures to effect any changes in neuroplasticity which are also required to create other changes in the expression of  will.

You just don't understand what they were saying , i guess .

Since the mind and consciousness cannot be the products of the brain or brain activity.....



But that wasn't what their experiments demonstrated. They leap frog over the causes or correlates of volition itself, and just demonstrate that volition, what ever "it" is, regardless of how or why it happens, can change other types of brain activity. I'm not disputing that at all, and I agree that neuroplasticity is a very interesting and useful topic.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 21:07:38
dlorde , Cheryl :

See the encounter above between Ben Libet and Schwartz , so to speak .

Concerning Libet's experiment , i guess, that showed that one gets aware of one's decision -making only after the fact can be maybe explained by the following :

The mind is exposed to an infinite number of possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ...as brain states and as inner states ,so, what the mind decides to focus on through the action of volitional effort is what gets actualized : that's the veto power of the active mindful volitional effort ,either way,  in total contrast with the passive determined attention .

Volitional effort triggers a mental force that acts on the neuronal correlates : a mental force that triggers a physical one  : see above  .

P.S.: Why did you ignore all those above displayed  experiments ? that clearly show that the mindful volitional effort can change the brain as Schwartz ' 4-steps therapy also proved ? in relation to OCD patients and others who could change their brain and hence overcome their OCD symptoms by changing the OCD faulty and well established circuitry of the brain through the self-directed neuroplasticity .

OCD patients , for example, changed their correlated neuronal faulty circuitry that was sending false and deceptive messages to their minds ,and hence changed also their minds .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/12/2014 21:35:16
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445885#msg445885 date=1417727089]


But that wasn't what their experiments demonstrated. They leap frog over the causes or correlates of volition itself, and just demonstrate that volition, what ever "it" is, regardless of how or why it happens, can change other types of brain activity. I'm not disputing that at all, and I agree that neuroplasticity is a very interesting and useful topic.
[/quote]

No, you're wrong about that , Cheryl, big time : neither you nor dlorde are able yet to understand the essence of those experiments and Schwartz' words .
Those experiments show that volitional effort of attention can strengthen its neuronal correlates and change the brain accordingly ,so, when one would regularly do that ,the new neural pathways override the old habitual ones .

Schwartz' 4-steps therapy can thus also help people get rid of their bad habits , addictions ...not just of OCD symptoms, anxiety ...

I have experienced that myself : i had some bad habits and intrusive thoughts ...
Schwartz therapy helped me get rid of all that successfully : i am one of the living proofs of the power and causal efficacy of the volitional effort of attention in relation to the brain , needless to add thus .

Come, on : you have been thinking and behaving , the both of you , as if the mind is a product of the brain : that's a materialistic false belief assumption or extension of materialism , no empirical fact : the brain does not wholly determin our behaviors .There is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports the materialist production theory .

Since you, guys , cannot but think materialistically , then you can't but assume that the brain does all the work ,simply put , while you have been experiencing the power and causal efficacy of volitional effort in relation to the brain and body , in relation to the rest of the physical reality , and that on a daily basis , come on , materialism has been blinding and distorting your perception .

Your brains cannot wholly determin what you are doing here in this forum, for example .Are you nuts ? lol

Even science itself cannot even exist , let alone function or progress without the mind or consciousness .We can't understand the universe or ourselves without the former .

Better still : QM can never be understood without reference to the mind .

Science 's progress that started / starts and will start in the very minds of scientists through ideas , insights , volitional effort of attention , hard work , creativity, imagination ...

Even history and civilizations have been shaped partly by ideas , for example : no small part of the  so-called enlightenment itself was built upon ideas , thoughts ...that were produced in the minds of philosophers ,scientists , artists (Those ideas were not created from a vacuum , ok , but the minds of those thinkers and scientists , artists ...had something to do with all that at least , together with their brain circuitry , together with the social biological psychological economical cultural political and other factors .) ...

How can you deny the obvious power and causal efficacy of the mind through the action of volitional effort of attention in relation to the brain and body and in relation to shaping the rest of the physical reality around you .

You're no powerless or determined hardware run by software ,without any degree of free will : materialism has been turning you into irrational illogical incoherent paradoxical ...insane mindless people , no offense , come on .

You've been conditioned by materialism in the Pavlovian sense , i am afraid .

How can ethics , morality , the sense of responsibility and accountability accounted for by the deterministic insane materialism ,come on ...let alone the rest .

Materialism is so full of incoherent paradoxical non-sense , so full of holes , inconsitencies , faslehood,so full of sh1t lol, sorry ,  that one is extremely perplexed how can intelligent people like yourselves believe in materialism ...Amazing .

Materialism is a fraud , a false distortion of reality , to say the least ...

It gotta be kicked out of all sciences and of all other human activity as well , the sooner the better , for the benefit and progress of science and for those  of all mankind .

Amazing ...

Use your minds , people .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2014 22:15:50
Cheryl :

OCD Faulty but well established circuitry :

In the case of OCD patients , the brain sends deceptive messages to the mind that takes them for granted as real and acts upon them (The origin of those deceptive messages can be traced back to childhood or later history of OCD patients) .OCD patients can then learn how to make the necessary effort to ignore those intrusive compulsory thoughts by trying to refocus away from them, relabel them , revalue them for what they are ( Brain faulty circuitry without any real power or reality ), through Schwartz' four -steps therapy :


Quote : "...A major question now arises. How does the OCD patient focus attention away from the false messages transmitted by the faulty but well-established OCD circuit (“Count the cans in the pantry again!”) and toward the barely whispered “true” messages (“No, go feed the roses instead”) that are being transmitted by the still-frail circuits that therapy is coaxing into existence? Later on, once the “true” messages have been attended to and acted on for several weeks, they will probably have affected the gating of messages through the caudate and be ever-easier to act on.

 But early in therapy this process is weak, even nonexistent. It is not at all obvious how a patient heeds the healthy signal, which is just taking shape in his cortex and beginning to forge a new neural pathway through his caudate, and ignores the much more insistent one being generated incessantly by his firmly entrenched and blazingly hyperactive orbital frontal cortex–basal ganglia “error message” circuitry.

And once appropriate attention has been paid, how does he activate the motor circuitry that will take him away from the pantry and toward the rose garden? This last is an especially high hurdle, given that movement toward the pantry followed by obsessive counting has been the patient’s habitual response to the OCD urge for years. As a result, the maladaptive motor response has its own very well established brain circuitry in the basal ganglia." End quote.



Well, I question the assumption that the compulsive thoughts are generated by the brain, but the desire not to act on them is not. Based on what evidence, when his fMRIs show that both events are accompanied by activity in certain areas of the brain?

There is nothing more material or immaterial about either type of thought, or at least he hasn't shown how they differ.  One could also interpret his findings as the frontal cortex recognizing that the action is unnecessary or possibly even harmful and suppressing another area, and it likely gets easier with practice.

If I eat before going to the grocery store because I know I shop more sensibly when I am not hungry, is that necessarily "my immaterial will" or is it the result of learned past experience? How does one prove that my thoughts about eating healthy or saving money are more immaterial than my thoughts that a chocolate cake might be great for desert tonight? Or is it my prefrontal cortex recognizing that in order to accomplish a long term goal, I have to sacrifice a short term one, and I am better able to do that if I can reduce other brain activity (but I'm hungry!And that looks good!)  that might override my prefrontal cortex's instructions while in the grocery store?

Mathematician John Nash said in later years that he refused to let himself think about politics or religion, because those topics seemed to lead to delusional or paranoid ideas. Even if the initial thought about those subjects seemed reasonable and benign, he just wouldn't "go there" and would distract himself with another topic. I'm sure non-schizophrenics use the same technique with memories that are emotionally traumatic or depressing.

Individuals have mixed emotions or conflicting views about many things, even topics  that do not involve compulsions or urges. Which are the "true" thoughts or the immaterial ones? How does Schwartz know? And what, as he asks, determines the winners?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 04/12/2014 22:58:46

I am talking here about the effort of attention that's the essence of volition .You have to make the difference between passive determined attention and the volitional one through effort thus .



Define effort, and explain why effort is somehow equivalent with immaterial.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/12/2014 00:47:14
Since you like assigning reading, Don, here's an article for you.

An Integrative Theory Of Prefrontal Cortex Function
http://matt.colorado.edu/teaching/highcog/readings/mc1.pdf

The article addresses such things as attention, selective attention, complex goal directed behavior, the PFC's two way connections to virtually all the cortical sensory systems, motor systems, and many subcortical structures,  convergence and integration of information from different areas of the brain, as well as feed back to those areas, top down control of processing, behavioral inhibition, and neuroplasticity.

"Abstract: The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of activity along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal
states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed."

Enjoy!

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 05/12/2014 01:07:08
I am talking here about the effort of attention that's the essence of volition .
The sensation of volitional effort is associated with the executive under unusual load, maintaining a sharp focus of attention, with the objective of maximizing relevant neural activity and suppressing irrelevant or distracting activity. The sensation typically involves the same perceptual areas as involved in feedback from physical exertion. The intensity of the activity, and so the sensation of effort, will generally be related to the assessed value of the goal. This can't be maintained for long periods, but can be improved with practice, and changes in the connectivity of the relevant executive areas can be seen as a result. See, for example, Perception of effort and movement-related cortical potential during weight lifting (http://www.brainproducts.com/files/public/products/brochures_material/pr_articles/1204_UR_deMorree.pdf).   

The effects of such intense deliberative (System 2) activity are stressful and often spill over into subconscious (System 1) stress responses, such as tensing of facial muscles, and physical displacement activities. These responses add real physical feedback to the sensation of volitional effort even when it is not involved in intense physical activity. Training can also reduce these stress responses by refining focus and reducing spurious 'leakage' of neural activity and so reducing the sensation of effort.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2014 21:30:42
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445893#msg445893 date=1417731350]

Well, I question the assumption that the compulsive thoughts are generated by the brain, but the desire not to act on them is not. Based on what evidence, when his fMRIs show that both events are accompanied by activity in certain areas of the brain?

Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .OCD is a psychological and biological disorder that occurs thanks to faulty brain "circuitry " that sends false or deceptive messages to the mind that takes them for granted as real and acts upon them .OCD patients can learn about that psychological and biological nature of OCD symptoms , learn how to relabel them for what they are in reality (just disorders ) ,learn how not to attribute them to the self , how to refocus away from them on a regular basis through informed trained effort , by refocusing on healthier thoughts and actions , and learn how to revalue them for what they are (just faulty brain circuitry and psychological disorders without any real reality or power ,  that can be traced back to certain past events  of OCD patients ) .

Furthermore , volitional effort of attention is irreducible to neurophysiological processes .It is a mental force that triggers a physical one through its neuronal correlates. The latter are just the "circuitry " through which the mind works .

Brain activity cannot account for volitional effort of attention thus .The latter is irreducible to the former .

Quote
There is nothing more material or immaterial about either type of thought, or at least he hasn't shown how they differ.  One could also interpret his findings as the frontal cortex recognizing that the action is unnecessary or possibly even harmful and suppressing another area, and it likely gets easier with practice.

Show me a thought then . How does it look like ? How can brain activity produce thoughts ?

Via computation ? Come on, get real . Quantitative neuronal correlates can never produce qualitative thoughts ...

Show me how the conscious and aware smell of a rose , taste of a pizza lol, love , ...can rise from just physics and chemistry  : you can't , simply because they are irreducible to the latter , even though they have neuronal correlates and senses to the brain through which they express themselves....

Volitional mental effort of attention is irreducible to neurophysiology , once again ,as the mind is irreducible to brain activity .

Quote
If I eat before going to the grocery store because I know I shop more sensibly when I am not hungry, is that necessarily "my immaterial will" or is it the result of learned past experience? How does one prove that my thoughts about eating healthy or saving money are more immaterial than my thoughts that a chocolate cake might be great for desert tonight? Or is it my prefrontal cortex recognizing that in order to accomplish a long term goal, I have to sacrifice a short term one, and I am better able to do that if I can reduce other brain activity (but I'm hungry!And that looks good!)  that might override my prefrontal cortex's instructions while in the grocery store?

I am a bit tired now , so, i am not thinking really straight , trying my best though through my volitional effort of attention lol ,seriously .

The mind and its thoughts ...are irreducible to brain activity , even though they need the latter of course through which they work : the mind needs a healthy brain and body .

When you are hungry , your brain and body are deprived of their energy through food , so, they can't work properly as mediums for the mind ,that's why one can't really think quite well when hungry , because the latter urge is so vital and  can  overrides the rest .... a matter of self-preservation ,or survival priority .

Quote
Mathematician John Nash said in later years that he refused to let himself think about politics or religion, because those topics seemed to lead to delusional or paranoid ideas. Even if the initial thought about those subjects seemed reasonable and benign, he just wouldn't "go there" and would distract himself with another topic. I'm sure non-schizophrenics use the same technique with memories that are emotionally traumatic or depressing.

Ironically enough , maths are "matters " of the mind : they use  abstract logic through numbers , symbols, concepts ...and have no physical reality , but they nevertheless underlie the laws of physics ;

Jonathan Shear is his book about consciousness talked about the fact that maths that are high abstractions of the mind are incompatible with materialism , but they were incorporated in science anyway only thanks to their practical inescapable use and relevance  .QM is even highly mathematical .

Materialism  is  the major example of schizophrenic views of the world : denies the very existence and relevance , not to mention causality , of the most important feature of man : the mental one .

Yet without the real and fundamental causal efficacy and reality + power of the mind , no beliefs or world views such as materialism would exist , no science would exist , no understanding of ourselves and the universe would exist , no ethics , no politics , no economics , no religions , no ideas , no imagination, no intellect , no creativity, no awareness  ...just total darkness .

Do you see now how schizophrenic materialism and materialists are , no offense ? , not to mention the inescapable intrinsic cognitive dissonance of materialism and materialists .

Not only that , on top of that , materialism does reduce the mental part of man and the universe to just physics and chemistry , while it is irreducible to the latter .

Quote
Individuals have mixed emotions or conflicting views about many things, even topics  that do not involve compulsions or urges. Which are the "true" thoughts or the immaterial ones? How does Schwartz know? And what, as he asks, determines the winners?

Getting rid of intrusive thoughts or at least trying not to act upon them is what can pave the way for one to be...come oneself .

OCD symptoms ,for example, distort the notion of the self , get mixed up with it and even prevent it from expressing itself .




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2014 21:35:22
You are NOT your Brain :

http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Your-Brain/dp/1583334831
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2014 21:44:24

I am talking here about the effort of attention that's the essence of volition .You have to make the difference between passive determined attention and the volitional one through effort thus .



Define effort, and explain why effort is somehow equivalent with immaterial.

Have you ever been in a marathon ,for example ?
The brain and body would scream at you to stop , yet you continue running thanks to your volitional effort only .

I am really tired today , so, i can't focus well , i will just refer you to the following that's been backed by many empirical evidence :


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/books/review/willpower-by-roy-f-baumeister-and-john-tierney-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/0143122231/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417815629&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=wellpower

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/12/2014 21:56:35
dlorde :

Sorry, i am very tired today .Talk to you tomorrow : You're wrong , big time :

You are not your brain , as the mind is no product of the brain , and hence mindful volitional effort of attention is irreducible to its neuronal correlates , no matter what you or other materialists would try to say on the subject .

You're real schizophrenics ,guys ,no offense,  with a lots of cognitive dissonance problems to deal with also .

See also this great book by Schwartz too : OCD patients can never overcome their disorder without the mindful volitional effort of attention ...that's irreducible to neurophysiology : you're all just confusing materialism with science :

http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Lock-Yourself-Obsessive-Compulsive-Behavior/dp/0060987111

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 06/12/2014 00:10:38
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .
Lol! How can the physical brain 'send messages' outside the physical world? what does that even mean? where's your evidence?

It's unfalsifiable nonsense.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 06/12/2014 00:21:56
You're real schizophrenics ,guys ,no offense,
Ah, no. We're the ones saying that the brain is an integrated physical whole and the mind is its activity; you're the one invoking a non-physical consciousness that magically interacts with the physical brain.

p.s. have you realised yet that the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation is just billions of years of Many Worlds with eventual conscious interference? The wavefunction of the universe evolves, superposition on superposition, for billions of years (Many Worlds), until consciousness finally evolves and unexplainedly collapses it - quite unnecessarily (evolution of consciousness is a gradual process - at what point did it gain that ability?); far simpler to let the wavefunction continue evolving as it has done for billions of years, including the evolved consciousness in its superpositions - as in Many Worlds. That's why MW is preferred by Ockham's Razor.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/12/2014 04:03:54
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .OCD is a psychological and biological disorder that occurs thanks to faulty brain "circuitry " that sends false or deceptive messages to the mind that takes them for granted as real and acts upon them .OCD patients can learn about that psychological and biological nature of OCD symptoms , learn how to relabel them for what they are in reality (just disorders ) ,learn how not to attribute them to the self , how to refocus away from them on a regular basis through informed trained effort , by refocusing on healthier thoughts and actions , and learn how to revalue them for what they are (just faulty brain circuitry and psychological disorders without any real reality or power ,  that can be traced back to certain past events  of OCD patients ) .

You would appear to be claiming that some thoughts (the deceptive ones, or the unhealthy ones) are the result of "faulty brain circuity" but other kinds of thoughts are the result of immaterial will. But for the past year you've been saying that no kind of thought, no kind of subjective experience, no experience involving qualia can be generated by the brain. Now suddenly certain kinds can?

Quote
Furthermore , volitional effort of attention is irreducible to neurophysiological processes .It is a mental force that triggers a physical one through its neuronal correlates. The latter are just the "circuitry " through which the mind works .
Brain activity cannot account for volitional effort of attention thus .The latter is irreducible to the former .

Did you even bother to read the article about the prefrontal cortex that I posted? Any response to it?
Quote
Show me a thought then . How does it look like ? How can brain activity produce thoughts ?
Well, evidently, it can, since the OCD thought "I need to wash my hands again", or "I must turn around three times when I walk out the door" wasn't produced by the immaterial will, so it had to be produced by something. How does circuitry itself produce a fully formed thought, irrational or otherwise, if you insist it can't produce thoughts at all?

Quote
Quantitative neuronal correlates can never produce qualitative thoughts ...

You seemed to have painted yourself into a corner.

Quote
When you are hungry , your brain and body are deprived of their energy through food , so, they can't work properly as mediums for the mind ,that's why one can't really think quite well when hungry , because the latter urge is so vital and  can  overrides the rest .... a matter of self-preservation ,or survival priority .
Hunger, and the taste of pizza, and pain from a marathon, and the smell of a rose that you mentioned earlier, are all subjective experiences with qualia, which you keep insisting are irreducible to brain activity. Now you're claiming those things are just urges, signals in the brain circuitry representing the body's needs or state, that the immaterial will can ignore. What's your basis now for saying the subjective experience of hunger or pain or "intrusive thoughts" is a material process of circuitry, and other kinds of thoughts are not?






Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/12/2014 07:03:31

Show me a thought then . How does it look like ?

We describe consciousness as an "experience" an event in time and use all sorts of verbs to describe different processes associated with it, like thinking, feeling, believing, reasoning.

I could name any number of physical processes that are not "a thing" you can point to, and most people have no trouble recognizing that they are physically based, despite being events or interactions.

Why do you expect the neural code to physically resemble what it codes for? We have no trouble accepting that computers do not work that way, and language does not work that way, and DNA doesn't work that way, and musical recordings do not work that way. What is about brains that makes people insist that unless there are teeny, tiny replicas of a banana or kangaroo or Jennifer Aniston inside my neurons, then "a thought" has to be immaterial?

Is it possible that the first time I experience something, it is coded, and when I recall it, I re-experience it by playing back that code?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/12/2014 19:42:30
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445956#msg445956 date=1417824638]
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .
Lol! How can the physical brain 'send messages' outside the physical world? what does that even mean? where's your evidence?

Well, consciousness and the mind are non-local,so.
Maybe they work through entanglement with the brain as well , who knows ?

As Popper used to say : physical-physical interaction is not the only kind of interaction .There is nothing that can make us assume that the non-physical cannot interact with the physical, and vice versa .


Quote
It's unfalsifiable nonsense.

Don't think via your "gastric brain " , dlorde lol :

Ironically enough : QM can never be understood without reference to the mind .QM that's highly mathematical too .Maths as a product of the mind , remember , but maths  nevertheless underlies the laws of physics ...

How can you even make maths compatible with ...materialism ?:they are not ,as Jonathan Shear said in his consciousness explained book .

Explain to me the very origin of maths then : it is  a highly  abstract non-physical product of the mind .

Reminds me of a scientific article i have read ,during my teen -age , in a French scientific magazine (Science & Vie ) where they attempted to answer the question of the origin of maths and whether it is a product of nature or that of biology (As a mainstream materialist magazine , it cannot but a -priori assume that the mind is just brain activity , so ) : they couldn't link maths to nature , so, they tried to prove the biological origin (Absurd false materialistic premise that assumes that the mind is just neurophysiology, for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever to support it, once again  ) ,they tried to prove the so-called biological origin of maths .They used clever reasoning in the sense that our minds tend to see or project regularities everywhere and that our reality is mainly a mental construct ...Long story .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/12/2014 20:06:13
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445960#msg445960 date=1417825316]
You're real schizophrenics ,guys ,no offense,
Ah, no. We're the ones saying that the brain is an integrated physical whole and the mind is its activity; you're the one invoking a non-physical consciousness that magically interacts with the physical brain.

Brain activity can never account for the mind ,awareness or consciousness (They can never rise from matter , let alone that they can be just a property of matter,like mass , charge  are ...since they are different in kind   from matter ,and hence they are irreducible to the latter ) , come on .When are you gonna grasp this simple fact , dlorde ?

How can you believe in such non-sense such as that of Graziano on the subject , in the sense that the mind is just a simulation computed by the brain , an illusory one that feels real though , a useful illusory survival strategy ,or in the materialistic belief assumption that consciousness can rise from the fundamental physical fields such as electromagnetism lol ...consciousness as a property of matter ( materialistic property dualism lol and materialistic panpsychism in disguise too )

Not to mention that the materialistic related production theory has been supported by no empirical evidence whatsoever = a big zero : correlations are no causations , needless to add .
You, guys, have been just confusing materialism with science ,and have been not able to see  the  'tree  " that hides the  "forest ": neuronal correlates of the mind are not identical with the mind : you have to let go of your impoverished and limited positivism too .

How can an intelligent scientist such as yourself believe in such insane absurd paradoxical materialistic non-sense?

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p.s. have you realised yet that the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation is just billions of years of Many Worlds with eventual conscious interference? The wavefunction of the universe evolves, superposition on superposition, for billions of years (Many Worlds), until consciousness finally evolves and unexplainedly collapses it - quite unnecessarily (evolution of consciousness is a gradual process - at what point did it gain that ability?); far simpler to let the wavefunction continue evolving as it has done for billions of years, including the evolved consciousness in its superpositions - as in Many Worlds. That's why MW is preferred by Ockham's Razor.

Quote :


"In the beginning there were only probabilities.
The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later.
The universe exists because we are aware of it."
End quote .
— Martin Rees
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/12/2014 20:52:11
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445989#msg445989 date=1417849411]

Show me a thought then . How does it look like ?

We describe consciousness as an "experience" an event in time and use all sorts of verbs to describe different processes  associated with it, like thinking, feeling, believing, reasoning.

(By the way : that willpower book is just a materialistic approach of the will .I made a mistake .I wanted to provide you with a link to another book though instead , Brain lock by Schwartz .)

Show me a thought then .

Ok, that's a rather subjective qualitative experience or process that can never rise from the quantitative impersonal matter, no way , simply because the former is totally different in kind   form the latter  .
What you said here above reminds me of the fact that science has to be communicated through  language , ironically enough , that's also a feature of the mind , even though it has its related speech neuronal correlates and vocal cords ...through which it has to express itself .
Not to mention the fact that the materialistic computational theory is false , simply because the subjective cannot be quantified ,The subjective that's a matter of meaning , purpose , taste , preferences, aesthetics , values , ethics , morality ........Try to quantify all the latter then .

Furthermore , the subjective part of the observer can never be completely separated from the observed objective : they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other ,as QM showed , and as philosophy proved prior to QM ...

Human language that's elusive cultural ideological ...

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I could name any number of physical processes that are not "a thing" you can point to, and most people have no trouble recognizing that they are physically based, despite being events or interactions.

Everybody knows pretty well that thoughts are non-physical , even maths is just a product of the mind : non-physical , even though maths do underlie the laws of physics ...

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Why do you expect the neural code to physically resemble what it codes for?

Code , processing , input , output ...are just computer terminology that gets applied to the working of the brain , even though the materialistic mechanical computer-like view of life is false : living organisms cannot be equated with or compared to machines or computers ( That's 1 of the devastating and false legacies of Descartes ) , even though living organisms do have some 'autonomic or automatic " features.

You're using meaningless semantics and false metaphors in relation to the working of the brain like coding  , processing ...

What makes you think the brain works that computer -like way then ? Right , materialism does that to you .Try to make "conscious or aware living " computers then : can never be done , despite all that bombastic talk of the so-called strong artificial intelligence nonsense : see Searle, Chalmers and others on the subject .

Even the so-called DNA code is a false way of talking about DNA : the sequences or arrangements of aminoacids .., are just the image of the process , not the cause of the process or the process itself, otherwise tell me what DNA's information is ,or what's its origin or how it emerged and from what ?

Even the so-called life information ,DNA information,  or the latter's use in relation to life is inadequate and false : what does that mean ? nothing : they are just materialistic false metaphors regarding life that have been taken literally and have been having a "life : of their own .

Furthermore , biological "information" cannot be compared to that of the computer or machines.

Living organisms get compared to whatever advanced technology of the moment : the brain used to be compared to hydraulic systems lol prior to its computer metaphor .

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We have no trouble accepting that computers do not work that way, and language does not work that way, and DNA doesn't work that way, and musical recordings do not work that way. What is about brains that makes people insist that unless there are teeny, tiny replicas of a banana or kangaroo or Jennifer Aniston inside my neurons, then "a thought" has to be immaterial?

Simply because the brain is a living thing whose correlates of the mind cannot be compared in kind to the mind .See above.

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Is it possible that the first time I experience something, it is coded, and when I recall it, I re-experience it by playing back that code?

You're just using semantics and inappropriate + false  computer terminology in relation to the working of the brain that can never 'store or code " for anything at all : the physical brain is just a tool .

What does it mean to say that the brains or DNA code for something : nothing , just empty rhetorics or semantics and false materialistic analogies or metaphors : materialistic ignorance on the subject in disguise : materialistic mysticism lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/12/2014 21:46:46
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg445979#msg445979 date=1417838634]
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .OCD is a psychological and biological disorder that occurs thanks to faulty brain "circuitry " that sends false or deceptive messages to the mind that takes them for granted as real and acts upon them .OCD patients can learn about that psychological and biological nature of OCD symptoms , learn how to relabel them for what they are in reality (just disorders ) ,learn how not to attribute them to the self , how to refocus away from them on a regular basis through informed trained effort , by refocusing on healthier thoughts and actions , and learn how to revalue them for what they are (just faulty brain circuitry and psychological disorders without any real reality or power ,  that can be traced back to certain past events  of OCD patients ) .

You would appear to be claiming that some thoughts (the deceptive ones, or the unhealthy ones) are the result of "faulty brain circuity" but other kinds of thoughts are the result of immaterial will. But for the past year you've been saying that no kind of thought, no kind of subjective experience, no experience involving qualia can be generated by the brain. Now suddenly certain kinds can?

Even though you seem to have read Schwartz' posted words on the subject , you still do not understand what he meant .

We're still in almost total darkness regarding how the mind works through the brain , so, we just use our deceptive and limited human language to try to describe that through relatively informed empirical evidence : we interpret the latter our human limited way through our human limited language .We cannot do otherwise ,since our knowledge , perception and human language are limited .

Saying that the brain sends deceptive message to the mind through its well established and faulty OCD "circuitry " , for example , just means how we currently understand the relationship between mind and the brain in the non-materialistic sense on the subject , that is : it does not mean that what we say on the subject does correspond to the actual reality : we can't help but say that, since the brain seems to  "inform " the mind about both the outside physical world and about the inner biology as well , and since OCD has an underlying biological and psychological nature , then the well established OCD brain "circuitry " as a result of the related psychological OCD disorder , "informs " the mind about the OCD  "corresponding" biological disorder .
The mind takes the latter biological disorder  for granted as real  and acts on that , instead of realising through informed insights that that biological disorder is just the "image " of the OCD psychological disorder .

When OCD patients would understand what's really going , they can override their OCD symptoms through informed self-directed neuroplasticity via the volitional effort of attention through some particular steps on a regular basis.

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Furthermore , volitional effort of attention is irreducible to neurophysiological processes .It is a mental force that triggers a physical one through its neuronal correlates. The latter are just the "circuitry " through which the mind works .
Brain activity cannot account for volitional effort of attention thus .The latter is irreducible to the former .

Did you even bother to read the article about the prefrontal cortex that I posted? Any response to it?

I stopped reading it , just after scanning some line of it .That's obviously a biased materialistic stuff that a-priori assumes that the mind is the product of the brain, and hence volitional effort of attention also is .Why continue reading it then ? What for ? since they  base all their talk on the major intrinsic materialistic false premise : all is matter , including the mind .

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Show me a thought then . How does it look like ? How can brain activity produce thoughts ?
Well, evidently, it can, since the OCD thought "I need to wash my hands again", or "I must turn around three times when I walk out the door" wasn't produced by the immaterial will, so it had to be produced by something. How does circuitry itself produce a fully formed thought, irrational or otherwise, if you insist it can't produce thoughts at all?

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Quantitative neuronal correlates can never produce qualitative thoughts ...

You seemed to have painted yourself into a corner.

I don't think so .That's just your own materialistic interpretation of what i said : they are doomed to conflict with each other , no wonder .

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When you are hungry , your brain and body are deprived of their energy through food , so, they can't work properly as mediums for the mind ,that's why one can't really think quite well when hungry , because the latter urge is so vital and  can  overrides the rest .... a matter of self-preservation ,or survival priority .
Hunger, and the taste of pizza, and pain from a marathon, and the smell of a rose that you mentioned earlier, are all subjective experiences with qualia, which you keep insisting are irreducible to brain activity. Now you're claiming those things are just urges, signals in the brain circuitry representing the body's needs or state, that the immaterial will can ignore. What's your basis now for saying the subjective experience of hunger or pain or "intrusive thoughts" is a material process of circuitry, and other kinds of thoughts are not?

They all have to express themselves through their neuronal correlates , as the whole mind has to express itself through the brain, so, what's your point ?

Neuronal correlates of hunger , taste , smell ....are not identical to their qualia,even though  the smell of a rose , a taste of a delicious cake , feeling of hunger have to use their neuronal correlates and the corresponding senses ,,,,,, .

In short :

The mind is irreducible to brain activity and cannot be the product of the latter : there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports the latter materialistic intrinsic claim : that's science upside down :

Materialists do a -priori believe in the intrinsic materialistic belief assumption that all is matter , including the mind , without bothering to check whether it is correct or false , they take that false axiom of theirs for granted as "an empirical fact " and from there they continue building their sand castles ...= making science or the empirical evidence fit into the materialistic theory of nature lol , instead of the other way around .

Any scientific theory must be  supported by empirical evidence , must be falsifiable, either directly or indirectly  : the materialistic theory of the nature of reality and all its extensions, including the materialistic models or theories of consciousness ,have been supported by a big zero evidence , but nevertheless they keep being regarded as being scientific .

Worst : all materialistic sand castles have been built on the false materialistic theory of the nature of reality, including that regarding the nature of the mind thus  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 00:01:26
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445956#msg445956 date=1417824638]
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .
Lol! How can the physical brain 'send messages' outside the physical world? what does that even mean? where's your evidence?
Well, consciousness and the mind are non-local,so.
Maybe they work through entanglement with the brain as well , who knows ?
Clearly not you. Colour me unsurprised that you can't say how the non-existent interacts with the existent.

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As Popper used to say : physical-physical interaction is not the only kind of interaction .There is nothing that can make us assume that the non-physical cannot interact with the physical, and vice versa .
Perhaps; but if he said that, he was either referring to something else, or referring to the subjective and/or objective abstractions of his metaphysical Worlds 2 & 3.  Because, regarding mind and brain, Popper was property dualist, not a substance dualist. So he did not think that the mind is a substance separate from the body: he was an interactionist who thought that mental or psychological properties or aspects of people are distinct from physical ones, but arise from them. His 'Three Worlds' model involved a metaphysical hierarchy of abstraction, World 1 was the physical level of objects, World 2 was the subjective abstract, personal knowledge - arising from World 1, and World 3 was the objective abstract, the sum of human knowledge - arising from World 2. So, rather than supporting your hypothesis, he contradicts it.

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Explain to me the very origin of maths then : it is  a highly  abstract non-physical product of the mind .
I can't say, I wasn't there; but it presumably originates in observation and interaction with the physical world (e.g. counting). It's not a huge step from keeping a pebble for every sheep to counting, and from counting or token exchange to simple arithmetic.

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They used clever reasoning in the sense that our minds tend to see or project regularities everywhere and that our reality is mainly a mental construct ...Long story .
Empirical evidence suggests that this is indeed the case. We are pattern-matching systems and our perception of reality is a construct largely based on our expectations.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/12/2014 02:02:10


Everybody knows pretty well that thoughts are non-physical , even maths is just a product of the mind

Not so Don,..........Math is as real as any physical law, and the laws of physics were here long before men came to understand them with the mental capacity that the brain has provided men with.

 Math is not just an invention of the mind, it was a discovery associated with material physical evidence.

IN SHORT; The reality of math was here long before men ever walked this earth, and will be here long after we are all gone!

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 07/12/2014 07:07:51
... maths is just a product of the mind ... 

... IN SHORT; The reality of math was here long before men ever walked this earth ...

e.g. Snails were using "Cellular Automata Rule 30 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30)" before human-beings existed ...
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fartfail.com%2Fautomata%2Fimg%2Fpaper%2Frule30shell.jpg&hash=68ff51570bd5687a391dfd855d09c72e)
http://artfail.com/automata/

Rule 30 produces a complex-patten which emerges by repeatedly applying simple-rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30#Rule_set).
But Don does not believe in complex emergent properties (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+emergence+magical+unscientific+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com) , despite them occurring in nature, ( e.g. on the shell above ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_properties)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/12/2014 07:16:04
Nice example, RD.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/12/2014 07:55:50


You're just using semantics and inappropriate + false  computer terminology in relation to the working of the brain that can never 'store or code " for anything at all : the physical brain is just a tool .What does it mean to say that the brains or DNA code for something : nothing , just empty rhetorics or semantics and false materialistic analogies or metaphors : materialistic ignorance on the subject in disguise : materialistic mysticism lol


There may well be great differences between biological systems and computers. I wasn't claiming they were identical in every way. But they do both store information, and there is good evidence of neural coding. We've shown you the experiments.
If it's not coded and stored in the brain, how are memories, knowledge, facts, etc stored immaterially, and how does the immaterial send and receive this information?

Your responses lately are full of back peddling, special pleading, and rants with meaningless, untestable claims that everything is "just the image of the process, not the real  process."  You're really floundering.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 11:31:56
There may well be great differences between biological systems and computers. I wasn't claiming they were identical in every way. But they do both store information, and there is good evidence of neural coding. We've shown you the experiments.
If it's not coded and stored in the brain, how are memories, knowledge, facts, etc stored immaterially, and how does the immaterial send and receive this information?
We know they're coded and stored in the brain from experiments & studies like this: Rat memory restored by installing replay electronics (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20590-rat-memory-restored-by-installing-replay-electronics.html), this: Real-time neural coding of memory (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17925242), and this: How the Brain Encodes Memories at a Cellular Level (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091223125125.htm).

There are plenty more, for those willing to learn - I'm thinking of Don's classic excuse a few posts back, where he refused to read a paper that wasn't based on the hypothesis he prefers (magic):
Quote from:  DonQuichotte
...I stopped reading it , just after scanning some line of it .That's obviously a biased materialistic stuff that a-priori assumes that the mind is the product of the brain, and hence volitional effort of attention also is .Why continue reading it then ? What for ?
To learn, Don. To learn. 

Sometimes with all his evasions, distractions, goalpost shifting, etc., he gives the impression he's afraid that learning and understanding too much about different world views and ideas will change his mind!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/12/2014 15:46:50
Dlorde made a comment last year that I liked so much I saved:

"It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits."

I often wonder what difference would it make if Don wanted to believe that ultimately, at the very end, it is spirits. Would it change his understanding or the knowledge of the world all that much? But he's even more dogmatic than the Shaman, by stubbornly dragging his heels and insisting it's an immaterial process from the outset, making it impossible to discuss any interaction or explanation at another level of order - lower or higher.

And I find he overturns the table just when the discussion is getting interesting. For example, one thing that I do question about the computer/brain comparison is the idea that just because computers don't need or require consciousness to carry out certain processes, biological systems should not either. But perhaps that is the strategy we evolved, in the same way that their are multiple strategies for obtaining energy, locomotion, or reproduction.
Attention, choice, and volition are really fascinating topics, and Ramachandran's investigations, such as blind sight patients, suggest they are tied to the function of consciousness and qualia.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 07/12/2014 16:08:14


 Math is not just an invention of the mind, it was a discovery associated with material physical evidence.


Material Don! It's all about physical reality and the presence of evidence that we come to understand reality! Our minds don't invent reality, our minds discover it!

If one prefers to invent their own reality as opposed to discovering it, they risk bordering on the insane. Don, you asked me once if I thought you should see your shrink, and my answer would be; It might be a good idea!

I never see you post anywhere but on this thread. And honestly, it's beginning to look like an obsession with you. And that's not a good thing Don. Frankly, I used to think you were just misguided and needed some thoughtful instruction. But lately, I've begun to worry about you my friend. And in all honesty, I'm not trying to be facetious here. I think you need to do some honest reflection about how much dedication you render to this subject. And honestly try to listen to many of your detractors concerning the valid points they're making.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2014 18:09:00
"Quantum physics : illusion or reality ?" By Alastair Rae: About Positivism:
Excerpt from chapter 11 : Illusion or reality ?:


 Quote:

"I first want to refer briefly to a way of thinking about philosophical
problems known as ‘positivism’. Encapsulated in Wittgenstein’s phrase
‘of what we cannot speak thereof should we be silent’, positivism
asserts that questions that are incapable of verification are ‘non-questions’,
which it is meaningless to try to answer.

Thus the famous, if apocryphal, debate between medieval scholars about how many angels can dance on the point of a pin has no content because angels can never be observed or measured so no direct test of any conclusion we might reach about them is ever possible. Opinions about such unobservable phenomena are therefore a matter of choice rather than logical necessity.

Positivism can often exert a salutary beneficial influence on our thinking, cutting through the tangle of ideas and verbiage we (or at least I) sometimes get into, but if taken too far it can lead us to a position where many obviously acceptable, and apparently meaningful, statements are in danger of being dismissed as meaningless.

 An example is a reference to the past such as ‘Julius Caesar visited Britain
in 55 BC’, or ‘Florence Nightingale nursed the troops in the Crimean War’. There is no way such statements can be directly verified as we
cannot go back in time to see them happening, but everybody who knows some history would believe them to be both true and significant and certainly not meaningless. Or what are we to make of a statement
about the future such as ‘the world will continue to exist after my death’? There is no way that I can directly verify this proposition, but I
 firmly believe it to be both meaningful and true. A positivist analysis can be useful, but it has to be employed with caution." End quote.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2014 18:52:38
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446063#msg446063 date=1417967210]
Dlorde made a comment last year that I liked so much I saved:

"It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits."

(Prior note : that's a misleading, a misplaced  and a simplistic post from dlorde that cannot be applied to what i was saying : see below why not . Positivism is in fact the one that's a reductionist version of  "shamanistic " simplistic and false view of the world or methodology , in the sense that only the observable is real ...QM and the observer cannot even be separated from each other , for example : try to apply that silly positivism to QM then lol ) )

See my posted short excerpt above about positivism from someone who 's a proponent of MW theory .

Positivism is an impoverished misleading , false and limited view of the world, philosophy  and  methodology that goes back all the way to Comte , in the sense that only the observable is real : that's clearly a fundamentally false myopic view of the world and methodology : try to apply it to QM, for example lol

There are once again phenomena or processes whose existence can be inferred indirectly from some axioms or empirical evidence : not to mention what   Godel proved : there are some true propositions the truth of which cannot be proved from the axioms ...  :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

Furthermore : as Popper proved : who says that the non-physical cannot interact with the physical, and vice versa ?

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I often wonder what difference would it make if Don wanted to believe that ultimately, at the very end, it is spirits. Would it change his understanding or the knowledge of the world all that much? But he's even more dogmatic than the Shaman, by stubbornly dragging his heels and insisting it's an immaterial process from the outset, making it impossible to discuss any interaction or explanation at another level of order - lower or higher.

 (Prior note : you're just projecting , Cheryl : you're the dogmatic ones here, guys, all of you  : you have been believing in the materialistic false dogmatic belied system at the heart of current science ,by taking it for granted as science , without question,  despite all overwhelming evidence against it . Materialism has been turning science into a dogmatic secular orthodox ideological religion , science that should  not be or become an ideology in fact ,while science is all about dispelling dogmas ,half-truths and falsehood like those of materialism, ironically enough .)

Well, like it or not : see above : your simplistic positivism here above have been challenged and refuted by QM even that can never be understood without reference to the mind , ironically enough , otherwise , everything would remain in entangled  superposition states ,as the materialistic MW theory assumes by building all its sand castles on the materialistic false belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process , and hence cannot but make part of the physical universe , and therefore must remain in a superposition state in its turn through entanglement ...

Once again , If the mind was just a material process like the rest of them, we wouldn't have had that interpretation problem of QM, in the first place to begin with .Von Neumann even proved, through rigorous maths ,that the only plausible or logical candidate for the collapse of the wave function must be none other than a non-physical and a non-local process at the end of the measurement or observation chain : consciousness .

That's why materialists came up with such absurd paradoxical and unfalsifiable theories (like the hidden variable and the MW theories ) to elude the problem , in order to try so desperately to rescue their refuted deterministic reductionist materialism by sticking to their false and fundamental intrinsic premise : all is matter , including the mind .


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And I find he overturns the table just when the discussion is getting interesting. For example, one thing that I do question about the computer/brain comparison is the idea that just because computers don't need or require consciousness to carry out certain processes, biological systems should not either. But perhaps that is the strategy we evolved, in the same way that their are multiple strategies for obtaining energy, locomotion, or reproduction.

Ok, tell me then how consciousness allegedly evolved or arose from ...matter ? : non-sense .

Biological evolution can never account for , let alone explain, consciousness , its nature emergence or origin , let alone its 'evolution " .

http://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Consciousness-The-Hard-Problem/dp/026269221X

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Attention, choice, and volition are really fascinating topics, and Ramachandran's investigations, such as blind sight patients, suggest they are tied to the function of consciousness and qualia.

Blind people do not have to see to apply their mindful volitional effort of attention and action to themselves,to  their brains and to the rest of the physical reality .Their lost sight capacity gets compensated by other abilities .
Volitional effort of attention is neither  identical with the activity of its neuronal correlates  nor is it dependent of sight  ,let alone that it can be reducible to  brain activity through the senses .

The problem with brilliant neuroscientists like Ramachandran from which i have learned a lot , the problem of those kinds of scientists is that they try to make the empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialistic false beliefs or premises , instead of the other way around , instead of following the evidence wherever it might take them( as Von Neumann and many other prominent scientists did/do) , by misinterpreting the empirical evidence materialistically .

As a materialist thus , Ramachandran cannot but a -priori assume that the mind is a product of the brain or just brain activity , and hence volitional effort of attention also is .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 07/12/2014 19:27:04

Ok, tell me then how consciousness allegedly evolved or arose from ...matter ? : non-sense .


You define it and I'll explain it. Not that your narrow false nonmaterialist mind will accept the explanation, but it would be fun.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2014 19:51:39
... maths is just a product of the mind ... 

... IN SHORT; The reality of math was here long before men ever walked this earth ...

e.g. Snails were using "Cellular Automata Rule 30 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30)" before human-beings existed ...
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fartfail.com%2Fautomata%2Fimg%2Fpaper%2Frule30shell.jpg&hash=68ff51570bd5687a391dfd855d09c72e)
http://artfail.com/automata/

Rule 30 produces a complex-patten which emerges by repeatedly applying simple-rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30#Rule_set).
But Don does not believe in complex emergent properties (https://www.google.com/search?q=DonQuichotte+emergence+magical+unscientific+site%3Awww.thenakedscientists.com) , despite them occurring in nature, ( e.g. on the shell above ).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_properties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_properties)

QM has been showing to us all that it  can never be understood without reference to the mind , no matter how many MW or hidden variable theories materialists would try to come up with to elude that fact , in order to rescue their  false deterministic materialism .

The mind of the observer cannot thus be separated from the observed objective reality , if there is such a latter thing at all , and hence maths that seem to be a product of the mind as well as underlying the laws of physics might be just a human mental construct ( the mental that's irreducible to the physical ,that is , despite  the false materialistic intrinsic reductionist attempts to reduce the mind to just brain activity .) :

http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science-spotlights/kavli-origins-of-math#.VISt8MnCkYw
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 20:03:37
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446063#msg446063 date=1417967210]"It's reminiscent of a shaman who claims that a motor car is motivated by spirits; when told it is the internal combustion engine, he says that spirits make that work; when the mechanism is explained, he says spirits make the spark and ignite the fuel; when electricity and fuel combustion are explained, he says they're controlled by spirits; and so-on. Ultimately, a fully detailed explanation of the car is made, down to the quantum mechanical level, which the shaman insists is the work of spirits."

(Prior note : that's a misleading and simplistic post from dlorde that cannot be applied to what i was saying

If you look back over your posts here about consciousness, you'll see it's a fair analogy of the changes in your description of it (vague though they are). 

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See my posted short excerpt above about positivism from someone who 's a proponent of MW theory .
I'm equally accepting of Relational EPR (http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0604064.pdf) as an interpretation of QM - I just find Many Worlds more fun - particularly as you were spectacularly unaware that your criticisms of it here were equally applicable to the Copenhagen 'conscious collapse' interpretation in the absence of a consciousness... Note that the Relational EPR paper emphasises that for the purposes of QM, an observer is any physical system:
Quote from:  Smerlak & Rovelli
An observer, in the sense used here, does not need to be, say “complex”, or even less so “conscious”. An atom interacting with another atom can be considered an observer. Obviously this does not mean that one atom must be capable of storing the information about the other atom, and consciously computing the outcome of its future interaction with it; the point is simply that the history of its past interaction is is principle sufficient information for this computation.

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Positivism is an impoverished misleading , false and limited view of the world, philosophy  and  methodology that goes back all the way to Comte , in the sense that only the observable is real : that's clearly a fundamentally false view of the world and methodology : try to apply it to QM, for example lol
You still haven't grasped that this is a fundamental feature of QM - that, in a sense, only the observable (note again an observation is any interaction of physical systems) is real - IOW it really does change what we mean by 'real' - e.g. the relativity of reality:
Quote from:  Smerlak & Rovelli
This recalls the conclusion that the late Prof. Peres reached in his analysis of EPR in 2004: “The question raised by EPR ‘Can the quantum–mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?’ has a positive answer. However, reality may be different for different observers”.

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There are once again phenomena or processes whose existence can be inferred indirectly from some axioms or empirical evidence : not to mention what   Godel proved : there are some true propositions the truth of which cannot be proved from the axioms ...  :
What have Godel's theorems about mathematical logic got to do with this?

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Furthermore : as Popper proved : who says that the non-physical cannot interact with the physical, and vice versa ?
That's not a proof, it's a question; and I've already explained what he probably meant by 'non-physical'. If you have some evidence he wasn't referring to his Three Worlds metaphysics (such as the context of that quote), by all means present it.

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Once again , If the mind was just a material process like the rest of them, we wouldn't have had that interpretation problem of QM, in the first place to begin with .Von Neumann even proved, through rigorous maths ,that the only plausible or logical candidate for the collapse of the wave function must be none other than a non-physical and a non-local process at the end of the measurement or observation chain : consciousness .
You should be aware that the collapse of the wavefunction isn't part of the quantum formalism. Von Neumann didn't realise it at the time, but it's an unnecessary addition that causes more problems than it solves; for example, it's now clear that the apparent collapse occurs in the absence of consciousness and, if a consciousness is present, before any signal can reach that consciousness. Unless you're prepared to ascribe consciousness to every physical system, from subatomic particles upwards, it's a dead duck - and if you do that, you'll have to find some other way to make human consciousness 'special' (in fact, panpsychism really changes nothing in this respect).

You're flogging a dead horse - worse, an imaginary dead horse.

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That's why materialists come up with such absurd paradoxical and unfalsifiable theories (like the hidden variable and the MW theories ) to elude the problem...
The hidden variable hypothesis was an entirely reasonable one, following classical physical principles - the simplest and most obvious explanation. And it was falsifiable - it was tested and found to be false!
MW is not a theory, it's an interpretation of the theory of QM (how many times?).

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Ok, tell me then how consciousness allegedly evolved or arose from ...matter ? : non-sense .
So where does it come from in your view?  Provide as much detail as you can...

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The problem with brilliant neuroscientists like Ramachandran from which i have learned a lot , the problem of those kinds of scientists is that they try to make the empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialistic false beliefs or premises , instead of the other way around , instead of following the evidence wherever it might take them( as Von Neumann and many other prominent scientists did/do) , by misinterpreting the empirical evidence materialistically .
Lol! Pot, meet kettle!  [:o)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 20:08:09
QM has been showing to us all that it  can never be understood without reference to the mind...
That's simply wrong. Have you not watched that MIT 'Introduction to QM' video yet?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2014 20:28:24
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446036#msg446036 date=1417910486]
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg445956#msg445956 date=1417824638]
Well, the brain usually sends messages to the mind from both the outside physical world as well as from the inner biological one,and gets feedbacks from the mind in return ,or not  .
Lol! How can the physical brain 'send messages' outside the physical world? what does that even mean? where's your evidence?
Well, consciousness and the mind are non-local,so.
Maybe they work through entanglement with the brain as well , who knows ?
Clearly not you. Colour me unsurprised that you can't say how the non-existent interacts with the existent.

What are you talking about ? What non-existent ....Let go of your fundamentally false and myopic positivism .See above my posted excerpt about positivism and my post to Cheryl on the subject here above .
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As Popper used to say : physical-physical interaction is not the only kind of interaction .There is nothing that can make us assume that the non-physical cannot interact with the physical, and vice versa .
Perhaps; but if he said that, he was either referring to something else, or referring to the subjective and/or objective abstractions of his metaphysical Worlds 2 & 3.  Because, regarding mind and brain, Popper was property dualist, not a substance dualist. So he did not think that the mind is a substance separate from the body: he was an interactionist who thought that mental or psychological properties or aspects of people are distinct from physical ones, but arise from them. His 'Three Worlds' model involved a metaphysical hierarchy of abstraction, World 1 was the physical level of objects, World 2 was the subjective abstract, personal knowledge - arising from World 1, and World 3 was the objective abstract, the sum of human knowledge - arising from World 2. So, rather than supporting your hypothesis, he contradicts it.

Popper was referring to the non-physical consciousness interacting with the physical brain .

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Explain to me the very origin of maths then : it is  a highly  abstract non-physical product of the mind .
I can't say, I wasn't there; but it presumably originates in observation and interaction with the physical world (e.g. counting). It's not a huge step from keeping a pebble for every sheep to counting, and from counting or token exchange to simple arithmetic.

Do you see any numbers walking down the streets ? lol,any logarithms or square roots....sun-bathing on the beach ?  Come on , maths are mental constructs that happen to be underlying the laws of physics also (QM observer effect interpretation is the only one that can account for both facts: our reality is mainly mental ,if not wholly mental . )

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They used clever reasoning in the sense that our minds tend to see or project regularities everywhere and that our reality is mainly a mental construct ...Long story .
Empirical evidence suggests that this is indeed the case. We are pattern-matching systems and our perception of reality is a construct largely based on our expectations.

Aha : now you're trying to make that fit into your false refuted outdated and superseded materialistic mechanical deterministic world view .
Way to go, scientist .
Maths are mental constructs that are irreducible to biology or to neurophysiology ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/12/2014 20:54:27
QM has been showing to us all that it  can never be understood without reference to the mind...
That's simply wrong. Have you not watched that MIT 'Introduction to QM' video yet?

That's just a materialistic approach .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 21:17:19
Popper was referring to the non-physical consciousness interacting with the physical brain .
Evidence? the context of the quote might help. As I said, Popper wasn't a substance dualist; he didn't believe in the non-physical in the sense you do.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/12/2014 21:22:03
QM has been showing to us all that it  can never be understood without reference to the mind...
That's simply wrong. Have you not watched that MIT 'Introduction to QM' video yet?

That's just a materialistic approach .
It describes what is empirically observed; no more.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2014 01:48:27


Blind people do not have to see to apply their mindful volitional effort of attention and action to themselves,to  their brains and to the rest of the physical reality .Their lost sight capacity gets compensated by other abilities .

That isn't what blindsight refers to, which you should know if you are so familiar with his work.

Humans have two visual pathways from the eyeballs to the higher centers of the brain.  The  evolutionarily older pathway, more prominent in some mammals and reptiles,  goes to the brain stem, and then gets relayed eventually to the higher centers of the brain. The evolutionarily newer pathway goes from the eyeball through the thalamus to the visual cortex of the brain.
In blindsight, the first pathway still works, and some kind of visual information is shared with other parts of the brain, but without the conscious experience of seeing and without the qualia of vision, because the second pathway, or part of the the visual cortex it leads to, doesn’t work.  Patients with blindsight can track objects, avoid obstacles, detect position and movement, sometimes even identify color or orientation (vertical or horizontal) and yet they insist categorically they cannot see - to them it feels like a wild guess, even though they are consistently accurate.

There are several reasons why Ramachandran found all of this interesting. One is, that these patients allowed him to compare vision with consciousness to vision without consciousness & qualia, and see how they differed, or what consciousness added. The evidence from his experiments suggests that without consciousness and qualia, a person cannot use visual information to make choices in which the response to a stimulus is open-ended - that is, when there is a vast variety of responses possible in reaction to stimulus. One biological function of qualia, according to Ramachandran, is it that qualia allows an image to be held in working memory long enough for the executive function to work with it, assign meaning or significance based on a myriad of associated information from other parts of the brain.

Quote



The problem with brilliant neuroscientists like Ramachandran from which i have learned a lot , the problem of those kinds of scientists is that they try to make the empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialistic false beliefs or premises , instead of the other way around , instead of following the evidence wherever it might take them( as Von Neumann and many other prominent scientists did/do) , by misinterpreting the empirical evidence materialistically .As a materialist thus , Ramachandran cannot but a -priori assume that the mind is a product of the brain or just brain activity , and hence volitional effort of attention also is .


You can criticize Ramachandran for not considering a supernatural or immaterial explanation (while also failing to provide the immaterial mechanism yourself) but his interpretations lead to more testable hypothesizes, more experimental designs, and more information about how things work, etc. Yours lead no where.That was my point about the shaman reference. Your automatic attribution of every mental process and aspect of consciousness to the immaterial prevents any further exploration or insight into the process, and has no explanatory power.
 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/12/2014 11:08:33
You can criticize Ramachandran for not considering a supernatural or immaterial explanation (while also failing to provide the immaterial mechanism yourself) but his interpretations lead to more testable hypothesizes, more experimental designs, and more information about how things work, etc. Yours lead no where.That was my point about the shaman reference. Your automatic attribution of every mental process and aspect of consciousness to the immaterial prevents any further exploration or insight into the process, and has no explanatory power.
The problem for Don is that not only does his hypothesis have no explanatory or predictive power, but it has no supporting evidence; which, of course, is why researchers like Ramachandran don't need to consider it - they simply follow the evidence they have, finding no need to invoke redundant magical entities.

And, as has already been said, the quantum theory Don has currently latched onto, much like a drunk clinging to a lamp post - more for support than illumination - actually does the opposite, not only providing no support for his idea, but actively contradicting it by illuminating the fields and forces available for everyday interaction with the brain (basically the electromagnetic field alone). Regardless of how he tries to force his preferred interpretation to fit his hypothesis, his hypothesis doesn't have a mechanism because quantum field theory behind the interpretation tells us there is, and can be, no such mechanism... His current response of ignoring or dismissing all 'materialist approaches' is the equivalent of a child stuffing his fingers in his ears and shouting "La la la la la, I can't hear you!".

I can't wait to see what else he'll find to scrape from the bottom of his immaterial barrel!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 17:35:04
MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND:

Let's go back to basics , guys :
Materialists have been building all their sand castles on their intrinsic fundamental false premise : all is matter , including the mind, and hence the latter is either identical with the former , a product of the former or just an epiphenomena : 

Enjoy :


Quote : "The doctrine of materialism is one of the implications of taking classical physics to be a complete description of all of nature, including human beings. It is essentially the idea that all events have a physical cause; in other words, that all events are caused by the interaction between particles of matter and force fields. It follows from this that mind has no causal role in nature but is at most merely a useless by-product produced by the brain, and so in short, all that matters is matter.
There are three basic materialist approaches: the mind does not exist, the mind is identical to the brain, or the mind is a useless by-product produced by the brain.

The eliminative materialists seriously argue that consciousness and the self do not exist, but that children are indoctrinated by “folk psychology” into believing that they exist as conscious, thinking beings.

 For instance, journalist Michael Lemonick writes, “Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not: some entity deep inside the brain that corresponds to the ‘self,’ some kernel of awareness that runs the show, as the ‘man behind the curtain’ manipulated the illusion of a powerful magician in The Wizard of Oz. After more than a century of looking for it, brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.”

This may sound bizarre, but since materialism cannot account for consciousness, some materialists simply deny their own existence as conscious beings. They are driven to this act of desperation by their conviction that science, which they understand as applied materialism, supports them. Note the self-refuting nature of this position: If I believe that consciousness does not exist, then how could my belief exist? If my consciousness does not exist, then neither does my belief. And if my professed belief is nothing more than a machine going through its motions, then you have no reason to accept it as correct.

The identity theory holds great attraction for many philosophers, as it seems to offer a simple and easy solution to the problem. It says, for instance, that the subjective awareness of a red patch is objectively the movement of particles taking place in one’s brain. Some identity theorists hope that neuroscience will one day be able to map out the brain states that correspond to mental states, so that we will be able to simply describe mental activity as the activity of the brain. But Beauregard points out why this is a false hope:

Every human mind and brain moves through life differently, changing as it goes, so the information obtained for his brain would not apply to anyone else’s—or even to his own brain at a later time! This point bears repeating because it is so contrary to materialist hopes that it is often ignored in public discussions. One outcome, for example, is that [Jean-Peirre] Changeux’s view that mind states and brain states are completely identical is untestable and lacks predictive value.

Any theory that is untestable and lacks predictive value does not belong to science, but rather to philosophy at best, ideology at worse. And it does get worse. How are we even to understand the assertion that thoughts and brain states are really one and the same? If they are the same, then every characteristic of one must be a characteristic of the other; but this leads to nonsense, as physicist and philosopher C. D. Broad pointed out.

There are some questions which can be raised about the characteristics of being a molecular movement, which it is nonsensical to raise about the characteristics of being an awareness of a red patch; and conversely. About a molecular movement it is perfectly reasonable to raise the question: Is it swift or slow, straight or circular, and so on? About the awareness of a red patch it is nonsensical to ask whether it is a swift or slow awareness, a straight or a circular awareness, and so on. Conversely, it is reasonable to ask about an awareness of a red patch whether it is a clear or a confused awareness; but it is nonsense to ask of a molecular movement whether it is a clear or a confused movement. Thus the attempt to argue that “being a sensation of so and so” and “being a bit of bodily behavior of such and such a kind” are just two names for the same characteristic is evidently hopeless.

Eliminative materialism and identity theory are varieties of monism, the idea that only one kind of substance exists in the universe. A materialist monist believes that matter is all that exists, in contrast to a dualist, who believes that reality contains two sorts of essences: psychical and physical. The materialist believes that the full authority of science supports his position and that dualism is an outmoded legacy of a prescientific era, but many modern scientists disagree. Astronomer V. A. Firsoff writes, “To assert there is only matter and no mind is the most illogical of propositions, quite apart from the findings of modern physics, which show that there is no matter in the traditional meaning of the term.”

 As we saw earlier, many quantum theorists were driven to the conclusion that prior to conscious observation, matter exists only in a half-real state as possibility waves, without definite values for dynamic attributes such as position or velocity. Hence Walker’s remark that “duality is already a part of physics.” Wolfgang Pauli, one of the major contributors to quantum theory, concluded, “The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously."

Epiphenomenalism does not deny the existence of consciousness, but holds that the interaction between the brain and mind runs strictly one way, from brain to mind. This view was popularized by Darwin’s friend and colleague Thomas Huxley, who described the mind as a mere epiphenomena—a useless by-product of brain activity. According to this theory, free will and intent are only illusions.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Karl Popper rightly pointed out.

The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the onesided action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.

So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.
However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics, being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary theory.

 However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has eliminated the causal closure of the physical.
Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, pointed out that while biologists have been relentlessly moving toward the hard-core materialism that characterized nineteenth-century physics, “at the same time, physicists, faced with compelling experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly mechanical models of the universe to a view that sees the mind as playing an integral role in all physical events. It is as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the tracks.”

 For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline should rethink its position—physics or biology? On a practical note, can we reasonably expect much progress in neuroscience, given the problems, if we do not begin by reassessing the materialism that has characterized our hypotheses for decades?”.

Materialist theories of mind are based on the assumption that brain activity, and hence mental activity, is driven from below by the deterministic, observer-independent motions of elementary particles in the brain, as described by classical physics. But we have known since the early years of the twentieth century that classical physics fails drastically at the atomic and subatomic levels, and that the behavior of such particles is indeterministic and observer dependent. The irony here is that while materialists often describe themselves as promoting a scientific outlook, it is possible to be a materialist only by ignoring the most successful scientific theory of matter the world has yet seen.

 The materialist believes that consciousness is created by matter, yet the best theory we have about the nature of matter seems to require that consciousness exists independently of matter. And materialist models of mind utterly fail to answer the hard problem: why should consciousness exist in the first place and then constantly deceive us as to its function?.
Materialist philosopher of mind John Searle has lamented the bankruptcy of most work in the philosophy of mind and has candidly suggested that the motivation behind acceptance of materialist views is more emotional than rational.

Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives. That is, the choice we are tacitly presented with is between a ‘scientific’ approach, as represented by one or another of the current versions of ‘materialism,’ and an ‘anti-scientific’ approach, as represented by Cartesianism or some other traditional religious conception of the mind." End Quote .

Chris Carter
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 17:44:29
dlorde :

Here below will you find the specific quote of Popper within  its specific  context :


THE DREADED INTERACTION PROBLEM :

Quote : "Critics of dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties such as mind and matter could possibly interact (materialist philosopher William Lycan calls this the “dreaded” interaction problem). How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter? As K. R. Rao writes:

The main problem with such dualism is the problem of interaction. How does unextended mind interact with the extended body? Any kind of causal interaction between them, which is presumed by most dualist theories, comes into conflict with the physical theory that the universe is a closed system and that every physical event is linked with an antecedent physical event. This assumption preempts any possibility that a mental act can cause a physical event.

Of course, we know now that the universe is not a closed system and that the collapse of the wave function—a physical event—is linked with an antecedent mental event. The objection Rao describes is of course based on classical physics.
By asking “How does unextended mind interact with the extended body?” Rao is making the implicit assumption that phenomena that exist as cause and effect must have something in common in order to exist as cause and effect. So is this a logical necessity or is it rather an empirical truth, a fact about nature? As philosopher and historian David Hume pointed out long ago, we form our idea of causation from observations of constant correlation; and since anything in principle could correlate with anything else, only observation can establish what causes what. Parapsychologist John Beloff considers the issue logically:

If an event A never occurred without being preceded by some other event B, we would surely want to say that the second event was a necessary condition or cause of the first event, whether or not the two had anything else in common. As for such a principle being an empirical truth, how could it be since there are here only two known independent substances, i.e. mind and matter, as candidates on which to base a generalization? To argue that they cannot interact because they are independent is to beg the question… . It says something about the desperation of those who want to dismiss radical dualism that such phony arguments should repeatedly be invoked by highly reputable philosophers who should know better.

Popper also rejects completely the idea that only like can act upon like, describing this as resting on obsolete notions of physics. For an example of unlikes acting on one another, we have interaction between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies. Popper considers the issue empirically:
In the present state of physics we are faced, not with a plurality of substances, but with a plurality of different kinds of forces, and thus with a pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles.
 Perhaps the clearest physical example against the thesis that only like things can act upon each other is this: In modern physics, the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields —by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and then the modified field acts upon another body
." End quote

Chris Carter
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 17:48:26
Von Neumann and Consciousness :

Consciousness as a key component or a key "building block"  of the universe :

Quote : "The von Neumann interpretation of reality leaves open the possibility that the mind is not an emergent but rather an elemental property, that is, a basic constituent of the universe as elemental as energy and force fields.

 This idea is seriously entertained by physicists such as Herbert, and in its favor we should note that it would resolve the paradox that is raised by the von Neumann interpretation: if consciousness depends on the physical world and if the value of many quantum physical properties depends on consciousness, then how did the physical world ever bring about consciousness in the first place? The solution to this puzzle is apparently what Jeans means when he writes, “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.”End quote .

Chris Carter
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 08/12/2014 17:59:19
Quote from: DonQuichotte

 “Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we ought rather hail it as the governor of the realm of matter.”End quote .

Chris Carter
If that were true, we have the mind of the amoeba to thank for all prehistoric events. And what about the very early universe, who's consciousness was governor then?

As usual, this logic has a multitude of errors and you should be smart enough to realize it Don. Not only are you perpetrating a hoax upon us, if you truly believe this line of crap, you're perpetrating it upon yourself.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 08/12/2014 18:15:37
dlorde :

Here below will you find the specific quote of Popper within  its specific  context :


THE DREADED INTERACTION PROBLEM :

Quote : "Critics of dualism often question how two fundamentally different properties such as mind and matter could possibly interact (materialist philosopher William Lycan calls this the “dreaded” interaction problem). How can something nonspatial, with no mass, location, or physical dimensions, possibly influence spatially bound matter?

Easy. They don't. "Mind" is an abstract and undefined notion with no specific characteristics and no observable effect on matter. Matter is the very opposite, and it only interacts with matter and energy.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 18:17:31
dlorde , Cheryl :




Quote : " Conclusion:
The results suggest that MRCP amplitude during movement execution is a neural correlate of perception of effort. This study was the first to provide direct neurophysiological evidence that MRCP amplitude during movement execution correlates with perception of effort.
This finding supports the corollary discharge theory, which proposes that perception of effort is the conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles.
 Further studies using brain imaging and neuropharmacological techniques, are necessary to identify more precisely the brain networks and neurotransmitters underlying perception of effort."End quote

How can they jump from the former to the following ? :


...The conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles

How can the CMC be conscious or aware ?

They equate   the neuronal correlates of perception of
effort (CMC ) with the conscious awareness of the   perception of effort itself  .

They started from the following premise to conclude the above :

Quote : "Perception of effort, the conscious sensation of how heavy and
strenuous a physical task is (Borg, 1998), is an important aspect
of our subjective experience of volition.
It is thought that the signal underlying perception of effort arises in the brain from corollary discharges of the central motor command.
This corollary discharge theory suggests that perception of effort should be significantly correlated with the magnitude of central motor command." End quote .

.............

We encounter the same materialistic  logical fallacy or the same materialistic intrinsic false premise :  the mind is just brain activity , since all is matter , including the mind :

They jump from neuronal correlates of the mind to the mind itself by equating the 2 with each other :

Quote : " The prefrontal cortex has long been suspected to play an important role in cognitive control, in the ability to orchestrate thought and action in accordance with internal goals. Its neural basis, however, has remained a mystery. Here, we propose that cognitive control stems from the active maintenance of patterns of activity in the prefrontal cortex that represent goals and the means to achieve them. They provide bias signals to other brain structures whose net effect is to guide the flow of activity
along neural pathways that establish the proper mappings between inputs, internal states, and outputs needed to perform a given task. We review neurophysiological, neurobiological, neuroimaging, and computational studies that support this theory and discuss its implications as well as further issues to be addressed." End quote .



Excerpt from the Conclusion :
Quote : "The theory we have described provides a framework within which to formulate hypotheses about the specific mechanisms underlying the role of the PFC in cognitive control. We have reviewed a number of these, some of which have begun to take explicit form in computational models. We have also provided a sampling of the many questions that remain about these mechanisms and the functioning of the PFC. Regardless of whether the particular hypotheses we have outlined accurately describe PFC function, they offer an example of how neurally plausible mechanisms can exhibit the properties of self-organization and self-regulation required to account for cognitive control without recourse to a “homunculus.”End quote .

How can they equate  the activity of the prefrontal cortex  or the alleged PFC neuronal correlates of cognititive control with the volitional conscious aware cognitive control?

Well, no wonder there , since they already assume ,thanks to their materialism, that the mind , including cognitive control thus , is just brain activity : they start from their materialistic false premise to build their sand castles on it .

That mindful cognitive control does work through its prefrontal cortex correlates does not mean that the former is just the latter , or that they can be equated with each other .

............

Furthermore , we encounter the same materialistic logical fallacy or materialistic fundamental false premise when dealing with  the interpretations of experiments regarding memory ,for example : equating neuronal correlates of  memory ...with the latter, and hence memory is allegedly stored in the brain correlates of memory :

Quantitative neuronal correlates of memory get equated with memory itself ,while the latter  is a matter of qualitative subjective processes that cannot be reduced to or equated with their quantitative neuronal correlates, needless to add , since memory itself as a matter of subjective processes that encompass taste , subjective experiences, meaning , purpose, aesthetics , ethics , morality , ....cannot be quantified or "computed or stored " by their neuronal correlates.

See the following on the subject :

Quote : "THE EVIDENCE FROM NEUROPHYSIOLOGY:

It is commonly assumed today that memories are somehow stored in the brain, and this belief goes back to ancient times. Aristotle, for instance, compared memories with impressions left by seals in wax.

As time has passed, the analogies have been updated—most recently in terms of tape recordings or computer memory stores—yet the basic idea has remained the same. But how well does the neurophysiological evidence support the belief that memories are stored somehow as traces within the brain?
Neuroscientists have tried for decades to locate the sites of memory traces within the brain, and an enormous number of animals have been expended in the attempt.

 The usual process has been to train the animals to perform some task and then cut out parts of their brains to find out where the memories are stored. But even after large chunks of their brains have been removed—in some experiments up to 60 percent—the unfortunate animals can often remember what they were trained to do. Even experiments on invertebrates such as the octopus have failed to locate specific memory traces, leading one researcher to conclude that “memory seems to be both everywhere and nowhere in particular.”

There is, however, much evidence that changes can occur in the brains of animals as a consequence of the way they grow up. Experiments with rats have shown that animals raised in an environment with plenty of stimulation and activity have bigger brains than those raised in solitary confinement.
The nervous system is dynamic in its structure, and its development is influenced by its activity.

This consideration has been used in an experiment with chicks in an attempt to localize memory traces in the brain laid down during the learning process. A day after hatching, they were trained to perform a simple task, the effects of which were studied by injecting radioactive substances.

 Greater amounts of these substances were incorporated into nerve cells in a particular region of the left hemisphere of the forebrain in those chicks than in chicks that did not undergo the training.6 In other words, nerve cells in a particular region of the brain showed greater growth and development in chicks that had learned to perform the simple task, but when the region of the forebrain associated with the learning process was removed a day after they were trained, the chicks could still remember what they had learned. The cells that had experienced greater growth and development during the learning process were not necessary for the memory retention. Once again, the hypothetical memory traces have proved to be elusive.
There is another empirical consideration that causes great difficulty for the trace theory of memory.

If memories are somehow stored in brain cells or as modifications of the synaptic connections between them, then the structure of the synapses and the nervous system must remain stable over long periods of time. After all, the time span of human memory is often decades.

Yet as Francis Crick writes: “It is believed that almost all the molecules in our bodies, with the exception of DNA, turn over in a matter of days, weeks, or at the most a few months. How then is memory stored in the brain so that its trace is relatively immune to molecular turnover?”.

Crick’s “solution” is to postulate a mechanism whereby “molecules in the synapse interact in such a way that they can be replaced by new material, one at a time, without altering the overall state of the structure.” His hypothesis involves protein molecules that he endows with a number of unusual properties, but there is no evidence yet that such molecules exist.
We can see from these considerations that the conventional theory of memory traces stored in the brain is in fact an assumption, one that follows from the currently orthodox theory of life, the mechanistic theory, according to which all aspects of life and mind are ultimately explicable in terms of the known laws of physics and chemistry. Results from the experiments mentioned above have not usually called this assumption into question. As one maverick biologist has pointed out:

The conventional response to such findings is that there must be multiple or redundant memorystorage systems distributed throughout various regions of the brain: if some are lost, back-up systems can take over. This hypothesis, invented to account for the failure of attempts to find localized memory traces, follows naturally from the assumption that memories must be stored somehow inside the brain; but in the continuing absence of any direct evidence, it remains more a matter of faith than of fact.

Since the assumption that memories must be stored in the brain follows directly from the mechanistic theory of life, the validity of this theory must be examined and the implications of alternative theories of life for the noncerebral storage of memories must be clearly set forth." End quote .

Chris Carter

.........

"If mind exerts its power over nature by selecting which quantum outcome actually occurs, then our perceived freedom of action is not illusory, for physics as currently conceived regards quantum events as essentially uncaused, unrestrained by prior physical events."
PHYSICIST NICK HERBERT


Regarding the controversial collapse of the wave function and Bell's theorem + the latter's related experiments that proved the existence of "spooky action at a distance " or non-locality or entanglement + introduced the notion of free will in the measurement problem + challenged the existence of the objective reality as such , i refer you to :

The Copenhagen interpretation is still the standard or orthodox one in QM .

http://quantumenigma.com/controversy/

MW interpretation of QM is just a desperate and pathetic attempt to rescue the deterministic materialism .

Alastair Rae , for example, as a proponent of MW theory (theory of interpretation of QM, if you like ) said

that he would prefer the latter ,mainly because he doesn't want to give up reality : a matter of preference.










Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 19:15:23
Popper was referring to the non-physical consciousness interacting with the physical brain .
Evidence? the context of the quote might help. As I said, Popper wasn't a substance dualist; he didn't believe in the non-physical in the sense you do.

See the previous page .Popper was the one at least who coined that famous statement of his : "promissory materialism " lol : he was against materialism at least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 19:19:25
QM has been showing to us all that it  can never be understood without reference to the mind...
That's simply wrong. Have you not watched that MIT 'Introduction to QM' video yet?

That's just a materialistic approach .
It describes what is empirically observed; no more.

Yeah , right : that's why the interpretation or measurement problem of QM does still exist: still not resolved conclusively ,although there is one particular interpretation of QM that's way more plausible and way more simple than the rest : the observer effect interpretation  .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 19:38:36
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446095#msg446095 date=1418003307]


Blind people do not have to see to apply their mindful volitional effort of attention and action to themselves,to  their brains and to the rest of the physical reality .Their lost sight capacity gets compensated by other abilities .

That isn't what blindsight refers to, which you should know if you are so familiar with his work.

I am not familiar with that part of his work .So what ?

Quote
Humans have two visual pathways from the eyeballs to the higher centers of the brain.  The  evolutionarily older pathway, more prominent in some mammals and reptiles,  goes to the brain stem, and then gets relayed eventually to the higher centers of the brain. The evolutionarily newer pathway goes from the eyeball through the thalamus to the visual cortex of the brain.
In blindsight, the first pathway still works, and some kind of visual information is shared with other parts of the brain, but without the conscious experience of seeing and without the qualia of vision, because the second pathway, or part of the the visual cortex it leads to, doesn’t work.  Patients with blindsight can track objects, avoid obstacles, detect position and movement, sometimes even identify color or orientation (vertical or horizontal) and yet they insist categorically they cannot see - to them it feels like a wild guess, even though they are consistently accurate.

Ok. And ?

Quote
There are several reasons why Ramachandran found all of this interesting. One is, that these patients allowed him to compare vision with
Quote
consciousness to vision without consciousness & qualia, and see how they differed, or what consciousness added. The evidence from his experiments suggests that without consciousness and qualia, a person cannot use visual information to make choices in which the response to a stimulus is open-ended - that is, when there is a vast variety of responses possible in reaction to stimulus. One biological function of qualia, according to Ramachandran, is it that qualia allows an image to be held in working memory long enough for the executive function to work with it, assign meaning or significance based on a myriad of associated information from other parts of the brain.

I told you so, didn't i ? He reduces consciousness or qualia and vision to just biological processes ,doesn't he ? .

As a materialist , he cannot but assume that brain activity and the rest of biology is all what there is in living organisms like ours  ,so consciousness and the rest gotta be just material processes .
How can he jump from the quantitative to the qualitative like that by equating between the 2 ? : simply because he sees no distinction between the 2 = they are all just material processes.


Quote
The problem with brilliant neuroscientists like Ramachandran from which i have learned a lot , the problem of those kinds of scientists is that they try to make the empirical evidence fit into their a-priori held materialistic false beliefs or premises , instead of the other way around , instead of following the evidence wherever it might take them( as Von Neumann and many other prominent scientists did/do) , by misinterpreting the empirical evidence materialistically .As a materialist thus , Ramachandran cannot but a -priori assume that the mind is a product of the brain or just brain activity , and hence volitional effort of attention also is .

Quote
You can criticize Ramachandran for not considering a supernatural or immaterial explanation (while also failing to provide the immaterial mechanism yourself) but his interpretations lead to more testable hypothesizes, more experimental designs, and more information about how things work, etc. Yours lead no where.That was my point about the shaman reference. Your automatic attribution of every mental process and aspect of consciousness to the immaterial prevents any further exploration or insight into the process, and has no explanatory power.

You did not get what i was saying : i am not rejecting the man's work , just his underlying materialistic theory of consciousness+ the fact that materialists like himself do reduce the whole universe , including ourselves , to just material processes  .
Ramachandran like any other materialist scientists reduces consciousness to just brain activity : this materialist claim has been supported by a big zero empirical evidence ,and yet materialists do continue building all their sand castles on their false materialistic intrinsic claim that all is matter , including the mind thus  .

Furthermore , the non-materialistic conception of nature that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature alike , needless to add , and its related theories  of consciousness have been supported by a little army of scientists and philosophers ...as the subject matter of this thread , if you haven't noticed yet ,

As for the rest of your speculations, see the previous page then .
Even thought we talked all about the above previously on the lengthy consciousness thread and through this thread as well via countless relevant informed excerpts of books and other and more on the subject , you , guys , do still behave and think as if i have never provided you with any relevant info or evidence on the subject .

Do i have to start all over again , over and over again ? Don't think so .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 20:04:15
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446121#msg446121 date=1418036913]
You can criticize Ramachandran for not considering a supernatural or immaterial explanation (while also failing to provide the immaterial mechanism yourself) but his interpretations lead to more testable hypothesizes, more experimental designs, and more information about how things work, etc. Yours lead no where.That was my point about the shaman reference. Your automatic attribution of every mental process and aspect of consciousness to the immaterial prevents any further exploration or insight into the process, and has no explanatory power.
The problem for Don is that not only does his hypothesis have no explanatory or predictive power, but it has no supporting evidence; which, of course, is why researchers like Ramachandran don't need to consider it -


Sure about that ? Your intentional selective amnesia is tragic -hilarious "

http://www.opensciences.org/about/manifesto-for-a-post-materialist-science

Quote
they simply follow the evidence they have, finding no need to invoke redundant magical entities.


lol H I L A R I O U S :

What evidence is there for the materialistic intrinsic fundamental claim that all is matter , including the mind then ? = a big zero .

If the dogmatic materialists would really follow the evidence ,they would be ceasing to be materialists lol, in the first place to begin with , instead of equating their materialistic false belief or world view, ideology ,conception of nature ,  19th century philosophy that was built upon the fundamentally false classical physics ,  instead of thus equating materialism with ...science by turning the latter into a materialistic one ,as that has been the case for relatively so long now and counting .....


Quote
And, as has already been said, the quantum theory Don has currently latched onto, much like a drunk clinging to a lamp post - more for support than illumination - actually does the opposite, not only providing no support for his idea, but actively contradicting it by illuminating the fields and forces available for everyday interaction with the brain (basically the electromagnetic field alone). Regardless of how he tries to force his preferred interpretation to fit his hypothesis, his hypothesis doesn't have a mechanism because quantum field theory behind the interpretation tells us there is, and can be, no such mechanism... His current response of ignoring or dismissing all 'materialist approaches' is the equivalent of a child stuffing his fingers in his ears and shouting "La la la la la, I can't hear you!".

For your info : Great scientific minds physicists and other scientists+ other philosophers ...yesterday and today supported/support the observer effect interpretation of QM.
The Copenhagen interpretation is still the standard or orthodox one so far , while other competing interpretations of QM like that insane MW one are too ....(fill in the blanks then : multiple choices ) to be taken seriously .
 
Quote
I can't wait to see what else he'll find to scrape from the bottom of his immaterial barrel!

Nothing that your dogmatic  materialistic key hole version of reality can account for , let alone explain lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/12/2014 20:47:09
My own version of  "Aliens visiting earth ,and studying humans" story  lol :

"They are made of ...meat ." reported the chief of the aliens team sent to earth to his superior back home .

His superior : " What ? Machines made of meat ? What about the signals they have been sending ?  They can't be sent from ...meat ."

Chief : -" No , they have built machines or devices for that . "

Superior : -" Machines built machines ? Do they have brains at least ? "

C- Yes indeed , but their brains are made of meat too .
S- made of meat ? How come ?

C-I am telling you their brains are made of meat .

S- So, machines were built by meat ?

C- Yes , that's what i am telling you .

S- Sentient meat , i hope .

C- Yes, sentient meat .

S- How can mechanistic  meat be sentient ?

C- We abducted some specimens of them and studied them .Yes, they are sentient beings , but ,they are made of meat , even their brains are  .

S- Wait a minute : did you find nothingelse than meat in their brains or bodies ?

C- We studied their brains and bodies , and guess what ? : they seemed at first to be just their  brains .

S- Seemed ? What do you mean ?

C- You know : we wanted to get firsthand report from their subjective  consciousness ,so, we asked them to tell us how they experience that through their own words.

S- And ?

C-It is a curious and long tale .

S- Tell me that tale anyway .
C-Well, they say that there has been a particular dominating view on the subject that assumes that all is matter , including the mind .

S- Absurd

C- Yes, but the majority of their scientists believe in it .

S- I thought they were rational creatures .

C- You know reason and belief don't go so often hand in hand .

S- I know , but you were telling me that their science has been saying that everything is matter .Is their science a belief ? Come on .Makes no sense .

C- Well, it's a bit more complicated than that , but their science has become a belief indeed ,ironically enough , a dogmatic one too .
We went back in time to study their ancient civilizations , beliefs , history ...and guess what ?

S- What ? You're making me more curious than ever .This is s strange tale .

C- It's just starting to get weirder than ever . Their ancient civilizations, cultures , beliefs ...used to believe in ...souls .

S-Souls ? What is that ?

C- Immaterial part of their being .

S- Immaterial ? What does that mean anyway ?

C- I'll tell you , just wait . They believed in many things like in the existence of the immaterial soul , spirit or whatever , but some of them were also materialists even during ancient times .In short , a new major force or method was discovered and applied : science .They used it and found out about the fact that most ,if not all , of what their church used to tell them about the universe  and themselves was false .

S- They discovered evolution ?

C- Oh , yes ,and a lot more , like classical physics .They discovered that the universe was governed by laws, immutable laws .

S- What ? How could they combine that with evolution ?

C- It just starts to get interesting : the dominating world view of the moment saw its chance delivered to it on a silver plate by a certain Newton . The latter's classical physics are  deterministic and make no room for souls .One guy prior to Newton was by the way so afraid of their church's inquisition that he left the soul or mind or whatever to the church ,and the physical reality , whatever the latter might mean, to their science .He was called Descartes.

S- What ? They have separate parts the mind of which is powerless without any causal powers ? What kindda mindless creatures are those ?

C- Yes or so they thought at least , untill some weird German came along : Max Planck ,who paved the way for what they call the quantum revolution .

S- You mean that primitive belief  of ours ?

C-Indeed .

S-They still have a long way to go then .They are in fact just in the primitive stage ,despite their alleged evolution .

C- Well, they see that in a quite different light .They think they have almost all figured it out . In short : there has been what can be called some dissident scientists of theirs, philosophers too who have been distancing themselves from that mainstream childish materialism of theirs .

S- Oh, interesting .Good to see that they can progress .But they do it rather slowly via many backsteps as well .

C- The new dissidents against the mainstream scientific priesthood have been stumbling upon many weird powers of their minds , so, they concluded that minds can't be material anyway . The prevailing wisdom calls them names, mocks them, ridicules them , and more ,and say that they are trying to bring science back to the medieval times.

S- What a foolish species .

C- Indeed , but they never stop investigating and resisting the status-quo , some of them at least .

S- Enough ,I have more important things to attend to .This species is too ignorant , too arrogant , too irrational , too violent , too self-centered to pay any attention to it yet .They can't be trusted with our wisdom and knowledge .They can't handle that either , they would just misuse it . Never return to that planet again .It contains the very seeds of its ultimate destruction through ignorance , arrogance , egocentrism, greed , self-importance ...

lol



 





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/12/2014 22:24:05
Here below will you find the specific quote of Popper within  its specific  context :
LOL! Seriously?

There's no quote from Popper there, and in particular no mention of what you posted earlier as a Popper quote.

It appears to be a verbatim excerpt from 'Science and the Near-Death Experience' by Chris Carter, including a physical description of an aspect of Popper's metaphysics - which basically repeats my explanation: that Popper wasn't a substance dualist but an interactionalist ("we are faced, not with a plurality of substances... <but a> pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles"), specifically physical fields and forces, and the bodies on which they act ("we have interaction between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies"). More specifically, "the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields — by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and then the modified field acts upon another body."

He presumably wasn't aware they're all aspects of underlying quantum fields, but at a higher level it's not an unreasonable model. However, it's all 'modern physics'; forces, fields, and matter. All material.

Didn't you even read it before posting it? It's nothing to do with your magical immaterial consciousness dualism - an if Carter thinks so, he's an even bigger idiot than I thought - or have you now backtracked down to the level of the shaman who says quantum field theory itself is the work of spirits? Is that your thesis now, that QFT is non-physical, immaterial? That would be a delicious irony  [;D]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2014 22:37:17
MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND:

Let's go back to basics , guys :
Materialists have been building all their sand castles on their intrinsic fundamental false premise....

As in  "Let's go back to my original rant that materialism is false, and ignore your responses to anything I've said."
Quote


Quote : " It follows from this that mind has no causal role in nature but is at most merely a useless by-product produced by the brain...."


A straw man argument by Carter, as usual.

 I can't actually name any neuroscientist who believes that consciousness is just a useless epiphenomenon. Maybe there is one, but none that I've read, even  Dennett.

Ramachandran definitely does not consider consciousness and qualia an epiphonomena. And I think he is right in that we will likely gain the most insight into consciousness and qualia by looking at what functional benefit they provide, in comparison to automatic, subconscious processing (which makes up most of neural processing.)

In his discussion of blindsight patients and the function of qualia in vision he says:

"There is some physiological evidence for such a connection between qualia and memory.Goodale has reported a certain type of ‘blindsight’ patient who can correctly rotate an envelope to post it in a horizontal or a vertical slot, even though he does not consciously perceive the slot’s orientation and cannot tell you whether the slot is vertical or horizontal (Milner & Goodale, 1995). But if the room lights are switched off just before he puts the letter in, ‘he’ forgets the orientation of the slot almost immediately and is unable to get the letter in. This suggests that the unconscious ‘dorsal
stream’ visual system which discerns orientation and affects arm movements accordingly is not only devoid of qualia but also does not have memory; it is the ‘ventral stream’ visual system that is conscious and has memory. We would maintain that the reason the qualia-laden ventral system has memory is because it is involved in making choices based on perceptual representations. In contrast, the system without qualia engages in continuous real-time processing running in a tightly closed loop
and consequently doesn’t need memory—it is not involved in the making of choices.

This suggests a testable prediction: in patients with blindsight, and in Goodale’s visual zombie, if you give the patient a choice, the system should go haywire. Not only should it not have short-term memory as Goodale showed, but also it should be incapable of making choices. For example if the person is asked to mail a letter and shown two orthogonal slots simultaneously, he should fail, being unable to choose between the two (or alternatively, the system might always go for the first one it
detects). This is consistent with the Crick-Koch view that the neurons which project to the frontal lobes are the qualia neurons because, obviously, the frontal lobes are important for the execution of choices. We would argue, however, that what we think of as the choice itself is really the work of a limbic executive system consisting of the amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, and other areas, and that the frontal lobes are needed only for fully working out the long-range implications and possible alternatives
which the decision entails, and for dealing with complications arising as the decision is executed (more on this in the final section)."


In addition to blindsight, Ramachandran discusses the qualia of pain in the response to injury. When you touch something hot or sharp, you withdraw your hand before the you are conscious of the sensation of pain. There is only one possible immediate out put to that stimulus - withdraw, now, - and pain is not required for the reflex arc to achieve that output.  Ramachandran argues that the qualia of pain is linked to other, additional, slower pathways where there is either the opportunity for, or the necessity of, making a choice - whether to attempt the same movement again or not, change position, run away, put ice on the injury, etc.

He has other interesting ideas about the function of qualia, as do other neuroscientists  (but since Don is convinced it has nothing to do with the brain or neuroscience, it is probably of no use or interest to him.) But the function of qualia and consciousness may provide an answer to philosophers like Chalmers, whose entire dualist argument rests on the concept of philosophical zombies. This sort of research suggests that a zombie without consciousness could not function as we do, and could not be like us in every way except consciousness.





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/12/2014 23:45:48
How can they jump from the former to the following ? :

...The conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles

How can the CMC be conscious or aware ?
ROFL! Slight reading comprehension error there; they're not talking about a 'Central Motor Command' like some kind of military transport control centre, they're talking about an instruction to the muscles (a motor command) that originates centrally. Central motor command == command to the muscles from the centre.

In other words, they're talking about being consciously aware of commands to the muscles as a result of 'corollary discharge', i.e. the other pathways are activated, including feedback to higher levels that brings that command activity to conscious awareness.

I'm beginning to see why you get the wrong end of the stick so often...

Quote
How can they equate  the activity of the prefrontal cortex  or the alleged PFC neuronal correlates of cognititive control with the volitional conscious aware cognitive control?
That's what the whole paper is about! If it's a bit technical for you, I strongly recommend that you read 'Self Comes to Mind' by Antonio Damasio, which will give you the technical (but tech-lite) background, and then Stanislas Dehaene's 'Consciousness and the Brain', which gives an readable integrated overview.

Quote
That mindful cognitive control does work through its prefrontal cortex correlates does not mean that the former is just the latter , or that they can be equated with each other .
As has been said before, using other analogies, you may think a watch is operated by spirits before you open the back, peer inside, and start poking at the contents, but when you've traced the main path of cogs from the spring to the hands, and noted what happens when the spring has unwound or a cog breaks, you no longer need to invoke spirits to explain it. You may not understand the whole mechanism or the exact principles behind the escapement, but you can see the general principles and organisation; and only fool or a man with something important to lose would continue to insist that spirits power the spring or allow the cogs to turn, or control the escapement. You've been sounding like a man with something important to lose for some time now.

Quote
Furthermore , we encounter the same materialistic logical fallacy or materialistic fundamental false premise when dealing with  the interpretations of experiments regarding memory ,for example : equating neuronal correlates of  memory ...with the latter, and hence memory is allegedly stored in the brain correlates of memory :

Quantitative neuronal correlates of memory get equated with memory itself ,while the latter  is a matter of qualitative subjective processes that cannot be reduced to or equated with their quantitative neuronal correlates, needless to add , since memory itself as a matter of subjective processes that encompass taste , subjective experiences, meaning , purpose, aesthetics , ethics , morality , ....cannot be quantified or "computed or stored " by their neuronal correlates.
When you can delete a memory by blocking the neurons where you think it is stored, and restore it by feeding in a recording of the activity of those neurons, when stimulating or suppressing specific areas produces specific changes in all those properties, it's entirely reasonable to assume, in the absence of any indication to the contrary, that those areas perform those functions.

Quote
See the following on the subject :

Quote : "THE EVIDENCE FROM NEUROPHYSIOLOGY:
...
If memories are somehow stored in brain cells or as modifications of the synaptic connections between them, then the structure of the synapses and the nervous system must remain stable over long periods of time. After all, the time span of human memory is often decades.

Yet as Francis Crick writes: “It is believed that almost all the molecules in our bodies, with the exception of DNA, turn over in a matter of days, weeks, or at the most a few months. How then is memory stored in the brain so that its trace is relatively immune to molecular turnover?”.

Chris Carter
I was right - Carter is a bigger idiot than I thought. Our whole bodies remain relatively stable over long periods of time, not just our nervous systems. At the same time, they are also incredibly dynamic - particularly our nervous system - millions or billions of neural connections are being made or broken every second, just as billions of cells throughout the body die and are replaced every day, yet somehow the pattern of our structure and our memory remains fairly intact (although episodic memory is seriously labile and unreliable). Either Carter wrote his piece twenty years ago, or he's failed to keep up with the subject he's writing about - he's way behind the current state of knowledge about the neurophysiology of memory.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/12/2014 23:57:29


 "For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline should rethink its position—physics or biology?


It doesn't always work that way. A good example is Penrose. Even with the assistance of anesthesiologist Hammeroff in developing his theory of quantum consciousness, they were sent back to the drawing board  multiple times when neuroscientists showed that aspects of their theory were not compatible with the empirical evidence about the structure of neurons or microtubules.
Stapp didn't have that problem, as he just ignored the interaction problem and the origin of his conscious agency, and neuroscience entirely, and not surprisingly, is irrelevant.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2014 01:26:42
The Copenhagen interpretation is still the standard or orthodox one in QM .

http://quantumenigma.com/controversy/

I think you'll find the authors of that book are not supportive of the 'conscious collapse' version of the Copenhagen interpretation:
Quote from: Kuttner & Rosenblum
In the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, observation takes place, for all practical purposes, as soon as the microscopic quantum object encounters the macroscopic screen. Other interpretations of quantum mechanics, attempting to go beyond practical purposes, consider observation to be more involved with the actual conscious experience of the experimental result.

They see the mainstream Copenhagen interpretation as a 'practical' one, rather than especially meaningful; in notes to the book they say:
Quote from: Kuttner & Rosenblum
Back when I studied quantum mechanics in graduate school it was generally implied that Copenhagen resolved all philosophical problems, that Copenhagen is the “right” interpretation... I can’t quite remember why we so blithly accepted the “collapse of the wavefunction”–everywhere, instantaneously.

and in a Physics Today article, they say:
Quote from: Kuttner & Rosenblum
The Copenhagen interpretation is, of course, all we need to describe the world for all practical purposes. And for a physics class, practical purposes are all that generally matter. But a physics student confronting someone inclined to take the implications of quantum mechanics to unjustified places will find Copenhagen’s for-all-practical-purposes treatment an ineffective argument.
Note: By 'unjustified places', they mean conscious collapse.

In a review of the book, Professor Richard Conn Henry (himself an advocate of the subjective universe) says, about their treatment of QM interpretations:
Quote
Copenhagen. The “majority” interpretation, for decades. Not really an interpretation at all, but rather a (clearly non-physical) segregation of the world into the microscopic (in which there is reality, but it is observer-created reality), and the macroscopic (which was taken to be real). A human observer is not needed; a geiger counter will do just fine. Our authors [Kuttner & Rosenblum] correctly point out that the advance of technology now forces retreat from this increasingly untenable “interpretation.”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 09/12/2014 01:33:54
... How then is memory stored in the brain so that its trace is relatively immune to molecular turnover? ...

Quote from: timeshighereducation.co.uk
... a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex ...
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/198208.article
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/12/2014 16:19:48
dlorde , Cheryl :




Quote : " Conclusion:
The results suggest that MRCP amplitude during movement execution is a neural correlate of perception of effort. This study was the first to provide direct neurophysiological evidence that MRCP amplitude during movement execution correlates with perception of effort.
This finding supports the corollary discharge theory, which proposes that perception of effort is the conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles.
 Further studies using brain imaging and neuropharmacological techniques, are necessary to identify more precisely the brain networks and neurotransmitters underlying perception of effort."End quote

How can they jump from the former to the following ? :


...The conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles

How can the CMC be conscious or aware ?

They equate   the neuronal correlates of perception of
effort (CMC ) with the conscious awareness of the   perception of effort itself  .

They started from the following premise to conclude the above :

Quote : "Perception of effort, the conscious sensation of how heavy and
strenuous a physical task is (Borg, 1998), is an important aspect
of our subjective experience of volition.
It is thought that the signal underlying perception of effort arises in the brain from corollary discharges of the central motor command.
This corollary discharge theory suggests that perception of effort should be significantly correlated with the magnitude of central motor command." End quote .


I don't think they are equating the perception of effort with volition. You are the one assuming the action and the feeling about it are one and the same. The perception of effort  is the feeling or qualia associated with a physical or mental task that is difficult. Not unlike any other feeling - curiosity, confidence or satisfaction of figuring out an answer, surprise, doubt or worry that you may have over looked something, confusion, relief, etc.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 09/12/2014 16:28:43
Quote from: DonQuichotte
MW interpretation of QM is just a desperate and pathetic attempt to rescue the deterministic materialism .
What is "MW interpretation"? If you were saying that it's "theory of interpretation of QM" then that makes no sense to me.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 17:30:50
Quote from: DonQuichotte
MW interpretation of QM is just a desperate and pathetic attempt to rescue the deterministic materialism .
What is "MW interpretation"? If you were saying that it's "theory of interpretation of QM" then that makes no sense to me.

That's the many worlds interpretation of QM then .What' s this fuss of yours all about then ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 17:40:01
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446169#msg446169 date=1418077445]
Here below will you find the specific quote of Popper within  its specific  context :
LOL! Seriously?

There's no quote from Popper there, and in particular no mention of what you posted earlier as a Popper quote.

It appears to be a verbatim excerpt from 'Science and the Near-Death Experience' by Chris Carter, including a physical description of an aspect of Popper's metaphysics - which basically repeats my explanation: that Popper wasn't a substance dualist but an interactionalist ("we are faced, not with a plurality of substances... <but a> pluralism of different interacting explanatory principles"), specifically physical fields and forces, and the bodies on which they act ("we have interaction between the four known and very different forces, and between forces and physical bodies"). More specifically, "the action of bodies upon bodies is mediated by fields — by gravitational and electrical fields. Thus like does not act upon like, but bodies act first upon fields, which they modify, and then the modified field acts upon another body."

He presumably wasn't aware they're all aspects of underlying quantum fields, but at a higher level it's not an unreasonable model. However, it's all 'modern physics'; forces, fields, and matter. All material.

Didn't you even read it before posting it? It's nothing to do with your magical immaterial consciousness dualism - an if Carter thinks so, he's an even bigger idiot than I thought - or have you now backtracked down to the level of the shaman who says quantum field theory itself is the work of spirits? Is that your thesis now, that QFT is non-physical, immaterial? That would be a delicious irony  [;D]


Don't be silly : Carter just used that specific Popper's quote in relation to the fact that not only likes can act upon likes , in a nutshell ,so, any  processes don't have to be like each other in kind to interact with each other , simply put ,if you push that logic of Popper to its limits at least .

That's why i told you to see that specific quote within its specific context , and that's why i posted the prior quotes before it as well  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 17:54:41
dlorde , Cheryl :




Quote : " Conclusion:
The results suggest that MRCP amplitude during movement execution is a neural correlate of perception of effort. This study was the first to provide direct neurophysiological evidence that MRCP amplitude during movement execution correlates with perception of effort.
This finding supports the corollary discharge theory, which proposes that perception of effort is the conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles.
 Further studies using brain imaging and neuropharmacological techniques, are necessary to identify more precisely the brain networks and neurotransmitters underlying perception of effort."End quote

How can they jump from the former to the following ? :


...The conscious awareness of the central motor command to the muscles

How can the CMC be conscious or aware ?

They equate   the neuronal correlates of perception of
effort (CMC ) with the conscious awareness of the   perception of effort itself  .

They started from the following premise to conclude the above :

Quote : "Perception of effort, the conscious sensation of how heavy and
strenuous a physical task is (Borg, 1998), is an important aspect
of our subjective experience of volition.
It is thought that the signal underlying perception of effort arises in the brain from corollary discharges of the central motor command.
This corollary discharge theory suggests that perception of effort should be significantly correlated with the magnitude of central motor command." End quote .


I don't think they are equating the perception of effort with volition. You are the one assuming the action and the feeling about it are one and the same. The perception of effort  is the feeling or qualia associated with a physical or mental task that is difficult. Not unlike any other feeling - curiosity, confidence or satisfaction of figuring out an answer, surprise, doubt or worry that you may have over looked something, confusion, relief, etc.

I did formulate my answer to that specific PDF relating to the perception of effort rather clumsily, i must admit  : I will reformulate it this way then ,as follows :

They say that the perception of effort is just the conscious awareness of the motor command to the muscles : the latter triggers the former : the conscious aware perception of effort is just the discharge of the motor command to the muscles , a discharge that arises in the brain that is = conscious aware perception of effort is just the result  of its correlated brain activity that triggers a discharge to the motor command to the muscles = they don't say exactly  how  the conscious aware perception of effort  does rise from  that related brain discharge to the motor command to the muscles , or as David Cooper would put it :

where is the mechanism in the system that triggers conscious awareness of the perception of effort or pain : or how the discharge from the brain to the motor command to the muscles is "translated " into the conscious aware perception of effort or pain ...What mechanism takes care of that ,what mechanism would allow us to jump from the one to the other .

In short : that's just a materialistic approach that equates brain activity and its related motor commands to the muscles with the conscious aware perception of effort .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 18:07:39
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446175#msg446175 date=1418083049]


 "For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline should rethink its position—physics or biology?


It doesn't always work that way.


Biology remains mostly stuck within the fundamentally false classical physics , while physics has moved beyond the latter to QM : clearly quantum physics is not the one that has to rethink its position, does it ?

And since reductionist materialism just assumes that psychology is just applied biology, biology just applied chemistry , chemistry just applied physics , then biology and neuroscience at least must rethink their position, not physics .


Quote
A good example is Penrose. Even with the assistance of anesthesiologist Hammeroff in developing his theory of quantum consciousness, they were sent back to the drawing board  multiple times when neuroscientists showed that aspects of their theory were not compatible with the empirical evidence about the structure of neurons or microtubules.


Really ? Empirical evidence has been showing , indirectly that is , that consciousness is a non-physical non-local process , while materialists like your above mentioned ones keep on believing in their false materialistic version of consciousness upon which they have been building all their sand castles .It is thus irrelevant that they did rethink some of the sub-claims of their so-called quantum theory of consciousness (The latter is allegedly just the magical result of all those sexy dances vibrations oscillations of ensemble of neurons in the microtubules ) ,since their major claim or major premise upon which they have been building their theory has been that consciousness is just brain activity .

In short : no matter how many empirical or other improvements they would try to apply to their theory , it will  always be false , since it has been built upon their major materialistic false premise : consciousness is just brain activity , just a material process .

Quote
Stapp didn't have that problem, as he just ignored the interaction problem and the origin of his conscious agency, and neuroscience entirely, and not surprisingly, is irrelevant.

What are you talking about ? How do you know that ?Didn't we go through all that , on many occasions ?

Stapp based his quantum theory of consciousness on the non-mechanical instantaneous causal efficacy  of consciousness ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ,on the physical brain through the observer effect interpretation of QM, at the level of calcium ions through the quantum Zeno effect ( Volitional effort of attention can maintain and sustain certain brain states in place , like when certain regularly observed or measured sub-atomic processes do not decay as a result , and thus remain in their initial state .) ,as well as through Hebb's law that states that neurons that fire together wire together : Schwartz ' non-materialist successful cognitive psychology or 4-steps therapy is based upon all the above and more , and it has been proved to work empirically : scanned brains of patients who underwent that therapy , before and after the therapy thus , showed significant changes in their brains accordingly through self-directed neuroplasticity .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 09/12/2014 18:17:35
Quote from: DonQuichotte
What' s this fuss of yours all about then ?
Given what it meant I retract the statement.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 18:24:13
Quote from: DonQuichotte
What' s this fuss of yours all about then ?
Given what it meant I retract the statement.

Ok, thanks . Don't worry about it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 18:39:42
... How then is memory stored in the brain so that its trace is relatively immune to molecular turnover? ...

Quote from: timeshighereducation.co.uk
... a few of the body's cell types endure from birth to death without renewal, and this special minority includes some or all of the cells of the cerebral cortex ...
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/198208.article

Regardless of whether or not that minority of cells of the cerebral cortex thus get renewed or not , the brain is an ever changing theater thanks to neuropalsticity and self-directed neuroplasticity .

Better still : the assumption that the mind and its memories ...are just brain activity , and hence  memories can be stored in the brain....is just a materialistic extension of the materialistic fundamental intrinsic claim that all is matter , including the mind = no empirical evidence .

Furthermore , can you care to enlighten us about how such qualitative subjective memories that are a matter of qualitative subjective experiences , taste , preferences , aesthetics , morality , ethics , ...can you tell us how they can be quantified or computed by the related or correlated quantitative brain activity ?, let alone stored  : how can the qualitative arise from the quantitative then ? And how can the latter compute quantify or store the former ? : what makes you make that inexplicably magical jump then ?
Right , materialism does that to you , not empirical evidence .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 09/12/2014 19:06:49
... can you care to enlighten us about how such qualitative subjective memories that are a matter of qualitative subjective experiences , taste , preferences , aesthetics , morality , ethics ... can you tell us how they can be quantified or computed by the related or correlated quantitative brain activity ?

 Brain-damaged individuals can undergo a personality change,
becoming aggressive and/or libidinous ...

Quote from: caring.com
... some people with AD [ Alzheimer's Disease] do things that are totally uncharacteristic of personality before the disease. Swearing (yes, even precious sweet elderly ladies!), spitting, becoming socially inept and impulsive with inappropriate words or actions, and sexual advances may appear for some folks.
https://www.caring.com/questions/dementia-and-personality-change

 So their moral judgement has been modified by deactivation [destruction] of part of their brain .

And of course persons suffering from dementia lose their memory. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/12/2014 19:22:47


Furthermore , can you care to enlighten us about how such qualitative subjective memories that are a matter of qualitative subjective experiences , taste , preferences , aesthetics , morality , ethics , ...can you tell us how they can be quantified or computed by the related or correlated quantitative brain activity ?, let alone stored  : how can the qualitative arise from the quantitative then ? And how can the latter compute quantify or store the former ? : what makes you make that inexplicably magical jump then ?
Right , materialism does that to you , not empirical evidence .

You can't expect anyone to explain all neuroscience in two or three paragraphs. Look at how long that one article is on the prefrontal cortex, which is just a description of their model and cites dozens and dozens of papers that performed the individual experiments on which their model is based.

When you get backed into a corner, you start demanding "Explain this! Explain that! Explain these 20 or 30 other things," already convinced that if you don't know of any explanation, and Chris Carter doesn't know of any explanation, it probably doesn't exist, or isn't possible.

So, which of those things that you mentioned above would you like to investigate and discuss next in some kind of meaningful detail? Ethics? Preferences? Aesthetics? Something else?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 09/12/2014 19:32:13
Real Life Show : Caught on Candid Camera :

I wanted to surprise our dear friends here below ,so, i planted some undetectable mini cams all over  the place where they were gathering to celebrate the holidays ahead of time .

They were having some drinks after dinner.... ,while listening to music .It was a cozy and relaxed atmosphere , when Ethos suddenly told them to be quiet , because he heard someone on tv saying,on History channel, in the other room that a certain weird guy was so scared  of the inquisition  that he left (his ) the mind to the church ,and the physical world to science ."Weird" said Ethos : "How was science supposed to be studying the physical world without the mind then ? "

Ethos thought that Descartes was a clever guy indeed ,after all,  not a coward, but he wanted to discuss other more important matters with alancalverd .

So, he went back to the living room where the rest of our friends were having a drink and a laugh,while listening  to soft music in the background  .


Ethos : You know ,Alan .I think that QM can explain why Sint-Claus can be in many places at once .Seriously.

Alan : Cut the crap, man .You're a grown up man and you still believe in that crap.Science is not about whys .Oh, wait a minute .Your theory has predictive powers indeed .It can also be falsified .What a scientific mind you have , dear Ethos , unlike that silly mystic Don who  wants to introduce ghosts and spirits to science .Insane .Let me play some Jazz instead .

Ethos : Exactly what i thought, Alan , unless Sint Claus has a mind .Forget about that superstitious guy for a minute.

Alan : Bullocks .Define mind . Mind is irrelevant .Who needs one? .Physicists don't at least .The mind is just weird dances or oscillations vibrations of neurons .

Ethos : Yes , Alan ,but , look i have been thinking lately about QM .The brain is also made of atoms, electrons .....so, electrons might play a role in all that through those elusive calcium ions via the synapses .
You know , neurotransmitters and all the other stuff that's going on in the brain .It has been discovered that there is a lots of nanotechnology taking place in cells .

Alan : Look, i am only concerned with healing the sick through my hi-tech quantum devices .I am not  interested in that mind stuff, Ok, Ethos ?

Ethos : Ok, Alan,That was just a thought .Chill .Oh ,yeah, i just heard that Descartes left (his ) the mind to the church and the physical world to science .How was science supposed to study the physical world without the mind that was left to the church ?.
We have a problem here , Alan.

Alan : Really ? I don't see no problem in that .That's  what a good scientist should do indeed .Oh, crap .The mind is just a material process .
Let the church have fun with its imaginary immaterial spirit then .

Ethos : That's what honest science is all about indeed .Honest science ,something Don will never grasp.

dlorde : Cartesian dualistic dichotomy between mind and matter and that they are allegedly different separate from each other substances was a false one indeed anyway .Descartes was a clever guy though  .Our modern world is Cartesian ,despite the flaws of Cartesian  thought  .

Cheryl : Don still believes in that  dualism  lol I am making a painting about that . lol

dlorde : Don believes in another kind of dualism in fact, the poor guy  : mind and matter are 2 different substances mutually interacting with
each other via magic lol .He's so schizophrenic that he projects that on us , while stubbornly refusing to  learn from our posted prevailing materialistic wisdom .I think he's afraid to find out about the truth like i did .He's afraid of education, knowledge ,afraid of science ,afraid to discover that he has been living a big lie .I know , i have been there , you know .I can understand where he's coming from  , but he's got to try to muster enough
courage to face the music like i did .When you give him a link to a certain PDF that proves that  the perception of effort is just the conscious awareness of the motor command to the muscles that originates from the related brain's discharge ,he tells you :

How can the motor command be conscious or aware ? lol .He either did not understand what that PDF said .or his English needs some improvement . He was just tired and confused maybe .I think that what he actually wanted to say is that that experiment did not explain  how the conscious awareness of the motor command to the muscles  that originates in the brain 's related discharge ,arises in the first place to begin with .
What specific mechanism, if any , as David Cooper would put it (The latter seemed absorbed in some mechanistic dream of his ) in the system would be responsible for that conscious aware perception of effort ?

Well, that's just the illusory conscious aware perception of effort that feels real though , just a useful illusory  simulation computed by the brain exactly like Graziano said : no need for a ghost in the machine thus .Maybe is Don not evolved enough to grasp that simple fact .He's got to get rid of his old superstitions .He says sometimes that he's neither a dualist nor an idealist , weird ,he's not a materialist either lol , so what can we call him on the subject ? .

Science is all about dispelling dogmas , superstitions like that .
That's why we are here : to help people like Don to set themselves free from their  pre-scientific  superstitions.

Cheryl : Indeed, dlorde : magic .That's why i saved that related post of yours ,really.How can the immaterial mind interact with the physical brain ?: that's superstition.Who needs that Cartesian theater ? Regardless of whether the particular hypotheses we have outlined accurately
describe PFC function, they offer an example of how neurally plausible mechanisms can exhibit the properties of self-organization and self-regulation required to account for cognitive control without recourse to a “homunculus.”

Alan : what are you talking about , guys , wasting your time on rubbish .The mind is irrelevant .Who needs one? .Physicists don't at least .
What predictive power has the mind anyway? ,nothing .I have been asking this question to Don ,on many occasions .Don makes it sound as if science and ourselves have been run by the mind .Who needs the mind ?, even though maths are just products of the mind that happen to underlie the laws of physics : that's no conclusive proof for the power of the mind .Who needs the mind to "shut up and calculate " anyway ? .I don't .

I did tell him that QM is just simple algebra indeed (not done by the mind , mind you , but by deterministic mindless neurons lol ) ,and that there is no such thing as the wave/particle duality either .The latter is just in the mind .I see neither a problem regarding the latter , nor that there is what can be called the interpretation or measurement problem in QM  .There is no problem at all, i am telling him .

dlorde : "  Alan : the mind is just a property of matter (Just overlook this paradoxical materialistic property dualism and panpsychism in disguise ,Don is not here to hear about that anyway, he wouldn't understand  ) .
The mind just arises from electromagnetism, you know .Don says interesting things sometimes,otherwise he's a total waste of time  : That clever  guy Descartes was so scared  of the medieval christian inquisition 
that he left (his) the mind to the church ,and the physical world to
science . Was he out of his mind ?I don't think so.He knew exactly what he was doing .Who needs a mind to study the physical world scientifically or otherwise anyway ? :  deterministic mindless neurons do the job on our behalf ,without us having any say on the matter whatsoever ,so what 's the fuss all about ?
Cartesian dualistic  dichotomy between mind and body and that they are allegedly separate different substances was a false Cartesian legacy .There is no mind as such , no free will as such , just illusions ,evolutionary useful ones that feel real though as Graziano said .
The whole universe is deterministic , so .We're mindless machines , hardware run by software .

Ethos : " How was science supposed to study the physical world
without the mind then ? if Descartes left the mind to the church . How do you study science without your mind ? Note that i do believe both in the church and more in science."

dlorde : "Ethos , Are you out of your mind ? How can you believe in religion since all is matter,including the mind ,while believing in science too that says that religion or God were just created by the brain through evolution ?."

Ethos : " Why not , dlorde ? I suffer from multiple personality disorder .One of my personalities believes in religion,and the other one in materialistic science .They never meet each other though .So, what's your problem ? "

Cheryl : " You're right about that , Ethos .You can believe in both and be both at the same time :they are one anyway .
Ramachandran says that God is in the brain, so.I just don't understand that weird guy Don .Why does he feel the need or rather obsessive-compulsive  urge to introduce ghosts into the machine ? I will never understand him ."

Ethos : " Exactly , Cheryl .That's exactly my point .Don is mentally ill .My christian feeling of charity or compassion goes to him , especially during Christmas times .Poor lad , i told him to go see a shrink ,but i think i was too hard on him.
I shouldn't have said that .He might get worse as a result .I really feel guilty about that .I think i should make a confession to a priest ."

Cheryl : " You have already done that .See me as your priest Ramachandran says that it's healthy to confess anyway , to anyone .
It's all in the brain, you know ."

dlorde : " Oh, Cheryl, please .Stop misleading Ethos .I have no respect for such mysticism.I have been there , believe me .


Cheryl : dlorde , i meant that in a materialistic way , you know .

dlorde : Oh, materialistic mysticism, you mean .Ok, sorry ,I can live with that .Sean Caroll seems to have approved of that .

Alan : This is a science forum, guys .Show me some predictions  .

Ethos : I predict that Don is motivated by religious secret agendas .He's a danger to science .He threatens to send back science to the dark ages.

RD and PmbPhy who were late and just entered the living room overheard the latest sentence , then RD said : I will provide Don with some relevant links , like the ones that show that some damage to the brain can even alter consciousness significantly by changing the self-identity personality and more of the unfortunate persons who suffered such calamities .

dlorde replied to that by saying : I have already mentioned that to him , but he replied that that was just the result of faulty brain "circuitry " due either to biological or psychological damage or both ,  and that the mind has to work through its neuronal correlates anyway , the healthy ones at least ,so, any changes or damages of  the related neuronal correlates has to affect consciousness accordingly....something like that .

PmbPhy then said : well, life goes on .I see no science in what that guy has been saying anyway .I just went to that main link of this thread : just cranks there who talk about some non-materialistic stuff , no science .

David Cooper who remained silent all that time ,while he seemed to be absorbed in some contemplative  computer  computations of his , suddenly intervened by saying :
Guys , your materialistic inexplicable magic is no less magical than that of Don : where is the alleged mechanism in the system that makes it aware or conscious , that makes it self-aware or self-conscious ? .Unless you can show me where exactly in the system and what specific mechanism is involved in it that makes the system aware conscious or self aware self-conscious , there is no way i am gonna continue listening to this magic of yours .Then, he stormed out of the living room , but , before he exited the door , he added :
I will be following the progress, if any , of your debate , but i will not take any part in it anymore ,unless someone can show me the above .

The resulting intense silence that took possession of the place dictated its terms for quite some time , before our remaining friends in the living room went back to resuming their activity and talk , as if what David Cooper said or did has never taken place  .

............

"What is mind ? No matter
What is matter ? Never mind " T.H.Key

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/12/2014 19:50:32


What are you talking about ? How do you know that ?Didn't we go through all that , on many occasions ?

Stapp based his quantum theory of consciousness on the non-mechanical instantaneous causal efficacy  of consciousness ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ,on the physical brain through the observer effect interpretation of QM, at the level of calcium ions through the quantum Zeno effect ( Volitional effort of attention can maintain and sustain certain brain states in place , like when certain regularly observed or measured sub-atomic processes do not decay as a result , and thus remain in their initial state .) ,as well as through Hebb's law that states that neurons that fire together wire together : Schwartz ' non-materialist successful cognitive psychology or 4-steps therapy is based upon all the above and more , and it has been proved to work empirically : scanned brains of patients who underwent that therapy , before and after the therapy thus , showed significant changes in their brains accordingly through self-directed neuroplasticity .



Physicist Matthew Donald of Cambridge said in his critique of Stapp's theory:
  ”In Stapp (1993 §1.10), Stapp states that his theory “makes consciousness causally effective, yet it is fully compatible with all known laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy.” Stapp does not justify this statement. In general, energy is not conserved in individual quantum jumps. Average total energy may be conserved if the projections involved commute with the global Hamiltonian. Leaving aside the commutation question, however, this would require that “causal effectiveness” produces the same averages as conventional quantum probabilities. In Stapp (1995),Stapp admits that, “No attempt is made here to show that the quantum statistical laws will hold for the aspects of the brain’s internal dynamics controlled by conscious thoughts”.


 Stapp’s whole theory seems to rest on the idea of consciousness using the Zeno effect to stack the quantum mechanical deck so to speak, to not simply collapse the wave, but to do it in a way that produces one result over another. How does this not violate conservation of energy?

What's more, Stapp does not even attempt to explain on what information the conscious agency bases it's choices, or how this information is maintained.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 09/12/2014 20:17:05
... the brain is an ever changing theater thanks to neuropalsticity and self-directed neuroplasticity .
... the assumption that the mind and its memories ...are just brain activity , and hence  memories can be stored in the brain....is just a materialistic extension of the materialistic fundamental intrinsic claim that all is matter , including the mind = no empirical evidence .

Why is brain-growth and neuroplasticity necessary if the brain is a dumb terminal (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/dumb_terminal.html) communicating with a remote cloud database (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_database.html) ?.
 
I could see, hear, walk & remember some information when I was 5 years old , why did I need to grow a bigger brain as I became an adult ?.  Answer: because memories are stored in the brain, not remotely. If the data storage [memory] was in a remote location a child-sized brain would be more than sufficient to get through life.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/12/2014 21:26:32
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4122207/
The Biological Function of Consciousness

 I found his final conclusion somewhat unsatisfying, but the discussion leading up to it was thought provoking, and there may be links to interesting studies.
And I think comparing conscious processes with unconscious ones, asking about the function of qualia, or what is special about processes or curcuits that generate qualia (since most don't) is a good approach.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2014 22:15:24
Don't be silly : Carter just used that specific Popper's quote in relation to the fact that not only likes can act upon like..
Silly? I asked for the specific context of that Popper quote, and you offered an extract from Carter's book that doesn't have a Popper quote in it - though you still seem to think it does - don't you understand what a 'quote' is?

Nevertheless, the Carter quote you posted about Popper agrees with the interactive property dualist interpretation I gave for the original Popper quote, not the substance dualism you were arguing, so thanks for the support  8D
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 09/12/2014 22:24:07
Real Life Show : Caught on Candid Camera :
...
dlorde : Cartesian dualistic dichotomy between mind and matter and that they are allegedly different separate from each other substances was a false one indeed anyway .Descartes was a clever guy though  .Our modern world is Cartesian ,despite the flaws of Cartesian  thought  .


I realise this is probably a childish prank, but I'd appreciate you not attributing fictitious quotes to me. I imagine the other members feel the same. False attribution of quotes is not funny or clever.


I would report it, but the moderators here appear to be blind, deaf, and dumb. You can babble to yourself from now on; I'm out.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 09/12/2014 22:27:59
Real Life Show : Caught on Candid Camera :

I wanted to surprise our dear friends here below ,so, i planted some undetectable mini cams all over  the place where they were gathering to celebrate the holidays ahead of time .



Sir Don.......I must confess that I did enjoy your little melodrama. Much better than traditional soap opera I must say.

What truly astounds me is that someone as intelligent as you respectfully are could have such a mental block to what is so very obvious to the rest of us. Nothing in this world, will ever be fully understood or documented without the measure of observation by means of material resource, which by the way includes the brain.

When you constantly refer to "the immaterial" please ask yourself how the immaterial reconciles with even quantum physics. Even the quantum realm requires attention to material objects such as the smallest atomic units of mass and charge. If we leave out material, what is left? Nothingness

Even the wave forms are disturbances in the fabric of space/time. And space/time can't ever be considered as immaterial.

How can you honestly reconcile this immaterial logic of yours with the material universe?


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2014 00:18:59
Sir Don.......I must confess that I did enjoy your little melodrama. Much better than traditional soap opera I must say.

Dang it! you just had to go and spoil my melodramatic flounce out! have you no consideration?

But you do ask sensible questions - which won't be answered with anything approaching rational argument because there is no rational response.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2014 01:53:22
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221200320X

This is a shorter article, more narrow in scope, the basic premise of which is "qualia can be analysed and characterised. Such an attempt is the first step towards scientific investigation of qualia." One functional aspect considered includes the degree of vividness of qualia for distinguishing between objects in the here and now, compared to objects in imagination.
Philosophers of consciousness treat qualia as if it were a subjective no man's land, but this article is a reminder that qualia is tightly linked to perception, which has been studied extensively. The article's examples of qualia fusion, metamers, and binding of perceptual cues are indicators of qualia's neurological basis. 
I liked the comment at the end, "Thomas Nagel's seemingly intractable question ‘what it's like to be a bat’ might be addressed by examining the microcircuits involved in echolocation. At least, we can quantitatively evaluate the similarity between the circuitry for the echolocation and that for vision or audition, allowing us to infer if qualia for echolocation would be closer to visual or auditory qualia."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2014 03:11:31

Qualia and Spandrels:
an Engineering Perspective

http://www.infres.enst.fr/~jld/papers/Dessalles_01082301.pdf

Another functional look at qualia.
While people talk about qualia as being ineffable and holistic, this article argues that qualia does have a certain structure and orderliness (continuity, directionality, regularity, dynamic range) The concept of qualitative space is interesting. The article might not address the "feelyness" of qualia, but I still think it's role in enhancing discrimination and minimizing noise is significant. Also, a good argument against, or at least restricting, the inverted quale scenario, which I was always skeptical of.
I also found it ironic that an engineering approach seems ot offer a good response to both dualists like Chalmers, and and someone like Dennett.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2014 15:11:34
... can you care to enlighten us about how such qualitative subjective memories that are a matter of qualitative subjective experiences , taste , preferences , aesthetics , morality , ethics ... can you tell us how they can be quantified or computed by the related or correlated quantitative brain activity ?

 Brain-damaged individuals can undergo a personality change,
becoming aggressive and/or libidinous ...

Quote from: caring.com
... some people with AD [ Alzheimer's Disease] do things that are totally uncharacteristic of personality before the disease. Swearing (yes, even precious sweet elderly ladies!), spitting, becoming socially inept and impulsive with inappropriate words or actions, and sexual advances may appear for some folks.
https://www.caring.com/questions/dementia-and-personality-change

 So their moral judgement has been modified by deactivation [destruction] of part of their brain .

And of course persons suffering from dementia lose their memory. 


We've talked about disease and disorder changing not only function and ability but Don sees it as being like a broken radio that no longer receives or transmits the true, nonlocal consciousness. Aside from lack of evidence for a receiver model, it's hard to explain changes to personality or morality, which Don also sees as attributes of the immaterial will. It's even harder to explain changes to qualitative conscious experience itself, as reported by the individual with a neurological disorder. (You aren't really confused, hallucinating, or having trouble remembering things, you only think you are. The real you is somewhere, doing just fine.)

But one thing we haven't talked about much is development which you also referred to. And it's interesting because it highlights not only changes in structure, plasticity, but the influence of learning and experience. Why should the expression of the immaterial mind change so predictably with physiological development?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 17:44:07
Quote
author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg446260#msg446260 date=1418164079]
Real Life Show : Caught on Candid Camera :

I wanted to surprise our dear friends here below ,so, i planted some undetectable mini cams all over  the place where they were gathering to celebrate the holidays ahead of time .

Sir Don.......I must confess that I did enjoy your little melodrama. Much better than traditional soap opera I must say.

Sir Ethos : I thought so .No need to confess once again .You have already done that lol .Good  to know that you have a sense of humour. Thanks .


Quote
What truly astounds me is that someone as intelligent as you respectfully are could have such a mental block to what is so very obvious to the rest of us. Nothing in this world, will ever be fully understood or documented without the measure of observation by means of material resource, which by the way includes the brain.

Thanks, man . Anyway , science is not about the right of the majority though : it would have to take only one single scientist to turn science upside down .
The whole materialistic mainstream scientific community is simply wrong , big time, you have no idea , wrong about equating science with materialism at least , and hence the mind cannot be in the brain or brain activity , cannot be a material process...memories cannot be stored in the brain ...

Furthermore , empirical  evidence can be inferred ,indirectly, from other empirical evidence , like the fact that consciousness is a non-physical and non-local process ,a fact that can be inferred , indirectly , form other related empirical evidence on the subject .

Quote
When you constantly refer to "the immaterial" please ask yourself how the immaterial reconciles with even quantum physics. Even the quantum realm requires attention to material objects such as the smallest atomic units of mass and charge. If we leave out material, what is left? Nothingness

Ironically enough, QM can never be understood without reference to the mind ,simply because they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other ,or as a prominent physicist said ,or in words to that same effect at least :

Will it not turn out that ,with the development of science , any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness ...since both are inseparably linked to each other .

Quote
Even the wave forms are disturbances in the fabric of space/time. And space/time can't ever be considered as immaterial.

See above . The very notions of space and time , space -time , gravity , mass,time , causality , reality , locality  ...would be turned on their heads ,if you only would take a look at them from the observer effect interpretation of QM where consciousness plays a central role in shaping the physical reality ,while getting influenced by the latter .
The mind of the observer cannot be separated from the observed so-called objective reality .There is no such thing as the independent observer or the independent observed objective reality ,since both are inseparable from each other ,as the mind cannot but exert a causal effect on its physical environment  ,while being influenced by the latter : our "reality " is just the product of that mutual interaction between our minds and our environments through our senses and brains and beyond .There is also what can be called extra-sensory perception, but that's another story .

Quote
How can you honestly reconcile this immaterial logic of yours with the material universe?

The universe is not   exclusively material or physical , as materialism wanna make you believe it is ,and hence materialism is false .The universe is also mental and the latter is irreducible to matter .
Better still : the mental is the key component or key 'building block " of the universe , a primary one at that , that is , no wonder that 0,000000...1 % of the universe , including ourselves thus , is "matter "....The latter is almost nothing in the universe: almost insignificant and irrelevant  .The whole population of earth can be contained within  an apple ,for example , if one would take all that empty space out of it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:00:48
Quote
author=RD link=topic=52526.msg446249#msg446249 date=1418156225]
... the brain is an ever changing theater thanks to neuropalsticity and self-directed neuroplasticity .
... the assumption that the mind and its memories ...are just brain activity , and hence  memories can be stored in the brain....is just a materialistic extension of the materialistic fundamental intrinsic claim that all is matter , including the mind = no empirical evidence .

Why is brain-growth and neuroplasticity necessary if the brain is a dumb terminal (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/dumb_terminal.html) communicating with a remote cloud database (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_database.html) ?.

Neuroplasticity is a vital must that has to cope with the ever changing experiences , with the ever changing storm of information or whatever both from the outside world and from within ...with learning new things , new skills ....to cope with the ever changing environment .

A kid's brain can't cope with growing up, simply put , unless neuroplasticity is there to change it through learning , experience and more .

You're applying the computer model to consciousness , that's why you can't think outside of that box .

The brain is no computer or machine , it does not code for anything , does not store anything , does not compute anything : that's just the projection of materialists .
Quote
 
I could see, hear, walk & remember some information when I was 5 years old , why did I need to grow a bigger brain as I became an adult ?.  Answer: because memories are stored in the brain, not remotely. If the data storage [memory] was in a remote location a child-sized brain would be more than sufficient to get through life.

It's exactly the other way around : makes no biological sense that memories can be stored in the brain .There has to be a non-physical and non-local "place " for memories thus .


Excerpt From " The Biology of Belief , Unleashing the Power of Consciousness ... " By Biologist Bruce Lipton, Chapter 6 : "Growth and Protection " : 

Quote : "Evolution has provided us with lots of survival mechanisms. They can be roughly divided into two functional categories: growth and protection. These growth and protection mechanisms are the fundamental behaviors required for an organism to survive. I’m sure you know how important it is to protect yourself. You may not realize though that growth is vitally important for your survival as well —even if you’re an adult who has reached your full height. Every day billions of cells in your body wear out and need to be replaced. For example, the entire cellular lining of your gut is replaced every seventy-two hours. In order to maintain this continuous turnover of cells, your body needs to expend a significant amount of energy daily.

By now you won’t be surprised to learn that I first became aware of how important growth and protection behaviors are in the laboratory where my observations of single cells have so often led me to insights about the multicellular human body. When I was cloning human endothelial cells, they retreated from toxins that I introduced into the culture dish, just as humans retreat from mountain lions and muggers in dark alleys. They also gravitated to nutrients, just as humans gravitate to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and love. These opposing movements define the two basic cellular responses to environmental stimuli. Gravitating to a life-sustaining signal, such as nutrients, characterizes a growth response; moving away from threatening signals, such as toxins, characterizes a protection response. It must also be noted that some environmental stimuli are neutral; they provoke neither a growth nor a protection response.

My research at Stanford showed that these growth/protection behaviors are also essential for the survival of multicellular organisms such as humans. But there is a catch to these opposing survival mechanisms that have evolved over billions of years. It turns out that the mechanisms that support growth and protection cannot operate optimally at the same time. In other words, cells cannot simultaneously move forward and backward. The human blood vessel cells I studied at Stanford exhibited one microscopic anatomy for providing nutrition and a completely different microscopic anatomy for providing a protection response. What they couldn’t do was exhibit both configurations at the same time. (Lipton, et al, 1991).

In a response similar to that displayed by cells, humans unavoidably restrict their growth behaviors when they shift into a protective mode. If you’re running from a mountain lion, it’s not a good idea to expend energy on growth. In order to survive—that is, escape the lion—you summon all your energy for your fight or flight response. Redistributing energy reserves to fuel the protection response inevitably results in a curtailment of growth.

In addition to diverting energy to support the tissues and organs needed for the protection response, there is an additional reason why growth is inhibited. Growth processes require an open exchange between an organism and its environment. For example, food is taken in and waste products are excreted. However, protection requires a closing down of the system to wall the organism off from the perceived threat.

Inhibiting growth processes is also debilitating in that growth is a process that not only expends energy but is also required to produce energy. Consequently, a sustained protection response inhibits the creation of life-sustaining energy. The longer you stay in protection, the more you compromise your growth. In fact, you can shut down growth processes so completely that it becomes a truism that you can be “scared to death.”

Thankfully, most of us don’t get to the “scared to death” point. Unlike single cells, the growth/protection response in multicellular organisms is not an either/or proposition—not all of our 50 trillion cells have to be in growth or protection mode at the same time. The proportion of cells in a protection response depends on the severity of the perceived threats. You can survive while under stress from these threats but chronic inhibition of growth mechanisms severely compromises your vitality. It is also important to note that to fully experience your vitality it takes more than just getting rid of life’s stressors. In a growth-protection continuum, eliminating the stressors only puts you at the neutral point in the range. To fully thrive, we must not only eliminate the stressors but also actively seek joyful, loving, fulfilling lives that stimulate growth processes."End Quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:27:05
Excerpt From "The Biology of Belief ..." By Biologist Bruce Lipton , Chapter 5 : "Biology and Belief " , " Mind over Body " :


Quote :"Let’s review what we know about cells. We learned in earlier chapters that the functions of cells are directly derived from the movements of their protein “gears.” The movement generated by assemblies of proteins provides the physiologic functions that enable life. While proteins are the physical building blocks, complementary environmental signals are required to animate their movement. The interface between environmental signals and behavior-producing cytoplasmic proteins is the cell’s membrane. The membrane receives stimuli and then engages the appropriate, life-sustaining cellular responses.

 The cell membrane operates as the cell’s “brain.” Integral membrane receptor-effector proteins (IMPs) are the fundamental physical subunits of the cellular brain’s “intelligence” mechanism. By functional definition, these protein complexes are “perception switches” that link reception of environmental stimuli to response-generating protein pathways.
Cells generally respond to an assortment of very basic “perceptions” of what’s going on in their world.

 Such perceptions include whether things like potassium, calcium, oxygen, glucose, histamine, estrogen, toxins, light, or any number of other stimuli are present in their immediate environment. The simultaneous interactions of tens of thousands of reflexive perception switches in the membrane, each directly reading an individual environmental signal, collectively create the complex behavior of a living cell.

For the first three billion years of life on this planet, the biosphere consisted of free-living single cells such as bacteria, algae, and protozoans. While we have traditionally considered such life forms as solitary individuals, we are now aware that signal molecules used by individual cells to regulate their own physiologic functions, when released into the environment, also influence the behavior of other organisms.

Signals released into the environment allow for a coordination of behavior among a dispersed population of unicellular organisms. Secreting signal molecules into the environment enhanced the survival of single cells by providing them with the opportunity to live as a primitive “community.”
The single-celled slime mold amoebas provide an example of how signaling molecules lead to community. These amoebas live a solitary existence in the soil foraging for food.

 When available food in the environment is consumed, the cells synthesize an excess amount of a metabolic by-product called cyclic AMP (cAMP), much of which is released into the environment. The concentration of the released cAMP builds in the environment as other amoebas face starvation. When secreted cAMP signal molecules bind to cAMP-receptors on the cell membranes of other slime mold amoebas, it signals them to activate a swarming behavior wherein the amoebas congregate and form a large multicellular “slug.” The slug community is the reproductive stage of slime mold. During the “famine” period, the community of aging cells shares their DNA and creates the next generation of offspring.

The new amoebas hibernate as inactive spores. When more food is available, the food molecules act as a signal to break the hibernation, releasing a new population of single cells to start the cycle over again.
The point is that single-celled organisms actually live in a community when they share their “awareness” and coordinate their behaviors by releasing “signal” molecules into the environment.
Cyclic AMP was one of evolution’s earliest forms of secreted regulatory signals that controls cell behavior.

 The fundamental human signal molecules (e.g., hormones, neuropeptides, cytokines, growth factors) that regulate our own cellular communities were once thought to have arisen with the appearance of complex multicellular life forms. However, recent research has revealed that primitive single-celled organisms were already using these “human” signal molecules in the earliest stages of evolution. Through evolution, cells maximized the number of IMP “awareness” proteins their membranes could hold. To acquire more awareness, and therefore increase their probability of surviving, cells started to assemble, first into simple colonies and later into highly organized cellular communities.

As described earlier, the physiologic functions of multicellular organisms are parceled out to specialized communities of cells forming the body’s tissues and organs. In communal organizations, the cell membrane’s intelligence processing is carried out by the specialized cells of the organism’s nervous and immune systems.
It was only 700 million years ago, recent in regard to the time frame of life on this planet, when single cells found it advantageous to join together in tightly knit multicellular communities, organizations we recognize as animals and plants.

The same coordinating signal molecules used by free-living cells were used in these newly evolved closed communities. By tightly regulating the release and distribution of these function-controlling signal molecules, the community of cells would be able to coordinate their functions and act as a single life form. In the more primitive multicellular organisms, those without specialized nervous systems, the flow of these signal molecules within the community provided an elementary “mind,” represented by the coordinating information shared by every cell. In such organisms, each cell directly read environmental cues and personally adjusted its own behavior.
However, when cells came together in community, a new politic had to be established.

In community, each cell cannot act as an independent agent that does whatever it wants. The term “community” implies that all of its members commit to a common plan of action. In multicellular animals, individual cells may “see” the local environment outside of their own “skin,” but they may
have no awareness of what is going on in more distant environments, especially those outside of the whole organism itself.

 Can a liver cell buried in your viscera, responding to its local environmental signals, make an informed response regarding the consequence of a mugger that jumps into your environment? The complex behavior controls needed to ensure a multicellular organization’s survival are incorporated within its centralized information processing system.
As more complex animals evolved, specialized cells took over the job of monitoring and organizing the flow of the behavior regulating signal molecules. These cells provided a distributed nerve network and central information processor, a brain.

The brain’s function is to coordinate the dialogue of signal molecules within the community. Consequently, in a community of cells, each cell must acquiesce control to the informed decisions of its awareness authority, the brain. The brain controls the behavior of the body’s cells. This is a very important point to consider as we blame the cells of our organs and tissues for the health issues we experience in our lives."End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:37:59
"How the Mind Controls the Body"

From the same above mentioned source and chapter :


Quote : "My insights into how beliefs control biology are grounded in my studies of cloned endothelial cells,
the cells that line the blood vessels. The endothelial cells I grew in culture monitor their world closely and change their behavior based on information they pick up from the environment. When I provided nutrients, the cells would gravitate toward those nutrients with the cellular equivalent of open arms.

When I created a toxic environment, the cultured cells would retreat from the stimulus in an effort to wall themselves off from the noxious agents. My research focused on the membrane perception switches that controlled the shift from one behavior to the other.

The primary switch I was studying has a protein receptor that responds to histamine, a molecule that the body uses in a way that is equivalent to a local emergency alarm. I found that there are two varieties of switches, H1 and H2, that respond to the same histamine signal. When activated, switches with H1 histamine receptors evoke a protection response, the type of behavior revealed by cells in toxin-containing culture dishes. Switches containing H2 histamine receptors evoke a growth response to histamine, similar to the behavior of cells cultured in the presence of nutrients.

I subsequently learned that the body’s system-wide emergency response signal, adrenaline, also has switches sporting two different adrenaline-sensing receptors, called alpha and beta. The adrenaline receptors provoked the exact same cell behaviors as those elicited by histamine. When the adrenal alpha-receptor is part of an IMP switch, it provokes a protection response when adrenaline is perceived. When the beta-receptor is part of the switch, the same adrenaline signal activates a growth response. (Lipton, et al, 1992).

All that was interesting, but the most exciting finding was when I simultaneously introduced both histamine and adrenaline into my tissue cultures. I found that adrenaline signals, released by the central nervous system, override the influence of histamine signals that are produced locally.

 This is where the politics of the community described earlier come in to play. Suppose you’re working in a bank. The branch manager gives you an order. The CEO walks in and gives you the opposite order.
Which order would you follow? If you want to keep your job you’ll snap to the CEO’s order. There is a similar priority built into our biology, which requires cells to follow instructions from the head honcho nervous system, even if those signals are in conflict with local stimuli.

I was excited by my experiments because I believed that they revealed on the single-cell level a truth for multicellular organisms—that the mind (acting via the central nervous system’s adrenaline) overrides the body (acting via the local histamine signal). I wanted to spell out the implications of my experiments in my research paper, but my colleagues almost died from apoplexy at the notion of injecting the body-mind connection into a paper about cell biology. So I put in a cryptic comment about understanding the significance of the study, but I couldn’t say what the significance was.

 My colleagues did not want me to include these implications of my research because the mind is not an acceptable biological concept. Bioscientists are conventional Newtonians—if it isn’t matter, it doesn’t count. The “mind” is a non-localized energy and therefore is not relevant to materialistic biology. Unfortunately, that perception is a “belief” that has been proven to be patently incorrect in a quantum mechanical universe!" End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:42:09
Quote
author=RD link=topic=52526.msg446249#msg446249 date=1418156225]
... the brain is an ever changing theater thanks to neuropalsticity and self-directed neuroplasticity .
... the assumption that the mind and its memories ...are just brain activity , and hence  memories can be stored in the brain....is just a materialistic extension of the materialistic fundamental intrinsic claim that all is matter , including the mind = no empirical evidence .

Why is brain-growth and neuroplasticity necessary if the brain is a dumb terminal (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/dumb_terminal.html) communicating with a remote cloud database (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_database.html) ?.

Neuroplasticity is a vital must that has to cope with the ever changing experiences , with the ever changing storm of information or whatever both from the outside world and from within ...with learning new things , new skills ....to cope with the ever changing environment .

A kid's brain can't cope with growing up, simply put , unless neuroplasticity is there to change it through learning , experience and more .

You're applying the computer model to consciousness , that's why you can't think outside of that box .

The brain is no computer or machine , it does not code for anything , does not store anything , does not compute anything : that's just the projection of materialists .
Quote
 
I could see, hear, walk & remember some information when I was 5 years old , why did I need to grow a bigger brain as I became an adult ?.  Answer: because memories are stored in the brain, not remotely. If the data storage [memory] was in a remote location a child-sized brain would be more than sufficient to get through life.

It's exactly the other way around : makes no biological sense that memories can be stored in the brain .There has to be a non-physical and non-local "place " for memories thus .


Excerpt From " The Biology of Belief , Unleashing the Power of Consciousness ... " By Biologist Bruce Lipton, Chapter 6 : "Growth and Protection " : 

Quote : "Evolution has provided us with lots of survival mechanisms. They can be roughly divided into two functional categories: growth and protection. These growth and protection mechanisms are the fundamental behaviors required for an organism to survive. I’m sure you know how important it is to protect yourself. You may not realize though that growth is vitally important for your survival as well —even if you’re an adult who has reached your full height. Every day billions of cells in your body wear out and need to be replaced. For example, the entire cellular lining of your gut is replaced every seventy-two hours. In order to maintain this continuous turnover of cells, your body needs to expend a significant amount of energy daily.

By now you won’t be surprised to learn that I first became aware of how important growth and protection behaviors are in the laboratory where my observations of single cells have so often led me to insights about the multicellular human body. When I was cloning human endothelial cells, they retreated from toxins that I introduced into the culture dish, just as humans retreat from mountain lions and muggers in dark alleys. They also gravitated to nutrients, just as humans gravitate to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and love. These opposing movements define the two basic cellular responses to environmental stimuli. Gravitating to a life-sustaining signal, such as nutrients, characterizes a growth response; moving away from threatening signals, such as toxins, characterizes a protection response. It must also be noted that some environmental stimuli are neutral; they provoke neither a growth nor a protection response.

My research at Stanford showed that these growth/protection behaviors are also essential for the survival of multicellular organisms such as humans. But there is a catch to these opposing survival mechanisms that have evolved over billions of years. It turns out that the mechanisms that support growth and protection cannot operate optimally at the same time. In other words, cells cannot simultaneously move forward and backward. The human blood vessel cells I studied at Stanford exhibited one microscopic anatomy for providing nutrition and a completely different microscopic anatomy for providing a protection response. What they couldn’t do was exhibit both configurations at the same time. (Lipton, et al, 1991).

In a response similar to that displayed by cells, humans unavoidably restrict their growth behaviors when they shift into a protective mode. If you’re running from a mountain lion, it’s not a good idea to expend energy on growth. In order to survive—that is, escape the lion—you summon all your energy for your fight or flight response. Redistributing energy reserves to fuel the protection response inevitably results in a curtailment of growth.

In addition to diverting energy to support the tissues and organs needed for the protection response, there is an additional reason why growth is inhibited. Growth processes require an open exchange between an organism and its environment. For example, food is taken in and waste products are excreted. However, protection requires a closing down of the system to wall the organism off from the perceived threat.

Inhibiting growth processes is also debilitating in that growth is a process that not only expends energy but is also required to produce energy. Consequently, a sustained protection response inhibits the creation of life-sustaining energy. The longer you stay in protection, the more you compromise your growth. In fact, you can shut down growth processes so completely that it becomes a truism that you can be “scared to death.”

Thankfully, most of us don’t get to the “scared to death” point. Unlike single cells, the growth/protection response in multicellular organisms is not an either/or proposition—not all of our 50 trillion cells have to be in growth or protection mode at the same time. The proportion of cells in a protection response depends on the severity of the perceived threats. You can survive while under stress from these threats but chronic inhibition of growth mechanisms severely compromises your vitality. It is also important to note that to fully experience your vitality it takes more than just getting rid of life’s stressors. In a growth-protection continuum, eliminating the stressors only puts you at the neutral point in the range. To fully thrive, we must not only eliminate the stressors but also actively seek joyful, loving, fulfilling lives that stimulate growth processes."End Quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:43:55
Quote
author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg446260#msg446260 date=1418164079]
Real Life Show : Caught on Candid Camera :

I wanted to surprise our dear friends here below ,so, i planted some undetectable mini cams all over  the place where they were gathering to celebrate the holidays ahead of time .

Sir Don.......I must confess that I did enjoy your little melodrama. Much better than traditional soap opera I must say.

Sir Ethos : I thought so .No need to confess once again .You have already done that lol .Good  to know that you have a sense of humour. Thanks .


Quote
What truly astounds me is that someone as intelligent as you respectfully are could have such a mental block to what is so very obvious to the rest of us. Nothing in this world, will ever be fully understood or documented without the measure of observation by means of material resource, which by the way includes the brain.

Thanks, man . Anyway , science is not about the right of the majority though : it would have to take only one single scientist to turn science upside down .
The whole materialistic mainstream scientific community is simply wrong , big time, you have no idea , wrong about equating science with materialism at least , and hence the mind cannot be in the brain or brain activity , cannot be a material process...memories cannot be stored in the brain ...

Furthermore , empirical  evidence can be inferred ,indirectly, from other empirical evidence , like the fact that consciousness is a non-physical and non-local process ,a fact that can be inferred , indirectly , form other related empirical evidence on the subject .

Quote
When you constantly refer to "the immaterial" please ask yourself how the immaterial reconciles with even quantum physics. Even the quantum realm requires attention to material objects such as the smallest atomic units of mass and charge. If we leave out material, what is left? Nothingness

Ironically enough, QM can never be understood without reference to the mind ,simply because they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other ,or as a prominent physicist said ,or in words to that same effect at least :

Will it not turn out that ,with the development of science , any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness ...since both are inseparably linked to each other .

Quote
Even the wave forms are disturbances in the fabric of space/time. And space/time can't ever be considered as immaterial.

See above . The very notions of space and time , space -time , gravity , mass,time , causality , reality , locality  ...would be turned on their heads ,if you only would take a look at them from the observer effect interpretation of QM where consciousness plays a central role in shaping the physical reality ,while getting influenced by the latter .
The mind of the observer cannot be separated from the observed so-called objective reality .There is no such thing as the independent observer or the independent observed objective reality ,since both are inseparable from each other ,as the mind cannot but exert a causal effect on its physical environment  ,while being influenced by the latter : our "reality " is just the product of that mutual interaction between our minds and our environments through our senses and brains and beyond .There is also what can be called extra-sensory perception, but that's another story .

Quote
How can you honestly reconcile this immaterial logic of yours with the material universe?

The universe is not   exclusively material or physical , as materialism wanna make you believe it is ,and hence materialism is false .The universe is also mental and the latter is irreducible to matter .
Better still : the mental is the key component or key 'building block " of the universe , a primary one at that , that is , no wonder that 0,000000...1 % of the universe , including ourselves thus , is "matter "....The latter is almost nothing in the universe: almost insignificant and irrelevant  .The whole population of earth can be contained within  an apple ,for example , if one would take all that empty space out of it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 10/12/2014 18:56:12
Quote
the mental is the key component or key 'building block " of the universe , a primary one at that

so what does it predicate (never mind predict) that isn't consistent with the material? 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 18:57:47
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446296#msg446296 date=1418224294]
... can you care to enlighten us about how such qualitative subjective memories that are a matter of qualitative subjective experiences , taste , preferences , aesthetics , morality , ethics ... can you tell us how they can be quantified or computed by the related or correlated quantitative brain activity ?

 Brain-damaged individuals can undergo a personality change,
becoming aggressive and/or libidinous ...

Quote from: caring.com
... some people with AD [ Alzheimer's Disease] do things that are totally uncharacteristic of personality before the disease. Swearing (yes, even precious sweet elderly ladies!), spitting, becoming socially inept and impulsive with inappropriate words or actions, and sexual advances may appear for some folks.
https://www.caring.com/questions/dementia-and-personality-change

 So their moral judgement has been modified by deactivation [destruction] of part of their brain .

And of course persons suffering from dementia lose their memory. 


We've talked about disease and disorder changing not only function and ability but Don sees it as being like a broken radio that no longer receives or transmits the true, nonlocal consciousness. Aside from lack of evidence for a receiver model, it's hard to explain changes to personality or morality, which Don also sees as attributes of the immaterial will. It's even harder to explain changes to qualitative conscious experience itself, as reported by the individual with a neurological disorder. (You aren't really confused, hallucinating, or having trouble remembering things, you only think you are. The real you is somewhere, doing just fine.)

It's hard to explain the qualitative personality and its related morality , memory and other changes that happen to people afflicted with dementia ,Alzheimer ...but that's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic intrinsic belief assumption that consciousness is just brain activity .

Well, consciousness has to work through its brain , so, any damage or changes to the related neuronal correlates can trigger changes in consciousness accordingly, and vice versa . .

Quote
But one thing we haven't talked about much is development which you also referred to. And it's interesting because it highlights not only changes in structure, plasticity, but the influence of learning and experience. Why should the expression of the immaterial mind change so predictably with physiological development?

See above the excerpts from a certain book of biologist Bruce Lipton concerning growth and protection on the subject and more .

When an individual grows up , he/she undergoes many experiences , learns many things and skills, is exposed to many information from the outside as well as from the inside worlds , exposed to many psychological and other challenges ,traumas ....so, his/her brain and the rest of his /her biology must cope with all that through biological changes , through neuroplasticity or through self-directed neuroplasticity ...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 19:33:33
Quote
the mental is the key component or key 'building block " of the universe , a primary one at that

so what does it predicate (never mind predict) that isn't consistent with the material?

Predict lol : This has become your signature , Alan, together with ...Jazz .

It predicates that the mind is more primordial and powerful than "matter "  can ever be (0,000000...1 % of the universe , including ourselves, is made of "matter " = the latter is the one that's almost  insignificant and almost irrelevant , not the mind , even though matter and mind are inseparable , in this life at least. ): the mind plays a central role in shaping its environment,including the brain and body ,  ,and the mind gets influenced by its "external " environment as well , including by the brain and body  , unlike that materialistic intrinsic absurd unscientific paradoxical belief assumption that the mind is just an irrelevant side effect or by-product of evolution without any causal effects on the physical reality , including on the brain , and that the mind is just a simulation , an evolutionary  illusory useful one computed by the brain , a simulation that feels real though = bullshit .

Without your mind , the features of which that do not obey the laws of physics at least , you wouldn't have been able to be conscious or aware , let alone become a physicist who likes to play or listen to Jazz lol

Jazz is too sad by the way , Alan, the blues at least  . How come you like it ? Jazz that's an African -American product .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 20:05:43
There are many theories of consciousness , some are  more or less plausible or scientific than the rest   : Take your pick :
I think that materialistic theories of consciousness must be discarded and eliminated totally ,since they all assume a -priori that consciousness is just the product of brain activity , a materialistic intrinsic  assumption that's false and that has been supported by a big zero empirical evidence: Looking for consciousness or the mind in the brain is a dead -end street  .
We're still almost in total darkness regarding how the mind works through the brain though .
Better still : we still do not know much about the brain itself , let alone about the mind :

Journal of Consciousness Studies :

http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2014 20:25:45


Will it not turn out that ,with the development of science , any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness ...since both are inseparably linked to each other .


Are you suggesting that consciousness and the universe can't exist one without the other? If that is your position, I suggest that you consider the following question:

Where was consciousness at the Big Bang event. And we really don't need to go clear back to this time in history. Where was consciousness before the earth came into being? And even later in the historical record, where was consciousness before life first appeared upon this planet?

I suggest that consciousness is dependent upon the universal environment which gave us the material brain which developed over many millions of years. But the material environment was here long before that conscious intelligence developed. So consciousness and the universe were not inseparably linked from the beginning. Consciousness developed later in this story.

If you have evidence to prove otherwise, please present it to us.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 20:58:11
Quote
author=Ethos_ link=topic=52526.msg446329#msg446329 date=1418243145]

Will it not turn out that ,with the development of science , any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness ...since both are inseparably linked to each other .


Are you suggesting that consciousness and the universe can't exist one without the other?


Descartes left his and our minds to the church , remember , and the physical universe to science : how are we supposed to study the former through the latter without our minds lol

I am using this joke to illustrate the fact that materialism also says that the mind has no causal effects on the physical reality , let alone on the brain .Yet , without the causal efficacy of the mind on the physical brain and body , no science would exist , let alone the rest .

All i am saying is that since scientists, who  are also a part of this universe ,cannot but study the universe through their consciousnesses via the scientific method ,the latter that's a product of the mind in its mutual interactions with its environment , then consciousness cannot but be involved in all that ,cannot be separated from the observed so-called objective reality or observed universe,since consciousness does make part of this universe (The latter that cannot be just material or physical thus , but has to be also mental ) : they are intertwined with each other ,so, any real progress in the study of the universe might turn out ,some day , to be impossible without that in the study of consciousness : we see that happening already in QM, for example , QM that can  never be understood without reference to the mind , once again .

See Bell's theorem and its related experiments done by Aspect , Clauser and others that proved non-locality , introduced the limited notion of free will at the level of the kinds of measurements that physicists choose to apply , challenged the very foundations of reality ...

We must try to answer the major questions thus regarding how we are able to be aware or conscious of the universe and of ourselves, how come that we can try to understand the universe and ourselves , when or how consciousness emerged , what is its origin .,,,

Clearly , biological evolution cannot account for consciousness , since the latter cannot be reduced to material , neurophysiological or biological processes .

There are a lot more  unanswered questions on the subject we should try to explore as well , but the main problem is : we are stuck within our consciousnesses , in the sense that we are trying to study the subject through the subject , the subject trying to study itself .

Quote
If that is your position, I suggest that you consider the following question:
Where was consciousness at the Big Bang event. And we really don't need to go clear back to this time in history. Where was consciousness before the earth came into being? And even later in the historical record, where was consciousness before life first appeared upon this planet?

I don't know , but i think that the physical universe prior to life's and to man's appearance in it did exist as just probabilities , possibilities , eventualities ...waiting to be actualized , or as a scientist said :

It doesn't matter that the universe did exist billions of years before man entered its stage ,the universe exists because we are aware of it .

But then again , i am not sure about the above , who is ?

Quote
I suggest that consciousness is dependent upon the universal environment which gave us the material brain which developed over many millions of years. But the material environment was here long before that conscious intelligence developed. So consciousness and the universe were not inseparably linked from the beginning. Consciousness developed later in this story.

That's the chicken-egg question lol : which one existed first .

See above : biological evolution cannot account for consciousness, since the latter cannot be material or physical .

Materialism puts the horse behind the chariot lol : assumes that matter is primordial ( 0,00000...1 % of the universe, including ourselves thus ,  is made of "matter " though lol ) and the mind is just a by-product or side -effect of the so-called evolution of  the physical brain , and without any causal effects on the latter (Absurd paradoxical false intrinsic materialistic assumptions)  but the opposite  might be more plausible, i don't know ,since the mind is the one that's primordial ,and since materialism is false .

Quote
If you have evidence to prove otherwise, please present it to us.

lol I have more evidence for the fact that Sint Claus can be in many places at once lol, than for the above :

No one has any evidence  : QM might help clarify all that , to some extent at least , by proving the central role of consciousness in it , but how can we either prove or falsify the real nature of reality at the sub-atomic level at least when we are not observing or measuring it ? You tell me , Ethos .I don't know .

QM might also get superseded in its turn someday , who knows ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/12/2014 21:32:32
Ethos :

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."

P.S : My emphasis : In short :

What we take  for granted as the physical universe or physical reality, through our mindful perception of it at least , might be just a mental construct of ours = the universe might be ...mental .

In other words : What we take for granted as reality or as the physical universe thus might be just a mental illusion .

I can't even imagine what that means .I can't even picture that or imagine that .Who can ?

That sounds insane to all of us indeed , but that's what QM has been saying anyway : Bell's theorem and its related experiments just supported and proved that fact more clearly than ever before .

Don't leave your mind to ...materialism then, Ethos lol , like Descartes did by leaving (  his) the mind to the church , metaphorically speaking then  lol .Use it to grasp the above and more .Your mind is not powerless .It is powerful , more powerful than you can ever imagine, you have no idea ,my friend Ethos .

That turns all what materialistic science has been saying about the origin of the universe , the origin of life , the evolution of life ...upside down, to say the least .

Welcome to the "real " world .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/12/2014 22:20:44


In other words : What we take for granted as reality or as the physical universe thus might be just a mental illusion .


That might be true if I were the only observer Don. But I'm not! I have support from millions of other people that experience the same observations. And this is why we test and observe and qualify those observations as genuine realities. The only other conclusion one could draw is that we are alone in our illusions and may be ourselves, nothing more than an illusion.

So humanity is left with a decision. Do I believe what I observe or do I invent my own reality. I think you'll remember what I said the latter course leads one to, it's called insanity. So you have a choice Don as each and everyone of us also has. Accept the evidence of observation or declare your very existence as an illusion.

Science chooses to take all reasonable information either observed by experiment or understood thru mathematics. It's all the evidence we have to judge this world by. And if, as you speculate, it's only an illusion, all the conclusions we will ever be able to draw from those illusions are also nothing more than only illusions! So why draw any conclusions at all?

I prefer the reality that is in agreement with others of my own kind and the world around me.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 10/12/2014 23:30:41
Excerpt From "The Biology of Belief ..." By Biologist Bruce Lipton , Chapter 5 : "Biology and Belief " , " Mind over Body " :

Far out man...  ::)


There's no shortage of opinion about Lipton's work:

Epigenetics: It doesn’t mean what quacks think it means (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/epigenetics-it-doesnt-mean-what-quacks-think-it-means/) (Science-Based Medicine)
Bruce Lipton PhD: Quack, ignoramus (https://spiritualityisnoexcuse.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/bruce-lipton-phd-quack-ignoramus/)
Bruce Lipton: Quack, Creationist, Buffoon, PhD (https://spiritualityisnoexcuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/bruce-lipton-quack-creationist-buffoon-phd/)
Choprawoo returns, this time with help from Bruce Lipton (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/06/14/choprawoo-returns-this-time-with-help-fr/)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 10/12/2014 23:50:11
"How the Mind Controls the Body"

From the same above mentioned source and chapter :


Quote : "My insights into how beliefs control biology are grounded in my studies of cloned endothelial cells,
the cells that line the blood vessels. The endothelial cells I grew in culture monitor their world closely and change their behavior based on information they pick up from the environment. When I provided nutrients, the cells would gravitate toward those nutrients with the cellular equivalent of open arms.

When I created a toxic environment, the cultured cells would retreat from the stimulus in an effort to wall themselves off from the noxious agents. My research focused on the membrane perception switches that controlled the shift from one behavior to the other.

The primary switch I was studying has a protein receptor that responds to histamine, a molecule that the body uses in a way that is equivalent to a local emergency alarm. I found that there are two varieties of switches, H1 and H2, that respond to the same histamine signal. When activated, switches with H1 histamine receptors evoke a protection response, the type of behavior revealed by cells in toxin-containing culture dishes. Switches containing H2 histamine receptors evoke a growth response to histamine, similar to the behavior of cells cultured in the presence of nutrients.

I subsequently learned that the body’s system-wide emergency response signal, adrenaline, also has switches sporting two different adrenaline-sensing receptors, called alpha and beta. The adrenaline receptors provoked the exact same cell behaviors as those elicited by histamine. When the adrenal alpha-receptor is part of an IMP switch, it provokes a protection response when adrenaline is perceived. When the beta-receptor is part of the switch, the same adrenaline signal activates a growth response. (Lipton, et al, 1992).

All that was interesting, but the most exciting finding was when I simultaneously introduced both histamine and adrenaline into my tissue cultures. I found that adrenaline signals, released by the central nervous system, override the influence of histamine signals that are produced locally.

 This is where the politics of the community described earlier come in to play. Suppose you’re working in a bank. The branch manager gives you an order. The CEO walks in and gives you the opposite order.
Which order would you follow? If you want to keep your job you’ll snap to the CEO’s order. There is a similar priority built into our biology, which requires cells to follow instructions from the head honcho nervous system, even if those signals are in conflict with local stimuli.

I was excited by my experiments because I believed that they revealed on the single-cell level a truth for multicellular organisms—that the mind (acting via the central nervous system’s adrenaline) overrides the body (acting via the local histamine signal). I wanted to spell out the implications of my experiments in my research paper, but my colleagues almost died from apoplexy at the notion of injecting the body-mind connection into a paper about cell biology. So I put in a cryptic comment about understanding the significance of the study, but I couldn’t say what the significance was.

 My colleagues did not want me to include these implications of my research because the mind is not an acceptable biological concept. Bioscientists are conventional Newtonians—if it isn’t matter, it doesn’t count. The “mind” is a non-localized energy and therefore is not relevant to materialistic biology. Unfortunately, that perception is a “belief” that has been proven to be patently incorrect in a quantum mechanical universe!" End quote .

I don't quite get his point. That cells with the corresponding receptors respond to hormones and other chemical messengers that alter their function? And maintain homeostasis through negative feedback loops? And this is news or proof of the immaterial because....?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 03:24:20

It's hard to explain the qualitative personality and its related morality , memory and other changes that happen to people afflicted with dementia ,Alzheimer ...but that's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic intrinsic belief assumption that consciousness is just brain activity .
See, that's where your logic completely falls apart. The LACK of YOUR explanation for why the immaterial personality changes with biological disease, or immaterial memories disappear, or the change in the quality of subjective experience claimed by the person experiencing it has NOTHING to do with any assumption made by materialists (or Buddhists or Christians or Druids or Scientologists or anyone else you might be attempting to explain your theory to.) The lack of explanations or contradictions in your own theory remain regardless of who the listener is.


Quote
When an individual grows up , he/she undergoes many experiences , learns many things and skills, is exposed to many information from the outside as well as from the inside worlds , exposed to many psychological and other challenges ,traumas ....so, his/her brain and the rest of his /her biology must cope with all that through biological changes , through neuroplasticity or through self-directed neuroplasticity ...

Any evidence for self directed neuroplasticity in babies? How does that work exactly?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 17:14:02
"How the Mind Controls the Body"

From the same above mentioned source and chapter :


Quote : "My insights into how beliefs control biology are grounded in my studies of cloned endothelial cells,
the cells that line the blood vessels. The endothelial cells I grew in culture monitor their world closely and change their behavior based on information they pick up from the environment. When I provided nutrients, the cells would gravitate toward those nutrients with the cellular equivalent of open arms.

When I created a toxic environment, the cultured cells would retreat from the stimulus in an effort to wall themselves off from the noxious agents. My research focused on the membrane perception switches that controlled the shift from one behavior to the other.

The primary switch I was studying has a protein receptor that responds to histamine, a molecule that the body uses in a way that is equivalent to a local emergency alarm. I found that there are two varieties of switches, H1 and H2, that respond to the same histamine signal. When activated, switches with H1 histamine receptors evoke a protection response, the type of behavior revealed by cells in toxin-containing culture dishes. Switches containing H2 histamine receptors evoke a growth response to histamine, similar to the behavior of cells cultured in the presence of nutrients.

I subsequently learned that the body’s system-wide emergency response signal, adrenaline, also has switches sporting two different adrenaline-sensing receptors, called alpha and beta. The adrenaline receptors provoked the exact same cell behaviors as those elicited by histamine. When the adrenal alpha-receptor is part of an IMP switch, it provokes a protection response when adrenaline is perceived. When the beta-receptor is part of the switch, the same adrenaline signal activates a growth response. (Lipton, et al, 1992).

All that was interesting, but the most exciting finding was when I simultaneously introduced both histamine and adrenaline into my tissue cultures. I found that adrenaline signals, released by the central nervous system, override the influence of histamine signals that are produced locally.

 This is where the politics of the community described earlier come in to play. Suppose you’re working in a bank. The branch manager gives you an order. The CEO walks in and gives you the opposite order.
Which order would you follow? If you want to keep your job you’ll snap to the CEO’s order. There is a similar priority built into our biology, which requires cells to follow instructions from the head honcho nervous system, even if those signals are in conflict with local stimuli.

I was excited by my experiments because I believed that they revealed on the single-cell level a truth for multicellular organisms—that the mind (acting via the central nervous system’s adrenaline) overrides the body (acting via the local histamine signal). I wanted to spell out the implications of my experiments in my research paper, but my colleagues almost died from apoplexy at the notion of injecting the body-mind connection into a paper about cell biology. So I put in a cryptic comment about understanding the significance of the study, but I couldn’t say what the significance was.

 My colleagues did not want me to include these implications of my research because the mind is not an acceptable biological concept. Bioscientists are conventional Newtonians—if it isn’t matter, it doesn’t count. The “mind” is a non-localized energy and therefore is not relevant to materialistic biology. Unfortunately, that perception is a “belief” that has been proven to be patently incorrect in a quantum mechanical universe!" End quote .

I don't quite get his point. That cells with the corresponding receptors respond to hormones and other chemical messengers that alter their function? And maintain homeostasis through negative feedback loops? And this is news or proof of the immaterial because....?

Reread that , Cheryl , and see this on the subject :

Libet Benjamin-Can Conscious Experience Affect Brain Activity ?:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imprint.co.uk%2Fpdf%2FLibet.pdf&ei=Ls-JVMaiGYavU9vKgNAF&usg=AFQjCNH8Wham7kVuYqgUOVRlxbQ-yOON4w&sig2=h2AYHzF83ffqfG-yXYE8YA&bvm=bv.81456516,d.d24
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 17:19:57


In other words : What we take for granted as reality or as the physical universe thus might be just a mental illusion .


That might be true if I were the only observer Don. But I'm not! I have support from millions of other people that experience the same observations. And this is why we test and observe and qualify those observations as genuine realities. The only other conclusion one could draw is that we are alone in our illusions and may be ourselves, nothing more than an illusion.

So humanity is left with a decision. Do I believe what I observe or do I invent my own reality. I think you'll remember what I said the latter course leads one to, it's called insanity. So you have a choice Don as each and everyone of us also has. Accept the evidence of observation or declare your very existence as an illusion.

Science chooses to take all reasonable information either observed by experiment or understood thru mathematics. It's all the evidence we have to judge this world by. And if, as you speculate, it's only an illusion, all the conclusions we will ever be able to draw from those illusions are also nothing more than only illusions! So why draw any conclusions at all?

I prefer the reality that is in agreement with others of my own kind and the world around me.

The so-called physical reality,including the physical brain and body thus ,  is the one that might be an illusion , an elaborate persistent  useful one that feels ,sounds , looks , tastes ,.... appears to be real lol, not the mind : QM says thus the very opposite of what materialism has been saying : Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated that fact clearly : 

I was just saying that QM has been showing to us that what we call reality or the physical reality might be an illusion, a mental one and more  :

Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated that and more  :

Ethos :

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."

P.S : My emphasis : In short :

What we take  for granted as the physical universe or physical reality, through our mindful perception of it at least , might be just a mental construct of ours = the universe might be ...mental .

In other words : What we take for granted as reality or as the physical universe thus might be just a mental illusion .

I can't even imagine what that means .I can't even picture that or imagine that .Who can ?

That sounds insane to all of us indeed , but that's what QM has been saying anyway : Bell's theorem and its related experiments just supported and proved that fact more clearly than ever before .

Don't leave your mind to ...materialism then, Ethos lol , like Descartes did by leaving (  his) the mind to the church , metaphorically speaking then  lol .Use it to grasp the above and more .Your mind is not powerless .It is powerful , more powerful than you can ever imagine, you have no idea ,my friend Ethos .

That turns all what materialistic science has been saying about the origin of the universe , the origin of life , the evolution of life ...upside down, to say the least .

Welcome to the "real " world .Cheers.

Once again :

The so-called physical reality,including the physical brain and body thus ,  is the one that might be an illusion , an elaborate persistent  useful one that feels ,sounds , looks , tastes ,.... appears to be real lol, not the mind : QM says thus the very opposite of what materialism has been saying : Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated that fact clearly : 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 18:12:43
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446346#msg446346 date=1418268260]

It's hard to explain the qualitative personality and its related morality , memory and other changes that happen to people afflicted with dementia ,Alzheimer ...but that's no conclusive evidence for the materialistic intrinsic belief assumption that consciousness is just brain activity .
See, that's where your logic completely falls apart. The LACK of YOUR explanation for why the immaterial personality changes with biological disease, or immaterial memories disappear, or the change in the quality of subjective experience claimed by the person experiencing it has NOTHING to do with any assumption made by materialists (or Buddhists or Christians or Druids or Scientologists or anyone else you might be attempting to explain your theory to.) The lack of explanations or contradictions in your own theory remain regardless of who the listener is.

Let me first remind you of the fact that we're still almost in total darkness regarding how the mind works through the brain, not to mention that we still do not know much about the brain itself , let alone about the mind  : see how many theories of consciousness that  are out there , none of which can pretend to have the final word on the subject , not even remotely close :

http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html

Second : materialistic theories of consciousness should be either partly or totally eliminated from the list of competitive theories of consciousness, simply because materialism is certainly false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness, let alone explain it , and since consciousness is irreducible to brain activity .

Third : both psychological and biological disorders + the "external " environment , to mention just that , can affect the brain ,and hence the expression of consciousness through it ,the brain as a transceiver for  consciousness and the mind .

But fact is : Conscious Experience can affect Brain Activity : too :

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imprint.co.uk%2Fpdf%2FLibet.pdf&ei=fdyJVIakDsfvUKfegKAG&usg=AFQjCNH8Wham7kVuYqgUOVRlxbQ-yOON4w&sig2=Cc0h5V0ekX4ql3EE1-k-Pg&bvm=bv.81456516,d.d24


Schwartz' excerpts might have also explained to you that psychological disorders such as OCD can trigger biological and neurophysiological ones, for example , which alter the consciousness of the OCD patients .

The latter can try to 'fix " that by being aware of the biological and psychological nature of OCD , and hence can try to rewire their brains through self-directed neuroplasticity via therapy or via informed trained self-help , and hence change their minds accordingly .

So, diseases like Alzheimer , dementia ...can alter the brain in significant ways that express themselves at the level of consciousness accordingly : the multiple damages to the neuronal correlates of memory , to the neuronal correlates of self-identity or personality .....cannot thus but alter consciousness at those levels ,since consciousness has to work and express itself through its neuronal correlates .

Try to do an experiment at home , by trying to reverse-engineer your tv set , radio ....to see what happens next lol

Depending on the kind of damage to those devices you might trigger , or depending on their specific malfunctions , you might get sound without images ,and vice versa , or double images ,weird images , weird sound ...or nothing at all : blank tv or mute radio ...

Would that mean that tv or radio do produce their sounds or sounds-images ?

The problem with the latter analogy is that  the transmitting stations, satellites , broadcasting channels and the receiving devices are all material or physical + they are separate from each other : the inseparable mind and the brain , on the other hand , are 2 different processes in kind ,and the brain is both a receiver and a transmitter (transceiver ) : the physical brain transmits a storm of "information " from both the 'external " environment through the senses , as well as from within the inner biology to the mind , while reacting to the corresponding feedbacks from  the mind + to those concerning the psychological inner experiences ...not to mention to the unconscious stream of info and feedbacks ...

Take all the above into consideration and more ,and you might be able to come up with a scientific theory of consciousness that might be worthy of a Nobel prize and beyond .

Good luck with  that .Don't forget to mention me,as your muse ,  in your eventual Nobel prize ceremony speech lol


Quote
Quote
When an individual grows up , he/she undergoes many experiences , learns many things and skills, is exposed to many information from the outside as well as from the inside worlds , exposed to many psychological and other challenges ,traumas ....so, his/her brain and the rest of his /her biology must cope with all that through biological changes , through neuroplasticity or through self-directed neuroplasticity ...

Any evidence for self directed neuroplasticity in babies? How does that work exactly?

Who was talking about any self-directed neuroplasticity of babies ? lol , even though educators , parents ...can induce neuroplasticity for babies lol : can direct their neuroplasticity ,as our environments do that to our brains via our experiences , learning , adaptation , social communication  ...

I said ,as a response to RD , that the brains of kids can't cope with growing up unless they can benefit from the intrinsic neuroplasticity , when he said why do brains need plasticity if memory and the mind are not in the brain ....
Got the pic , lady painter ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 18:16:20
Excerpt From "The Biology of Belief ..." By Biologist Bruce Lipton , Chapter 5 : "Biology and Belief " , " Mind over Body " :

Far out man...  ::)


There's no shortage of opinion about Lipton's work:

Epigenetics: It doesn’t mean what quacks think it means (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/epigenetics-it-doesnt-mean-what-quacks-think-it-means/) (Science-Based Medicine)
Bruce Lipton PhD: Quack, ignoramus (https://spiritualityisnoexcuse.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/bruce-lipton-phd-quack-ignoramus/)
Bruce Lipton: Quack, Creationist, Buffoon, PhD (https://spiritualityisnoexcuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/bruce-lipton-quack-creationist-buffoon-phd/)
Choprawoo returns, this time with help from Bruce Lipton (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/06/14/choprawoo-returns-this-time-with-help-fr/)

Of course .He's not a materialist ,so .
Lipton does flirt with new age sometimes, for example and more , but that's no reason to reject all his work , is it ?

Materialist biologists are even worse than new age lunatics lol even : they reduce life to just mechanical deterministic mindless material processes .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 18:30:24


Reread that , Cheryl , and see this on the subject :

Libet Benjamin-Can Conscious Experience Affect Brain Activity ?:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imprint.co.uk%2Fpdf%2FLibet.pdf&ei=Ls-JVMaiGYavU9vKgNAF&usg=AFQjCNH8Wham7kVuYqgUOVRlxbQ-yOON4w&sig2=h2AYHzF83ffqfG-yXYE8YA&bvm=bv.81456516,d.d24
Intentional Inhibition How the "Veto Area Exerts" Control.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19072994
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 11/12/2014 19:08:38

Of course .He's not a materialist ,so .
Lipton does flirt with new age sometimes, for example and more , but that's no reason to reject all his work , is it ?


The important question is  whether there is any reason to accept any of it. Just one example, please, of a nonmaterialist prediction that was more accurate than a materialist one. Surely one example isn't too much to expect of your "major bombshell" - or is it just a damp fart?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 19:11:25


Reread that , Cheryl , and see this on the subject :

Libet Benjamin-Can Conscious Experience Affect Brain Activity ?:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.imprint.co.uk%2Fpdf%2FLibet.pdf&ei=Ls-JVMaiGYavU9vKgNAF&usg=AFQjCNH8Wham7kVuYqgUOVRlxbQ-yOON4w&sig2=h2AYHzF83ffqfG-yXYE8YA&bvm=bv.81456516,d.d24
Intentional Inhibition How the "Veto Area Exerts" Control.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19072994

As all materialist scientists , Libet cannot but equate brain activity with that of the mind (identity theory = all is brain ) , including the mindful veto power of volition : what a waste of  such a brilliant mind who denied the very causal efficacy of his own mind lol and the latter 's very ...existence as such = a paradox (The logical limit of deterministic reductionist materialism at the level of consciousness at least , is that it must be an illusion, an evolutionary useful brain simulation  that feels real lol : there is no other way they can try to "account for or explain " the very existence of the feeling of conscious awareness , the latter that's not just a matter of feeling anyway , needless to add . ) :

It is not the brain "veto-area" that exerts control .It is the  mindful volitional effort that does that through the former = the 2 are not identical , and hence cannot be equated with each other : David Cooper would agree with me on that much at least .

Those guys from my above displayed Libet  link to you are totally confused and stuck within their a -priori held materialistic beliefs regarding the nature of consciousness at least , the poor lads  : they can't but try to make their false and paradoxical materialism fit into the empirical evidence , instead of the other way around , although they  do acknowledge  sometimes the fact that equating brain activity with that of the mind is nonsense : ( They can't admit that the mindful volitional effort of attention and action  through the conscious aware veto power does not have to obey the laws of physics .)

Quote from the above mentioned source :

"...So, what can we make out of all this? Velmans points out that a physical reductionism, that proposes the conscious experience is identical with neural activity, is not acceptable.

Yet, he assumes that the processes giving rise to conscious experience follow deterministic physical laws. Velmans then offers the view that the unconscious neural processes that lead to a conscious wish to act could be regarded as an expression of free will, because we feel that we have free choice and control over the act.

Clearly, such a view does not represent a genuine free will. The voluntary act is, in this view, not free of the inexorable adherence to deterministic physical processes. In this view, the feeling of an independent freedom of choice and control is merely an illusion.....
" End quote .

In short :

They can't but resort to concluding that free will , subjective experience , the mind ....are just illusions that feel real though like Graziano said .The latter is the one who pushes the materialistic logic to its logical paradoxical limits as it should be done indeed : that's what one gets when one starts from one's major false premise upon which one builds all one's sand castles : 

Graziano is the kindda Hume of materialism lol, Hume that was bold enough as to push the logic  of Locke's empiricism to its logical paradoxical limits ,while Locke was never bothered by the fact that he was inconsistent , illogical , incoherent and irrational sometimes as long as his faulty empiricism would deliver some practical results , so pragmatic was he .But then again , even modern scientific pragmatism is no synonymous of being right .

Consciousness and the mind + all their related processes are just illusory useful evolutionary simulations computed by the brain : illusions that feel real though : the feeling of pain , for example, is an illusion that feels real though lol ....

Instead of confronting the fact that the core assumption of materialism is false and hence has been supported by a big zero evidence  : all is matter , including the mind , they try to elude that fact by trying to make the empirical evidence fit into their a -priori held materialistic beliefs regarding the nature of consciousness and that of the mind (just material processes , just the product of brain activity : equating between consciousness and its neuronal correlates lol : identity theory .) ,which delivers tragic -hilarious pathetic materialistic "results " lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 19:24:18

Of course .He's not a materialist ,so .
Lipton does flirt with new age sometimes, for example and more , but that's no reason to reject all his work , is it ?


The important question is  whether there is any reason to accept any of it. Just one example, please, of a nonmaterialist prediction that was more accurate than a materialist one. Surely one example isn't too much to expect of your "major bombshell" - or is it just a damp fart?

lol Hi, Alan : predictions lol : you're obsessed by that .Play or listen to some Jazz when that obsession  gets overwhelming .Kidding .

The non-physical and non local nature of consciousness in its mutual interactions with its 'outer  "and  inner  environments, including the physical brain,   is the one that can account for and explain the following at least and  more  :

All the material,  physiological and psychological materialistic "explanations " of the following do hold no water whatsoever , and have been refuted as well :

-The measurement problem in QM ,above all .
-Mindful conscious aware Volitional effort of attention and action through its related neuronal correlates .... .
-Placebo/ Nocebo  effects
-Psi phenomena
-Near death experiences
- Mindful informed active Biofeedback training to control the autonomic nervous system ,stress , heart's beats ...
-The mindful causal effects of meditation, mindfulness ...
-Self-directed neuroplasticity
- Epigenetics
To mention just the above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 19:30:17


It is not the brain "veto-area" that exerts control .It is the  mindful volitional effort that does that through the former = the 2 are not identical , and hence cannot be equated with each other : David Cooper would agree with me on that much at least .


I'm not sure he would. There is nothing about control or decision making that is necessarily related to feeling and qualia.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 19:32:25

Of course .He's not a materialist ,so .
Lipton does flirt with new age sometimes, for example and more , but that's no reason to reject all his work , is it ?


The important question is  whether there is any reason to accept any of it. Just one example, please, of a nonmaterialist prediction that was more accurate than a materialist one. Surely one example isn't too much to expect of your "major bombshell" - or is it just a damp fart?

lol Hi, Alan : predictions lol : you're obsessed by that .Play or listen to some Jazz when that obsession  gets overwhelming .Kidding .



Yeah, a lot of scientists have a thing for all that experimenty stuff and predictions. Who knew.

So just take one thing from your list above and provide a detailed, falsifiable, immaterial explanation for it with a prediction.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 19:48:47
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446389#msg446389 date=1418326345]

Of course .He's not a materialist ,so .
Lipton does flirt with new age sometimes, for example and more , but that's no reason to reject all his work , is it ?


The important question is  whether there is any reason to accept any of it. Just one example, please, of a nonmaterialist prediction that was more accurate than a materialist one. Surely one example isn't too much to expect of your "major bombshell" - or is it just a damp fart?

lol Hi, Alan : predictions lol : you're obsessed by that .Play or listen to some Jazz when that obsession  gets overwhelming .Kidding .



Yeah, a lot of scientists have a thing for all that experimenty stuff and predictions. Who knew.

Predictions are not the only criterion for scientific knowledge or theories, models ...
What predictions can evolution,for example,  deliver ? for the future ?
When one is constantly obsessed by just that prediction part ,that's a kindda imbalance .

Quote
So just take one thing from your list above and provide a detailed, falsifiable, immaterial explanation for it with a prediction.

Reread what i said carefully then ,Cheryl .
Once again : non-materialistic science does embrace both the material and immaterial in nature ,needless to add .
God...


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 19:52:49


It is not the brain "veto-area" that exerts control .It is the  mindful volitional effort that does that through the former = the 2 are not identical , and hence cannot be equated with each other : David Cooper would agree with me on that much at least .


I'm not sure he would. There is nothing about control or decision making that is necessarily related to feeling and qualia.

D.Cooper most certainly would : that's the central part of his arguments ,if you haven't noticed that yet already : in the sense : what part of the system exactly and what specific mechanism involved in it that makes it aware conscious or self-aware self-conscious : the related brain activity does not provide the answer , as equating brain activity  with conscious awareness (identity theory ) is just materialistic inexplicable magic .

Mindful volitional effort of attention and action through the veto power that cannot be equated with its neuronal correlates , is a matter of ....mindful conscious aware ... intention   and action , not a matter of feeling .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 19:53:24


I said ,as a response to RD , that the brains of kids can't cope with growing up unless they can benefit from the intrinsic neuroplasticity , when he said why do brains need plasticity if memory and the mind are not in the brain ....
Got the pic , lady painter ?

Yes, you answered his question by saying babies need neuroplasticity because they need neuroplasticity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/12/2014 19:54:27


It is not the brain "veto-area" that exerts control .It is the  mindful volitional effort that does that through the former = the 2 are not identical , and hence cannot be equated with each other : David Cooper would agree with me on that much at least .


I'm not sure he would. There is nothing about control or decision making that is necessarily related to feeling and qualia.

Mindful volitional effort of attention and action through the veto power that cannot be equated with its neuronal correlates , is a matter of ....mindful conscious aware ... intention   and action , not a matter of feeling .

Then ask him.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 20:04:25


I said ,as a response to RD , that the brains of kids can't cope with growing up unless they can benefit from the intrinsic neuroplasticity , when he said why do brains need plasticity if memory and the mind are not in the brain ....
Got the pic , lady painter ?

Yes, you answered his question by saying babies need neuroplasticity because they need neuroplasticity.

lol

Babies' brains are not formed completely  yet ,not even remotely close thus , they are just in the process of being "completed " , so, they are extremely plastic ,way more than those of adults , needless to add .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 20:07:16
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/12/2014 20:30:36
In short :

Your false reductionist deterministic materialism has got it all backward lol : see above .

Materialism is the universe upside down lol ,so to speak .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/12/2014 00:19:33
But fact is : Conscious Experience can affect Brain Activity ...

Really? hmm, I wonder why that might be - what would be the simplest explanation?

How about, conscious experience is brain activity?

Next...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/12/2014 00:30:08
I was just saying that QM has been showing to us that what we call reality or the physical reality might be an illusion, a mental one and more
Ah, no. That would be solipsism - it doesn't work. And you'd be arguing with figments of your imagination, which also doesn't work.

Quote
QM says thus the very opposite of what materialism has been saying : Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated that fact clearly : 
Lol! no, they didn't. They changed our understanding of it. Reading is good, but you need to try a little more understanding.


One has to admire the childish enthusiasm with which you latch on to every new idea you encounter and read into it whatever you can find or twist to fit your worldview.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 12/12/2014 05:51:53


Third : both psychological and biological disorders + the "external " environment , to mention just that , can affect the brain ,and hence the expression of consciousness through it ,the brain as a transceiver for  consciousness and the mind .
There's no evidence at all that the brain is a transceiver, or for non local consciousness existing outside the brain, not that it  keeps you from using the same silly radio analogy again and again.

Quote
Schwartz' excerpts might have also explained to you that psychological disorders such as OCD can trigger biological and neurophysiological ones, for example , which alter the consciousness of the OCD patients .
You never did bother to answer the question of how the faulty brain circuitry manufactures the "deceptive thoughts," but "true thoughts" can only be the product of the immaterial. Again, for the past year you've been saying that no kind of thought, no kind of subjective experience, no experience involving qualia can be generated by the brain.

Are hallucinations also "deceptive qualia" produced by faulty circuits? Why would the brain be capable of generating qualia, only when it’s broken, but be unable to, when its not broken. Or to use your tv anaology, how does a broken TV set create a news program that doesn’t exist, but be unable to create one (only broadcast) when its working properly? It shouldn’t be able to generate anything, according to your theory, because TV sets don’t create programs, and brains do not generate thoughts or qualia. Or have you changed your mind?
Quote
The latter can try to 'fix " that by being aware of the biological and psychological nature of OCD , and hence can try to rewire their brains through self-directed neuroplasticity via therapy or via informed trained self-help , and hence change their minds accordingly .
Again, why would would the immaterial mind need to cause a physical change in the brain to cause another change in the immaterial mind? Shouldn't the immaterial mind be able to simply change its own immaterial thoughts? Isn't that free will?
Quote
So, diseases like Alzheimer , dementia ...can alter the brain in significant ways that express themselves at the level of consciousness accordingly : the multiple damages to the neuronal correlates of memory , to the neuronal correlates of self-identity or personality .....cannot thus but alter consciousness at those levels ,since consciousness has to work and express itself through its neuronal correlates .
If the mind is dependent on the brain for its proper functioning and relys on the brain for an undistorted experience of consciousness itself, what does the immaterial contribute at all?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 12/12/2014 10:14:14
If the mind is dependent on the brain for its proper functioning and relys on the brain for an undistorted experience of consciousness itself, what does the immaterial contribute at all?
Precisely. The mind can then be seen as an aspect of brain activity. And once the influence(?) of the immaterial is reduced to the level of quantum mechanics, we can just deal with quantum mechanics.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 12/12/2014 12:24:56

Predictions are not the only criterion for scientific knowledge or theories, models ...

They are what distinguishes science from bullshit.

Quote
What predictions can evolution,for example,  deliver ? for the future ?

Evolution is an observation, not a hypothesis.  However you can use the hypothesis that evolution is inevitable, to predict that the future won't look like the past. Then you breed some mice, or humans, and to nobody's surprise, they don't look exactly like both of their parents. Which is at least logically consistent.

Quote
When one is constantly obsessed by just that prediction part ,that's a kindda imbalance .
between what and what? Between science and bullshit? Well, yes. But what benefits has bullshit ever brought to humanity? Perhaps you don't give much weight to the elimination of smallpox or the invention of the machine you are looking at right now, or maybe you have an immaterial computer, car, toothbrush....in which case please let us see it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 17:48:35
Excerpt from "Biology of Belief .." by biologist Bruce Lipton , Chapter 5 : "Biology and Belief " , "Placebos: The Belief Effect" :


Quote : "Every medical student learns, at least in passing, that the mind can affect the body. They learn that some people get better when they believe (falsely) they are getting medicine.

When patients get better by ingesting a sugar pill, medicine defines it as the placebo effect. My friend Rob Williams, founder of PSYCH-K, an energy-based psychological treatment system, suggests that it would be more appropriate to refer to it as the perception effect. I call it the belief effect to stress that our perceptions, whether they are accurate or inaccurate, equally impact our behavior and our bodies.

I celebrate the belief effect, which is an amazing testament to the healing ability of the body/mind.
However, the “all in their minds” placebo effect has been linked by traditional medicine to, at worst, quacks or, at best, weak, suggestible patients. The placebo effect is quickly glossed over in medical schools so that students can get to the real tools of modern medicine like drugs and surgery.

This is a giant mistake. The placebo effect should be a major topic of study in medical school. I believe that medical education should train doctors to recognize the power of our internal resources.
Doctors should not dismiss the power of the mind as something inferior to the power of chemicals and the scalpel. They should let go of their conviction that the body and its parts are essentially stupid and that we need outside intervention to maintain our health.

The placebo effect should be the subject of major, funded research efforts. If medical researchers could figure out how to leverage the placebo effect, they would hand doctors an efficient, energybased, side effect–free tool to treat disease. Energy healers say they already have such tools, but I am a scientist, and I believe the more we know about the science of the placebo, the better we’ll be able to use it in clinical settings.

I believe the reason the mind has so summarily been dismissed in medicine is the result, not only of dogmatic thinking, but also of financial considerations. If the power of your mind can heal your sick body, why should you go to the doctor and more importantly, why would you need to buy drugs? In fact, I was recently chagrined to learn that drug companies are studying patients who respond to sugar pills with the goal of eliminating them from early clinical trials.

 It inevitably disturbs pharmaceutical manufacturers that in most of their clinical trials the placebos, the “fake” drugs, prove to be as effective as their engineered chemical cocktails. (Greenberg 2003) Though the drug companies insist they’re not trying to make it easier for ineffective drugs to get approved, it is clear that effectiveness of placebo pills is a threat to the pharmaceutical industry. The message from the drug companies is clear to me: if you can’t beat placebo pills fairly, simply remove the competition!

The fact that most doctors are not trained to consider the impact of the placebo effect is ironic because some historians make a strong case that the history of medicine is largely the history of the placebo effect. For most of medical history, doctors did not have effective methods to fight disease.
Some of the more notorious treatments once prescribed by mainstream medicine include bloodletting, treating wounds with arsenic, and the proverbial cure-all, rattlesnake oil.

No doubt some patients, the conservatively estimated one third of the population who are particularly susceptible to the healing power of the placebo effect, got better with those treatments. In today’s world, when doctors wearing white coats deliver a treatment decisively, patients may believe the treatment works—and so it does, whether it is a real drug or just a sugar pill.

Though the question of how placebos work has in the main been ignored by medicine, recently some mainstream medical researchers are turning their attention to it. The results of those studies suggest that it is not only wacky, nineteenth-century treatments that can foster a placebo effect but also modern medicine’s sophisticated technology, including the most “concrete” of medical tools, surgery.
A Baylor School of Medicine study, published in 2002 in the New England Journal of Medicine evaluated surgery for patients with severe, debilitating knee pain.

(Moseley, et al, 2002) The lead author of the study, Dr. Bruce Moseley, “knew” that knee surgery helped his patients: “All good surgeons know there is no placebo effect in surgery.” But Moseley was trying to figure out which part of the surgery was giving his patients relief. The patients in the study were divided into three groups. Moseley shaved the damaged cartilage in the knee of one group.

For another group, he flushed out the knee joint, removing material thought to be causing the inflammatory effect. Both of these constitute standard treatment for arthritic knees. The third group got “fake” surgery. The patient was sedated, Moseley made three standard incisions and then talked and acted just as he would have during a real surgery—he even splashed salt water to simulate the sound of the knee-washing procedure. After 40 minutes, Moseley sewed up the incisions as if he had done the surgery. All three groups were prescribed the same postoperative care, which included an exercise program.
The results were shocking. Yes, the groups who received surgery, as expected, improved.

 But the placebo group improved just as much as the other two groups! Despite the fact that there are 650,000 surgeries yearly for arthritic knees, at a cost of about $5,000 each, the results were clear to Moseley:
“My skill as a surgeon had no benefit on these patients. The entire benefit of surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee was the placebo effect.” Television news programs graphically illustrated the stunning results.

 Footage showed members of the placebo group walking and playing basketball, in short doing things they reported they could not do before their “surgery.” The placebo patients didn’t find out for two years that they had gotten fake surgery. One member of the placebo group, Tim Perez, who had to walk with a cane before the surgery, is now able to play basketball with his grandchildren. He summed up the theme of this book when he told the Discovery Health Channel: “In this world anything is possible when you put your mind to it. I know that your mind can work miracles.”
Studies have shown the placebo effect to be powerful in treating other diseases, including asthma and Parkinson’s. In the treatment of depression, placebos are stars. So much so that psychiatrist

Walter Brown of the Brown University School of Medicine has proposed placebo pills as the first treatment for patients with mild or moderate depression. (Brown 1998) Patients would be told that they’re getting a remedy with no active ingredient, but that shouldn’t dampen the pills’ effectiveness.
Studies suggest that even when people know they’re not getting a drug, the placebo pills still work.
One indication of the power of the placebo came from a report from the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

The report found that half of severely depressed patients taking drugs improve versus thirty-two percent taking a placebo. (Horgan 1999) Even that impressive showing may underestimate the power of the placebo effect because many study participants figure out they’re taking the real drug because they experience side effects that are not experienced by those taking the placebo. Once those patients realize they’re taking the drug, i.e., once they start believing that they’re getting the real pill, they are particularly more susceptible to the placebo effect.

Given the power of the placebo, it is no wonder that the $8.2 billion antidepressant industry is under attack by critics who charge that drug companies are hyping the effectiveness of their pills. In a 2002 article in the American Psychological Association’s Prevention & Treatment, “The Emperor’s New Drugs,” University of Connecticut psychology professor Irving Kirsch found that eighty percent of the effect of antidepressants, as measured in clinical trials, could be attributed to the placebo effect. (Kirsch, et al, 2002) Kirsch had to invoke the Freedom of Information Act in 2001 to get information on the clinical trials of the top antidepressants: these data were not forthcoming from the Food and Drug Administration.

The data show that in more than half of the clinical trials for the six leading antidepressants, the drugs did not outperform placebo, sugar pills. And Kirsch noted in a Discovery Health Channel interview that “the difference between the response of the drugs and the response of placebo was less than two points on average on this clinical scale that goes from fifty to sixty points.

That’s a very small difference. That difference clinically is meaningless.”
Another interesting fact about the effectiveness of antidepressants is that they have performed better and better in clinical trials over the years, suggesting that their placebo effects are in part due to savvy marketing. The more the miracle of antidepressants was touted in the media and in advertisements, the more effective they became.

Beliefs are contagious! We now live in a culture where people believe that antidepressants work, and so they do. A California interior designer, Janis Schonfeld, who took part in a clinical trial to test the efficacy of Effexor in 1997, was just as “stunned” as Perez when she found out that she had been on a placebo.

Not only had the pills relieved her of the depression that had plagued her for thirty years, the brain scans she received throughout the study found that the activity of her prefrontal cortex was greatly enhanced. (Leuchter, et al, 2002) Her improvements were not “all in her head.” When the mind changes, it absolutely affects your biology. Schonfeld also experienced nausea, a common Effexor side effect.

She is typical of patients who improve with placebo treatment and then find out they were not on the real drug—she was convinced the doctors had made a mistake in the labeling for she “knew” she was on the drug. She insisted that the researchers double-check their records to make absolutely sure she wasn’t on the drug." End quote .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 18:08:28
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":

Quote : "At one pole is the determinist materialist position. In this philosophy, observable matter is the only reality and everything, including thought, will, and feeling, can be explained only in terms of matter and the natural laws that govern matter. The eminent scientist Francis Crick (codiscoverer of the genetic molecular code) states this view elegantly (Crick and Koch, 1998):

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions,
your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons (nerve cells).’”
According to this determinist view, your awareness of yourself and the world around you is simply the by-product or epiphenomenon of neuronal activities, with no independent ability to affect or control neuronal activities.

Is this position a “proven” scientific theory? I shall state, straight out, that this determinist materialist view is a belief system; it is not a scientific theory that has been verified by direct tests. It is true that scientific discoveries have increasingly produced powerful evidence for the ways in which mental abilities, and even the nature of one’s personality, are dependent on, and can be controlled by, specific structures and functions of the brain.

 However, the nonphysical nature of subjective awareness, including the feelings of spirituality, creativity, conscious will, and imagination, is not describable or explainable directly by the physical evidence alone.
As a neuroscientist investigating these issues for more than thirty years, I can say that these subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function.

 This is in contrast to my earlier views as a young scientist, when I believed in the validity of determinist materialism. That was before I began my research on brain processes in conscious experience, at age 40. There is no guarantee that the phenomenon of awareness and its concomitants will be explainable in terms of presently known physics.

In fact, conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you would not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena. Only a report by the individual who is experiencing such phenomena could tell you about them.

Francis Crick demonstrated his scientific credentials by terming
his physicalist-determinist view an “astonishing hypothesis,” awaiting future developments that might produce more ade-quate answers. But many scientists and philosophers appear not to realize that their rigid view that determinism is valid is still based on faith. They really don’t have the answer.

Actually, even the nonmental physical world exhibits uncertainties (quantum theory) as well as chaotic behaviors that make a deterministic predictability of events impossible. At a small conference on these issues, the eminent theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner was asked whether physics could ever explain consciousness.
Wigner replied, “Physics can’t even explain physics,” let alone consciousness.
 The more meaningful question, therefore, would be: Does the phenomenon of conscious experience, and its relation to the physical brain, fully obey the known rules and laws of the physical world? (More on this later.).

At the opposite pole from determinist materialism are beliefs that the mind is separable from the brain (dualism). A religious version of dualism may maintain a belief in the existence of a soul that is somehow part of the body during life, but can separate and take off to variously defined destinations of immortality after death.
I shall state, at once, that the latter is absolutely tenable as a belief.

The same is true for most other philosophical and religious proposals. There is nothing in all of scientific evidence that directly contradicts such beliefs. Indeed, they do not fall within the purview of scientific knowledge (see Karl Popper’s position, described earlier).
A beautiful example of the scientific process was given by Einstein’s
proposal that light is subject to the same gravitational influences as matter.

 However, to demonstrate the gravitational effect on light requires that the light pass near an object of immense mass, one far greater than that available on earth. The difficulty in providing a proper test prevented full acceptance of Einstein’s proposal. Fortunately, around 1920 a complete solar eclipse occurred.

The light from a star located on the other side of the sun passed near the sun on its way to earth and was visible during the eclipse. Indeed, the star’s apparent position was altered, as the light was bent from its path by the “pull” of the sun. Had the light not been bent, Einstein’s proposal would have been falsified (contradicted)..." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 18:34:36
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446410#msg446410 date=1418344208]
I was just saying that QM has been showing to us that what we call reality or the physical reality might be an illusion, a mental one and more
Ah, no. That would be solipsism - it doesn't work. And you'd be arguing with figments of your imagination, which also doesn't work.

Quote
QM says thus the very opposite of what materialism has been saying : Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated that fact clearly : 
Lol! no, they didn't. They changed our understanding of it. Reading is good, but you need to try a little more understanding.

Oh , yes , they did : read those relevant posted short quotes regarding Bell's theorem ,from "Quantum Enigma ..." book,  in the previous page , once again , and more carefully this time :

Bell's theorem and its related experiments which were conducted by Aspect , Clauser and others did prove non-locality to exist or "spooky action at a distance " or entanglement , as well as they did challenge the classical concept of "reality " or realism that states that the properties of objects can  exist independently of any "observation " ,and more ,so any physical theory that might supersede QM in the future must predict the latter results and more .

Furthermore , quantum effects have been demonstrated even at the relatively "macroscopic " level :

Excerpt from "Quantum Enigma ..." :

Quote : " Experimental Metaphysics:

"All men suppose that what is called wisdom deals
with the first causes and the principles of things."
— Aristotle, in Metaphysics

Metaphysics , literally, “after physics,” is the title a fi rst-century editor gave to a collection of Aristotle’s philosophical works that came after his book Physics . Were Aristotle around today, he would surely explore “first causes” by trying to understand what quantum mechanics is telling us about the world, and about us.

Our title for this chapter, “Experimental Metaphysics,” was inspired by
a recent collection of essays by that name discussing laboratory experiments exploring the foundations of quantum mechanics. The book’s first chapter (by John Clauser) has the provocative title “De Broglie Wave
Interference of Small Rocks and Live Viruses,” which are the experiments
Clauser is proposing.
Because the microscopic realm of atoms differs by so many orders of
magnitude from the macroscopic realm of humans, some argue that quantum mechanics has little implication for our human-scale view of Nature, “what’s really going on.”

That was not the attitude of Einstein, Bohr, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and the other developers of quantum theory. In later years, however, as the quantum enigma remained unresolved, and the theory worked so well for all practical purposes, the early concerns waned.
That’s changed. There’s lots of agreement today that we fundamentally
don’t understand what’s going on. At least there’s lots of dis agreement about what’s going on, which is pretty much the same thing.

Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confirm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a
world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their
own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all
objects. Even to us?

From a classical physics point of view, some argue that we are just
objects governed by biology and chemistry, and therefore ultimately
by deterministic physics. However, since Bell’s theorem, the human element, free choice, for example, is seen as an issue in fundamental physics questions.

While the free choice of the experimenter was implicit in classical physics there is no classical physics experiment where free choice, a human
element, becomes problematic. Although it may never be practical to do a
quantum experiment critically involving free choice, a suggested one discussed below comes close.

In the rest of this chapter, we touch on several experiments and proposed
experiments that ever more tightly, but mysteriously, connect the strange microscopic world with the “reasonable” macroscopic world we experience.


Macroscopic Realizations :

So far, in our telling of an object’s existence in two places at once, or its
entanglement with another object, the objects were photons, electrons, or
atoms, objects small enough to be physically isolated from their macroscopic surroundings.

 In recent years, quantum phenomena have been extended to larger objects, and even more signifi cantly, to objects with substantial contact with the macroscopic environment. By the time this book is in print there will surely be dramatic phenomena we would have included.
Here’s an early example of “two places at once” with an almost macroscopic
object. In 1997, researchers at MIT put a clump of several million sodium atoms at low temperature in a quantum state called a Bose-Einstein
condensate.

They then put this single clump two places at once separated by a distance larger than a human hair. That’s a small separation, but it’s a macroscopically seeable one. The whole clump was in both places. Each of
its atoms was in both places. To demonstrate that this clump, this almost
macroscopic object, was in two places at the same time, they did what one
always does to demonstrate such a superposition state. They brought the
clump from the two regions together to overlap and produce an interference
pattern.

Physicists at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009 demonstrated a quantum entanglement between two objects big enough to see with your naked eye.
Figure 14.1 is an electronic circuit chip made of aluminum in contact
with a solid substrate. Each side of the largest white box is 6 mm, a quarter inch. The small white squares on the gray background are superconducting loops, and a current can flow within each of them.

 A pulse of microwaves directed at the chip entangles the two current flows.
Classically, the direction of current flow in the two loops should be completely independent of each other. But
after the entangling microwave pulse, the currents fl owed in opposite directions, something explained only by the quantum entanglement of these
directly seeable objects. Entanglements of circuits like this are the probable
basis of quantum computers.

Scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Science and Technology, in 2008, displayed the first device on a chip that could reasonably be described as a “quantum computer.” It even looks a bit like an early computer circuit.
Here, trapped ions and associated circuitry can perform at least 160 different computer operations, albeit with only ninety-four percent accuracy.

For any practical use, accuracy would need to be greatly improved, and a
practical quantum computer would have to link many such devices, by
quantum entanglement, Einstein’s “spooky actions.” In 2009, Physics World
picked this quantum achievement as the “Breakthrough of the Year.”
A March 2010 article in Nature News is titled “Scientists Supersize Quantum
Mechanics: Largest Ever Object Put into Quantum State.” The object was
a metal paddle only a thousandth of a millimeter long, but visible to the
naked eye in the same way you can see a tiny dust mote in a sunbeam. The little cantilever was cooled to an extremely low temperature until it reached the most motionless state permitted by quantum mechanics, essentially standing still. It was then “excited” to be in a superposition of that motionless state and simultaneously in a vibrating state.

 The paddle was moving and not moving at the same time. (Shades of a cat being dead and alive at the same time!) Even more impressive than the existence of this almost macroscopic superposition state is the fact that the paddle was not physically isolated. Its base was solidly connected to a block of silicon, which was in physical contact with the experimental apparatus, and ultimately with the rest of the world. It was enough to “isolate” the particular vibration motion, and not necessary to isolate the physical object.

 It was often considered that any contact with the macroscopic surroundings would rapidly collapse a strange superposition. The entanglement of modes of behavior of objects too big to isolate now looks much more feasible. This feat by scientists at the University of California at Santa Barbara was named the 2010 “Breakthrough of the Year” by Science magazine. Even before the year was over! It came too late for us to include a picture of the paddle in our book, but you can see it at:
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/news.2010.130.html.

In 2011, an article in Nature reported the cooperative effort of scientists
at fi ve different laboratories to display interference with large organic
molecules. The largest contained 430 atoms. This set a new record for putting individual objects in two places at the same time. Moreover, the fact that the molecules had internal temperatures of several hundred degrees Centigrade demonstrated that positional wavefunctions are not necessarily decohered by coupling to internal thermal motions. This makes the apparent display of quantum phenomena in biological systems ever more reasonable.

The philosophical significance of their work was not ignored by the authors, who refer to their molecules as “the fattest Schrödinger cats
realized to date.”

Macroscopic Proposals :

Proposals abound for the entanglement or for putting essentially macroscopic objects in two places at once. In some cases there’s a further end in mind, such as the sensitive detection of gravity waves. Often the motivation is to display the strangeness of quantum theory on an ever more provocative level.

In 2003 a paper titled “Towards Quantum Superpositions of a Mirror” scientists at the University of Oxford and the University of California, Santa Barbara, claim the result implied by the paper’s title, a mirror in a
quantum superposition state, “is within reach using a combination of state-of-the-art technologies.” The mirror they’re talking of is tiny, but it’s one seeable with the naked eye. It would be mounted on a tiny lever terminating one arm of an interferometer.

 A quantum superposition would be indicated by the disappearance of interference and its return as the mirror goes into a superposition state and then returns to its initial state.
Experiments in 2006 testing the feasibility of the earlier proposal conclude
that it is feasible, though barely, with today’s technology.
In 2008, calculations by physicists at the Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik at Leibniz and at Potsdam argued that the entanglement of two “heavily macroscopic mirrors” will be achievable within the next decade.

The mirrors they analyze are each on the perpendicular arms of an interferometer built to detect gravitational radiation, something predicted by general relativity, but yet to be observed. Gravitational wave interferometers, for which quantum phenomena are proposed, are currently in operation and use mirrors ranging from a few grams up to 40 kg.
A 2008 article in the American Physical Society’s Physical Review Focus ,
which publicizes significant physics of wide interest, is titled “Schrödinger’s
Drum.”

The allusion, of course, is to Schrödinger’s cat. Here the “cat” is an
essentially macroscopic one-millimeter-square membrane of silicon nitride
that is free to vibrate like a drum and is cooled to a very low quantum
state. Researchers at several institutions are discussing such a drum.
In a particularly interesting display, a pair of such membranes would be
entangled so that an observation of one instantaneously influenced the
other–without any physical force connecting them.



Quantum Phenomena in Biology? :

The question mark in this section’s title reflects our prejudice as physicists
that contact with the warm, wet biological environment would frustrate
any quantum superposition or entanglement. Countering that concern,
perhaps a single aspect of a biological system could be sufficiently decoupled from the rest of the body. An example of such decoupling was demonstrated for the little visible paddle described above.

That paddle had to be at extremely low temperature so that vibrating atoms did not disturb the superposition state, a usual requirement for a quantum effect in a many-atom object. Low temperatures would preclude any biological process. But conceivably, there could be a decoupling from the thermal motion. A warm violin string vibrating many thousands of cycles would be a classical analogy. A quantum entanglement in a warm, wet biological environment is hard to believe, but is it less counterintuitive than the quantum enigma itself?

A proposed quantum phenomenon with a biological organism, not just in a
biological process, can raise philosophical issues. In 2009 scientists at the
Max-Planck-Institut in Garching and the Institut de Ciències Fotòniques in
Barcelona proposed putting living organisms in quantum superposition states, in two places at the same time. They intend to optically levitate an
infl uenza virus, put it in a superposition state by using a light pulse, and
subsequently detect the superposition state by reflected light.

Their analysis argues for the feasibility of their proposal for even larger living organisms, in particular, tardigrades, or “water bears,” which can survive at the low temperatures and in the vacuum required for these experiments. They consider their work “to be a starting point to experimentally address fundamental questions, such as the role of life and consciousness in quantum mechanics.”

Explaining the remarkable effi ciency of photosynthesis by quantum coherence is not a new idea. But in 2010, chemists at the University of
Toronto offered experimental evidence that algae use quantum coherence
to harvest light.

In photosynthesis, special proteins absorb incoming photons to excite electrons to higher energy to start a series of electron transfers to “photosystems,” where the energy of the electrons starts the creation of carbohydrates. Classically, the electrons would find their way to photosystems by random hops. But the high efficiency displayed suggests that electron probability waves sample many paths simultaneously and collapse to find the best ones. To display this, they excited proteins with a laser pulse and used a second laser pulse to see where the electrons went.

Analysis by researchers at the University of Geneva and at the University
of Bristol in 2009 show that quantum experiments establishing a violation
of Bell’s inequality are possible with human eyes as the detectors at one
site. Since the human eye cannot reliably detect a single photon, one of the twin-state photons is amplified by cloning it by stimulated emission. What is claimed here is not only that there can be entanglement between two microscopic systems, but also that there can be entanglement between a microscopic object and a macroscopic human system. This can supposedly be so, even in the presence of photon loss to the environment, which might have been expected to wash out the entanglement.
A 2009 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science is titled “Some Quantum Weirdness in Physiology.”

The paper notes that “most modern biomolecular scientists view quantum mechanics much as deists view their God; it merely sets the stage for action and then classically understandable, largely deterministic pictures take over.” The paper then comments on a dozen, mostly recent, studies denying that mainstream view.

These papers report evidence for quantum coherence effects, that is,
superpositions and entanglements, in biological systems, principally photosynthesis and vision.

Two other proposals for even weirder quantum phenomena in a biological
system, namely, the human brain, one by Roger Penrose and another by Henry Stapp, are treated in chapter 17. Both focus on the issue of consciousness." End quote



Quote
One has to admire the childish enthusiasm with which you latch on to every new idea you encounter and read into it whatever you can find or twist to fit your worldview.

A universe that lacks "reality ", whatever the latter might mean , or that the properties of objects cannot exist independently of 'observation " is a mind blowing one indeed : I can't even imagine what that means , let alone picture that .

Sounds insane to all of us , but that's what QM has been saying : Bell's theorem and its related experiments just corroborated that fact , so , that's why i presumed that the physical universe or the physical reality might be just an illusion , a mental illusion : The physical reality might not be entirely mental or entirely an illusion , but i can't picture what that new concept of "reality " might entail , who can ? Can you ?

Oh , i am asking the wrong person, a materialist lol , so , don't bother telling  me about your own materialistic conception of what that new "reality " might mean .  lol

I am not comfortable with that strange or weird idea .I don't know what to make of it either , but QM is the epitome of weirdness ,so .

Blame it on QM then ,or just blame it on the fact that what QM might mean is still a big controversy , after all .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 18:57:14
dlorde , Cheryl, alancalverd :

Try to read ,with an open mind ,that is , the above displayed excerpt from a certain Lipton's book regarding the demonstrated placebo effect even at the level of surgery ,as well as regarding Candace Pert's research and discoveries , placebo effect that can never be accounted for , let alone explained , by materialism .

dlorde :

Your autonomic brain "explanation "  (away) of the placebo effect does hold no water whatsoever , so, try to come up with somethingelse more intelligent instead= some other more intelligent materialistic inexplicable magic lol  .

Cheryl :

See what Libet had to say about deterministic reductionist materialism regarding the brain -body relationship or nature, or regarding the materialistic identity theory that equates the activity of the  neuronal correlates with that of the mind ... .

alancalverd :

Read those relevant posted short quotes from "Quantum Enigma ..." book , in the previous page , regarding Bell's theorem and its related experiments .

And tell me what does that tell you about "reality " .

Thanks, guys . Nice weekend . Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 12/12/2014 19:22:42
I have no intention of being sidetracked into a discussion about reality, fantasy, or any other abstract noun. All I ask is just one example for proof that your preferred nonmaterialist approach is more predictive (i.e. more useful) than whatever it is that you decry.

Come on, Don, just one sentence and all will be resolved in your favour!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 20:21:51
dlorde , alancalverd :

What part exactly can't you understand from the following ? :

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

The following are the results of experiments , no abstract talk :

Quote :

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world." End quotes
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 20:47:44
Is There Any Scientific Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem? :

Excerpt from the same above mentioned book .

Libet assumed  that consciousness was  an emergent phenomena , David Cooper would not agree with  that , i guess .

Libet had some very interesting things to say anyway .  He was a great mind indeed .

Quote : " ...Is there some way to arrive at convincing knowledge of how conscious subjective experience arises? Is there a way to do this that is based on observable evidence?.

We must first recognize that the brain is the physical “organ” for conscious and unconscious mental functions. For life as we know it, the necessity of the appropriate function and structure of the brain is incontrovertible. There is no objective evidence for the existence of conscious phenomena apart from the brain.
(A belief in a separable conscious soul is not excluded, as noted previously.) .
Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that it is the brain and not any other bodily structure that is crucial lies in the effects of a complete severing (transaction) of the spinal cord at its junction with the brain.

This unfortunate event occurs not infrequently in accidents in which the neck is “broken,” as in the recently publicized case of the actor Christopher Reeves. The patient remains the same conscious person he was before the accident. However, he loses all control of body movements from the neck down, including of breathing movements, as well as all sensations that are carried by spinal nerves to the body.

Interruption of the nerve pathways that connect the brain with the spinal cord is the reason for the loss of sensory and motor control below the neck. The person does remain aware of all the important sensations arising with intact nerve connections to the head. And, if the brain is functional, the person retains awareness of his thoughts, feelings, and self.
On the other hand, damage to the brain itself can result in the loss of various conscious functions, or even a permanent loss of consciousness, depending on the sites of the damage.

 It is the loss of brain function that truly defines the end of conscious human life, that is, death. This is so even when the rest of the body, including the spinal cord, skeletal muscles, and the heart, are still functioning. Indeed, under this condition of brain death, the other organs or tissues may be taken for transplantation to other people.

In earlier times, the heart was often regarded as the seat of consciousness and of emotional feelings (see Aristotle). But replacing one heart with another (even one that is a mechanical device) does not alter an individual’s emotional makeup or experience.

So, what sorts of factual answers to the questions about conscious experience could we hope to pursue successfully, and what answers have we now achieved? One important question—how brain activities are related to conscious and unconscious mental function—is, in principle, amenable to descriptive and experimental investigation. But to do that, we need to define conscious subjective experience, and do so in a way that is operational—
that is, practical for study.

We start with the stubborn fact that a conscious subjective experience
is directly accessible only to the individual who has the experience. Consequently, the only valid evidence for an external observer must come from an introspective report of the experience by the subject.

Introspective Reports of Subjective Experience :.

Scientists, like philosophers, have speculated about how the brain and mind are connected. But, until recently, very few, including neuroscientists, have attempted direct experimental studies of how cerebral nerve cell activities are involved in the production or appearance of conscious, subjective experiences.
Why? Apart from the technical difficulties for such experiments on human subjects, a philosophical impediment has played a major role.

Studies that require data from introspective reports of subjective experiences have tended to be taboo in the academic community.
That negative attitude was influenced in large part by the dominance, during the first seventy-five years of the twentieth century, of behaviorism in psychology and of logical positivism in philosophy.

These viewpoints hold that only directly observable events are admissible as scientific data. Introspective reports are only indirectly related to the actual subjective experiences; that is, they are reports of something not directly observable by the investigator and are untrustworthy observations.
However, unless scientists can find a way to obtain valid introspective
reports, they can never study the profoundly important question of how our conscious mind is related to our brain.

The late great physicist Richard Feynman stated, “I’m just looking to find out more about the world . . . Whatever way it comes out, it’s nature, and she is going to come out the way she is! Therefore, when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we’re going to find.”

We must, of course, admit that an introspective report does not provide absolute evidence about the experience. (Paren-thetically, physicists agree that even hard-nosed physical measurements
cannot be made with absolute certainty.) .

The only subjective experience that one can be absolutely certain about is one’s own experience—as noted by René Descartes, Bishop Berkeley, and others. Yet, in our ordinary social interactions we commonly accept introspective reports of experiences by other individuals as meaningful reflections of their experiences, although we may try to evaluate the validity of these reports.
To be sure, the conversion and transmission of an experience into a report may involve some distortion.

However, it is possible to limit the kinds of experiences being studied to very simple ones that do not have emotional content. These experiences can even be tested for reliability. In our own investigations we used very simple sensory experiences that had no emotional aspects that might lead to distortion.

 Furthermore, we could test the reliability of the reports, by changing the sensory inputs in ways under the investigator’s control and comparing the different reports elicited in this way. It should have been clear, therefore, that a way to study subjective experiences scientifically can be achieved.

I should add that an introspective report need not be made by a verbal, oral statement. A nonverbal report, like tapping an appropriate key to indicate whether a sensation had been subjectively felt, can be quite acceptable, providing the subject understands that this indicator in fact refers to a subjective, introspective experience.

I may add here that when I was an undergraduate, I realized that verbal expressions are not completely adequate representations of reality. They are only approximations, limited by the meanings attributable to the words.

 I decided, therefore, to try to think about reality in a nonverbal way—that is, to try to grasp the real situation in a fully integrated and intuitive way. In my subsequent thinking about experimental problems, I did actually tend to view them in nonverbal ways.
The development of cognitive psychology in the 1970s onward became a major factor in shifting scientific opinion on the usefulness of introspective reports.

Cognitive scientists wanted to deal with questions about what people knew and felt, and how that was related to reality. To do so, they had to have people tell them about their subjective experiences. I should note that there are still traditional behaviorists among psychologists, and that a large group of philosophers adhere to a movement related to behaviorism called functionalism.

Starting in the late 1950s, I did not wait for cognitive science to
support my use of introspective reports in our studies. I approached
this issue as a physiologist, with no stake in behaviorism or functionalism. My attitude was, from the start, that conscious experience could be studied and treated like any other observable function of the brain. As an experimental scientist, it was, and is, my firm conviction that a person’s report of a conscious experience should be regarded as primary evidence.

 This evidence should not be altered or distorted so as to be made to conform to a preconceived view or theory about the nature of consciousness. Unless they can be convincingly affected or contradicted by other evidence, properly obtained introspective reports of conscious experience should be looked on like other kinds of objective evidence.

I was, in fact surprised when I found that a controlling body of opinion among behavioral scientists did not agree with my view. Indeed, a visiting group of such individuals, representing a study section of the National Institutes of Health, told me I was not studying a suitable topic. They denied my application for a grant.

Interestingly, I found no such rejection among the world’s
leaders in experimental neurophysiology, such as Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper, Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry, Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin.

These researchers regarded our work as praiseworthy and pioneering—sentiments also expressed during a major symposium entitled “Brain and Conscious Experience” in 1964. Sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and chaired by Sir John Eccles, this symposium was held in the fifteenth-century house of Pius IV, inside the Vatican grounds. Pope Paul took us seriously enough to hold a formal audience with us.

The twenty-five or so members of the symposium were seated on one side of a great hall, and a roughly equal number of Cardinals faced us on the other side in their red robes. When the Pope came down to greet us, the Catholic scientists knelt and kissed his ring, and the rest of us shook his hand. I still have the thick red leather nameplate with gold lettering from that meeting. Since then, I have been a participant and speaker in a number of additional interesting symposia on consciousness. There was, in fact, another one in the Vatican in 1988, again organized by Sir John Eccles.

Besides neurophysiologists, leading philosophers such as the
late Sir Karl Popper, Thomas Nagel, and the late Stephen Pepper also agree with my views concerning how to study conscious subjective experience. Stephen Pepper was Professor of Philosophy at the University of California–Berkeley.

Pepper was a strong advocate of so-called identity theory, which holds that the externally observable physical quality of the brain and the inner quality of subjective experience are simply different phenomenological aspects of a single “substrate.” Nevertheless, Pepper listened carefully to my discussion of my team’s views and findings; he even concluded that our evidence for a retroactive referral of sensory timing might argue against the validity of identity theory..."End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 20:53:09
dlorde , Cheryl, alancalverd :

I will not be here until next monday , so, you will have time enough to read all the above .

Try to read ,with an open mind ,that is , the above displayed excerpt from a certain Lipton's book regarding the demonstrated placebo effect even at the level of surgery ,as well as regarding Candace Pert's research and discoveries , placebo effect that can never be accounted for , let alone explained , by materialism .

dlorde :

Your autonomic brain "explanation "  (away) of the placebo effect does hold no water whatsoever , so, try to come up with somethingelse more intelligent instead= some other more intelligent materialistic inexplicable magic lol  .

Cheryl :

See what Libet had to say about deterministic reductionist materialism regarding the brain -body relationship or nature, or regarding the materialistic identity theory that equates the activity of the  neuronal correlates with that of the mind ... and more (2 Libet Excerpts ) .

alancalverd :

Read those relevant posted short quotes from "Quantum Enigma ..." book , on  this page , regarding Bell's theorem and its related experiments .

And tell me what does that tell you about "reality " .

dlorde :

I could not fix the display of the above posted excerpt in my reply to your post ,sorry .Enjoy anyway .It's not that bad and it's worth reading it as well .

Thanks, guys . Nice weekend . Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 12/12/2014 21:51:06
Just a final thought for today, guys :

Some people's personalities or characters  , sense of morality ....and more do change almost completely when they get ...drunk lol, for example .
Some good nice polite mannered  people become aggressive ,rude, vulgar , offensive ...you name it , because alcohol blocks or deactivates their inhibitions area in the brain, i guess  .

Even peaceful people can become beasts Under certain circumstances , like during wars ,riots,  turmoil , economic or other crises ....

Cheers.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 13/12/2014 00:08:41
Bell's theorem and its related experiments which were conducted by Aspect , Clauser and others did prove non-locality to exist or "spooky action at a distance " or entanglement , as well as they did challenge the classical concept of "reality " or realism that states that the properties of objects can  exist independently of any "observation " ,and more ,so any physical theory that might supersede QM in the future must predict the latter results and more .
Well, they challenged locality and counterfactual definiteness, but yes, it's pretty much the same thing from 60,000ft. The thing to remember is that an 'observation' or 'measurement' is any interaction with a quantum system - whether it be a fundamental particle or the atoms of Heisenberg himself. The only requirement for consciousness is if, at some point, you want to be aware of the measurement.

Quote
Furthermore , quantum effects have been demonstrated even at the relatively "macroscopic " level
Yes, we know. Try to remember that what seems new and exciting to you is not necessarily news to other people.

Quote
A universe that lacks "reality ", whatever the latter might mean , or that the properties of objects cannot exist independently of 'observation " is a mind blowing one indeed : I can't even imagine what that means , let alone picture that .
'Reality', in this context, means lacking conterfactual definiteness (as above), which is the ability to say definitely what the state of a system is between measurements. You can have that or locality, but not both.

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Sounds insane to all of us
You just have to get used to it. Special Relativity sounded insane until people came to terms with it.

Quote
.. that's why i presumed that the physical universe or the physical reality might be just an illusion , a mental illusion : The physical reality might not be entirely mental or entirely an illusion , but i can't picture what that new concept of "reality " might entail , who can ? Can you ?
Just because you can't conceptualise something, doesn't mean you should jump to wild and unjustified conclusions. Work with what you know, the empirical evidence, not wild speculation. That's why quantum interpretations are just that, interpretations, non-mathematical ways to work conceptually with what the empirical data tells us.

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Oh , i am asking the wrong person, a materialist lol , so , don't bother telling  me about your own materialistic conception of what that new "reality " might mean .  lol
Given that contemporary materialism has so much broader a scope than solely the 'matter' of the original form, perhaps 'Physicalism' is more appropriate. And so, in the circumstances, it seems entirely appropriate to say that only the physical world has meaning for us, and we have an astonishingly good model of how it behaves, if not an intelligible explanation.

Quote
I am not comfortable with that strange or weird idea .
It's more a question of semantics than philosophy - you need to accept that the reality is that, between interactions, quantum systems can not be said to have a definite state, but the probabilities of the outcome of some interaction can be precisely calculated. That's the way mother nature is; she doesn't care how comfortable you are.

Why you want to add to the weirdness by bringing atavistic anthropocentric ideas of consciousness affecting these outcomes - which it clearly doesn't, as the outcome probabilities are the same whether the interacting system is a fundamental particle or a brain cell, is unclear. Perhaps it's the traditional fear of loss of control in the face of seemingly 'random' nature - man must be special; I must be special; consciousness must be special; we can't be just like everything else (we're God's special creatures), we must control something - is that it? a deliberate anthropocentric equivocation of 'observer'?

It's a simple truth that if you drop the idea of wavefunction collapse and just let the wavefunction evolve continuously (which is all QM formalism specifies), all awkward interpretive problems drop away; for you, of course, this also means dropping the even more problematic idea of consciousness having anything to do with it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 13/12/2014 00:10:48
dlorde :

Your autonomic brain "explanation "  (away) of the placebo effect does hold no water whatsoever , so, try to come up with somethingelse more intelligent instead= some other more intelligent materialistic inexplicable magic lol  .

Really? What is your reasoned argument against it?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 13/12/2014 00:17:06
Some people's personalities or characters  , sense of morality ....and more do change almost completely when they get ...drunk lol, for example .
Some good nice polite mannered  people become aggressive ,rude, vulgar , offensive ...you name it , because alcohol blocks or deactivates their inhibitions area in the brain, i guess  .

Even peaceful people can become beasts Under certain circumstances..
Is that an allusion of an apology for your past uncivil rants? - not your fault because they were drunken rants?

And, of course, that only makes sense if your brain is what makes you the person you are  ;) .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 13/12/2014 14:55:20
Quote
"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confirm the weird predictions of quantum theory.

But quantum theory is entirely materialistic. It's all about the observed behaviour of real stuff. What nonmaterialistic predictions did these experiments confirm?

And note that later in the paragraph "observation" is in quotation marks. It doesn't mean observation by a conscious being.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 13/12/2014 17:44:28

 It inevitably disturbs pharmaceutical manufacturers that in most of their clinical trials the placebos, the “fake” drugs, prove to be as effective as their engineered chemical cocktails. (Greenberg 2003) Though the drug companies insist they’re not trying to make it easier for ineffective drugs to get approved, it is clear that effectiveness of placebo pills is a threat to the pharmaceutical industry. The message from the drug companies is clear to me: if you can’t beat placebo pills fairly, simply remove the competition!

Placebo medicine used to be widely available. It was called Snake Oil. And I would think that if a drug company could get away with marketing a physiologically inert substance with no side effects or risks as an effective medication, they'd actually be thrilled. Think of the costs saved in research and development.

When you look at the actual knee study, it suggests to me that knee surgery may be less effective that thought, not that a placebo is a great cure. There were moderate improvements all three groups, but there were also other factors for all three groups . David Felson of Boston University and Joseph Buckwalter of the University of Iowa notes that "Although smoothing cartilage and [other] irregularities may sound appealing, larger forces within and outside the joint environment, such as malalignment, muscle weakness, instability, and obesity may have greater effects on the clinical outcomes of osteoarthritis of the knee."
Patients are encouraged to lose weight before knee surgery. Could weight loss, physical therapy, prophylactic antibiotics, anti inflammatory pain medication, and completely resting the knee after surgery, sham or otherwise, for an extended period of time also result in the level of "moderate" improvement obtained in the study?

Placebos are useful controls and that is why such studies are done.  The point of placebo is to replicate every aspect  of experiment as accurately as possible, except the one variable you want to observe.

People who equate placebo with the ability to change reality by thinking about it are quick to ignore other explanations - that some diseases or conditions do resolve or improve with time for purely physiological reasons.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 13/12/2014 19:37:03
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":



What aspect of his CFM theory would you like to discuss?

Your quotes are somewhat selective, I notice. He also says:

"Nondeterminism—which is the view that conscious will may,at times, exert effects not in accord with known physical laws— is of course also a nonproven speculative belief."

and

"There is no objective evidence for the existence of conscious phenomena apart from the brain."

"On this last point, we must recognize that there is no evidence to support the concept of separate entity status, which can only be a metaphysical belief."

"It should be noted that all cognitive functions (receipt, analysis,recognition of signals), information storage, learning and memory, processes of arousal and attention and of states of affect and mood, and so on) are not
 proposed as functions to be organized or mediated by the postulated CMF (conscious mental field). In short, it is only the phenomenon of conscious subjective experience, associated with all the complex cerebral functions, that is modeled in the CMF, in an admittedly speculative manner."

"The CMF does not exist without the brain. It emerges from the appropriate system of neural activities."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 12:06:54
Placebo medicine used to be widely available. It was called Snake Oil. And I would think that if a drug company could get away with marketing a physiologically inert substance with no side effects or risks as an effective medication, they'd actually be thrilled. Think of the costs saved in research and development.
In fact, doctors have been using placebo medicines for years for the commonest class of illnesses - by prescribing antibioics for viral infections and various 'general malaises'. Unfortunately, this has had damaging consequences with antibiotic resistance.

In recent times, there has been a lot of discussion about how to take advantage of placebo effects in an ethical way (i.e. without deliberately deceiving the patient). The irony is that Homeopathy has been part of the UK National Health Service from the beginning (1948), providing a successful placebo service, but only recently have the ethics of this service been questioned now that it is clearly known to be only placebo (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/45/4502.htm). The discovery that the effect can occur even when you know the treatment is placebo, holding out the possibility of informed placebo treatment, has revived interest a little, although it is still controversial.

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When you look at the actual knee study, it suggests to me that knee surgery may be less effective that thought, not that a placebo is a great cure.
That seems to be the case for arthritic and degenerative joint conditions. A more recent Finnish study (though rather small) has shown similar results in cases of degenerative meniscal tears. This is further support for placebo having positive effect for certain inflammatory conditions and reducing perceived pain, consistent with a CNS-mediated response.

Even back in the early 1980's, when I was working on the menisectomy research project in the Environmental Physiology Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, we knew that good surgical outcomes were mainly associated with acute injuries immobilised and operated on immediately (i.e. within a couple of days). This was mostly restricted to professional footballers; miners, the other major group involved in the study, generally had long-term degenerative knee conditions and far less positive surgical outcomes.

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People who equate placebo with the ability to change reality by thinking about it are quick to ignore other explanations - that some diseases or conditions do resolve or improve with time for purely physiological reasons.
Yes, indeed - the is true of most 'alternative' medicine; Ben Goldacre (http://www.badscience.net/) writes about this, and regression to the mean, etc., in his excellent book 'Bad Science' (with a great chapters on 'The Placebo Effect' and 'Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things'). 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 12:14:05
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":
What aspect of his CFM theory would you like to discuss?

Your quotes are somewhat selective, I notice. He also says:
<...quotes directly contradicting Don's main thesis...>
Ouch! Yes, that looks like deliberately deceptive cherry-picking...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 14/12/2014 16:11:54
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":
What aspect of his CFM theory would you like to discuss?

Your quotes are somewhat selective, I notice. He also says:
<...quotes directly contradicting Don's main thesis...>
Ouch! Yes, that looks like deliberately deceptive cherry-picking...

I will say that Don is correct in that Libet is critical of reductionist materialism, as expressed in the excerpt and else where in the book. Libet  does not automatically exclude the possibility of the immaterial or even things like souls, life after death, etc.

This seems to contradict Don's earlier claims that neuroscientists who rely on materialist methodologies like fMRIs, or attribute mental processes to brain activity, do so because they are incapable of grasping any non-materialist interpretation, rather than simply following the evidence.

Libet does not sound indoctrinated to me, nor afraid that considering the existence of the immaterial or criticizing materialism in any way will brand him as a nut case. But he does insist on evidence. He is an example of the kind of neuroscientist that Don claims doesn't exist.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 14/12/2014 17:21:56
The wikipedia article has a good summary of Libet's work, and CMF theory, as well as an experiment he proposes to test it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Conscious_Mental_Field_Theory

I don't know if my version of the book is the same as Don's, but on this website there is a interesting forward to the book that discusses the basis of choice in applying the veto power or after one becomes conscious of what wants or is intending to do. I will post the entire forward since he never seems to follow my links.


 
  F O R E W O R D

I just typed the word “consciousness” into the search engine in Amazon.com, and it returned 2,670 titles. If I wait a few weeks, there will probably be more. Does the world really need another book on consciousness? Yes—if we are talking about the one you are holding in your hands, right now. This book is strikingly different from most of the others in one key respect: It focuses on empirical discoveries, not speculation or argument.  Benjamin Libet has an enviable track record of producing solid empirical findings about the relationship between neural events and consciousness. And these findings are not simply reliable— they are also surprising. His discoveries were at first controversial, but have withstood the test of time. Surprising findings play a special role in science, given that they (by definition) upset the apple cart of conventional wisdom. His results must now be explained by any theory of consciousness and its neural underpinnings. This book gathers together Libet’s contributions in one place, and puts them in context.
 

Libet’s work has focused on temporal relations between neural events and experience. He is famous in part for discovering that we unconsciously decide to act well before we think we’ve made the decision to act. This finding has major implications for one of the deepest problems in philosophy and psychology,namely the problem of “free will.”First, a brief overview of the basic discovery: Libet asked people to move their wrist at a time of their choosing. The participants were asked to look at a moving dot that indicated the time, and note the precise time when they decided to flex their wrist. The participants reported having the intention about 200milliseconds before they actually began to move. Libet also measured the “readiness potential” in the brain, which is revealed by activity recorded from the supplementary motor area of the brain (which is involved in controlling movements). This readiness potential occurred some 550 milliseconds before the action began. The brain events that produced the movement thus occurred about 350 milliseconds before the participant was aware of having made a decision. Libet shows that this disparity is not simply due to extra time required to note and report the time.

Why is this finding important? Consider two reasons: First, on the face of things, the finding suggests that being conscious of having made a decision might be best thought of as a result of brain processes that actually do the work, rather than as part of the causal chain of events leading up to a decision. Second,Libet points out that even if a movement were initiated by unconscious forces, there is nevertheless ample time to veto an act, once one is aware of one’s intentions. Libet believes that  this observation keeps the door open for traditional notions of “free will.”
 
But does it? Consider an argument against free will, based on one developed in detail by Strawson
1. At birth, one’s thoughts, feelings and behavior are deter-mined by genes, prenatal learning, and environmental stimuli.
2. Subsequent thoughts, feelings and behavior are built on the foundation present at birth—they are determined by one’s genes, learning history, and present stimuli. All decisions and choices are based on reasons, and those reasons are a direct result of one’s accumulation of experience, as modulated by genetic factors.
3. If one tries to change oneself, both the goals and methods of such change are themselves determined by genes, previous learning, and current environmental stimuli. What one can be is determined by what one already is.
4. Adding random factors would not confer free will. Klein(2002; Stapp, 2001; and others) notes that simply adding indeterminacy to a system does not make its actions free if they are not already free. In fact, adding randomness decreases freedom rather than increasing it. “Random behavior” is not “free will.”
5. Thus, this argument goes, there’s no free will to be exercised during the interval between when one becomes aware of an impending action and one performs it. Whether or not you will squelch the action is as determined as are the factors that initiate the action in the first place. Even if one has time to override one’s unconscious urges, there’s no free will at work if one’s conscious decisions are themselves determined(cf. Wegner, 2002). Libet’s “time to veto” no more confers the opportunity to exercise of free will than the time between put-ting eggs on the skittle and waiting for them to fry provides the eggs with the opportunity not to cook.

Nevertheless, at least to my mind, something smells right about Libet’s proposal. In particular, the opposite of being “determined” is not necessarily being “random.” Klein (2002) notes that classical deterministic views are rooted in a world view that is not in fact correct. Many events in the real world are not like pool balls, hitting one another and careening off the sides of the table in predictable ways. We know that many physical systems have chaotic elements: The way they respond to a perturbation depends on tiny—in principle, never precisely measurable—differences in their start state. Freeman (2000) and others have shown that at least some aspects of brain function are best conceived as such systems. Is it possible that the very nature of the brain confers free will? Kane (1996) has suggested as much,and I will summarize a version of the type of view he advocates(although he focuses on process that may occur when one is faced with difficult decisions, the basic ideas can be extended further).Let’s consider one possible way in which this feature of the brain may keep the door open for Libet’s idea.

1. Libet is right to focus on consciousness when theorizing about free will: In order to employ free will, one must evaluate information in working memory. Such information includes the alternative choices, the rationales for each, and the anticipated consequences of making each choice (although not all this information must be in working memory at the same time). If an external force coerces us, or we are operating on “automatic pilot,” we are not exercising free will.

2. The rationales and anticipated consequences—and even, depending on the situation, the alternative courses of action—are not simply “looked up” in memory, having been stashed away like notes in a file after previous encounters. Rather, one constructs rationales and anticipated consequences, as appropriate for the specific situation at hand. This construction process may rely in part on chaotic processes. Such processes are not entirely determined by one’s learning history (even as filtered by one’s genes). By analogy, consider the path of a raindrop dribbling down a pane of glass. It zigs, it zags, tracing a path best explained with the aid of chaotic principles. The same raindrop,striking precisely the same place on that pane on a warmer day(which would cause the glass to be in a slightly different state)would take a different path. In chaotic systems, very small differences in start state can produce large differences downstream.The pane of glass is like the state of the brain at any instant. Depending on what one was just thinking about, the brain is in a different “start state” (i.e., different information is partially activated, different associations are primed) when one constructs rationales and anticipated consequences—which will affect how one decides. (Note that this idea does not simply move the problem back a step: What one was just thinking itself was in part a result of non deterministic processes.) Our thoughts, feelings and behavior are not determined; we can have novel insights as well as “second thoughts.”

3. Given the choices, rationales, and anticipated consequences,one decides what do on the basis of “what one is” (mentally speaking, to use Strawson’s term, which includes one’s knowledge, goals, values, and beliefs). “What one is” consists in part of information in memory, which plays a key role in the processes that construct the alternatives, rationales, and anticipated  consequences. In addition, “what one is” governs how one actually makes the decisions. And making that decision and experiencing the actual consequences in turn modifies “what one is,”which then affects both how one constructs alternatives, rationales and anticipated consequences and how one makes decisions in the future. Thus, with time one’s decisions construct what one is. We are not simply accumulators of environmental events, fil-tered by our genetic make-ups. We bring something novel and unique to each situation—ourselves. Nietzsche (1886, as quoted in Strawson, 1994, p. 15) commented, “The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far.” Maybe not.

4. This brings us back to the implications of Libet’s discovery,and suggests a way in which we can exercise free will during that crucial interval between when we become aware of that action and the action begins: The sum of “what one is” leads one to make a specific decision. Such a decision can occur unconsciously, and initiate an action. However, upon realizing that one is about to perform a specific act, one can consider its likely consequences and the rationales pro and con for performing that act; this information is constructed on the spot, and is not present during unconscious processing. And, based on “what one is,”one then can decide not to move ahead—or, if the action has begun, one can decide to squelch it (and thus one is not limited to the 200 milliseconds Libet has measured). As Libet notes, we can in fact veto an action, and that decision is not a foregone conclusion. We make decisions for reasons, and those reasons are our reasons.

Libet has made a fundamental discovery. If the timing of mental events is as he describes, then we not only have “freewill” in principle—but we also have the opportunity to exercise that free will.The ideas I’ve briefly sketched are variants of many others (cf.Kane, 1996), and address issues that have been discussed (some-times heatedly) for thousands of years. I’ve not mentioned the issue of “ultimate responsibility”—whether one is completely responsible for “what one is.” Given that one cannot control the genetic cards one’s parents dealt one, the sense of “free will” developed here seems to go only so far. However, Libet’s veto idea leads us to take a step back, and reframe the question: Instead of asking whether one is “ultimately responsible” for every aspect of what one is, why not ask whether one is “proximally responsible” for the effects
 of every aspect of what one is on what one does? Can we choose—based on what we’ve chosen to be-come—to override some impulses and express others?

I hope these brief reflections have conveyed two essential points. The first is that these are extraordinarily knotty issues,and the question of the role of consciousness in free will is not likely to be resolved soon. And the second is that we are entering a new era in discussing such questions. No longer are we restricted to the arm chair and the silver tongue. We now have objective data. This book makes a crucial contribution in providing grist for the mill of anyone interested in consciousness, free will,responsibility, or the relation of mind and body.I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did.


S. M. Kosslyn
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 18:01:08
The wikipedia article has a good summary of Libet's work, and CMF theory, as well as an experiment he proposes to test it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Conscious_Mental_Field_Theory

I don't know if my version of the book is the same as Don's, but on this website there is a interesting forward to the book that discusses the basis of choice in applying the veto power or after one becomes conscious of what wants or is intending to do. I will post the entire forward since he never seems to follow my links

What 's your point , Cheryl ?
You could have just displayed that wiki link in question .
I have read most of that book , so, what's your point then ?
Libet assumed that consciousness was an emergent phenomena ,that's what that theory of his was all about .

He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .

Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .

Why don't you react to the following from that same book ?,regarding the materialistic identity theory that's just a matter of belief , no scientific theory  :

"Mind Time ,The Temporal Factor in Consciousness -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":

Quote : "At one pole is the determinist materialist position. In this philosophy, observable matter is the only reality and everything, including thought, will, and feeling, can be explained only in terms of matter and the natural laws that govern matter. The eminent scientist Francis Crick (codiscoverer of the genetic molecular code) states this view elegantly (Crick and Koch, 1998):

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions,
your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons (nerve cells).’”
According to this determinist view, your awareness of yourself and the world around you is simply the by-product or epiphenomenon of neuronal activities, with no independent ability to affect or control neuronal activities.

Is this position a “proven” scientific theory? I shall state, straight out, that this determinist materialist view is a belief system; it is not a scientific theory that has been verified by direct tests. It is true that scientific discoveries have increasingly produced powerful evidence for the ways in which mental abilities, and even the nature of one’s personality, are dependent on, and can be controlled by, specific structures and functions of the brain.

 However, the nonphysical nature of subjective awareness, including the feelings of spirituality, creativity, conscious will, and imagination, is not describable or explainable directly by the physical evidence alone.
As a neuroscientist investigating these issues for more than thirty years, I can say that these subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function.

 This is in contrast to my earlier views as a young scientist, when I believed in the validity of determinist materialism. That was before I began my research on brain processes in conscious experience, at age 40. There is no guarantee that the phenomenon of awareness and its concomitants will be explainable in terms of presently known physics.

In fact, conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you would not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena. Only a report by the individual who is experiencing such phenomena could tell you about them.

Francis Crick demonstrated his scientific credentials by terming
his physicalist-determinist view an “astonishing hypothesis,” awaiting future developments that might produce more ade-quate answers. But many scientists and philosophers appear not to realize that their rigid view that determinism is valid is still based on faith. They really don’t have the answer.

Actually, even the nonmental physical world exhibits uncertainties (quantum theory) as well as chaotic behaviors that make a deterministic predictability of events impossible. At a small conference on these issues, the eminent theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner was asked whether physics could ever explain consciousness.
Wigner replied, “Physics can’t even explain physics,” let alone consciousness.
 The more meaningful question, therefore, would be: Does the phenomenon of conscious experience, and its relation to the physical brain, fully obey the known rules and laws of the physical world? (More on this later.).

At the opposite pole from determinist materialism are beliefs that the mind is separable from the brain (dualism). A religious version of dualism may maintain a belief in the existence of a soul that is somehow part of the body during life, but can separate and take off to variously defined destinations of immortality after death.
I shall state, at once, that the latter is absolutely tenable as a belief.

The same is true for most other philosophical and religious proposals. There is nothing in all of scientific evidence that directly contradicts such beliefs. Indeed, they do not fall within the purview of scientific knowledge (see Karl Popper’s position, described earlier).
A beautiful example of the scientific process was given by Einstein’s
proposal that light is subject to the same gravitational influences as matter.

 However, to demonstrate the gravitational effect on light requires that the light pass near an object of immense mass, one far greater than that available on earth. The difficulty in providing a proper test prevented full acceptance of Einstein’s proposal. Fortunately, around 1920 a complete solar eclipse occurred.

The light from a star located on the other side of the sun passed near the sun on its way to earth and was visible during the eclipse. Indeed, the star’s apparent position was altered, as the light was bent from its path by the “pull” of the sun. Had the light not been bent, Einstein’s proposal would have been falsified (contradicted)..." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 18:22:37
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446567#msg446567 date=1418573514]
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":
What aspect of his CFM theory would you like to discuss?

Your quotes are somewhat selective, I notice. He also says:
<...quotes directly contradicting Don's main thesis...>
Ouch! Yes, that looks like deliberately deceptive cherry-picking...

I will say that Don is correct in that Libet is critical of reductionist materialism, as expressed in the excerpt and else where in the book. Libet  does not automatically exclude the possibility of the immaterial or even things like souls, life after death, etc.

You've done your homework well, Cheryl, i see .
Quote
This seems to contradict Don's earlier claims that neuroscientists who rely on materialist methodologies like fMRIs, or attribute mental processes to brain activity, do so because they are incapable of grasping any non-materialist interpretation, rather than simply following the evidence.

(Prior note : Libet's theory of consciousness , in the sense that the latter allegedly was  just an emergent phenomena  from brain activity has not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever either : that was just Libet's interpretation of the evidence  :  Libet made the same lethal mistake that's been committed by most neuroscientists : confusing correlation with causation .)

lol

What are you talking about , Cheryl ?

Once again, post -materialistic science does embrace both the material and the immaterial alike in nature , needless to add .
Who then rejected studying the physical brain via fMRIs and other brain scans,via experiments  ...? : that's no materialist methodology , that's scientific methodology regarding the working of the physical brain .
Have you seen non-materialist neuroscientists like Beauregard rejecting brain scans...? Have you seen non -materialist cognitive scientist Schwartz doing that ? .....

The mind does work through its brain , so the latter's working must also be studied scientifically , needless to add .

Quote
Libet does not sound indoctrinated to me, nor afraid that considering the existence of the immaterial or criticizing materialism in any way will brand him as a nut case. But he does insist on evidence. He is an example of the kind of neuroscientist that Don claims doesn't exist.

Libet was just a rare exception to the rule ,like Penfield , Eccles , Sperry ...were .
Libet was a believer in the materialistic reductionist identity theory when he was a graduate student ,as he said in that above mentioned book of his , but he moved on beyond the former ,later on .

Libet was one of the exceptions to the rule : most ,if not all , materialist scientists never question their reductionist identity theory that's just a matter of belief , ever,let alone their materialist belief regarding the nature of reality : all is matter , including the mind , materialistic beliefs that have been supported by no empirical evidence whatsoever  .

Worse : materialism has been equated with science for relatively so long now and counting , without question, by the majority of scientists ..., to mention just the latter .

Worst: They assume that the reductionist IT has been supported by empirical evidence . lol

dlorde is 1 of those die-hard materialistic reductionists who still assume that the identity theory is not a belief , and hence it has been supported by empirical evidence . lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 18:44:14
The wikipedia article has a good summary of Libet's work, and CMF theory, as well as an experiment he proposes to test it.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Conscious_Mental_Field_Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Conscious_Mental_Field_Theory)

I don't know if my version of the book is the same as Don's, but on this website there is a interesting forward to the book that discusses the basis of choice in applying the veto power or after one becomes conscious of what wants or is intending to do. I will post the entire forward since he never seems to follow my links.


An interesting foreword - although I couldn't help noticing that Kosslyn makes some basic errors -


The 5th paragraph of the Foreword surprisingly suggests that chaotic systems are not deterministic. They are - but, as he rightly says, they are not predictable. Benoit Mandelbrot and Edward Loenz originally developed the field of chaos theory, showing chaotic behaviour in simple non-linear deterministic mathematical systems (e.g. fractals and chaotic attractors). 


Numbered paragraph 2 defers free-will to chaos, but compounds the error of thinking it is not deterministic because of its unpredictability (or seemingly random influences). By confusing chaos with indeterminism, it further implies only non-deterministic systems can have novel insights, which is not the case.


Numbered paragraph 4 is also questionable when it says the veto (the 'free-won't') is 'constructed on the spot' (what does he mean by that? if he means unpremeditated, isn't he eliminating conscious deliberation?), and 'is not present during unconscious processing'; it is not clear that this latter is the case. There are arguments that the veto also involves unconscious decision-making, which follows ongoing subconscious modelling of the consequences of the initial action, of which we also subsequently become aware (the subconscious System 1 processing is highly parallel, unlike conscious System 2 processing). In other words, the initial decision is made subconsciously, while modeling of its consequences continues subconsciously, at some point throwing up a veto alarm (i.e. oops - bad idea!). We become consciously aware of the initial decision shortly before we become aware of the veto alarm which overrides and suppresses the initial decision to act.


It's possible to argue either way - that the systems involving conscious awareness coordinate the sequences of subconscious processing, or that they simply become aware of the results as they unfold, and arrogate agency for them; but it seems to me most likely that the 'veto alarm' does originate in subconscious processing, as in everyday experience it generally has that characteristic 'oops!' or 'oh-oh' lightbulb moment of conscious realisation (i.e. sometimes we become aware that we've caught ourselves in time to prevent a gaff, sometimes we become aware that we've made a gaff). This may not be so apparent in a lab setting, but, to be fair, the jury is still out on this one.


Nevertheless, if we drop the errors on chaos & determinism, and stick with the meat of his analysis, he's basically arguing for compatibilist free will - the uncoerced and unconstrained application of the experience,  knowledge, mental state, etc., that makes us who we are at and over the period in which we make a decision.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 18:46:49
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":
What aspect of his CFM theory would you like to discuss?

Your quotes are somewhat selective, I notice. He also says:
<...quotes directly contradicting Don's main thesis...>
Ouch! Yes, that looks like deliberately deceptive cherry-picking...

Selective quotes ??? : You're the one who's selective in your reading of the above , ironically enough .
I have posted 2 Libet's excerpts : once concerning his rejection of the materialist identity theory that's just a belief , no scientific theory (no wonder that you did not like that : you still believe that the materialistic reductionist identity theory is a "scientific theory " that has " been supported by the available empirical evidence so far " lol ) ,concerning IT and more .

The second Libet's excerpt is about his rejection of behaviorist functionalism , positivism and more .

Libet's theory of consciousness that does take into consideration the relevance and evidence of the the first person subjective experience that's accessible only to the one experiencing it : positivism ,behaviorism and identity theory do reject the "unobserved " subjective experience ...

Read all that .

Since you are still a die-hard dogmatic materialist reductionist who has been taking his materialistic beliefs for granted as science , as Libet showed here above , i see no point in discussing Libet's theory or the mind -body problem with you ,what for ? .

Try to differentiate between materialist beliefs and science by distinguishing them from each other ,and hence by stopping to equate between them ,then and only then , we can progress in this debate .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 19:01:26
dlorde is 1 of those die-hard materialistic reductionists
I'll admit to being a physicalist with a predilection for type-physicalism (nomological monism), but I'm open to Davidson's anomalous monism if it can be shown to be useful; it's just an alternative interpretation.

My reasons are simply that there is no evidence to support a dualist view (and quantum field theory confirms there can be no mechanism), and all existing evidence is consistent with monism. This is hardly surprising, as the immaterial or non-physical by definition can't interact with the physical.

If you know different, you're welcome to provide convincing evidence. So far, your contributions have been notable for the complete absence of any such evidence. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 19:11:55
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg446498#msg446498 date=1418482520]
Quote
"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confirm the weird predictions of quantum theory.

But quantum theory is entirely materialistic. It's all about the observed behaviour of real stuff. What nonmaterialistic predictions did these experiments confirm?

What "real " stuff ?: Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge the very concept of classical "reality " or realism, locality and more ...did prove Einstein to be wrong and Bohr to be right ,in that famous EPR argument of theirs ...

Nobel laureate Bohr's son even denies the very existence of the quantum world as such : extreme Copenhagen interpretation .

QM or modern physics in general are all about "physical material"  phenomena .
Materialism is somethingelse entirely different : materialism is just a false conception of nature that reduces everything to just matter or to just material processes , not to mention that QM can never be understood without reference to the mind , once again .
You're still unable to differentiate between 2 simple concepts : between the material or physical reality , and between ...materialism .


Quote
And note that later in the paragraph "observation" is in quotation marks. It doesn't mean observation by a conscious being.

So, you're denying the very existence as such of the measurement problem in QM , once again ?

Whatever .Since the mind is non-physical and non-local ,and hence materialism is false , and since conscious observation has to be made at the end of the measurement chain in QM , then conscious observation has to have some effect on the measured objects,as Von Neumann proved  .

See what this prominent idealist monist quantum physicist has to say on the subject :

He thinks that the so-called physical reality is just an illusion : all is mind : the very opposite of materialism : all is matter :

He thinks that "matter " does exist as just wave-like probabilities , eventualities , possibilities ...waiting to be actualized by the very act of conscious observation ...:

http://www.amitgoswami.org/


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 19:15:14
Since you are still a die-hard dogmatic materialist reductionist who has been taking his materialistic beliefs for granted as science , as Libet showed here above , i see no point in discussing Libet's theory or the mind -body problem with you ,what for ? .
Because you might learn something? No, I take that back. Your reluctance to discuss with people who disagree with your worldview simply highlights your lack of confidence of defending it with reasoned argument.

Quote
Try to differentiate between materialist beliefs and science by distinguishing them from each other ,and hence by stopping to equate between them ,then and only then , we can progress in this debate .
This is a science forum. All you need to do is provide some plausible scientific evidence that you have something to discuss or debate, and we can progress. So far, all we've heard from you is bald assertion and cherry-picked copypasta.


 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 14/12/2014 19:23:33

What 's your point , Cheryl ?
You could have just displayed that wiki link in question .
I have read most of that book , so, what's your point then ?
I didn't know if your version included the same Forward by Kosslyn. What was your point in posting Libet's comments if you have no interest in his work and do not feel he is credible?

Quote
Libet assumed that consciousness was an emergent phenomena ,that's what that theory of his was all about .
I'm aware of that.
Quote
He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .
Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .

I disagree.

Quote
Why don't you react to the following from that same book ?,regarding the materialistic identity theory that's just a matter of belief , no scientific theory  :


.
I did acknowledge that in another post, but again, he also says "Nondeterminism—which is the view that conscious will may,at times, exert effects not in accord with known physical laws— is of course also a nonproven speculative belief," which you chose to ignore.
  But unlike Chris Carter, Libet's work is not primarily based on gripes with materialism or a belief in the supernatural. He is trying to construct a model that explains his experimental observations and makes testable predictions. His theory rests on its own merits, regardless of how he feels about materialism, one way or the other.

Every time I see the the Popper example of falsifiability, using Einstein's theory and the eclipse, I imagine you saying "But Albert, that is no kind of evidence - no way, no how!  You are merely mistaking the image of the process with the process!"


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 20:16:15
Some people's personalities or characters  , sense of morality ....and more do change almost completely when they get ...drunk lol, for example .
Some good nice polite mannered  people become aggressive ,rude, vulgar , offensive ...you name it , because alcohol blocks or deactivates their inhibitions area in the brain, i guess  .

Even peaceful people can become beasts Under certain circumstances..
Is that an allusion of an apology for your past uncivil rants? - not your fault because they were drunken rants?

And, of course, that only makes sense if your brain is what makes you the person you are  ;) .

That drunk "analogy"  was just referring to those personality , sense of morality ...changes in Alzheimer's, dementia ..patients .Sort of, but not really  .

That does absolutely not mean that we are our brains : our minds have to work through their brains ,so, when alcohol or drugs deactivate the inhibition area in the brain , or when some drugs or other chemicals seem to either expand or reduce consciousness accordingly , that does not mean that that brain activity is all what there is : that identity theory is just a belief , not a scientific theory , as Libet and others said by the way.

Ach, just spare me your irritating bullshit , please , from now on .Deal ?

Thanks for nothing , for not appreciating all the time and efforts i have been investing in here in many ways .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 20:27:08
dlorde , alancalverd :

What part exactly , or what particular sentence , word , concept or whatever exactly , can't you understand from the following ? :

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

The following are the results of experiments , no abstract talk :

Quote :

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world." End quotes
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 20:35:16
Cheryl :

How can you deny the obvious fact that placebo effects are incompatible with materialism , especially those at the level of surgery that were proved by Bruce Mosely and by others so clearly through Lipton's specific excerpt ?

How can materialism account for , let alone explain, the placebo effects ?

I am not gonna even discuss that silly autonomic brain "explanation " away of placebo effects , since our minds can be so trained as to control the autonomic nervous system itself via biofeedback informed training , to say just that .

Furthermore, all material, physiological and psychological materialistic 'explanations "  (away ) of placebo/nocebo effects , psi phenomena , including remote viewing , "explanations " away of the mindful trained effects of meditation, mindfulness .....have been refuted ,and hence do hold no water whatsoever .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 21:17:50
You're just such a narrow-minded  dogmatic materialist ( I have more respect for scientists like Libet , for example, who can change their minds in the face of evidence , none for ossified dogmatics like yourself , to be honest ) , a believer who has been taking his own materialistic beliefs as granted for science ,or who has been equating between science and materialism , like the majority of scientists today have been doing .
...
You've got no reasons , no evidence ...to stick to your false materialist beliefs .
...
You can't see evidence , even if it would hit you in the eye .
...
This is extremely tragic -hilarious , pathetic and ironic coming from such a dogmatic materialist scientist like yourself who has been bombarding my eyes with a lots of "empirical evidence " lol that has been supporting the materialistic reductionist identity theory,and other materialist non-sense  lol


Er, yeah... great argument.


Is this a temporary histrionic distraction, or have we once more reached that point in the thread where you just lose it completely?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 14/12/2014 21:22:37
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446579#msg446579 date=1418585013]

What 's your point , Cheryl ?
You could have just displayed that wiki link in question .
I have read most of that book , so, what's your point then ?
I didn't know if your version included the same Forward by Kosslyn. What was your point in posting Libet's comments if you have no interest in his work and do not feel he is credible?

A lots of false assumptions in just those above displayed few lines of yours , Cheryl : wow :

Who said i was not interested in Libet's work ? of course i am .I read from and make personal research , my own way , about all the existing thoughtstreams or camps out there , from idealists to materialists through dualists , humanists , buddhists ...and the rest , relatively speaking then (I exclude new age and all those pseudo-scientific lunatics , needless to add . I would even try to learn from the devil in person ,if that would be possible lol .)

I have read  many  works of materialist scientists and philosophers ...( I used to assume that materialistic  science and materialist scientists are the only real ones , seriously .) like that of Graziano, Gazanniga ,Dawkins, Dennett , Harris ,Chalmers , Searle ,  Hitchens, Sagan, Jay Gould , Ramachandran , and a lot more . That does not mean that i should not express my own opinions about the their  works .

I have not even implicitly insinuated that Libet was not credible,for example  .What makes you say all the above ?

I have posted his excerpts , just to show that there are materialists scientists like himself , the exceptions to the rule , who were able to move on beyond the false identity theory belief that's no scientific theory .....like the ones who were materialists and rejected reductionist materialism , later on ...like Eccles , Penfield  and others did  .

I respect  Libet ,for example,  for that  and more , despite his flaws (nobody is perfect ) ,and because i wanted to discuss some relevant parts of his work as well , like his brilliant astonishing experimental experiment  regarding the mindful volitional effort of attention through the veto power and more , and their implications for all of us ,as well as for all the theories of consciousness that must thus take into consideration Libet's relevant empirical evidence on the subject  and more .

Not to mention that i wanted also to discuss with you , guys , the interpretation dilemma in science ,like the lethal  mistake that was made by Libet and by most other neuroscientists : confusing correlation with causation and more .

Quote
I have read almost all that book of his ,as i said , earlier on, that he was a great mind , after all , despite my disagreements with his work, the part of which that assumes that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena ,that is .

Quote
Libet assumed that consciousness was an emergent phenomena ,that's what that theory of his was all about .
I'm aware of that.

Good to know that . We have already talked extensively , i guess , about the so-called emergent phenomena theory regarding the origin function and nature of consciousness,haven't we ? Even Cooper rejected that .

The fact that i do disagree with Libet regarding his consciousness emergent phenomena theory , does not mean that i reject all his work , needless to add .

I just wanna know how such great minds can make such lethal mistakes of interpretation by confusing correlation with causation , the more when we see Libet , and rightly so, rejecting the materialistic reductionist identity theory belief .

Quote
Quote
He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .
Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .

I disagree.

Why ? You're entitled to your own opinion though of course , needless to add .

To assume that the non-physical subjective experience ( Libet , for example, and others as well ,did acknowledge the non-physical nature of consciousness ) can arise from the activity of the related neuronal correlates is no less an inexplicably magical assumption  than that of the identity theory that was rejected by Libet , ironically and unfortunately enough .

Quote
Quote
Why don't you react to the following from that same book ?,regarding the materialistic identity theory that's just a matter of belief , no scientific theory  :


.
I did acknowledge that in another post, but again, he also says "Nondeterminism—which is the view that conscious will may,at times, exert effects not in accord with known physical laws— is of course also a nonproven speculative belief," which you chose to ignore.
  But unlike Chris Carter, Libet's work is not primarily based on gripes with materialism or a belief in the supernatural. He is trying to construct a model that explains his experimental observations and makes testable predictions. His theory rests on its own merits, regardless of how he feels about materialism, one way or the other.

Yeah, i know that you acknowledged that in one of your previous posts .I respect that in you , that's why i said once that you are the most open-minded person who's been participating to this thread .

dlorde , for example, just ignored that specific Libet's excerpt about the materialistic reductionist identity theory belief that's no scientific theory , by accusing me of being selective  lol  .No wonder .

For the rest ,many false assumptions again .
For your info, Cheryl : I do deal with all the works of scientists on the subject the same way , either those of the non-materialist or those of the materialist scientists alike , as i do have my own critique regarding the books of Carter also , regarding the work of Stapp, regarding that of Schwartz , Sheldrake and others , needless to add .

I do accept only the conclusively proved empirical evidence such as that famous Libet's test , for example, regarding decision-making ...to mention just that one then .

What's not scientifically proved conclusively remains controversial and a matter of interpretation , opinion, belief, or speculation : that's how i see and deal with all that .

Quote
Every time I see the the Popper example of falsifiability, using Einstein's theory and the eclipse, I imagine you saying "But Albert, that is no kind of evidence - no way, no how!  You are merely mistaking the image of the process with the process!"

Don't be silly , please , Cheryl : I know you can do much better than that :

You're comparing apples with olives :

Einstein's relativity theories have been proved to work successfully via many predictions , the same goes for QM , Newton's physics , thermodynamics  and electromagnetism  ...

I object only to the materialistic interpretations of the empirical evidence , as well as to the non-materialist ones that do not get verified conclusively and that might be contradicted by other empirical evidence .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 14/12/2014 21:32:14
You're just confirming what i was saying about you all along , from the very start : you are just a dogmatic believer who's a believer first and a dogmatic narrow-minded scientist only second .

What can one learn from you then ? Oh , please , just spare me your dogmatic materialistic non-sense .Amazing .
Right... OK, let me know when you want to grow up address the arguments rather than make childish insults  ::)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2014 17:46:31
The Measurement or Interpretation Problem in QM :

Excerpt from a certain Carter's book :

Quote :

"Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle:

Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.

However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the so-called measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
After you look it was in a single box.

 It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed. But it was not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation. This hard-to-accept observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.

Up until the moment of measurement, certain properties of quantum phenomena, such as location, momentum, and direction of spin, simply exist as a collection of probabilities, known as the wave function, or state vector. The wave function can be thought of as the probability distribution of all possible states, such as, for instance, the probability distribution of all possible locations for an electron.*

But this is not the probability that the electron is actually at certain locations, instead, it is the probability that the electron will be found at certain locations. The electron does not have a definite location until it is observed. Upon measurement, this collection of all possible locations “collapses” to a single value—the location of the particle that is actually observed.
Physicist Nick Herbert expresses it this way:

The quantum physicist treats the atom as a wave of oscillating possibilities as long as it is not observed. But whenever it is looked at, the atom stops vibrating and objectifies one of its many possibilities.

Whenever someone chooses to look at it, the atom ceases its fuzzy dance and seems to “freeze” into a tiny object with definite attributes, only to dissolve once more into a quivering pool of possibilities as soon as the observer withdraws his attention from it. The apparent observer-induced change in an atom’s mode of existence is called the collapse of the wave function.

Measurements thus play a more positive role in quantum mechanics than in classical physics, because here they are not merely observations of something already present but actually help produce it. According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics popular among many theorists, it is the existence of consciousness that introduces intrinsic probability into the quantum world.

This interpretation owes its origin to mathematician John von Neumann, one of the most important intellectual figures of the twentieth century. In addition to his contributions to pure mathematics, von Neumann also invented game theory, which models economic and social behavior as rational games, and made fundamental contributions to the development of the early computers.

 In the 1930s, von Neumann turned his restless mind to the task of expressing the newly developed theories of quantum mechanics in rigorous mathematical form, and the result was his classic book The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. In it he tackled the measurement problem head on and rejected the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which was becoming the orthodox position among physicists.

 Although it is somewhat vague, the central tenets of the Copenhagen interpretation seem to be (1) that all we have access to are the results of observations, and so it is simply pointless to ask questions about the quantum reality behind those observations, and (2) that although observation is necessary for establishing the reality of quantum phenomena, no form of consciousness, human or otherwise, is necessary for making an observation. Rather, an observer is anything that makes a record of an event, and so it is at the level of macroscopic measuring instruments (such as Geiger counters) that the actual values of quantum phenomena are randomly set from a range of statistical possibilities.

Von Neumann objected to the Copenhagen interpretation practice of dividing the world in two parts: indefinite quantum entities on the one side, and measuring instruments that obey the laws of classical mechanics on the other. He considered a measuring apparatus, a Geiger counter for example, in a room isolated from the rest of the world but in contact with a quantum system, such as an atom simultaneously in two boxes. The Geiger counter is set to fire if the atom is found in one box, but to remain unfired if it is found in the other. This Geiger counter is a physical instrument, hence subject to the rules of quantum mechanics.

 Therefore, it should be expected to enter into a superposition state along with the atom, a state in which it is simultaneously fired and unfired.
Should the Geiger counter be in contact with a device that records whether the counter has fired, then logically, it too should enter a superposition state that records both situations as existing simultaneously.

 Should an observer walk into the room and examine the recording device, this logic can be continued up the “von Neumann chain” from the recording device, to photons, to the eyes and brain of the observer, which are also physical instruments that we have no reason to suppose are exempt from the rules of quantum mechanics. The only peculiar link in the von Neumann chain is the process by which electrical signals in the brain of the observer become a conscious experience.

Von Neumann argued that the entire physical world is quantum mechanical, so the process that collapses the wave functions into actual facts cannot be a physical process; instead, the intervention of something from outside of physics is required. Something nonphysical, not subject to the laws of quantum mechanics, must account for the collapse of the wave function: the only nonphysical entity in the observation process that von Neumann could think of was the consciousness of the observer.

 He reluctantly concluded that this outside entity had to be consciousness and that prior to observation,even measuring instruments interacting with a quantum system must exist in an indefinite state.
Von Neumann extended the Copenhagen interpretation by requiring the measurement process to take place in a mind.

He was reluctantly driven to this conclusion by his relentless logic: the only process in the von Neumann chain that is not merely the motion of molecules is the consciousness of the observer. His arguments were developed more completely by his illustrious followers, most notably Fritz London, Edmond Bauer, and Eugene Wigner. Wigner, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics, wrote, “When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena, through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again; it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”

The box-pair experiment also bears on the role of consciousness and free will. After all, you can choose to look in one of the boxes or to do an interference experiment, and you will get different “realities,” one being particle-like, the other wavelike. But your choice of which experiment to do is not determined, even statistically, by anything in the physical theory. Nothing in quantum mechanics says you must choose one experiment rather than the other. If you deny that consciousness collapses the wave function, then this means atoms prior to observation existed as either particle or wave.

Somehow you chose to only look in those boxes that contained particle atoms and you chose to only do an interference experiment with wave-form atoms. This would also deny free will, because then your illusion of choice is determined by a conspiracy of the physical universe with the state of your brain and your perceived choice. This replaces the deterministic universe with one that is deterministic and conspiratorial.
This is how von Neumann, Wigner, and others brought mind back into nature and made a strong case against the causal closure of the physical. As we will see, the case gets even stronger.

At this point, it should be stressed that this is only one interpretation of the facts of quantum mechanics: in addition to the Copenhagen interpretation, there are several other speculations about what is really happening when quantum possibilities settle down into one actuality. Most attempt to rescue the determinism and observer independence of classical physics.

For instance, the hidden variable theory holds that the indeterminacy of quantum physics is an illusion due to our ignorance: if we knew more about the system in question—that is, if we knew the value of some “hidden variables”—then the indeterminacy would vanish. However, there are several reasons why the general community of quantum physicists never held the hidden-variable theory in high regard.

One reason, according to quantum physicist Euan Squires, is that the hidden variable theory is “extremely complicated and messy. We know the answers from quantum theory and then we construct a hidden-variable, deterministic theory specifically to give these answers. The resulting theory appears contrived and unnatural.”

Squires points out that the hidden variable theory never gained widespread acceptance because “the elegance, simplicity and economy of quantum theory contrasted sharply with the contrived nature of a hidden-variable theory which gave no new predictions in return for its increased complexity; the whole hidden-variable enterprise was easily dismissed as arising from a desire, in the minds of those too conservative to accept change, to return to the determinism of classical physics.”

Another reason the general community of quantum physicists consider the hidden variable theory highly implausible is that it explains away indeterminacy by postulating the existence of an ad hoc quantum force that, unlike any of the other four forces in nature, behaves in a manner completely unaffected by distance.

The many worlds hypothesis is perhaps the strangest of all. It is the only one that denies the existence of nonlocality, but it does so by postulating that all possible values of a measured property exist simultaneously in coexisting universes. When a measurement is made, we are told, the universe we are in splits into multiple universes, with one of the possible results in each of them. For instance, if a measurement may yield two possible results, then at the instant of measurement the entire universe splits in two, with each possible result realized in each universe. If a measurement may yield a continuum of possible states—such as the position of an electron—then the instant such a measurement occurs, it is proposed that the universe splits into an infinite number of universes!

 Since it is further assumed that these parallel universes cannot interact with each other, this hypothesis is completely untestable. Entities are being multiplied with incredible profusion. William of Occam must be spinning in his grave.

In the opinion of many physicists, the last two interpretations are simply desperate, last-ditch attempts to rescue the classical assumptions of determinism and observer independence that have been abandoned by quantum mechanics.

 For instance, one interpretation salvages determinism from classical physics by postulating hidden variables and the other by speculating that everything that can happen does in fact happen in an infinite number of constantly splitting parallel universes, regardless of the way things may appear to any particular version of our constantly splitting selves.

At any rate, these four interpretations are all consistent with the observed facts. They are attempts to describe what reality is really like between observations, to account for the seemingly bizarre behavior of matter predicted so accurately by the theory of quantum physics.

They are not usually considered to be scientific theories about the nature of reality, but rather metaphysical theories, as within quantum mechanics there does not currently seem to be any obvious experiment that one could perform in order to choose between them.* End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2014 17:53:40
Materialism is a Dogma, an Ideology , a Belief , No Science :

Quote :

"It is only in searching for refutations that science can hope to learn and to advance. It is only in considering how its various theories stand up to tests that it can distinguish between better and worse theories and so find a criterion of progress."

KARL POPPER, CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS

"...Materialism is an ideology, a dogma. For such individuals, materialism is not a scientific hypothesis that is open to potentially being proved false; it is an article of faith that “must” be true, regardless of evidence to the contrary.

 As Grossman shrewdly pointed out, a complicating factor is that materialists are typically under the impression that their belief in materialism is not ideological, but empirical.
That is, they talk as though their adherence to materialism is rigorously scientific, when in fact it is merely an expression of faith.

It is this confusion, this implicit equation of materialism with science, that explains the widespread practice of ignoring and dismissing the objectionable evidence as somehow “unscientific.”
Materialism is upheld as an incontestable dogma on which, it is thought, rests the entire edifice of science.

 But the difference between science and ideology is not that they are based on different dogmas; rather, it is that scientific beliefs are not held as dogmas, but are open to testing and hence possible rejection. Science cannot be an objective process of discovery if it is wedded to a metaphysical belief that is accepted without question and that leads to the exclusion of certain lines of evidence on the grounds that these lines of evidence contradict the metaphysical belief.
Grossman makes this point clearly:
Science is a methodological process of discovering truths about reality. Insofar as science is an objective process of discovery, it is, and must be, metaphysically neutral.

In sofar as science is not metaphysically neutral, but instead weds itself to a particular metaphysical theory, such as materialism, it cannot be an objective process for discovery. There is much confusion on this point, because many people equate science with materialist metaphysics, and phenomena that fall outside the scope of such metaphysics, and hence cannot be explained in physical terms, are called “unscientific.”

This is a most unfortunate usage of the term. For if souls and spirits are in fact a part of reality, and science is conceived epistemologically as a system of investigation of reality, then there is no reason why science cannot devise appropriate methods to investigate souls and spirits." End quote

Chris Carter
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2014 18:03:07
Mindful Conscious Aware Volitional Veto Power , and How Determinism is False :

Determinism was just the legacy of the fundamentally false classical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built ,and hence deterministic reductionist materialism is also false .

I think that free will is our human conscious and aware capacity to choose from all the existing  possibilities , eventualities, probabilities ...that are available to us .

Our past does not determin our present or future , we can change the present and the future by changing ourselves .

I must say up front that the opposite of determinism is  not randomness .It is the mindful conscious aware  volitonal action through the veto power ,as S. M. Kosslyn said , in similar words , in his forward to Libet's book in question when he said that "...Libet is right to focus on consciousness when theorizing about free will: In order to employ free will, one must evaluate information in working memory. Such information includes the alternative choices, the rationales for each, and the anticipated consequences of making each choice (although not all this information must be in working memory at the same time). If an external force coerces us, or we are operating on “automatic pilot,”
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2014 18:08:20
Libet's Conscious Mental Field Theory Sounds Like Electromagnetism lol :

"Regardless of whether the CMF theory is valid, a knowledge of nerve cell structures and functions can never, in itself, explain or describe conscious subjective experience. As noted earlier, studying the brain can show you what nerve cells are doing and so forth, but there is nothing in that which exhibits or describes any subjective experience. Also, it is possible that some mental phenomena have no direct neuronal basis (see Chapter 3) and it is also possible that the conscious will does not always obey the natural laws of the physical world (see Chapter 4).

We may, therefore, have to be satisfied with knowledge of how conscious subjective experience is related to brain activities, but we may not be able to explain why or how subjective experience can be produced by brain activities any more than we can explain why gravity is a property of matter. We accept that each fundamental category of phenomena exists and that its relation to other systems may be studied without knowing why such relationships
exist."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 15/12/2014 18:10:51
"...How does the categorically different nonphysical phenomenon of subjective experience come from the physical activities of nerve cells? This problem has been termed the “hard problem” by philosopher David Chalmers (1996).

Chalmers (1995) tried to solve this problem by proposing a double-aspect theory of information. He postulated information as having both physical and phenomenal aspects. Experience would emerge from or be identical with the phenomenal aspect.

This proposal, which appears to be a version of identity theory, is unconvincing for various reasons (Libet, 1996). Identity theory posits that there is a common “substrate” for all reality, and this substrate has an observable “outer quality” and an “inner quality.”

The outer quality is what we see and measure as the physical brain; the inner quality of subjective experience is not accessible to an external observer. But identity theory, including the Chalmers’s version of it, is not testable; it is therefore not a scientific theory. A different testable solution, the unified conscious mental field, is presented in this chapter.?"
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 15/12/2014 23:39:17
Cut to the chase, Don.

Reality is what happens. Quantum mechanics is our best effort at predicting what happens. Now show me a nonmaterialist prediction that works better than quantum mechanics. That's all it takes to explode your "bombshell", and so far you haven't even lit the fuse.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: domkarr on 16/12/2014 03:44:25
Ummm... I know that I am new here but I have heard and read a fair bit about the topic and although it may invoke a poor response.
I just though maybe I should ask.
If reality is relevant to the person and experiences of that person, not to mention their own psychological and mental state combined with
that persons knowledge of reality and personal opinion plus the faction of science that they belong to.

Then is this conversation ever going to end before all of your heads explode trying to force others into your version of reality?

I don't mean any offense and I don't want to sound patronizing because I can see that you have all taken a lot of time to learn about the
subject and are all obviously very learned people. But what I mean is that unless you all had the same upbringing with the same genetics
with the same learning, the same lecturers and the same brain chemistry then is it not possible that no one will ever agree on the subject
or if they do agree it will only ever be on a majority basis.

I personally have found that two people who watch the exact same event will almost always walk away experiencing different realities.
I definitely enjoyed reading the argument as all sides made some very good arguments but I feel that this is one of those arguments that
will probably carry on into the next millennia with people still arguing that a cat is not a cat but merely a perception of cat within a box
and that box doesn't exist unless someone makes the box and if no-one makes the box then the cat never existed and so on and so on.
A very interesting subject and a good read so thanks guys.     
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 16/12/2014 10:05:37
If reality is relevant to the person and experiences of that person, not to mention their own psychological and mental state combined with that persons knowledge of reality and personal opinion plus the faction of science that they belong to.

Then is this conversation ever going to end before all of your heads explode trying to force others into your version of reality?
These are good points and fundamental questions. Basically you're asking what is the point of discussing metaphysics and the philosophy of science.

For me, it's an exchange of knowledge and understanding, of science, the philosophy of science, metaphysics; and, importantly, other people and their views, how they see the world, how they think about it.

The way I see it, you can't force anyone into your view of the world, but you can help them to see and understand things differently, and they can do the same for you. This may or may not lead to a change of views. When you argue or discuss with someone with different views, not only may you learn new knowledge and insights from them, but you also have to review and reassess your own understanding and assumptions to integrate new information and in countering arguments you think are wrong. In this way you often find new knowledge and insights for yourself, prompted by the discussion.

A directly antagonistic approach like telling someone they are wrong, even if you give valid reasons, tends to reinforce their belief and determination not to acknowledge your argument - just as if you physically push them, they will want to push back. For this reason, I prefer a Socratic approach, where you ask them questions designed to get them to think about your argument for themselves and so potentially find the flaws in their own; if they are able to answer your questions with valid responses that counter your argument, then you will learn something about the flaws in your own argument.

Even when the Socratic approach fails because someone refuses to answer the questions you ask (like Don), you may still benefit from finding new questions and new ways to make your points - and you get a chance to exercise your patience and learn to control frustration.

In principle, it's a win-win, as long as you are mature enough to understand and accept that changing your own mind or restructuring your own views and arguments as a result of the discussion is as much a personal victory as causing the same changes in the other person.

ETA - another important reason to continue with even an apparently unproductive debate on a forum like this is to provide a balancing view for the lurkers and new arrivals - like yourself [;)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2014 16:42:45
Ummm... I know that I am new here but I have heard and read a fair bit about the topic and although it may invoke a poor response.
I just though maybe I should ask.
If reality is relevant to the person and experiences of that person, not to mention their own psychological and mental state combined with
that persons knowledge of reality and personal opinion plus the faction of science that they belong to.

Then is this conversation ever going to end before all of your heads explode trying to force others into your version of reality?

I don't mean any offense and I don't want to sound patronizing because I can see that you have all taken a lot of time to learn about the
subject and are all obviously very learned people. But what I mean is that unless you all had the same upbringing with the same genetics
with the same learning, the same lecturers and the same brain chemistry then is it not possible that no one will ever agree on the subject
or if they do agree it will only ever be on a majority basis.

I personally have found that two people who watch the exact same event will almost always walk away experiencing different realities.
I definitely enjoyed reading the argument as all sides made some very good arguments but I feel that this is one of those arguments that
will probably carry on into the next millennia with people still arguing that a cat is not a cat but merely a perception of cat within a box
and that box doesn't exist unless someone makes the box and if no-one makes the box then the cat never existed and so on and so on.
A very interesting subject and a good read so thanks guys.     

Thank you for making me laugh. And you are absolutely right about a number of things. But while not coming to any consensus, this thread and the previous one like it, has motivated me to think about different things, research information,  clarify my own ideas or opinions, and alter them or incorporate new ones. So I don't think it is utterly pointless. I once heard the expression "You can't change what is in the box using only what is already in the box; there are a limited number of useful combinations" so occasionally I try to throw new things in the box or my brain, even randomly at times, hoping for novel combinations and new insights.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2014 17:00:39

He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .
Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .
Quote
Quote
I disagree.
Quote
Why ? You're entitled to your own opinion though of course , needless to add .



I recognize that consciousness is an unsolved problem, so my “disagreement” is an opinion, based on which theories or approaches I believe have the best explanatory track record so far.  In order to explain why I disagree, I would have to restate much of what I’ve said over the last year.  If my comments weren’t very convincing the first time around, I doubt you’ll find them so a second or third  time, even though my ideas have evolved or changed quite a bit with these discussions.
 Never the less, I’ll summarize as briefly as possible my view of consciousness so far:

1)   Neuroscience or brain activity is a sufficient basis for mental activity as demonstrated by studies that show intact, functioning brain structures are required for mental activity to occur. Counterfactual dependence makes this unlikely to be a mere correlation.
2)   I reject dualism and supernatural explanations because of lack of evidence and the interaction problem. There is no interaction problem if consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity.
3)   Consciousness and qualia are tightly linked to sensory detection, perception, and response in living things. More complex brains allow for greater processing of sensory information (perception) and more flexibility or options in response.  If sensory detection and response were selected for in evolution, then arguably, processing of them, including consciousness and qualia, were selected for as well, and they are not epiphenomena.
4)   Some  biological functions of qualia include  a) distinguishing between objects in the here and now from those in mental test simulations, b) to enhance discrimination and reduce noise, and c) to make connected and integrated, but qualitatively different, sensory information available to different processing systems in the brain simultaneously. 
5)   For consciousness and qualia to have been adaptive and selected for in evolution, they must causally affect our choices and behavior. If consciousness and qualia had no effect on behavior and were not adaptive, it would not matter if our subjective experience and qualia had any consistent correlation with reality, were consistent over time, or radically different from person to person.  While it is (as yet) impossible to know if your subjective experience is like my subjective experience, for minds of animals that depend on social interaction for survival to have any common frame of reference, there must be significant similarity and consistency of qualia from person to person.
6)   For consciousness to be adaptive there must be a limited form of free will, better described as choice, within boundaries set by genetics, environmental influences, subconscious and reflexive processes, and learned experience. At the same time, learning and brain plasticity also makes those boundaries less rigid.
7)    Not everything we are consciously aware of is necessarily under conscious control.
8)   Volition and choice are also mediated by structures and activity of the brain through top down control.
9)   Even though computers can replicate mental processes without consciousness, that does not mean that consciousness does not facilitate information processing or learning in humans and other animals. In the same way that there are multiple strategies for  locomotion, reproduction or energy conversion  in nature, there may be different methods of processing information in biological systems compared to machines.
10)   I reject that consciousness must “look like” the system from which it emerges, or that the every or any component of the system must share all of the properties of consciousness, since that is not necessarily true (or even usually true) of other emergent processes. And thus, I reject Cooperism.

 Libet says “Yet, if you look into this neural activity and neural structures involved you would not see anything  that looked like subjective experience.”  However, if you looked at DNA, you would not see anything that “looks like” animals or the phenotypical traits that DNA gives rise to. The function of DNA would seem equally unlikely or magical without knowing about messenger RNA, amino acids, proteins, hormones, and regulation of gene expression, or metabolism. Looking just at DNA, you cannot “see” meiosis, alleles, sexual combination of gametes, cell differentiation, embryology, or natural selection, or any number of things or processes that would complete the picture of how DNA does what it does. Without that additional information, you would be left wondering how you can possibly get a giraffe or an oyster or an oak tree from the same damn molecule. Expecting consciousness to physically resemble neurons and neurotransmitters is like expecting to see a tiny anatomical drawing of a giraffe inside every giraffe cell. Processes are not things.

Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter.

That's it in a nutshell. Fire away.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2014 17:56:03
I also invite anyone else to summarize their view of consciousness so far. It's harder than you think.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 16/12/2014 17:59:33


Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter.

That's it in a nutshell. Fire away.
Absolutely Cheryl, processes are materially based. But when we consider time in the equation, one must remember that time and space are inseparable. And time and space are necessary constituents of the local matter we observe in our reality. So I would disagree somewhat and suggest that "Life" and consciousness are, in fact, reducible to matter which is a manifestation of space/time and energy.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2014 19:45:18
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446679#msg446679 date=1418749239]

He just replaced the materialistic magical identity theory with yet another inexplicable magic : consciousness as an alleged emergent phenomena .
Consciousness cannot be an emergent phenomena though : we have already talked about that on many occasions , on that lengthy consciousness thread : even Cooper did reject it .
Quote
Quote
I disagree.
Quote
Why ? You're entitled to your own opinion though of course , needless to add .



I recognize that consciousness is an unsolved problem, so my “disagreement” is an opinion, based on which theories or approaches I believe have the best explanatory track record so far.  In order to explain why I disagree, I would have to restate much of what I’ve said over the last year.  If my comments weren’t very convincing the first time around, I doubt you’ll find them so a second or third  time, even though my ideas have evolved or changed quite a bit with these discussions.

(Prior note : This " in an nutshell " long post of yours was quite a punishment for me lol .Took me quite some time to address .There is still a lot to say about  all that , but i will leave it at that then , otherwise , my reply would be way too long ...Thanks for your raised  relevant important and interesting issues here below . )

That 's the right attitude , or state of mind  indeed , Cheryl , not to mention that scientific humility does dictate that to all of us , whether we like it or not , in the sense that no single theory of consciousness out there can pretend to have the final word on the subject , not even remotely close thus .

Better still : none is really scientific .

Furthermore , all those theories of consciousness are still in their  infancy stage + science's methodology as well as its epistemology, not to mention its vocabulary (the latter since science has to be communicated through human language thus)   have to evolve enough as to try to tackle the hard problem of consciousness more efficiently .

So, we must all try to be open-minded on the subject .
 I must admit i have learned a lot from these discussions , explored many unexpected routes and territories.....you have no idea .

As long as one thus can admit the obvious fact that consciousness is still the hard problem in science , still the biggest mystery ever , and that we do still do not know much about the brain itself, let alone about the mind , only then can one progress , instead of assuming the converse so dogmatically , irrationally and unscientifically as some people here as well as elsewhere have been assuming  .


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Never the less, I’ll summarize as briefly as possible my view of consciousness so far:

1)   Neuroscience or brain activity is a sufficient basis for mental activity as demonstrated by studies that show intact, functioning brain structures are required for mental activity to occur. Counterfactual dependence makes this unlikely to be a mere correlation.

Well , i have to disagree with your last argument  of course , while agreeing with the first : the mind has to work through its brain ,so the correlation between the related activity of the neuronal correlates and that of the mind does not necessarily imply causation .
There is no "conclusive" evidence whatsoever , no evidence at all in fact , that even implies that the relationship between the mind and its brain is not  a mere correlation .

Even Libet's conscious mental field theory did not deliver that evidence , let alone the conclusive one on the subject, even though Libet's work is indeed extremely fascinating , like that of Ramachandran ... .

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2)   I reject dualism and supernatural explanations because of lack of evidence and the interaction problem. There is no interaction problem if consciousness is an emergent property of brain activity
.

Zero of all lol : Your materialistic above displayed 'arguments " are just the legacy of the fundamentally false classical physics upon which materialism was built , ironically enough, that made no room whatsoever for the causal and active efficacy of the mind , since the classical world view was mechanical and deterministic + was causally closed , not to mention its classical locality and realism  .

When you try to move on to QM that replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , your 'arguments " will fade or smelt  away like snow under the bright lovely warm smiling sun .

First of all , there is nothing "supernatural " about dualism : your non-physical and non-mental consciousness is your key feature or key part that does interact with your brain body and with the rest of your environment , including with the rest of the physical reality  .

Second : QM is the major "living " proof of the fact that consciousness of the observer cannot be separated from the so-called objective reality : even Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge both the classical locality and the classical realism ,and since materialism has been built upon the fundamentally false classical  deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view , then materialism is also false , which means that the universe , including ourselves thus , is not   exclusively material or physical , and since materialism can intrinsically never account for , let alone explain, consciousness, then the latter cannot but be a non-physical as well as a non-local process that's consistent with QM,since the whole universe is quantum "mechanical ", as Von Neumann , for example, used to say , in the sense that the non-physical consciousness plays a central role in shaping the physical reality via a non-mechanical causation, that is .

The materialistic standard model of quantum field theory thus , for example, might be  approximately correct and fundamentally false   , like classical physics were /are by the way .

Third : we have already dealt with the alleged dreaded interaction problem of dualism ,on many occasions, that's just the legacy of classical physics , in the sense that the universe is deterministic and causally closed ,where both locality and realism were compatible with classical physics,to mention just that .QM has been opening its wide weird spooky wave-like cloudy doors to approaching that interaction problem  by proving the inseparability of the consciousness of the observer from the observed .

Better still, locality or separability ( any given objects can interact with each other only through physical forces where any interaction cannot exceed the speed of light , and objects cannot thus influence each other from a distance ) as well as realism ( The objects' properties exist independently of their observation ) have been challenged by Bell's theorem and its related experiments that corroborated what QM has been predicting on the subject : "spooky action at a distance " ,non-locality or entanglement does exist and occur instantaneously at that , that is + QM has been proving the fact that the universe is not causally closed , and hence consciousness can have efficacious causal effects on matter , brain , body and on the rest of the physical reality through the mindful volitional effort of the veto power at least and action , the latter that's irreducible to   the activity of its related neuronal correlates .
That mindful conscious aware veto power and action cannot be explained by any known laws of physics , as Stapp and others tried to prove .

In short : QM has been opening its wide doors to consciousness by allowing its causal efficacy .

QM that might be superseded in its turn also maybe .QM that can never be understood without reference to the mind , ironically enough .

So, if QM cannot fully account  or conclusively for the causal efficacy of consciousness , then any physical theory that might supersede it must have a better explanatory power : must predict all what QM predicts and more .

 The visionary William James , for example, did predict that classical physics were fundamentally false ,since they could absolutely not account for the major anomaly of them all : consciousness .

We might be needing better physics that can better account for consciousness thus ,as Wigner said .

Fourth :

In fact , everything that goes beyond the false materialistic conception of nature is , per definition, "supernatural " lol : that's just a materialistic tactical  terminology that's used to exclude its  competition from science .

The latter whose naturalism or naturalistic methodology and naturalistic epistemology are no synonymous of materialism : go beyond the latter .

In other words : anything that's non-material must be 'supernatural " lol to materialism , and since the latter is false, then the universe is both mental non-physical non-material and material physical .


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3)   Consciousness and qualia are tightly linked to sensory detection, perception, and response in living things. More complex brains allow for greater processing of sensory information (perception) and more flexibility or options in response.  If sensory detection and response were selected for in evolution, then arguably, processing of them, including consciousness and qualia, were selected for as well, and they are not epiphenomena.

( Materialistic monism in all its shapes and forms cannot but consider consciousness as being a useless side effect or by-product of evolution , without any causal effects on matter : consciousness as an alleged epiphenomena thus ,ironically enough .
Even Libet's conscious mental field theory that proves the causality and action of the mindful volitional veto power is a kindda panpyschism in disguise : although Libet did acknowledge the very non-physical nature of consciousness , he just assumed that the latter was just an emergent phenomena from the activity of the physical brain : that's an inexplicable magical panpsychism : how can the non-physical arise from the physical then ? and how can that so-called emergent property that allegedly arises from the physical can ,in its turn , affect causally its physical "maker " ? ,so to speak .)

That they are linked to each other does not mean they are either identical with each other  or that consciousness is  an alleged emergent property from the activity of the evolutionary complexity of the brain  .

I see not how biological evolution can ever intrinsically account for , let alone  explain the origin emergence function nature or "evolution " of consciousness , do you ?

Once again , the mind has to work through its brain via the senses ,so , you're making a false conclusion from a correct premise : how can you jump from the one to the other , Cheryl ?

You're jumping from sensory detection, as you put it , to a totally different territory in kind : the conscious aware perception .

There is a huge gap in there you can't bridge that simple way , no way .

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4)   Some  biological functions of qualia include  a) distinguishing between objects in the here and now from those in mental test simulations, b) to enhance discrimination and reduce noise, and c) to make connected and integrated, but qualitatively different, sensory information available to different processing systems in the brain simultaneously.
 

Consciousness is not a biological process, Cheryl : your materialistic monistic identity theory and Libet's  conscious mental field theory do hold no water whatsoever .

I haven't checked out Libet's alleged evidence regarding the latter at least .

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5)   For consciousness and qualia to have been adaptive and selected for in evolution, they must causally affect our choices and behavior. If consciousness and qualia had no effect on behavior and were not adaptive, it would not matter if our subjective experience and qualia had any consistent correlation with reality, were consistent over time, or radically different from person to person.  While it is (as yet) impossible to know if your subjective experience is like my subjective experience, for minds to have any common frame of reference, there must be significant similarity and consistency of qualia from person to person.

Ironically enough , you 're kissing goodbye your own materialistic monism by saying the above . Materialism that cannot intrinsically but consider consciousness as being just an epiphenomena ,as mentioned above .

If that was "true ", what's the point of  having consciousness ? lol

I was just going along with your above displayed arguments , just for discussion's sake .

Tell me now how the biological evolution can ever account for , let alone explain , consciousness ? Then , we can address the rest of your arguments .


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6)   For consciousness to be adaptive there must be a limited form of free will, better described as choice, within boundaries set by genetics, environmental influences, subconscious and reflexive processes, and learned experience. At the same time, learning and brain plasticity also makes those boundaries less rigid.

Well, the issue of free will is a very broad one , a hard one , i must admit.
I think that our limited degree of free will , in the form of the causality and action of our mindful conscious aware volitional veto power cannot be governed by any, let alone by any  known , laws of physics , not in the absolute sense at least .

Our genes or biology , experiences , knowledge , education , environment , the sub-conscious ...do have their own roles in shaping us all , but , they are not the only players : they can maybe  partly shape the  existing possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ...that might be available to us , but they can't always determin what choices we would make , i guess, i don't know .

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7)    Not everything we are consciously aware of is necessarily under conscious control.

Hilarious tautology lol

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8)   Volition and choice are also mediated by structures and activity of the brain.

The mind has to work through its brain anyway .

Mediated by the brain but they also have a causal efficacy in relation to the brain , like in the case of mindful informed trained self-directed neuroplasticity , like in the case of choosing or not to move one's arm or to do this rather than that , like in the case of mindful biofeedback training , like in the case of mindful belief in the curing power of a placebo or medicine , .....


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9)   Even though computers can replicate mental processes without consciousness, that does not mean that consciousness does not facilitate information processing or learning in humans and other animals. In the same way that there are multiple strategies for  locomotion, reproduction or energy conversion  in nature, there may different methods of processing information in biological systems compared to machines.

That  materialistic  machine or computer analogy or terminology regarding the nature function and origin of consciousness is false .

Even though (super) computers can do what they are programmed to do faster and better than humans can ,without being conscious or aware , they can never be conscious or aware , let alone alive : conscious awareness and life cannot be separated from each other .

Living organisms are no machines or computers : it's about time that you ,guys , try to drop that computer false analogy and terminology regarding the work ,origin and nature of the living conscious awareness .

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10)   I reject that consciousness must “look like” the system from which it emerges, or that the every or any component of the system must share all of the properties of consciousness, since that is not necessarily true of other emergent processes ( and thus, I reject Cooperism.)

Who said that ? : the biological or physical emergent properties are different from their original biological or physical components in genre only ( the wetness of water or the ocean waves are different in genre from their original components , but they remain material physical  ) , while consciousness is totally different in kind from its alleged original physical or biological components : to say otherwise , that's simply inexplicable magic or panpyshism . Even Cooper rejects that , and rightly so : how can physical material or biological systems or rather living organisms be conscious or aware ?: they can do without ,as there is nothing intrinsic in the biological or physical  system , no "mechanism " that can explain that , while the non-mechanical causal effect of consciousness in the dualistic sense or in the idealistic monistic sense are the ones that can account for that through QM, for example ..

 
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Libet says “Yet, if you look into this neural activity and neural structures involved you would not see anything  that looked like subjective experience.”  However, if you looked at DNA, you would not see anything that “looks like” animals or the phenotypical traits that DNA gives rise to. The function of DNA would seem equally unlikely or magical without knowing about messenger RNA, amino acids, proteins, hormones, and regulation of gene expression, or metabolism. Looking just at DNA, you cannot “see” meiosis, alleles, sexual combination of gametes, cell differentiation, embryology, or natural selection, or any number of things or processes that would complete the picture of how DNA does what it does. Without that additional information, you would be left wondering how you can possibly get a giraffe or an oyster or an oak tree from the same damn molecule. Expecting consciousness to physically resemble neurons and neurotransmitters is like expecting to see a tiny anatomical drawing of a giraffe inside every giraffe cell. Processes are not things.

Oh, Cheryl : you're comparing potatoes  with bananas ,once again : see above .

Even those physical or biological processes examples of yours can be dealt with as follows :

The role of DNA , for example has been overrated ,as biological determinism that makes no biological sense whatsoever has been refuted as well , not to mention that DNA alone cannot account for morphogenesis ,for example, cannot account for the origin of its life "information " either , to mention just that .



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Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter.

Wrong comparison again + yet other tautologies : material processes are not material, even though they are based on material processes lol :
All material or biological processes , including their emergent physical or biological processes ,remain material or biological .


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That's it in a nutshell. Fire away.

In a nutshell ? I am scared of when you're gonna elaborate on all that .The above took me quite some time to finish lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2014 20:03:38


In a nutshell ? I am scared of when you're gonna elaborate on all that .The above took me quite some time to finish lol


I thought that was rather concise, to summarize a years worth of my posts. Give us your view of consciousness in ten points, (And not simply 1) Materialism is false. 2) Materialism is false 3) Materialism is thus super duper false 4) Materialism is still false...)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 16/12/2014 20:42:32


In a nutshell ? I am scared of when you're gonna elaborate on all that .The above took me quite some time to finish lol


I thought that was rather concise, to summarize a years worth of my posts. Give us your view of consciousness in ten points, (And not simply 1) Materialism is false. 2) Materialism is false 3) Materialism is thus super duper false....)

Thanks for that , Cheryl : i was just kidding though : that post of yours was extremely interesting and challenging indeed :

Later then, Cheryl .
I did not just say that materialism was false ,i did more than that .
Well, we 're talking about consciousness and the brain ,so i have to say that materialism is false ,because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness, let alone explain it , and then go from there to the next stage .

Even Libet rejected materialistic monism and its identity theory, together with an army of scientists and philosophers  .They all moved on beyond materialism .

But you , guys, are still stuck  within the  fundamentally false classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view upon which materialism  was built .

QM moved on beyond that , but materialists still do try to resist what QM has been saying , by trying to rescue their refuted determinism, as well as their challenged classical localism and realism ,so .

Libet and others did move beyond materialistic monism and beyond its identity theory that's just a belief , no scientific theory , even though their alternatives were not proven conclusively , but that was a start anyway, an excellent one  .

On the other hand , even Schwartz whose books ' excerpts i have been posting did base his work on that of Stapp as well as on Libet's conscious mental field theory .

Regardless of whether or not the latter will turn out to be valid (it is not ) , LIbet did open a wide door for further research on the subject .

You should all do the same,instead of sticking to the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical physics of materialism , no matter what .

Libet was a pioneer indeed .His work is very fascinating . I respect him for that and more , despite his flaws (nobody is perfect or all-knowing .) .

Libet and other scientists like Eccles, Sperry , Penfield and others have opened a whole universe to science beyond materialism .That was their greatest achievement .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 16/12/2014 20:44:05


 before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
Wrong. Not "proven" but "modelled"

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After you look it was in a single box.
Yes

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It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box.
No.

Before the race, we had a good idea of which dog was likely to win, based on previous form - a probability model. Indeed the bookies have a reasonable wave function for all the dogs. After the race we know exactly which dog won. But our presence at the finishing post had nothing to do with it - he won by being faster than the others over the half mile that we didn't see.

If observation creates the reality of the atom in the box, then observation equally creates the nonexistence of the atom in the other box. But that is absurd - either the same action (opening the box) produces two completely different outcomes, or every observation creates an atom - which is patently untrue as it means that two simultaneous observations creates two atoms where only one existed beforehand. That would indeed be interesting: it would mean that the universe is doubling its mass every time an atom interacts with another - which is not observed.

So, put simply, in quantum mechanics "observation" does not have its colloquial meaning.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 16/12/2014 20:54:12
ps. Are you sure you know what a tautology is, Don? Where exactly is my reasoning circular in any of those ten points?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: domkarr on 17/12/2014 09:38:04
thanks for the replies

always happy to make people smile, it's a cheap and pleasant medicine I've found.

In one of the fields that I have studied, graphic design, there is a phenomena that I cannot remember the name for that advertisers use. usually in order to manipulate the client.
Also entertainment industry relies very heavily upon this.

It goes something like this (I cannot find the original experiment so I'm fictionalizing one). so lets say there is just a line on a blank page and nothing else and you show that line to a hundred people. Pretty much everyone in the group when asked will describe it as a line with little variation. but then you show the group a white line on a black background and suddenly the description variates and some people begin to use unusual descriptions like a worm in the dirt and so on.

then the same thing with a plain box on a blank white page, peoples description of the box variates very little as with the line but then when adding a color such as green people start to fill the box not with color but other things like leaves or vomit or they start to say that the box is sick or that the box holds a forest. a lot admittedly would describe the box as a simple green box.

make the box red and bounce on a computer screen and all of a sudden people give the box a personality to match an action the box is suddenly jumping mad. say if the box was blue and slowly moving up and down then the description might be something like a sad box creature plodding along a rainy road.

anyway the point is that; essentially the box hasn't really changed in any significant way but in the human mind the box has suddenly come to life and has a personality.
The more visual effects that are added the more character, story and variances are created by the group until a point is reached where just about every single person has a different story for the box.

anyway, the thing that I am getting at is, in a way this is similar to what I would personally think of as a consciousness (this is my limited thought on the matter and in no way a thesis). Is it not possible that although we are by and large, widely receptive of reality as being real and therefore quantifiable.

That it is entirely possible that the reason consciousness is not as quantifiable is because we are not all in our minds experiencing the same version of consciousness but more sort of making up our own individual version of consciousness? is what I am perplexed about.

I'm just curious to hear if this has been considered before or if there was anything in this line of thinking at all.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2014 10:35:56
That it is entirely possible that the reason consciousness is not as quantifiable is because we are not all in our minds experiencing the same version of consciousness but more sort of making up our own individual version of consciousness? is what I am perplexed about.

I'm just curious to hear if this has been considered before or if there was anything in this line of thinking at all.
This has been a major theme of philosophy since man started philosophising. Naturally, each of us is unique in genetic expression, developmental detail, and life experience, so our brains are unique; but, as Cheryl alluded to previously, we all have the same physical brain structures performing the same functions, our genetics are broadly similar, and for most of us, our basic experiences of the world are similar. Considering the evolutionary context, consciousness is a trait evolving in populations because it gives a selective advantage, and in humans has strong social and communication function, also implying fundamental similarities.

So it seems reasonable to assume that, despite differences in detail, our consciousnesses should be similar enough that we can gain advantage from understanding each other and sharing experience vicariously or empathically (the discovery of mirror neurons suggests this is important).

There will be some people that do have significant differences, due to developmental problems, etc. Your description of the way people respond to elaborations of simple images reminds me of an example of the difference between normative and autistic consciousness. Subjects are shown a short 2D animation where a small square, a circle, and a triangle are moving around a square 'box' or room with a single opening or 'door'. The circle repeatedly moves towards the door and as it does so, the triangle repeatedly moves to obstruct its entry. After a while, the square moves over to obstruct the triangle and the circle moves inside the 'room'.

Normative subjects generally describe this animation as an anthropomorphic story, giving the shapes motivation, and character, for example, with the 'bad guy' triangle bullying the circle and the 'good guy' square stepping in to stop the bullying and allow the circle to proceed (or some similar story). Autistic subjects are generally more literal, just describing the shapes moving, and not attributing motivation or character (i.e. not making a story of it).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2014 12:48:38
When you try to move on to QM that replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , your 'arguments " will fade or smelt  away like snow under the bright lovely warm smiling sun .



Nothing I've said is incompatible with a probabilistic universe. You are the one making a special exemption for consciousness from that universe.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 19:59:30
Cheryl :

You wanted 10 points .I will give you 20 .I am very generous ,so people say lol at least .

I will summarize my  20 points for you, regarding consciousness in its mutual interactions with its environment , including with the physical brain and with the rest of the physical reality , as follows :

1- Consciousness is obviously a non-physical process .Anyone who would say otherwise is either a fool , an idiot or a materialist lol .

2 - Human conscious free will does exist as such , in its limited mindful volitional effort of attention and action via the veto power , as Libet proved .Anyone who would think otherwise is either a fraud , an idiot , a fool or a classical determinist , not to mention a deterministic materialist who cannot but (mis )interpret QM materialistically .

3- The non-physical and non -local nature of consciousness has been proved as such by the related indirect empirical evidence,including by the world's leading neuroscientists and others such as  Benjamin Libet, Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper,Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry,Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin.....

4- Consciousness and the mind +their related processes have to work through their  physical brain , through  their related neuronal correlates ,so any damage to the latter ,either via injuries, diseases , genetic or other defect ... has to affect the expression of the former through the latter accordingly.

5- Consciousness can exist separately of its brain as many near death experiences , out of body experiences and more ...have proved .

6 - All materialistic physiological , material and psychological "explanations " (away) of the placebo /nocebo effects  , near death experiences , remote viewing and other psi phenomena , biofeedback training that enables one   to take control of one's own autonomic nervous system and more , the effects of meditation , mindfulness , the informed trained self-directed neuroplasticity ....have been refuted and do hold no water whatsoever .

7- As Libet and others admitted , there is nothing in science that contradicts the possible existence of a soul, an afterlife ...nothing in science that can contradict the belief that consciousness can take off ,after death , to some destination beyond this world, unless one would equate  science with  the false materialistic conception of nature ,  as the majority of scientists today have been doing , unfortunately enough  .

8- Correlation between the mind and its brain does not necessarily imply causation .There is no conclusive empirical evidence whatsoever that proves that the relationship between the mind and its brain is not a mere correlation .

9-Materialistic monistic identity or production theory is just a false belief , no scientific theory .

10- The emergent property phenomena theory regarding the origin , emergence and function of consciousness has not been proved conclusively ,including Libet's conscious mental field theory .
The mere activity of the brain can intrinsically never account for , let alone explain, consciousness thus .

11-QM had replaced the deterministic universe  of classical physics with the probabilistic one .

12-QM had replaced the causally closed universe of classical physics with the causally open one,or as Von Neumann proved through rigorous maths : a non-physical process is the one that might be collapsing the wave function via a non-mechanical causation : consciousness of the observer at the end of the measurement chain, since conscious observation has to be made at the end of that chain,after all  .

13-QM can never be understood without reference to the mind : the 2 major enigmas have been encountering  each other thus : consciousness and QM that are inseparable from each other .

14-QM had challenged locality and realism of classical physics, and had intoduced the limited notion of free will as well at the level of the measurements in QM ,as Bell's theorem and its related or stimulated experiments had proved  .

15-Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated the predictions of QM by challenging the classical realism :
The properties of the observed particles are NOT independent of their observation : the observed is not independent of the observer .

16-QM has already been proving the fact that any real progress in the scientific study of the physical universe  will be almost impossible without that in the study of consciousness ,since the former and the latter are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other .

17-Biological evolution can never account for the emergence nature function or orgin of consciousness ,since the latter cannot arise from the former .

18- The origin of life and the evolution of life are inseparable of the nature of life ,as well as of consciousness (Life cannot but be conscious ) ,meaning : since materialism is false , because it can intrinsically never account for, let alone explain, consciousness ,then any theories of the origin of life , the nature of life , the evolution of life must take into consideration and account for the existence of consciousness that's irreducible to matter or to brain activity .

19 - Since conscious life cannot be reduced to just material processes , then evolution cannot be just biological .

20- Considering all the above , all what materialistic science has been telling us about the origin of the universe , the origin of life , the evolution of life , the nature of life and more must be reexamined and revisited , to say the least .

I will add just one last point then :

Science is just a human social activity , and to some extent a cultural one also (see how the Eurocentric materialistic ideology  has been not only dominating in science , but has been also equated with science as well , without question, almost worldwide,since the second half of the 19th century at least  .), and since the old Cartesian dichotomy between the subjective and the objective , or between the observer and the observed is false , then some aspects of science cannot but be subjective also ,which means that naturalistic science, its naturalistic methodology , its naturalistic epistemology and naturalistic vocabulary as well (science has to be communicated through human language  anyway ) that do go beyond the materialistic ones,needless to add ,  must incorporate or integrate the subjective element in the rational empiricism of science thus .

There is a lot more to say on the subject , but i will leave it at then, for the time being at least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 20:18:46
When you try to move on to QM that replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , your 'arguments " will fade or smelt  away like snow under the bright lovely warm smiling sun .



Nothing I've said is incompatible with a probabilistic universe. You are the one making a special exemption for consciousness from that universe.

You do believe in the emergent property theory regarding the emergence function and origin of consciousness , don't you ?

I hope that you have already kissed goodbye that false materialistic belief that's no scientific theory : identity or production theory , thanks to Libet and others .

How can consciousness have any degree of causal efficacy , let alone any degree of free will then , if it had arisen  from just the determined physics and chemistry of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the brain ?

Don't tell me about that materialistic paradoxical top-down causation or about higher and lower levels of brain "processing " , since reductionist materialism cannot but allow a bottom- up causation , so any so-called top-down causation must be the latter in disguise .

Not to mention that even Libet could not prove how his conscious mental field theory can account for that conscious aware top-down causation through the veto power .

There is no way to account for all that and more than through acknowledging the fact that aware consciousness does play a central role in shaping its environment , including its physical brain and the rest of the physical reality ,as QM has been showing ,consciousness that's not only irreducible to brain activity , but can also  never be an emergent property of brain activity , and hence consciousness has to be a central and key component or key "building block " of the universe , not a property of matter and  not an emergent property of matter  .

Consciousness that's more primordial than matter can ever be . "Matter " that's the one that might be just an elaborate and persistent illusion that feels ,taste , looks, sounds ...real , not consciousness thus , who knows ?

No wonder that 0,00000...1 % of the universe , including ourselves thus , is made out of "matter " :

The whole human population of this planet can fit into an apple, for example, if all 'empty space " in it would be 'sucked out of it "  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 20:33:30


 before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.
Wrong. Not "proven" but "modelled"

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After you look it was in a single box.
Yes

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It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box.
No.

Before the race, we had a good idea of which dog was likely to win, based on previous form - a probability model. Indeed the bookies have a reasonable wave function for all the dogs. After the race we know exactly which dog won. But our presence at the finishing post had nothing to do with it - he won by being faster than the others over the half mile that we didn't see.

If observation creates the reality of the atom in the box, then observation equally creates the nonexistence of the atom in the other box. But that is absurd - either the same action (opening the box) produces two completely different outcomes, or every observation creates an atom - which is patently untrue as it means that two simultaneous observations creates two atoms where only one existed beforehand. That would indeed be interesting: it would mean that the universe is doubling its mass every time an atom interacts with another - which is not observed.

So, put simply, in quantum mechanics "observation" does not have its colloquial meaning.

I do not agree with the concept or term " creates "  , collapses or "freezes" the wave function would be more correct , i guess :

Rosenblum and Kuttner sum up the puzzle:

Quote : "Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.

However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the so-called measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.

After you look it was in a single box. It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed.

 But it was not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation. This hard-to-accept observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics" End quote

....................

Quote : "Physicist J. C. Polkinghorne sums up the metaphysical confusion many quantum theorists feel when he writes:
"It is a curious tale. All over the world measurements are continually being made on quantum mechanical systems. The theory triumphantly predicts, within its probabilistic limits, what their outcomes will be. It is all a great success. Yet we do not understand what is going on. Does the fixity on a particular occasion set in as a purely mental act of knowledge? At a transition from small to large physical systems? At the interface of matter and mind that we call consciousness?.
In one of the many subsequent worlds into which the universe has divided itself?".

Perhaps one interpretation is simpler or more logically consistent, or perhaps one of the interpretations is more aesthetically pleasing than the others. These considerations may provide philosophical reasons for preferring one over the others, but such reasons can hardly be considered decisive. However, a fascinating set of experiments performed by physicist

Helmut Schmidt and others appears to show that conscious intent can affect the behavior of otherwise purely random quantum phenomena. Could an experiment be designed to test the Von Neumann interpretation?
Consciousness is central to the von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics.

 According to this interpretation, some properties of quantum phenomena do not exist in any definite state except through the intervention of a conscious mind, at which point the wave function of possibilities collapses into a single state. The usual form of this interpretation allows the observer to collapse the wave function to a unique outcome but not to have any effect on what outcome actually occurs: the actual outcome is assumed to be randomly chosen by nature from the range of values provided by the wave function. But the experiments of German physicist Helmut Schmidt and other physicists indicate that the consciousness of the observer may not only collapse the wave function to a single outcome but may also help specify what outcome occurs by shifting the odds in a desired direction." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 20:53:11
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 21:01:31
Cheryl :

See my 20+ points here above and more . Thanks.Cheers .

alancalverd :

What do you make of Bell's theorem and its related experiments ? See above and more .

dlorde :

Since the materialistic identity or production theory regarding the origin function and emergence of consciousness is a false belief , no scientific theory , what alternatives for that can you propose ?

The emergent property theory on the same subject has not been proved conclusively (how can it ever be ) , so .

domkarr :

Welcome to the party lol

What theory of consciousness are you inclined to "fall for " .Thanks .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2014 21:11:55
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ?
I understand all the quotes you posted. What's your point?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2014 21:16:24
dlorde :

Since the materialistic identity or production theory regarding the origin function and emergence of consciousness is a false belief , no scientific theory , what alternatives for that can you propose ?
Since the theory of immaterial non-physical consciousness interacting with the brain is a self-contradictory, unevidenced example of magical thinking, what alternatives can you propose?  [::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 21:43:42
dlorde :

Since the materialistic identity or production theory regarding the origin function and emergence of consciousness is a false belief , no scientific theory , what alternatives for that can you propose ?
Since the theory of immaterial non-physical consciousness interacting with the brain is a self-contradictory, unevidenced example of magical thinking, what alternatives can you propose?  [::)]

Really ? See my 20+ points to our Cheryl   here above then .I am not quite sure about some of them at least .

Even the  world's leading neuroscientists such as Libet , Eccles, Penfield , Sperry and many others + philosophers such as Popper , Nagel,Chalmers , Searle  ... (regardless of the fact that the latter's philosophical theories are untestable + regardless of the fact that the emergent property theory in relation to consciousness has not been proved conclusively ...) + physicists such as Stapp and others + cognitive scientists such as Schwartz ( the latter did base his work on Stapp's work and Libet's conscious mental field theory ) and others did acknowledge the obvious fact that consciousness is a non-physical process at least .A fact you cannot but consider as being "magical " , since you are a materialist (just projecting thus lol ) .

Everything that goes beyond materialism is , per definition, "magical or supernatural " lol , no wonder .

On the other hand , dualism and idealism do make more scientific sense than materialism, so .

The non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness is compatible and consistent with QM, for example, see Von Neumann and the rest .

Try to break free from classical physics then upon which materialism was built .

See Stap's work ,for example, despite its flaws .to mention just that one ,or just Libet's work then .

Consciousness studies are still in their infancy stage though : take your pick : all materialist theories of consciousness must be either completely or partly eliminated from the competition , i guess, since the materialistic identity or production theory is false , and since materialism as a whole is also false : Take your pick thus :

http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html

P.S.: Forget about what happened earlier on .These kindda topics cannot but involve heated passions sometimes....nothing personal thus .My apologies .Thanks .Good night .Take care .Cheers .

Oh, yeah , Graziano , Damasio , Dehanne Stanislas ,Ben Goldacre Bad Science , Penrose -Hameroff , and many others ( Got both the kindle bad science ebook and the audio now .Read some of the placebo part . Have all those other books also .) ....and other materialists do have some interesting things to say , but it's such a waste of talent , intelligence , knowledge ....since they all base their theories on the identity or production theory belief .

Imagine what you,as a scientist ,  and those other materialist scientists can accomplish if they only would realize how false materialism is and move on beyond it like Libet , Eccles and the mentioned rest above did . Such a waste of talent , really .

Take care .Nice holidays by the way .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 17/12/2014 21:50:37
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ?
I understand all the quotes you posted. What's your point?

What i meant was/is :
You have (mis)interpreted them materialistically , i guess ,while they were so clear about what they were saying about classical realism ,classical determinism, and classical locality that have been challenged by QM and and by Bell's theorem and its related experiments ....Later , more  .

Gotta go now, thanks . Good night.Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2014 22:16:27
Really ? See my 20+ points to our Cheryl   here above then .I am not quite sure about some of them at least .
Those that made any kind of sense were either variations on the assertion 'materialism is wrong so you're wrong', or non-sequiturs. Hitchens's razor applies.


Quote
P.S.: Forget about what happened earlier on .These kindda topics cannot but involve heated passions sometimes....nothing personal thus .My apologies .Thanks .Good night .Take care .Cheers .
You've done that often enough that I'm well aware of your instability.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 17/12/2014 22:21:14
What i meant was/is :
You have (mis)interpreted them materialistically , i guess ,while they were so clear about what they were saying about classical realism ,classical determinism, and classical locality that have been challenged by QM and and by Bell's theorem and its related experiments ....Later , more 
More unevidenced assertion. By all means explain how I'm mistaken, or produce a reasoned argument. I won't hold my breath.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2014 22:48:04
Cheryl :

You wanted 10 points .I will give you 20 .I am very generous ,so people say lol at least .

I will summarize my  20 points for you, regarding consciousness in its mutual interactions with its environment , including with the physical brain and with the rest of the physical reality , as follows :



As I anticipated, most of your points for your view of consciousness were variations of "materialism is false."

You reject mounds of evidence regarding neuroscience as mere correlation (or the "image" of the process), but are not bothered in the least by the dismal lack of direct evidence (or even well replicated correlations!) for psi, souls, life after death, psycho-kinesis, consciousness outside the brain, etc.

You haven't convinced me that your amalgamation of quantum mechanics contributes anything to the understanding of consciousness itself, and it utterly fails to address any of the deficits you attributed to material explanation when you first began this thread.

Your particular brand of quantum woo is less of a means to describe any aspect of consciousness than it is an attempt to justify an irrational argument lacking evidence. If there is no determinism on any level, OR if consciousness is exempt from even probabilistic predictions, then one theory of consciousness is as valid as the next, equally likely, irrefutable, and simply a preference.

It would be essentially the same argument if you proposed that because of indeterminacy in the universe, astrology, voo-doo, crystal healing, homeopathy, magic spells -anything at all - must all be considered equally valid phenomena, since there is no basis for any criteria for facts or beliefs.

Basically your strategy is, if you can't construct a rational argument, attack rationality itself, and assert that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, fool, etc.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 17/12/2014 23:21:43
Sorry, Don, but repetitively quoting something I had carefully pointed out was obviously wrong, doesn't make it right.

We now have the capability to detect a single photon or particle with versions of the double-slit experiment. When we do so, it is in one place only. If we repeat the experiment, the next particle may turn out to be somewhere else. And when we do it lots of times, we get a distribution that looks exactly like the diffraction pattern of the wave function of a single particle. No problem: that is how nature works. I can't see why you get so excited by it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 17/12/2014 23:39:39
But the experiments of German physicist Helmut Schmidt and other physicists indicate that the consciousness of the observer may not only collapse the wave function to a single outcome but may also help specify what outcome occurs by shifting the odds in a desired direction." End quote

I question how many physicists besides Schmidt believe this. Is he this Helmut Schmidt?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmut_Schmidt_%28parapsychologist%29

If this were true, why wouldn't every scientist conducting the measurement get a completely different distribution?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 18/12/2014 13:18:39


11-QM had replaced the deterministic universe  of classical physics with the probabilistic one .

12-QM had replaced the causally closed universe of classical physics with the causally open one,or as Von Neumann proved through rigorous maths : a non-physical process is the one that might be collapsing the wave function via a non-mechanical causation : consciousness of the observer at the end of the measurement chain, since conscious observation has to be made at the end of that chain,after all  .

13-QM can never be understood without reference to the mind : the 2 major enigmas have been encountering  each other thus : consciousness and QM that are inseparable from each other .

14-QM had challenged locality and realism of classical physics, and had intoduced the limited notion of free will as well at the level of the measurements in QM ,as Bell's theorem and its related or stimulated experiments had proved  .

15-Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated the predictions of QM by challenging the classical realism :
The properties of the observed particles are NOT independent of their observation : the observed is not independent of the observer .

16-QM has already been proving the fact that any real progress in the scientific study of the physical universe  will be almost impossible without that in the study of consciousness ,since the former and the latter are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other .

Regarding 11-16:

I really didn’t ask for your 10 points in order to toss back at you the same criticisms I’ve made before. I was genuinely trying to piece together the logical steps in your own version of consciousness theory (as opposed to just materialism is false.)

Considering how critical you are of gaps, there would seem to be a lot of them. Perhaps you can fill them in for me.

Your theory seems to go something like this:
An observation in quantum mechanics requires a conscious human to make a choice in what to measure, and become aware of the result in order to collapse the wavefunction. --->

Consciousness can collapse wave functions without measuring devices made up of physical material. Not only is an observation “not  just,” it does not even require physical interactions, interference by particles. Immaterial thoughts alone will have the same effect. --->

Consciousness can collapse the wave functions in the brain without actually being aware that it is engaging in that the process. While Stapp used quantum effects mainly to explain how an unidentified conscious agency freely selects from a number of conscious choices, Hammeroff says that somehow  these options may bubble up from the subconscious neural machinery, and consciousness selects from among them, which is not entirely different from Libet or any materialist theory, (other than materialists see the executive function as being generated by the structures like the prefrontal cortex).But with any of these scenarios, the process itself is subconscious, and it only becomes conscious after the results are in. That is, I am not aware of where to go looking for these ideas or options, how or when they first took up residence. I am not aware of this underlying quantum activity or its application, as if  I were perusing and selecting from my closet which shirt I am going to wear that day. I am unaware of these underlying interactions (quantum or conventional) or the location or generation of these choices. When I have a “tip of the tongue” experience, I do not know where to go looking for the celebrity name that I can’t recall or why it suddenly pops in my head 3 hours later.

It would appear that Stapp and Hammeroff are replicating in their theory the set up of the interference experiment on a microscopic scale in the brain, as near as I can tell, even though the “choices” to be selected from (to measure or not measure) are manifestly conscious in the experiment, and the specific outcome is not actually controllable.

Or perhaps the above is not how your own theory works at all – that from your “consciousness collapses the wave function” assertion you  jump to the idea that consciousness is a kind of as yet undetected universal field,  that finds its way to my brain transceiver and controls me like a robot, but the real work of consciousness, all thought and deliberation, all subjective experience and qualia, etc occurs elsewhere though mechanisms that are unknown and undetected. Some aspect of this nonlocal consciousness is discrete and unique to “me” and no one else, separate from other biological robot's designated share of the universal consciousness.
That is quite a leap, and you haven’t actually presented any evidence from physicists, or even models from physicists who think the above might be true. If I’m confused about how your theory actually works, perhaps you could enlighten me and bridge those explanatory gaps.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/12/2014 18:17:08
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446745#msg446745 date=1418854587]
Really ? See my 20+ points to our Cheryl   here above then .I am not quite sure about some of them at least .
Those that made any kind of sense were either variations on the assertion 'materialism is wrong so you're wrong', or non-sequiturs. Hitchens's razor applies.

No way . You can do much better than that , dlorde , come on .

Quote
Quote
P.S.: Forget about what happened earlier on .These kindda topics cannot but involve heated passions sometimes....nothing personal thus .My apologies .Thanks .Good night .Take care .Cheers .
You've done that often enough that I'm well aware of your instability.

Wrong diagnosis , Dr.

That's certainly no instability , just the fact that i cannot stand stubborn dogmatism in the face of evidence , especially not in science and especially not from a scientist such as yourself ,that's all .

You have been claiming all along that your materialistic "all is brain" or that "we are just our brains"  beliefs have been supported by empirical evidence ,  while the converse was true ,so : see Libet on the subject then.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/12/2014 18:26:36
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg446748#msg446748 date=1418858503]
Sorry, Don, but repetitively quoting something I had carefully pointed out was obviously wrong, doesn't make it right.

Shall i then just take your word for  it above the expertise of those prominent physicists in question ?


Quote
We now have the capability to detect a single photon or particle with versions of the double-slit experiment. When we do so, it is in one place only. If we repeat the experiment, the next particle may turn out to be somewhere else. And when we do it lots of times, we get a distribution that looks exactly like the diffraction pattern of the wave function of a single particle. No problem: that is how nature works. I can't see why you get so excited by it.

Of course , no problem at all .No interpretation or measurement problem in QM at all ,silly me .
You're the only physicist who understands QM thus .Feynman was an idiot thus when he claimed that " I can safely say that nobody understands QM ..."

Thanks for your brilliant response ,Alan .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/12/2014 18:47:23
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446746#msg446746 date=1418854874]
What i meant was/is :
You have (mis)interpreted them materialistically , i guess ,while they were so clear about what they were saying about classical realism ,classical determinism, and classical locality that have been challenged by QM and and by Bell's theorem and its related experiments ....Later , more 
More unevidenced assertion. By all means explain how I'm mistaken, or produce a reasoned argument

I thought my posted quotes on the subject were clear enough : they couldn't be more clearer .

Besides proving non-locality to occur as QM predicted , Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge the classical realism too as QM predicted also  ,classical realism in the sense that the measured objects do have their own properties that are independent of the fact of whether or not they are observed : the so-called objective reality out there is independent of any observation : realism was thus challenged too ( Will the moon be still there when you don't look at it,as Einstein jokingly said . ) .

The latter fact was by the way Einstein's "quantum demon " , in the sense that he could not bring himself to accept it , not to mention non-locality or "spooky action at a distance " as Einstein so derisively said , the EPR argument with Bohr was thus all about trying to prove that QM was incomplete ...in order to rescue realism and locality at least  .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments did thus prove Einstein to be wrong in all details, as Bell said , and Bohr to be right .

Quote
I won't hold my breath.

Please, stop using these kindda irritating remarks that do really  "push my buttons" , thanks .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/12/2014 19:43:51
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446767#msg446767 date=1418908719]


11-QM had replaced the deterministic universe  of classical physics with the probabilistic one .

12-QM had replaced the causally closed universe of classical physics with the causally open one,or as Von Neumann proved through rigorous maths : a non-physical process is the one that might be collapsing the wave function via a non-mechanical causation : consciousness of the observer at the end of the measurement chain, since conscious observation has to be made at the end of that chain,after all  .

13-QM can never be understood without reference to the mind : the 2 major enigmas have been encountering  each other thus : consciousness and QM that are inseparable from each other .

14-QM had challenged locality and realism of classical physics, and had intoduced the limited notion of free will as well at the level of the measurements in QM ,as Bell's theorem and its related or stimulated experiments had proved  .

15-Bell's theorem and its related experiments corroborated the predictions of QM by challenging the classical realism :
The properties of the observed particles are NOT independent of their observation : the observed is not independent of the observer .

16-QM has already been proving the fact that any real progress in the scientific study of the physical universe  will be almost impossible without that in the study of consciousness ,since the former and the latter are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other .

Regarding 11-16:

I really didn’t ask for your 10 points in order to toss back at you the same criticisms I’ve made before. I was genuinely trying to piece together the logical steps in your own version of consciousness theory (as opposed to just materialism is false.)

I was also just genuinely trying to tell you about those points of mine too, that's all, Cheryl . Beware of false speculations then .

Don't imitate , innovate ,Cheryl .Don't imitate dlorde by reducing all my points to just "materialism is false " assertions . Our dlorde is the wrong guy or the wrong scientist to imitate ,since he can't let go of his cherished identity theory , to mention just that one , even in the face of evidence .

Quote
Considering how critical you are of gaps, there would seem to be a lot of them. Perhaps you can fill them in for me.

Your theory seems to go something like this:
An observation in quantum mechanics requires a conscious human to make a choice in what to measure, and become aware of the result in order to collapse the wavefunction. --->
Consciousness can collapse wave functions without measuring devices made up of physical material. Not only is an observation “not  just,” it does not even require physical interactions, interference by particles. Immaterial thoughts alone will have the same effect. --->

lol

Completely wrong : i did not say such non-sense  : your own misunderstanding of my own words thus .

Quote
Consciousness can collapse the wave functions in the brain without actually being aware that it is engaging in that the process.


Wrong again : your own misunderstanding of my words .


Quote
While Stapp used quantum effects mainly to explain how an unidentified conscious agency freely selects from a number of conscious choices,

Unidentified ? What are you talking about ? Did Stapp say that ?
Stapp talked about the mindful conscious aware maintained sustained volitional effort of attention that collapses certain brain states and hold them in place through the quantum Zeno effect and Hebb's law, grosso -modo thus  .
Stapp says that that happens at the level of calcium ions ...


Quote
Hammeroff says that somehow  these options may bubble up from the subconscious neural machinery, and consciousness selects from among them, which is not entirely different from Libet or any materialist theory,


The subconscious cannot be equated with your so-called neural "machinery " either  . The above does not really contradict Stapp's work on the subject anyway .Stapp does not say that consciousness "creates " those choices , possibilities , eventualities , probabilities or brain states out of nothing .

Quote
(other than materialists see the executive function as being generated by the structures like the prefrontal cortex)

Generated ? We have already talked about that : that's the  materialistic  identity theory false belief that's no scientific theory ,as Libet said .

Quote
.But with any of these scenarios, the process itself is subconscious, and it only becomes conscious after the results are in. That is, I am not aware of where to go looking for these ideas or options, how or when they first took up residence. I am not aware of this underlying quantum activity or its application, as if  I were perusing and selecting from my closet which shirt I am going to wear that day. I am unaware of these underlying interactions (quantum or conventional) or the location or generation of these choices. When I have a “tip of the tongue” experience, I do not know where to go looking for the celebrity name that I can’t recall or why it suddenly pops in my head 3 hours later.

You don't have to be aware of your brain activity , of the rest of your biology , to be able to function : you don't see your neurons doing what they do, you're not aware of that  .Stapp just tried to explain how things happen at the interface between the mind and its brain,at the level of calcium ions , others went even deeper or "lower " and placed the interface of the mind and its brain at the level of electrons ... .

Since we are made out of atoms , electrons ...,and since the whole universe , including ourselves thus , seem to be quantum "mechanical " , then neuroscientists have to let go of their classical assumptions regarding how the mind and brain work when studying them : materialist neuroscientists thus are still stuck within classical physics regarding the mind -body problem .

Classical physics that cannot account for the mind causal efficacy ,since classical physics is  both mechanical deterministic and also assume that the universe is causally closed , so the mind can have no causal efficacy on matter the brain body or on the rest of its environment , including on the physical reality , but QM says otherwise .

Furthermore, all those processes remain just "wave-like " possibilities , eventualities , probabilities ..waiting to be actualized by the very act of mindful conscious aware volitional effort of attention , the latter does not "create " them out of nothing , just chooses consciously what particular ones should be actualized through the volitional effort of attention and action = veto power : see above .


Quote
It would appear that Stapp and Hammeroff are replicating in their theory the set up of the interference experiment on a microscopic scale in the brain, as near as I can tell, even though the “choices” to be selected from (to measure or not measure) are manifestly conscious in the experiment, and the specific outcome is not actually controllable.

See above . You can hold in place whatever  brain states you choose to , but you can also decide to dismiss them for the "benefit " of others : you can decide to act upon them or not .You can choose to focus and act upon certain thoughts rather than on other ones : you can decide not only the outcome but you can also decide the direction of the outcome .

Quote
Or perhaps the above is not how your own theory works at all – that from your “consciousness collapses the wave function” assertion you  jump to the idea that consciousness is a kind of as yet undetected universal field,  that finds its way to my brain transceiver and controls me like a robot, but the real work of consciousness, all thought and deliberation, all subjective experience and qualia, etc occurs elsewhere though mechanisms that are unknown and undetected. Some aspect of this nonlocal consciousness is discrete and unique to “me” and no one else, separate from other biological robot's designated share of the universal consciousness.

Stapp's work is all about the fact that the mind of the observer is inseparable from the observed (QM showed that fact ) ,about the causal efficacy of the mind regarding its environment ,  from there he went on building the causal efficacy of the mindful conscious aware volitional effort of attention and action regarding the physical brain ,body and regarding the rest of the physical reality ,at the level of calcium ions through the Zeno effect and Hebb's law , once again .

Quote
That is quite a leap, and you haven’t actually presented any evidence from physicists, or even models from physicists who think the above might be true. If I’m confused about how your theory actually works, perhaps you could enlighten me and bridge those explanatory gaps.

What do you think i have done in that lengthy consciousness thread as well as in this thread by talking to you about Stapp's theory on the subject , about that of Schwartz that is based both on Stapp's work and on Libet's conscious mental field theory through the veto power . not to mention that Beauregard bases also his theories on Stapp's work , not to mention that the manifesto of this thread is based on Stapp's work and on those of other non-materialist scientists as well .

It's not that i  did not tell you about what  all those non-materialistic theories of consciousness were  all about , it is exactly the other way around : you either forgot about all those excerpts , other material and more ,or you just did not make the necessary effort to research about that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 18/12/2014 20:24:59
Don't imitate , innovate ,Cheryl .Don't imitate dlorde by reducing all my points to just "materialism is false " assertions .

No, that's pretty much the general consensus, not just dlorde.
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It's not that i  did not tell you about what  all those non-materialistic theories of consciousness were  all about , it is exactly the other way around : you either forgot about all those excerpts , other material and more ,or you just did not make the necessary effort to research about that .


Hahahahaha. Yeah, Don, that's it. I just forgot how you explained your theory so well before.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 18/12/2014 20:49:52
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446747#msg446747 date=1418856484]
Cheryl :

You wanted 10 points .I will give you 20 .I am very generous ,so people say lol at least .

I will summarize my  20 points for you, regarding consciousness in its mutual interactions with its environment , including with the physical brain and with the rest of the physical reality , as follows :



As I anticipated, most of your points for your view of consciousness were variations of "materialism is false."

That 's not true , Cheryl :
Did the world's leading neuroscientists and philosophers such as Ben Libet , -Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper, Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry, Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin, Thomas Nagel, Karl Popper , David Chalmers , John Searle and many others as well , did they not acknowledge the the non-physical nature of consciousness ??? ,for example ?
Did they not reject reductionist deterministic materialism ?
Did Libet ,for example , to mention just this one, not reject the materialistic monistic reductionist identity theory belief that's no scientific theory ?
Is this thread not all about a certain manifesto ?
I will leave it at then , for the time being at least . .

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You reject mounds of evidence regarding neuroscience as mere correlation (or the "image" of the process), but are not bothered in the least by the dismal lack of direct evidence (or even well replicated correlations!) for psi, souls, life after death, psycho-kinesis, consciousness outside the brain, etc.


I don't reject no evidence . I just reject all the materialist theories of consciousness, simply because they reduce the latter to just brain activity .
The materialistic identity theory , for example, has been supported by a big zero evidence ,No wonder , simply because it is just a belief , no scientific theory .
The emergent property theory regarding consciousness has also been supported by a big zero empirical evidence, while the dualistic and idealistic theories of consciousness were /are the ones that make more scientific sense , despite their flaws .
The latter is pretty normal, since we are ,once again, still in the infancy stage regarding consciousness studies .
As for psi phenomena, near death experiences .....they have been delivering a lots of evidence  .that can only accounted for if we would assume that consciousness is a non-physical and a non-local process that's neither irreducible to brain activity , nor can it be an emergent property of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain .
Furthermore , biological evolution can also not account for , let alone explain,   consciousness ,simply because the latter is both irreducible to biology and can also not be an emergent property from biology  ..

If you want me to display for you all the evidence that has been delivered by psi research ...I would  be more than willing to deliver that .I would even provide you with all the refutations of all the material, physiological and psychological materialistic "explanations " (away ) of psi phenomena, near death experiences , placebo/nocebo effects and the rest .

But then again , once again , i am not really interested in psi phenomena ..

I do focus mostly on the mind -body hard problem, simply because there is nothing more important than that : all the rest is relatively just details , since consciousness is a key and central player in the universe , including in our own lives , without which there can even be no science , without which we cannot try to understand the universe or ourselves , or as William James used to say ,or in words to the same effect at least : all the erst would fade away in comparison with finding out about how we are able to be aware of ourselves and this universe .


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You haven't convinced me that your amalgamation of quantum mechanics contributes anything to the understanding of consciousness itself, and it utterly fails to address any of the deficits you attributed to material explanation when you first began this thread.

See my prior reply to your post here above on the subject .
Since the whole universe ,including ourselves, seems to be quantum "mechanical " in the Von Neumannian sense where consciousness has a non-mechanical causal efficacy on the brain and on the rest of the physical reality , then scientists have to try to find out about how the mind works through its brain at the interface between mind and brain : neuroscientists must abandon classical physics in their attempts to study the brain mind relationship

Quote
Your particular brand of quantum woo is less of a means to describe any aspect of consciousness than it is an attempt to justify an irrational argument lacking evidence. If there is no determinism on any level, OR if consciousness is exempt from even probabilistic predictions, then one theory of consciousness is as valid as the next, equally likely, irrefutable, and simply a preference.

You just did not understand what i was saying .See my prior reply to your post here above on the subject .
Deterministic mechanical classical physics made no room for the causal efficacy of consciousness on the physical reality , needless to add : there is no way that consciousness can have any effects on the physical reality, including on its physical brain and body , if classical physics were not fundamentally false , and hence were not superseded by QM that had replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one , replaced the causally close universe of classical physics with the causally open one , replaced classical locality with non-locality and challenged classical realism that asserted that the objective reality out there (the physical reality thus ) is independent of the observer = the latter is inseparable from the former as QM showed = taking into consideration all the above + LIbet's work regarding the mindful volitional veto power at least ,  consciousness can thus have causal effects on its physical brain and body as well as on the erst of its environment , including on the rest of the physical reality through the mind -brain interface as well as through extrasensory effects ....

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It would be essentially the same argument if you proposed that because of indeterminacy in the universe, astrology, voo-doo, crystal healing, homeopathy, magic spells -anything at all - must all be considered equally valid phenomena, since there is no basis for any criteria for facts or beliefs.

Don't confuse potatoes with apples :
I am only interested in the brain -body problem , and in how the minds might work through the brain, how the mind has causal effects on the physical brain and on the erst of the physical reality ...

What materialistic science has been telling us thus about our minds , about the origin of life , the evolution of life , ....have to be revisited and questioned radically , simply because deterministic reductionist materialism that was built upon the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical physics is false, whether you like it or not
 .
Quote
Basically your strategy is, if you can't construct a rational argument, attack rationality itself, and assert that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot, fool, etc.

You're just projecting , Cheryl :

What rationality are you talking about then ? What rationality is there , what empirical evidence is there that support the false materialistic conception of nature that has been equated with science = a big zero .

P.S.: I wonder why and i am extremely puzzled by the fact that you , guys , do see more value ,where there is none , in your own irrational materialistic beliefs than in the empirical evidence that has been contradicting them .How come ? Amazing .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 19/12/2014 11:24:45
Besides proving non-locality to occur as QM predicted , Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge the classical realism too as QM predicted also  ,classical realism in the sense that the measured objects do have their own properties that are independent of the fact of whether or not they are observed : the so-called objective reality out there is independent of any observation : realism was thus challenged too ( Will the moon be still there when you don't look at it,as Einstein jokingly said . ) .
Yes, we know. I've already addressed this, but I'll repeat it anyway.

Quantum mechanics (Quantum Field Theory) accounts for our material world.  It's the most precise and most tested theory we have ever had.

QFT and the experiments that physicists have done to test it, tells us that there are no unknown fields or forces that can interact significantly with humans or their brains - only gravity and electromagnetism are relevant.

You may not like it, but mother nature cares not a jot - she does what she does. The plain fact is, the quantum mechanics that you've been showing such enthusiasm for directly contradicts your 'immaterial consciousness' idea.

You might find that getting a better understanding of the empirical evidence about consciousness will help; this does require that you're prepared to change your mind according to the evidence. The first half of this paper, previously posted by Cheryl, gives a good summary of the current position: The Biological Function of Consciousness (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4122207/).

It's possible that some macro-scale QM effect may contribute to the generation of consciousness, as in optimizations found elsewhere in biology; but no convincing argument has yet been made that it's necessary, no plausible models have been proposed, and it seems unlikely given the short evolutionary timescale. Nevertheless, it's possible.

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Quote
I won't hold my breath.
Please, stop using these kindda irritating remarks that do really  "push my buttons" , thanks .
Oh grow up.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 19/12/2014 12:40:25
Did the world's leading neuroscientists and philosophers such as Ben Libet , -Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper, Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry, Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin, Thomas Nagel, Karl Popper , David Chalmers , John Searle and many others as well , did they not acknowledge the the non-physical nature of consciousness ??? ,for example ?
Well, no, they didn't. Looking at that list, at least three spring to mind, Libet, Searle, and Popper, that explicitly acknowledge that consciousness arises from brain activity (and Chalmers has an open mind).

Libet proposed the 'Conscious Mental Field' (CMF) to explain how the mental arises from the physical brain, saying, "The CMF is not a Cartesian dualistic phenomenon; it is not separable from the brain. Rather, it is proposed to be a localizable system property produced by appropriate neuronal activities, and it cannot exist without them". He called it 'non-physical' because it isn't made of 'stuff', it is patterns of neuronal activity.

Searle said consciousness is a real subjective experience, caused by the physical processes of the brain (he called this view 'biological naturalism'). In 'The Problem of Consciousness', he says, "brain processes cause conscious processes".

Popper, in 'Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind', said consciousness is an evolved behaviour:
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Ecological conditions like those that favor the evolution of open behavioral programs sometimes also favor the evolution of the beginnings of consciousness, by favoring conscious choices. Or in other words, consciousness originates with the choices that are left open by open behavioral programs.

Let us look at various possible stages in the emergence of consciousness.

As a possible first stage there may evolve something that acts like a centralized warning, that is, like irritation or discomfort or pain, inducing the organism to stop an inadequate movement and to adopt some alternative behavior in its stead before it is too late, before too much damage has been done. The absence of a warning like pain will lead in many cases to destruction. Thus natural selection will favor those individuals that shrink back when they receive a signal indicating an inadequate movement; which means, anticipating the inherent danger of the movement. I suggest that pain may evolve as such a signal; and perhaps also fear.

As a second stage, we may consider that natural selection will favor those organisms that try out, by some method or other, the possible movements that might be adopted before they are executed. In this way, real trial-and-error behavior may be replaced, or preceded, by imagined or vicarious trial-and-error behavior. The imagining may perhaps initially consist of incipient efferent nervous signals, serving as a kind of model, or symbolic representation of the actual behavior, and of its possible results.

Richard Dawkins has brilliantly developed some such speculations about the beginnings of mind in considerable detail.18 The main points about them are two. One is that these beginnings of mind or consciousness should be favored by natural selection, simply because they mean the substitution of imagined or symbolic or vicarious behavior for real trials which, if erroneous, may have fatal consequences. The other is that we can here apply the ideas of selection and of downward causation to what is clearly a choice situation: the open program allows for possibilities to be played through tentatively — on a screen, as it were — in order that a selection can be made from among these possibilities. [See R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 62f].

As a third stage, we may perhaps consider the evolution of more or less conscious aims, or ends: of purposeful animal actions, such as hunting. Unconscious instinctive action may have been purpose-directed before, but once vicarious or imagined trial-and-error behavior has started, it becomes necessary, in situations of choice, to evaluate the end state of the imagined behavior. This may lead to feelings of avoidance or rejection — to anticipations of pain — or to feelings of eager acceptance of the end state; and the latter feelings may come to characterize a consciousness of aim or end or purpose. In connection with open choices, a feeling may evolve of preference for one possibility rather than another; preference for one kind of food, and thus for one kind of ecological niche, rather than another.

You need to understand that the fact that you don't like something doesn't make it false, and continually asserting what you'd like to be true doesn't make it true - neither do false appeals to well-known authorities by misrepresenting their views.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 19/12/2014 19:05:12
<Popper Quote>...
Baseless speculations .

<Popper Quote>...
lol The conscious aware perception or feeling of pain cannot be reduced to its neuronal correlates ,as biological evolution can never intrinsically account for , let alone, explain conscious awareness in general , simply because the latter is irreducible to the former , and simply because the latter cannot emerge from the former , no way : there is no empirical evidence that even implies or suggests that .

<Popper Quote>...
Speculative fairy tales . Where is the alleged empirical evidence that allegedly supports that = a big zero .

<Popper Quote>...
Dawkins' simplistic bullshit is not even worth discussing , his refuted genetic determinism even less , his corresponding neo-Darwinism does not hold much water .

<Popper Quote>...
Why do you confuse baseless speculations with science then ?

<Popper Quote>...
I thought that the so-called blind random unguided lottery of evolution through the natural selection was / is purposeless : why are you trying to introduce teleology where it does not belong ?

Lol! Ask Popper - they're not my words you're criticising, that's the Popper quote. You're casting scorn at a direct quote from the very authority you claimed support from... oh dear.

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You need to understand that all your materialistic non-sense is no science = has been supported by a big zero evidence .
Yawn - the evidence is all around you. You're a living example of it yourself (and a very entertaining one  [;D]).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 19:18:43
"Mind Time The Temporal Factor in Consciousness-Benjamin Libet" : "General Views on Mind and Matter ":

Quote : "At one pole is the determinist materialist position. In this philosophy, observable matter is the only reality and everything, including thought, will, and feeling, can be explained only in terms of matter and the natural laws that govern matter. The eminent scientist Francis Crick (codiscoverer of the genetic molecular code) states this view elegantly (Crick and Koch, 1998):

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions,
your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons (nerve cells).’”
According to this determinist view, your awareness of yourself and the world around you is simply the by-product or epiphenomenon of neuronal activities, with no independent ability to affect or control neuronal activities.

Is this position a “proven” scientific theory? I shall state, straight out, that this determinist materialist view is a belief system; it is not a scientific theory that has been verified by direct tests. It is true that scientific discoveries have increasingly produced powerful evidence for the ways in which mental abilities, and even the nature of one’s personality, are dependent on, and can be controlled by, specific structures and functions of the brain.

 However, the nonphysical nature of subjective awareness, including the feelings of spirituality, creativity, conscious will, and imagination, is not describable or explainable directly by the physical evidence alone.
As a neuroscientist investigating these issues for more than thirty years, I can say that these subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function.

 This is in contrast to my earlier views as a young scientist, when I believed in the validity of determinist materialism. That was before I began my research on brain processes in conscious experience, at age 40. There is no guarantee that the phenomenon of awareness and its concomitants will be explainable in terms of presently known physics.

In fact, conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you would not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena. Only a report by the individual who is experiencing such phenomena could tell you about them.

Francis Crick demonstrated his scientific credentials by terming
his physicalist-determinist view an “astonishing hypothesis,” awaiting future developments that might produce more ade-quate answers. But many scientists and philosophers appear not to realize that their rigid view that determinism is valid is still based on faith. They really don’t have the answer.

Actually, even the nonmental physical world exhibits uncertainties (quantum theory) as well as chaotic behaviors that make a deterministic predictability of events impossible. At a small conference on these issues, the eminent theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner was asked whether physics could ever explain consciousness.
Wigner replied, “Physics can’t even explain physics,” let alone consciousness.
 The more meaningful question, therefore, would be: Does the phenomenon of conscious experience, and its relation to the physical brain, fully obey the known rules and laws of the physical world? (More on this later.).

At the opposite pole from determinist materialism are beliefs that the mind is separable from the brain (dualism). A religious version of dualism may maintain a belief in the existence of a soul that is somehow part of the body during life, but can separate and take off to variously defined destinations of immortality after death.
I shall state, at once, that the latter is absolutely tenable as a belief.

The same is true for most other philosophical and religious proposals. There is nothing in all of scientific evidence that directly contradicts such beliefs. Indeed, they do not fall within the purview of scientific knowledge (see Karl Popper’s position, described earlier).
A beautiful example of the scientific process was given by Einstein’s
proposal that light is subject to the same gravitational influences as matter.

 However, to demonstrate the gravitational effect on light requires that the light pass near an object of immense mass, one far greater than that available on earth. The difficulty in providing a proper test prevented full acceptance of Einstein’s proposal. Fortunately, around 1920 a complete solar eclipse occurred.

The light from a star located on the other side of the sun passed near the sun on its way to earth and was visible during the eclipse. Indeed, the star’s apparent position was altered, as the light was bent from its path by the “pull” of the sun. Had the light not been bent, Einstein’s proposal would have been falsified (contradicted)..." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 19:23:06
Is There Any Scientific Approach to the Mind-Brain Problem? :

Excerpt from the same above mentioned book .

Libet assumed  that consciousness was  an emergent phenomena , David Cooper would not agree with  that , i guess .

Libet had some very interesting things to say anyway .  He was a great mind indeed .

Quote : " ...Is there some way to arrive at convincing knowledge of how conscious subjective experience arises? Is there a way to do this that is based on observable evidence?.

We must first recognize that the brain is the physical “organ” for conscious and unconscious mental functions. For life as we know it, the necessity of the appropriate function and structure of the brain is incontrovertible. There is no objective evidence for the existence of conscious phenomena apart from the brain.
(A belief in a separable conscious soul is not excluded, as noted previously.) .
Perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence that it is the brain and not any other bodily structure that is crucial lies in the effects of a complete severing (transaction) of the spinal cord at its junction with the brain.

This unfortunate event occurs not infrequently in accidents in which the neck is “broken,” as in the recently publicized case of the actor Christopher Reeves. The patient remains the same conscious person he was before the accident. However, he loses all control of body movements from the neck down, including of breathing movements, as well as all sensations that are carried by spinal nerves to the body.

Interruption of the nerve pathways that connect the brain with the spinal cord is the reason for the loss of sensory and motor control below the neck. The person does remain aware of all the important sensations arising with intact nerve connections to the head. And, if the brain is functional, the person retains awareness of his thoughts, feelings, and self.
On the other hand, damage to the brain itself can result in the loss of various conscious functions, or even a permanent loss of consciousness, depending on the sites of the damage.

 It is the loss of brain function that truly defines the end of conscious human life, that is, death. This is so even when the rest of the body, including the spinal cord, skeletal muscles, and the heart, are still functioning. Indeed, under this condition of brain death, the other organs or tissues may be taken for transplantation to other people.

In earlier times, the heart was often regarded as the seat of consciousness and of emotional feelings (see Aristotle). But replacing one heart with another (even one that is a mechanical device) does not alter an individual’s emotional makeup or experience.

So, what sorts of factual answers to the questions about conscious experience could we hope to pursue successfully, and what answers have we now achieved? One important question—how brain activities are related to conscious and unconscious mental function—is, in principle, amenable to descriptive and experimental investigation. But to do that, we need to define conscious subjective experience, and do so in a way that is operational—
that is, practical for study.

We start with the stubborn fact that a conscious subjective experience
is directly accessible only to the individual who has the experience. Consequently, the only valid evidence for an external observer must come from an introspective report of the experience by the subject.

Introspective Reports of Subjective Experience :.

Scientists, like philosophers, have speculated about how the brain and mind are connected. But, until recently, very few, including neuroscientists, have attempted direct experimental studies of how cerebral nerve cell activities are involved in the production or appearance of conscious, subjective experiences.
Why? Apart from the technical difficulties for such experiments on human subjects, a philosophical impediment has played a major role.

Studies that require data from introspective reports of subjective experiences have tended to be taboo in the academic community.
That negative attitude was influenced in large part by the dominance, during the first seventy-five years of the twentieth century, of behaviorism in psychology and of logical positivism in philosophy.

These viewpoints hold that only directly observable events are admissible as scientific data. Introspective reports are only indirectly related to the actual subjective experiences; that is, they are reports of something not directly observable by the investigator and are untrustworthy observations.
However, unless scientists can find a way to obtain valid introspective
reports, they can never study the profoundly important question of how our conscious mind is related to our brain.

The late great physicist Richard Feynman stated, “I’m just looking to find out more about the world . . . Whatever way it comes out, it’s nature, and she is going to come out the way she is! Therefore, when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we’re going to find.”

We must, of course, admit that an introspective report does not provide absolute evidence about the experience. (Paren-thetically, physicists agree that even hard-nosed physical measurements
cannot be made with absolute certainty.) .

The only subjective experience that one can be absolutely certain about is one’s own experience—as noted by René Descartes, Bishop Berkeley, and others. Yet, in our ordinary social interactions we commonly accept introspective reports of experiences by other individuals as meaningful reflections of their experiences, although we may try to evaluate the validity of these reports.
To be sure, the conversion and transmission of an experience into a report may involve some distortion.

However, it is possible to limit the kinds of experiences being studied to very simple ones that do not have emotional content. These experiences can even be tested for reliability. In our own investigations we used very simple sensory experiences that had no emotional aspects that might lead to distortion.

 Furthermore, we could test the reliability of the reports, by changing the sensory inputs in ways under the investigator’s control and comparing the different reports elicited in this way. It should have been clear, therefore, that a way to study subjective experiences scientifically can be achieved.

I should add that an introspective report need not be made by a verbal, oral statement. A nonverbal report, like tapping an appropriate key to indicate whether a sensation had been subjectively felt, can be quite acceptable, providing the subject understands that this indicator in fact refers to a subjective, introspective experience.

I may add here that when I was an undergraduate, I realized that verbal expressions are not completely adequate representations of reality. They are only approximations, limited by the meanings attributable to the words.

 I decided, therefore, to try to think about reality in a nonverbal way—that is, to try to grasp the real situation in a fully integrated and intuitive way. In my subsequent thinking about experimental problems, I did actually tend to view them in nonverbal ways.
The development of cognitive psychology in the 1970s onward became a major factor in shifting scientific opinion on the usefulness of introspective reports.

Cognitive scientists wanted to deal with questions about what people knew and felt, and how that was related to reality. To do so, they had to have people tell them about their subjective experiences. I should note that there are still traditional behaviorists among psychologists, and that a large group of philosophers adhere to a movement related to behaviorism called functionalism.

Starting in the late 1950s, I did not wait for cognitive science to
support my use of introspective reports in our studies. I approached
this issue as a physiologist, with no stake in behaviorism or functionalism. My attitude was, from the start, that conscious experience could be studied and treated like any other observable function of the brain. As an experimental scientist, it was, and is, my firm conviction that a person’s report of a conscious experience should be regarded as primary evidence.

 This evidence should not be altered or distorted so as to be made to conform to a preconceived view or theory about the nature of consciousness. Unless they can be convincingly affected or contradicted by other evidence, properly obtained introspective reports of conscious experience should be looked on like other kinds of objective evidence.

I was, in fact surprised when I found that a controlling body of opinion among behavioral scientists did not agree with my view. Indeed, a visiting group of such individuals, representing a study section of the National Institutes of Health, told me I was not studying a suitable topic. They denied my application for a grant.

Interestingly, I found no such rejection among the world’s
leaders in experimental neurophysiology, such as Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper, Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry, Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin.

These researchers regarded our work as praiseworthy and pioneering—sentiments also expressed during a major symposium entitled “Brain and Conscious Experience” in 1964. Sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and chaired by Sir John Eccles, this symposium was held in the fifteenth-century house of Pius IV, inside the Vatican grounds. Pope Paul took us seriously enough to hold a formal audience with us.

The twenty-five or so members of the symposium were seated on one side of a great hall, and a roughly equal number of Cardinals faced us on the other side in their red robes. When the Pope came down to greet us, the Catholic scientists knelt and kissed his ring, and the rest of us shook his hand. I still have the thick red leather nameplate with gold lettering from that meeting. Since then, I have been a participant and speaker in a number of additional interesting symposia on consciousness. There was, in fact, another one in the Vatican in 1988, again organized by Sir John Eccles.

Besides neurophysiologists, leading philosophers such as the
late Sir Karl Popper, Thomas Nagel, and the late Stephen Pepper also agree with my views concerning how to study conscious subjective experience. Stephen Pepper was Professor of Philosophy at the University of California–Berkeley.

Pepper was a strong advocate of so-called identity theory, which holds that the externally observable physical quality of the brain and the inner quality of subjective experience are simply different phenomenological aspects of a single “substrate.” Nevertheless, Pepper listened carefully to my discussion of my team’s views and findings; he even concluded that our evidence for a retroactive referral of sensory timing might argue against the validity of identity theory..."End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 19:27:52
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader .Cheryl   did understand the above at least :
Do not confuse property dualism with substance dualism either .


Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446567#msg446567 date=1418573514]
"Mind-Time The Temporal Factor -Benjamin Libet" : "General

I will say that Don is correct in that Libet is critical of reductionist materialism, as expressed in the excerpt and else where in the book. Libet  does not automatically exclude the possibility of the immaterial or even things like souls, life after death, etc.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 19:39:56
From the same above mentioned Libet's book :

"...How does the categorically different nonphysical phenomenon of subjective experience come from the physical activities of nerve cells? This problem has been termed the “hard problem” by philosopher David Chalmers (1996).

Chalmers (1995) tried to solve this problem by proposing a double-aspect theory of information. He postulated information as having both physical and phenomenal aspects. Experience would emerge from or be identical with the phenomenal aspect.

This proposal, which appears to be a version of identity theory, is unconvincing for various reasons (Libet, 1996). Identity theory posits that there is a common “substrate” for all reality, and this substrate has an observable “outer quality” and an “inner quality.”

The outer quality is what we see and measure as the physical brain; the inner quality of subjective experience is not accessible to an external observer. But identity theory, including the Chalmers’s version of it, is not testable; it is therefore not a scientific theory. A different testable solution, the unified conscious mental field, is presented in this chapter.?"

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 20:49:39
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446822#msg446822 date=1418992825]
Did the world's leading neuroscientists and philosophers such as Ben Libet , -Lord Adrian, Sir John Eccles, Herbert Jasper, Charles Phillips,Wilder Penfield, Roger Sperry, Frederic Bremer, Ragnar Granit, Anders Lundberg, Robert Doty, and Howard Shevrin, Thomas Nagel, Karl Popper , David Chalmers , John Searle and many others as well , did they not acknowledge the the non-physical nature of consciousness ??? ,for example ?
Well, no, they didn't. Looking at that list, at least three spring to mind, Libet, Searle, and Popper, that explicitly acknowledge that consciousness arises from brain activity (and Chalmers has an open mind).

They did all acknowledge the non-physical nature of consciousness , once again , in the non-substance dualistic sense , that is,as they assumed that consciousness was irreducible to brain activity also  .

Don't confuse property dualism with substance dualism ,and don't confuse Libet's conscious mental field theory = emergent property theory, regarding the origin emergence and function of consciousness , with the materialistic monistic identity theory either .

Libet 's theory says that consciousness as a non-physical process does arise from brain activity indeed .That's not the same as equating consciousness with brain activity , not the same as assuming that brain activity produces consciousness, as the materialistic identity theory assumes .The latter that's just a belief , no scientific theory ,as Libet said here above : see his specific 2 excerpts here above : i did repost them for you .

On the other hand , Chalmers ' property dualism  is a kindda panpsychism and another version of identity theory in disguise , despite the fact that Chalmers tried to refute reductionist materialistic monism .He even said that science does neither require materialism nor does it need to be materialistic .

Libet said the following about that : see above the rest of that quote :
Quote : "Chalmers (1995) tried to solve this problem by proposing a double-aspect theory of information. He postulated information as having both physical and phenomenal aspects. Experience would emerge from or be identical with the phenomenal aspect." End quote .

Searle also acknowledges the non-physical nature of consciousness ,not in the sense of substance dualism thus ,even though he says that consciousness arises from brain activity .His theory of consciousness is untestable ,as Libet said .

Popper had even co-authored a book with Eccles "The self and its brain " :
Here below is a summary of the book in question from amazon.com :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Self-Its-Brain-Interactionism/dp/0415058988

Quote : " The relation between body and mind is one of the oldest riddles that has puzzled mankind. That material and mental events may interact is accepted even by the law: our mental capacity to concentrate on the task can be seriously reduced by drugs. Physical and chemical processes may act upon the mind; and when we are writing a difficult letter, our mind acts upon our body and, through a chain of physical events, upon the mind of the recipient of the letter. This is what the authors of this book call the 'interaction of mental and physical events'. We know very little about this interaction; and according to recent philosophical fashions this is explained by the alleged fact that we have brains but no thoughts. The authors of this book stress that they cannot solve the body mind problem; but they hope that they have been able to shed new light on it. Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments; and Popper with his highly controversial theory of 'World 3'. They show that certain fashionable solutions which have been offered fail to understand the seriousness of the problems of the emergence of life, or consciousness and of the creativity of our minds.
In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interaction on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues.
In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex.
Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their opinions." End quote .

All those world 's leading neuroscientists ,together  with Popper , Nagel and other philosophers did support the work of Libet .The latter who acknowledged the non-physical nature of consciousness , in the non -substance dualistic sense , in his conscious mental field theory or emergent property theory that has not been proved conclusively either,as well as the fact that consciousness is irreducible to brain activity  .

Quote
Libet proposed the 'Conscious Mental Field' (CMF) to explain how the mental arises from the physical brain, saying, "The CMF is not a Cartesian dualistic phenomenon; it is not separable from the brain. Rather, it is proposed to be a localizable system property produced by appropriate neuronal activities, and it cannot exist without them". He called it 'non-physical' because it isn't made of 'stuff', it is patterns of neuronal activity.

At the end of the above mentioned book of his , Libet talks about an interesting imaginary discussion between himself and Descartes ,while mentioning some errors that were committed by Damasio in the latter's book about the errors of Descartes .

Anyway , modern substance dualism has not much to do with the old and false Cartesian dualism : the former says that the mind and matter  are 2 different substances or processes that are not only inseparable from each other , but they also interact mutually with each other + the mind has a causal effect on matter or on the physical brain and body , while being influenced by them  , unlike what Descartes said about all that .

Furthermore , modern dualism says also that the observed so-called objective reality is inseparable from the consciousness of the observer : the mind is inseparable from the physical reality : the observer and the observed are inseparable , the subjective and the objective are inseparable: there is no such thing as the independent observer or independent observed = they are intertwined with each other  .

As of Libet's conscious mental field theory or emergent property theory , Libet acknowledges the non-physical nature of consciousness that's irreducible to brain activity , but emerges from it .

Libet even said in one of his above displayed excerpts that there is nothing in science that contradicts the substance dualistic or religious beliefs ,in the sense that there is nothing in science that contradicts the belief assumptions that consciousness might take off ,after death , to some destination beyond this world .

Furthermore , LIbet said also that brain activity is a necessary condition for consciousness , but that does not mean that the latter cannot exist without its brain : many near death experiences, out of body experiences ...proved the fact that consciousness can exist even when cardiac arrest occurs and brain activity is non-existent .

Quote
Searle said consciousness is a real subjective experience, caused by the physical processes of the brain (he called this view 'biological naturalism'). In 'The Problem of Consciousness', he says, "brain processes cause conscious processes".

Libet said consciousness emerges from brain activity , not that the former is caused by the latter , or that the latter produces or is identical with the former ,since Libet says that consciousness is a non-physical process that's irreducible to brain activity but emerges from it .

See above .The point is : all those mentioned neuroscientists and philosophers did acknowledge the non-physical nature of consciousness (that's a good start in the right direction ) , in the non-substance dualistic sense indeed , even though they assumed that consciousness can arise from the brain as an alleged emergent phenomena .

The latter's assumption has not been proved conclusively anyway (how can it ever be ) .

Quote
Popper, in 'Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind', said consciousness is an evolved behaviour:Ecological conditions like those that favor the evolution of open behavioral programs sometimes also favor the evolution of the beginnings of consciousness, by favoring conscious choices. Or in other words, consciousness originates with the choices that are left open by open behavioral programs.

Biological evolution can intrinsically never account for consciousness , let alone explain it , simply because consciousness is neither reducible to brain activity , neither is it brain activity , nor is it an emergent property from biology .


Quote
Let us look at various possible stages in the emergence of consciousness.

lol

Quote
As a possible first stage there may evolve something that acts like a centralized warning, that is, like irritation or discomfort or pain, inducing the organism to stop an inadequate movement and to adopt some alternative behavior in its stead before it is too late, before too much damage has been done. The absence of a warning like pain will lead in many cases to destruction. Thus natural selection will favor those individuals that shrink back when they receive a signal indicating an inadequate movement; which means, anticipating the inherent danger of the movement. I suggest that pain may evolve as such a signal; and perhaps also fear.

The conscious aware feeling of pain or perception of pain is both irreducible to brain activity and cannot emerge from it : that's the main issue in consciousness studies , if you haven't noticed yet : the gap between the 2 is unbridgeable : you can't jump from the one to the other .

All scientists or philosophers who do base their sand castles on that major false premise are wrong : consciousness allegedly arising or emerging from brain activity : those are just beliefs or baseless speculations = fairy tales.

Quote
As a second stage, we may consider that natural selection will favor those organisms that try out, by some method or other, the possible movements that might be adopted before they are executed. In this way, real trial-and-error behavior may be replaced, or preceded, by imagined or vicarious trial-and-error behavior. The imagining may perhaps initially consist of incipient efferent nervous signals, serving as a kind of model, or symbolic representation of the actual behavior, and of its possible results.

Non-sense  based on the previous non-sense , on false premises . .Consciousness is neither reducible to biology or brain activity , nor can it emerge from it : that's the main issue in consciousness studies .

Quote
Richard Dawkins has brilliantly developed some such speculations about the beginnings of mind in considerable detail.18 The main points about them are two. One is that these beginnings of mind or consciousness should be favored by natural selection, simply because they mean the substitution of imagined or symbolic or vicarious behavior for real trials which, if erroneous, may have fatal consequences. The other is that we can here apply the ideas of selection and of downward causation to what is clearly a choice situation: the open program allows for possibilities to be played through tentatively — on a screen, as it were — in order that a selection can be made from among these possibilities. [See R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 62f].

Oh, please , spare me those  simplistic speculative evolutionary non-sense fairy tales  of Dawkins ( I read enough about that ) that make no biological sense either : his genetic determinism has been refuted and his rigid and dogmatic neo-Darwinism does hold not much water whatsoever either .

Quote
As a third stage, we may perhaps consider the evolution of more or less conscious aims, or ends: of purposeful animal actions, such as hunting. Unconscious instinctive action may have been purpose-directed before, but once vicarious or imagined trial-and-error behavior has started, it becomes necessary, in situations of choice, to evaluate the end state of the imagined behavior. This may lead to feelings of avoidance or rejection — to anticipations of pain — or to feelings of eager acceptance of the end state; and the latter feelings may come to characterize a consciousness of aim or end or purpose. In connection with open choices, a feeling may evolve of preference for one possibility rather than another; preference for one kind of food, and thus for one kind of ecological niche, rather than another.

I thought that the so-called blind random unguided evolution through the natural selection was purposeless lol

Quote
You need to understand that the fact that you don't like something doesn't make it false, and continually asserting what you'd like to be true doesn't make it true - neither do false appeals to well-known authorities by misrepresenting their views.

See above : you're the one who doesn't understand what those well -known "authorities " have been saying ,regarding their non-substance dualism acknowledgments of the non-physical nature of consciousness at least ,and regarding the fact that it is irreducible to brain activity or biology ,physics and chemistry .

I was not appealing to their 'authority " either : science is above the latter .Even prominent scientists and philosophers can be wrong too .

I was just referring to the empirical or rational sides of their work , in the above mentioned sense at least .

I do accept only what's been proved as such via empirical evidence thus .

So,you need to understand the fact that your materialistic non-sense has been supported by a big zero evidence , and hence it is false .Whether i like something or not is not the point thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 19/12/2014 21:02:29
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader .Cheryl   did understand the above at least :
Do not confuse property dualism with substance dualism either .


Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446567#msg446567 date=1418573514]


I will say that Don is correct in that Libet is critical of reductionist materialism, as expressed in the excerpt and else where in the book. Libet  does not automatically exclude the possibility of the immaterial or even things like souls, life after death, etc.



Yes, he did criticize reductionist materialism in his argument for emergent properties. That does not equal a ringing endorsement of any mystical idea you care to propose. That does not mean evidence for non local consciousness that interacts with the brain as a transceiver and exists independently of it. 

Despite the fact you've quoted the introduction to his book 3 or 4 times, you seem to have completely misread or ignored the last few paragraphs of that excerpt. That souls, life after death and other religious ideas are tenable as "beliefs" "since there is nothing in all of scientific evidence that directly contradicts such beliefs", but "they do not fall within the purview of scientific knowledge (see Karl Popper’s position, described earlier)." That is the whole point of the Popper reference to Einstein and the eclipse, that while you may not be able to exclude a belief, for that belief to be a scientific theory, it must be testable, and be confirmed empirically. Which is what every other scientist says as well!

How can you ignore that statement? And how can you ignore the other ones like:

"Nondeterminism—which is the view that conscious will may,at times, exert effects not in accord with known physical laws— is of course also a nonproven speculative belief."

and

"There is no objective evidence for the existence of conscious phenomena apart from the brain."

"On this last point, we must recognize that there is no evidence to support the concept of separate entity status, which can only be a metaphysical belief."




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 21:06:58
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 21:14:44
Excerpt from "Quantum Enigma ..." : Consciousness and Reduction :

Quote : " With consciousness encountered in the quantum experiment, or even just arising in the quantum theory, we can see a problem with reductionism.The reductionist perspective seeks to reduce the explanation of a complex system to its underlying science. For example, one can seek explanations of psychological phenomena in biological terms. Biological phenomena can be seen as ultimately chemical. And no chemist doubts that chemical phenomena are fundamentally the interactions of atoms obeying quantum physics. Physics, itself, can supposedly rest firmly on primitive empirical ground.

In chapter 3 we represented this view with the reductionist pyramid. That view of the primitive empirical ground on which physics rests is challenged by quantum mechanics, where physics ultimately rests on observation. Observation somehow involves consciousness, whatever that is. Therefore, add a somewhat cloudy consciousness at the base of our reductionist pyramid in Figure 17.2. For all practical purposes, science will always be hierarchical, with each level in the hierarchy needing its own set of concepts.

Nevertheless, this new perspective on reduction can change the way we perceive the scientific enterprise."End quote

Old "pyramid " :

Psychology
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Empirical evidence

New scientific hierarchy : New "pyramid " : Fig 17.2 :

Psychology
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Consciousness
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 19/12/2014 21:56:00
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446852#msg446852 date=1419022949]
dlorde :

You're a lousy reader .Cheryl   did understand the above at least :
Do not confuse property dualism with substance dualism either .


Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446567#msg446567 date=1418573514]


I will say that Don is correct in that Libet is critical of reductionist materialism, as expressed in the excerpt and else where in the book. Libet  does not automatically exclude the possibility of the immaterial or even things like souls, life after death, etc.



Yes, he did criticize reductionist materialism in his argument for emergent properties. That does not equal a ringing endorsement of any mystical idea you care to propose. That does not mean evidence for non local consciousness that interacts with the brain as a transceiver and exists independently of it.


Who said otherwise then ? Did i say that Libet endorsed those beliefs or your distortions of what they mean ?

Oh, forgot : see this regarding the self and its brain by Popper and Eccles :

Download the PDF , if you want to :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2448303/pdf/ulstermedj00079-0013.pdf

"...Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments..."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Self-Its-Brain-Interactionism/dp/0415058988

Quote from amazon.com :

"The relation between body and mind is one of the oldest riddles that has puzzled mankind. That material and mental events may interact is accepted even by the law: our mental capacity to concentrate on the task can be seriously reduced by drugs. Physical and chemical processes may act upon the mind; and when we are writing a difficult letter, our mind acts upon our body and, through a chain of physical events, upon the mind of the recipient of the letter. This is what the authors of this book call the 'interaction of mental and physical events'. We know very little about this interaction; and according to recent philosophical fashions this is explained by the alleged fact that we have brains but no thoughts. The authors of this book stress that they cannot solve the body mind problem; but they hope that they have been able to shed new light on it. Eccles especially with his theory that the brain is a detector and amplifier; a theory that has given rise to important new developments, including new and exciting experiments; and Popper with his highly controversial theory of 'World 3'. They show that certain fashionable solutions which have been offered fail to understand the seriousness of the problems of the emergence of life, or consciousness and of the creativity of our minds.
In Part I, Popper discusses the philosophical issue between dualist or even pluralist interaction on the one side, and materialism and parallelism on the other. There is also a historical review of these issues.
In Part II, Eccles examines the mind from the neurological standpoint: the structure of the brain and its functional performance under normal as well as abnormal circumstances. The result is a radical and intriguing hypothesis on the interaction between mental events and detailed neurological occurrences in the cerebral cortex.
Part III, based on twelve recorded conversations, reflects the exciting exchange between the authors as they attempt to come to terms with their opinions."End quote .

Furthermore,what's so mystical about the non-physical and non -local nature of consciousness interacting with its brain mutually then ? Even QM has been encountering consciousness : the interpretation or measurement or observation problem in QM : see above .

QM that can never be understood without reference to the mind , once again .

Who said that consciousness can exist independently of its brain ,in this life at least , under normal circumstances ,that is ? ( Many near death experiences ,for example, proved the fact that consciousness can exist even after cardiac arrest and brain clinical "near death " by the way .)

Quote
Despite the fact you've quoted the introduction to his book 3 or 4 times, you seem to have completely misread or ignored the last few paragraphs of that excerpt. That souls, life after death and other religious ideas are tenable as "beliefs" "since there is nothing in all of scientific evidence that directly contradicts such beliefs", but "they do not fall within the purview of scientific knowledge (see Karl Popper’s position, described earlier)."

Did i say otherwise ?
I did not misread them ? That's just your false speculation  or false assumption on the subject . I used them even against the non-sense of dlorde, if you haven't noticed that yet , in my won words that is .

I said that Libet assumed that there is nothing in science that can contradict the belief that consciousness can take off to some destination beyond this world, after death .

I will even tell you now that Libet was wrong about assuming that the beliefs in the existence of the soul, and in the after life do fall outside the purview of scientific knowledge :

Near death experiences and other consciousness studies have been delivering some indirect evidence , yet not conclusively , that prove the existence of the after -life , and that prove the non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness or the soul or whatever that's both irreducible to brain activity and cannot be an emergent phenomena from biology or from brain activity .

Quote
That is the whole point of the Popper reference to Einstein and the eclipse, that while you may not be able to exclude a belief, for that belief to be a scientific theory, it must be testable, and be confirmed empirically. Which is what every other scientist says as well!

The above latter claims of mine were proved , indirectly and yet not conclusively , through near death experiences and through other scientific consciousness studies .

By the way , what's so testable or provable about either the identity theory or the emergent property theory regarding consciousness at least ? = a big zero evidence .


Quote
How can you ignore that statement?


See above .I did not ignore it .Don't project your own misunderstanding of my words and your wild speculations about that on me .

Quote
And how can you ignore the other ones like:

"There is no objective evidence for the existence of conscious phenomena apart from the brain."


I did not ignore that either .I used them even against the non-sense of dlorde, if you haven't noticed that yet , in my won words that is .

Well, who said otherwise ? In normal circumstances ,consciousness and its brain are inseparable and cannot exist without each other .

That consciousness takes off to another destination beyond this world , after death , well, that happens after death , not in this life at least .

But then again , see my emphasis on near death experiences studies on the subject as mentioned above .

Quote
"On this last point, we must recognize that there is no evidence to support the concept of separate entity status, which can only be a metaphysical belief."

What separate entity ? The one in your imagination, i guess :
Once again : consciousness and its brain are inseparable in this life at least .Who said otherwise ? ,although near death experiences have shown that consciousness can exist without its brain after the clinical "near death " of the brain .

Strange Kafkaian accusations again.Amazing .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 19/12/2014 22:25:06

Who said otherwise then ? Did i say that Libet endorsed those beliefs or your distortions of what they mean ?...

Who said that consciousness can exist independently of its brain ,in this life at least , under normal circumstances ,that is ?

Did i say otherwise ?
Uh, yeah you have, repeatedly. Back peddling at it's worst. Do I really have to go back and dig up all your quotes??

Quote

What separate entity ? The one in your imagination, i guess :
Once again : consciousness and its brain are inseparable in this life at least .Who said otherwise ? ,although near death experiences have shown that consciousness can exist without its brain after the clinical "near death " of the brain .

Strange Kafkaian accusations again.Amazing .


hahahaha. That sentence is as Kafkaian as it gets!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 19/12/2014 23:39:12
...
Libet 's theory says that consciousness as a non-physical process does arise from brain activity indeed .... not the same as assuming that brain activity produces consciousness...
So consciousness arising from brain activity is different from brain activity producing consciousness - how?   [::)]

Quote
The point is : all those mentioned neuroscientists and philosophers did acknowledge the non-physical nature of consciousness (that's a good start in the right direction ) , in the non-substance dualistic sense indeed , even though they assumed that consciousness can arise from the brain as an alleged emergent phenomena .
So what are you now saying - have you changed your mind and now espouse property dualism instead of substance dualism? Have you now come to terms with consciousness as an emergent phenomenon of brain activity?

If not, why all this harping on about it?

Personally, I'm quite happy with a property dualistic perspective; I agree that consciousness can reasonably be seen as an emergent phenomenon of brain activity - I'm prepared to accept labelling it as 'non-physical' in that sense (although I think it's misleading, with a risk of equivocation with the 'non-physical' of substance dualist immaterialism). But if you're moving in that direction, or thinking about it, congratulations, I think you'll find it rewarding.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 19/12/2014 23:44:26
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :


I understand every word. It's bunkum. See reply #890 above.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 00:04:11

Who said otherwise then ? Did i say that Libet endorsed those beliefs or your distortions of what they mean ?...

Who said that consciousness can exist independently of its brain ,in this life at least , under normal circumstances ,that is ?

Did i say otherwise ?
Uh, yeah you have, repeatedly. Back peddling at it's worst. Do I really have to go back and dig up all your quotes??

Quote

What separate entity ? The one in your imagination, i guess :
Once again : consciousness and its brain are inseparable in this life at least .Who said otherwise ? ,although near death experiences have shown that consciousness can exist without its brain after the clinical "near death " of the brain .

Strange Kafkaian accusations again.Amazing .


hahahaha. That sentence is as Kafkaian as it gets!

I think you're right Cheryl; I also noticed he seemed to have changed his position. He's not going to admit it, but what he's saying now is different from what he said at the outset:

"consciousness is neither in the brain nor is it brain activity"

"What you don't understand is that no physical reality or matter can exist without consciousness = "matter " exists only when observed , so, consciousness precedes the existence of "matter ""

But then he also said:

".. I am NOT here to "defend " or talk about the work of those non-materialist scientists thus ,also because it would cost me too much time and energy i cannot afford ."

Cough...  [;D]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: domkarr on 20/12/2014 04:26:51
thanks for the concise reply dlord and sorry if i was jumping up on horse that has already been ridden to death, i am just trying to catch up with everyone else.

I hope it's not too annoying explaining to the newbie but could I ask another?

You see I was sort of trying to come to grips with what is currently accepted as being a human consciousness, sub-consciousness and what is the mind and what is the brain.
As I understand it, although I am probably wrong, The consciousness is a kind of intangible substantial entity that our brains have built or evolution built in order to guide the mind and body through life.

then there is the sub-conscious, a secondary but in no way lesser form of automated guiding tool, that our brains and bodies use to navigate life.

Then we have the mind and that is yet another tool but one that is used by the brain more as a data bank of sorts and also the reference for human emotive responses, learned behaviors and so on.

then there is the housing for these tools, the hardware, the brain, where various chemical and electrical functions (much like a computer) allow us to assemble reality by using these functions in conjunction with the aforementioned tools to create the marvelous machine that is us (humanity).

I just wanted to make sure that I'm on the same page as everyone else and haven't invented my own tangent from a lack of structured learning. As what I have learned on this subject is mainly from personal research and discussion.

To tell the truth I don't think there is anything particularly spiritual about the brain but in saying that I have had thoughts that maybe there are certain things that science may never be able to answer or we won't find the answer before we all go extinct.  [8]

As mr. quichotte pointed out, how do we explain instances where people have outer body experiences?

I have heard a bit on the subject and there are all sorts of ideas about it but has there ever been a definite answer?  [???]
for instance how can anyone say for certain that this is not some kind of telekinetic response to death?
Or as Don says a force not yet found? 

Even as I wrote that I felt a bit like a fool for bringing it up as i have trouble dealing with something i cannot prove. but I'm seeking to catch up with the conversation and find better understanding of the topic, not to throw doubt on anyone and certainly I don't think I need to fuel the conversation  [;D]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 20/12/2014 05:08:12
I think you are definitely on the right page, Domkarr.

Wikipedia's not a bad place to start for an overview of philosophical and scientific approaches to the question and you can then clink the links or google the names of people whose ideas interest you.
For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 20/12/2014 06:19:23
I was reading this article today about experiments that show crows can understand analogies. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141218131427.htm

It also made me think more about the consciousness and evolution. In philosophy and the field of AI, people often make a hard and firm distinction between mere sensation/detection and consciousness, while there would not appear to be that same strict division in evolutionary phylogeny at all. Rather there's a broad and gradual spectrum of consciousness from single celled organisms to more complex animals. I'm not saying amoebas are conscious, but if one believes there is a strict division between sensation and sentience, tell me where the cut off point is. Trace the evolutionary past of a conscious animal and show me at what point they weren't. If apes have consciousness, what about cats, rabbits or mice, or sparrows?  Which ones have qualia? Does it matter how many types of qualia a species has?  (Hofstadter discusses some of this in his book "I am a Strange Loop)

What's more,  very diverse or widely genetically separated groups, (like humans and crows in the example above) may share some attributes or abilities,  but not others.  There is convergent evolution with physical traits. But what I find interesting about convergent evolution of specific traits associated with consciousness is that it demonstrates that our view of consciousness as this unified, either/or, all or nothing "thing" is likely wrong. Consciousness is not some additional, special stuff that was somehow tacked on to a system so it could experience itself- it is the system. Consciousness has an evolutionary past and rudimentary forms. Substance dualist philosophers who only look at the human mind and all its grandeur and insist there is no way it can be produced by cellular activity- there is no way you can get this from that - ignore evolution which says, yes you can, and this is how it happened.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00667/full

The evolutionary and genetic origins of consciousness in the Cambrian Period over 500 million years ago

 Todd E. Feinberg1* and Jon Mallatt2
1Neurology and Psychiatry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, NY, USA
2School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

Abstract:
Vertebrates evolved in the Cambrian Period before 520 million years ago, but we do not know when or how consciousness arose in the history of the vertebrate brain. Here we propose multiple levels of isomorphic or somatotopic neural representations as an objective marker for sensory consciousness. All extant vertebrates have these, so we deduce that consciousness extends back to the group's origin. The first conscious sense may have been vision. Then vision, coupled with additional sensory systems derived from ectodermal placodes and neural crest, transformed primitive reflexive systems into image forming brains that map and perceive the external world and the body's interior. We posit that the minimum requirement for sensory consciousness and qualia is a brain including a forebrain (but not necessarily a developed cerebral cortex/pallium), midbrain, and hindbrain. This brain must also have (1) hierarchical systems of intercommunicating, isomorphically organized, processing nuclei that extensively integrate the different senses into representations that emerge in upper levels of the neural hierarchy; and (2) a widespread reticular formation that integrates the sensory inputs and contributes to attention, awareness, and neural synchronization. We propose a two-step evolutionary history, in which the optic tectum was the original center of multi-sensory conscious perception (as in fish and amphibians: step 1), followed by a gradual shift of this center to the dorsal pallium or its cerebral cortex (in mammals, reptiles, birds: step 2). We address objections to the hypothesis and call for more studies of fish and amphibians. In our view, the lamprey has all the neural requisites and is likely the simplest extant vertebrate with sensory consciousness and qualia. Genes that pattern the proposed elements of consciousness (isomorphism, neural crest, placodes) have been identified in all vertebrates. Thus, consciousness is in the genes, some of which are already known."

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 14:44:41
thanks for the concise reply dlord and sorry if i was jumping up on horse that has already been ridden to death, i am just trying to catch up with everyone else.

I hope it's not too annoying explaining to the newbie but could I ask another?
Feel free - it's good to have fresh questions and another viewpoint - this thread is a bit stale!

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As I understand it, although I am probably wrong, The consciousness is a kind of intangible substantial entity that our brains have built or evolution built in order to guide the mind and body through life.

then there is the sub-conscious, a secondary but in no way lesser form of automated guiding tool, that our brains and bodies use to navigate life.

Then we have the mind and that is yet another tool but one that is used by the brain more as a data bank of sorts and also the reference for human emotive responses, learned behaviors and so on.

then there is the housing for these tools, the hardware, the brain, where various chemical and electrical functions (much like a computer) allow us to assemble reality by using these functions in conjunction with the aforementioned tools to create the marvelous machine that is us (humanity).
There aren't really any 'wrong' definitions or meanings for these labels - it's really a moveable feast, with different meanings dependent on context and usage. If there's any field that supports Wittgenstein's idea that meaning is usage, it's this one. What counts is that we try to understand what others are talking about.

I see the mind as what the brain does (excluding the low-level automatic body management stuff); the 'mental faculties' in general. It can be awake, asleep, conscious, unconscious, focused, unfocused, emotional, etc. Consciousness is a particular state of mind, a mode of brain operation, typically involving (in humans) awareness, responsiveness, a sense of self, a sense of agency and control, etc. The subconscious is where the bulk of the activity occurs, updating the consciousness with significant events on a 'need to know' basis. Subconscious processing (System 1 thought (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory)) involves multiple highly parallel processes of which we are not aware, producing fast one-shot results; conscious processing (System 2) provides a scratchpad or workspace where these results can be held, manipulated and sent for further System 1 processing. This deliberative System 2 thinking is slow, sequential, and effortful, and we are consciously aware of it.

Beyond this, interpretations vary wildly, but it seems clear, from medical and experimental evidence, that consciousness isn't quite what it seems to be; the sense of self is explicitly constructed from the mapping & integration of a number of sensory streams (hence OBEs), and the sense of agency is largely retrospective - we become aware of decisions & actions by subconscious processes and have the sense they were consciously made.

I currently see consciousness having a monitoring and coordinating role with the subconscious processes, using their processing facilities for resolving non-trivial problems, forward planning, controlling social interaction, etc.   I see the aware self as a simplified, idealised model of the system (the mind as a whole), used in planning and 'what-if' scenarios, and playing the role of an interface for social interaction - a kind of social avatar or representative. As a model and representative of the whole system, it must be given a sense of agency or it would feel like a helpless passenger, and a sense of self awareness arises out of the constructed sense of self and the reflective need to model its own behaviour (e.g. in forward planning).

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As mr. quichotte pointed out, how do we explain instances where people have outer body experiences?

I have heard a bit on the subject and there are all sorts of ideas about it but has there ever been a definite answer?  [???]
The evidence suggests the OBEs are due to anomalous functioning of the area(s) of the brain dealing with the location component of the sense of self. Streams of sensory information from eyes, ears (balance), and proprioception (position of arms & legs, skin touch sensors, etc) are used to maintain a dynamic sense of location and orientation. This is part of what is called Multisensory Integration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisensory_integration). If you mess with these data streams, you can cause problems, for example, if balance information from the ears conflicts with information from the eyes, you may become disoriented or nauseous. If you mess with visual information and touch information you can get identification errors, e.g. the rubber hand illusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7MJvk); this is a minor example of the Body Transfer Illusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion) (bear with me!), where, using a similar technique you can be deceived into thinking you are in a different body entirely.

If you mess with the brain areas where this sensory integration occurs and the sense of location is generated, you can get all kinds of weird effects, including the sense of being located outside the body (often above it, for some reason), or having no bodily boundaries and being located everywhere (psychoactive drugs may do this - giving a sense of 'cosmic consciousness'). Most OBEs occur under extreme circumstances of stress, pain, oxygen deprivation, influence of drugs, seizures, epilepsy, etc., where there is likely to be some impairment to general levels of consciousness, and even partial dream state. In these circumstances, visual imagery may be constructed to match the sensation, either from existing knowledge and expectations or from scratch (e.g. floating above the scene of the accident or operating theatre, or floating through an alien landscape). It's not clear exactly when these images and experiences actually occur, as they are always recalled after the fact; there may be components from prior to losing consciousness and/or as consciousness returns. Partial memories and gaps may be filled in and elaborated on recall. OBEs of varying intensity have been artificially generated by stimulating areas of the brain (http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/3/550.abstract) with transcranial magnetic stimulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) (TMS).

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... how can anyone say for certain that this is not some kind of telekinetic response to death?
Or as Don says a force not yet found?
People who are dead don't report any experiences (people commonly report they died or were declared clinically dead, but these days it's generally an exaggeration for their heart stopping temporarily, or just an example that the clinical assessment of death isn't 100% reliable). Nevertheless, when death is a possibility, there is often severe physiological or mental stress, which could be expected to generate anomalous experiences.

As for telekinesis, there is no convincing evidence for it, despite over a hundred years of attempts to find some (although many fraudsters have been exposed), and no plausible mechanism (the brain barely produces enough electrical potential to be detectable by sensitive EEG electrodes on the scalp). The clincher is that our best physical model of the world (quantum field theory) tells us there are no unknown fields or forces that are long range enough and strong enough to significantly interact with matter at human scales (see The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k) for fascinating details).

Bear in mind also that there are probably Nobel prizes and a whole new field of serious research awaiting any scientists who can demonstrate reliable and repeatable instances of telekinesis, or any 'paranormal' phenomena, and millions of dollars in prize challenge awards from skeptic organizations. There is also a whole industry generating revenue from unproven paranormal claims.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 14:53:34
... What's more,  very diverse or widely genetically separated groups, (like humans and crows in the example above) may share some attributes or abilities,  but not others.  There is convergent evolution with physical traits. But what I find interesting about convergent evolution of specific traits associated with consciousness is that it demonstrates that our view of consciousness as this unified, either/or, all or nothing "thing" is likely wrong. Consciousness is not some additional, special stuff that was somehow tacked on to a system so it could experience itself- it is the system. Consciousness has an evolutionary past and rudimentary forms. Substance dualist philosophers who only look at the human mind and all its grandeur and insist there is no way it can be produced by cellular activity- there is no way you can get this from that - ignore evolution which says, yes you can, and this is how it happened.
Yes, I absolutely agree; the evolutionary context is crucial to understanding the basis and origins of consciousness. Taking a limited anthropocentric view is bound to raise puzzling questions and arguments from incredulity in the absence of such context.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 17:45:19
... What's more,  very diverse or widely genetically separated groups, (like humans and crows in the example above) may share some attributes or abilities,  but not others.  There is convergent evolution with physical traits. But what I find interesting about convergent evolution of specific traits associated with consciousness is that it demonstrates that our view of consciousness as this unified, either/or, all or nothing "thing" is likely wrong. Consciousness is not some additional, special stuff that was somehow tacked on to a system so it could experience itself- it is the system. Consciousness has an evolutionary past and rudimentary forms. Substance dualist philosophers who only look at the human mind and all its grandeur and insist there is no way it can be produced by cellular activity- there is no way you can get this from that - ignore evolution which says, yes you can, and this is how it happened.
Yes, I absolutely agree; the evolutionary context is crucial to understanding the basis and origins of consciousness. Taking a limited anthropocentric view is bound to raise puzzling questions and arguments from incredulity in the absence of such context.

You have to try to prove first that consciousness can arise from the biological evolution lol , from physics and chemistry .

Clearly , the biological evolution  can never intrinsically account for either the origin , nature or emergence of consciousness , let alone for  its 'evolution " .

Furthermore, all consciousness studies have not been able so far , if ever , to answer how aware consciousness emerges ,in the first place to begin with, what its origin might be .....: that's still the main unresolved issue , not a matter of or argument from  incredulity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 17:56:26
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg446864#msg446864 date=1419027906]

Who said otherwise then ? Did i say that Libet endorsed those beliefs or your distortions of what they mean ?...

Who said that consciousness can exist independently of its brain ,in this life at least , under normal circumstances ,that is ?

Did i say otherwise ?
Uh, yeah you have, repeatedly. Back peddling at it's worst. Do I really have to go back and dig up all your quotes??

I am not aware of any such thing .You have just misunderstood what i said , i guess .Feel free to remind me of those specific quotes that allegedly support your claims here above .

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What separate entity ? The one in your imagination, i guess :
Once again : consciousness and its brain are inseparable in this life at least .Who said otherwise ? ,although near death experiences have shown that consciousness can exist without its brain after the clinical "near death " of the brain .

Strange Kafkaian accusations again.Amazing .


hahahaha. That sentence is as Kafkaian as it gets!

What do you mean exactly ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 18:21:09

Who said otherwise then ? Did i say that Libet endorsed those beliefs or your distortions of what they mean ?...

Who said that consciousness can exist independently of its brain ,in this life at least , under normal circumstances ,that is ?

Did i say otherwise ?
Uh, yeah you have, repeatedly. Back peddling at it's worst. Do I really have to go back and dig up all your quotes??

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What separate entity ? The one in your imagination, i guess :
Once again : consciousness and its brain are inseparable in this life at least .Who said otherwise ? ,although near death experiences have shown that consciousness can exist without its brain after the clinical "near death " of the brain .

Strange Kafkaian accusations again.Amazing .


hahahaha. That sentence is as Kafkaian as it gets!

I think you're right Cheryl; I also noticed he seemed to have changed his position. He's not going to admit it, but what he's saying now is different from what he said at the outset:

"consciousness is neither in the brain nor is it brain activity"

You're both completely wrong about that:
I haven't changed my position ,since there is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports either the materialistic identity theory , nor the so-called emergent property theory regarding the nature, origin emergence and function of consciousness : the latter that's indeed neither in the brain nor is it brain activity , let alone that it can be an emergent phenomena from the latter .

I was just responding to your earlier claims, that's all


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"What you don't understand is that no physical reality or matter can exist without consciousness = "matter " exists only when observed , so, consciousness precedes the existence of "matter ""

That was said within a certain particular context .It's not what i appears to be thus , outside of that specific context .

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But then he also said:

".. I am NOT here to "defend " or talk about the work of those non-materialist scientists thus ,also because it would cost me too much time and energy i cannot afford ."

This whole thread is just about a certain manifesto thus .One can check that out via the main link of this thread .

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Cough...  [;D]

To your health .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 18:31:04
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :


I understand every word. It's bunkum. See reply #890 above.

Try to address  that specific post of mine then ,or rather try to refute it lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 19:03:06
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446871#msg446871 date=1419032352]
...
Libet 's theory says that consciousness as a non-physical process does arise from brain activity indeed .... not the same as assuming that brain activity produces consciousness...
So consciousness arising from brain activity is different from brain activity producing consciousness - how?   [::)]

You're deliberately trying to play some nasty tricks here :

Consciousness arising from brain activity = the latter "producing" the former, like the interactions between hydrogen and oxygen atoms "produce " the wetness of water ,or like the ocean "produces " its waves ...= emergent property theory regarding consciousness = the 2 are 2 different processes , brain activity is material or physical and consciousness is non -physical in the property dualistic sense  .
On the other hand , Identity theory says  brain activity = consciousness : equating between the 2 .

There is not much 'difference " between the identity theory and between emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain  indeed anyway : that's exactly what i thought .

This following lecture in PDF form will tell you the relative "difference" between the 2 above mentioned bullshit theories lol :

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2448303/

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The point is : all those mentioned neuroscientists and philosophers did acknowledge the non-physical nature of consciousness (that's a good start in the right direction ) , in the non-substance dualistic sense indeed , even though they assumed that consciousness can arise from the brain as an alleged emergent phenomena .
So what are you now saying - have you changed your mind and now espouse property dualism instead of substance dualism? Have you now come to terms with consciousness as an emergent phenomenon of brain activity?

Sweet dreams, Alice lol

I haven't changed my position .I was just responding to your earlier claims, that's all .

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If not, why all this harping on about it?

Just responding to your earlier claims ,once again .

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Personally, I'm quite happy with a property dualistic perspective; I agree that consciousness can reasonably be seen as an emergent phenomenon of brain activity - I'm prepared to accept labelling it as 'non-physical' in that sense (although I think it's misleading, with a risk of equivocation with the 'non-physical' of substance dualist immaterialism). But if you're moving in that direction, or thinking about it, congratulations, I think you'll find it rewarding.

lol : see above .

The so-called emergent property theory regarding the origin emergence function and nature of consciousness is no less inexplicably magical than the other materialistic identity theory : even our mechanical David Cooper   did reject it , earlier on , in that length consciousness thread .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 20/12/2014 19:32:40
If you really think about it , guys , you can't but admit that neither the identity theory nor the conscious mental field theory of Libet (the latter that's just the emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain ) that's just another version of identity theory anyway lol , you can't but admit that they have been supported by a big zero empirical evidence .No wonder thus .

Only the modern substance dualism and idealist monism are consistent with QM , and can thus remain in the competition regarding the possible theories of consciousness .

Materialism and property dualism ( the latter is just yet another paradoxical form of  materialism and panpsychism in disguise thus )  ,for example , are  incompatible with QM that has been encountering consciousness.

Regarding substance dualism  "dreaded interaction problem " , that has been solved by QM , relatively speaking then , as my many posted excepts on the subject showed, not conclusively , that is ,since consciousness studies are still in their infancy stage .

We might be needing even better physics than QM  to account for consciousness ,as Wigner , for example said .Who knows ?

No wonder thus that William James did predict the fact that classical physics had to be fundamentally false and approximately correct , since they could absolutely not account for consciousness and for its causal effects on matter , brain and body .

Neuroscience thus , for example, must abandon its classical approaches in studying consciousness and its brain through classical physics at least .

P.S.: Von Neumann was maybe the one who was closer to solving the interpretation ,measurement or observation problem in QM , by proving through rigorous maths that there must be a process that might be collapsing the wave function at the end of the measurement chain .A non-physical process ,that is , since all measuring devices , the physical brain , photons ....are material or physical processes that cannot but remain in a superposition state accordingly .He could not think of any other non-physical process than that of the consciousness of the observer ,logically ,since conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain thus .

P.S.: dlorde :

All materialistic (mis)interpretations of QM are just pathetic desperate attempts to rescue the determinism of  reductionist materialism ,including the MW interpretation of QM,since consciousness is no material process , let alone an emergent phenomena from brain activity  .

The materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be thus approximately correct and fundamentally false , in its turn, since materialism is false ,and since it cannot account for consciousness+ since Bell's theorem and its related experiments have challenged the classical locality, classical  realism and classical determinism (not to mention the classical causally closed universe ) upon which materialism was built

Furthermore , all materialistic physiological and psychological "explanations " (away ) of the effects of placebo / nocebo  , of biofeedback training in controlling the autonomic nervous system , of near death experiences , of out of body experiences (the real ones that are not induced by drugs at least ) , the effects of meditation, mindfulness , the materialistic "explanations " (away ) of epigenetics , and of psi phenomena , including remote viewing ....have been refuted .

I can provide you with all those refutations, if you want to .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 20/12/2014 19:55:15
thanks for the concise reply dlord and sorry if i was jumping up on horse that has already been ridden to death, i am just trying to catch up with everyone else.

I hope it's not too annoying explaining to the newbie but could I ask another?
Feel free - it's good to have fresh questions and another viewpoint - this thread is a bit stale!

Quote
As I understand it, although I am probably wrong, The consciousness is a kind of intangible substantial entity that our brains have built or evolution built in order to guide the mind and body through life.

then there is the sub-conscious, a secondary but in no way lesser form of automated guiding tool, that our brains and bodies use to navigate life.

Then we have the mind and that is yet another tool but one that is used by the brain more as a data bank of sorts and also the reference for human emotive responses, learned behaviors and so on.

then there is the housing for these tools, the hardware, the brain, where various chemical and electrical functions (much like a computer) allow us to assemble reality by using these functions in conjunction with the aforementioned tools to create the marvelous machine that is us (humanity).
There aren't really any 'wrong' definitions or meanings for these labels - it's really a moveable feast, with different meanings dependent on context and usage. If there's any field that supports Wittgenstein's idea that meaning is usage, it's this one. What counts is that we try to understand what others are talking about.

I see the mind as what the brain does (excluding the low-level automatic body management stuff); the 'mental faculties' in general. It can be awake, asleep, conscious, unconscious, focused, unfocused, emotional, etc. Consciousness is a particular state of mind, a mode of brain operation, typically involving (in humans) awareness, responsiveness, a sense of self, a sense of agency and control, etc. The subconscious is where the bulk of the activity occurs, updating the consciousness with significant events on a 'need to know' basis. Subconscious processing (System 1 thought (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_process_theory)) involves multiple highly parallel processes of which we are not aware, producing fast one-shot results; conscious processing (System 2) provides a scratchpad or workspace where these results can be held, manipulated and sent for further System 1 processing. This deliberative System 2 thinking is slow, sequential, and effortful, and we are consciously aware of it.

Beyond this, interpretations vary wildly, but it seems clear, from medical and experimental evidence, that consciousness isn't quite what it seems to be; the sense of self is explicitly constructed from the mapping & integration of a number of sensory streams (hence OBEs), and the sense of agency is largely retrospective - we become aware of decisions & actions by subconscious processes and have the sense they were consciously made.

I currently see consciousness having a monitoring and coordinating role with the subconscious processes, using their processing facilities for resolving non-trivial problems, forward planning, controlling social interaction, etc.   I see the aware self as a simplified, idealised model of the system (the mind as a whole), used in planning and 'what-if' scenarios, and playing the role of an interface for social interaction - a kind of social avatar or representative. As a model and representative of the whole system, it must be given a sense of agency or it would feel like a helpless passenger, and a sense of self awareness arises out of the constructed sense of self and the reflective need to model its own behaviour (e.g. in forward planning).

Quote
As mr. quichotte pointed out, how do we explain instances where people have outer body experiences?

I have heard a bit on the subject and there are all sorts of ideas about it but has there ever been a definite answer?  [???]
The evidence suggests the OBEs are due to anomalous functioning of the area(s) of the brain dealing with the location component of the sense of self. Streams of sensory information from eyes, ears (balance), and proprioception (position of arms & legs, skin touch sensors, etc) are used to maintain a dynamic sense of location and orientation. This is part of what is called Multisensory Integration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisensory_integration). If you mess with these data streams, you can cause problems, for example, if balance information from the ears conflicts with information from the eyes, you may become disoriented or nauseous. If you mess with visual information and touch information you can get identification errors, e.g. the rubber hand illusion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxwn1w7MJvk); this is a minor example of the Body Transfer Illusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_transfer_illusion) (bear with me!), where, using a similar technique you can be deceived into thinking you are in a different body entirely.

If you mess with the brain areas where this sensory integration occurs and the sense of location is generated, you can get all kinds of weird effects, including the sense of being located outside the body (often above it, for some reason), or having no bodily boundaries and being located everywhere (psychoactive drugs may do this - giving a sense of 'cosmic consciousness'). Most OBEs occur under extreme circumstances of stress, pain, oxygen deprivation, influence of drugs, seizures, epilepsy, etc., where there is likely to be some impairment to general levels of consciousness, and even partial dream state. In these circumstances, visual imagery may be constructed to match the sensation, either from existing knowledge and expectations or from scratch (e.g. floating above the scene of the accident or operating theatre, or floating through an alien landscape). It's not clear exactly when these images and experiences actually occur, as they are always recalled after the fact; there may be components from prior to losing consciousness and/or as consciousness returns. Partial memories and gaps may be filled in and elaborated on recall. OBEs of varying intensity have been artificially generated by stimulating areas of the brain (http://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/3/550.abstract) with transcranial magnetic stimulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) (TMS).

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... how can anyone say for certain that this is not some kind of telekinetic response to death?
Or as Don says a force not yet found?
People who are dead don't report any experiences (people commonly report they died or were declared clinically dead, but these days it's generally an exaggeration for their heart stopping temporarily, or just an example that the clinical assessment of death isn't 100% reliable). Nevertheless, when death is a possibility, there is often severe physiological or mental stress, which could be expected to generate anomalous experiences.

As for telekinesis, there is no convincing evidence for it, despite over a hundred years of attempts to find some (although many fraudsters have been exposed), and no plausible mechanism (the brain barely produces enough electrical potential to be detectable by sensitive EEG electrodes on the scalp). The clincher is that our best physical model of the world (quantum field theory) tells us there are no unknown fields or forces that are long range enough and strong enough to significantly interact with matter at human scales (see The Higgs Boson and the Fundamental Nature of Reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k) for fascinating details).

Bear in mind also that there are probably Nobel prizes and a whole new field of serious research awaiting any scientists who can demonstrate reliable and repeatable instances of telekinesis, or any 'paranormal' phenomena, and millions of dollars in prize challenge awards from skeptic organizations. There is also a whole industry generating revenue from unproven paranormal claims.



Wonderful response, dlorde. Excellent summary!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 21:01:21
You're deliberately trying to play some nasty tricks here :
Deliberately asking you to clarify your gnomic utterances. Nasty if you were hoping they'd be accepted without question - but they have to at least make superficial sense for that.

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There is not much 'difference " between the identity theory and between emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain  indeed anyway
Different ways of viewing the same thing.

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... blah ...
OK; do let me know when 'Post-Materialistic Science' produces something useful or interesting. Anything at all.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 20/12/2014 21:10:49
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :


I understand every word. It's bunkum. See reply #890 above.

Try to address  that specific post of mine then ,or rather try to refute it lol


"Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain,"

Why "has to be made"? Only if a sentient being wants to know the answer. But the interactions we use for measurement are exactly the same as those that go on elsewhere in the universe where there are no sentient beings, and apparently have always gone on, long before any sentient being evolved.

If you believe that your observation, at the end of a series of events that began several billion years ago (and was more recently mediated by other sentient beings) is what determined all those events, you are insufferably vain or completely insane.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 21:19:14
Wonderful response, dlorde. Excellent summary!
Thanks Cheryl, much appreciated.

I thought domkarr could use a summary to save the torture of trawling through the thread!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 20/12/2014 21:41:59
Only the modern substance dualism and idealist monism are consistent with QM , and can thus remain in the competition regarding the possible theories of consciousness .

Materialism and property dualism ( the latter is just yet another paradoxical form of  materialism and panpsychism in disguise thus )  ,for example , are  incompatible with QM that has been encountering consciousness.
No; not even wrong.

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Regarding substance dualism  "dreaded interaction problem " , that has been solved by QM
Lol - in a sense; as QFT eliminates substance dualism.

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P.S.: dlorde :

All materialistic (mis)interpretations of QM are just pathetic desperate attempts to rescue the determinism of  reductionist materialism ,including the MW interpretation of QM,since consciousness is no material process , let alone an emergent phenomena from brain activity  .
So you keep banging on. Are you hoping to bore us into agreement?

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The materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be thus approximately correct and fundamentally false , in its turn, since materialism is false ,and since it cannot account for consciousness+ since Bell's theorem and its related experiments have challenged the classical locality, classical  realism and classical determinism (not to mention the classical causally closed universe ) upon which materialism was built
Modern views of materialism are built on QFT (QM). I thought you might cling to the classical formulation, which is why I suggested substituting Physicalism. But on reflection, given your penchant for pigeon-holing and stereotyping by philosophical genre rather than by actual argument, I'm only responding to arguments based on what I post.

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Furthermore , all materialistic physiological and psychological "explanations " (away ) of the effects of placebo / nocebo  , of biofeedback training in controlling the autonomic nervous system , of near death experiences , of out of body experiences (the real ones that are not induced by drugs at least ) , the effects of meditation, mindfulness , the materialistic "explanations " (away ) of epigenetics , and of psi phenomena , including remote viewing ....have been refuted .

I can provide you with all those refutations, if you want to .
Yes, please do provide all those refutations.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/12/2014 00:26:33

As mr. quichotte pointed out, how do we explain instances where people have outer body experiences?

I have heard a bit on the subject and there are all sorts of ideas about it but has there ever been a definite answer?  [???]
for instance how can anyone say for certain that this is not some kind of telekinetic response to death?
Or as Don says a force not yet found? 

Even as I wrote that I felt a bit like a fool for bringing it up as i have trouble dealing with something i cannot prove. but I'm seeking to catch up with the conversation and find better understanding of the topic, not to throw doubt on anyone and certainly I don't think I need to fuel the conversation  [;D]

It's not an unreasonable question at all.

I think I’ve seen maybe two psi studies in my life that sounded credible, or at least appeared to be good faith efforts to report the data accurately and control for other variables and bias. Its difficult to explain, though, why a phenomena that some claim is common place and interacts with us in every day life, would be so damn difficult to nail down, when physics is quite adept at identifying all kinds of  interactions that are weak, or of very short duration, or rare, or sensitive to interference, or extremely far away. It also doesn’t make sense to me why the paranormal should be so elusive and capricious, and the data at the very best, only marginally significant beyond chance, if it were a real phenomena.

The other problem I have with psi research is that it never seems to progress beyond a kind of indirect proof by process of elimination, as in “There was no way this person could have access to that information – we’ve controlled for every variable we can identify – so it must be ….. esp”  or remote viewing or whatever.

Every new area of science begins with an observation and an attempt to reproduce it in a controlled environment. But generally it progresses to the next level where  different variables are manipulated. At that point, researchers say “Okay, we still don’t know what exactly “X” is or what causes it, but we know it only happens when “Y” is present, but never with “Z,” and it’s increased by “B or C.”
These described attributes become the basis for a theoretical model which is used to make predictions in additional experiments. If those predictions fail, it’s back to the drawing board.
But psi research never seems to make it to that level; there is never any additional research that provides more insight into how it works or a possible mechanism.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Rupert Sheldrake (Don is a fan). Among other psi related projects, he was involved with research about whether people can detect when someone they can’t see is staring at them.  Mainstream science really did give Sheldrake a fair shake on this one, in my opinion, and it got a lot of press. For one, it’s a common experience that many people report having had – feeling that someone is staring at them without being aware of, or recalling,  any sound or visual cue that they were present.  Secondly, it seems like something that, if it could exist, it should exist, because of the huge survival advantage it would give any prey that could detect nonphysically whether a predator was watching them. It sounds entirely reasonable that if there were anyway to do this, some species in the rich diversity of nature over millions of years would have developed that ability.

But the original study could never be consistently replicated, and there were no subsequent studies that provided any more insight as to how or why or under what circumstances it happens or doesn’t happen. Like other psi experiments, research fizzled out at that point, much to Sheldrake's annoyance.

Paranormal researchers like Sheldrake sometimes portray themselves as Galileo-like mavericks oppressed by narrow minded, mainstream science.  But as dlorde says, if someone could consistently replicate psi results, or better yet, explain the mechanism as well, they’d be richly rewarded, and probably mentioned in every general science book for years to come. Or they could just go to the casino, collapse the wavefunction in some desired direction, and really clean up.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 00:41:21
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Rupert Sheldrake (Don is a fan). Among other psi related projects, he was involved with research about whether people can detect when someone they can’t see is staring at them.  Mainstream science really did give Sheldrake a fair shake on this one, in my opinion, and it got a lot of press. For one, it’s a common experience that many people report having had – feeling that someone is staring at them without being aware of, or recalling,  any sound or visual cue that they were present.  Secondly, it seems like something that, if it could exist, it should exist, because of the huge survival advantage it would give any prey that could detect nonphysically whether a predator was watching them. It sounds entirely reasonable that if there where anyway to do this, some species in the rich diversity of nature over millions of years would have developed that ability.

But the original study could never be consistently replicated, and there were no subsequent studies that provided any more insight as to how or why or under what circumstances it happens or doesn’t happen. Like other psi experiments, research fizzled out at that point, much to Sheldrake's annoyance.
Sheldrake was also involved in the 'dogs can tell when their masters are coming home' study, which claimed some kind of psychic link by which a dog could tell when his master left work. Replication - with the same dog -failed, and a number of plausible mundane explanations were found, including poor controls (I think one explanation showed the dog was responding to falling levels of his master's scent in the house).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/12/2014 02:13:54

Sheldrake was also involved in the 'dogs can tell when their masters are coming home' study, which claimed some kind of psychic link by which a dog could tell when his master left work. Replication - with the same dog -failed, and a number of plausible mundane explanations were found, including poor controls (I think one explanation showed the dog was responding to falling levels of his master's scent in the house).

That illustrates the problem with "proof by process of elimination" really well. It is isn't really proof; it's basically "we don't know why it happened" and you can't really be sure you have considered all the other variables.  The scent explanation seems obvious only in hindsight, dogs being so much more sensitive to odors we aren't even aware of.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/12/2014 05:32:00


You have to try to prove first that consciousness can arise from the biological evolution lol , from physics and chemistry .Clearly , the biological evolution  can never intrinsically account for either the origin , nature or emergence of consciousness , let alone for  its 'evolution " .

Furthermore, all consciousness studies have not been able so far , if ever , to answer how aware consciousness emerges ,in the first place to begin with, what its origin might be..

That's like saying I have to first explain how a bee can fly before demonstrating that it in fact does. Not that the detailed explanation of a bee's flight doesn't lend greater understanding of the process, but it isn't required  for that empirical observation that other animals exhibit behavior and brain activity consistent with consciousness.

Subjective Experience is Probably Not Limited to Humans: The Evidence from Neurobiology and Behavior

http://bernardbaars.pbworks.com/f/Baars,+Subjective+not+just+human.pdf.
Abstract

"In humans, conscious perception and cognition depends upon the thalamocortical (T-C) complex, which supports perception, explicit cognition, memory, language, planning, and strategic control. When parts of the T-C system are damaged or stimulated, corresponding effects are found on conscious contents and state, as assessed by reliable reports. In contrast, large regions like cerebellum and basal ganglia can be damaged without affecting conscious cognition directly. Functional brain recordings also show robust activity differences in cortex between experimentally matched conscious and unconscious events. This basic anatomy and physiology is highly conserved in mammals and perhaps ancestral reptiles. While language is absent in other species, homologies in perception, memory, and motor cortex suggest that consciousness of one kind or another may be biologically fundamental and phylogenetically ancient. In humans we infer subjective experiences from behavioral and brain evidence. This evidence is quite similar in other mammals and perhaps some non-mammalian species. On the weight of the biological evidence, therefore, subjectivity may be conserved in species with human-like brains and behavior."



Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals.
www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/anils/Papers/SethEdelmanBaarsCC.pdf

Seth AK1, Baars BJ, Edelman DB.

Abstract

The standard behavioral index for human consciousness is the ability to report events with accuracy. While this method is routinely used for scientific and medical applications in humans, it is not easy to generalize to other species. Brain evidence may lend itself more easily to comparative testing. Human consciousness involves widespread, relatively fast low-amplitude interactions in the thalamocortical core of the brain, driven by current tasks and conditions. These features have also been found in other mammals, which suggests that consciousness is a major biological adaptation in mammals. We suggest more than a dozen additional properties of human consciousness that may be used to test comparative predictions. Such homologies are necessarily more remote in non-mammals, which do not share the thalamocortical complex. However, as we learn more we may be able to make "deeper" predictions that apply to some birds, reptiles, large-brained invertebrates, and perhaps other species



Three Arguments for the Consciousness of Cephalopods.

http://io9.com/5626679/three-arguments-for-the-consciousness-of-cephalopods
 .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/12/2014 08:14:36
This is the next book I'd like to read:
Consciousness and the Brain Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014)  by Stanislas Dehaene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_and_the_Brain
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 16:24:37
This is the next book I'd like to read:
Consciousness and the Brain Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014)  by Stanislas Dehaene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_and_the_Brain
You should enjoy that one - it's authoritative, and the most enjoyably readable account I've come across. Highly recommended!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 16:46:27

Three Arguments for the Consciousness of Cephalopods.

http://io9.com/5626679/three-arguments-for-the-consciousness-of-cephalopods .
Octopuses can learn to solve novel puzzles just by watching another octopus do it once - not necessarily a sign of consciousness, but the capacity for once-only learning and forward planning.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 16:55:48
This is the next book I'd like to read:
Consciousness and the Brain Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014)  by Stanislas Dehaene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_and_the_Brain

Got that book too , a kindle ebook . Unfortunately enough ,as the title suggests ,Stanislas ' identity theory upon which he built all his sand castles is just a belief , no scientific theory ,as Libet said .

Stanislas has some interesting things to say though .
The poor brain does code for nothing in fact : that's just the false materialistic computer or machine metaphor projection regarding the nature of life in general, including the brain thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 17:06:47
Quote
author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg446935#msg446935 date=1419109849]
dlorde , alancalverd :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :


I understand every word. It's bunkum. See reply #890 above.

Try to address  that specific post of mine then ,or rather try to refute it lol


"Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain,"

Why "has to be made"? Only if a sentient being wants to know the answer. But the interactions we use for measurement are exactly the same as those that go on elsewhere in the universe where there are no sentient beings, and apparently have always gone on, long before any sentient being evolved.

Well, if physicists wanna know about the physical processes in nature , they have to do that through observation or measurement and experiments , right ? .

See my specific post in question that talks about the fact that Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism as QM predicted they would , to mention just the latter .

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If you believe that your observation, at the end of a series of events that began several billion years ago (and was more recently mediated by other sentient beings) is what determined all those events, you are insufferably vain or completely insane.

Well, i don't know about that .Who does ?
A prominent physicist even said on the subject , or in words to that same effect at least, that it doesn't matter that life or conscious life existed billions of years after the big bang ,the universe exists because we are aware of it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 17:13:58
Wonderful response, dlorde. Excellent summary!
Thanks Cheryl, much appreciated.

I thought domkarr could use a summary to save the torture of trawling through the thread!

lol

My heart goes to our domkarr : the poor lad will be misled  and deceived ,big time, by your materialistic speculations  and beliefs that have been supported by a big zero empirical evidence .
He has already been confusing  materialism with science too,so ; he's been already predisposed to swallow your materialistic non-sense ,without you needing to make any real efforts to 'convince " him of that .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 17:27:25
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446938#msg446938 date=1419111719]
Only the modern substance dualism and idealist monism are consistent with QM , and can thus remain in the competition regarding the possible theories of consciousness .

Materialism and property dualism ( the latter is just yet another paradoxical form of  materialism and panpsychism in disguise thus )  ,for example , are  incompatible with QM that has been encountering consciousness.
No; not even wrong
.

Can you elaborate on that ? , please , thanks .

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Regarding substance dualism  "dreaded interaction problem " , that has been solved by QM
Lol - in a sense; as QFT eliminates substance dualism.

See above : QFT has to be fundamentally false and approximately correct ,it is even certainly false , without a shadow of a doubt ,  since it absolutely cannot  account for consciousness , in the same way classical physics were , and since materialism is false .

Quote
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P.S.: dlorde :

All materialistic (mis)interpretations of QM are just pathetic desperate attempts to rescue the determinism of  reductionist materialism ,including the MW interpretation of QM,since consciousness is no material process , let alone an emergent phenomena from brain activity  .
So you keep banging on. Are you hoping to bore us into agreement?

I am just stating what many physicists and other scientists have been saying on the subject : i agree with them.

Quote
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The materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be thus approximately correct and fundamentally false , in its turn, since materialism is false ,and since it cannot account for consciousness+ since Bell's theorem and its related experiments have challenged the classical locality, classical  realism and classical determinism (not to mention the classical causally closed universe ) upon which materialism was built
Modern views of materialism are built on QFT (QM). I thought you might cling to the classical formulation, which is why I suggested substituting Physicalism. But on reflection, given your penchant for pigeon-holing and stereotyping by philosophical genre rather than by actual argument, I'm only responding to arguments based on what I post.

See above , QFT has to be most certainly fundamentally false , since it can absolutely not account for consciousness ,like classical physics were by the way for the same reason as William James predicted (Max Planck just knocked down the head of the last nail on the coffin of the fundamentally false  and approximately correct classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view or physics ) ,  and since materialism is false .

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Furthermore , all materialistic physiological and psychological "explanations " (away ) of the effects of placebo / nocebo  , of biofeedback training in controlling the autonomic nervous system , of near death experiences , of out of body experiences (the real ones that are not induced by drugs at least ) , the effects of meditation, mindfulness , the materialistic "explanations " (away ) of epigenetics , and of psi phenomena , including remote viewing ....have been refuted .

I can provide you with all those refutations, if you want to .
Yes, please do provide all those refutations.

Ok, try to make some time for extensive reading then .Get ready .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 17:48:42
Jonathan Shear Quotes :

In the view of modern science, the universe is fundamentally physical and existed and evolved for billions of years without any consciousness in it at all. Consciousness, on this now commonplace view, is a very recent addition, a byproduct of the complex chemical processes that gave rise to sophisticated biological systems. The question thus arises of how consciousness ever came to be.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:03:21
PROPOSED PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS:
FANTASY AND WISHFUL THINKING :



The simplest explanation proposed for the NDE is simply that it is fantasy, derived from wishful thinking.
It is argued that the motivation is a dread or denial of death and that the content is derived from the person’s belief system. In other words, NDEs are products of the imagination, constructed from our personal and cultural expectations to protect us from facing the threat of death.

However, this hypothesis is simply not supported by the empirical data. While we have seen that there are some cross-cultural variations in the content of NDEs, individuals sometimes report experiences that conflict with their religious and personal expectations of death.
This theory should predict a strong correlation between the occurrence of NDEs and the strength of religious belief, yet as noted above, there is no such correlation.

Furthermore, if NDEs are fantasies, then why are Western descriptions of “paradise” in NDEs so similar, yet so unlike the biblical stereotype?
Other consistencies in NDEs tend to refute this theory. People who have never heard or read of NDEs describe the same kinds of experiences as do people who are quite familiar with the reports.

Similar NDEs are also reported by people who did not expect to die, either because the traumatic event happened too quickly for the person to be aware of what was happening or because it occurred during a medical procedure the person fully expected to survive. Finally, children too young to have received substantial cultural and religious training about death report NDEs similar to those of adults.
Tests have shown that there is a mild association between reporting an NDE and being fantasy prone.

 However, being fantasy prone is also associated with more intense sensory experiences, and individuals with a fantasy-prone personality do not commonly mistake fantasy for reality—a point specifically made by the psychologists who developed this concept. Psychologists Sheryl Wilson and Theodore Barber stated unequivocally that fantasy-prone people are as good at reality testing as anyone else.

 Bruce Greyson, who is a clinical psychiatrist, writes, “There is absolutely no evidence that NDErs are fantasy-prone individuals. Although NDErs do score higher than nonNDErs on standard measures of fantasy-proneness, which may suggest nothing more than that their sensory perceptions of the outside world are much more vivid than those of nonNDErs, NDErs’ scores do not come anywhere near the cut-off point on those measures for designation as a ‘fantasy-prone personality.’” End quote.
 
Chris Carter
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:15:35
DISSOCIATED STATES :

Quote : " Dissociated states are defense mechanisms thought to be employed in times of great psychological stress. Three of the most common types of dissociated states are dissociation, derealization, and depersonalization.

Dissociation is a state in which emotions are separated and detached from distressing events to postpone having to emotionally deal with the trauma.

Derealization refers to a state in which the environment feels unreal, as if the person were in a dreamworld. This state of mind could obviously be very comforting if the person were facing a threat she felt unable to deal with.

Depersonalization involves a state of confusion over the reality of oneself. An individual who is depersonalized feels that he is not a real person.

The theory that dissociated states may explain the NDE is a somewhat more refined version of the motivated fantasy theory and has been popularized in the work of psychiatrist Russell Noyes. He has conducted extensive research into the subjective experiences reported by individuals who have suddenly faced the threat of imminent death, yet somehow survived. Many of these individuals reported strange experiences as they became aware that death was imminent and unavoidable.

One such experience was related to Noyes by a race car driver who had been thrown thirty feet in the air after colliding with another car. At no time during the accident was the driver unconscious or physically near death.
As soon as I saw him I knew I was going to hit him. I remember thinking that death or injury was coming but after that I didn’t feel much at all. It seemed like the whole thing took forever.

Everything was in slow motion and it seemed to me like I was a player on a stage and could see myself tumbling over and over in the car. It was as though I sat in the stands and saw it all happening … but I was not frightened… . Everything was so strange… . The whole experience was like a dream but at no time did I lose my sense of where I was… . I was like floating on air…
 Finally, the car pancaked itself on the track and I was jolted back to reality.

From experiences such as this, Noyes identified several characteristics of what he called “depersonalization in the face of life-threatening danger.” These include an altered sense of time, increased speed of thought, a sense of detachment, a feeling of unreality, a lack of emotion, sharper vision or hearing, flashbacks of memories, and a sense of harmony or unity with the universe.
What is required for depersonalization to occur is the perception of imminent death.

 In other words, the person must clearly perceive the imminence of his own death before the syndrome can develop. As Noyes writes, “Subjective reports suggest that the chief prerequisite to their [NDEs] full development is the perception of imminent death… . [Otherwise] victims of cardiac arrest may not have such experiences unless convinced of their closeness to death.”

However, several researchers have found cases that involved a loss of consciousness so sudden the individuals simply had no time to perceive the threat to their lives. Cardiologist Michael Sabom, for instance, has encountered several such cases, one of which involved a middle-aged farmer who suffered from transient episodes of complete heart blockage, with total stopping of the heart.

During some of these episodes, he would suddenly pass out in the middle of a sentence. Sabom interviewed the man after he had been fitted with a pacemaker and recorded the following account, which occurred before he was brought to the hospital.

I was walking across the parking lot to get into my car… . I passed out. I don’t recall hitting the ground. The next thing I do recall was that I was above the cars, floating. I had a real funny sensation, a floating sensation. I was actually looking down on my own body, with four or five men running toward me. I could hear and understand what these men were saying. To me, it was a real funny feeling.

 I had no pain whatsoever. I didn’t feel any pain. Then the next thing, when I came back to my senses, I was in my body, and I had pain on the back of my head where I had hit the concrete.
Although this man’s experience clearly resembles the early stages on an NDE, according to this report he almost certainly had no time to appreciate the threat to his life.

A major difference between Noyes’ study and most research studies of the NDE is that his study focused primarily on people who were not actually physically near death. However, he did interview a small number of individuals who both apprehended their own death and were in fact in serious danger.

He found that the experiences of this group were clearly different from those who were never in any real danger, and so excluded them from his analysis. Emphasizing the differences between the two groups, Noyes writes, “It seems important to note that there are a great variety of near-death experiences.

Those studies by the author [Noyes] were reported by persons who were psychologically —but not necessarily physically—close to death. A different kind of experience has been described by persons who narrowly escaped death from physical illness, cardiac arrest, and so forth.”
More recently, psychiatrists Glen Gabbard and Stuart Twemlow have noted that NDEs differ from depersonalization on a number of grounds.

 They extracted several cases of depersonalization from the literature and broke down their characteristics, finding few similarities with the NDE. They point out that depersonalization usually does not include a sense of being outside of the body; is experienced as dreamlike; is usually unpleasant; and is often accompanied by feelings of anxiety, panic, or emptiness.

Psychologist Harvey Irwin conducted an empirical assessment of the tendency to dissociate and found no difference between those who have had an NDE and a control group. He concluded that those who have had an NDE are not habitually inclined to use dissociation to cope with trauma.

Finally, we have some direct testimony that casts doubt on the theory that dissociated states may play a role in the classic NDE. Sabom gathered the following two accounts. In the first, the experiencer said, “I’ve had a lot of dreams and it wasn’t like any dream that I had had.

It was real. It was so real. And that peace, the peace made the difference from a dream, and I dream a lot.” The second experiencer noted, “That was real… . I’ve lived with this thing for three years now and I haven’t told anyone because I don’t want them putting the straitjacket on me… . It’s real as hell.”

In their investigation of over three hundred English NDEs, Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick write:
This feeling that the “me” up there and out of the body is the real me, infinitely more real than the body it leaves behind, is described over and over again. Avon Pailthorpe … was surprised “how clearly I felt myself to be myself without my body.”

Mrs Frances Barnshey: “I couldn’t see any kind of body belonging to me. I seemed to be mind and emotions only, but I felt more vital, more myself than I’ve felt in my life at any time before or since.

The accounts above illustrate why derealization and depersonalization as explanations will not work: experiencers almost unanimously report that the experience was real and that it happened to them, with their sense of self fully intact." End quote

Same source
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:20:38
IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTIONS :


Quote " " Some have raised the possibility that the accurate accounts given by cardiac arrest survivors of their resuscitations are really nothing more than imaginative reconstructions based on previous hospital experience and on documentaries and medical dramas. Many of us have seen resuscitations enacted on television, and it is argued that a patient with a history of heart disease may reasonably be expected to know even more about such procedures than someone with no such medical history. In other words, it is argued that the reports are in truth merely fantasies based on educated guesses about what goes on during resuscitations in an emergency room.

Cardiologist Michael Sabom set out to test this hypothesis. He interviewed thirty-two survivors of a nonsurgical crisis—mostly cardiac arrest—who claimed to have seen portions of their own resuscitation from a position outside of their bodies. He also interviewed twenty-five patients with a similar background—patients with heart disease—who had been admitted to a coronary care unit and had thus received considerable exposure to hospital routine. Four of these patients had experienced cardiac arrest without an NDE.

These twenty-five patients served as a control group. Sabom asked them to imagine standing in a corner of a hospital room watching a medical team revive a person whose heart had stopped beating. The patients were then asked to describe in visual detail what they would expect to see.

Eighty percent of these control patients made at least one major error in describing standard hospital resuscitation technique, despite being “reasonably confident” they were correct.

In contrast, not one of the thirty-two survivors who claimed to have witnessed their own resuscitations committed such an error when describing what happened to them. Twenty-six of the thirty-two could recall only general visual impressions, not specific verifiable details.

This the patients attributed to being far more interested in an experience they found amazing than in what was being done to their bodies. However, six of the thirty-two survivors provided specific details of their own resuscitation, including details of their own resuscitation that did not occur in the other resuscitations. " End quote .

Same source
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:28:23
SEMICONSCIOUS PERCEPTION :


Quote : " While Sabom was conducting a medical grand rounds presentation on NDEs at the University of Florida in 1978, another professor of medicine raised the following point: “We have all resuscitated patients who have appeared dead at the time but who later could tell us of our conversation during the period of resuscitation. How do you know that these people who are describing an ‘accurate’ neardeath experience are not just hearing the conversation while semiconscious at the time and later conjuring up a visual image in their mind of what went on?”.

Sabom has dealt extensively with this possibility. He has provided four reasons why it is highly unlikely that semiconscious aural perception can explain the visual descriptions of resuscitations and other details of the environment so often found in NDE accounts.

First, when patients who had been under general anesthesia during a major operation are later hypnotized and regressed back to the time of the operation, they can sometimes recall conversations among the physicians and nurses, but not visual impressions. Such recall, even when frightening, has been reported by these patients to be of an auditory nature, quite unlike the detailed visual impressions of an NDE.

Second, the experience of a semiconscious patient undergoing resuscitation can be compared with that of a semiconscious patient undergoing elective cardioversion. To correct abnormal heart rhythm, patients sometimes elect to undergo cardioversion, a procedure in which electric shocks are applied to the chest. This technique is also commonly used during cardiac resuscitations to correct lifethreatening rhythmic disturbances of the heart.

In the elective situation, the patient is commonly given a sedative to render him semiconscious and to minimize the pain of the shock. However, patients in this semiconscious state can sometimes hear nearby conversations and recall the sensations associated with the shock; for example, they have said it’s like having everything torn out of your insides.

 If NDEs occur when individuals are merely semiconscious, then we should expect similar sensations to be remembered by those who report watching emergency cardioversion being performed on their bodies during an NDE. But the accounts are very different following an NDE, as excerpts from these three reports illustrate:
I could see myself jolt, but again it didn’t hurt like an electric shock should hurt… . I wasn’t hurting, I wasn’t anxious… . I had no pain.

They were rubbing those things together and then I bounced off the table… . I came off the table about nine to ten inches, I seemed to arch… . [While watching] I seemed to be in a very peaceful state.
I thought they had given my body too much voltage because my body jumped about two feet off the table… . [While watching, I felt] floating, soft, easy, comfortable, nothing wrong.

Third, several people who had described an NDE to Sabom could distinguish between semiconscious auditory perception of nearby conversation and the subsequent occurrence of an NDE complete with visual perception. One man found his vision fading as he suffered a heart attack. He described what he experienced as medical assistance was rushed to his aid: “I was in total blackness and I didn’t have any ability to move but I could hear well and understand.

I heard them talk and I heard the guy say my pressure was zero and who it was and I heard Dr. J say, ‘Shall we try to get a pulse?’ And I wanted to answer and tried to answer but couldn’t… . That’s when I had the experience [NDE]—After sound and all had gone and I couldn’t hear anymore.”

Another man who had experienced both the semiconscious state with auditory perception and unconsciousness associated with an NDE compared the two situations. He said, “I didn’t see nothing. I just heard. This other time with the cardiac arrest [and NDE], I was looking down from the ceiling and there were no ifs, ands or buts about it.”

These reports show that individuals who have experienced both semiconscious hearing and visual perception during an NDE could clearly distinguish between the two.

Finally, Sabom points out that NDEs including visual perception of the environment have been reported by individuals who were unconscious and near death while no one else was present.
Obviously, in these cases, semiconscious perception of verbal information would have been impossible, since no one was around to supply it."End quote .

Same source
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:36:04
dlorde :

You can read above about some of the proposed psychological explanations of NDE , for example .
Tomorrow ,i will display the rest of them , and then, later on , the same goes for the physiological explanations of NDE .

When we will finish with all that , we will go on to address the materialistic 'explanations " (away ) of  out of body experiences , especially those that were delivered by Susan Blackmore in her "Dying to live " book on the subject .

After all the above , we will be tackling the other issues like :

- The effects of meditation, mindfulness...
-Psi phenomena , including remote viewing ...
- Biofeedback training to control the autonomic nervous system ..
-Self-directed neuroplasticity
and more .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 21/12/2014 18:39:06
The simplest explanation proposed for the NDE is simply that it is fantasy, derived from wishful thinking.
It is argued that the motivation is a dread or denial of death and that the content is derived from the person’s belief system. In other words, NDEs are products of the imagination, constructed from our personal and cultural expectations to protect us from facing the threat of death.
 
Chris Carter

Yet another straw-man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) from Chris Carter.

It is argued ...

By whom ? : I haven't seen anybody make that argument in this thread.
[ In the year+ you've been doing this you must have regurgitated most of Chris Carter's books in this forum : you'll be lucky if he doesn't sue ].

Some people who have had a religious upbringing will interpret their NDE/OOBE experience as evidence of an afterlife , whereas others will recognise it as a vivid hallucination brought on by cerebral hypoxia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hypoxia).

That NDE/OOBE can be experienced by people who are nowhere near death, but under the influence of psychotropic drugs, ( e.g. ketamine) , or undergoing brain-surgery (http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020916/full/news020916-8.html), demonstrates NDE/OOBE are not evidence of afterlife but are caused by brain-dysfunction.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 18:55:03
Quote
author=RD link=topic=52526.msg446991#msg446991 date=1419187146]
The simplest explanation proposed for the NDE is simply that it is fantasy, derived from wishful thinking.
It is argued that the motivation is a dread or denial of death and that the content is derived from the person’s belief system. In other words, NDEs are products of the imagination, constructed from our personal and cultural expectations to protect us from facing the threat of death.
 
Chris Carter


Yet another straw-man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man) from Chris Carter.

Read the rest .We're just warming up .

Quote
It is argued ...

By whom ? : I haven't seen anybody make that argument in this thread.

So what ?

Quote
[ In the year+ you've been doing this you must have regurgitated most of Chris Carter's books in this forum : you'll be lucky if he doesn't sue ].

Carter should be happy for the fact that i have been making publicity for his books for free .He should pay me for that . lol

Quote
Some people who have had a religious upbringing will interpret their NDE/OOBE experience as evidence of an afterlife , whereas others will recognise it as a vivid hallucination brought on by cerebral hypoxia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hypoxia).

We're just starting with some psychological materialistic "explanations " (away ) of NDE .We'll get to the physiological ones, in due time .

Quote
That NDE/OOBE can be experienced by people who are nowhere near death, but under the influence of psychotropic drugs, ( e.g. ketamine) , or undergoing brain-surgery (http://www.nature.com/news/2002/020916/full/news020916-8.html), demonstrates NDE/OOBE are not evidence of afterlife but are caused by brain-dysfunction.

See above . Wait 'til we get to the physiological "explanations " (away) of NDE .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 19:04:25
Cheryl, alancalverd, dlorde :

See my replies to some of your posts   above  the displayed relatively short excerpts regarding  some of the psychological "explanations " (away ) of NDE, in the previous page  .

Cheryl :

Both the identity theory and the emergent property theory regarding the origin function nature and emergence of consciousness have been supported by a big zero empirical evidence ,no wonder , so how can you assume then that biological evolution can  account for consciousness , let alone explain it ???
Consciousness can never arise from biology : that's the main issue in consciousness studies by the way, if you haven't noticed that yet .

Looking for consciousness  in the brain is no less an inexplicably magical futile attempt than assuming that biological evolution can give rise to consciousness.

domkarr :

You were mentioned in 1 of my replies to dlorde here above .

Nice start of the week, guys .Thanks.Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 21/12/2014 20:21:05
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 21/12/2014 20:41:34
They're coming to get you, Don!

Have you mentioned blowing up any dodgy dictators, insulted any prophets, questioned the honesty of a Labour politician, or said anything (like "G W Bush") that might constitute a threat to dignity of the Presidency of the United States?

Speaking as something of an expert in matters of electronics, have you tried switching it off and on again?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 21/12/2014 20:42:43
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?
It's called paranoia Don.......................
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 21/12/2014 21:27:14
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?
It's called paranoia Don.......................
It sounds more like a virus to me.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 21/12/2014 22:21:56


Cheryl :

Both the identity theory and the emergent property theory regarding the origin function nature and emergence of consciousness have been supported by a big zero empirical evidence ,no wonder , so how can you assume then that biological evolution can  account for consciousness , let alone explain it ???
Consciousness can never arise from biology : that's the main issue in consciousness studies by the way, if you haven't noticed that yet .

Looking for consciousness  in the brain is no less an inexplicably magical futile attempt than assuming that biological evolution can give rise to consciousness.


So how then do you know that the physicist making the observation in the QM experiment is conscious? Is it actually provable? Consciousness cannot arise from biology, according to you,  so his biological status as a human being is irrelevant.

You’re comfortable assuming the physicist is conscious because he demonstrates behavior consistent with consciousness, and he claims he is (although a computer could make the same claim) and he has the human neural correlates consistent with consciousness.

Surely all those “rigorous maths” of Von Neumann you mentioned earlier that showed that consciousness is responsible for the collapse of the wavefunction would not hinge on a flimsy and unprovable  assumption??? That doesn't sound rigorous to me.   How is behavior and neural correlates irrelevant to the determination of consciousness if your entire QM consciousness theory ultimately rests on that very same assumption?! That is quite a pickle.

Believe me, I’ve often wondered if you were a turing test designed by Cooper to drive us crazy, but he denies it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 22:34:01
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446938#msg446938 date=1419111719]
Only the modern substance dualism and idealist monism are consistent with QM , and can thus remain in the competition regarding the possible theories of consciousness .

Materialism and property dualism ( the latter is just yet another paradoxical form of  materialism and panpsychism in disguise thus )  ,for example , are  incompatible with QM that has been encountering consciousness.
No; not even wrong
.

Can you elaborate on that ? , please , thanks .
Already done earlier in the thread.

Quote
The materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be thus approximately correct and fundamentally false...
QFT is not a description of reality, it's a model. It's a good model because it works. Without it, you wouldn't have the processor or storage in your computer, or LEDs, etc. When it stops making astonishingly accurate predictions about the real world, it'll be time to refine it or replace it.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 22:51:13
dlorde :

You can read above about some of the proposed psychological explanations of NDE , for example .
Tomorrow ,i will display the rest of them , and then, later on , the same goes for the physiological explanations of NDE .
You needn't bother with them - I'm well aware some people believe they're real events. The plural of anecdotes is not data, and reality doesn't depend on the number of people making a claim.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 21/12/2014 22:54:29
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?
It's called paranoia Don.......................
It sounds more like a virus to me.
Of course, a virus induced paranoia.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 21/12/2014 22:54:50
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?
Sounds like paranoia - although maybe it's some immaterial, non-physical influence affecting your computer [;)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: domkarr on 22/12/2014 00:13:26
 [;D] [;D] [;D] [;D] [;D] [;D] [;D] [;D]

I'm so glad i didn't have to trawl through miles of data. I don't have much internet access where I am at the moment so I am really appreciative of help and definitely I think cheryl was a hundred percent in assessing your response dlord and of course she (well I assume cheryl is a she sorry if that's not the case) gave a brilliant response as well.

I particularly liked the rubber hand experiment, made me think that virtual reality isn't too far away. have you guys seen this before?

http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-11-22

It's been out for a while so I'm guessing that it's nothing new. I am intrigued, absolutely intrigued, by the discussion.
As i mentioned previously I have been researching the subject but it's hard to know what the bunk is and what the forefront is.
Just out of curiosity I have some more curiosity, not that will need too much explanation or teaching the newbie.

Where do you all sit on the theories of the universe being virtual and that of the universe being intrinsically linked at a sub-atomic level?

I personally find it hard to believe that we are some kind of experimental universe, but I don't doubt that considering the way the universe works that there has to be some form of link between all matter in the universe. (maybe i should have started a new thread)

If i where to believe in telekinesis at all I would say that it had something to do with the later, but then i suppose I'm getting way off subject here and am probably talking more about left over or background radiation and physics than mind sciences. still I think it is linked in a way although i can't say I have a grand wealth of knowledge in that field either. I have a habit of exploring all knowledge and sometimes find myself confusing theories and unable to directly quote people due to the volume.
I have to admit that I'm more sort of a ground level scientist dealing in technology and physical rather than the meta-physical. but I also believe that the way forward for our species is a blending of science as we seem to be exhausting potential in a lot fields (not to say that there is not a whole lot left).

but yeah, thanks again for the intelligent and relative responses guys.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 00:57:37
I particularly liked the rubber hand experiment, made me think that virtual reality isn't too far away. have you guys seen this before?

http://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds?utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=button__2014-11-22
Thanks for that; I hadn't seen that particular one, but Sacks has plenty of fascinating studies; I've read a couple of his books.

Quote
Where do you all sit on the theories of the universe being virtual and that of the universe being intrinsically linked at a sub-atomic level?

The universe being virtual is way down towards the bottom of the list of things to think about; an interesting idea, but without some plausible reason to take it seriously, or some testable propositions, that's where it's likely to stay. In terms of the big picture, it only introduces another speculative layer between us and any 'true origin'.

As for the universe being 'intrinsically linked' at the sub-atomic level, you'll have to explain exactly what that means and why it's been proposed, because I have no idea.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: RD on 22/12/2014 01:25:02
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site : my pc crashed 3 times yesterday , 1 time tonight ,to mention just that .
Not to mention that my pc webcam has been hacked and does not function anymore.....

What's going on ?

Muhahaha (http://www.freesound.org/people/teqstudios/sounds/118703/)

But seriously, I've visited this site for years and have never had an infection from it.
[ If computer-sabotage was available to silence you, why wait over a year to apply it ? ].

If you do have a computer-infection, ( rather than plain-old malfunction ) , the websites you downloaded pirated copies of eBooks from (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=49378.0;attach=18229;image) are a far more likely candidate than this one.

If fictional computer-sabotage gives you a way "out" of this thread whilst keeping your head held high , that's fine by me.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: PmbPhy on 22/12/2014 01:39:05
Quote from: Ethos_
Of course, a virus induced paranoia.
Why do you think he's paranoid rather than his computer having a computer virus?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 22/12/2014 02:09:37
I've been reluctant to get drawn into the quantum mechanics part of the discussion because to me, Don has never clearly outlined how he gets from "consciousness collapses the wave function" to "the brain is a transceiver for immaterial nonlocal consciousness" - so what's the point of debating the interpretation of quantum mechanics for that end? His version of consciousness remains unexplained and attributeless, regardless.

Never the less, because he brings it up over and over and insists that all the really important physicists accept his interpretation, I thought I'd post some interesting quotes from the article :Does Quantum Mechanics Require A Conscious Observer? by Michael Nauenberg, (a collaborator of Bell's.) The last quote is one of Bell's.
 
"Abstract:
The view that the implementation of the principles of quantum mechanics requires a conscious observer is based on misconceptions that are described in this article."
http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness139.html


Richard P. Feynman (Nobel Prize, 1965):
Nature does not know what you are looking at, and she behaves the way she is going to behave whether you bother to take down the data or not (Feynman et al., 1965). 

Murray Gellmann (Nobel Prize, 1969): The universe presumably couldn't care less whether human beings evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists (Rosenblum and Kuttner 2006, 156). 

Anthony J. Leggett (Nobel Prize 2003): It may be somewhat dangerous to explain something one does not understand very well [the quantum measurement process] by invoking something [consciousness] one does not understand at all! (Leggett, 1991). 

John A. Wheeler: Caution: "Consciousness" has nothing whatsover to do with the quantum process. We are dealing with an event that makes itself known by an irreversible act of amplification, by an indelible record, an act of registration. Does that record subsequently enter into the "consciousness" of some person, some animal or some computer? Is that the first step into translating the measurement into "meaning" meaning regarded as "the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate." Then that is a separate part of the story, important but not to be confused with "quantum phenomena." (Wheeler, 1983).

John S. Bell: From some popular presentations the general public could get the impression that the very existence of the cosmos depends on our being here to observe the observables. I do not know that this is wrong. I am inclined to hope that we are indeed that important. But I see no evidence that it is so in the success of contemporary quantum theory.

So I think that it is not right to tell the public that a central role for conscious mind is integrated into modern atomic physics. Or that `information' is the real stuff of physical theory. It seems to me irresponsible to suggest that technical features of contemporary theory were anticipated by the saints of ancient religions... by introspection.

The only 'observer' which is essential in orthodox practical quantum theory is the inanimate apparatus which amplifies the microscopic events to macroscopic consequences. Of course this apparatus, in laboratory experiments, is chosen and adjusted by the experiments. In this sense the outcomes of experiments are indeed dependent on the mental process of the experimenters! But once the apparatus is in place, and functioning untouched, it is a matter of complete indifference - according to ordinary quantum mechanics - whether the experimenters stay around to watch, or delegate such 'observing' to computers, (Bell, 1984).

Nico van Kampem:
Whoever endows with more meaning than is needed for computing observable phenomena is responsible for the consequences. (van Kampen, 1988).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 22/12/2014 02:18:37
Quote from: Ethos_
Of course, a virus induced paranoia.
Why do you think he's paranoid rather than his computer having a computer virus?
Because he acts like someone here at TNS has purposely sabotaged his computer. Read his reply #951.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 22/12/2014 02:22:20
I do suspect that somebody might have  been sending me some malicious malware or trojans from this site :

What's going on ?
Here's why, he seems to be blaming one of us.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 11:49:42
If you do have a computer-infection, ( rather than plain-old malfunction ) , the websites you downloaded pirated copies of eBooks from (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=49378.0;attach=18229;image) are a far more likely candidate than this one.

I warned him about this, and the ethics and legality of copyright theft many moons ago; naturally, he knew better. It's probably karmic justice.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 12:10:41
I've been reluctant to get drawn into the quantum mechanics part of the discussion because to me, Don has never clearly outlined how he gets from "consciousness collapses the wave function" to "the brain is a transceiver for immaterial nonlocal consciousness" - so what's the point of debating the interpretation of quantum mechanics for that end? His version of consciousness remains unexplained and attributeless, regardless.

Never the less, because he brings it up over and over and insists that all the really important physicists accept his interpretation, I thought I'd post some interesting quotes from the article :Does Quantum Mechanics Require A Conscious Observer? by Michael Nauenberg, (a collaborator of Bell's.) The last quote is one of Bell's.
Thanks for that - it usefully clarifies the simplification behind Von Neumann's 'dilemma'.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: domkarr on 22/12/2014 12:42:51
well you've obviously heard about the virtual universe theory so i won't go into that.

The other thing is a newer theory that all mass in the universe or matter, would be more precise, is in some way linked i mean the whole theory goes pretty deep but the relevant part of the theory to the current discussion is that, because we are a small part of that matter, we are also linked into the universe.

I say deep because the theory includes such ideas as multiple or never ending alternate dimensions, black holes, the background radiation left over by the big bang and even goes so far as to suggest that our minds might contain a doorway to other planets or dimensions (i know doorways in the mind is not mainstream science).

it's hard to explain what i'm sure other people much better at the science than myself have been proposing.
but basically the idea is that because there is this background radiation or energy, then it isn't so hard to believe that energy might be able to travel or bridge clear through to these other dimensions or planets (i say both because i think the people involved have already split into two opposing sides) sort of like electricity traveling through water. so anyway the relevant part is that sometimes on rare occasions people are somehow capable of absorbing this energy and even in certain minds correlating this energy as visions or dreams or some such thing  and that maybe it is even possible that we are being fed that energy from an as of yet unknown source in the universe.

i wish i was as good as you guys at referencing but my brain is crap with names for some reason.

As I understand it, all of this is still fairly new stuff maybe arising in the last ten years or so and I think some of the more sci-fi theorizing and even the more believable content is not yet proven but could go either way. I was just wondering if any of this was ringing any bells or not (maybe in the way of obe's?).

I only bring it up because i thought maybe it might bean interesting idea to consider. In no way is any of this my doing I just can't recall the exact sources but I think maybe a search for dark energy might yield a few of these theories as that is the supposed energy connecting all matter in the universe. I mean the idea thrills me because it might hold the key to communication with other planets in the universe or possible means of travel.
Maybe even something as far fetched as telekinesis?

I'm not a great wealth of knowledge on the subject but I was consider that maybe blending this form of science with the kind that is the current discussion might possibly produce some interesting concepts.

oh and hey don mate, I was wondering, have you been thumping the keyboard on you're laptop much during this conversation?
maybe I think you might have depressed on the inner workings of you're computer with a bit to much force one too many times and knocked a bit of solder loose on the motherboard.
happened to my laptop recently, although i'm just heavy handed, but does the crash accompany a crash dump error or a blue or black screen?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 17:56:58
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg447012#msg447012 date=1419200516]


Cheryl :

Both the identity theory and the emergent property theory regarding the origin function nature and emergence of consciousness have been supported by a big zero empirical evidence ,no wonder , so how can you assume then that biological evolution can  account for consciousness , let alone explain it ???
Consciousness can never arise from biology : that's the main issue in consciousness studies by the way, if you haven't noticed that yet .

Looking for consciousness  in the brain is no less an inexplicably magical futile attempt than assuming that biological evolution can give rise to consciousness.


So how then do you know that the physicist making the observation in the QM experiment is conscious? Is it actually provable? Consciousness cannot arise from biology, according to you,  so his biological status as a human being is irrelevant.

You’re comfortable assuming the physicist is conscious because he demonstrates behavior consistent with consciousness, and he claims he is (although a computer could make the same claim) and he has the human neural correlates consistent with consciousness.

You did not quite get what i was saying :

I just said that consciousness  cannot be an emergent property of brain activity ,no matter how evolved the brain might be , let alone that it can be reducible to brain activity or be equated with it , cannot be a biological process , is irreducible to brain activity ,and hence cannot be the product of biology or biological evolution either .

In his book about consciousness, the one you wish to read next ,Stanislas talked so bombastically about the scientific study of consciousness and about his "global neuronal workshop " theory or global information sharing theory regarding the working of the brain and how it "gives rise" to consciousness .

By trying to map all neuronal networks or pathways or brain regions that are involved in conscious processes , he and his team hope to solve the mystery of consciousness by trying to prove the latter to be just the way the brain organizes , monitors , and controls its stream of input and inner workings spontaneously through a network of information sharing ...

Stanislas thinks that  conscious awareness  can be reduced to what he calls conscious access that should not be conflated with awakeness or vigilance and attention ....

Stanislas just reduces conscious awareness to brain activity thus through the so-called executive higher level processes of the brain in their interactions with the lower level ones  .....

Stanislas said many interesting things in that book of his though, talked about many experiments and findings , but he built all his work on the major false premise or belief = emergent property theory that's just another version of identity theory thus , unfortunately enough .

I have read just some parts of that book quickly , so , just to get the general idea behind it .The latter is not so impressive or novel as Stanislas has presented it so bombastically .


Quote
Surely all those “rigorous maths” of Von Neumann you mentioned earlier that showed that consciousness is responsible for the collapse of the wavefunction would not hinge on a flimsy and unprovable  assumption??? That doesn't sound rigorous to me.   How is behavior and neural correlates irrelevant to the determination of consciousness if your entire QM consciousness theory ultimately rests on that very same assumption?! That is quite a pickle.
[/quote]

Von Neumann proved ,through rigorous maths , that there must be a non-physical process that might be collapsing the wave function : he couldn't think of any other such process than the consciousness of the observer ,logically, at the end of the measurement chain ,since all other processes involved in measurements or "observations "  are material or physical , including the physical brain of the observer , the measuring devices , photons of light ...all the latter that cannot but remain in entangled superposition states thus .

Quote

Believe me, I’ve often wondered if you were a turing test designed by Cooper to drive us crazy, but he denies it.

Cooper or any other computer freaks or artificial intelligence maniacs lol can never copy human consciousness ,not even remotely close ,  ever , since the latter is irreducible to brain activity and cannot emerge from it either .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 18:05:11
... basically the idea is that because there is this background radiation or energy, then it isn't so hard to believe that energy might be able to travel or bridge clear through to these other dimensions or planets (i say both because i think the people involved have already split into two opposing sides) sort of like electricity traveling through water. so anyway the relevant part is that sometimes on rare occasions people are somehow capable of absorbing this energy and even in certain minds correlating this energy as visions or dreams or some such thing  and that maybe it is even possible that we are being fed that energy from an as of yet unknown source in the universe.
I'm afraid it sounds like pseudo-scientific mystical bollocks to me. There are certainly other planets elsewhere in this universe, and there may be other universes - but in all the physics-based theories I've heard, they can't interact. Energy isn't some kind of 'stuff', it's a kind of equivalence relation; and if you accept that quantum field theory is a reasonable approximation of how reality behaves (and the evidence so far is that it's way better than that), there are no mysterious fields or forces that significantly interact with matter at our scale.

Without references or links, or more specific details, I can't really say more.
 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 18:20:12
I've been reluctant to get drawn into the quantum mechanics part of the discussion because to me, Don has never clearly outlined how he gets from "consciousness collapses the wave function" to "the brain is a transceiver for immaterial nonlocal consciousness" - so what's the point of debating the interpretation of quantum mechanics for that end? His version of consciousness remains unexplained and attributeless, regardless.

Never the less, because he brings it up over and over and insists that all the really important physicists accept his interpretation, I thought I'd post some interesting quotes from the article :Does Quantum Mechanics Require A Conscious Observer? by Michael Nauenberg, (a collaborator of Bell's.) The last quote is one of Bell's.
 
"Abstract:
The view that the implementation of the principles of quantum mechanics requires a conscious observer is based on misconceptions that are described in this article."
http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness139.html


Richard P. Feynman (Nobel Prize, 1965):
Nature does not know what you are looking at, and she behaves the way she is going to behave whether you bother to take down the data or not (Feynman et al., 1965). 

Murray Gellmann (Nobel Prize, 1969): The universe presumably couldn't care less whether human beings evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists (Rosenblum and Kuttner 2006, 156). 

Anthony J. Leggett (Nobel Prize 2003): It may be somewhat dangerous to explain something one does not understand very well [the quantum measurement process] by invoking something [consciousness] one does not understand at all! (Leggett, 1991). 

John A. Wheeler: Caution: "Consciousness" has nothing whatsover to do with the quantum process. We are dealing with an event that makes itself known by an irreversible act of amplification, by an indelible record, an act of registration. Does that record subsequently enter into the "consciousness" of some person, some animal or some computer? Is that the first step into translating the measurement into "meaning" meaning regarded as "the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate." Then that is a separate part of the story, important but not to be confused with "quantum phenomena." (Wheeler, 1983).

John S. Bell: From some popular presentations the general public could get the impression that the very existence of the cosmos depends on our being here to observe the observables. I do not know that this is wrong. I am inclined to hope that we are indeed that important. But I see no evidence that it is so in the success of contemporary quantum theory.

So I think that it is not right to tell the public that a central role for conscious mind is integrated into modern atomic physics. Or that `information' is the real stuff of physical theory. It seems to me irresponsible to suggest that technical features of contemporary theory were anticipated by the saints of ancient religions... by introspection.

The only 'observer' which is essential in orthodox practical quantum theory is the inanimate apparatus which amplifies the microscopic events to macroscopic consequences. Of course this apparatus, in laboratory experiments, is chosen and adjusted by the experiments. In this sense the outcomes of experiments are indeed dependent on the mental process of the experimenters! But once the apparatus is in place, and functioning untouched, it is a matter of complete indifference - according to ordinary quantum mechanics - whether the experimenters stay around to watch, or delegate such 'observing' to computers, (Bell, 1984).

Nico van Kampem:
Whoever endows with more meaning than is needed for computing observable phenomena is responsible for the consequences. (van Kampen, 1988).

Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .

I have many sources that agree with the above stuff of yours , as i have many more other sources that disagree .

There is a lots of disagreement about the interpretation of QM , which comes down to no agreement or real consensus , but the simplest and most plausible interpretation of QM was delivered by Von Neumann mainly and is still supported by an army of physicists today ,  prominent and less prominent ones ,so .

Feynman was the one who said by the way that " I can safely say that nobody understands QM ..." : the interpretation of QM remains controversial and unresolved thus , although the simplest and more plausible interpretation of QM is the one that was mentioned above .

All interpretations of QM thus are relatively "equally valid " , while the one that involves the observer effect in the above mentioned sense is more simple and plausible than the rest,even though it has not been proved conclusively  ( how can it be proved conclusively , since physicists  can't know what happens when they are not conducting measurements or conscious aware observations: when they are not looking ...or when they conduct the 1  measurement and not another one .) .

Those physicists who say that the latter is based on a misconception are the ones against it , like all materialists are , simply because it is totally incompatible with materialism .

The materialistic MW interpretation of QM  is too untestable , too absurd bizarre paradoxical to be taken seriously , and it is based all about the major materialistic false premises or belief : consciousness is a material process (well, of course consciousness cannot collapse the wave function, if it is just a material process like the rest of them are lol : how convenient for materialists .) .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical locality , classical determinism, and classical realism as well,as QM predicted they would  .

The classical realism , for example, that states that the properties of objects are independent of whether or not they are observed : the so-called external  objective reality "out there " is independent from the observer :  that was challenged by Bell's theorem and its related experiments exactly as QM predicted thus = the observer and the observed are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other = there is no such thing as the independent observer and independent observed : the observer and the observed are inseparable = the subjective and the objective are inseparable = science must try to modify or rather  extend and expand its rational empirical methodology and epistemology as to include the subjective element in it , not to mention that science must also modify its vocabulary on the subject accordingly , since science has to be communicated through human language as well .

Even Einstein himself was bothered mostly by the latter fact , by the fact that QM challenged classical realism .He could not bring himself to accept that ,that's why he thought that the highly successful QM had to be incomplete .He tried to prove the latter via what became to be known as the EPR (collectively Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen ) argument with Bohr .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments proved thus Einstein to be wrong and Bohr to be right : see below :

Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 18:31:29
Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .
Good grief, that's rich coming from someone who's sole technique is based on posting other people's work. Pots & kettles come to mind.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 18:58:51
Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .
Good grief, that's rich coming from someone who's sole technique is based on posting other people's work. Pots & kettles come to mind.

Well, you ,guys, are all materialists (I am the only non-materialist guy here ) ,so i have to try to provide you with non-materialist stuff that refutes materialism .
That's why i was relying on the works of some scientists , philosophers ...by posting some relevant excerpts of theirs from some of their books on the subject to support my claims : that's what this whole thread is all about by the way : about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature , since materialism is false , mainly because it can never intrinsically account for consciousness, let alone explain it ,and hence all materialist theories of consciousness are false + the materialistic MW interpretation of QM is also false ,since it is based on the materialistic false belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process + The materialistic so-called standard model of QFT has to be fundamentally false and approximately correct , like classical physics were/are  by the way , simply because the latter both can absolutely not account for neither consciousness nor for its causal effects on matter ..................
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 19:28:15
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447013#msg447013 date=1419201241]
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg446938#msg446938 date=1419111719]
Only the modern substance dualism and idealist monism are consistent with QM , and can thus remain in the competition regarding the possible theories of consciousness .

Materialism and property dualism ( the latter is just yet another paradoxical form of  materialism and panpsychism in disguise thus )  ,for example , are  incompatible with QM that has been encountering consciousness.
No; not even wrong
.

Can you elaborate on that ? , please , thanks .
Already done earlier in the thread.

Oh ,that : there are allegedly no significant or relevant forces that remain to be discovered ,and hence consciousness is just a material process without any causal effects on matter ...blablabla ...(Reminds me of what a British lunatic scientist or physicist said in the 19th century by the way about how allegedly nearly complete classical physics were  ,in the sense that there remained no laws of physics to be discovered . Only details remained to be filled in through better and better measurements . lol How ironic: QFT says basically the same : history repeats itself  .)

How can physics say anything about the latter ? since "physicists can't even explain physics ..." and since "we might be needing better physics than QM to account for consciousness" ,as Wigner said .

No wonder that William James did predict the fact that classical physics had to be approximately correct and fundamentally false , since it could /can absolutely not account for neither consciousness nor for its causal effects on matter .

Quote
Quote
The materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be thus approximately correct and fundamentally false...
QFT is not a description of reality, it's a model. It's a good model because it works. Without it, you wouldn't have the processor or storage in your computer, or LEDs, etc. When it stops making astonishingly accurate predictions about the real world, it'll be time to refine it or replace it.

QFT  works like classical physics did /do , but they are nevertheless both approximately correct and fundamentally false ,since they both can absolutely not account for neither consciousness nor for its causal effects on matter , once again thus .

By the way , your beloved  Sean Caroll talks about QFT as being the one that 's all about the nature of reality lol ( what a bombastic talk ) ,while physicists can't even solve the interpretation problem in QM that's supposed to be about the nature of reality ,while 96% of the universe is allegedly made of unknown dark matter and unknown dark energy ,so physicists do not even know much about the remaining 4 % of the universe , ironically enough .

Not to mention the fact that 99,9999..9 % of the universe is made of "empty space " , while the remaining 0,0000..0 % is "matter " ( not to mention the wave /particle duality ) .

Physicists focus thus all their attention on the 0,00000..0 % of the remaining 4 % lol of the universe , and then they have the nerve to assert so boldly and bombastically that that's all about "the nature of reality "  lol  through the QFT lol

You gotta be insane to believe in that materialistic stuff .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 19:32:07
Cheryl :

I did add some extra remarks below  this post of mine to you that weren't added to the same one in the previous page :

I've been reluctant to get drawn into the quantum mechanics part of the discussion because to me, Don has never clearly outlined how he gets from "consciousness collapses the wave function" to "the brain is a transceiver for immaterial nonlocal consciousness" - so what's the point of debating the interpretation of quantum mechanics for that end? His version of consciousness remains unexplained and attributeless, regardless.

Never the less, because he brings it up over and over and insists that all the really important physicists accept his interpretation, I thought I'd post some interesting quotes from the article :Does Quantum Mechanics Require A Conscious Observer? by Michael Nauenberg, (a collaborator of Bell's.) The last quote is one of Bell's.
 
"Abstract:
The view that the implementation of the principles of quantum mechanics requires a conscious observer is based on misconceptions that are described in this article."
http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness139.html


Richard P. Feynman (Nobel Prize, 1965):
Nature does not know what you are looking at, and she behaves the way she is going to behave whether you bother to take down the data or not (Feynman et al., 1965). 

Murray Gellmann (Nobel Prize, 1969): The universe presumably couldn't care less whether human beings evolved on some obscure planet to study its history; it goes on obeying the quantum mechanical laws of physics irrespective of observation by physicists (Rosenblum and Kuttner 2006, 156). 

Anthony J. Leggett (Nobel Prize 2003): It may be somewhat dangerous to explain something one does not understand very well [the quantum measurement process] by invoking something [consciousness] one does not understand at all! (Leggett, 1991). 

John A. Wheeler: Caution: "Consciousness" has nothing whatsover to do with the quantum process. We are dealing with an event that makes itself known by an irreversible act of amplification, by an indelible record, an act of registration. Does that record subsequently enter into the "consciousness" of some person, some animal or some computer? Is that the first step into translating the measurement into "meaning" meaning regarded as "the joint product of all the evidence that is available to those who communicate." Then that is a separate part of the story, important but not to be confused with "quantum phenomena." (Wheeler, 1983).

John S. Bell: From some popular presentations the general public could get the impression that the very existence of the cosmos depends on our being here to observe the observables. I do not know that this is wrong. I am inclined to hope that we are indeed that important. But I see no evidence that it is so in the success of contemporary quantum theory.

So I think that it is not right to tell the public that a central role for conscious mind is integrated into modern atomic physics. Or that `information' is the real stuff of physical theory. It seems to me irresponsible to suggest that technical features of contemporary theory were anticipated by the saints of ancient religions... by introspection.

The only 'observer' which is essential in orthodox practical quantum theory is the inanimate apparatus which amplifies the microscopic events to macroscopic consequences. Of course this apparatus, in laboratory experiments, is chosen and adjusted by the experiments. In this sense the outcomes of experiments are indeed dependent on the mental process of the experimenters! But once the apparatus is in place, and functioning untouched, it is a matter of complete indifference - according to ordinary quantum mechanics - whether the experimenters stay around to watch, or delegate such 'observing' to computers, (Bell, 1984).

Nico van Kampem:
Whoever endows with more meaning than is needed for computing observable phenomena is responsible for the consequences. (van Kampen, 1988).

Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .

I have many sources that agree with the above stuff of yours , as i have many more other sources that disagree .

There is a lots of disagreement about the interpretation of QM , which comes down to no agreement or real consensus , but the simplest and most plausible interpretation of QM was delivered by Von Neumann mainly and is still supported by an army of physicists today ,  prominent and less prominent ones ,so .

Feynman was the one who said by the way that " I can safely say that nobody understands QM ..." : the interpretation of QM remains controversial and unresolved thus , although the simplest and more plausible interpretation of QM is the one that was mentioned above .

All interpretations of QM thus are relatively "equally valid " , while the one that involves the observer effect in the above mentioned sense is more simple and plausible than the rest,even though it has not been proved conclusively  ( how can it be proved conclusively , since physicists  can't know what happens when they are not conducting measurements or conscious aware observations: when they are not looking ...or when they conduct the 1  measurement and not another one .) .

Those physicists who say that the latter is based on a misconception are the ones against it , like all materialists are , simply because it is totally incompatible with materialism .

The materialistic MW interpretation of QM  is too untestable , too absurd bizarre paradoxical to be taken seriously , and it is based all about the major materialistic false premises or belief : consciousness is a material process (well, of course consciousness cannot collapse the wave function, if it is just a material process like the rest of them are lol : how convenient for materialists .) .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical locality , classical determinism, and classical realism as well,as QM predicted they would  .

The classical realism , for example, that states that the properties of objects are independent of whether or not they are observed : the so-called external  objective reality "out there " is independent from the observer :  that was challenged by Bell's theorem and its related experiments exactly as QM predicted thus = the observer and the observed are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other = there is no such thing as the independent observer and independent observed : the observer and the observed are inseparable = the subjective and the objective are inseparable = science must try to modify or rather  extend and expand its rational empirical methodology and epistemology as to include the subjective element in it , not to mention that science must also modify its vocabulary on the subject accordingly , since science has to be communicated through human language as well .

Even Einstein himself was bothered mostly by the latter fact , by the fact that QM challenged classical realism .He could not bring himself to accept that ,that's why he thought that the highly successful QM had to be incomplete .He tried to prove the latter via what became to be known as the EPR (collectively Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen ) argument with Bohr .

Bell's theorem and its related experiments proved thus Einstein to be wrong and Bohr to be right : see below :

Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .

Source : "Quantum Enigma , Physics encounters consciousness : "

http://quantumenigma.com/

"According to Bell:
In his arguments with Bohr, Einstein was wrong in all the details.
Bohr understood the actual manipulation of quantum mechanics much better than Einstein. But still, in his philosophy of physics and his idea of what it is all about and what we are doing and should do, Einstein seems to be absolutely admirable. . . . [T]here is no doubt that he is, for me, the model of how one should think about physics."

.......


"Bell’s theorem and the experiments it fostered are responsible. They
did more than confi rm the weird predictions of quantum theory. The
experiments showed that no future theory could ever explain our actual
world as a “reasonable” one. Any correct future theory must describe a world in which objects do not have properties that are separately their own, independent of their “observation.” In principle, that applies to all objects. Even to us?"

............

Bell’s theorem has been called “the most profound discovery in science in
the last half of the twentieth century.” It has rubbed physics’ nose in the weirdness of quantum mechanics. Bell’s theorem and the experiments it stimulated answered what was supposedly a “merely philosophical question” in the laboratory. We now know Einstein’s “spooky actions” actually exist. Even events at the edge of the galaxy instantly influence what happens at the edge of your garden. We quickly emphasize that such influences are undetectable in any normally complex situation.Nevertheless, What are now called “EPR-Bell influences,” or entanglement, now get attention in industrial laboratories for their potential to allow incredibly powerful computers. They already provide the most secure encryption for confidential communication. Bell’s theorem has renewed interest in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and dramatically displays physics’ encounter with consciousness."

..........

.."When the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. Assumptions of reality and separability yielded a wrong prediction in our actual world.

Bell’s straw man was knocked down, as Bell expected it would be. Our world therefore does not have both reality and separability. It’s in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
We immediately admit not understanding what the world lacking “reality” might mean. Even what “reality” itself might mean. In fact, whether or not reality is indeed required as a premise in Bell’s theorem is in dispute.
However, we need not deal with that right now.

 For our derivation of a Bell inequality, we assume a straightforward real world. Later, when we discuss the consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality in our actual world, we’ll define a “reality” implicitly accepted by most physicists. It will leave us with a strangely connected world."


P.S.: Even Bell himself ,even the authors of quantum enigma , the author Alastair Rae of "Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " , and many other physicists would rather prefer to rescue or preserve some sense of "reality " than to give it all up ,otherwise they would have nothing to work on  ( or as Einstein said ,or in words to that same effect at least : I don't see what's physics is supposed to work on ,if the objective reality out there is inseparable from the observer ) ,or as Alastair Rae, for example , who's a propenent of MW interpretation of QM  said in that above mentioned book of his : i would rather prefer to believe in MW than to give up reality .He did even admit that that's just a matter of taste or a matter of philosophical , or aesthetical preference , not  a matter of fact .

Furthermore, my own understanding of the conscious aware collapse of the wave function cannot be taken in the literal sense : it just means that the physical reality or the objective reality is inseparable from the consciousness of the observer (there is no separate consciousness and separate physical reality : they are inseparable : "reality " is psycho-physical as Pauli used to say ) ,or as a prominent physicist said, or in words to the same effect at least :

[/Will it not trun out that ,with the developemnt of science , any progress in the study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness ,since both are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other .i]

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 22/12/2014 20:21:03
domkarr :

See the following from Nature scientific magazine :

Simulations back up theory that Universe is a hologram :

http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328


And this one from New Scientist :

Experiment tests whether universe is a hologram :

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26114-experiment-tests-whether-universe-is-a-hologram.html#.VJh8fcKAzc

The "physical reality " might be an elaborate  and persistent  illusion that looks, feels , tastes , sounds ...real to all of us, who wknow ?

Cheryl :

Read the following carefully : from New Scientist :

Quantum weirdness, the battle for the basis of reality :

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCsQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftwileshare.com%2Fuploads%2FQuantum_weirdness__The_battle_for_the_basis_of_reality_-_physics-math_-_05_August_2013_-_New_Scientist.pdf&ei=rYOYVIDwHsL5ULKVhLAL&usg=AFQjCNEK6mmejb-U2urIkiaTeiQ5gGAKDw&bvm=bv.82001339,d.d24

Use your mind ,Cheryl,  don't leave your mind to neither dlorde nor to materialism , like  Descartes who left (his ) the mind to the medieval Church, metaphorically speaking then  .   lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 22/12/2014 21:49:25


Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .


I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 22/12/2014 23:40:04
.. there is no separate consciousness and separate physical reality : they are inseparable...

That's right; you're beginning to get the hang of it. Consciousness is an aspect of physical reality, a physical process.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 22/12/2014 23:49:24
Cheryl :


Well, you should try to refute my earlier quotes and excerpts on the subject , instead of posting others that say somethingelse .

Lol. Seriously? How can you criticise someone else for that?  You post excerpt after excerpt, and quote after quote, and when someone raises a question or counters a point, you simply instruct them to to go back and read your source "more carefully" instead of responding to their specific comment.

Quote
There is a lots of disagreement about the interpretation of QM , which comes down to no agreement or real consensus , but the simplest and most plausible interpretation of QM was delivered by Von Neumann
It isn't the simplest. It can involve long messy chains of macroscopic constructions that include thermodynamically irreversible events, multiple exits along the chain for information to leak out of the system and influence outside events, depending on how any inanimate objects in the chain react, until the result reaches your "conscious human observer".

And you never answered my earlier question - how do you know your physicist is conscious in the first place, if biology, neurocorrelates, and behavior cannot be used in the determination? How can a mathematical theory depend so critically on this unprovable assumption?
 
Cooper may not approve of emergent properties, but he mused extensively about AI performing complex, problem solving,cognitive and physical tasks. Imagine that your physicist really isn't human, but AI. Our AI physicist  chooses the apparatus and decides what to measure, records and interprets the results, which become the basis for more experiments (or not) perhaps resulting in some new technological innovation or application that he then pursues (or not). Supplies are ordered (or not) delivery trucks come and go (or not), repairs to equipment are made (or not), new staff are required to assist (or not), all depending on what the AI physicists require to continue their work and the direction it takes, (or not). It would seem that anything that happens as result of this activity becomes entangled in the chain and in a state of superpositon.  How is that more simple or plausible?
Quote

Those physicists who say that the latter is based on a misconception are the ones against it , like all materialists are , simply because it is totally incompatible with materialism.


That is not why they object to it. Did you read the rest of Nauenberg's article?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 23/12/2014 15:24:58


Processes are materially based, but not material in themselves. “Life” and consciousness are materially based but they are also events in time, and that is why they are irreducible to just matter
Absolutely Cheryl, processes are materially based. But when we consider time in the equation, one must remember that time and space are inseparable. And time and space are necessary constituents of the local matter we observe in our reality. So I would disagree somewhat and suggest that "Life" and consciousness are, in fact, reducible to matter which is a manifestation of space/time and energy.

I've been thinking about your response, Ethos.  Not to sound like Bill Clinton (when he said it depends on you define "is") but it depends on how you define "irreducible." The argument of anti-materialists is that  individual elements of the system do not in isolation display all of the properties of the entire phenomena they observe. The interaction of things does not seem to have a precise location or mass-like form in the system, hence properties of the phenomena must come from some additional, special, mystical stuff that we just can't detect. (Ironically, it almost seems like the anti-materialists are the ones stymied by a material conception of things, by rejecting that arrangement and interaction matters, or that processes are physical or real.)

It may be a simplistic analogy, but where does a tornado go when it is done being a tornado? The argument for souls, or consciousness outside the brain, is like arguing that there must be a place where all former tornadoes reside, as tornadoes.

But your comment brings up an interesting  point - time - which I find infinitely more strange than consciousness. The barrier between your subjective experience and my subjective experience seems a less formidable one than the intuitive obstacles in comprehending time, or thinking of time as anything like space, or possibly having a beginning, or stopping or ending. I sometimes find myself pondering how it is that life "feels" like the world exists, vanishes, and reappears in a slightly different arrangement, again and again, like a flickering series of images on a reel of movie film, while someone burns the reels as quickly as they are shown. But that is just how I perceive it and the physics of time say otherwise.

The explanations of gravitational time dilation, with astronauts going off and coming back to a much older earth, make sense as long as you don't really think about it too much, and the arrow of time is still, if I'm not mistaken, a genuine mystery even in quantum mechanics. You can't un-do decoherence - is that correct?

I can't help but suspect (and this is admittedly speculation) that the ephemeral and immaterial qualities people attribute to consciousness have less to do with the nature of matter, and more to do with the nature of time. But time feels like the water we swim in, and like fish, perhaps we fail to take it into account, especially in these kind of discussions. (I'm not sure we know how to take it into account.)

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 23/12/2014 17:19:19
... the arrow of time is still, if I'm not mistaken, a genuine mystery even in quantum mechanics. You can't un-do decoherence - is that correct?
Yes, you can't undo decoherence, any more than you can un-make an omelette and get back the eggs. The arrow of time is a macro-scale statistical phenomenon, explained by statistical mechanics. It points in the general direction of disorder (roughly speaking, entropy). Any ordered system that has some degrees of freedom will tend, with random interactions over time, to become more disordered - simply because there are far more ways for it to be disordered than ordered. This is the entropy gradient, a slope down which systems with low entropy slide as their entropy increases. The universe is unwinding from low to high entropy; the only mystery is why it started out with such low entropy.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 17:27:16
dlorde :

You were completely wrong about Carter's earlier understanding of  Popper's world 3 theory : see below and more + Popper and Eccles argued for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter do not obey any laws of physics in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " : 

"Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " By Alastair Rae ,Excerpt From Chapter 5 : " Is it all in the Mind?" :



Quote : " In the last chapter we saw how the measurement problem in quantum theory arises when we try to treat the measurement apparatus as a quantum system. We need more apparatus to measure which state the
first apparatus is in, and we have a measurement chain that seems to go
on indefinitely.

 There is, however, one place where this apparently infinite sequence certainly seems to end and that is when the information reaches us. We know from experience that when we look at the photon detector we see that either it has recorded the passage of a photon or it hasn’t. When we open the box and look at the cat either it is dead or it is alive; we never see it in the state of suspended animation that quantum physics alleges it should be in until its state is measured.

It might follow, therefore, that human beings should be looked on as the ultimate measuring apparatus. If so, what aspect of human beings is it that gives them this apparently unique quality? It is this question and its implications that form the subject of the present chapter.

Let us examine more closely what goes on when a human being observes the quantum state of a system. We return to the set-up described in the last chapter, where a 45° photon passes through a polarisation analyser that moves a pointer to one of two positions (H or V) depending on whether the photon is horizontally or vertically polarised.

At least that is what would happen if the analyser and pointer
behaved as a measuring apparatus. If however we treat them as part of
the quantum system, the pointer is placed in a superposition of being at
H and at V until its state is measured. We now add a human observer
who looks at the pointer (it would be possible to imagine the observer
using one of his other senses, for example hearing a particular sound caused by a change in the pointer’s position, but it is clearer if we think
of a visual observation).

 In physical terms this means that light is scattered from the pointer into the observer’s eyes, the retina picks up the signal and transmits it along the optic nerve to the brain. So far the process would seem to be just like that carried out by any other measuring apparatus and there would not seem to be any evidence of a uniquely human act.

From now on, however, the measurement becomes part of the observer’s knowledge. He is conscious of it. It is in his mind. The attribute of human beings that distinguishes us from other objects in the universe is our consciousness, and if we adopt this approach to the quantum measurement problem, consciousness has an even more central role to play in the physics of the universe than we might ever have imagined.

An example of the distinction between the conscious observer and a more conventional measuring apparatus is illustrated by a variation of the Schrödinger’s cat situation known as ‘Wigner’s friend’, after E. P. Wigner, who was central in the development of the consciousness -based theory of measurement. In this example we replace the cat by a human ‘friend’, and the gun by a conventional detector and pointer.

When we open the box, we ask our friend what happened and she will tell us that the pointer moved to H or V at a certain time. Assuming, of course, our friend to be a truthful person, we cannot now treat the whole box and its contents as a quantum system, as the friend would have had to be in a state corresponding to a superposition of knowing that the pointer is at H and knowing that it is at V – until we asked her!
The cat may not really have been alive or dead, but the state of our friend’s mind is quite certain – at least to her.

A consciousness-based quantum measurement theory therefore relies on the premise that human consciousness behaves quite differently from any other object in the universe. In the rest of this chapter we shall look at some of the evidence for and against this proposition and then try to see whether it can form the basis of a satisfactory quantum measurement theory.

The idea that human consciousness is unique and different from anything else in the universe is of course a very old and widely held belief.

Ever since men and women started thinking of their existence
(which is probably ever since we were ‘self-conscious’) many people
have thought that their consciousness, sometimes called their ‘mind’,
their ‘self’ or their ‘soul’, was something distinct from the physical
world. This idea is a central tenet of all the world’s major religions, which maintain that consciousness can exist independently of the body and indeed the brain – in some cases in a completely different (perhaps heavenly) existence after the body’s death, and in others through a reincarnation into a completely new body, or into the old body when resurrected at a Last Judgment.

A twentieth-century book setting out arguments in favour of the
separateness of the soul was written jointly by the famous philosopher
Sir Karl Popper and the Nobel-prize winning brain scientist Sir John
Eccles in 1977. The book’s title The Self and Its Brain clearly indicates
the viewpoint taken. It is of course impossible to do justice to nearly
600 pages of argument in a few paragraphs, but we can try to
summarise the main ideas. Popper starts with a definition of ‘reality’:
something is real if it can affect the behaviour of a large-scale physical
object.


This is really quite a conservative definition of reality and would be generally accepted by most people, as will become clear by considering a few examples. Thus (large-scale) physical objects themselves must be real because they can interact and affect each other’s behaviour. Invisible substances, such as air, are similarly real if only because they exert effects on other recognizably real solid objects.

Similarly gravitational and magnetic fields must be real because their
presence causes objects to move: dropped objects fall to the floor, the
moon orbits the earth, a compass needle turns to point to the magnetic
north pole and so on. Popper describes all such objects, substances and
fields as belonging to what he calls ‘world 1’. There are two more
‘worlds’ in Popper’s philosophy. World 2 consists of states of the
human mind, conscious or unconscious. These must be considered real
for exactly the same reason as were world-1 objects – i.e. they can affect the behaviour of physical objects. Thus a particular state of mind can cause the brain to send a message along a nerve that causes the contraction of a muscle and a movement of a hand or leg, which in turn may cause an undoubted world-1 object such as a football to be propelled through the air.

Beyond worlds 1 and 2 is world 3. Following Popper, world 3 is defined as the products of the human mind. These are not physical objects nor are they merely brain states, but are things such as stories, myths, pieces of music, mathematical theorems, scientific theories etc.

These are to be considered real for exactly the same reasons as were
applied to worlds 1 and 2. Consider for example a piece of music. What
is it? It is certainly not the paper and ink used to write out a copy of the
score, neither is it the compact disc on which a particular performance is
recorded. It isn’t even the pattern on the disc or the vibrations in the air
when the music is played. None of these world-1 objects are the piece of
music, but all exist in the form they do because of the music. The music
is a world-3 object, a product of the human mind, which is to be considered as ‘real’ because its existence affects the behaviour of large scale physical objects – the ink and paper of the score, the shape of the grooves in the record, the pattern of vibrations in the air and so on.

( Popper actually refers to large-scale objects partly to avoid discussing the
quantum behaviour of microscopic bodies, so there is a potential problem of
consistency here if we are to apply his ideas to the measurement problem.).

Another example of a world-3 object is a mathematical theorem
such as ‘The only even prime number is 2’.

 Everyone who knows any mathematics must agree that this statement is true and it follows that it is ‘real’ if only because world-1 objects such as the arrangement of the ink on the paper of this page would otherwise have been different. The reality of scientific theories is seen in even more dramatic ways. It is because of the truth of our scientific understanding of the operation of semiconductors that microchip-based computers exist in the form they do. Tragically, it was the truth of the scientific theories of nuclear physics that resulted in the development, construction and detonation of a nuclear bomb.

The reader may well have noticed an important aspect of these
world-3 objects. Their reality is established only by the intervention of
conscious, human, beings. A piece of music or a mathematical theorem
results in a particular mental state of a human being (i.e. a world-2
object) which in turn affects the behaviour of world 1.

Without human consciousness this interaction would be impossible and the reality of world 3 could not be established. It is this fact that leads Popper and Eccles to extend their argument to the reality of the self-conscious mind itself. Only a self-conscious human being can appreciate the reality of
world-3 objects, so it follows that human consciousness itself must be
real and different from any physical object, even the brain.
These ideas are developed further in a major section of the book, written by John Eccles.

He describes the physiological operation of the brain and speculates on how the self-conscious mind may interact with the brain: he suggests a remarkably mechanistic model in which he postulates that particular ‘open synapses’ in the brain are directly affected by the (assumed separate) self-conscious mind. An interaction of this kind is a necessary consequence of the idea of a mind or soul that is separate from the body and brain: before an, undoubtedly real, world-1 event can occur there must be an interaction between the ‘thoughts’ of the mind and the physical states of the brain. At some point there must be changes in the brain that do not result from normal physical causes but which are the result of a literally ‘supernatural’ interaction.

The above arguments are by no means universally accepted and
many people (including the present author) believe that a much more
‘natural’ understanding of consciousness is possible. But if we accept
the idea of our conscious selves as separate from and interacting with
our physical brains, a resolution of the measurement problem is immediately suggested. We simply postulate that the laws of quantum physics govern the whole of the physical universe and that the measurement chain is broken when the information reaches a human
consciousness.

 The interaction between mind and matter, which by
definition is not subject to the laws of physics, breaks the measurement
chain and puts the quantum system into one of its possible states.
The effect of this view of the quantum theory of measurement on our attitude to the physical universe can hardly be exaggerated. Indeed
it is difficult to hold this position while still assigning any reality at all
to anything outside our consciousness.

 Every observation we make is equivalent to a quantum measurement of some property that apparently has reality only when its observation is recorded in our minds. If the state of a physical system is uncertain until we have observed it, does it mean anything to say that it even exists outside ourselves? ‘Objective reality’, the reality of objects outside ourselves, seems, in Heisenberg’s phrase, to have ‘evaporated’ as a result of quantum physics.

 As Bertrand Russell put it in 1956: ‘It has begun to seem that matter, like
the Cheshire Cat, is becoming gradually diaphanous and nothing is left
but the grin, caused, presumably, by amusement at those who still think
it is there’. Of course the existence of the external universe has always
been recognised as a problem in philosophy. Because our knowledge of
the outside world (if it does exist!) is mediated by our senses, it seems
natural to believe that it is this sensual data of whose existence we can
be sure.

 When we say, for example, that there is a table near us, some
will insist that all we actually know is that our mind has acquired information by way of our brain and our senses that is consistent with
the postulate of a table. Nevertheless, before quantum physics it was
always possible to argue that by far the simplest model to explain our sense data is that there really is a table in the room – that the external
physical universe does exist objectively. A quantum theory based on consciousness, however, goes further than this: the very existence of an
external universe, or at least the particular state it is in, is strongly determined by the fact that conscious minds are observing it.

We have reached a very interesting position. Ever since the beginnings of modern science four or five hundred years ago, scientific thought seems to have moved humankind and consciousness further from the centre of things. More and more of the universe has become explicable
in mechanical, objective terms, and even human beings are becoming
understood scientifically by biologists and behavioural scientists.

 Now we find that physics, previously considered the most objective of the
sciences, is reinventing the need for the human soul and putting it right at
the centre of our understanding of the universe! However, before accepting such a revolution in attitudes, it is important to examine some
of the arguments against a consciousness-based measurement theory and to understand why, although some continue to support it, most physicists do not believe it is an adequate solution to the measurement problem nor, indeed, a correct way to understand the physical universe and our relationship with it." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 17:37:25
dlorde :

If we assume that consciousness is a non-local and non-physical process in the substance dualistic or idealistic monistic sense that is , then the interpretation problem in QM is solved  ,as Alastair Rae said, in other words,  in his above displayed  excerpt from his "Quantum physics ,illusion or reality ? " book, even though he does not agree with that alleged nature of consciousness ,and hence he's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM .

He even admitted that he preferred the latter interpretation ,in order not to give up reality : he said that that choice of his  was just a matter of taste , or a matter of philosophical or aesthetical preference , not a matter of fact .

P.S : Your earlier bashing of Carter regarding his alleged  "misunderstanding or misuse " of Popper's philosophy or world 3 theory was completely wrong : see above .
You were /are thus the one who misunderstood/ misunderstands  Popper on the subject , not Carter.
Not to mention the fact that Popper and nobel prize winner Eccles did argue for the existence of a separate soul in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " .
Furthermore , Eccles argued for his  assumption that the interaction of the mind with matter did not obey any laws of physics .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 17:49:54


Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .


I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 18:10:44
.. there is no separate consciousness and separate physical reality : they are inseparable...

That's right; you're beginning to get the hang of it. Consciousness is an aspect of physical reality, a physical process.

lol

Impossible : consciousness cannot be a physical process ,no way (identity theory or emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain are false .) : QM proved that fact : it's only by assuming that consciousness is a non-local and non-physical process , either in the substance dualism or idealist monism sense , that the interpretation problem in QM can be solved : see above .

When i say "There is no separate mind and no separate matter as such ,and hence they are inseparable from each other " , i just mean that they are totally different processes in kind that are inseparable form each other , in this life at least , while there is a separate consciousness or soul that interacts with matter without obeying any laws of physics : see above .

That means that materialism is false , all materialist theories of consciousness are false , and QFT has to be fundamentally false and approximately correct ,since it can absolutely not account for either consciousness nor for its non-mechanical instantaneous non-local causal effects on matter ,without any transfer of energy whatsoever ....to say just that .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 18:33:24
dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .

See above,for example  .

If that's not sufficient to make you , guys , question your false materialistic beliefs,or just some of them  at least ,which you have been equating and confusing with science , then i will provide you with more solid scientific stuff on the subject that might  make you "loose your secular "scientific " materialistic dogmatic ...religion "  lol ,unless you choose to adopt Alastair's subjective attitude here above ,even in the face of counter-evidence , in order not to give up reality , whatever the latter might mean indeed  .

I know that the psychological revolution at least ,that has been triggered by QM is not that easy to cope with , grasp, or handle ,especially if one is an entrenched dogmatic materialist,especially when we see that QM has been misused and misunderstood by many 'scientific " deceptive gurus  or pseudo-scientists ( Even i , as a non-materialist , am still struggling with what QM might mean , since nobody really understands it , and with what all its unparalleled and unique far-reaching implications at all levels might be exactly ), but the fact that the 2 major enigmas of them all have been encountering each other : consciousness and QM thus , and the fact that they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other , that will make you adjust your psychological attitude or state of mind accordingly ,in due time,  or otherwise be left behind .

Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .

QM has already been showing to all of us who can 'see " at least , that any progress in the scientific study of the universe will be impossible without that in the study of consciousness .The latter without which even science itself cannot even exist , let alone function or progress.Consciousness without which we can't be aware or conscious of this universe , we can't  be self-aware or self-conscious , let alone that we can be able to try to understand the universe or ourselves in it .

P.S.: QM has been by the way the only scientific theory ever ( a highly successful one at that that is ), whose interpretation has been involving a subjective element in it , which  has been involving the consciousness of the observer in it so far at least ,which means that the observer cannot be separated from the observed  : the mind has been involved in physics ,or rather has been entering the "exclusive" realm of the so-called most objective and physical of all sciences (physics ), while both the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical physics and QFT have been excluding it from physics , ironically enough  .

No wonder that William James , for example, did predict the fact that classical physics had to be approximately correct and fundamentally false , since it could not account for either consciousness nor for its causal effects on matter, or as Wigner said : physicists can't even explain physics , let alone consciousness , and that we might be needing even better physics than QM to account for consciousness , whatever the latter might be indeed  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 23/12/2014 19:40:26



Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .


Huh?
Consciousness of the observer makes the universe(?) or is part of the universe(?)
therefore it is involved in the universe
(therefore? because?) it is nonphysical
(otherwise? or if that were not so?) we could not be aware of the universe or aware of ourselves.

I have to go defrost a turkey. I'll have to face the music at another time.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 19:55:44



Just face the music : the consciousness of the observer does make part of this universe ,so it cannot but be involved in it ,to say the least thus,as it cannot be a physical process ,otherwise we can't be aware or conscious of this universe ,let alone self-conscious or self-aware = a paradox .


Huh?
Consciousness of the observer makes the universe(?) or is part of the universe(?)
therefore it is involved in the universe
(therefore? because?) it is nonphysical
(otherwise? or if that were not so?) we could not be aware of the universe or aware of ourselves.

I have to go defrost a turkey. I'll have to face the music at another time.

lol


Human language is so deceptive indeed . Science must try to modify its vocabulary in accordance with what QM at least has been saying thus ,since science has to be communicated through human language.... .

What i meant was : in a nutshell :
The universe is psycho-physical ( I can't even picture or know what that means lol ) ,as Pauli used to say, since the consciousness of the observer is inseparable from the observed so-called "physical reality or physical universe " .

Science must thus extend or expand its rational empirical methodology as well as its epistemology , not to mention its vocabulary , as to incorporate or integrate the inescapable subjective element in it .

Merry Christmas , Cheryl , by the way .

Materialist Cheryl celebrating Christmas lol . Have fun anyway . It's mostly a family thing , an illusion, a useful one , an evolutionary useful illusory simulation computed by the brain that feels ,tastes , looks , sounds ...real though lol , like music is lol

Insane paradoxical absurd materialist world view ....making the world and humanity even more insane absurd paradoxical ... lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 23/12/2014 20:16:15
Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 23/12/2014 21:07:33
Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .
Back at ya Don.................and a very Happy New Year to all as well!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: tartarusMkII on 23/12/2014 21:23:45


Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .


I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .

In my opinion a clear and adequate refutation :)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 23/12/2014 22:36:10
You were completely wrong about Carter's earlier understanding of  Popper's world 3 theory : see below and more + Popper and Eccles argued for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter do not obey any laws of physics in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " :
It's a matter of timing and interpretation; Popper's 'Three Worlds' hierarchy was a model of emergent property interactionalism, where World 2 & 3 emerged from the physical world (World 3 via World 2) and influenced it via top-down causal interaction (which, as we discussed earlier, is a more readily accessible view of the bottom-up complexities behind emergent properties). His collaboration with Eccles resulted in a subtle and somewhat controversial development of their views - Eccles didn't believe the mind or consciousness was non-physical, but of a different world, which changed the ontological emphasis of Popper's World 2; this move away from emergent property interactionalism to a more literal 'other world' dualism was criticised, not least by Feyerabend, who noted that top-down causal influence by mental abstractions on the physical, clearly doesn't necessarily imply they are ontologically distinct, and that none of Popper's arguments for the autonomy of such abstract objects determined them to be irreducible in terms of mental or physical states and processes.

Still, the philosophical toings an froings don't really matter; what counts is the data, the empirical evidence, which only points in one direction.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 00:03:16
dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .
I don't really care whether you think I'm misleading, deceptive, or an evil sprite from the non-physical realm. I just give my unvarnished assessment and opinion of what I read and hear. If it means you do a little more research, all well and good, although I'd prefer a little more critical thinking to go with it. Hopefully you'll grow out of the mystical novelty of QM and come to see that consciousness is necessary for the appreciation of observations, but has no direct influence (beyond occasionally deciding what kind of observation to make).

Once again, please let us know when 'post-materialist' science has a useful contribution to make. Anything at all.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 24/12/2014 01:30:32
I'm not sure if these experiments in this article help clarify anything (they do provide empirical evidence contradicting some of the statements in the some of Don's recent excerpts)
 
 I did discover that reading about quantum mechanics while baking is a poor mix.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.2404v2.pdf

Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)
Shan Yu, a Danko Nikoli a,b
́
a Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Deutschordenstr. 46, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 bFrankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Ruth-Moufang-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, German

Abstract
"It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that quantum mechanics explains the emergence of consciousness in the brain. Here we formulated several predictions that follow from this hypothetical relationship and that can be empirically tested. Some of the experimental results that are already available suggest falsification of the first hypothesis. Thus, the suggested link between human consciousness and collapse of wave function does not seem viable. We discuss the constraints implied by the existing
evidence on the role that the human observer may play for quantum mechanics and the role that quantum mechanics may play in the observer’s consciousness."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 17:09:54
Merry Christmas to all of you , boys and girls .
Back at ya Don.................and a very Happy New Year to all as well!

Likewise , buddy .Best wishes .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 17:11:52


Even dlorde and alancalverd could say nothing intelligent about the following , let alone try to refute it ,despite my repetitive posting of the following ,on many occasions :  Here you go again thus :

What particular word , concept , sentence or whatever exactly can't  you understand from the following ? :

Conscious aware observation has to be made anyway , at the end of the measurement chain, as Von Neumann said ,so .


I understood every word. It is incorrect, illogical, and based on a narrow interpretation of "observation" which Heisenberg used to mean "interaction".  It would be unwise to base even a philosophy, let alone a science, on an anthropic arrogation of an entirely sensible axiom: when things interact, they change.

Is this supposed to be  your "refutation " of all that ? lol
Bright answer indeed , Alan .  lol
See above .

In my opinion a clear and adequate refutation :)

Sweet dreams , Alice.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 17:38:53
Happy holidays everyone!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 17:45:13
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447197#msg447197 date=1419379396]
dlorde :

You are an extremely  misleading and deceptive scientist , big time, no offense .Thanks,ironically or paradoxically enough,  for that fact or faculty of yours,  , that does trigger doubts in me sometimes,appreciate indeed , you have no idea lol  (That's a tactic or strategy of yours by the way of which i am well aware.Instead of being genuinely interested in empirical evidence ,instead of following evidence wherever it might take you ,as a real or true scientist should do anyway ,instead of that ,  you are so absolutely certain of your "scientific " materialistic beliefs, while science is certainly and absolutely not about either the truth or certainty .) .Doubt is good and necessary , the skeptical healthy one at least ( Only entrenched dogmatic materialists , secular ,"scientific" , and religious fundamentalists and other fanatics "can have no doubts " ,or at least claim they have none.)  .It just makes me do more research regarding your deceptive and misleading claims , regarding Popper , Eccles and others ,as well as regarding many other topics as well ,and then i find out about all your misleading and deceptive claims afterwards , a fact that  confirms my earlier allegations : that's extremely gratifying  lol , you have no idea .
I don't really care whether you think I'm misleading, deceptive, or an evil sprite from the non-physical realm. I just give my unvarnished assessment and opinion of what I read and hear. If it means you do a little more research, all well and good, although I'd prefer a little more critical thinking to go with it.


No, i don't think you're an "evil " person . I just mean that you mislead people who are genuinely looking for real empirical evidence, that's all ,while taking your materialistic beliefs for granted as science , like the majority of scientists do today by the way .
I don't really blame you for that either : you're just yet another victim of "scientific " materialism .

Quote
Hopefully you'll grow out of the mystical novelty of QM and come to see that consciousness is necessary for the appreciation of observations, but has no direct influence (beyond occasionally deciding what kind of observation to make).

Well, consciousness has to be non-local and non-physical : that was proved to be as such by many indirect empirical evidence .That nature of consciousness changes everything in science at least .
If we then thus take that nature of consciousness into consideration , then it can't , per definition,  but have causal effects on matter without obeying any laws of physics . Apply that to QM and the whole picture would change : that would solve the interpretation problem in QM somehow ,but that would leave us with no "objective reality out there " : a paradox .

But then again , i find it difficult to accept that " all is mind ,or all is in the mind " : that's an untenable idealist monist view .

On the other hand , i think that substance dualism is the one that's closer to the "truth " than the rest in all of this .I don't know .Who does anyway ?

QM has somehow solved the "dreaded interaction problem " of substance dualism and more,to mention just that  ...so.

Furthermore , i think that the objective reality out there is really out there indeed , but we can never approach it as such, via our minds or reason ,via logic or via science at least , since whenever we would try to "look at it or observe it " , we instantly turn it into a kind of  illusory physical reality . I don't know . Who does ?

It's only through higher levels of consciousness that we can hope to approach that elusive objective reality out there somehow , i guess .

Let's leave it at that , for the time being at least .

Quote
Once again, please let us know when 'post-materialist' science has a useful contribution to make. Anything at all.

Well, check that out then via this thread's links on the subject .
Post-materialistic science has a lots of relevant interesting things to say , to say the least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 18:17:52
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447196#msg447196 date=1419374170]
You were completely wrong about Carter's earlier understanding of  Popper's world 3 theory : see below and more + Popper and Eccles argued for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter do not obey any laws of physics in their co-authored book " The self and its brain " :
It's a matter of timing and interpretation; Popper's 'Three Worlds' hierarchy was a model of emergent property interactionalism, where World 2 & 3 emerged from the physical world (World 3 via World 2) and influenced it via top-down causal interaction (which, as we discussed earlier, is a more readily accessible view of the bottom-up complexities behind emergent properties). His collaboration with Eccles resulted in a subtle and somewhat controversial development of their views - Eccles didn't believe the mind or consciousness was non-physical, but of a different world, which changed the ontological emphasis of Popper's World 2; this move away from emergent property interactionalism to a more literal 'other world' dualism was criticised, not least by Feyerabend, who noted that top-down causal influence by mental abstractions on the physical, clearly doesn't necessarily imply they are ontologically distinct, and that none of Popper's arguments for the autonomy of such abstract objects determined them to be irreducible in terms of mental or physical states and processes.

Come on : Reread that displayed excerpt on the subject , once again :  Both Popper and Eccles, in that co-authored  book of theirs (The self and its brain ...) ,  did argue for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter cannot , by definition , but not obey any laws of physics : that sounds like substance dualism to me , even though Popper's 3 worlds theory does sound even "pluralistic" , at first sight at least  .

Why can't you just admit that you were completely wrong about that then ? There is no shame in admitting one's errors , to the contrary .The latter are human , too human .
 
Quote
Still, the philosophical toings an froings don't really matter; what counts is the data, the empirical evidence, which only points in one direction.

Yeah, indeed : I posted that above displayed excerpt just to make you see your previous mistake regarding Popper and Eccles , and in order to help Cheryl ,for example, understand what the consciousness -based interpretation of QM is all about ....

I don't really see any value in that kind of philosophy that was delivered by Popper on the subject anyway (his 3 worlds theory ), even though it sounds consistent with substance dualism .

Furthermore , what evidence is there to support all materialistic beliefs or the materialist theory of the nature of reality  , including all the materialist theories of consciousness .... ??? = a big zero .

Empirical evidence , either the direct or the indirect one on the subject , does point to one direction only : that leading to the non-materialist science, the substance dualistic one that is ,that embraces both the material and the immaterial in nature alike , not to the idealist  monist one  which is untenable scientifically .

Just try to face the music , dlorde : materialism is  certainly false,without a shadow of a doubt , mainly because it can never intrinsically account for consciousness ever, ,and hence materialism must be kicked out of all sciences for that matter : the sooner,  the better ,for the benefit and progress of both science and humanity as a whole .

Science's own intrinsic unique and unparalleled method and nature will be doing the job , soon enough anyway , no matter how long the mainstream scientific materialistic dogmatic priesthood can try to hold science back by continuing to impose  its materialistic dogmatic secular religion on science as science : no doubt in my mind about just that  .

P.S.: Resorting ,for example, to the subliminal and other " Thinking fast and slow " psychological insights and methods by Daniel kahneman and Amos Tversky to influence people's thoughts and behavior on the subject ,instead of doing just that via empirical evidence , is not the proper  scientific way to persuade people to change their minds .

I have my own ethical and subtle methods of persuasion that can  make people change their minds and behavior without them  being aware of just that , but this is not the place to apply them to people anyway .

This is a science forum , so.There are some people here and elsewhere that might not be able to pass even the Turing test , i guess , i don't know for sure , metaphorically speaking then , but that 's no reason to deceive  them .There can be no reason at all to do just the latter .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 18:56:41
I'm not sure if these experiments in this article help clarify anything (they do provide empirical evidence contradicting some of the statements in the some of Don's recent excerpts)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.2404v2.pdf

Wow - that's quite a find Cheryl. Their paper seems to present a clear and coherent analysis of the QM/consciousness debate that corresponds almost exactly with my own - less well-formed - views on the subject.

The idea that a conscious observer should not be treated as just another quantum system always seemed unjustifiably anthropocentric. I didn't know the experiments that they describe had explicitly been done, but I thought it was likely that equivalent situations would have occurred in the thousands of variations on the double-slit, and anomalous results would have been noticed.

I would be fascinated to see an equally clear and coherent rebuttal of their paper - there's nothing quite like having one's views challenged by well-reasoned argument, with the prospect of changing them [;)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 19:08:14
I'm not sure if these experiments in this article help clarify anything (they do provide empirical evidence contradicting some of the statements in the some of Don's recent excerpts)
 
 I did discover that reading about quantum mechanics while baking is a poor mix.

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1009.2404v2.pdf

Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)
Shan Yu, a Danko Nikoli a,b
́
a Department of Neurophysiology, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Deutschordenstr. 46, 60528 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 bFrankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Ruth-Moufang-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, German

Abstract
"It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that quantum mechanics explains the emergence of consciousness in the brain. Here we formulated several predictions that follow from this hypothetical relationship and that can be empirically tested. Some of the experimental results that are already available suggest falsification of the first hypothesis. Thus, the suggested link between human consciousness and collapse of wave function does not seem viable. We discuss the constraints implied by the existing
evidence on the role that the human observer may play for quantum mechanics and the role that quantum mechanics may play in the observer’s consciousness."

I tried to download your pdf link many times , just to see what's its content might be all about , without much success : it doesn't work : i can't comment on it thus ,since i can't download it .

That pdf might be referring to the experiments using a robot maybe to conduct measurements at the quantum level , to see what happens : they were refuted ,since a robot cannot but be programmed to do what it does , and since the programmers or the experimenters would influence the outcome of those experiments by their pre-programmed instructions to the robot to work on, and since conscious aware observation has to be made anyway at the end of the measurement chain .

Even the consciousness -based interpretation of QM can't be proved conclusively either : how can it be ?

Nevertheless , if we assume that consciousness is a separate non-local and non-physical process that cannot , by definition, but not obey any laws of physics in its interactions with matter , that would change the whole picture in QM .That would solve the interpretation problem in QM somehow .

That's why (alancalverd lol ) or rather how William James , for example , could predict the fact that the deterministic mechanical classical physics had to be fundamentally false  and approximately correct , for example, even before Planck showed up,since classical physics could absolutely neither account for consciousness nor for its non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter  .

That's why one can say with certainty even that the materialistic so-called standard model of quantum field theory has to be , in its turn , fundamentally false and approximately correct too,   since it can absolutely not account for neither  consciousness nor for its non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 19:22:31
Come on : Reread that displayed excerpt on the subject , once again :  Both Popper and Eccles, in that co-authored  book of theirs (The self and its brain ...) ,  did argue for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter cannot , by definition , but not obey any laws of physics : that sounds like substance dualism to me , even though Popper's 3 worlds theory does sound even "pluralistic" , at first sight at least  .

Why can't you just admit that you were completely wrong about that then ? There is no shame in admitting one's errors , to the contrary .The latter are human , too human .
The references I've seen have been careful to distinguish between Popper's property dualist approach and substance dualism. No offence, but I'll take those references over your opinion that you think it 'sounds like' substance dualism.

But frankly, I don't really care what Popper thought on this issue; we can't ask him, and it won't actually change anything.

If you really want to give me something to think about, try to find a well-reasoned and coherent rebuttal to the empirically based Yu and Nikolic paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2404) Cheryl posted earlier. It represents my position very nicely, so that would be the best way to change my mind - which isn't as difficult as you seem to think - after all, that's how I got to the views I have now.

Also, I'd appreciate it if - call it a gesture of seasonal goodwill if you like - you'd stop with the ad-hominems and underhand implications about my motives. That unpleasant calumny says more about you than it does about me. Just address the arguments.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 19:26:03
I tried to download your pdf link many times , just to see what's its content might be all about , without much success : it doesn't work : i can't comment on it thus ,since i can't download it .
Search for "Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)" by Shan Yu & Danko Nikolić. It's in arxiv.org, so easily accessible.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 20:32:00
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447293#msg447293 date=1419448951]
Come on : Reread that displayed excerpt on the subject , once again :  Both Popper and Eccles, in that co-authored  book of theirs (The self and its brain ...) ,  did argue for the existence of a separate soul whose interactions with matter cannot , by definition , but not obey any laws of physics : that sounds like substance dualism to me , even though Popper's 3 worlds theory does sound even "pluralistic" , at first sight at least  .

Why can't you just admit that you were completely wrong about that then ? There is no shame in admitting one's errors , to the contrary .The latter are human , too human .
The references I've seen have been careful to distinguish between Popper's property dualist approach and substance dualism. No offence, but I'll take those references over your opinion that you think it 'sounds like' substance dualism.

Ok, I can't lay my hands on " The self and its brain " , so i can't tell really ,but Alastair here above was clear about that at least .
Tell me about your references then ,or about where did Popper develop that 3 worlds theory of his : in which book or paper of his ?  , for example .Not that i care much about that .

Quote
But frankly, I don't really care what Popper thought on this issue; we can't ask him, and it won't actually change anything.


Neither do i in fact .

Nevertheless, since Popper did co-author that above mentioned book with Eccles where it was  argued for a separate soul that , by definition , cannot but have interactions with matter without obeying any laws of physics ,that's substance dualism .

Why would Popper take part in that , if he was not a substance dualist then ?

Would you , dlorde , co-author a book about substance dualism ,or about idealist monism , for example ? I don't think so .

Quote
If you really want to give me something to think about, try to find a well-reasoned and coherent rebuttal to the empirically based Yu and Nikolic paper (http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2404) Cheryl posted earlier. It represents my position very nicely, so that would be the best way to change my mind - which isn't as difficult as you seem to think - after all, that's how I got to the views I have now.

Got the pdf ,finally,  thanks . I will read it , later on then , and report back to you as well as to Cheryl   ( thanks , lady ) about it .

Quote
Also, I'd appreciate it if - call it a gesture of seasonal goodwill if you like - you'd stop with the ad-hominems and underhand implications about my motives. That unpleasant calumny says more about you than it does about me. Just address the arguments.

Ok, no worries .I might have been wrong about that . Irrelevant though .

Happy holidays.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 24/12/2014 20:34:00
I tried to download your pdf link many times , just to see what's its content might be all about , without much success : it doesn't work : i can't comment on it thus ,since i can't download it .
Search for "Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness (and the other way around)" by Shan Yu & Danko Nikolić. It's in arxiv.org, so easily accessible.

Done, thanks , appreciate indeed .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 24/12/2014 22:42:41
Tell me about your references then ,or about where did Popper develop that 3 worlds theory of his : in which book or paper of his ?  , for example .Not that i care much about that .
As it's Christmas:

Popper: “Three Worlds,” The Tanner Lecture on Human Values (http://www.thee-online.com/Documents/Popper-3Worlds.pdf‎), Delivered at the University of Michigan, April 7, 1978.

He doesn't seem to explicitly define their ontological status, but on page 166-7 explains them as an evolutionary hierarchy of emergence:
Quote
To sum up, we arrive at the following picture of the universe. There is the physical universe, world 1, with its most important sub-universe, that of the living organisms. World 2, the world of conscious experience, emerges as an evolutionary product from the world of organisms. World 3, the world of the products of the human mind, emerges as an evolutionary product from world 2.

A couple more references:
Popper on the mind-body problem (http://notesfrommylibrary.com/2011/04/16/popper-on-the-mind-body-problem/).

Popper's 3 Worlds of Knowledge (http://www.knowledgejump.com/knowledge/popper.html).

I've had my fill of Popper now. Outside the philosophy of science, I find his ideas unconvincing.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 25/12/2014 14:45:43
Here's a Christmas gift that may help clarify what a quantum measurement is, and give some idea of why a consciousness sees an apparent wavefunction collapse because it is a single (i.e. subjective) viewpoint, and hints why Many Worlds is the simplest, most obvious interpretation.

What Does a Measurement in Quantum Mechanics Do? (http://www.askamathematician.com/2011/06/q-what-does-a-measurement-in-quantum-mechanics-do/)
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 25/12/2014 16:16:45
My turkey is still frozen!!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 25/12/2014 21:17:47
What do you expect, living in Canada? Merry Christmas!
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/12/2014 19:19:02
Cheryl , dlorde :

I have just sent  an email to Fred Kuttner (1 of the authors of quantum enigma ...) regarding that above mentioned experiment that seems  to have refuted the consciousness-based interpretation of QM .

Let's wait for what he has to say about just that .

Fred seems also to have answered someone regarding the above by saying :

Quote : "...a reply from Fred Kuttner, one of the Quantum Enigma authors:

"I had not yet seen this paper. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. If you have read our book, you know that we claim neither that consciousness is needed to explain quantum mechanics ( though that is a common misinterpretation of our argument) nor vice versa. Rather, we claim that the action of free will in the choice of experiment is an encounter between consciousness and the experimental situation."
End quote .

I can't verify the authenticity of the above thus .

Quote garnered from the link below :

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/quantum-mechanics-needs-no-consciousness-and-the-other-way-around.961/

Interesting discussion on the subject they have there on skeptico-forum.com .

I wonder also how the above mentioned experiment that seems to have refuted the consciousness-based interpretation of QM can explain Dean Radin's double slit experiment that says the contrary,to mention just that one  :

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2014/03/psychophysical-interactions-with-double.html?m=1

It is thus still an open question ,as the above mentioned experiment the link to which has been provided by Cheryl   thus has to be replicated also , or as someone from the above mentioned forum said on the subject as a reply to someone else :


Quote : "...

   
Quote
So... no need for consciousness to understand QM, maybe. Radin's experiments seem to indicate the contrary, but there's need for further independent replication.

They don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum Mechanics may not require consciousness to cause a collapse of the wavefunction ( as the paper showed with the delayed choise quantum eraser that can easily exhibit interference and non-interference pattern merely by turning the beams of light potentially distinguishable or by keeping the information out of a possible way of knowing it ), however that doesn't mean consciousness cannot collapse the wavefunction.

Think for example, in a table. A table doesn't require a human to move it to be moved, however, humans can move tables from time to time by pushing them.

QM requiring consciousness can turn into very nasty contradictions and problems if one wills to take the issue furth enough, as one can see in Wigner Friend though experiment as a possible outcome of the decoherence required to see classical mechanics and the consciousness required for it. Quantum "God-like" consciousness have the terrible problem that we may never get to see quantum mechanics at all, or that the past doesn't exists, or many other bizarre scenarios that doesn't stick to well, epistemologically and ontologically speaking. "[/i] End quote .

See this also on the subject :

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/does-quantum-mechanics-need-a-conscious-observer.731583/

And this :

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality

The issue is not yet conclusively settled thus .


I will have to make some research about all the above thus and more .

Cheers.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 26/12/2014 22:06:10
Feynman said something like "the double slit experiment is the only mystery in QM ..." .

There are many interprétations of the same experiment lol :






To mention just those of Feynman, Khalili ....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 27/12/2014 15:14:56
Fred seems also to have answered someone regarding the above by saying :

Quote : "...a reply from Fred Kuttner, one of the Quantum Enigma authors:

"... If you have read our book, you know that we claim neither that consciousness is needed to explain quantum mechanics ( though that is a common misinterpretation of our argument) nor vice versa. Rather, we claim that the action of free will in the choice of experiment is an encounter between consciousness and the experimental situation."
End quote .

I can't verify the authenticity of the above thus .
Haven't you read the book (from which you quote so freely) ?   [;)]

Quote
I wonder also how the above mentioned experiment that seems to have refuted the consciousness-based interpretation of QM can explain Dean Radin's double slit experiment that says the contrary,to mention just that one
I would strongly recommend that you take anything to do with Dean Radin, particularly his own publications, with a very large pinch of salt indeed (be skeptical and apply critical thinking). I've already posted some instances of basic flaws found in his work that seem beyond careless or accidental. Proceed with extreme caution.

Quote
.."They don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum Mechanics may not require consciousness to cause a collapse of the wavefunction ..., however that doesn't mean consciousness cannot collapse the wavefunction."
Ah yes. The 'giving ground' defence. I recall this was what was said about Uri Geller when all his tricks and illusions had been performed by illusionists - "Just because they can do it by sleight of hand doesn't mean Geller isn't using paranormal powers". True, but extremely unlikely. Shortly after, Geller stopped claiming he had 'special powers' and started calling himself an 'entertainer' (with an air of mystery).

Consciousness is a process, not a quantum system, so it can't itself collapse anything. A brain (conscious, unconscious, alive, or dead) can be considered a quantum system, so it is eligible for quantum interaction and so, wavefunction collapse (if you prefer that interpretation), just like any other quantum system. It only needs to be alive and conscious to register the results.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 28/12/2014 10:02:26
Feynman said something like "the double slit experiment is the only mystery in QM ..." .



I agree. And one thing I've never understood about quantum woo, is the need to embellish quantum mechanics with mysticism, as if it weren't weird or amazing enough. The one sentence that really stands out in the article is I linked to is: "Because as long as
the “which-path” is in principle unobtainable, the wave
function does not collapse, regardless of the interaction
of the system with the environment (e.g., see Kim et al.,
2000 and other “quantum eraser” experiments)."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 29/12/2014 00:25:14
How about a brief reality check?

Don: imagine a dual-slit experiment setup: source, slits, detector array, display. Let the source emit just one electron, then switch off. What does the display show?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2014 19:42:41
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447428#msg447428 date=1419693296]
Fred seems also to have answered someone regarding the above by saying :

Quote : "...a reply from Fred Kuttner, one of the Quantum Enigma authors:

"... If you have read our book, you know that we claim neither that consciousness is needed to explain quantum mechanics ( though that is a common misinterpretation of our argument) nor vice versa. Rather, we claim that the action of free will in the choice of experiment is an encounter between consciousness and the experimental situation."
End quote .

I can't verify the authenticity of the above thus .
Haven't you read the book (from which you quote so freely) ?   [;)]

I have just read some relevant parts of it .That's mainly why i said that i could not verify the authenticity of that alleged reply of Kuttner on the subject , since the authors of "Quantum enigma ..." said  , for example  :

Quote : " ...Quantum mechanics is the most battle-tested theory in science. Not a single violation of its predictions has ever been demonstrated, no matter how preposterous the predictions might seem.

However, anyone concerned with what the theory means faces a philosophical enigma: the socalled measurement problem, or the problem of observation … before you look we could have proven—with an interference experiment—that each atom was a wave equally in both boxes.

After you look it was in a single box. It was thus your observation that created the reality of each atom’s existence in a particular box. Before your observation only probability existed. But it was not the probability that an actual object existed in a particular place (as in the classical shell game)—it was just the probability of a future observation of such an object, which does not include the assumption that the object existed there prior to its observation. This hard-to-accept observer-created reality is the measurement problem in quantum mechanics.....
End quote .

Who can misunderstand the above then that's totally inconsistent with that alleged reply of Kuttner .?

Let's wait for the answer of the latter regarding my email sent to him earlier on on the same subject thus .

Even in the above mentioned experiment that seems to require no consciousness to collapse the wave function , the scientists behind it did mention the authors of "Quantum enigma ...",for example,  by name as passionate supporters of the consciousness-based interpretation of QM .

Furthermore , even your beloved Joy Jim was honest enough as to admit that anyone who can solve the mystery of the double slit experiment does deserve a Nobel prize :


Not to mention the fact that there are also some other physicists who think they can solve that mystery by delivering some theories of theirs on the subject , like the one that tries to explain the 2-slit experiment via the fact that the universe is expanding ...

Quote
Quote
I wonder also how the above mentioned experiment that seems to have refuted the consciousness-based interpretation of QM can explain Dean Radin's double slit experiment that says the contrary,to mention just that one
I would strongly recommend that you take anything to do with Dean Radin, particularly his own publications, with a very large pinch of salt indeed (be skeptical and apply critical thinking). I've already posted some instances of basic flaws found in his work that seem beyond careless or accidental. Proceed with extreme caution.

Yeah, right : anything that would contradict your materialistic beliefs on the subject is by definition flawed or worse : that's a typical pattern of materialists by the way : so amusing  , lame and dull .

If you , as a scientist , would try to become as rigorous as Radin has been , you would  go a long way .

Quote
Quote
.."They don't need to be mutually exclusive. Quantum Mechanics may not require consciousness to cause a collapse of the wavefunction ..., however that doesn't mean consciousness cannot collapse the wavefunction."
Ah yes. The 'giving ground' defence. I recall this was what was said about Uri Geller when all his tricks and illusions had been performed by illusionists - "Just because they can do it by sleight of hand doesn't mean Geller isn't using paranormal powers". True, but extremely unlikely. Shortly after, Geller stopped claiming he had 'special powers' and started calling himself an 'entertainer' (with an air of mystery).

Already forgot about Bell's theorem and its related experiments that challenged classical locality,classical determinism and classical realism as well ?

See this on the subject then :

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality

Oh, come on : Stop comparing potatoes to bananas : the mystery of the double slit experiment is still unresolved : the above mentioned experiment that seems to have refuted the consciousness-based interpretation of QM in 2010 was no conclusive proof for that  :

You really should let go of your materialistic dogmatic irrational ridiculous and unscientific certainty by reading this great book on the subject : we should always be aware of the existence of the unknown that cannot be ruled out ,no matter how predictable we think events are , be aware  of the existence  and unexpected  rise of black swans : even the very history of science , its discoveries , progress ...were the results of the unexpected and unpredicted unpredictable rise of black swans in the above mentioned sense :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X

Furthermore , see the following double slit experiments on the subject that were conducted after 2010 and that "argued " for idealism :

http://realitysandwich.com/217334/is-quantum-physics-a-sort-of-idealism/

http://realitysandwich.com/217334/is-quantum-physics-a-sort-of-idealism/

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/iqoqi-results-lend-support-to-idealism.607/page-2#post-13887

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/iqoqi-results-lend-support-to-idealism.607/page-2#post-13886

http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/physicist-chris-isham-considers-jungian-idealism.643/

See this : The strangeness of the 2 slit experiment "explained". It's all "because the universe is expanding ":


See this too , while you are at it :


To mention just the above thus .

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Consciousness is a process, not a quantum system, so it can't itself collapse anything. A brain (conscious, unconscious, alive, or dead) can be considered a quantum system, so it is eligible for quantum interaction and so, wavefunction collapse (if you prefer that interpretation), just like any other quantum system. It only needs to be alive and conscious to register the results.

Since when have you become such an expert of QM ? What a nerve .

Even physicists , even prominent ones , do agree to disagree about the interpretation of the double slit experiment ,about the measurement or interpretation problem in QM .The latter is still unresolved .

How do you know thus that about consciousness  ? You don't even know what consciousness is .Nobody does in fact .

Not to mention the fact that even the mystery of the double slit experiment has not been solved yet ,conclusively that is .

Consciousness is indeed a process , but a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever , per definition thus ,since materialism is false mainly because it cannot account for consciousness.

And since consciousness has to have that kind of causal effects on matter , so logically, whenever it observes a quantum system ,it has to interact with it and change it accordingly .How ? that remains to be detected and explained somehow .

Consciousness that does interact with the physical brain , for example, too : consciousness has to have causal effects on matter   .So, how can consciousness have no causal effects whenever "observing" quantum systems ? Consciousness that cannot but be non-local ,non -physical while interacting with matter via a non-mechanical causation without having to obey any laws of physics by definition ,and hence consciousness has to interact with the physical brain at the quantum level ,since classical physics seems to be "the boos " at the macroscopic level, even though the whole universe seems to be quantum "mechanical " ...

See the following on the subject : i don't have to agree with it either ,but who am i anyway ?  lol :

http://www.closertotruth.com/series/quantum-physics-consciousness

Consciousness might turn out to be the next unpredicted or unpredictable undetectable black swan that might turn  physics and science as a whole on their heads , soon enough , who knows ?

Once again , if QM itself cannot somehow account for consciousness in the above mentioned sense and for its non-local non-mechanical causal effects on matter , then QM has to be , in its turn, fundamentally false and approximately correct .

We might be needing even better physics thus to account for consciousness and for its causal effects on matter .

But , first , let physicists try to explain physics to us : they can't even explain physics , let alone consciousness .

Let them try first to solve the mystery of the double slit experiment , the measurement or interpretation or observation problem in QM thus ,first .

P.S.: I have been having an extremely slow internet connection that irritated me and gave me a big headache : that has implications regarding the quality of the above .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2014 20:25:42
How about a brief reality check?

Don: imagine a dual-slit experiment setup: source, slits, detector array, display. Let the source emit just one electron, then switch off. What does the display show?

How about a brief "reality" check ,physicist ? :

Already forgot about Bell's theorem and its related experiments that challenged classical determinism, classical locality and classical realism as well ?

See this on the subject :

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality :

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality

Furthermore , Jim Al Khalili ,for example, was at least honest enough as to admit that anyone who can solve the mystery of the double slit experiment deserves a Nobel prize :


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 29/12/2014 20:59:51
Feynman said something like "the double slit experiment is the only mystery in QM ..." .



I agree. And one thing I've never understood about quantum woo, is the need to embellish quantum mechanics with mysticism, as if it weren't weird or amazing enough. The one sentence that really stands out in the article is I linked to is: "Because as long as
the “which-path” is in principle unobtainable, the wave
function does not collapse, regardless of the interaction
of the system with the environment (e.g., see Kim et al.,
2000 and other “quantum eraser” experiments)."

For your info : the mystery of the double slit experiment is still unresolved (That's the interpretation , measurement or observation problem in QM , needless to add thus ) , despite that experiment to which you have provided a link earlier on : that's no conclusive proof for the alleged claim that consciousness has no causal effects on matter ,or for the claim that the observed and the observer are separate or independent processes from each other (classical realism : Bell's theorem and its related experiments have challenged that at least ) ,to mention just that thus .

QM has shown , for example , that the whole universe , including ourselves thus , is interconnected somehow (not in the new age sense at least lol ) ,so how can we as observers of this universe and of ourselves and each other be independent from the observed universe of which we make part : how can the observed be independent of the observer : there is no such thing as the independent observer and independent observed = they are inescapably and inseparably intertwined with each other , logically .

What mysticism are you talking about then ? Anything that goes beyond materialism is by definition mysticism, or is 'supernatural , paranormal, magical ..." , while materialism itself is the epitome of reversed inexplicable magic ;the reductionist one .

Well, since materialism is false , simply because it can never intrinsically account for consciousness , then the latter cannot be a material process at least .

It has to be non-physical and non-local , as many indirect empirical evidence proved it to be,as it has , by definition, to have non-mechanical non-local causal  effects on matter without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever ,and since the whole universe is quantum "mechanical " , consciousness cannot but have that kind of causal effects on the quantum systems as well as on the macroscopic level ,somehow .How ? nobody knows that yet , if ever : that might turn out to be the next unpredicted and unexpected unknown that might turn physics and science as a whole on their heads : the next black swan thus : stop being so "certain " of your false materialistic beliefs then and stop seeing the world from their exclusive key hole lens , they are no science :  even the latter's history , progress and discoveries were/are and will always be  the results of many unpredicted unknown black swans :

http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X


What's so mystical about all that ,or about that above mentioned nature of consciousness , since the latter cannot be a material process , and hence materialism is false ,which means that consciousness has to be non-physical and non -local while having  non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter without obeying any laws of physics , by definition  .

It's a bit like saying that sine some people don't understand how wireless cell phones or internet might work , then they're right in asserting that 's just inexplicable magic or mysticism lol ( I have deliberately turned that materialistic analogy upside down to serve my own purposes .)

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 29/12/2014 21:42:54


Let them try first to solve the mystery of the double slit experiment , the measurement or interpretation or observation problem in QM thus ,first .




Why "first"? What question about it must be answered or solved first before excluding, (as they seemed to) that consciousness itself collapses the wavefunction?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 30/12/2014 00:47:09
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I would strongly recommend that you take anything to do with Dean Radin, particularly his own publications, with a very large pinch of salt indeed (be skeptical and apply critical thinking). I've already posted some instances of basic flaws found in his work that seem beyond careless or accidental. Proceed with extreme caution.
Yeah, right : anything that would contradict your materialistic beliefs on the subject is by definition flawed or worse : that's a typical pattern of materialists by the way : so amusing  , lame and dull .

If you , as a scientist , would try to become as rigorous as Radin has been , you would  go a long way .
If I was as rigorous as Radin, I too would have to make a living on the fringes of pseudoscience, rather than being comfortably retired.

But seriously, many moons ago, when all this was fields, I had great enthusiasm for Jahn and the Pricenton (PEAR) team, I had great respect for Sheldrake, and had hopes that Radin and his like would come up with fascinating, if not world-changing, results (probably much as the  'hippie' physicists that tested Bell's Inequalities felt when they found them to be violated). But it didn't happen. It fizzled out, and the ones who could take the disappointment moved onto other things, and the ones who couldn't persisted, and made careers as mavericks or selling pseudoscience to the gullible, according to their nature. 

It was only when, on finally wondering what had happened to all those years of claims and promises of imminent breakthroughs, I did some background research and discovered the detailed critiques, failed replications, methodological flaws, statistical abuses (I'm looking at you, Radin), etc. So, with delicious irony, what I learned from those failures (and others) was partly responsible for my current skepticism of the paranormal, and got me into looking at recent research in the relevant areas - which only served to reinforce that skepticism.

But hey, by all means ignore my advice - carry on with your uncritical acceptance of Radin & co's product, and see what comes of it. Let me know when any of it produces something useful. Anything at all.

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Already forgot about Bell's theorem and its related experiments that challenged classical locality,classical determinism and classical realism as well ?
Who could forget? I still remember the excitement at the time [8D]

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You really should let go of your materialistic dogmatic irrational ridiculous and unscientific certainty by reading this great book on the subject : we should always be aware of the existence of the unknown that cannot be ruled out ,no matter how predictable we think events are , be aware  of the existence  and unexpected  rise of black swans : even the very history of science , its discoveries , progress ...were the results of the unexpected and unpredicted unpredictable rise of black swans in the above mentioned sense :
I agree entirely - my current position is necessarily provisional. For the last four years I've been hoping the AWARE study would turn up something interesting, but no. I've already told you precisely what would be sufficient to make me seriously reconsider it, so go to it.

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Since when have you become such an expert of QM ? What a nerve .
You don't need to be an expert to know what a quantum system is Don.

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How do you know thus that about consciousness  ? You don't even know what consciousness is .Nobody does in fact .
...
Consciousness is indeed a process...
 
ROFL! you're a funny guy, Don  [:o)]

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but a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever , per definition thus
You realise that is a pretty solid definition of magic, right?   [???]

You don't really mean consciousness is magic, do you?

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P.S.: I have been having an extremely slow internet connection that irritated me and gave me a big headache : that has implications regarding the quality of the above .
Really? the speed of your internet connection affects the quality of your posts?

You poor thing, that must be awful - and it seems to happen so often...  [;)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2014 17:53:17


Let them try first to solve the mystery of the double slit experiment , the measurement or interpretation or observation problem in QM thus ,first .


Why "first"? What question about it must be answered or solved first before excluding, (as they seemed to) that consciousness itself collapses the wavefunction?

lol

Well, physicists should first try to explain physics .They can't even explain the latter , let alone consciousness ( the latter goes beyond physics and physicists , needless to add ) , as Wigner said.We might even be needing better physics than QM to account for consciousness ,as he added as well .

Physicists  should thus first try to explain physics thus before concluding that consciousness is not required in QM ,since nobody knows what consciousness is , in the first place to begin with  .

Even science itself cannot even exist , let alone function or progress without consciousness through which scientists came up with QM , in the first place to begin with , via applying the scientific method .

Ironically enough , QM can never be understood without reference to the mind , since conscious aware observation has to be made , after all, at the end of the measurement chain ,as Von Neumann used to say .

Not to mention the fact that consciousness has to be non-physical at least and non-local as well ,since materialism is false , consciousness as a separate process ( substance dualism must be replaced by process dualism ,for example , since matter and mind as separate and different  from each other processes in kind  that interact mutually with each other are no substances , but processes ) that has non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , without obeying any laws of physics , by definition thus .

So, how can consciousness in the above mentioned sense not have any causal effects on the observed matter at the quantum level then ?

How can the observed be independent of the observer since both are supposed to make part of the same universe ( The psycho-physical universe .) ?






Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2014 18:29:18
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447595#msg447595 date=1419900429]
Quote
I would strongly recommend that you take anything to do with Dean Radin, particularly his own publications, with a very large pinch of salt indeed (be skeptical and apply critical thinking). I've already posted some instances of basic flaws found in his work that seem beyond careless or accidental. Proceed with extreme caution.
Yeah, right : anything that would contradict your materialistic beliefs on the subject is by definition flawed or worse : that's a typical pattern of materialists by the way : so amusing  , lame and dull .

If you , as a scientist , would try to become as rigorous as Radin has been , you would  go a long way .
If I was as rigorous as Radin, I too would have to make a living on the fringes of pseudoscience, rather than being comfortably retired.

Oh, come on : you said the same thing regarding the work of PEAR , regarding that of Sheldrake , regarding those of other non-materialist scientists : that's a typical materialistic pattern  whenever materialism gets contradicted , challenged or refuted .

For your information , the dogmatic materialistic belief system at the very heart of current science is the epitome of pseudo-science at the very heart of current science , ironically enough .

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But seriously, many moons ago, when all this was fields, I had great enthusiasm for Jahn and the Pricenton (PEAR) team, I had great respect for Sheldrake, and had hopes that Radin and his like would come up with fascinating, if not world-changing, results (probably much as the  'hippie' physicists that tested Bell's Inequalities felt when they found them to be violated). But it didn't happen. It fizzled out, and the ones who could take the disappointment moved onto other things, and the ones who couldn't persisted, and made careers as mavericks or selling pseudoscience to the gullible, according to their nature.
 

A lots of exciting and fascinating things have been happening ,thanks to the works of many non-materialist scientists .

You're just too a dogmatic materialist to either notice or acknowledge that fact .

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It was only when, on finally wondering what had happened to all those years of claims and promises of imminent breakthroughs, I did some background research and discovered the detailed critiques, failed replications, methodological flaws, statistical abuses (I'm looking at you, Radin), etc. So, with delicious irony, what I learned from those failures (and others) was partly responsible for my current skepticism of the paranormal, and got me into looking at recent research in the relevant areas - which only served to reinforce that skepticism.


Yeah, right : despite all the obvious and overwhelming evidence against materialism , you can't but remain a materialist as if materialism has been 'scientific " .

What evidence is there for all materialist claims at all levels ? = a big zero ,if you haven't noticed just that yet .

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But hey, by all means ignore my advice - carry on with your uncritical acceptance of Radin & co's product, and see what comes of it. Let me know when any of it produces something useful. Anything at all.

You know what i do think of such 'advices " that come from materialists such as yourself .
Apply that advice of yours to your false materialistic dogmatic beliefs first , the ones you have been confusing and equating with science all along, ironically enough .

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Already forgot about Bell's theorem and its related experiments that challenged classical locality,classical determinism and classical realism as well ?
Who could forget? I still remember the excitement at the time [8D]

You just can't remember the fact that whenever any empirical evidence , scientific theories ...that might be contradicting , refuting or challenging the mainstream materialist 'scientific world view " , whenever they would raise their heads , they get almost totally ignored as such or worse , for obvious materialistic "reasons " .

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You really should let go of your materialistic dogmatic irrational ridiculous and unscientific certainty by reading this great book on the subject : we should always be aware of the existence of the unknown that cannot be ruled out ,no matter how predictable we think events are , be aware  of the existence  and unexpected  rise of black swans : even the very history of science , its discoveries , progress ...were the results of the unexpected and unpredicted unpredictable rise of black swans in the above mentioned sense :
I agree entirely - my current position is necessarily provisional. For the last four years I've been hoping the AWARE study would turn up something interesting, but no. I've already told you precisely what would be sufficient to make me seriously reconsider it, so go to it.

No , you're just kidding yourself : as a materialist dogmatic scientist , it would have to take Jesus himself to return to earth to make you change your mind lol ...maybe, just maybe .

Despite the fact that materialism, together with all its extensions, is false ,that doesn't bother you in any way , let alone make you think or even consider changing your mind on the subject .

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Since when have you become such an expert of QM ? What a nerve .
You don't need to be an expert to know what a quantum system is Don.

I was not referring to that . I was rather referring to the fact that you always sound so certain (unscientific dogmatic attitude of yours ) of your materialistic interpretation of QM and the rest  ,even though there is no consensus at all regarding the latter , not even remotely close thus , as if the very existence of the unpredicted unpredictable and undetected undetectable black swans is a myth .

Some black swans will be destroying all your dogmatic materialistic beliefs ,soon enough , if you live long enough to witness just that .

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Quote
How do you know thus that about consciousness  ? You don't even know what consciousness is .Nobody does in fact .
...
Consciousness is indeed a process...
 
ROFL! you're a funny guy, Don  [:o)]

I see no contradiction in that : consciousness is a separate non-physical and non -local process ....But nobody knows what consciousness really is anyway .

In my humble opinion, i think that science will never be able to know what consciousness ,the soul or whatever might be exactly ,ever .


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but a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever , per definition thus
You realise that is a pretty solid definition of magic, right?   [???]

You don't really mean consciousness is magic, do you?

If you're interested in inexplicable 'scientific " magic , all you have to do is check out your own "scientific " materialism : stop projecting thus .

Furthermore , there is nothing in science or in its methodology and epistemology that prevents it from exploring the existence of any phenomena of any kind , be it souls , spirits or any other immaterial phenomena .

Naturalistic science and its naturalistic methodology and epistemology do go beyond materialism and hence can be either dualistic , idealistic , theistic or otherwise .

Science is no synonymous of materialism,wake up, Alice .

Science is all about methodology and epistemology , not about materialism or any other ism : science should be metaphysically neutral thus = should be neither materialist nor otherwise, even though science has been materialist ,ironically and paradoxically enough , for relatively so long now and counting  .

Materialism is just a false outdated and superseded 19th century ideology that has been equated with science , ironically and paradoxically enough ,while  turning science into a dogmatic ideology or secular atheistic religion,unfortunately enough  .

Science that should be all the opposite of the above : that should be all about dispelling ideologies and dogmas , falsehood , half -truths ...

Science that should certainly not be an ideology or a secular dogmatic materialistic religion as it has been for relatively so long now and counting ...

But then again , science itself is just a human social activity ,and to some extent just a cultural one as well (see how the cultural Eurocentric materialism has been equated with science for relatively so long now and counting thus ) .

Metaphysically neutral science is a myth or an utopia thus ,so far at least .

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P.S.: I have been having an extremely slow internet connection that irritated me and gave me a big headache : that has implications regarding the quality of the above .
Really? the speed of your internet connection affects the quality of your posts?

You poor thing, that must be awful - and it seems to happen so often...  [;)]

You're a real jerk ,you know that ? A depressing dogmatic fool who thinks  himself to be wise or funny .

Or as your ancestor Shakespeare said : " A fool thinks himself to be wise , but a wise man knows himself to be a fool " ,something like that at least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2014 19:24:57
It all comes down to the mind -body problem , including at the level of the interpretation of QM thus :

"MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND" By Chris Carter :

The doctrine of materialism is one of the implications of taking classical physics to be a complete description of all of nature, including human beings.* It is essentially the idea that all events have a physical cause; in other words, that all events are caused by the interaction between particles of matter and force fields. It follows from this that mind has no causal role in nature but is at most merely a useless by-product produced by the brain, and so in short, all that matters is matter.

There are three basic materialist approaches: the mind does not exist, the mind is identical to the brain, or the mind is a useless by-product produced by the brain.
The eliminative materialists seriously argue that consciousness and the self do not exist, but that children are indoctrinated by “folk psychology” into believing that they exist as conscious, thinking beings.

 For instance, journalist Michael Lemonick writes, “Despite our every instinct to the contrary, there is one thing that consciousness is not: some entity deep inside the brain that corresponds to the ‘self,’ some kernel of awareness that runs the show, as the ‘man behind the curtain’ manipulated the illusion of a powerful magician in The Wizard of Oz. After more than a century of looking for it, brain researchers have long since concluded that there is no conceivable place for such a self to be located in the physical brain, and that it simply doesn’t exist.”

This may sound bizarre, but since materialism cannot account for consciousness, some materialists simply deny their own existence as conscious beings. They are driven to this act of desperation by their conviction that science, which they understand as applied materialism, supports them. Note the self-refuting nature of this position: If I believe that consciousness does not exist, then how could my belief exist? If my consciousness does not exist, then neither does my belief. And if my professed belief is nothing more than a machine going through its motions, then you have no reason to accept it as correct.

The identity theory holds great attraction for many philosophers, as it seems to offer a simple and easy solution to the problem. It says, for instance, that the subjective awareness of a red patch is objectively the movement of particles taking place in one’s brain. Some identity theorists hope that neuroscience will one day be able to map out the brain states that correspond to mental states, so that we will be able to simply describe mental activity as the activity of the brain. But Beauregard points out why this is a false hope:

Every human mind and brain moves through life differently, changing as it goes, so the information obtained for his brain would not apply to anyone else’s—or even to his own brain at a later time! This point bears repeating because it is so contrary to materialist hopes that it is often ignored in public discussions. One outcome, for example, is that [Jean-Peirre] Changeux’s view that mind states and brain states are completely identical is untestable and lacks predictive value.

Any theory that is untestable and lacks predictive value does not belong to science, but rather to philosophy at best, ideology at worse. And it does get worse. How are we even to understand the assertion that thoughts and brain states are really one and the same? If they are the same, then every characteristic of one must be a characteristic of the other; but this leads to nonsense, as physicist and philosopher C. D. Broad pointed out.

There are some questions which can be raised about the characteristics of being a molecular movement, which it is nonsensical to raise about the characteristics of being an awareness of a red patch; and conversely. About a molecular movement it is perfectly reasonable to raise the question: Is it swift or slow, straight or circular, and so on? About the awareness of a red patch it is nonsensical to ask whether it is a swift or slow awareness, a straight or a circular awareness, and so on. Conversely, it is reasonable to ask about an awareness of a red patch whether it is a clear or a confused awareness; but it is nonsense to ask of a molecular movement whether it is a clear or a confused movement. Thus the attempt to argue that “being a sensation of so and so” and “being a bit of bodily behavior of such and such a kind” are just two names for the same characteristic is evidently hopeless.

Eliminative materialism and identity theory are varieties of monism, the idea that only one kind of substance exists in the universe. A materialist monist believes that matter is all that exists, in contrast to a dualist, who believes that reality contains two sorts of essences: psychical and physical. The materialist believes that the full authority of science supports his position and that dualism is an outmoded legacy of a prescientific era, but many modern scientists disagree. Astronomer V. A. Firsoff writes, “To assert there is only matter and no mind is the most illogical of propositions, quite apart from the findings of modern physics, which show that there is no matter in the traditional meaning of the term.”

 As we saw earlier, many quantum theorists were driven to the conclusion that prior to conscious observation, matter exists only in a half-real state as possibility waves, without definite values for dynamic attributes such as position or velocity. Hence Walker’s remark that “duality is already a part of physics.”

Wolfgang Pauli, one of the major contributors to quantum theory, concluded, “The only acceptable point of view appears to be the one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and the qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and can embrace them simultaneously.”

Epiphenomenalism does not deny the existence of consciousness, but holds that the interaction between the brain and mind runs strictly one way, from brain to mind. This view was popularized by Darwin’s friend and colleague Thomas Huxley, who described the mind as a mere epiphenomena—a useless by-product of brain activity. According to this theory, free will and intent are only illusions.
Although Darwin liked and admired Huxley, he would have none of this. Supporting Huxley’s opinion would have contradicted his life’s work, as Karl Popper rightly pointed out.

The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the one-sided action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.

So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.

However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics, being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary theory. However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has eliminated the causal closure of the physical.

Harold Morowitz, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale University, pointed out that while biologists have been relentlessly moving toward the hard-core materialism that characterized nineteenth-century physics, “at the same time, physicists, faced with compelling experimental evidence, have been moving away from strictly mechanical models of the universe to a view that sees the mind as playing an integral role in all physical events. It is as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions and not noticing what is happening across the tracks.”

 For Beauregard, this raises questions: “If physics fails to support biology, which discipline should rethink its position—physics or biology? On a practical note, can we reasonably expect much progress in neuroscience, given the problems, if we do not begin by reassessing the materialism that has characterized our hypotheses for decades?”.

Materialist theories of mind are based on the assumption that brain activity, and hence mental activity, is driven from below by the deterministic, observer-independent motions of elementary particles in the brain, as described by classical physics. But we have known since the early years of the twentieth century that classical physics fails drastically at the atomic and subatomic levels, and that the behavior of such particles is indeterministic and observer dependent.

The irony here is that while materialists often describe themselves as promoting a scientific outlook, it is possible to be a materialist only by ignoring the most successful scientific theory of matter the world has yet seen. The materialist believes that consciousness is created by matter, yet the best theory we have about the nature of matter seems to require that consciousness exists independently of matter. And materialist models of mind utterly fail to answer the hard problem: why should consciousness exist in the first place and then constantly deceive us as to its function?.

Materialist philosopher of mind John Searle has lamented the bankruptcy of most work in the philosophy of mind and has candidly suggested that the motivation behind acceptance of materialist views is more emotional than rational.

Acceptance of the current views is motivated not so much by an independent conviction of their truth as by a terror of what are apparently the only alternatives. That is, the choice we are tacitly presented with is between a ‘scientific’ approach, as represented by one or another of the current versions of ‘materialism,’ and an ‘anti-scientific’ approach, as represented by Cartesianism or some other traditional religious conception of the mind...."End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2014 19:45:24
It all comes down to the mind -body problem , including at the level of the interpretation of QM thus .

Since materialism is false , once again, simply because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness,let alone explain it ,  then the latter cannot be a material process ,and hence it has to be a separate non-physical and non-local process that has non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter while obeying no laws of physics whatsoever ,since both the identity theory and  the so-called emergent property theory regarding the origin function emergence and nature of consciousness are false .

All that has to have implications for the interpretation of QM, for example, to mention just that .





Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/12/2014 20:02:58

"MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND" By Chris Carter :


The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the one-sided action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.

You realize this contradicts everything you said earlier in response to my Ten Points, about consciousness and the mind not having an evolutionary and biological origin?

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So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.

Yep.
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However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics, being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary theory. However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has eliminated the causal closure of the physical.
That summary is  just wrong. Darwin did discuss behavior as a trait that could be selected for, in animals and in man, and there was no argument from physics that conflicted with it. All that was missing from his theory at the time was the mechanism of DNA, but good data is still good data, even without all the pieces of the puzzle.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 30/12/2014 21:22:09
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg447625#msg447625 date=1419969778]

"MATERIALIST THEORIES OF MIND" By Chris Carter :


The theory of natural selection constitutes a strong argument against Huxley’s theory of the one-sided action of body on mind and for the mutual interaction of mind and body. Not only does the body act on the mind—for example, in perception, or in sickness—but our thoughts, our expectations, and our feelings may lead to useful actions in the physical world. If Huxley had been right, mind would be useless. But then it could not have evolved … by natural selection.

You realize this contradicts everything you said earlier in response to my Ten Points, about consciousness and the mind not having an evolutionary and biological origin?

You do realize that the above is inconsistent with all materialist theories of mind , do you ? that consider the mind as just a useless side effect or a by -product of evolution ,an epiphenomena , ironically and paradoxically enough .

Better still, some materialists would even say that subjective experiences ...are just useful illusory evolutionary simulations computed by the physical brain , simulations that feel real though lol, like Graziano argued  .

I don't agree with that part of Carter's book of course regarding the biological evolution and the mind ....at least .I have just posted that to retell you about those false materialist theories of mind .

Carter is a substance dualist , so he doesn't believe in that materialistic non-sense regarding the alleged evolutionary biological origin of consciousness, needless to add .

I don't see either how the biological evolution can ever account for consciousness and the mind .It absolutely can't ,since consciousness is neither reducible to biology nor can it be an emergent property of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain ,no way .

Nevertheless, body and mind do have mutual interactions with each other indeed .

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So from a strictly Darwinian approach, the mental powers of animals and men should be expected to lead to useful actions and should therefore be a causal influence in nature. According to this account, perceptions, emotions, judgments, and thoughts all have a real effect. And the more highly developed the mental powers, the more causal impact they should be expected to have.

Yep.


How can materialist Darwin account for the causal efficacy of the mind then ?

How can the biological evolution give rise to the mind and consciousness ?

Bullocks lol

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However, Darwin’s viewpoint was thought to conflict with the physics of his time, which could specify no mechanism by which the mental could influence the physical. Arguments based on physics, being a more “basic” science than biology, were thought to trump arguments based on evolutionary theory. However, as we have seen, modern physics allows nonmechanical causation and has eliminated the causal closure of the physical

That summary is  just wrong. Darwin did discuss behavior as a trait that could be selected for, in animals and in man, and there was no argument from physics that conflicted with it. All that was missing from his theory at the time was the mechanism of DNA, but good data is still good data, even without all the pieces of the puzzle.


Well, you should have read the previous quote more carefully :
Classical physics were /are deterministic and causally closed ,so it made/ makes no room whatsoever for any causal efficacy of the mind .So, Darwin's viewpoint concerning  the causal efficacy of the mind  did conflict with the classical physics of his time as well as with his deterministic materialism that was built upon classical physics , ironically and paradoxically enough .QM did replace the  classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one that allowed /allows for a non-mechanical causation of the mind by eliminating the causal closure of the physical thus .

Happy new year , lady .Happy new year to all of you , guys .Best wishes.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 30/12/2014 22:52:50
\

You do realize that the above is inconsistent with all materialist theories of mind , do you ? that consider the mind as just a useless side effect or a by -product of evolution ,an epiphenomena , ironically and paradoxically enough .
I don't think consciousness is an epiphenomena, and I don't know of any neuroscientists who do, as I've explained several times before in response to Carter's straw man argument.

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Better still, some materialists would even say that subjective experiences ...are just useful illusory evolutionary simulations computed by the physical brain , simulations that feel real though lol, like Graziano argued  .

I'm not even sure how to make sense of that statement. If they are useful, then they aren't epiphenomena. Simulations in what way? Our perceptions and qualia correspond with reality well enough for us to navigate the world, but do they provide us with all of the information - can we see in the ultra violet range or echolocate like bats or sense magnetic fields like migrating birds? No, so perhaps in that sense our perception is a limited  "simulation" of reality. So?

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I don't agree with that part of Carter's book of course regarding the biological evolution and the mind ....at least .I have just posted that to retell you about those false materialist theories of mind .

Carter is a substance dualist , so he doesn't believe in that materialistic non-sense regarding the alleged evolutionary biological origin of consciousness, needless to add .


Then it's strange that he would do a 180 and attempt to use evolution in his argument. Perhaps he thought no one would notice.
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I don't see either how the biological evolution can ever account for consciousness and the mind .It absolutely can't ,since consciousness is neither reducible to biology nor can it be an emergent property of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain ,no way .

How can materialist Darwin account for the causal efficacy of the mind then ?
Because animals that behaved in certain ways survived while others didn't.


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Well, you should have read the previous quote more carefully :
Classical physics were /are deterministic and causally closed ,so it made/ makes no room whatsoever for any causal efficacy of the mind .So, Darwin's viewpoint concerning  the causal efficacy of the mind  did conflict with the classical physics of his time as well as with his deterministic materialism that was built upon classical physics , ironically and paradoxically enough .QM did replace the  classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one that allowed /allows for a non-mechanical causation of the mind by eliminating the causal closure of the physical thus .
It makes no room for the causal efficacy of the mind if you assume the mind and the brain are separate entities, and behavior, including the ability to learn from experience, is not in any way a genetic trait. It's not a problem for either biologists or physicists -interaction between the immaterial and the brain is just a problem for mystics and substance dualists - another weakness of that theory.
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Happy new year , lady .Happy new year to all of you , guys .Best wishes.
Happy New Year to you as well.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 31/12/2014 01:41:19
A lots of exciting and fascinating things have been happening ,thanks to the works of many non-materialist scientists .

You're just too a dogmatic materialist to either notice or acknowledge that fact .
Just let me know when they come up with something interesting or useful and I'll notice and acknowledge it.

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but a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever , per definition thus
You realise that is a pretty solid definition of magic, right?   [???]

You don't really mean consciousness is magic, do you?

If you're interested in inexplicable 'scientific " magic , all you have to do is check out your own "scientific " materialism : stop projecting thus .
I'm just quoting your own words Don. Care to explain how 'a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever' differs from magic ?

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Materialism is just a false outdated and superseded 19th century ideology that has been equated with science , ironically and paradoxically enough ,while  turning science into a dogmatic ideology or secular atheistic religion,unfortunately enough  .
Your the only one whining constantly about materialism. As I said before, I couldn't care less about your personal stereotype of materialism; I'm not a subscriber. Respond to the posts, not some straw man philosophical stereotype.

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You're a real jerk ,you know that ? A depressing dogmatic fool who thinks  himself to be wise or funny .
Lol! I don't need to be funny while you're around  [:o)]

You spend a whole post (and a past history of insults) on ad-hominems, then call me a jerk for one trivial quip. Look to the log in your own eye pal. You may like to feel superior by being a jerk yourself, but you cry when some one does it back to you. Maybe if you learned to be a little more pleasant and addressed the argument rather than a straw man stereotype of the arguer, you wouldn't get treated like a jerk yourself.

But cheer up - you've got a whole new year to find something useful from 'Post Materialistic Science', and to find a plausible and credible rebuttal of the Yu & Nikolic paper ('Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness'). If your model of the world is scientific, testable, and right, you shouldn't have any difficulty at all (snicker).

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/12/2014 18:05:39
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447635#msg447635 date=1419990079]
A lots of exciting and fascinating things have been happening ,thanks to the works of many non-materialist scientists .

You're just too a dogmatic materialist to either notice or acknowledge that fact .
Just let me know when they come up with something interesting or useful and I'll notice and acknowledge it.

They don't need or require neither your confirmation, approval nor your recognition or validation ,silly .

Who the hell do you think you are anyway ?

You wouldn't notice,see,  or acknowledge counter-evidence against materialism even if it would hit you in the eye ,so , why should i bother then ...Pfft

+ The works of non-materialist scientists are no state secret , they are public for everybody to check out .

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but a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever , per definition thus
You realise that is a pretty solid definition of magic, right?   [???]

You don't really mean consciousness is magic, do you?

If you're interested in inexplicable 'scientific " magic , all you have to do is check out your own "scientific " materialism : stop projecting thus .
I'm just quoting your own words Don. Care to explain how 'a non-physical and a non-local process that can have instantaneous non-local and non-mechanical causal effects on matter , and that without obeying any laws of physics whatsoever' differs from magic ?

Don't be stupid ,you silly materialist dogmatic magician .Stop projecting .Even Alastair Rae who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM did acknowledge the fact that if there was a separate soul as Popper and Eccles argued for in their co-authored "The self and its brain " ,then it has  to have causal effects on matter without , by definition, obeying any laws of physics .

Alastair even added and rightly so : if that was the case , if there was a separate soul , that would solve the interpretation problem in QM somehow .

Think about it : it's not that difficult : materialism is false , since it mainly can never intrinsically account for consciousness ,and hence the latter cannot be a material process .

A separate soul has to have non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter , including at the quantum level ,without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics .

(By the way Searle was right in saying that that was substance dualism .We should in fact speak of process dualism , since the mind and matter are both totally different in kind  from each other processes , no substances ) .

QM has eliminated the classical causal closure of the physical , by replacing the classical deterministic universe by the probabilistic one , and hence has been allowing , so to speak, the non-mechanical and non-local causation of the mind in relation to matter : read the above displayed excerpt from a certain Carter's book on the subject to which Cheryl   here above has been reacting  .Do the same instead of trolling this stupid way then .

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Materialism is just a false outdated and superseded 19th century ideology that has been equated with science , ironically and paradoxically enough ,while  turning science into a dogmatic ideology or secular atheistic religion,unfortunately enough  .
Your the only one whining constantly about materialism. As I said before, I couldn't care less about your personal stereotype of materialism; I'm not a subscriber. Respond to the posts, not some straw man philosophical stereotype.

Well, materialism has been confused and equated with science for relatively so long now , without question, and counting ,so how do you expect me not to react to your materialistic dogmatic beliefs ,the ones you have been taking for granted as science = most of your alleged arguments or alleged evidence are just materialistic beliefs ,so.

It all comes down to the mind -body problem, including at the level of the interpretation of QM ,and since science has been materialist all that time and counting ,then most of what has been taken for granted as science must be questioned and identified as such , as just materialistic beliefs , no science,including the MW interpretation of QM that's based on the materialistic false belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process , including all materialist theories of mind ... .

Even the so-called standard model of QFT has to be absolutely and certainly ,and without a shadow of a doubt , fundamentally false and approximately correct , since it can absolutely neither account for consciousness nor for its non-mechanical and non-local causal effects on matter ...as  classical physics were /are and for the same reason .

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You're a real jerk ,you know that ? A depressing dogmatic fool who thinks  himself to be wise or funny .
Lol! I don't need to be funny while you're around  [:o)]

You spend a whole post (and a past history of insults) on ad-hominems, then call me a jerk for one trivial quip. Look to the log in your own eye pal. You may like to feel superior by being a jerk yourself, but you cry when some one does it back to you. Maybe if you learned to be a little more pleasant and addressed the argument rather than a straw man stereotype of the arguer, you wouldn't get treated like a jerk yourself.

I just can't stand dogmatic materialists such as yourself , let alone your irritating and belittling comments .I can't stand any form of dogmatism in fact , not even in myself .

Don't throw stones at people while living in a house that's made of glass .

Why do you continue reacting to my posts then ? Why do you continue confirming my views about you , over and over again ?

Why don't you get a real life ? Are you that masochistic  ?

As a famous poet said :

"The heart of a diamond can be cut by the leaf of a flower ,
A soft and gentle word has no effect on a stupid man ."

You can expand the meaning of "stupid " in the above lines as to encompass fool , dogmatic , arrogant , uninteresting,sterile  ...

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But cheer up - you've got a whole new year to find something useful from 'Post Materialistic Science', and to find a plausible and credible rebuttal of the Yu & Nikolic paper ('Quantum mechanics needs no consciousness'). If your model of the world is scientific, testable, and right, you shouldn't have any difficulty at all (snicker).

That experiment is already almost 5 years old and represents no conclusive evidence for its bombastic claims ( Bell's theorem and its related experiments made a stronger case than that ,for example ) ,and there were many other double slit experiments,to mention just that ,  that were conducted after 2010 that proved the contrary of that bombastic experiment ,not to mention that the mystery of the double slit experiment does remain unresolved up to this sec and counting  .

A Nobel prize and beyond are waiting for the one(s) who would solve the latter .

As for the rest , try to cure yourself from your unscientific and irrational illogical dogmatic certainty .Beware of the next unexpected unpredicted undetected unpredictable undetectable unknown , for the next black swans that might be sending the already refuted outdated and superseded materialism to the garbage of history where it belongs ,and for good this time lol , for the benefit and progress of both science and humankind .

Happy new year anyway ,dlorde.Best wishes . Let's hope this new year will be curing you from your tragic -hilarious absurd paradoxical ridiculous and unscientific dogmatic materialistic certainty or lethal disease  .Otherwise , some black swans will do the job for you  whether you would like it or not ,soon enough, if that lethal disease of yours doesn't kill you before the former  happens . Amen .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/12/2014 18:48:45
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg447630#msg447630 date=1419979970]

You do realize that the above is inconsistent with all materialist theories of mind , do you ? that consider the mind as just a useless side effect or a by -product of evolution ,an epiphenomena , ironically and paradoxically enough .
I don't think consciousness is an epiphenomena, and I don't know of any neuroscientists who do, as I've explained several times before in response to Carter's straw man argument.

Then you should have read that above displayed excerpt of Carter more carefully that was all about the materialist theories of mind :

They do either :

1-Deny the existence of consciousness and the mind as such : just illusions .

2- Consider them to be  just useless side effects or by-products of evolution : epiphenomena thus .

3- Or reduce them to just brain activity,without any causal effects on matter of course  : identity theory that's just a materialistic act of faith too , no scientific theory .

If any materialist neuroscientist would claim that the mind has causal effects on matter , the brain or body , he/she would be contradicting his/her own materialism ,big time .

In other words :

Materialism that's just the false belief assumption that all is matter or that all that matters is matter cannot but either deny the very existence of the mind and consciousness as such ( consider them to be  just illusions ,or  just  some sort of elaborate simulations computed by the so-called evolutionary complexity of the  physical brain : useful illusory evolutionary simulations that feel real though as Graziano argued for ...) ,cannot but consider them to be just useless epiphenomena ,  or cannot but equate the mind and consciousness with brain activity without any causal effects on matter brain or body , logically .

Our so-called illusory perception of free will or our so-called illusory perception of our mindful volitional causal effects on matter brain and body ...are just the work of the pre-frontal cortex ,for example,or that of the so-called higher centers of the brain ...blablabla... ...= we are just automatons , just machines or robots made out of meat lol , just hardware run by software =bullshit .

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Better still, some materialists would even say that subjective experiences ...are just useful illusory evolutionary simulations computed by the physical brain , simulations that feel real though lol, like Graziano argued  .

I'm not even sure how to make sense of that statement. If they are useful, then they aren't epiphenomena. Simulations in what way? Our perceptions and qualia correspond with reality well enough for us to navigate the world, but do they provide us with all of the information - can we see in the ultra violet range or echolocate like bats or sense magnetic fields like migrating birds? No, so perhaps in that sense our perception is a limited  "simulation" of reality. So?


Useful in the sense that they help us survive ,like some sort of survival  placebo  lol

Our perception is limited indeed, not to mention our selective perception or attention,  and we do perceive and see things in nature as well that do not exist as such like colors , optical illusions ,sun set , flat earth lol , still earth ....but that's not all what materialists mean by asserting that the mind and consciousness are just illusions or useful illusory evolutionary brain simulations  that feel real ,for example .

They just mean ,as the above implies, that our physical brains create that alleged illusory  feeling of being conscious or aware , that alleged illusory aware conscious perception or the alleged illusory subjective experiences that feel real : our brains allegedly fool us into believing that we are conscious aware beings lol for survival "purposes " : the brain fooling itself thus lol = the brain creating an illusion for and by itself, kidding itself and by itself lol  .

There is indeed what can be called the  self-deceit intrinsic capacity of the human mind  , but that limited capacity gets extended by materialists as to encompass the whole mind and consciousness as such = as a whole self-deceit = illusions = the brain creating the illusion of mind to fool the mind lol ....crazy stuff that belongs more in a mad house than in science .

All materialist theories of mind thus are so full of intrinsic inconsistencies paradoxes and absurdities that they cannot but deliver such non-sense = desperate pathetic materialistic attempts to rescue materialism and its classical determinism : materialists are stuck within their materialistic prison ,unless they try to break out from it ,since materialism is just a false prison , a false belief that shapes the consciousnesses , minds and behaviors of materialists thus .

I am just telling you about the logical consequences of materialism regarding the mind -body problem : see above thus .

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I don't agree with that part of Carter's book of course regarding the biological evolution and the mind ....at least .I have just posted that to retell you about those false materialist theories of mind .

Carter is a substance dualist , so he doesn't believe in that materialistic non-sense regarding the alleged evolutionary biological origin of consciousness, needless to add .


Then it's strange that he would do a 180 and attempt to use evolution in his argument. Perhaps he thought no one would notice.


No , he just did that to show how flawed materialism is , by refuting materialism even from within via the latter's inconsistencies at the level of Darwinism and more ....

Materialist Darwin , for example, assumed that the mind had causal effects on matter , while both the classical physics of his time as well as his own materialism that was built upon the former did not only conflict with the causal efficacy of the mind, but they also ruled it  out , ironically and paradoxically enough , exactly like the materialist standard model of QFT does  .

Carter used thus the inherent or intrinsic incoherence or inconsistencies of materialism to refute the latter while providing stronger evidence for that from what QM has been saying .

QM that superseded the classical deterministic mechanical physics upon which materialism was built .

That's why materialists do come up with other alternate physical theories to go around the problem like that so-called standard model of quantum field theory that has to be most certainly fundamentally false and approximately correct too, in its turn, as classical physics was/is by the way , since both can absolutely not account for either consciousness nor for its causal efficacy .

That's why materialists do come up also with their own interpretations of QM to avoid the problem like the MW interpretation of QM that's based on the materialistic intrinsic false belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process and hence it has to become  entangled with quantum systems and measuring devices whenever "observing " them and thus join the superposition states in its turn ....blablabla ...so the universe splits into multiverses ...  lol Crazy stuff.

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I don't see either how the biological evolution can ever account for consciousness and the mind .It absolutely can't ,since consciousness is neither reducible to biology nor can it be an emergent property of the so-called evolutionary complexity of the physical brain ,no way .

How can materialist Darwin account for the causal efficacy of the mind then ?
Because animals that behaved in certain ways survived while others didn't.


Darwin was right in his assertions on the subject regarding the causal efficacy of the mind at least , but as a materialist ,there is no way he can account for that ,since both classical physics of his time as well as his own materialism did /do rule out any causal efficacy of the mind, by definition  .

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Well, you should have read the previous quote more carefully :
Classical physics were /are deterministic and causally closed ,so it made/ makes no room whatsoever for any causal efficacy of the mind .So, Darwin's viewpoint concerning  the causal efficacy of the mind  did conflict with the classical physics of his time as well as with his deterministic materialism that was built upon classical physics , ironically and paradoxically enough .QM did replace the  classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one that allowed /allows for a non-mechanical causation of the mind by eliminating the causal closure of the physical thus .
It makes no room for the causal efficacy of the mind if you assume the mind and the brain are separate entities, and behavior, including the ability to learn from experience, is not in any way a genetic trait. It's not a problem for either biologists or physicists -interaction between the immaterial and the brain is just a problem for mystics and substance dualists - another weakness of that theory.

You're the one who's been assuming that the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process ,has been an "empirical fact " . The materialistic identity or production theory are just acts of faith , no scientific theories thus .They are untestable thus .

Well, once again, materialism is false , simply because it can mainly never intrinsically account for consciousness , and hence the latter cannot be a material process .

Once again : see the above mentioned materialist theories of mind : they cannot all but rule out any causal effects of the mind on matter , each one of them its own way .

1- How can the mind as an alleged illusion have any causal effects on matter ?

2- How can the mind as an epiphenomena do that ? : a paradox .The very definition of epiphenomena is that it does nothing , simply put thus .

3 - Regarding the materialistic identity theory : how can the mind that's just brain activity have any causal effects on the latter , for example ? Oh , well, the pre-frontal cortex does that ,some materialists say : the activity of the brain has causal effects on the activity of the brain lol and body .

Consciousness has to be non-physical , has to be non-local ( many indirect empirical evidence proved that fact as such ) and has to have , by definition, a non-mechanical causation in relation to matter ,has to interact mutually with matter brain and body : QM has replaced the deterministic causally closed universe with the probabilistic one by eliminating the causal closure of the physical ...so , there is no interaction problem .Read that excerpt more carefully then .

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Happy new year , lady .Happy new year to all of you , guys .Best wishes.
Happy New Year to you as well.

Likewise , lady .Best wishes . Have fun , Life is 2 short , enjoy it .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 31/12/2014 21:19:18
Email Reply From Fred Kuttner co-author of "Quantum enigma , Physics encounters consciousness " book  :

Date : December 29th , 2014 .

I haven't checked my emails for 2 days now up until a while ago ,and then, to my surprise and great delight ,  i saw the reply of Kuttner via email that was sitting there for 2 days now .He was indeed kind enough as to answer an email from a total stranger on the subject .Cool scientist indeed .I am grateful for and honored by that .

Anyway , i will copy and paste the exact words of Kuttner as i have received them via email thus , word for word : as follows :

Quote : "Dear ....,

I looked at the article you referenced.  I don't have the time to totally examine the article in the detail it would take to decide whether the proposed experiment could or could not disprove the hypothesis that consciousness is needed to collapse wavefunctions.  It is clear that despite the author's claim, their argument has nothing to say about whether quantum mechanics is necessarily involved in the functioning of the mind.

Like most physicists, unfortunately, the authors seem to believe that we make the claim that consciousness is needed to collapse wavefunctions.  We are actually agnostic about whether or not that is true.  The claim that we do make is that since by your choice of experiment you can determine whether the object in our 2-box experiment was in one box or both, the only possibilities we see are 1) Your choice of experiment determined the prior reality of the state of the object, backwards in time, or 2) The world exhibits a conspiratorial determinism such that you had no choice of which experiment to choose and that your choice was correlated with the state of the object, or 3) Quantum mechanics, our best theory of the physical world, is only a calculational tool that says nothing about reality.  You pick.

Cheers,
Fred
" End quote .

P.S.: I have just replied to the above by requesting from him to notify  me by email regarding his further comments on that above mentioned 2-slit experiment whenever he would have time for that + I did ask him some other relevant questions on the subject ....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2015 01:43:38
Who the hell do you think you are anyway ?

You wouldn't notice,see,  or acknowledge counter-evidence against materialism even if it would hit you in the eye ,so , why should i bother then ...Pfft
...
Don't be stupid ,you silly materialist dogmatic magician ...
...
Do the same instead of trolling this stupid way then .
...
Why don't you get a real life ? Are you that masochistic  ?
...
You can expand the meaning of "stupid " in the above lines as to encompass fool , dogmatic , arrogant , uninteresting,sterile  ...
...
Happy new year anyway ,dlorde.Best wishes .

Pretty much speaks for itself  [::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/01/2015 04:18:33
Who the hell do you think you are anyway ?

You wouldn't notice,see,  or acknowledge counter-evidence against materialism even if it would hit you in the eye ,so , why should i bother then ...Pfft
...
Don't be stupid ,you silly materialist dogmatic magician ...
...
Do the same instead of trolling this stupid way then .
...
Why don't you get a real life ? Are you that masochistic  ?
...
You can expand the meaning of "stupid " in the above lines as to encompass fool , dogmatic , arrogant , uninteresting,sterile  ...
...
Happy new year anyway ,dlorde.Best wishes .

Pretty much speaks for itself  [::)]
Yes......................a disgusting display of insulting arrogance! There's really no excuse for such behavior.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 01/01/2015 10:17:19
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The claim that we do make is that since by your choice of experiment you can determine whether the object in our 2-box experiment was in one box or both,


In other words, mass and charge are not conserved, if I choose not to conserve them. So I can take one atom of gold, and by choice alone, make another, ad infinitum. The implications are remarkable, if not absurd.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2015 11:54:39
Yes......................a disgusting display of insulting arrogance! There's really no excuse for such behavior.
He's done this sort of thing before when it's been pointed out he's said something silly or contradicted himself. What's disturbing is the weird contrast of a barrage of insults, followed by cheerful best wishes for the new year. Something not quite right about that...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 01/01/2015 13:33:27
Yes......................a disgusting display of insulting arrogance! There's really no excuse for such behavior.

 What's disturbing is the weird contrast of a barrage of insults, followed by cheerful best wishes for the new year. Something not quite right about that...
Really disingenuous and frankly quite dishonest.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2015 14:18:18
Quote
The claim that we do make is that since by your choice of experiment you can determine whether the object in our 2-box experiment was in one box or both,


In other words, mass and charge are not conserved, if I choose not to conserve them. So I can take one atom of gold, and by choice alone, make another, ad infinitum. The implications are remarkable, if not absurd.
Presumably they're talking about a superposition effect, otherwise, as you say, it sounds absurd...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 17:26:27
Quote
The claim that we do make is that since by your choice of experiment you can determine whether the object in our 2-box experiment was in one box or both,


In other words, mass and charge are not conserved, if I choose not to conserve them. So I can take one atom of gold, and by choice alone, make another, ad infinitum. The implications are remarkable, if not absurd.

He's just talking about the choices physicists make regarding whether to conduct an interference 2-slit experiment or otherwise : you either decide to determine via your choice of experiment whether to get an interference pattern or otherwise  .

P.S.: He's at least agnostic about whether consciousness can or cannot  collapse the wave function .

Alasatair Rae in his "Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " book was even clearer when he talked about the interpretation problem in QM while discussing the co-authored book of Popper and Eccles that argued for a separate soul :
Alastair who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM said that if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics ,and that would solve the interpretation problem in QM .

Alastair does not agree with that nature of consciousness , since he prefers to believe in the MW interpretation of QM that's based on the materialistic false belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process , ironically and paradoxically enough .

Happy new year ,Alan .Best wishes.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 17:44:16
Who the hell do you think you are anyway ?

You wouldn't notice,see,  or acknowledge counter-evidence against materialism even if it would hit you in the eye ,so , why should i bother then ...Pfft
...
Don't be stupid ,you silly materialist dogmatic magician ...
...
Do the same instead of trolling this stupid way then .
...
Why don't you get a real life ? Are you that masochistic  ?
...
You can expand the meaning of "stupid " in the above lines as to encompass fool , dogmatic , arrogant , uninteresting,sterile  ...
...
Happy new year anyway ,dlorde.Best wishes .

Pretty much speaks for itself  [::)]
Yes......................a disgusting display of insulting arrogance! There's really no excuse for such behavior.

You can't be a fair judge of  that ,no way .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 17:46:24
dlorde :

Let's start the new year with a clean sheet or slate .
Try to change your dogmatic , irritating , belittling and degrading behavior and then i will change mine as well .

Deal ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 01/01/2015 17:58:40
He's just talking about the choices physicists make regarding whether to conduct an interference 2-slit experiment or otherwise : you either decide to determine via your choice of experiment whether to get an interference pattern or otherwise  .

That's not what he said. And although what he said was obvious nonsense, he also didn't say that a single particle would produce an interference pattern, which would be even more nonsensical.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 18:02:47
Mind-to-mind thought talking possible by 2030, scientist says:

By Dick Pelletier
Ethical Technology

Posted: Dec 31, 2014

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/pelletier20141231


"Quantum Consciousness " :

Stuart Hameroff MD, 2015

Quote : " ....My research involves a theory of consciousness which can bridge these two approaches, a theory developed over the past 20 years with eminent British physicist Sir Roger Penrose. Called ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’), it suggests consciousness arises from quantum vibrations in protein polymers called microtubules inside the brain’s neurons, vibrations which interfere, ‘collapse’ and resonate across scale, control neuronal firings, generate consciousness, and connect ultimately to ‘deeper order’ ripples in spacetime geometry. Consciousness is more like music than computation...." End quote

http://www.hameroff.com/content/overview

Consciousness arising from brain activity lol : Cheryl   would like that non-sense .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 18:07:13
He's just talking about the choices physicists make regarding whether to conduct an interference 2-slit experiment or otherwise : you either decide to determine via your choice of experiment whether to get an interference pattern or otherwise  .

That's not what he said. And although what he said was obvious nonsense, he also didn't say that a single particle would produce an interference pattern, which would be even more nonsensical.

Would you then care to elaborate on these assertions of yours , please ? Thanks .

You either choose to conduct a 2-slit interference experiment without a detector thus  or otherwise= a 2-slit experiment with a detector at the top of the 2-slits thus  .Isn't that true ? It is .

Jim Al Khalili talks about that here below in this short video of his on the subject :

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2015 19:28:09
dlorde :

Let's start the new year with a clean sheet or slate .
Try to change your dogmatic , irritating , belittling and degrading behavior and then i will change mine as well .

Deal ?
It's entirely up to you, Don. I am always civil and polite to people who are civil and polite to me. 

However, I can't stop you considering my opinions to be dogmatic, nor can I stop you from finding reasoned argument and having your errors pointed out to be irritating, belittling or degrading; that's just a matter of emotional maturity.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 19:59:57
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447737#msg447737 date=1420140489]
dlorde :

Let's start the new year with a clean sheet or slate .
Try to change your dogmatic , irritating , belittling and degrading behavior and then i will change mine as well .

Deal ?
It's entirely up to you, Don. I am always civil and polite to people who are civil and polite to me. 

It's always the fault of other people , never ours , right ?
A little self-reflection or self-introspection won't hurt anybody , to the contrary .

Quote
However, I can't stop you considering my opinions to be dogmatic, nor can I stop you from finding reasoned argument and having your errors pointed out to be irritating, belittling or degrading; that's just a matter of emotional maturity.

Here you go again , emotional maturity , of course : you're not guilty of the above , silly me : i have just imagined all that , thanks to my emotional immaturity.



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 01/01/2015 20:01:19
"[The two-slit experiment] contains the only
mystery. We cannot make the mystery go away by
“explaining” how it works . . . In telling you how
it works we will have told you about the basic
peculiarities of all quantum mechanics."
— Richard Feynman
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 01/01/2015 22:17:30
It's always the fault of other people , never ours , right ?
A little self-reflection or self-introspection won't hurt anybody , to the contrary .
Quite. Nobody's perfect, but anyone reading the thread can make up their own mind.

Quote
Here you go again , emotional maturity , of course : you're not guilty of the above , silly me : i have just imagined all that , thanks to my emotional immaturity.
[::)] 

The basic rule for civil and polite debate or discussion is that you may attack the argument but not the arguer. If you attack the arguer, don't be surprised if they bite back.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 01/01/2015 23:23:04

You either choose to conduct a 2-slit interference experiment without a detector thus  or otherwise= a 2-slit experiment with a detector at the top of the 2-slits thus  .Isn't that true ? It is .


No detector = no experiment.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2015 05:36:55


Alasatair Rae in his "Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " book was even clearer when he talked about the interpretation problem in QM while discussing the co-authored book of Popper and Eccles that argued for a separate soul :
Alastair who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM said that if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics ,and that would solve the interpretation problem in QM .



If there are souls that can causally affect matter without obeying any of the laws of the universe, but all they ever bother to do is f*ck with certain physics experiments in a consistent and predictable fashion, souls have an odd sense of humor.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 02/01/2015 08:45:25
Back to my "single gold atom" experiment. A person with an acquisitive soul could become very rich by thought alone, but AFAIK it has not happened. So either there is no such thing as an acquisitive soul, or there is no means by which a soul can affect the physical universe.

I really don't see an "interpretation problem". QM describes what happens. It isn't what you would expect if classical mechanics applied to very small objects, but if you scale QM up to large objects, it begins to look like classical mechanics. So QM is an accurate representation of events and CM is an easier approximation. What's the problem?  Admittedly we don't have a quantum formalism for gravitation, but the CM model only predicts what happens without proposing how it works, so it's no big deal and certainly no reason for invoking the supernatural. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/01/2015 12:18:21
... if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics...
If there are souls that can causally affect matter without obeying any of the laws of the universe, but all they ever bother to do is f*ck with certain physics experiments in a consistent and predictable fashion, souls have an odd sense of humor.
And here was I thinking that causality was a fundamental law of physics...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 02/01/2015 19:07:34
While discussions of quantum mechanics are interesting in their own right, I still fail to see  the logical progression from the role of consciousness in them, (which is starting look more and more doubtful) to “consciousness cannot be brain activity” or “we have immortal souls.”

I’ve been thinking more about an article I posted a link for earlier – Biological Function of Consciousness by Brian Earl

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4122207/

It includes a good synopsis of consciousness research and different recent approaches. It also provides a very good argument that consciousness is not epiphenomena, that qualia and consciousness have biological functions in facilitating information processing and selecting appropriate response, and is therefore causal by influencing choices and behaviour which have evolutionary advantages.
 
But then there’s Section Four of Earl's article which is likely to make many readers slam on the brakes: “Evidence that conscious is solely information.”

I’m sure many will find the conclusion, that consciousness is information, unsatisfying. Superficially,  it seems to not only contradict, but flagrantly ignore, the hard problem and Chalmer’s argument, as well as Cooper’s primary objection, with the rather bold claim  “consciousness functions solely as input data; every component of consciousness is information in some form, and no part of one's experience is ever not information.” 

We insist feeling is not information, that it is something qualitatively different, more salient, more real, despite the obvious fact that if we destroy that information – if I block the transmission of the nerve, if I erase the memory of that painful experience – where is feeling's salient reality then? Even if the damage to my mangled finger is permanent, the pain disappears when the pain receptors stop transmitting  information. Even emotional pain about the fact that I now have a weird looking or dysfunctional finger disappears if I’m asleep, or engaged in other tasks. Where there is no transmission of information, there is no feeling.

 If philosophers are going to shout “show me a component of information that can feel” the rebuttal “show me feeling apart from information” is equally appropriate. 

What's more, there is nothing in quantum mechanics that explains what it “feels like”  to be a collapsing wave function, or how they are related in any logical way,  something that is utterly ignored in every quantum consciousness explanation, from Stapp to Penrose. This is odd, considering accounting for feeling and qualia is supposed to be neuroscience's Achilles heel from the dualist point of view.)

I think Earl's position is worth taking a closer look at, if anyone is interested. It also overlaps with other approaches such as Baars "global workspace," Kock and Crick's works on the function of the claustrum, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuronal-superhub-might-generate-consciousness/ and Tononi's integrated information theory.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 02/01/2015 23:14:00
...
I think Earl's position is worth taking a closer look at, if anyone is interested. It also overlaps with other approaches such as Baars "global workspace," Kock and Crick's works on the function of the claustrum, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/neuronal-superhub-might-generate-consciousness/ and Tononi's integrated information theory.
Yes, I agree - to an extent. I haven't heard a clear definition of information in this context. In physics, information is a somewhat abstruse concept, but here I think it's more like 'data with meaning' (e.g. sensory data). I would suggest that the meaning comes via pattern-matching, with the associative patterns of neural activity that the incoming data triggers. Patterns of input signals will stimulate pathways established by similar previous experience, and through those pathways, associations established previously for those patterns, so triggering recognition, familiarity, emotional associations, etc., at the same time contextual differences and novelties in the input will create new pathways, triggering different areas, and generating new associations.

Something along those lines...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/01/2015 04:34:54

Yes, I agree - to an extent. I haven't heard a clear definition of information in this context. In physics, information is a somewhat abstruse concept, but here I think it's more like 'data with meaning' (e.g. sensory data).

That is, I think, his use of the term information. He says "I use the term “information” to mean data or facts, which is a broader meaning than the usage in information theory as reduction in uncertainty. Some examples should help clarify my usage: The fact that I know something is information, and what I know is information. The fact that I am in pain is information, but the pain itself is information about possible bodily damage. The fact that I am angry is information, but my feeling angry is itself information about my own response to events.  Each of these statements does more than simply reduce uncertainty; it establishes the meaning or context of the information."
Quote
I would suggest that the meaning comes via pattern-matching, with the associative patterns of neural activity that the incoming data triggers. Patterns of input signals will stimulate pathways established by similar previous experience, and through those pathways, associations established previously for those patterns, so triggering recognition, familiarity, emotional associations, etc., at the same time contextual differences and novelties in the input will create new pathways, triggering different areas, and generating new associations.

Something along those lines...

I agree, but what is bold about his claim the inclusion of feeling as information that contributes to all of those recognitions, and associations above.

In a nut shell, he says consciousness is  a changing three-dimensional perceptual array of information that functions as input data to a process, or processes, that determine behavior. Consciousness includes no actual mental processes itself, but we experience the results of these processes.The only experiences that might superficially seem like processes are transitions from one group of sensations to the next or from one thought to the next. Qualia incorporate qualitative and quantitative information into consciousness. Qualia permit information about various qualitative properties, such as color or texture, and quantitative properties, such as relative size and location, to be incorporated into the information of consciousness, and that is why they evolved.

Feelings, like qualia, are also information. He divides them into various categories - "Physical state feelings represent information about internal physical conditions.For example, pain is a representation of bodily disturbance or peripheral tissue trauma and hunger informs consciousness of a need or desire for food.
Emotional feelings are representations and information concerning our state of physical and psychological responding to actual events, or to memories, thoughts,  or imaginings.
Mood feelings represent emotional states that are not tied to a particular situation, and are less well differentiated than other emotional feelings.  They inform consciousness concerning one's pre-existing psychological state or response bias. Therefore, these feelings are information.
Evaluative feelings are based upon nonconscious evaluations of things, and innate responses or learned associations in relation to them These feelings qualify objects, events, people, ideas, and so on, with regard to their meaning for us, our attitudes to them, or our judgments about them, and result from nonconscious and immediate evaluation processes ,but also what we understand, distrust, are familiar with, and so on; they are information about one's personal valuation of things."


The great irony is that feelings only seem superfluous to philosophers and other verbose humans, who rarely stop to consider the idea that feelings are the primary “language” of any animal that has consciousness, but no language. How does a conscious animal flag an event or an object in conscious awareness, memory, or imagination as good, bad, delicious,  risky,  threatening,  effective, ineffective, sexy,  or surprising, without the words "good, bad, delicious, risky, threatening effective", etc?  What is the “short form” for qualitatively flagging an event instead of replaying the entire memory in your head?

Emotions also serve to provoke displays of corresponding behavior (like screaming in terror) which are likely to provoke a similar or appropriate feeling and response in others, so they are a form of social communication as well.

Whether it's the language of words, or the language of feeling, it’s information, either way. We have may both, but we evolved from animals that didn’t. If emotions are more powerful drivers of behavior than word-based thoughts, perhaps it is because feelings have been with us a great deal longer. Humans and other animals who ignored fear or didn’t remember or express fear, suffered the consequences,  where as we have rarely died from mis-phrasing a sentence.

Anyway, it would be interesting to know how someone like Chalmers or Thomas Nagel would respond to Earl's ideas.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 17:43:09
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447743#msg447743 date=1420150650]
It's always the fault of other people , never ours , right ?
A little self-reflection or self-introspection won't hurt anybody , to the contrary .
Quite. Nobody's perfect, but anyone reading the thread can make up their own mind.

Indeed  lol , ironically enough  .

Quote
Quote
Here you go again , emotional maturity , of course : you're not guilty of the above , silly me : i have just imagined all that , thanks to my emotional immaturity.
[::)] 

The basic rule for civil and polite debate or discussion is that you may attack the argument but not the arguer. If you attack the arguer, don't be surprised if they bite back.

The arguer cannot be separated from the argued for ,especially when the arguer is an irritating dogmatic scientist who confuses and equates his own materialistic beliefs with science ,and hence can't but try to "explain " (away ) or belittle counter-arguments and the one making them .

What's the point of arguing with dogmatic people or with dogmatic scientists  then ?

Discussion with them like this one can't but end up like it did previously and on many similar occasions  , from time to time thus : very predictable indeed .

P.S.: I was just conducting some ethical tests on you though : you passed them successfully thus , but not in your favor, i am afraid  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 03/01/2015 17:55:13
Don't know how I missed this:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1996v2

Critique of Quantum Enigma:Physics encounters consciousness by Micheal Nauenberg
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 18:01:41

You either choose to conduct a 2-slit interference experiment without a detector thus  or otherwise= a 2-slit experiment with a detector at the top of the 2-slits thus  .Isn't that true ? It is .


No detector = no experiment.

Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 18:13:56


Alasatair Rae in his "Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " book was even clearer when he talked about the interpretation problem in QM while discussing the co-authored book of Popper and Eccles that argued for a separate soul :
Alastair who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM said that if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics ,and that would solve the interpretation problem in QM .



If there are souls that can causally affect matter without obeying any of the laws of the universe, but all they ever bother to do is f*ck with certain physics experiments in a consistent and predictable fashion, souls have an odd sense of humor.

That's a funny way of putting  it indeed . lol

The undeniable existence of separate souls has been f...with science ,especially with quantum physics ,  big time, by turning science in general upside down :
That's what the encountered anomalies usually do anyway when science happens to stumble upon them , ironically enough .

Anomalies like that are a bit like the unpredicted and undetected unexpected landmines or black swans : whenever science would encounter them or stumble upon them ,they explode in its nice scientific face ,while making it reconsider its (meta)paradigms ,big time.

Science has then to do the latter , it has no choice but to do that ,if it wants to survive or wants to continue functioning in a reliable way at least .

Anomalies like that are the raw material thanks to which science can progress too, if you haven't noticed just that yet  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 18:26:07
... if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics...
If there are souls that can causally affect matter without obeying any of the laws of the universe, but all they ever bother to do is f*ck with certain physics experiments in a consistent and predictable fashion, souls have an odd sense of humor.
And here was I thinking that causality was a fundamental law of physics...

There is also what can be called a non-mechanical   causation .
Maybe , the whole concept of causation is just a product of our minds , in order to make sense of "reality " .The latter might also be yet another product of the mind too .Who knows ?

Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism, remember ,not to mention classical determinism and classical locality too .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 18:34:10
Email reply from Fred Kuttner :

Date : January the first , 2015 :

Quote : " Dear ...

Your ideas about consciousness are interesting, and agree with some of the things that I and my co-author have thought.

I do not think I will have time anytime in the near future to examine the article you so kindly brought to my attention.  I am now working in an entirely different field, and am devoting all my efforts to it.

Cheers,

Fred
" End quote

P.S.: Yeah right , Fred co-authored a book the responsibility of which he has no time to address .
I did let him know about my disappointment in him as a scientist .
What a dick .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 18:36:52
Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :

That's a bog standard presentation of the 2 Slit experiment - the QM principles behind which are the motivation for all QM interpretations - including MW.

In what sense do you think the very reason for which the MW interpretation was formulated is a problem for it?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 18:44:50
Don't know how I missed this:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1996v2

Critique of Quantum Enigma:Physics encounters consciousness by Micheal Nauenberg
Well spotted Cheryl - I've seen some criticism of the Quantum Enigma excerpts on their web site (http://quantumenigma.com/), but Nauenberg seems to have been very thorough (even spotting an out-of-context, cherry-picked contribution of his own). Looks like yet another example of a misleading textbook being promoted and used as the basis for college courses.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 18:47:37
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447911#msg447911 date=1420310212]
Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :

That's a bog standard presentation of the 2 Slit experiment - the QM principles behind which are the motivation for all QM interpretations - including MW.

Well , Alan said : no detector = no experiment , so i referred him to Jim on the subject .
Or as Feynman said : the double slit experiment is the only mystery in QM ....something like that .

That's where and how the interpretation ,observation or measurement problem in QM saw the light of day .

Quote
In what sense do you think the very reason for which the MW interpretation was formulated is a problem for it?

MW interpretation of QM is based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process ,so it is a -priori false thus and does not deserve any further serious talk about it .It is untestable too , to mention just that .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 19:10:20
Don't know how I missed this:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.1996v2

Critique of Quantum Enigma:Physics encounters consciousness by Micheal Nauenberg
Well spotted Cheryl - I've seen some criticism of the Quantum Enigma excerpts on their web site (http://quantumenigma.com/), but Nauenberg seems to have been very thorough (even spotting an out-of-context, cherry-picked contribution of his own). Looks like yet another example of a misleading textbook being promoted and used as the basis for college courses.

Already forgot about the fact that all interpretations of QM are "equally valid " ,as Jim said in that posted excerpt of his earlier on ?

In fact ,the consciousness -based interpretation of QM  (interpretation that must not be taken literally though ) is , once again , the simplest and most plausible one than the rest ,simply because consciousness is a separate non-physical and a non-local process that has to have non-mechanical causal effects on matter ,without having , by definition, to obey any laws of physics (Even Alastair Rae who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM said that if there was indeed such a separate non-physical soul, then the interpretation of QM would be solved .He just dismissed the consciousness -based interpretation of QM ,simply because he has to give up reality as a result somehow , and simply because he does not believe in that alleged nature of consciousness .He prefers to believe in the materialist version of consciousness thus : a matter of belief , a matter of taste or a matter of aesthetics or philosophical preferences as he admitted .) .

Furthermore , There is no such "thing" as the independent observer and independent observed = they are inescapably and inseparably intertwined with each other .

On the other hand , MW interpretation of QM must be rejected together with materialism and all the latter's extensions, including all materialist theories of consciousness .....since materialism is false , simply because it can never intrinsically account for consciousness , let alone explain it .

The latter has been the major anomaly that broke the phony neck of materialism lol

So, science has to reconsider its materialistic false (meta) paradigm, reject it and move beyond it .

That's  what science should do and how it should work at least whenever stumbling upon such major landmines that cannot but explode in its orthodox face .

That's the only way science can save itself as a valid and reliable source of knowledge , and hence progress .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 19:14:32
... if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics...
And here was I thinking that causality was a fundamental law of physics...
There is also what can be called a non-mechanical   causation .
If you mean Hasker's emergent dualism, it's a non-explanation. Otherwise, I was pointing out that a claim of causal effects on matter without obeying physical laws, is a contradiction because causality is a physical law and the claimed effects are physical.

Quote
Maybe , the whole concept of causation is just a product of our minds , in order to make sense of "reality " .The latter might also be yet another product of the mind too .Who knows ?
I side with Dr. Johnson on this, and idealistic solipsism is a null philosophy.

Quote
Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism, remember ,not to mention classical determinism and classical locality too .
But not causality, so not relevant here.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 19:22:51
MW interpretation of QM is based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process ,so it is a -priori false thus and does not deserve any further serious talk about it .It is untestable too , to mention just that .
Ah, no. MW has nothing to say about consciousness or materialism, it's the simplest interpretation of the quantum formalism, making no additional assumptions.

Reading up on other interpretations, I'm wondering whether the De Broglie-Bohm Pilot Wave interpretation will ever make a come-back; it looks rather promising.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 19:37:54
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author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg447839#msg447839 date=1420188325]
Back to my "single gold atom" experiment. A person with an acquisitive soul could become very rich by thought alone, but AFAIK it has not happened. So either there is no such thing as an acquisitive soul, or there is no means by which a soul can affect the physical universe.

( How can one deny the obvious causal effect of the mind on matter ? If there was no such effect , no civilization, let alone science ,would exist as such,to say the least thus . You can't even survive , let alone function and develop without the causal effects of your own mind on your physical brain and body ,and on the rest of your environment .)

Then , you haven't only misunderstood what the consciousness-based interpretation of QM is all about , but you also are so intellectually lazy and close -minded (QM has by the way eliminated the causal closure of the physical and replaced the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one that allows , so to speak, for a non-mechanical causal effect of the mind on matter ) as not to read my posted excerpts of Carter regarding the "interaction problem " of substance dualism that was resolved by QM .

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I really don't see an "interpretation problem".

You're not the only physicist who keeps  that skeleton in your closet , be assured (I will not call the police about that , don't worry ) , by denying the interpretation problem in QM .
There is a problem though , big time .
Don't "shut up and calculate " ,try to address it , otherwise i will call the police regarding that skeleton in you closet .

Get it out of your closet while you can .Get out of the closet yourself now . lol

 
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QM describes what happens. It isn't what you would expect if classical mechanics applied to very small objects, but if you scale QM up to large objects, it begins to look like classical mechanics. So QM is an accurate representation of events and CM is an easier approximation. What's the problem?


(I thought the whole universe was quantum "mechanical " : quantum effects have been proven to occur at relatively "macroscopic " levels like at the level of some large molecules ...and as technology advances , more sophisticated experiments will be conducted at even more macroscopic levels )

Well, then : try to explain the central mystery in QM : the above mentioned double slit experiment then, if you think there is no problem or mystery in QM : a Nobel prize and beyond are waiting for you as Jim said .

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Admittedly we don't have a quantum formalism for gravitation, but the CM model only predicts what happens without proposing how it works

For your info : QM has been the only scientific theory ever ( a highly successful one at that ,that is ) that has been requiring an interpretative subjective element in it .

No other scientific theory has ever required such a subjective element in it.

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, so it's no big deal and certainly no reason for invoking the supernatural.


Who invoked any 'supernatural " ?, unless you assume that your own soul is "supernatural " . lol

The separate non-physical and non-local nature of consciousness which is inseparable from matter and which does have mutual interactions with it has nothing supernatural about it : it is a part of you even , the most important part of you , that is .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 19:55:07
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447919#msg447919 date=1420312971]
MW interpretation of QM is based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process ,so it is a -priori false thus and does not deserve any further serious talk about it .It is untestable too , to mention just that .
Ah, no. MW has nothing to say about consciousness or materialism, it's the simplest interpretation of the quantum formalism, making no additional assumptions.

Ah, yes : Re-read  your own previous  Caroll's link about it : MW interpretation would make no sense ,if it was not based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process that has to get entangled with its "observed " measuring devices and quantum systems , by joining their superposition states in its turn ...blablablabla...

On the other hand , For your info :  Von Neumann based all his interpretation of QM on the assumption , through rigorous maths , that there had to be a non-physical process that had to collapse the wave function (all measuring devices , quantum systems and the rest of the environment were /are all material or physical ) .He could not think of any other such non-physical process than the consciousness of the observer,logically  .

If consciousness is indeed a separate non-physical process , it cannot ever be in a superposition state , but non-held in place brain states , thoughts ....through the mindful volitional effort of attention through the veto power might be in a mental 'superposition state " maybe ( when we focus our mindful volitional attention on a particular brain state ,for example , or thoughts ...also , we maintain them  or hold them  in place for as along as we wish or can )

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Reading up on other interpretations, I'm wondering whether the De Broglie-Bohm Pilot Wave interpretation will ever make a come-back; it looks rather promising.

It has been making a timid come-back indeed .It is worth considering ,unlike that silly MW interpretation bullshit thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 20:19:06
...what is bold about his claim the inclusion of feeling as information that contributes to all of those recognitions, and associations above.
Is it really that bold? Damasio talks about feelings (e.g. primordial feelings arising from the brain stem) and their influence as constituting an important aspect of the construction of the sense of self, and they will be behavioural drivers in even the earliest evolutionary consciousness.

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In a nut shell, he says consciousness is  a changing three-dimensional perceptual array of information that functions as input data to a process, or processes, that determine behavior. Consciousness includes no actual mental processes itself, but we experience the results of these processes.The only experiences that might superficially seem like processes are transitions from one group of sensations to the next or from one thought to the next. Qualia incorporate qualitative and quantitative information into consciousness. Qualia permit information about various qualitative properties, such as color or texture, and quantitative properties, such as relative size and location, to be incorporated into the information of consciousness, and that is why they evolved.
I agree with this in general; my problem with it is that, even if we restrict the scope of we're considering to conscious awareness alone, the incoming data isn't information without ongoing processing. The associative matching, the triggering of established pathways, the feedback 'echoes' that give the data meaning, are all processes - the processing of data. Maybe he has a different type of processing in mind when he says consciousness is information without processing, but it's not clear to me.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 03/01/2015 20:55:45
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447918#msg447918 date=1420312472]
... if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics...
And here was I thinking that causality was a fundamental law of physics...
There is also what can be called a non-mechanical   causation .
If you mean Hasker's emergent dualism, it's a non-explanation. Otherwise, I was pointing out that a claim of causal effects on matter without obeying physical laws, is a contradiction because causality is a physical law and the claimed effects are physical.

No, i was just referring to what Carter said in my  latest posted excerpt of his on the subject regarding "the interaction problem " of substance dualism that was solved by QM, as he claimed at least , in the sense that QM has eliminated the classical and deterministic causal closure of the physical while replacing the classical deterministic universe with the probabilistic one, and hence has been making room for  , so to speak, a non-mechanical causation of the mind in relation to  matter to occur .

Non-mechanical causation of the mind is yet another form of causation thus , but one that does not have to obey any ordinary laws of physics .

For example, when you look at something or just at these lines , you instantly not only get aware and conscious of them , but you also understand them : no laws of physics alone , no brain activity alone can account for that  human ability of yours to instantly not only to be aware and conscious of these lines but to also understand them .

You can't explain the latter via just ordinary perception through the senses to the brain ,no way .

Even the "ordinary " act of seeing cannot be explained just by the physiology of the biological eye and brain , no way : it's the mind that sees through the eye and brain , not the latter .

Think about it , let's talk about how you decide to hold in place certain mind states , thoughts , feelings , emotions ....while eliminating or suppressing the other competitive or rival ones in the process that do compete to grab your attention  : you do that via your own mindful volitional effort of attention through your veto power .That choice cannot be determined by the laws of physics , not entirely at least ,as the forward writer to a certain Libet's book said )I posted that earlier on ) .

Try then to imagine what happens at the quantum level accordingly :
When you "observe" a measurement , you instantly get aware and conscious of not only what it is but also of what it might mean , you interpret what you see through your mind .

Taking into consideration the non-mechanical causal efficacy of the mind on matter and the fact that you interpret what you see or perceive mindfully , considering all that and more , i do not see how the mind cannot have any 'disturbing and interpretative "  effects on the "observed " measurements or data , i don't know , but to assert there can be no effect is really far fetched an assertion or a denial .

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Maybe , the whole concept of causation is just a product of our minds , in order to make sense of "reality " .The latter might also be yet another product of the mind too .Who knows ?
I side with Dr. Johnson on this, and idealistic solipsism is a null philosophy.

I said maybe. I do not really subscribe to that idealist monist view of the world  . I think that what's been called the contemplative cognitive science that's been some sort of a marriage between buddhism and cognitive science has been saying some interesting things on the subject of consciousness and its brain through the works of neuroscientist Francisco Varela , through that of Richard Davidson ...There are subtle states of consciousness that do need no brain or physical basis , for example , like those that are reached by highly experienced meditation experts or buddhist monks .some pure state of awareness ...

This interesting book talks about that :

http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Dreaming-Being-Consciousness-Neuroscience/dp/0231137095

Quote from amazon.com :

"A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of the mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain.

Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate--either in the waking state or in a lucid dream--we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self.

Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives."End quote.



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Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism, remember ,not to mention classical determinism and classical locality too .
But not causality, so not relevant here.

Not causality ? Sure about that ? How can one explain entanglement or non-locality that challenged the classical locality or separability that used to asset that no event A can be caused by B without any physical causation  and one that should not exceed the speed of light ? Explain that "spooky action at a distance " to me and what causality is there to explain it ?

Entanglement and other quantum effects that have been proved to occur even at the level of some "macroscopic " large molecules and beyond .

As technology gets more advanced , more sophisticated experiments are expected to be conducted at even more macroscopic levels thus .

Entanglement that has been turning the very concept of causality on its head thus ...

In short :

Maybe the non-local and non-physical separate mind does have a non-mechanical causal effect on matter through ...entanglement , who knows ? The non-mechanical causation of the mind = entanglement .

What about that ? It's possible . Nobody had ever imagined that entanglement could ever exist , not even at the level of sub-atomic "particles", let alone at the level of some "macroscopic " large molecules and beyond , so why can't the mind act via entanglement then in relation to matter ?

How can you a -priori exclude that possibility or unknown black swan .?


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 21:48:36
...MW interpretation would make no sense ,if it was not based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process that has to get entangled with its "observed " measuring devices and quantum systems , by joining their superposition states in its turn ...blablablabla...
Not really. However you want to interpret it, there are superpositions & entanglements - in theory and empirically observed. Nevertheless, the outcome of a measurement is always singular. If you believe that only consciousness collapses the wavefunction, then you must concede that the universe developed according to the MW interpretation until consciousness evolved - so there's tacit acceptance of an MW-style universe in conscious collapse, pre consciousness.

More interestingly, you must also concede that an unconscious individual that interacts with an entangled quantum system will join its superposition. Once that unconscious, now superposed, individual interacts with his environment (e.g. breathing), decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) will occur (equivalent to the appearance of wavefunction collapse), entanglement will be lost, and the two 'worlds' will become distinct and unique. Now, when that individual wakes up, MW says in each world he will see an appropriate (consistent) measurement outcome. Copenhagen Conscious Collapse says when he wakes up and looks to see the measurement outcome, the entangled wavefunction collapses to one particular outcome - which would be fine, and give a result consistent with that predicted by MW - except that by this time the entanglement has already decohered - conscious collapse simply can't account for this (because of the Von Neumann measurement chain error, below). 

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On the other hand , For your info :  Von Neumann based all his interpretation of QM on the assumption , through rigorous maths , that there had to be a non-physical process that had to collapse the wave function (all measuring devices , quantum systems and the rest of the environment were /are all material or physical ) .He could not think of any other such non-physical process than the consciousness of the observer,logically  .
As has already been pointed out earlier n the thread, the Von Neumann measurement chain is mathematically correct in its predictions, but makes the mistake of treating each step (link?) as a binary, ignoring the multiple degrees of freedom of real-world interactions - i.e. it's not really a chain of single particle-to-particle interactions as VN surmised, but a rapidly diverging tree of interactions, leading to the decoherence mentioned above. If this stochastic, discontinuous, and nonlinear environmental decoherence somehow is, or leads to, a real physical process of wavefunction collapse, it will probably invalidate the MW interpretation, but either way, it clearly makes conscious collapse untenable.

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If consciousness is indeed a separate non-physical process , it cannot ever be in a superposition state , but non-held in place brain states , thoughts ....through the mindful volitional effort of attention through the veto power might be in a mental 'superposition state " maybe ( when we focus our mindful volitional attention on a particular brain state ,for example , or thoughts ...also , we maintain them  or hold them  in place for as along as we wish or can )
This level of special pleading to retain consciousness as a non-superposable non-physical process hints, to paraphrase the Bard, that something is rotten in the state of non-physical Copenhagen Conscious Collapse. The combination of the interaction problem together with the now clearly exposed QM contradictions of conscious collapse, should give cause for serious reconsideration.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 03/01/2015 22:45:23
For example, when you look at something or just at these lines , you instantly not only get aware and conscious of them , but you also understand them : no laws of physics alone , no brain activity alone can account for that  human ability of yours to instantly not only to be aware and conscious of these lines but to also understand them .
Well, the pathways through which they are processed in the brain have been identified, and the areas where specific steps in the identification and recognition of words have been identified, and it has been established that simple maths, and even simple contextual understanding of words & phrases occurs at a subconscious level (not to mention the more sophisticated executive functions, once thought to be purely conscious, like inhibiting automatic responses [see van Gaal, S., 'Frontal Cortex Mediates Unconsciously Triggered Inhibitory Control' - Journal of Neuroscience 30]). Also, as has been mentioned previously, specific disruptions to these brain areas and pathways cause specific deficits in understanding and awareness - as specific as failure to recognise or understand particular elements (specific words, or classes of words, or specific meanings, or numbers, or sentences but not individual words, etc). So it's pretty clear that most of this is below conscious awareness, and all of it is a matter of brain processing.

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Even the "ordinary " act of seeing cannot be explained just by the physiology of the biological eye and brain , no way : it's the mind that sees through the eye and brain , not the latter .
The recursive homunculus of Dennett's 'Cartesian Theatre'  is the argument you need to overcome to maintain that view. Then you'll need to account for the neurophysiology of the visual cortex, where the progressive and hierarchical processing of visual information to produce a coherent 3D model of the visual field is well established, and using models derived from the neural networks there, computer models have been product that are subject to the same visual illusions as we are. Even sensory interference illusions like the McGurk Effect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0) have been elucidated.

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Think about it , let's talk about how you decide to hold in place certain mind states , thoughts , feelings , emotions ....while eliminating or suppressing the other competitive or rival ones in the process that do compete to grab your attention  : you do that via your own mindful volitional effort of attention through your veto power .That choice cannot be determined by the laws of physics , not entirely at least ,as the forward writer to a certain Libet's book said )I posted that earlier on ) .
See the van Gaal paper (above) for empirical evidence that's not necessarily the case.

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Taking into consideration the non-mechanical causal efficacy of the mind on matter and the fact that you interpret what you see or perceive mindfully , considering all that and more , i do not see how the mind cannot have any 'disturbing and interpretative "  effects on the "observed " measurements or data , i don't know , but to assert there can be no effect is really far fetched an assertion or a denial .
That's just a problem with assuming there's non-mechanical causal efficacy of non-physical mind on matter - it leads to all manner of problems and difficulties, particularly when the empirical evidence contradicts it.

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...Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate--either in the waking state or in a lucid dream--we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self.

Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives."End quote.[/i]
None of that is inconsistent with the sense of self, and consciousness, being products of brain activity - in fact, the reported experiences are entirely consistent with the neuroscience of self and how it is constructed in the brain.

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Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism, remember ,not to mention classical determinism and classical locality too .
But not causality, so not relevant here.

Not causality ? Sure about that ? How can one explain entanglement or non-locality that challenged the classical locality or separability that used to asset that no event A can be caused by B without any physical causation  and one that should not exceed the speed of light ? Explain that "spooky action at a distance " to me and what causality is there to explain it ?
Sure as eggs is eggs. As has been said repeatedly in this very thread, nothing about entanglement or "spooky action at a distance " involves the transfer of information FTL. Causality remains intact and unthreatened. 

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Entanglement that has been turning the very concept of causality on its head thus ...
No.

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How can you a -priori exclude that possibility or unknown black swan .?
No-one's excluding possibilities a-priori. You look at what is known (the existing consistently reliable framework of knowledge), and the empirical data (what observation and experiment tells you), and you draw up testable models and hypotheses that are consistent with the existing framework. All provisional. What you don't do is make up stuff you'd like to be true and try to argue that anything that contradicts it must be wrong.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2015 20:39:56
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447932#msg447932 date=1420321716]
...MW interpretation would make no sense ,if it was not based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process that has to get entangled with its "observed " measuring devices and quantum systems , by joining their superposition states in its turn ...blablablabla...
Not really. However you want to interpret it, there are superpositions & entanglements - in theory and empirically observed. Nevertheless, the outcome of a measurement is always singular. If you believe that only consciousness collapses the wavefunction, then you must concede that the universe developed according to the MW interpretation until consciousness evolved - so there's tacit acceptance of an MW-style universe in conscious collapse, pre consciousness.


(Prior note : Biological evolution can never intrinsically account for consciousness , let alone for its emergence ,function, origin or nature .consciousness could never have evolved from the biological evolution , no way , simply because consciousness is irreducible to biology and cannot have emerged from it , no way .Think about that .It makes no biological sense whatsoever to assert that : the subjective personal qualitative experiential can never rise from the quantitative non-experiential "impersonal objective " biology : they are totally different from each other in kind .Even some of your best philosophers , scientists ... cannot but agree with me on that , dlorde .Think about it .)

I don't know whether or not consciousness does collapse the wavefunction .I am just inclined to agree with what Alastair Rae ,for example ,said on the subject when talking about the consciousness -based interpretation of QM.

Assume for a sec thus that consciousness is a separate non-physical and non-local process , that would solve the interpretation problem in QM , as Alastair said , even though he doesn't believe in that alleged nature of consciousness , since he prefers to stick to the materialistic version of consciousness , and hence he's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM thus .

The latter is a -priori false since it is based on the false materialistic belief assumption that consciousness is just a material process,and hence cannot but get entangled, in its turn , with the "observed " quantum systems and measuring devices + with the rest of the environment ....by joining their "dance party " lol : their superposition states   .

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More interestingly, you must also concede that an unconscious individual that interacts with an entangled quantum system will join its superposition. Once that unconscious, now superposed, individual interacts with his environment (e.g. breathing), decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) will occur (equivalent to the appearance of wavefunction collapse), entanglement will be lost, and the two 'worlds' will become distinct and unique. Now, when that individual wakes up, MW says in each world he will see an appropriate (consistent) measurement outcome. Copenhagen Conscious Collapse says when he wakes up and looks to see the measurement outcome, the entangled wavefunction collapses to one particular outcome - which would be fine, and give a result consistent with that predicted by MW - except that by this time the entanglement has already decohered - conscious collapse simply can't account for this (because of the Von Neumann measurement chain error, below). 

A temporary unconscious person is no synonymous of a person without consciousness .The latter is still there ,it is just 'disconnected " somehow,  from that person's physical brain and body +from the rest of his/her environment, but not totally disconnected , i presume , i don't know  .

For example ,a younger brother of mine used to do some sleep walking when we were kids .I had even to go after him during a certain night when he sleep walked out of the house to the street ...to bring him back lol
He was asleep but nevertheless , he did things like a conscious person would like opening the doors , going out , talking , walking down the street,and even eating ,drinking ...while asleep  ...

fMRI scans are even able now to detect a minimum form of consciousness in vegetative patients , not to mention that even at the level of deep dreamless or paradoxical deep sleep , some neuroscientists claim to have detected some subtle forms of consciousness .

Some Buddhist meditation experts monks ,for example ,even claim that they can train their minds to be aware or conscious of ,monitor and control their deep sleep state .

When you wake up feeling like you slept well, they claim, that means that you have remembered your calm deep sleep , i don't know .

In short : being asleep or temporary unconscious does not mean a total absence of consciousness .

Not to mention the fact that our unconsciousness is also a part of our separate souls that can have effects on our bodies brains and environment even when we are asleep or unconscious .

We don't know much about consciousness , or unconsciousness thus , so we can't refute their effects by basing that on insufficient data .

We don't even know what the effects of consciousness and unconsciousness are , how they work ...what they exactly are ...


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On the other hand , For your info :  Von Neumann based all his interpretation of QM on the assumption , through rigorous maths , that there had to be a non-physical process that had to collapse the wave function (all measuring devices , quantum systems and the rest of the environment were /are all material or physical ) .He could not think of any other such non-physical process than the consciousness of the observer,logically  .
As has already been pointed out earlier n the thread, the Von Neumann measurement chain is mathematically correct in its predictions, but makes the mistake of treating each step (link?) as a binary, ignoring the multiple degrees of freedom of real-world interactions - i.e. it's not really a chain of single particle-to-particle interactions as VN surmised, but a rapidly diverging tree of interactions, leading to the decoherence mentioned above. If this stochastic, discontinuous, and nonlinear environmental decoherence somehow is, or leads to, a real physical process of wavefunction collapse, it will probably invalidate the MW interpretation, but either way, it clearly makes conscious collapse untenable
.

I am gonna reformulate a quote from a prominent physicist on the subject by turning it upside down to illustrate what i wanna say,as follows :

You can't explain  the mystery of the interpretation of QM by trying to explain away the other major mystery :consciousness .See above .

You arguments are no better than those of the supporters of the consciousness -based interpretation of QM : they try to explain the central mystery of QM by yet another major mystery  ( consciousness ) , but you almost do the same, in the reverse sense .

We absolutely do not know what consciousness does or does not ,let alone how thus .

Trying to explain a mystery by arguing for the effects or lack thereof of yet another bigger mystery is no explanation ,the same goes for   the fact that some materialists try to explain the mystery of consciousness by yet another mystery : information : they just use meaningless semantics and metaphors like that and like those machine and computer metaphors to hide their ignorance and make it look like wisdom or sophisticated knowledge , like Damasio , Dehanne , like the writer of "I am a trange loop " , like Graziano and others do .

Non-materialists do the same too their own mystical way .Both non-materialist and materialist mysticism or metaphysics are no explanations thus .

Both materialists and non-materialists just replace a mystery with yet another mystery thus : that's no explanation .

Scientists should at least be humble enough as to admit that they still have no clue about what consciousness might be and thus suspend  their attempts to solve the interpretation problem in QM, for example, until they can at least come up with scientific empirical evidence regarding the work of consciousness somehow : contemplative cognitive science that combines both neuroscience with contemplative subjective experiences , psychology ....can at least shed some light on all that, much better than science alone or spirituality alone can do  .


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If consciousness is indeed a separate non-physical process , it cannot ever be in a superposition state , but non-held in place brain states , thoughts ....through the mindful volitional effort of attention through the veto power might be in a mental 'superposition state " maybe ( when we focus our mindful volitional attention on a particular brain state ,for example , or thoughts ...also , we maintain them  or hold them  in place for as along as we wish or can )
This level of special pleading to retain consciousness as a non-superposable non-physical process hints, to paraphrase the Bard, that something is rotten in the state of non-physical Copenhagen Conscious Collapse. The combination of the interaction problem together with the now clearly exposed QM contradictions of conscious collapse, should give cause for serious reconsideration.

Carter did at least try to show you how QM had solved the alleged  interaction problem of substance dualism,as he claimed at least  . Alastair too saw no interaction problem in assuming that there might be a separate soul , even though he did not agree with that latter assumption .

And since  we still do not know much , if anything at all , about how consciousness works , we should at least suspend such above statements of yours until we do .

I am really not religiously motivated in assuming that consciousness is a separate non-physical and non-local process that's totally different in kind from "matter "  (we don't even know what matter is , let alone what the mind is ,while both are inseparable in fact and have mutual interactions with each other as well : mind and matter are  no substances , but processes . ) , i believe in that nature of consciousness , simply because the latter is irreducible to biology and can never emerge from it ,as there is a lots of indirect empirical evidence that has been proving that nature of consciousness .

When we acknowledge that above mentioned nature of consciousness that cannot but have non-mechanical causal effects on matter , a kindda mental force that triggers physical effects , well, then all science has to be turned on its head as a result , including what materialist science has been saying about the origin of the universe , the origin of life , the nature of life , the evolution of life , to mention just that .

QM had just brought that major  issue of consciousness back to science ,so the interpretation problem in QM is just a part of the whole picture that should be addressed thus : the interpretation problem in QM is thus just the tree that hides the forest , so to speak , just a part of the picture , not the whole picture .


P.S.: We can't step outside of consciousness to study it ,so to speak, we will have to accept the fact that what all we might know about consciousness has to be revealed by the latter either through science or through subjective or spiritual experiences or both .

Science alone deals only with what Buddhists call the gross form of consciousness, the perceptual sensory one, while there are more subtle and higher forms of consciousness than that, not to mention the non-sensory spontaneous activity of the brain  that reflects that of the inner subjective  life .....
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 04/01/2015 20:59:14
dlorde :

Thanks for your interesting and challenging replies , insights , arguments ....appreciate indeed .
No time left to reply to your latest post , i am afraid, sorry .
Will try to address that another time , if possible .

Thanks .Take care . Cheers .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 04/01/2015 21:49:40
(Prior note : Biological evolution can never intrinsically account for consciousness , let alone for its emergence ,function, origin or nature .consciousness could never have evolved from the biological evolution , no way , simply because consciousness is irreducible to biology and cannot have emerged from it , no way .Think about that .It makes no biological sense whatsoever to assert that : the subjective personal qualitative experiential can never rise from the quantitative non-experiential "impersonal objective " biology : they are totally different from each other in kind .Even some of your best philosophers , scientists ... cannot but agree with me on that , dlorde .Think about it .)
I have thought about it, and I find it both plausible and compellingly supported by the evidence.

Since you mention it, let's consider the evolutionary perspective. Do you consider any other animals to have some form of consciousness? Other primates? cetaceans? corvids? - creatures that display signs of self-awareness, can communicate complex ideas, understand instructions, are creative, use tools, plan ahead, have theory of mind?

Would you agree that there are degrees of consciousness among other species in the animal kingdom, with less sophisticated creatures having lesser degrees of consciousness?

What, in particular, do you find incredible about the evolution of consciousness?

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I don't know whether or not consciousness does collapse the wavefunction .I am just inclined to agree with what Alastair Rae ,for example ,said on the subject when talking about the consciousness -based interpretation of QM.
All due respect to Rae, but the available evidence says no, and the idea on which it was based has been shown to be mistaken.

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Assume for a sec thus that consciousness is a separate non-physical and non-local process , that would solve the interpretation problem in QM
What, exactly, is a 'non-physical process'? how can it interact with the physical? how does it solve the interpretation problem?

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A temporary unconscious person is no synonymous of a person without consciousness .The latter is still there ,it is just 'disconnected " somehow,  from that person's physical brain and body +from the rest of his/her environment, but not totally disconnected , i presume , i don't know  .

For example ,a younger brother of mine used to do some sleep walking when we were kids .I had even to go after him during a certain night when he sleep walked out of the house to the street ...to bring him back lol
He was asleep but nevertheless , he did things like a conscious person would like opening the doors , going out , talking , walking down the street,and even eating ,drinking ...while asleep  ...

fMRI scans are even able now to detect a minimum form of consciousness in vegetative patients , not to mention that even at the level of deep dreamless or paradoxical deep sleep , some neuroscientists claim to have detected some subtle forms of consciousness .

Some Buddhist meditation experts monks ,for example ,even claim that they can train their minds to be aware or conscious of ,monitor and control their deep sleep state .

When you wake up feeling like you slept well, they claim, that means that you have remembered your calm deep sleep , i don't know .

In short : being asleep or temporary unconscious does not mean a total absence of consciousness .
That's what I call a straw herring; a straw-man combined with a red herring...

Leave the goalposts where they are - unconscious means 'not conscious'. When I talked of someone unconscious, I didn't mean asleep, or sleep-walking, or conscious but unresponsive, I meant not concsious. My point was predicated on the absence of the conscious awareness of the result of a measurement that is the criterion for the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation. Not some kind of non-physical soul or spirit. If that's what you mean, you're talking about something else entirely.

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Not to mention the fact that our unconsciousness is also a part of our separate souls that can have effects on our bodies brains and environment even when we are asleep or unconscious .
Well you're on your own there. I'm not here to talk about souls, spirits, the supernatural, magic, religion, or gods, but to discuss scientific ideas about our empirical observations.

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You can't explain  the mystery of the interpretation of QM by trying to explain away the other major mystery :consciousness .See above .
I agree. That's why I'm not trying to explain either QM or consciousness, I'm just telling you that conscious collapse is untenable if it's based on Von Neumann's chain, because that isn't a correct description of the real-world situation.

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... there is a lots of indirect empirical evidence that has been proving that ...
You're think indirect evidence can be proof ?  [???]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 04/01/2015 23:25:07


Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :


Sorry, Jim, the "offset dectector" is nonsense. How do you detect the atom passing through the slit without doing something to it? Heisenberg sorted this out a long time ago.

Suppose the offset detector was a photographic film. You do the experiment and get a result, either an interference pattern or two lines. Now toss a coin. If it comes down heads, you process the film. That is equivalent to switching on the detector, so the interference pattern you recorded (on another piece of film) must disappear and be replaced by two lines. Does it? I think not.   
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/01/2015 05:28:58


Alasatair Rae in his "Quantum physics , illusion or reality ? " book was even clearer when he talked about the interpretation problem in QM while discussing the co-authored book of Popper and Eccles that argued for a separate soul :
Alastair who's a proponent of MW interpretation of QM said that if there was indeed a separate soul , the latter would have causal effects on matter without obeying , by definition , any laws of physics ,and that would solve the interpretation problem in QM .



If there are souls that can causally affect matter without obeying any of the laws of the universe, but all they ever bother to do is f*ck with certain physics experiments in a consistent and predictable fashion, souls have an odd sense of humor.

That's a funny way of putting  it indeed . lol

I was being facetious.
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The undeniable existence of separate souls has been f...with science ,especially with quantum physics ,  big time, by turning science in general upside down :


The undeniable existence of souls? Citation, please.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2015 10:22:22
The undeniable existence of souls? Citation, please.
Being charitable, it's true that if there was some magical or supernatural non-physical thing that could magically/supernaturally interact with the physical without obeying any laws of physics(!), then you wouldn't have to worry about any physical explanations for what we observe. You could just abandon everything we know and embrace the non-scientific magical/supernatural. But, of course, it's a not a direction for rational enquiry, it's counsel of despair. On a par with 'I don't understand it, therefore God'.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 17:43:25
Cheryl, dlorde :

The existence of the  separate non-physical and non-local consciousness or soul is a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified and that has been proved as such by many indirect empirical evidence ,since no direct evidence can be delivered on the subject (we can't observe consciousness or subjective experiences scientifically and directly ), while the identity theory as well as the emergent property theory regarding consciousness are untestable = unscientific .

The above mentioned nature of consciousness is the only one that can account for all consciousness related anomalies such as psi phenomena, for the effects of placebo/nocebo , for those of meditation , mindfulness, for our ability to control our autonomic nervous system via biofeedback training , for the mindful trained informed active self-directed neuroplasticity , for near death experiences , for out of body experiences , and much more .

Even the so-called integrated information theory regarding consciousness fails to account for all aspects of consciousness,to say the least  .

Furthermore , consciousness or awareness never "disappear " totally when we are unconscious , under anesthesia , in deep dreamless sleep, while we are dreaming ....

See below , regarding the fact that consciousness or awareness never 'disappears " totally at least as well as regarding the so-called integrated information theory and more :

Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :

Extremely fascinating read . The marriage between cognitive science and contemplative ancient wisdom is promising .

This marriage can do much better ( can give births to promising beautiful kids lol ) than Libet's combination of first person personal subjective reports with neuroscience .

A fresh release , just for your blue eyes , guys :  November 2014 : Enjoy :

Quote : "EAST MEETS WEST :

Let me summarize things up to this point. Our guiding question is whether some kind of consciousness is present in deep and dreamless sleep. Related to this question is whether, at the moment of awakening, we have some kind of memory of the deep sleep state or make a retrospective inference about having been asleep and unaware. Further related questions are what happens to the self and whether there’s some kind of self-experience in deep sleep.


The Indian philosophical treatments of these questions about deep and dreamless sleep give careful attention to a part of human life that contemporary Western philosophy of mind basically neglects.
Although philosophers of mind have written about dreaming, they’ve said almost nothing about dreamless sleep.



 Even phenomenology in the tradition of Edmund Husserl—the philosophical tradition that reigns supreme in the Western investigation of consciousness—says little about deep and dreamless sleep compared to the richness of the Indian philosophical discussions.
What about neuroscience? What does it have to say about deep and dreamless sleep?.


According to the standard neuroscience way of thinking, deep and dreamless sleep is a state where consciousness fades and sometimes disappears completely. Indeed, neuroscientists often try to define consciousness as that which disappears in deep sleep. As neuroscientists Giulio Tononi and Christof Koch write, “When you fall asleep … the level of consciousness decreases to the point that you become virtually unconscious—the degree to which you are conscious (of anything) becomes progressively less and less.”

 Elsewhere Tononi writes: “Everybody knows what consciousness is: it is what vanishes every night when we fall into a dreamless sleep and reappears when we wake up or when we dream.”

Philosopher John Searle agrees: “Consciousness consists of inner, qualitative, subjective states and processes of sentience or awareness. Consciousness, so defined, begins when we wake in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continues until we fall asleep again, die, go into a coma, or otherwise become ‘unconscious.’”
From the Indian and Tibetan contemplative perspectives, however, these descriptions are inaccurate.

Although object-directed consciousness becomes progressively less and less as we move from waking or dreaming into deep and dreamless sleep, awareness or sentience continues.


For Yoga and Vedānta, whereas dreaming is a form of object-directed consciousness—the objects in dreams being mental images—dreamless sleep is a mode of consciousness without an object.


Similarly, according to Tibetan Buddhism, deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content, and it’s the basis upon which dreaming and waking consciousness arise.

The Indian and Tibetan conceptions of deep and dreamless sleep bring a new perspective to the neuroscience of consciousness, especially to experimental investigations of brain activity during sleep.

At the same time, findings from the neuroscience of sleep are relevant to the Indian debates, especially to the differences between the Yoga and Vedānta views of mental functioning in deep and dreamless sleep.

WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?:

Why have neuroscientists thought that consciousness fades or disappears during deep and dreamless sleep? .

One reason comes from the reports people give when they’re woken up from non-REM or NREM sleep, especially when the EEG shows slow waves in the delta frequency range (0.5–4 Hertz) during sleep stages 3 and 4 (so-called slow-wave sleep). When given the instruction, “report anything that was going through your mind just before waking up,” people tend to report short and fragmentary thoughts or not being able to remember anything at all.27 On that basis, scientists conclude that the sleepers were aware of little or nothing at all prior to being woken up, and hence that slow-wave sleep is a state of reduced or absent consciousness.

Yet we should be cautious here. The fact that you have no memory of some period of time doesn’t necessarily imply that you lacked all consciousness during that time. You might have been conscious— in the sense of undergoing qualitative states or processes of sentience or awareness—but for one reason or another not been able to form the kind of memories that later you can retrieve and verbally report.

This point is familiar to scientists who study the effects of anesthetics. At certain doses, some anesthetics prevent memory formation while sparing awareness. As neuroscientists Michael Alkire, Giulio Tononi, and their colleagues state in an article on consciousness and anesthesia:



At doses near the unconsciousness threshold, some anesthetics block working memory. Thus, patients may fail to respond because they immediately forget what to do. At much lower doses, anesthetics cause profound amnesia. Studies with the isolated forearm technique, in which a tourniquet is applied to the arm before paralysis is induced (to allow the hand to move while the rest of the body is paralyzed), show that patients under general anesthesia can sometimes carry on a conversation using hand signals, but postoperatively deny ever being awake. Thus, retrospective oblivion is no proof of unconsciousness.


Although dreamless sleep and anesthesia aren’t the same condition, the general point that retrospective oblivion doesn’t prove a prior lack of consciousness must be kept in mind whenever we’re tempted to infer that consciousness is absent in deep sleep because people report not being able to remember anything when they’re woken up.

If consciousness continues in deep sleep, there may be various reasons people report not being able to remember anything when they’re woken up. One reason commonly given in Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism is that deeper aspects of consciousness unfamiliar to ordinary waking awareness can’t be cognitively accessed and reported without a high degree of meditative mental training.

We also need to think about the kinds of verbal reports that people are asked to make when they’re woken up in the sleep lab. The instruction to report “anything going through your mind just before waking up” encourages you to direct your attention and memory to the objects of your awareness—to anything you might have been thinking about. But what about the felt qualities of awareness itself?.

 A different instruction, to report “anything you were feeling just before waking up,” would encourage you to direct your attention and memory to the felt quality of your sleep. Did you have any feeling of being aware or in some kind of sentient state? Was your sleep peaceful and clear or agitated, restless, or sluggish? Or do you have no impression of any feeling or quality of awareness? The point is to guide people away from focusing exclusively on the objects of consciousness, which may be absent in deep sleep, and to orient them toward the felt qualities of awareness itself.

The connection between this point and the earlier one about meditative mental training is that individuals with such training, especially in lucid dream yoga and sleep yoga, may be able to give more detailed reports about qualities of awareness during sleep than untrained individuals can. We’ll return to this idea at the end of this chapter.

SLOW-WAVE SLEEP AND THE BRAIN :

Another reason neuroscientists think that consciousness fades or ceases in deep sleep comes from comparing brain activity during slow-wave sleep with brain activity during waking consciousness.

For example, Marcello Massimini, Giulio Tononi, and their colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, studied how the brain responds to being stimulated by a brief pulse of electricity at a small and precisely chosen region when subjects are awake versus when they’re in deep sleep.

During wakefulness, the pulse triggers a sustained EEG response that lasts for 300 milliseconds and is made up of rapidly changing waves that propagate in specific directions over long distances in the cortex. During deep sleep, however, although the initial response is stronger than during wakefulness, it remains localized to the stimulated brain region and lasts only 150 milliseconds.

 In short, whereas the waking brain responds to stimulation with a complex pattern of large-scale activity across many interconnected regions, the deeply sleeping brain responds with localized and short-lived activity.

Tononi and his colleagues interpret these findings as showing that “effective connectivity”—the ability of neural systems to influence each other—breaks down in deep sleep.

As a result, “large-scale integration” in the brain can’t happen, that is, the brain can’t generate the kinds of dynamically changing large-scale patterns of activity—such as the neural synchrony patterns discussed in chapter 2 —that characterize moment-to-moment awareness in the waking state.
What causes these losses in effective connectivity and large-scale integration in deep sleep? .

Part of the answer has to do with what are called “up” and “down” states in slow-wave sleep. During deep sleep, virtually all cortical neurons alternate between being active—the up state—and being completely inactive—the down state. In the up state, neurons fire at their waking rates for about a second; in the down state, they’re silent.

The synchronous occurrence of the up state in numerous neuronal populations is what generates the large-amplitude slow waves of the EEG measured at the scalp. The more active the neurons and the longer they stay in the up state, the more likely they are to fall into the down state, after which they revert to another up state. Think of a light bulb that’s more likely to go off depending on how brightly it burns and how long it’s on, but then turns back on again after being off.
Instead of having one stable state, the bulb is bistable, going on and off.

Similarly, the up state in cortical neurons during slow-wave sleep isn’t stable the way it is in wakefulness or REM sleep; rather, slow-wave sleep is inherently bistable, with the up state precipitating the down state, followed by a rebound to the up state, and so on. Any local activation—any turning on of the neurons at a particular region—will eventually trigger a down state that prevents those neurons from communicating with more distant ones. In this way, the effective connectivity between regions breaks down and large-scale integration across selective regions cannot happen.

But what is it about the loss of effective connectivity and large-scale integration that makes neuroscientists think that consciousness disappears in deep sleep? To put the question another way, what’s the connection between the presence of consciousness and the presence of effective connectivity and large-scale integration?.

To answer this question, neuroscientists usually rely on the idea that a content of consciousness is reportable, and that reportable contents can be attentionally selected, held in working memory, and used to guide thought and action. These cognitive processes—selective attention, working memory, sequential thought, and action guidance—require the large-scale integration of brain activity.

One of the more principled versions of this idea is Giulio Tononi’s “integrated information theory” of consciousness.30 According to this theory, any typical conscious experience has two crucial properties.

First, it’s highly “informative,” in the technical sense that it rules out a huge number of alternative experiences. Even an apparently simple conscious experience, such as lying on your back and seeing the clear blue sky throughout your whole visual field, is richly informative in the sense that it rules out a vast number of other experiences you could have had at that moment. You could have seen the sky as red or some other color, or your eyes could have been closed, or you could have experienced a flock of birds flying overhead, or you could have been focusing attentively on a nearby conversation, and so on.

Second, the experience is highly “integrated,” in the sense that it can’t be subdivided into parts that you experience on their own, such as the top and bottom portions of your visual field, or the color and the space of the sky.

Given this model of consciousness as “integrated information,” Tononi proposes that the level of consciousness of a system at a given time is a matter of how many possible states (information) are available to the system as a whole (integration). In the waking state, many possible states are available to the whole system (the system is rich in integrated information), whereas in deep sleep this repertoire drastically shrinks to just a few states (the system is poor in integrated information). Transposed onto the brain, the idea is that during slow-wave sleep there’s a massive loss of integrated information in the brain.

 Effective connectivity breaks down, leaving isolated islands that can’t talk to each other (loss of integration), while the repertoire of possible states contracts to a few largely uniform states (loss of information). Hence, according to the integrated information model, deep sleep is a state where consciousness reduces to a very low level or disappears entirely.


Although the integrated information theory offers a useful way to think about the qualitative richness and coherence of consciousness in informational terms, it has a serious limitation as a theory of phenomenal consciousness, so it would be a mistake to use it to rule out the possibility of consciousness during dreamless sleep. Despite Tononi’s bold claim that “consciousness is one and the same thing as integrated information,” integrated information doesn’t seem even sufficient for consciousness.

Computers can possess a high amount of integrated information, but they aren’t conscious. More generally, as philosopher Ned Block points out, the integrated information theory doesn’t distinguish between intelligence, in the sense of being able to solve complex problems by integrating multiple sources of information, and consciousness, in the sense of sentience or felt awareness (phenomenal consciousness). Since integrated information doesn’t seem sufficient for consciousness—let alone identical to it—its presence or absence shouldn’t be taken as the definitive mark of whether a state is conscious or not conscious.


We also need to keep in mind the distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. To be phenomenally conscious means to be in a state of felt awareness. For example, you’re phenomenally conscious when you dream. To be access conscious means to be in a state where there is cognitive access to the contents of awareness. Most people dream throughout the night but have little cognitive access to their dreams—they don’t remember them, so they can’t report them.

 When you’re access conscious you’re able to hold the contents of awareness in memory long enough to report them and use them in your subsequent thinking. Although large-scale integration in the cortex is crucial for cognitively accessible conscious experience, it may not be crucial for every kind of phenomenal consciousness, for example, the kind of cognitively unaccessed consciousness without an object that Yoga and Vedānta believe happens in deep and dreamless sleep.

Of course, Yoga and Vedānta, as well as Tibetan Buddhism, also say that deep sleep consciousness can become cognitively accessible through meditative mental training. We’ll come back to this idea shortly.
..." End quote .

P.S.: Evan Thompson who combines certain aspects of Buddhism with cognitive science through the works of neuroscientist Francisco Varela and those of others does really deliver some fascinating and groundbreaking insights on the subject of consciousness and its brain ....and much more .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 18:45:57
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author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg448021#msg448021 date=1420413907]


Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :


Sorry, Jim, the "offset dectector" is nonsense. How do you detect the atom passing through the slit without doing something to it? Heisenberg sorted this out a long time ago.

That's exactly what i thought , Alan, seriously . How can one detect anything at the quantum level at least without a detector ? lol

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Suppose the offset detector was a photographic film. You do the experiment and get a result, either an interference pattern or two lines. Now toss a coin. If it comes down heads, you process the film. That is equivalent to switching on the detector, so the interference pattern you recorded (on another piece of film) must disappear and be replaced by two lines. Does it? I think not.
 

Be more specific , Alan, please .
Are you denying the very existence of the interpretation problem in QM  by denying the existence of the mystery of the double slit experiment ? I think you are .You said previously that there was no problem at all .

Shall i call the cops regarding the fact that you do continue keeping that skeleton in your closet ?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 19:21:49
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg448010#msg448010 date=1420408180]
(Prior note : Biological evolution can never intrinsically account for consciousness , let alone for its emergence ,function, origin or nature .consciousness could never have evolved from the biological evolution , no way , simply because consciousness is irreducible to biology and cannot have emerged from it , no way .Think about that .It makes no biological sense whatsoever to assert that : the subjective personal qualitative experiential can never rise from the quantitative non-experiential "impersonal objective " biology : they are totally different from each other in kind .Even some of your best philosophers , scientists ... cannot but agree with me on that , dlorde .Think about it .)
I have thought about it, and I find it both plausible and compellingly supported by the evidence.

Think some more about it , dlorde .
Consciousness can never rise or evolve from the biological evolution or from biology , no way (That's still the main unresolved issue in all consciousness studies by the way ) , unless one would believe in that silly absurd and paradoxical untestable emergent property theory regarding the origin emergence nature and function of consciousness , unless one would believe in the untestable and false identity theory , unless one would believe in the refuted so-called integrated information theory regarding consciousness : see the fascinating excerpt above on the subject .

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Since you mention it, let's consider the evolutionary perspective. Do you consider any other animals to have some form of consciousness? Other primates? cetaceans? corvids? - creatures that display signs of self-awareness, can communicate complex ideas, understand instructions, are creative, use tools, plan ahead, have theory of mind?

Of course .The Cambridge declaration on consciousness confirmed that fact , its own way lol :

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffcmconference.org%2Fimg%2FCambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf&ei=6d2qVPWdNYqxaei_gegE&usg=AFQjCNH_ciHo4pB3uKwde-dOA7YzYRw_0w&sig2=T9STMydcsGOXC4kOKiRaqA&bvm=bv.82001339,d.d2s

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Would you agree that there are degrees of consciousness among other species in the animal kingdom, with less sophisticated creatures having lesser degrees of consciousness?

Of course .Is this some kind of a test ? lol

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What, in particular, do you find incredible about the evolution of consciousness?

See above : consciousness can never arise or emerge from biology : both the identity theory and the emergent property theory regarding consciousness are false and untestable .

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I don't know whether or not consciousness does collapse the wavefunction .I am just inclined to agree with what Alastair Rae ,for example ,said on the subject when talking about the consciousness -based interpretation of QM.
All due respect to Rae, but the available evidence says no, and the idea on which it was based has been shown to be mistaken.

What evidence ? = a big zero .


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Assume for a sec thus that consciousness is a separate non-physical and non-local process , that would solve the interpretation problem in QM
What, exactly, is a 'non-physical process'? how can it interact with the physical? how does it solve the interpretation problem?

See that specific Carter's excerpt on the subject of "the dreaded interaction problem " of substance dualism .
See also my previous comments on that , on many occasions in the previous page .

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A temporary unconscious person is no synonymous of a person without consciousness .The latter is still there ,it is just 'disconnected " somehow,  from that person's physical brain and body +from the rest of his/her environment, but not totally disconnected , i presume , i don't know  .
For example ,a younger brother of mine used to do some sleep walking when we were kids .I had even to go after him during a certain night when he sleep walked out of the house to the street ...to bring him back lol
He was asleep but nevertheless , he did things like a conscious person would like opening the doors , going out , talking , walking down the street,and even eating ,drinking ...while asleep  ...

fMRI scans are even able now to detect a minimum form of consciousness in vegetative patients , not to mention that even at the level of deep dreamless or paradoxical deep sleep , some neuroscientists claim to have detected some subtle forms of consciousness .

Some Buddhist meditation experts monks ,for example ,even claim that they can train their minds to be aware or conscious of ,monitor and control their deep sleep state .

When you wake up feeling like you slept well, they claim, that means that you have remembered your calm deep sleep , i don't know .

In short : being asleep or temporary unconscious does not mean a total absence of consciousness .
That's what I call a straw herring; a straw-man combined with a red herring...

Leave the goalposts where they are - unconscious means 'not conscious'. When I talked of someone unconscious, I didn't mean asleep, or sleep-walking, or conscious but unresponsive, I meant not concsious. My point was predicated on the absence of the conscious awareness of the result of a measurement that is the criterion for the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation. Not some kind of non-physical soul or spirit. If that's what you mean, you're talking about something else entirely.

Even non-conscious or unconscious people , even people who are in deep dreamless sleep , or under anesthesia ....do retain some subtle or minimal form of awareness or consciousness : see my fascinating excerpt on the subject here above , once again .

Consciousness or awareness do never 'disappear " totally , not even at the level of unconscious people , not even at the level of people under anesthesia , not even at the level of deep dreamless sleep  .

So, your "unconscious person " example regarding the measurement problem in QM does hold no water whatsoever ,considering the above at least .

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Not to mention the fact that our unconsciousness is also a part of our separate souls that can have effects on our bodies brains and environment even when we are asleep or unconscious .
Well you're on your own there. I'm not here to talk about souls, spirits, the supernatural, magic, religion, or gods, but to discuss scientific ideas about our empirical observations.

The very existence of the separate non-physical and non-local soul or consciousness , a bit like that one that was argued for by both Popper and Eccles in their co-authored "the self and its brain. .." book , is a scientific hypothesis that can be falsified ,as there is a lots of indirect empirical evidence that has been proving that above mentioned nature of consciousness .

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You can't explain  the mystery of the interpretation of QM by trying to explain away the other major mystery :consciousness .See above .
I agree. That's why I'm not trying to explain either QM or consciousness, I'm just telling you that conscious collapse is untenable if it's based on Von Neumann's chain, because that isn't a correct description of the real-world situation.

When you try to prove that the conscious collapse of the wave function is untenable , you already assume that you know all there is to know about consciousness ,so, your argument does hold no water whatsoever , since we don't know much about the work of consciousness : see my excerpt above .

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... there is a lots of indirect empirical evidence that has been proving that ...
You're think indirect evidence can be proof ?  [???]

We can't observe the personal subjective experiences or consciousness directly ,so we can't prove their existence scientifically and directly, let alone how they work or interact with their physical brains and bodies ... .

That's why the contemplative cognitive science that combines neuroscience , psychology with first hand subjective reports through some of the contemplative and meditative ancient wisdom like that of Buddhism , that's why that sort of science through that sort of marriage is much more able to deliver some serious insights on the subject of consciousness and its brain than science alone or spirituality alone ever can .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 05/01/2015 19:54:17
Cheryl, dlorde : <... stuff ...>
You're off the deep end, Don. It's simply nonsense to claim any of that is relevant.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 20:17:14
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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg447935#msg447935 date=1420325123]
For example, when you look at something or just at these lines , you instantly not only get aware and conscious of them , but you also understand them : no laws of physics alone , no brain activity alone can account for that  human ability of yours to instantly not only to be aware and conscious of these lines but to also understand them .
Well, the pathways through which they are processed in the brain have been identified, and the areas where specific steps in the identification and recognition of words have been identified, and it has been established that simple maths, and even simple contextual understanding of words & phrases occurs at a subconscious level (not to mention the more sophisticated executive functions, once thought to be purely conscious, like inhibiting automatic responses [see van Gaal, S., 'Frontal Cortex Mediates Unconsciously Triggered Inhibitory Control' - Journal of Neuroscience 30]). Also, as has been mentioned previously, specific disruptions to these brain areas and pathways cause specific deficits in understanding and awareness - as specific as failure to recognise or understand particular elements (specific words, or classes of words, or specific meanings, or numbers, or sentences but not individual words, etc). So it's pretty clear that most of this is below conscious awareness, and all of it is a matter of brain processing.

The identity theory is just an act of faith , no scientific theory as Libet said .
On the other hand , Libet's conscious mental field theory or emergent property theory ,for example, regarding the origin emergence function and nature of consciousness is also false ,since consciousness can never emerge  from biology , no way .

Consciousness can thus neither be reduced to nor equated with its  neuronal correlates or brain activity , let alone that consciousness can emerge form the latter : makes no biological sense whatsoever either .

Positivism must be extended as to include first hand subjective conscious reports and the corresponding spirituality if science wanna progress on the subject of consciousness and its brain,as the contemplative cognitive science has been doing by the way  .

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Even the "ordinary " act of seeing cannot be explained just by the physiology of the biological eye and brain , no way : it's the mind that sees through the eye and brain , not the latter .
The recursive homunculus of Dennett's 'Cartesian Theatre'  is the argument you need to overcome to maintain that view. Then you'll need to account for the neurophysiology of the visual cortex, where the progressive and hierarchical processing of visual information to produce a coherent 3D model of the visual field is well established, and using models derived from the neural networks there, computer models have been product that are subject to the same visual illusions as we are. Even sensory interference illusions like the McGurk Effect (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0) have been elucidated.

Those are just the corresponding neuronal reflections of consciousness and the mind , not the latter , just the image of the process , not the process itself or its cause : correlations do not necessarily imply causation either .

Carter , for example, did talk about the fact how QM has eliminated the causal closure of the physical while replacing the classical deterministic universe by the probabilistic one , and hence has been making room ,so to speak, for the non-mechanical causation of consciousness in relation to matter brain and body through mental forces that trigger physical effects as Schwartz tried to prove .
The latter's cognitive psychology or therapy that works so succesfuly is a major proof of the latter Schwartz' assertions.


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Think about it , let's talk about how you decide to hold in place certain mind states , thoughts , feelings , emotions ....while eliminating or suppressing the other competitive or rival ones in the process that do compete to grab your attention  : you do that via your own mindful volitional effort of attention through your veto power .That choice cannot be determined by the laws of physics , not entirely at least ,as the forward writer to a certain Libet's book said )I posted that earlier on ) .
See the van Gaal paper (above) for empirical evidence that's not necessarily the case.

What paper exactly ? Anyway : what you do not seem to wanna understand is that awareness or consciousness can neither be reduced to nor equated with its neuronal correlates ,and hence can also never emerge from them either .

There is no way that the quantitative "impersonal objective unexperiential " biology , neurophysiology or physics and chemistry can account for the personal subjective qualitative experiential qualia or consciousness and mind , no way .

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Taking into consideration the non-mechanical causal efficacy of the mind on matter and the fact that you interpret what you see or perceive mindfully , considering all that and more , i do not see how the mind cannot have any 'disturbing and interpretative "  effects on the "observed " measurements or data , i don't know , but to assert there can be no effect is really far fetched an assertion or a denial .
That's just a problem with assuming there's non-mechanical causal efficacy of non-physical mind on matter - it leads to all manner of problems and difficulties, particularly when the empirical evidence contradicts it.

There is no empirical evidence that contradicts it .
Better still, QM seems to lend support to the non-mechanical causation of the mind by eliminating the causal closure of the physical ....
One can in fact only guess and speculate about what all that means , since we still do not know much , if anything at all, about consciousness and the mind .
Looking for the latter in the physical brain or equating the former with the latter is a futile and absurd an attempt thus .

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...Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate--either in the waking state or in a lucid dream--we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self.

Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives."End quote.[/i]
None of that is inconsistent with the sense of self, and consciousness, being products of brain activity - in fact, the reported experiences are entirely consistent with the neuroscience of self and how it is constructed in the brain.

See above .

Thompson seems to fall  , so to speak, for the emergent property theory regarding consciousness and its brain .I can't tell for sure whether or not he indeed believes in the latter ,since i am still in the middle of exploring that fascinating book of his .

Mainstream neuroscience , for example, says that consciousness or awareness do 'disappear " totally in people under anesthesia , during deep dreamless sleep , when people are unconscious ....but the marriage between cognitive science and the contemplative and meditative sides of Buddhism says otherwise ,and hence brain activity alone or the lack thereof cannot be a sufficient condition for the presence or absence of consciousness ...or awareness ...

In other words : some subtle or higher forms of consciousness are not dependent on the brain and hence have no physical "basis " .

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Bell's theorem and its related experiments did challenge classical realism, remember ,not to mention classical determinism and classical locality too .
But not causality, so not relevant here.

Not causality ? Sure about that ? How can one explain entanglement or non-locality that challenged the classical locality or separability that used to asset that no event A can be caused by B without any physical causation  and one that should not exceed the speed of light ? Explain that "spooky action at a distance " to me and what causality is there to explain it ?
Sure as eggs is eggs. As has been said repeatedly in this very thread, nothing about entanglement or "spooky action at a distance " involves the transfer of information FTL. Causality remains intact and unthreatened.
 

Who said that entanglement involves the transfer of information ? It doesn't indeed , but nevertheless how can one explain that instantaneous "spooky action at a distance " then ? What causality is there to explain it then ?

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Entanglement that has been turning the very concept of causality on its head thus ...
No.

See right above .
Entanglement does turn the very concept of causality on its head , otherwise explain to me how it occurs or what causality is there to explain it ?

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How can you a -priori exclude that possibility or unknown black swan .?
No-one's excluding possibilities a-priori. You look at what is known (the existing consistently reliable framework of knowledge), and the empirical data (what observation and experiment tells you), and you draw up testable models and hypotheses that are consistent with the existing framework. All provisional. What you don't do is make up stuff you'd like to be true and try to argue that anything that contradicts it must be wrong.

Well, Let's start from what is known indeed and let's not exclude the unknown either  (we can exclude the unknown just by assuming that what we know is all there is to know or that we can predict it ,and by sticking to a certain world view while assuming it is "true", despite the overwhelming evidence against it  .) :

We know that materialism is certainly false , simply because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness , let alone explain it , let alone that materialism can account for any of all those consciousness related anomalies ,and hence the identity theory , the emergent property theory regarding consciousness , not to mention the so-called integrated information theory ...are false .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 20:29:24
Cheryl, dlorde : <... stuff ...>
You're off the deep end, Don. It's simply nonsense to claim any of that is relevant.

It is very relevant , just try to read it : it is even fascinating and groundbreaking :
There is no way science alone can tackle the consciousness hard problem , not even by including the ordinary first hand reports of subjective experiences at the level of what can be called the sensory perceptual gross form of consciousness  , or by studying the neuronal correlates of consciousness , science has also to include the first hand subjective reports of highly experienced meditation experts who claim that consciousness or awareness do never "disappear " totally , not even in people under anesthesia , not even during deep dreamless sleep , not even in unconscious people ...

Not to mention the fact that detecting some specific brain activity or lack thereof is no sufficient condition or no sufficient proof or evidence for claiming or concluding the presence or absence of consciousness ,and hence some subtle or higher forms of consciousness or awareness are not dependent on the brain and have thus no physical "basis " either .

Not to mention that the so-called integrated information theory regarding consciousness and its brain fails to account for the broad scope of consciousness and the mind ....to say the least thus .

In other words :

Libet ,for example, was a visionary and a revolutionary enough a neuroscientist as to go beyond positivism by including the first hand subjective expériences reports as valid evidence at the level of the ordinary sensory perceptual consciousness , why not include also those of the highly experienced meditation experts then , logically  ? and see what happens .

The latter insights might turn the "brain basis " hypothesis of consciousness on its head by falsifying it , either way thus .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/01/2015 21:04:39


Yet we should be cautious here. The fact that you have no memory of some period of time doesn’t necessarily imply that you lacked all consciousness during that time.You might have been conscious— in the sense of undergoing qualitative states or processes of sentience or awareness—but for one reason or another not been able to form the kind of memories that later you can retrieve and verbally report.This point is familiar to scientists who study the effects of anesthetics. At certain doses, some anesthetics prevent memory formation while sparing awareness.

Gee, and why would that be since memories are not stored in the brain according to your theory? If you experienced it, if you were consciously aware of those events while they were occurring,  you should be able to remember it, according to your model of consciousness. Even if your brain becomes temporarily unable to transmit non local consciousness at some point, once its functionally properly again, the memory of any event that you consciously experienced should be completely accessible, unless:
a) memories are actually formed and stored in the brain
b) you weren't in fact conscious while those events were taking place.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 05/01/2015 21:48:01
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448051#msg448051 date=1420491879]


Yet we should be cautious here. The fact that you have no memory of some period of time doesn’t necessarily imply that you lacked all consciousness during that time.You might have been conscious— in the sense of undergoing qualitative states or processes of sentience or awareness—but for one reason or another not been able to form the kind of memories that later you can retrieve and verbally report.This point is familiar to scientists who study the effects of anesthetics. At certain doses, some anesthetics prevent memory formation while sparing awareness.

Gee, and why would that be since memories are not stored in the brain according to your theory? If you experienced it, if you were consciously aware of those events while they were occurring,  you should be able to remember it, according to your model of consciousness. Even if your brain becomes temporarily unable to transmit non local consciousness at some point, once its functionally properly again, the memory of any event that you consciously experienced should be completely accessible, unless:
a) memories are actually formed and stored in the brain
b) you weren't in fact conscious while those events were taking place.

Prior note : well, we could  have been  aware or conscious of of some past events without having any memory left of them , like in the case of some traumas the memory of which we could have suppressed for example or something that we forgot or did not pay enough attention to or whatever .

Psychoanalysis , for example , can help us retrieve the traumatic suppressed memories ...and overcome them by coming to terms with them .

The author of the above mentioned book was in fact just referring to the fact that people might be aware or conscious of their deep dreamless sleep state while not being able to remember it in the morning when they Wake up and say "I slept well but i did not know nothing "  .

Two different Buddhist school of thought did debate about whether or not we failed to remember our deep dreamless sleep state indeed or was that just our egos' way of inferring that we slept good after the fact, not a matter of lost memory thus  : that was a long philosophical discussion thus that was summarized by the author of the above mentioned book while giving his own opinion on the matter in favor of the school that argued for the lost memory case .

Furthermore , some Buddhist meditation experts do claim that they can train their minds as to become fully conscious and aware of their deep dreamless state and report it back through their retained memories on the subject ordinary people can never do .

That said :

It dépends on how one (mis ) interprets that through one's own a-priori held world view that does shape one's own consciousness and behavior , ironically enough lol : you're talking from the materialist point of view thus , by basing all your arguments and conclusions on that major false materialistic premise, in the sense that consciousness and the mind +their memories and the rest are just brain activity ,for example, and hence memory is stored in the brain ....

On the other hand ,as a non-materialist myself ,  i  say that memory can neither be reduced to nor equated with its neuronal correlates, let alone that memory can be stored in the brain or emerge from it via some inexplicable materialistic magic lol, the same goes for the whole consciousness and mind +their other related processes and anomalies .

It's pretty normal thus , logical and predictable,from my own non-materialist point of view at least thus , that certain forms of memory (the non-subtle ones at least and i mean by the latter , the following : some meditation experts do claim, for example, that they can train their minds as to become  aware or conscious of they being Under deep dreamless sleep and hence remember that experience of "nothingness" without object or mental images ordinary people can never access as such ) , it's pretty normal that whenever the neuronal correlates of memory are messed with , altered , damaged , suppressed or whatever , the corresponding memory "disappers " or there is no recollection or remembrance of it.




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/01/2015 22:07:20

It dépends on how one (mis ) interprets that through one's own a-priori held world view that does shape one's own consciousness and behavior , ironically enough lol : you're talking from the materialist point of view thus , by basing all your arguments and conclusions on that major false materialistic premise, in the sense that consciousness and the mind +their memories and the rest are just brain activity ,for example, and hence memory is stored in the brain ....


And you're talking from the theist point of view, basing all of your arguments and conclusions on the untestable and scientifically unsubstantiated belief in souls. Your "indirect empirical evidence" is not actually any evidence at all, but simply complaints about what you feel is not adequately explained by science, and utter disregard for everything that is.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 05/01/2015 22:21:02
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author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg448021#msg448021 date=1420413907]


Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :


Sorry, Jim, the "offset dectector" is nonsense. How do you detect the atom passing through the slit without doing something to it? Heisenberg sorted this out a long time ago.

That's exactly what i thought , Alan, seriously . How can one detect anything at the quantum level at least without a detector ? lol
Heisenberg pointed out that the least disturbing thing you can do to observe a particle is to bounce a photon off it, which must of course alter its momentum. From this, you can deduce the indeterminacy principle and Heisenberg's equation.

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Suppose the offset detector was a photographic film. You do the experiment and get a result, either an interference pattern or two lines. Now toss a coin. If it comes down heads, you process the film. That is equivalent to switching on the detector, so the interference pattern you recorded (on another piece of film) must disappear and be replaced by two lines. Does it? I think not.
 

Be more specific , Alan, please .

Can't be much more specific. Jim al-K wittered on about "switching off the detector" but was very inexplicit about what he would use to detect whether an atom had passed though a slit. So I have introduced a detector that may or may not be "switched on" at the time, but neither we nor the atom can know because it may or may not be "switched on" several days later. What Heisenberg and I are getting at, is that any actual detector must interfere with the experiment in order to detect.

What happens in Jim's experiment if we have a very inefficient detector, that only picks up, say, half of the atoms that pass through slit A? Do we get a distorted interference pattern, or do 75% of the atoms go through slit B instead of 50%? It can't be the latter because that would mean that we had actually detected all the As! The more you analyse the experiment, the less meaningful it becomes, because he is starting with a macroscopic model and assuming it will work microscopically, whereas we know from hundreds of years of physics, that you can't do it backwards.
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Are you denying the very existence of the interpretation problem in QM  by denying the existence of the mystery of the double slit experiment ? I think you are .You said previously that there was no problem at all .

Shall i call the cops regarding the fact that you do continue keeping that skeleton in your closet ?


There is no mystery, any more than the mystery of why apples fall downward. There's a lot of stupidity and oversimplification when people try to predict quantum effects by scaling down macroscopic observations, for exactly the same reason as you shouldn't treat an individual patient on the basis of population statistics. Statistics generalises from the particular, classical mechanics averages a huge number of quantum events. Neither process is reversible.

The skeleton in my closet is over 50 years of using quantum mechanics to explain macroscopic phenomena, and the profound knowledge that you can't predict quantum phenomena by looking at chunks of rock, or even grains of sand. You will find the same skeleton key in the toolkit of every physicist and chemist who was educated in the late 20th century - we started some 2000 years after Aristotle and 300 years after Newton, so we don't finish in the place where the pioneers of quantum mechanics began.

The behaviour of particles is a fact, not a mystery. Particles do what they do, consistently, and we have evolved appropriate mathematical models to predict what they do in different circumstances. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 05/01/2015 22:34:53


Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :



I must have missed a post or few. What is your point in posting all this? Did some one argue that there is no brain activity or mental activity while asleep?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 06/01/2015 00:10:16
Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :
I must have missed a post or few. What is your point in posting all this? Did some one argue that there is no brain activity or mental activity while asleep?
It's a red herring - an absurd equivocation of consciousness to avoid the joke argument I made against the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation (which mistakenly maintains that wavefunction collapse occurs when someone becomes consciously aware of the result of a measurement). I suggested that an unconscious individual would not collapse the wavefunction and the entanglement would decohere by the time he came round, leaving no clear outcome under this interpretation ;)

Rather than point out the obvious flaws in the argument, he's apparently decided that you can be conscious even when completely unconscious (e.g. in a coma), and so this means you're aware enough to perceive the measurement and collapse the wavefunction...

You can draw your own conclusions.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/01/2015 14:22:40
Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :
I must have missed a post or few. What is your point in posting all this? Did some one argue that there is no brain activity or mental activity while asleep?
It's a red herring - an absurd equivocation of consciousness to avoid the joke argument I made against the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation (which mistakenly maintains that wavefunction collapse occurs when someone becomes consciously aware of the result of a measurement). I suggested that an unconscious individual would not collapse the wavefunction and the entanglement would decohere by the time he came round, leaving no clear outcome under this interpretation ;)

Rather than point out the obvious flaws in the argument, he's apparently decided that you can be conscious even when completely unconscious (e.g. in a coma), and so this means you're aware enough to perceive the measurement and collapse the wavefunction...

You can draw your own conclusions.

[::)]
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/01/2015 14:27:35


Prior note : well, we could  have been  aware or conscious of of some past events without having any memory left of them , like in the case of some traumas the memory of which we could have suppressed for example or something that we forgot or did not pay enough attention to or whatever .

Psychoanalysis , for example , can help us retrieve the traumatic suppressed memories ...and overcome them by coming to terms with them .


Fascinating. So where does non local consciousness hide these immaterial memories from its immaterial self?




Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 17:27:52
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448057#msg448057 date=1420497293]


Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :



I must have missed a post or few. What is your point in posting all this?


See above .

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Did some one argue that there is no brain activity or mental activity while asleep?

No , no one did .

Standard or mainstream neuroscience says that consciousness vanishes whenever we go to sleep and comes back whenever we wake up , the contemplative cognitive science says otherwise : see above .

Furthermore , it seems that one can be able to remember the deep dreamless sleep state through the corresponding meditative training .

The deep dreamless sleep state that seems to be a subtle form of consciousness , believe it or not .

Memory seems to be activated even at that level ,as some neuroscientists detected,so, there is nothing that can prevent one from remembering the deep dreamless sleep if trained enough to do that  .

The deep dreamless sleep state seems also to be what can be called the "causal consciousness " in the sense that it is the "seed " for the dreaming sleeping and waking states .

Some even claim that the subtle or higher forms of consciousness are independent of the brain and hence have no "physical or brain basis "...
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 17:35:20


Prior note : well, we could  have been  aware or conscious of of some past events without having any memory left of them , like in the case of some traumas the memory of which we could have suppressed for example or something that we forgot or did not pay enough attention to or whatever .

Psychoanalysis , for example , can help us retrieve the traumatic suppressed memories ...and overcome them by coming to terms with them .


Fascinating. So where does non local consciousness hide these immaterial memories from its immaterial self?

lol Don't be silly , Cheryl, be serious :

Can you remember your deep dreamless sleep state of last night ? No , you can't , neither can i .

The deep dreamless sleep state is some sort of subtle consciousness , some say , only highly trained people through meditation can remember it : some neuroscientists did even discover that memory gets activated at that level too , so, there is nothing that can prevents trained people from remembering their deep dreamless sleep state .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 17:42:55
Excerpt from "    WAKING, DREAMING, BEING: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy       ", Chapter 8 : " Sleeping : Are we conscious in deep sleep ? " By Evan Thompson :
I must have missed a post or few. What is your point in posting all this? Did some one argue that there is no brain activity or mental activity while asleep?
It's a red herring - an absurd equivocation of consciousness to avoid the joke argument I made against the conscious collapse version of the Copenhagen interpretation (which mistakenly maintains that wavefunction collapse occurs when someone becomes consciously aware of the result of a measurement). I suggested that an unconscious individual would not collapse the wavefunction and the entanglement would decohere by the time he came round, leaving no clear outcome under this interpretation ;)

Rather than point out the obvious flaws in the argument, he's apparently decided that you can be conscious even when completely unconscious (e.g. in a coma), and so this means you're aware enough to perceive the measurement and collapse the wavefunction...

You can draw your own conclusions.

lol


See above .

Well , joke or not , your argument does hold no water whatsoever ,since consciousness or awareness never disappear totally during sleep , under anesthesia , when unconscious, when in coma ,when in vegetative states  ...

Even the deep dreamless sleep state might be a mode of consciousness , a subtle one , a "causal one " = the 'seed " of the sleeping dreaming waking states ...

That turns your joke into an ironic reversed joke lol : making a joke of your joke lol
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 17:57:51
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author=alancalverd link=topic=52526.msg448021#msg448021 date=1420413907]


Watch Joy Jim at work : he explains that to you in a funny way : don't "shut up and calculate " as if there is no interpretation problem in QM , there is , big time  : Enjoy :


Sorry, Jim, the "offset dectector" is nonsense. How do you detect the atom passing through the slit without doing something to it? Heisenberg sorted this out a long time ago.

That's exactly what i thought , Alan, seriously . How can one detect anything at the quantum level at least without a detector ? lol
Heisenberg pointed out that the least disturbing thing you can do to observe a particle is to bounce a photon off it, which must of course alter its momentum. From this, you can deduce the indeterminacy principle and Heisenberg's equation.

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Quote
Suppose the offset detector was a photographic film. You do the experiment and get a result, either an interference pattern or two lines. Now toss a coin. If it comes down heads, you process the film. That is equivalent to switching on the detector, so the interference pattern you recorded (on another piece of film) must disappear and be replaced by two lines. Does it? I think not.
 

Be more specific , Alan, please .

Can't be much more specific. Jim al-K wittered on about "switching off the detector" but was very inexplicit about what he would use to detect whether an atom had passed though a slit. So I have introduced a detector that may or may not be "switched on" at the time, but neither we nor the atom can know because it may or may not be "switched on" several days later. What Heisenberg and I are getting at, is that any actual detector must interfere with the experiment in order to detect.

What happens in Jim's experiment if we have a very inefficient detector, that only picks up, say, half of the atoms that pass through slit A? Do we get a distorted interference pattern, or do 75% of the atoms go through slit B instead of 50%? It can't be the latter because that would mean that we had actually detected all the As! The more you analyse the experiment, the less meaningful it becomes, because he is starting with a macroscopic model and assuming it will work microscopically, whereas we know from hundreds of years of physics, that you can't do it backwards.
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Are you denying the very existence of the interpretation problem in QM  by denying the existence of the mystery of the double slit experiment ? I think you are .You said previously that there was no problem at all .

Shall i call the cops regarding the fact that you do continue keeping that skeleton in your closet ?


There is no mystery, any more than the mystery of why apples fall downward. There's a lot of stupidity and oversimplification when people try to predict quantum effects by scaling down macroscopic observations, for exactly the same reason as you shouldn't treat an individual patient on the basis of population statistics. Statistics generalises from the particular, classical mechanics averages a huge number of quantum events. Neither process is reversible.

The skeleton in my closet is over 50 years of using quantum mechanics to explain macroscopic phenomena, and the profound knowledge that you can't predict quantum phenomena by looking at chunks of rock, or even grains of sand. You will find the same skeleton key in the toolkit of every physicist and chemist who was educated in the late 20th century - we started some 2000 years after Aristotle and 300 years after Newton, so we don't finish in the place where the pioneers of quantum mechanics began.

The behaviour of particles is a fact, not a mystery. Particles do what they do, consistently, and we have evolved appropriate mathematical models to predict what they do in different circumstances.

Ask Jim about just that then .He was not the only one who suggested that .The mystery of the double slit experiment was recognized as such from the very inception of QM,from the very start thus ,  via the original double slit experiment which triggered the interpretation observation or measurement problem in QM .

The latter remains unsolved up to this date and counting .

A Nobel prize is waiting for the one (s) who would solve it ,as Jim said and rightly so .

Even Feynman used to say that " The double slit experiment is the only mystery in QM ..." ...

In short :

You're 1 of the few physicists who have been living in denial by stubbornly denying the interpretation problem in QM = by keeping that skeleton in the closet .

Calling the cops regarding the latter won't solve the problem either lol

Have fun then with your skeleton in the closet  , instead of getting it and yourself in the process out of the closet  .

There is thus no problem at all : all interpretations of QM have been just imaginary attempts to solve the imaginary interpretation problem in QM thus , just delusions based on illusions lol .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 18:50:00
Excerpt from the same above mentioned book and chapter :

Quote : " REMEMBERING IN SLEEP:

Although Yoga and Vedānta share the view that deep sleep is a state of consciousness, they differ in their conceptions of what happens to the mind in deep and dreamless sleep.According to Yoga, deep sleep is one of the changing states of the inner mental sense, so cognitive activity, particularly the formation of memories, continues. According to Vedānta, however, the inner mental sense shuts down entirely in deep sleep and reactivates upon awakening. How does this difference between Yoga and Vedānta look from the perspective of Western sleep science?.

If we set aside the question of consciousness in deep sleep and restrict the question to whether memory processes are active, the answer from science is unequivocal: memory processes are highly active in slow-wave sleep. Evidence from psychology and neuroscience clearly shows that slow-wave sleep promotes the formation of stable memories of events that were consciously experienced earlier when awake.

One recent experiment took advantage of the strong effect of smell on memory—the way that particular smells can trigger vivid memories, the most famous example being Proust’s description of the way the smell and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brought back to life his narrator’s long-forgotten childhood world in the French village of Combray. In the experiment, the subjects learned locations in a spatial memory task while being exposed to the scent of roses. The scent was presented again while
the subjects were in slow-wave sleep that night. Compared to the control condition where the scent wasn’t presented again during sleep, the presentation during slow-wave sleep resulted in significantly improved recall of the locations in the task on the following day.

In addition, the presentation of the scent during sleep resulted in significant activation in the hippocampus, a subcortical structure known to be crucial for the formation and recall of memories for experienced events.
This study built on other ones showing that the same neural networks in the hippocampus that are activated in the acquisition of new memories during waking life are reactivated in slow-wave sleep.

 For example, studies in rats have shown that when they learn their way in a maze, neurons in the hippocampus that fire in response to specific places—so-called hippocampal place cells—fire in the same order during subsequent slow-wave sleep, a phenomenon known as “hippocampal replay.” It’s as if the rats rerun the maze offline. More precisely, the neural networks the rats need to run the maze are repeating their waking activity patterns and thereby solidifying those patterns for future use.

Hippocampal replay is also found in humans: areas of the hippocampus that are activated when people learn a route through a virtual town in a computer game are reactivated during slow-wave sleep; in addition, the stronger the hippocampal reactivation during sleep, the better people are at remembering the route the next day.

These and other studies tell us that slow-wave sleep strengthens newly acquired memories and integrates them with older ones. Psychologists call this process “memory consolidation.”
Hippocampal replay is key in one of the main models of how memory consolidation happens in slow-wave sleep.

According to the model, the hippocampus and the neocortex (the outer layer and uniquely mammalian part of the cortex) engage in a dialogue that serves to transform new memories, which the hippocampus and neocortex hold together, into long-term memories, which the neocortex holds alone (or, according to another model, that the hippocampus and neocortex hold together in a strengthened way).
Here are the basics of how the dialogue works. There’s a flow of replay activity from the hippocampus to the neocortex, but the neocortex orchestrates the flow.

To be more specific, hippocampal replay triggers a similar replay in the neocortex, so that the same neocortical networks that were active in the acquiring of new memories are reactivated in slow-wave sleep. In this way, the hippocampus tunes the neocortex, so that new memories there are preferentially strengthened and integrated into the preexisting network of long-term memory. At the same time, the neocortex organizes the flow of replay activity into successive “frames.” This framing happens through the slow oscillation between up and down states in cortical neurons. Recall that in the up state, the neurons fire at their waking rates, whereas in the down state, they’re completely silent. Neocortical up states trigger hippocampal up states and thereby determine the successive moments at which the hippocampal replay occurs, which in turn drives the neocortical replay.

This “framing” of memory consolidation into successive momentary pulses is reminiscent of the successive “frames” in the flow of conscious waking perception discussed in chapter 2. In both cases— active perceiving and the subsequent laying down of memories—what at first sight might have looked like one continuous process turns out on closer inspection to have a discrete and periodic structure.

The so-called “hippocampal-neocortical dialogue” is an example of what neuroscientists call “active system consolidation,” the strengthening of memories by replaying them during sleep. At the neuronal level, active consolidation consists in selectively reactivating groups of neurons and thereby strengthening the synaptic connections between them.
According to Yoga, deep sleep is a state where memories are put together from subtle and subliminal mental impressions. Active memory consolidation during slow-wave sleep is a neuroscience counterpart to the Yoga view.

SEED SLEEP :

We can also find in neuroscience a counterpart to the Vedānta view that deep sleep contains the “seed” of dreaming and waking consciousness. The Advaita Vedānta philosophers Gauḍapāda and Śaṅkara describe deep sleep as “seed sleep.”

By this they mean that deep sleep is the causal source of waking and dreaming consciousness. Thus another word they use to describe it is “causal.” Deep sleep is the causal state immediately prior to dreaming or waking, and it strongly shapes how dreams and waking experiences arise. In the Vedānta framework, whereas consciousness identifies with the physical body as the self in the waking state and with the mental dream body as the self in the dream state, it identifies with a subtle “causal body” in deep and dreamless sleep.

At one level, this view of deep sleep differs considerably from the neuroscience view. For neuroscience, waking sense experience is the basis for all consciousness, which disappears in deep sleep. For Vedānta, waking and dreaming consciousness arise out of deep sleep, and the progression from deep sleep to dreaming to waking is a progression from subtler to grosser levels of consciousness and embodiment. To use an analogy from physics, for Vedānta deep sleep is a kind of “ground state” of consciousness, a lowest-energy state from which the “excited states” of dreaming and waking arise.

At another level, however, the idea that deep sleep is the ground for future experience has a strong analogue in neuroscience. It’s now well established that sleep actively promotes the ability to learn and acquire new memories in the waking state.38 In addition, slow-wave sleep may strongly affect subsequent REM sleep, the sleep stage when dreaming is most likely to occur.

 According to this idea, slow-wave sleep not only consolidates memories by replaying them, it primes memory networks for further consolidation during subsequent REM sleep, which always follows slow-wave sleep. In this way, memory replay in slow-wave sleep may shape the kinds of dreams we have as the proportion of REM to NREM sleep increases throughout the night.

Neuroscientist György Buzsáki, one of the leading researchers in the study of self-organizing brain activity, calls sleep the brain’s “default state” (not to be confused with the “default mode of brain function” discussed in chapter 10). By this he means that sleep is a self-organized state—one that emerges spontaneously without being managed or directed from outside—to which the brain always naturally returns. On the one hand, waking experience influences the way we sleep and rest; on the other hand, “After each day’s experience … the brain falls back to the default pattern to rerun and intertwine the immediate and past experiences of the brain’s owner.”

Buzsáki proposes that the self-organized processes of sleep strongly affect how the waking brain responds to the outside world. For example, every mental illness is associated with some kind of change in sleep. The sleep disorder is usually taken to result from the daily environmental interactions of the waking brain, but as Buzsáki points out, the causation probably goes the other way too: the symptoms displayed by the waking brain may result from disruptions to the brain’s default state of sleep.

In these newly emerging ideas from neuroscience we find a parallel to the older Yoga and Vedānta view that deep sleep provides the causal source for waking life and the ground in which waking life plants the seeds.

CONTEMPLATIVE SLEEP:

In juxtaposing the Indian and neuroscience conceptions of deep sleep, I’ve proceeded so far as if the Indian notion of dreamless sleep corresponds to NREM slow-wave sleep. But this correspondence is actually too simplistic. What the Indian conception of deep sleep suggests is that we need a finer taxonomy of sleep states—a taxonomy that’s not just physiological but also phenomenological, and that accommodates the ways that sleep may be culturally variable, as well as flexible and trainable through contemplative practices.

Recall that Vyāsa, in his commentary on the Yoga Sūtras, distinguishes three types of sleep— peaceful sleep, disturbed sleep, and heavy sleep. According to the cosmology that informs Yoga, these three types result from whichever of three “strands” or tendencies of material nature—called the three
guṇas—predominates in the mind-body complex. Overall, the quality of dullness or the tendency to
inactivity (tamas) dominates the mind in ordinary sleep. Sleep is heavy or stupefying when this quality isn’t modified by either of the two other qualities or tendencies. Sleep is disturbed and restless when the quality of excitation or tendency to activity (rajas) is present. And sleep is peaceful and refreshing when the quality of lightness or tendency to clarity (sattva) is present. When the Vedānta philosophers describe deep and dreamless sleep as blissful, they have deep sleep with this quality of clarity in mind.

When people are roused from NREM sleep, however, they sometimes report they’ve been thinking while they were asleep, and often they describe going around in a repetitive loop of rumination.
Although this kind of thinking probably occurs mainly in stage 2 NREM sleep, it’s also reported during awakenings from slow-wave sleep.

Philosopher Owen Flanagan, in his book Dreaming Souls: Sleep, Dreams, and the Evolution of the Conscious Mind, appeals to this finding in order to argue that there’s no such thing as dreamless sleep and hence no sleep completely lacking in consciousness.43 Contrary to the standard neuroscience view, Flanagan thinks we’re always conscious while asleep because we’re always dreaming. Dreaming, he proposes, is any conscious mental activity occurring during sleep, not just mental activity involving sensory imagery. If ruminative thinking occurring in NREM sleep counts as dreaming, and if this kind of mental activity can happen during slow-wave sleep, then all sleep stages involve dreaming and at least some degree of consciousness.

From the Indian yogic perspective, however, we need to distinguish clearly whether there’s such a thing as dreamless sleep, and whether we’re always conscious while we sleep. Yoga and Vedānta agree that consciousness is always present when we’re asleep, but this isn’t because we’re always dreaming, even if we define “dreaming” widely to mean any kind of thinking during sleep. On the contrary, what Yoga and Vedānta mean by “deep sleep” is the sleep state where there are no sensory or mental objects of awareness, that is, no images and no thoughts. Nevertheless, there is awareness, so this is a conscious state; it’s a mode of consciousness without an object. In the Yoga framework, reports of ruminative thinking upon awakening indicate a coarser or shallower sleep state—closer to the surface of thinking consciousness—with a strong quality of excitation or tendency toward movement of the mind (rajasic sleep).
Consider now the reasons that sleep and dream scientist J. Allan Hobson gives for doubting the reliability of waking reports of perseverative thinking during slow-wave sleep:

Reports of antecedent mental activity elicited following awakenings from deep sleep are rendered unreliable by the brain fog through which they must pass. … Even if the deeply sleeping brain were capable of the low-level ruminations sometimes implied by experimental reports, it is unlikely that they would survive the inertia of awakening. It may even be that the tumult of the awakening process triggers the chaotic and fragmentary mentation that is reported. And even when deep sleepers are sufficiently aroused to be interviewed, they may still generate huge slow waves in their EEGs, indicating that they are in a semistuporous state quite different from either sleeping or waking.
Indeed, they may even hallucinate, become anxious, and confabulate as if they suffered from delirium. This is precisely what happens in the night terrors of children.
Clearly, this too is a far cry from the Indian yogic conception of deep sleep.

 Neither reports of ruminative thinking nor waking hallucinatory confabulations correspond to the Yoga and Vedānta descriptions of deep sleep as a peaceful or blissful state free of mental activity and from which one awakens feeling alert and refreshed (sattvic sleep). From the Yoga perspective, what Hobson describes are sleep states strongly marked by a quality of dullness combined with mental excitation upon awakening.
My point is not at all that sleep science should refine its taxonomy using the ancient Indian notion of the three guṇas.

It’s rather that ultimately we can’t map the Indian notion of deep and dreamless sleep using already established scientific categories, especially the physiologically defined sleep stages, which, even from a scientific perspective, are now recognized as too crude to capture the moment-to moment dynamics of electrical brain activity during sleep, let alone the experiences that may be correlated with them.

Not only is the background metaphysics of the Indian view different from that of modern science, the Indian view is phenomenological, not physiological, and it’s embedded in a normative framework that understands sleep in contemplative terms. To bridge from sleep science and the neuroscience of consciousness to the Indian conception of deep and dreamless sleep, we need to view sleep as a mode of consciousness that’s trainable through meditation.

From the Yoga perspective, entering a state of blissful deep sleep on a regular basis requires leading a calm and peaceful life guided by the fundamental value of nonviolence (ahiṃsā), practicing daily meditation, and treating going to sleep and waking up as themselves occasions for meditation—for watching the mind as it enters into and emerges from sleep in order to inhibit the otherwise automatic identification with the changing states of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep as the true form of the “seer” or witnessing awareness.

Thus the modern practice of yoga nidrā or “yogic sleep,” which seems to have emerged in the twentieth-century neo-Vedanta movement but traces its origin to the much older movements known as Tantra, uses breathing methods, concentration, visualization, attention to the body, and emptying the mind of images and thoughts in order to lead the waking mind into a unique state of lucid awareness at the borderland of waking and deep sleep.

One long-term effect of this practice is said to be a deep sleep state that’s peaceful and refreshing. Another effect is said to be a greater ability to witness lucidly the sleeping process and to remember qualities of sleep upon awakening.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 18:51:17
CONTEMPLATIVE SLEEP SCIENCE:

 
Sleep yoga drives home the point that we can’t map the Indian and Tibetan yogic conceptions of deep and dreamless sleep using already established categories from sleep science.

 These Indian and Tibetan conceptions, besides being closely tied to first-person observations of what happens to consciousness during sleep, are embedded in contemplative frameworks that aim to bring about and promote certain kinds of sleep states. Instead of trying to fit these states into a physiological scheme derived from studying the way twentieth-century Americans and Europeans sleep in the sleep lab, we need to enlarge sleep science to include contemplative ways of understanding and training the mind in sleep. This project will require that sleep scientists, sleep yogis, and contemplative scholars of the Indian and Tibetan traditions work together to map the sleeping mind. In short, we need a new kind of sleep science—a contemplative sleep science.

Consider, for example, the Tibetan Buddhist practice of seeing through the dream state, described above. In this practice, you enter the state of lucid deep sleep from the lucid dream state. Lucid dreaming, however, seems to occur mainly during “phasic” REM sleep, where there are brief and rapid increases to the already high level of cortical activity in REM sleep; in addition, lucid dreaming has been shown to be correlated with large-scale coherent gamma oscillations in the EEG. What happens to these neural patterns when one enters lucid deep sleep from the lucid dream state?

Does lucid sleep in general require this sort of large-scale gamma activity, which we also know is strongly correlated with reportable conscious awareness? Or, to put the question more abstractly, does having experiential access to the deep sleep state require the kind of informational integration that occurs when neural systems can communicate quickly over long distances in the cortex? If so, then it’s hard to see how lucid dreamless sleep could be a purely slow-wave NREM state in the canonical sleep-science sense. However, given our limited knowledge of both the neurophysiology of sleep and the neural correlates of consciousness, we can hardly assume that we know what the neural signatures of lucid awareness in deep sleep would look like. To date, there are (to my knowledge) no published scientific studies on Tibetan Buddhist dream and sleep yoga, so these kinds of questions about the relationship between lucid dreaming and lucid deep sleep point toward completely unknown territory.

Here’s a speculative thought. Perhaps consciousness in deep sleep somehow correlates with features of the up state in slow-wave sleep when neurons fire at their waking rates for about a second. At both the single-neuron level and the larger level of neuronal populations, up state dynamics strongly resemble the dynamics of the awake and activated brain. For this reason, neuroscientists describe up states in slow-wave sleep as “fragments of wakefulness” or as restoring brief moments of “micro-wakelike activity.”

 According to Tibetan Buddhism, the substrate consciousness that’s present in deep sleep is momentary in nature, that is, it exists as a continuum of discrete moments. This momentary character seems not unlike the momentary character of up states. In addition, gamma oscillations at both low (40– 80 Hz) and high (80–120 Hz) frequencies occur during up states at roughly the same time over multiple cortical areas. Although the function of gamma oscillations in slow-wave sleep is unknown, they appear to support memory consolidation. Another speculative possibility is that these gamma oscillations also correlate with the presence of a subtle conscious awareness in deep sleep, and can be affected by practicing sleep yoga.

More generally, since different parts of the brain can be in up states and down states at the same time —or to put it another way, since different neuronal networks can be “awake” and “asleep” at the same time—the neural correlates of lucid deep sleep might involve one part of the brain being “awake” while other parts are “asleep.”

Two neuroscience studies of meditation and sleep are suggestive in this regard. The first is a recent study from Giulio Tononi’s and Richard Davidson’s labs.55 They examined slow-wave sleep in highly experienced Theravada Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist meditation practitioners, and found that the long-term meditators, compared to nonmeditators, had increased higher EEG gamma activity in a parietal-occipital region of the scalp during NREM sleep. The higher activity was positively correlated with the length of meditation training. This finding is notable because gamma-frequency electrical brain activity is a well-known neural marker of conscious cognitive processes and has also been shown to distinguish lucid dreaming from nonlucid dreaming in REM sleep.56 During NREM sleep, however, gamma activity tends to decrease, so the higher gamma activity in the meditators could reflect a capacity to maintain some level of awareness during sleep.
The second is an older study of sleep in long-term practitioners of Transcendental Meditation (TM) who reported the subjective experience of “witnessing” during sleep.57 In TM this experience is conceptualized as a “higher state of consciousness” where you feel a quiet and peaceful awareness during sleep and wake up feeling refreshed. In this study, three groups were compared—long-term practitioners, short-term practitioners, and individuals with no TM experience. The main finding was that the long-term practitioners showed a unique EEG pattern during slow-wave sleep, with theta and alpha activity present during stages 3 and 4, as well as decreased skeletal muscle activity as measured by the electromyograph (EMG). Although we can’t draw clear conclusions about what these distinctive physiological patterns mean, including whether they’re due to TM practice or some other cause, the authors of the study interpret them as supporting the presence of a different kind of slow-wave sleep state in individuals who report witnessing of sleep.

A few other studies have examined whether meditation practices are associated with altered sleep patterns in long-term practitioners compared to nonpractitioners.58 One study found that experienced practitioners of TM and other forms of yoga meditation showed significantly higher levels of the hormone melatonin, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is produced by the pineal gland, immediately following a nighttime period of meditation, compared to the same time after not meditating. Although the physiological pathway by which this increase happens is unknown, the finding suggests that these types of meditation practices can affect basic physiological processes underlying the sleep-wake cycle.

Two other studies found that both experienced Theravada Vipassanā meditation practitioners and experienced practitioners of a yogic breathing method called Sudarshan Kriya Yoga showed a significantly larger amount of slow-wave sleep in their sleep cycles compared to the amount in control subjects of the same age across all age groups from thirty to sixty years old.60 Although the amount of time spent in slow-wave sleep decreases considerably with age, the middle-aged group of experienced meditators showed the same amount of slow-wave sleep as the younger age group. In addition, the Vipassanā practitioners showed significantly more REM sleep as well as a higher number of sleep cycles through all five stages (NREM stages 1–4 and REM sleep) than did the nonpractitioners across all age groups.

In short, yoga and Vipassanā meditation practices seem to be associated with a host of changes to sleep physiology, so it’s not unreasonable to speculate that these meditation practices may also be associated with changes to other sleep-related phenomena, such as learning and memory consolidation, as well as health.

Although these last three studies focused on the potential effects of meditation on sleep physiology, they didn’t use contemplative mental training as a way to investigate consciousness and its physiological correlates in sleep. This further step is needed to create a contemplative sleep science and to connect Western science to the Indian and Tibetan contemplative frameworks for understanding sleep.

One benefit of a contemplative sleep science is that it could offer a new approach to the guiding question of this chapter—whether deep and dreamless sleep qualifies as a mode of consciousness.

Consider the following testable working hypothesis: in highly experienced practitioners of sleep and dream yoga, we should observe a closer relation between subjective reports of phenomenal qualities of sleep and various objective physiological measures (not just of the brain but also of the rest of the body).

 If highly experienced sleep yogis were able to provide reports upon awakening about their experience of the state they call deep and dreamless sleep, and if sleep scientists were able to relate these reports to fine-grained features of sleep physiology and to familiar aspects of the neural correlates of consciousness, then we would have new evidence from experimental science that deep and dreamless sleep—at least in certain individuals—is a mode of phenomenal consciousness, some of whose qualities can be made accessible to verbal report." End quote
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 06/01/2015 19:04:56
Cheryl, dlorde , alancalverd :

See my replies to your posts here above my new posted excerpts .

Cheryl, dlorde :

The purpose behind posting the above displayed excerpts is to show you how science can tackle the consciousness hard problem and its physical brain by not only including the ordinary first hand reports of subjective experiences at the level of the ordinary sensory perceptual consciousness as valid evidence ,as Libet did in his work , for example , but  also  by  including the first hand reports of the subjective experiences of highly experienced meditation practitioners as valid evidence as well in what can be called the contemplative cognitive science through the works of Francisco Varela , through that of Richard Davidson and others .

Contemplative cognitive science that 's a kind of marriage between cognitive science and some aspects of the contemplative and meditative Buddhism ...

P.S.: I do not necessarily have to agree with all the content of the above displayed excerpts though . They do not necessarily reflect all my own views on the subject , although i do agree with many allegations and views of the author of the book , Evan Thompson .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 06/01/2015 23:13:49


There is thus no problem at all : all interpretations of QM have been just imaginary attempts to solve the imaginary interpretation problem in QM thus , just delusions based on illusions lol .

Thyat's it. Just a complicated way of saying what I said: you can't derive quantum mechanics from classical mechanics, but you can derive classical mechanics from quantum mechanics. The mystery, problem, call it what you will, is a result of starting from the wrong end of the microscope.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 06/01/2015 23:19:04

Standard or mainstream neuroscience says that consciousness vanishes whenever we go to sleep and comes back whenever we wake up , the contemplative cognitive science says otherwise : see above .


Well, it depends on how you are defining consciousness or what level of consciousness you are referring to, lol. Some animals can even sleep half of their brain at a time.

Generally people are not very conscious of their surroundings while asleep, although a door slamming, a baby crying, or an alarm, wakes them up, so they can't be 100% cut off from sensory input, although this is likely subconscious monitoring, (which also goes on while awake.)  But dreams have qualia, so if qualia production or experience is considered a conscious element, then there is consciousness, at least intermittently, while asleep, but it is, for most, a very different experience than it is while awake. 

You seem to be setting up another strawman argument that neuroscience doesn't make. Nevertheless, sleep is an interesting topic. It's curious that the qualia of dreams is midway in vividness between the sensory qualia and the qualia of awake imagination. There would also seem to be less communication with parts of the brain that evaluate whether experiences or ideas violate our expectations or factual knowledge, and often the images or events in dreams are only bizarre after we wake up and think about them.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/01/2015 11:08:03
Sleep is a fascinating topic, but I would be wary of cherry-picking and creatively interpreting the introspective analyses of Eastern meditative traditions for their similarity to knowledge obtained from sleep research and neuroscience. When intelligent people think and introspect about such phenomena they may come up with close or analogous descriptions to what controlled experiment tells us, or they may not - as is conceded in the posted excerpts. These traditions may have interesting suggestions for the basis of testable hypotheses, but although some apparent correlations with contemporary science may be interesting, they are no guide to the reliability or utility of the traditions or their techniques in understanding what is occurring during sleep.

For example, the same kind of exercise can be done comparing a variety of creation myths with cosmology (e.g. big bang theory, planetary formation, etc.) and, with some flexible interpretation, some seemingly strong correlations can be made with modern theory.

However, this kind of flexible interpretation with informed hindsight is an ideal context for the influence of confirmation bias. Caution is advised - look out for interpretive 'tells' such as, 'what they are saying is...', 'what they mean is...', 'this is analogous to...', 'this correlates with...', and so-on. These should be viewed with a critical eye.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 07/01/2015 11:24:17

Standard or mainstream neuroscience says that consciousness vanishes whenever we go to sleep and comes back whenever we wake up , the contemplative cognitive science says otherwise : see above .

Well, it depends on how you are defining consciousness or what level of consciousness you are referring to, lol.
Exactly. It's yet another straw man - 'standard or mainstream' neuroscience says no such thing. General discussions of unqualified consciousness typically refer to alert and responsive wakefulness (as mediated by the reticular activating system), but many neuroscience studies and papers involve qualified forms or levels of consciousness, including consciousness during sleep (for example, Consciousness During Waking and Dreaming (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9135087), Lucid dreaming: a state of consciousness with features of both waking and non-lucid dreaming (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19750924), Waking and dreaming consciousness (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22609044), etc).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2015 14:41:47

Philosopher John Searle agrees: “Consciousness consists of inner, qualitative, subjective states and processes of sentience or awareness. Consciousness, so defined, begins when we wake in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continues until we fall asleep again, die, go into a coma, or otherwise become ‘unconscious.’”
From the Indian and Tibetan contemplative perspectives, however, these descriptions are inaccurate.

Although object-directed consciousness becomes progressively less and less as we move from waking or dreaming into deep and dreamless sleep, awareness or sentience continues.


For Yoga and Vedānta, whereas dreaming is a form of object-directed consciousness—the objects in dreams being mental images—dreamless sleep is a mode of consciousness without an object.


Similarly, according to Tibetan Buddhism, deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content, and it’s the basis upon which dreaming and waking consciousness arise.



I agree with dlorde's comment about cherry picking comparisons between ancient areas of knowledge and science.

But as far as simply describing the experience of sleep for most people, I don't see the huge discrepancy that Don is claiming exists. They both say that people become less conscious of their surroundings, and in dreamless sleep there is a kind of minimal consciousness of any sensory information, internal imaginings, or other "thing" being attended to.

It just  raises more doubts about the idea of  immaterial consciousness itself, that without external and internal sensation and things to be conscious of, or think about, consciousness is tenuous, if it doesn't entirely vanish.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2015 17:11:48
Excerpt from the same above mentioned book and chapter :

Quote : " REMEMBERING IN SLEEP:

Although Yoga and Vedānta share the view that deep sleep is a state of consciousness, they differ in their conceptions of what happens to the mind in deep and dreamless sleep.According to Yoga, deep sleep is one of the changing states of the inner mental sense, so cognitive activity, particularly the formation of memories, continues. According to Vedānta, however, the inner mental sense shuts down entirely in deep sleep and reactivates upon awakening. How does this difference between Yoga and Vedānta look from the perspective of Western sleep science?.

If we set aside the question of consciousness in deep sleep and restrict the question to whether memory processes are active, the answer from science is unequivocal: memory processes are highly active in slow-wave sleep. Evidence from psychology and neuroscience clearly shows that slow-wave sleep promotes the formation of stable memories of events that were consciously experienced earlier when awake.

One recent experiment took advantage of the strong effect of smell on memory—the way that particular smells can trigger vivid memories, the most famous example being Proust’s description of the way the smell and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brought back to life his narrator’s long-forgotten childhood world in the French village of Combray. In the experiment, the subjects learned locations in a spatial memory task while being exposed to the scent of roses. The scent was presented again while
the subjects were in slow-wave sleep that night. Compared to the control condition where the scent wasn’t presented again during sleep, the presentation during slow-wave sleep resulted in significantly improved recall of the locations in the task on the following day.

Interesting experiment. As I said, a sleeping person is not cut off from sensory monitoring or subconscious processing. These results make more sense from a neurological point of view, than with your immaterial brain theory. 

Quote
In addition, the presentation of the scent during sleep resulted in significant activation in the hippocampus, a subcortical structure known to be crucial for the formation and recall of memories for experienced events.
This study built on other ones showing that the same neural networks in the hippocampus that are activated in the acquisition of new memories during waking life are reactivated in slow-wave sleep

And what does this tell you?

Quote
For example, studies in rats have shown that when they learn their way in a maze, neurons in the hippocampus that fire in response to specific places—so-called hippocampal place cells—fire in the same order during subsequent slow-wave sleep, a phenomenon known as “hippocampal replay.”......

(rest of excerpt deleted but relevant) 


I don't have time to fact check all of this. But everything in the excerpt looks like neurological explanations for experiences described in Eastern practices. It's not a  Chris Carter-like antagonistic or argumentative attempt to prove that neuroscience is some how all wrong. But if this helps your understanding of things, I'm delighted.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 17:44:42

It dépends on how one (mis ) interprets that through one's own a-priori held world view that does shape one's own consciousness and behavior , ironically enough lol : you're talking from the materialist point of view thus , by basing all your arguments and conclusions on that major false materialistic premise, in the sense that consciousness and the mind +their memories and the rest are just brain activity ,for example, and hence memory is stored in the brain ....


And you're talking from the theist point of view, basing all of your arguments and conclusions on the untestable and scientifically unsubstantiated belief in souls. Your "indirect empirical evidence" is not actually any evidence at all, but simply complaints about what you feel is not adequately explained by science, and utter disregard for everything that is.

Once again , I am not religiously motivated in all of this , i just follow the evidence that tells me that materialism is false , mainly because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness ,let alone for its related anomalies , and hence consciousness cannot be a material process , can neither be reduced to nor equated with brain activity , let alone that it can emerge from brain activity  , form biology or from the biological evolution, not to mention that consciousness as a so-called integrated information does also hold no water whatsoever as my recent first excerpt from Evan Thompson's book explained ... .

Furthermore , Libet ,for example , to mention just that one , was so a visionary and a revolutionary neuroscientist as to dare go beyond positivism and behaviorism by including the first hand reports of subjective experiences as valid evidence in his scientific study or work regarding consciousness and its physical brain .

The above displayed excerpts of Thompson just extend the latter scientific approach to the level of the first hand reports of highly experienced meditation practitioners ,so what in Zeus ' name are you talking about then ?

Not to mention the works of non-materialist neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists on the subject , not to mention that of Popper and Nobel prize winner neuroscientist Eccles who argued for a separate soul in their co-authored book "The self and its brain ..." ......

In short :

There is absolutely nothing intrinsic in the naturalist science or in its naturalist epistemology or in its naturalist methodology that do go beyond materialism that prevents it from exploring the existence of souls , spirits or whatever .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 18:06:36


There is thus no problem at all : all interpretations of QM have been just imaginary attempts to solve the imaginary interpretation problem in QM thus , just delusions based on illusions lol .

Thyat's it. Just a complicated way of saying what I said: you can't derive quantum mechanics from classical mechanics, but you can derive classical mechanics from quantum mechanics. The mystery, problem, call it what you will, is a result of starting from the wrong end of the microscope.

Try to explain the double slit experiment then : a Nobel prize is waiting for you , genius .
Stop living in denial regarding the interpretation observation or measurement problem in QM .

There is a problem , a big one , hallooo : that started from the very inception of QM and is still a big issue up to this sec and counting :see all those competing interpretations of QM out there that have been trying to solve the interpretation problem in QM, in vain so far ...

Not to mention Bell's theorem and its related experiments that did challenge classical determinism, classical locality and classical realism as well ...

Welcome to the "real " world, Alice  .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 18:42:05
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448148#msg448148 date=1420641707]

Philosopher John Searle agrees: “Consciousness consists of inner, qualitative, subjective states and processes of sentience or awareness. Consciousness, so defined, begins when we wake in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continues until we fall asleep again, die, go into a coma, or otherwise become ‘unconscious.’”
From the Indian and Tibetan contemplative perspectives, however, these descriptions are inaccurate.

Although object-directed consciousness becomes progressively less and less as we move from waking or dreaming into deep and dreamless sleep, awareness or sentience continues.


For Yoga and Vedānta, whereas dreaming is a form of object-directed consciousness—the objects in dreams being mental images—dreamless sleep is a mode of consciousness without an object.


Similarly, according to Tibetan Buddhism, deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content, and it’s the basis upon which dreaming and waking consciousness arise.



I agree with dlorde's comment about cherry picking comparisons between ancient areas of knowledge and science.

There was no cherry picking : you can't tell what Thompson talked about in the rest of his book in question , can you ?

Use your own mind and be independent and free -minded enough as to stop repeating what dlorde or others for that matter say,without thinking .

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But as far as simply describing the experience of sleep for most people, I don't see the huge discrepancy that Don is claiming exists. They both say that people become less conscious of their surroundings, and in dreamless sleep there is a kind of minimal consciousness of any sensory information, internal imaginings, or other "thing" being attended to.

Try to understand what you quote , first :

Quote : "...
For Yoga and Vedānta, whereas dreaming is a form of object-directed consciousness—the objects in dreams being mental images—dreamless sleep is a mode of consciousness without an object.


Similarly, according to Tibetan Buddhism, deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content, and it’s the basis upon which dreaming and waking consciousness arise.
" End quote .

Can you be conscious or aware of your surroundings when sleeping , dreaming or when you are in the deep dreamless sleep state ?

Furthermore , waking , dreaming , deep dreamless sleep state at least do represent different modes of consciousness : the sensory perceptual awake one is what can be called the gross one ,and the more you get deeper in sleep , the more subtle the mode of consciousness or awareness gets .....

It all depends thus on what kind of consciousness or awareness are you talking about .


Quote
It just  raises more doubts about the idea of  immaterial consciousness itself, that without external and internal sensation and things to be conscious of, or think about, consciousness is tenuous, if it doesn't entirely vanish.

No, it doesn't .The fact that consciousness is no material process is an unequivocal one (all materialist theories of consciousness are untestable and false , together with materialism itself ) .

That some forms or modes of consciousness or awareness have to work through their  physical brain or that they  interact or correlate with it, or that they  depend on it ,  is no evidence for  the false materialist claims on the subject , on the contrary .

Quote : " ...whereas dreaming is a form of object-directed consciousness—the objects in dreams being mental images—dreamless sleep is a mode of consciousness without an object...." ...deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content... End quote.

The deep dreamless sleep state might even not depend on the brain since deep sleep is a state of “subtle consciousness” without sensory or cognitive content  , and there are also higher forms of consciousness like pure awareness and beyond where the sense of the self dissolves that might not need no brain either to exist .

Do not confuse access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness which  are both sensory perceptual ones with the more subtle and "basic" forms of consciousness and awareness thus .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 20:11:20
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448162#msg448162 date=1420650708]
Excerpt from the same above mentioned book and chapter :

Quote : " REMEMBERING IN SLEEP:

Although Yoga and Vedānta share the view that deep sleep is a state of consciousness, they differ in their conceptions of what happens to the mind in deep and dreamless sleep.According to Yoga, deep sleep is one of the changing states of the inner mental sense, so cognitive activity, particularly the formation of memories, continues. According to Vedānta, however, the inner mental sense shuts down entirely in deep sleep and reactivates upon awakening. How does this difference between Yoga and Vedānta look from the perspective of Western sleep science?.

If we set aside the question of consciousness in deep sleep and restrict the question to whether memory processes are active, the answer from science is unequivocal: memory processes are highly active in slow-wave sleep. Evidence from psychology and neuroscience clearly shows that slow-wave sleep promotes the formation of stable memories of events that were consciously experienced earlier when awake.

One recent experiment took advantage of the strong effect of smell on memory—the way that particular smells can trigger vivid memories, the most famous example being Proust’s description of the way the smell and taste of a madeleine dipped in tea brought back to life his narrator’s long-forgotten childhood world in the French village of Combray. In the experiment, the subjects learned locations in a spatial memory task while being exposed to the scent of roses. The scent was presented again while
the subjects were in slow-wave sleep that night. Compared to the control condition where the scent wasn’t presented again during sleep, the presentation during slow-wave sleep resulted in significantly improved recall of the locations in the task on the following day.

Interesting experiment. As I said, a sleeping person is not cut off from sensory monitoring or subconscious processing. These results make more sense from a neurological point of view, than with your immaterial brain theory. 

Thompson just tries to show through that experiment and more that memory gets activated at the level of deep dreamless sleep and hence proves  that the claims of some highly experienced meditation practitioners that they can train their minds through meditation as to be able to remember their deep dreamless sleep state is accurate .

Deep dreamless sleep state that's an alleged mode of consciousness without object ,mental images or sensory content .

Furthermore , how can the "content" of  deep dreamless sleep  state in the above mentioned sense thus depend on the physical brain ? if we except the memory part of it that's not accessible to ordinary people .

Thompson talks thus about the non-materialist contemplative cognitive science ,if you haven't noticed just that yet .

Quote
Quote
In addition, the presentation of the scent during sleep resulted in significant activation in the hippocampus, a subcortical structure known to be crucial for the formation and recall of memories for experienced events.
This study built on other ones showing that the same neural networks in the hippocampus that are activated in the acquisition of new memories during waking life are reactivated in slow-wave sleep

And what does this tell you?

See above .

Quote
Quote
For example, studies in rats have shown that when they learn their way in a maze, neurons in the hippocampus that fire in response to specific places—so-called hippocampal place cells—fire in the same order during subsequent slow-wave sleep, a phenomenon known as “hippocampal replay.”......

(rest of excerpt deleted but relevant) 


I don't have time to fact check all of this. But everything in the excerpt looks like neurological explanations for experiences described in Eastern practices. It's not a  Chris Carter-like antagonistic or argumentative attempt to prove that neuroscience is some how all wrong. But if this helps your understanding of things, I'm delighted.

That's the non-materialist contemplative science at work , lady .

Here is a summary of the book from amazon.com :

Quote : "A renowned philosopher of the mind, also known for his groundbreaking work on Buddhism and cognitive science, Evan Thompson combines the latest neuroscience research on sleep, dreaming, and meditation with Indian and Western philosophy of the mind, casting new light on the self and its relation to the brain.

Thompson shows how the self is a changing process, not a static thing. When we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. As we fall asleep, the impression of being a bounded self distinct from the world dissolves, but the self reappears in the dream state. If we have a lucid dream, we no longer identify only with the self within the dream. Our sense of self now includes our dreaming self, the "I" as dreamer. Finally, as we meditate--either in the waking state or in a lucid dream--we can observe whatever images or thoughts arise and how we tend to identify with them as "me." We can also experience sheer awareness itself, distinct from the changing contents that make up our image of the self.

Contemplative traditions say that we can learn to let go of the self, so that when we die we can witness its dissolution with equanimity. Thompson weaves together neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative to depict these transformations, adding uncommon depth to life's profound questions. Contemplative experience comes to illuminate scientific findings, and scientific evidence enriches the vast knowledge acquired by contemplatives
.." End quote.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 20:31:40
Sleep is a fascinating topic, but I would be wary of cherry-picking and creatively interpreting the introspective analyses of Eastern meditative traditions for their similarity to knowledge obtained from sleep research and neuroscience. When intelligent people think and introspect about such phenomena they may come up with close or analogous descriptions to what controlled experiment tells us, or they may not - as is conceded in the posted excerpts. These traditions may have interesting suggestions for the basis of testable hypotheses, but although some apparent correlations with contemporary science may be interesting, they are no guide to the reliability or utility of the traditions or their techniques in understanding what is occurring during sleep.

For example, the same kind of exercise can be done comparing a variety of creation myths with cosmology (e.g. big bang theory, planetary formation, etc.) and, with some flexible interpretation, some seemingly strong correlations can be made with modern theory.

However, this kind of flexible interpretation with informed hindsight is an ideal context for the influence of confirmation bias. Caution is advised - look out for interpretive 'tells' such as, 'what they are saying is...', 'what they mean is...', 'this is analogous to...', 'this correlates with...', and so-on. These should be viewed with a critical eye.

Sleep is a fascinating topic indeed , especially the  dream sleep and the lucid dream sleep .

The deep dreamless sleep state ( a state without sensory or cognitive content,without object thus  ) that seems to be a subtle , basic or 'seed " form or mode of consciousness is even more interesting indeed .

There is thus no harm in exploring what ancient wisdom has to say on the subject , and we should do that with caution indeed , in the form of including the first hand reports of subjective experiences at the level of those sleep states and at the level of higher or subtle forms  of consciousness that can be reached by highly experienced meditation practitioners or other mystics in the scientific study of consciousness and its brain .

The non-materialist contemplative cognitive science does just that .

Libet , for example, was a visionary and a revolutionary enough a neuroscientist as  to  include the first hand reports of subjective experiences at the level of the awake ordinary sensory perceptual  consciousness in his scientific study of consciousness and its brain  , so, why not extend that as to encompass the first hand subjective reports of highly experienced meditation practitioners and other mystics  like the contemplative cognitive science does at the sleep levels as well as beyond that  ...?  to see whether or not they are accurate .

By the way : I have just downloaded a certain movie ( Inception 2010 movie )  regarding how one can "hack " the nervous system or the subconscious and dreams of people as to implant the images and ideas they want to serve their own purposes : sounds entertaining :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception 

The subliminal mind control has already been (mis) used by marketing , by politics and other criminals as to manipulate the thoughts and behaviors of people in unethical ways of course , unfortunately enough ,so one should know about all that and more .

Contemplative cognitive science can even discover more interesting things beyond all that for the benefit of all mankind and for that of science as well .

P.S.: There can be  no real universal or cosmopolitan fruits or breakthroughs regarding consciousness and its brain at least that would be coming from the sterile cultural Eurocentric ethnocentric and egocentric exclusive false materialist belief or world view  in that regard thus that excludes , by definition , any other world views , thoughtstreams,cultures, beliefs ,  or ancient wisdom from the "equation " a-priori thus ,as if the false materialist belief  has some sort of exclusive monopoly on  "the truth " lol  .

Materialism that's just a world view thus a , a belief , a false one at that that is , an ideology , a 19th century outdated and superseded conception of nature , so why  should science not try to learn from other beliefs , world views , thoughtstreams , cultures .....scientifically like the contemplative cognitive science does , instead of a priori excluding them .

Science that's not about materialism or any other ism ,but rather all about methodology and epistemology , the naturalist ones that do go beyond materialism, which means that there is nothing intrinsic in naturalist science , in its naturalist methodology or in its naturalist epistemology that prevents it from exploring all possibilities and fields of human knowledge , experience and wisdom  .



Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 07/01/2015 21:12:18
Guys :

No time left for the rest of your posts ,but for the following very quickly then, as follows :

I have been exploring many views and theories of consciousness and its brain , including the materialist ones thus , including those of the so-called contemplative cognitive science ,even though i do not share many views of Buddhism  or Hinduism , for example , and even though i do disagree with the 'biological basis " of consciousness that has been promoted by the above mentioned contemplative cognitive science ,as i have been talking to you about what Thompson has been saying through his above displayed posted excerpts and through my own comments on them .

Try to address what Thompson has been saying thus ,instead of making it sound as if i have been the one saying that lol, and as if i have been some sort of Buddhist jesuit of some sort lol who tries to promote Buddhism or any other ism for that matter  .

Take a look at the following too while you are at it , it 's good to try to explore all man's knowledge , wisdom and experiences , the ancient and the modern ones alike , in a scientific manner ,so don't confine yourself , your consciousness or mind just within your materialist belief :

Even science itself cannot but reveal what is revealed by consciousness and the mind through the scientific method ,science that cannot exist without  consciousness and the mind   .We can't step outside of consciousness to study it either .We have to accept the fact that all what we can know , experience , feel, taste , smell, imagine , create , make , think ,do or do not  ....cannot but be revealed by consciousness  awareness and the mind ...through their mutual interactions with the physical brain body and with the rest of their environment .

http://therealjeffhall.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fields-of-consciousness.html

Beware of the many forms of scientism that's no science either (The reductionist exclusive cultural Eurocentric ethnocentric egocentric lol materialism is the worst kind of scientism in fact,and the most exclusive and narrow-minded of them all as well  )  , while you are at it :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 07/01/2015 21:47:06
What point do you want addressed. i don't have a problem with meditation, buddhist philosophical practices. The dalai Lama isn't hostile towards neuroscience and invites scientists to come and study meditating monks.

Vegetative comas and end stage Alzheimers are also forms of  "consciousness without content". I'm not sure I'd want to spend eternity in that state, whether it feels all "subtle" or not. But that's just my preference.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2015 18:18:35
Quote
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448181#msg448181 date=1420667226]
What point do you want addressed. i don't have a problem with meditation, buddhist philosophical practices. The dalai Lama isn't hostile towards neuroscience and invites scientists to come and study meditating monks.

What were we talking about then ? See above .

I just wanted to let you know about the so-called contemplative cognitive science , if you happened not to have heard of  or read about it ,through Thompson's book in question, and hence show you that the first hand subjective reports of highly experienced meditation practitioners and their related ancient wisdom can enrich cognitive science and vice versa ,since science  is not the only valid source of knowledge .

Those sleep , dream sleep , lucid dream  sleep , and  dreamless sleep states are really fascinating ,so .

Who is hostile to neuroscience anyway ?  The latter is still in its primitive or infancy stage ,relatively speaking , despite the bombastic talk of mainstream neuroscience .

We don't even know nearly enough regarding the brain itself, let alone regarding consciousness, not to mention that we don't know much about the unconscious or subconscious and its role in waking and sleep states either  .

Quote
Vegetative comas and end stage Alzheimers are also forms of  "consciousness without content". I'm not sure I'd want to spend eternity in that state, whether it feels all "subtle" or not. But that's just my preference.

Vegetative states and Alzheimer are also forms of consciousness without content ? What makes you say that ? Odd .

Like the deep dreamless sleep state is ?

Deep dreamless sleep state is allegedly without either sensory or cognitive content , without object thus,that's why we ordinary people can't remember it , although it is possible to remember it through mind training or meditation ....since memory gets activated at that level too  .

Vegetative patients ,for example, can respond to certain commands or instructions of scientists when asked to imagine playing tennis or doing some other activity ,and hence scientists see that the corresponding neural correlates get activated exactly like in the case of healthy patients : that's no consciousness without content .

Not to mention Alzheimer patients .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2015 19:14:08
Vegetative patients ,for example, can respond to certain commands or instructions of scientists when asked to imagine playing tennis or doing some other activity ,and hence scientists see that the corresponding neural correlates get activated exactly like in the case of healthy patients : that's no consciousness without content .
You're describing 'Locked-in Syndrome', a non-vegetative state.

Around 60% vegetative patients are in PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) and show no signs of consciousness (abnormal EEG, no characteristic P3 wave, etc), typically due to permanent damage to the brainstem. The other 40% are known as MCS (Minimally Conscious State), and may show some correlates of consciousness, and may recover to varying degrees.

Vegetative patients are a subset of those in a coma, and it is a small number of non-vegetative coma patients that have Locked-in Syndrome (effectively a complete paralysis of voluntary movement but with a full repertoire of conscious mental states). These are the patients who can communicate by imagining activities. These patients may have been misdiagnosed as vegetative, but turn out not to be so. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 08/01/2015 20:34:54


Who is hostile to neuroscience anyway ?  The latter is still in its primitive or infancy stage ,relatively speaking , despite the bombastic talk of mainstream neuroscience .

We don't even know nearly enough regarding the brain itself, let alone regarding consciousness, not to mention that we don't know much about the unconscious or subconscious and its role in waking and sleep states either  .



How can you be so sure that we "don't know that much about" consciousness? In stead of jumping from one general theory to another that purports to "explain everything" in one full swoop, consider this option: Take one specific area of consciousness or mental activity that interests you - episodic memory, or working memory, or visual perception and its qualia, or dreams, or attention, or language, one type of skill or ability like planning, or  search/recognition -whatever interests you. Take a few weeks to research it, from as many different angles or sources as you can, but try to stay with that more narrow topic. I think you'll find that a lot more is known than you expected, in much greater detail than you imagined, and with unexpected associations to other things. If you did that, I think you'd find that it isn't all "bombastic talk."
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2015 20:47:46
Vegetative patients ,for example, can respond to certain commands or instructions of scientists when asked to imagine playing tennis or doing some other activity ,and hence scientists see that the corresponding neural correlates get activated exactly like in the case of healthy patients : that's no consciousness without content .
You're describing 'Locked-in Syndrome', a non-vegetative state.

Around 60% vegetative patients are in PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) and show no signs of consciousness (abnormal EEG, no characteristic P3 wave, etc), typically due to permanent damage to the brainstem. The other 40% are known as MCS (Minimally Conscious State), and may show some correlates of consciousness, and may recover to varying degrees.

Vegetative patients are a subset of those in a coma, and it is a small number of non-vegetative coma patients that have Locked-in Syndrome (effectively a complete paralysis of voluntary movement but with a full repertoire of conscious mental states). These are the patients who can communicate by imagining activities. These patients may have been misdiagnosed as vegetative, but turn out not to be so.

Ok, but what makes you so sure about those 60 % vegetative patients who seem to show no signs of consciousness ? They might experience some undetected yet minimal forms of consciousness too , who knows ?

As  technology advances , neuroscientists might detect the latter,who knows ?  .

Vegetative patients may be more conscious of the world than we think:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vegetative-patients-may-be-more-conscious-of-the-world-than-we-think-9799650.html


https://www.google.com/search?q=vegetative+patients+show+signs+of+consc&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8


'Hidden' consciousness found in vegetative patients :

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/Hidden-consciousness-found-in-vegetative-patients/articleshow/44851317.cms

A patient in a vegetative state has been shown to ‘pay attention' to sounds :

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/patient-vegetative-state-has-been-shown-%E2%80%98pay-attention-sounds


Signs of Consciousness in Vegetative Patients? :


http://philosophyofbrains.com/2006/09/08/signs-of-consciousness-in-vegetative-patients.aspx

P.S.: In another context , A cousin of mine who was healthy and then pronounced dead , was almost buried 3 times .
Every time they tried to bury the poor lad , i was told , ( He lives in another country far away from mine ) , he would show signs of life at almost the last moment .

He even started to scream once , i was told , when they were ready to put his coffin into the grave .

He's dead now for the fourth and last time,so to speak  .

Maybe , he was not really dead the last time too , who knows ? But they did everything they could to be sure of his "last" death .

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 08/01/2015 21:26:47


Who is hostile to neuroscience anyway ?  The latter is still in its primitive or infancy stage ,relatively speaking , despite the bombastic talk of mainstream neuroscience .

We don't even know nearly enough regarding the brain itself, let alone regarding consciousness, not to mention that we don't know much about the unconscious or subconscious and its role in waking and sleep states either  .



How can you be so sure that we "don't know that much about" consciousness? In stead of jumping from one general theory to another that purports to "explain everything" in one full swoop, consider this option: Take one specific area of consciousness or mental activity that interests you - episodic memory, or working memory, or visual perception and its qualia, or dreams, or attention, or language, one type of skill or ability like planning, or  search/recognition -whatever interests you. Take a few weeks to research it, from as many different angles or sources as you can, but try to stay with that more narrow topic. I think you'll find that a lot more is known than you expected, in much greater detail than you imagined, and with unexpected associations to other things. If you did that, I think you'd find that it isn't all "bombastic talk."

Even prominent neuroscientists cannot but admit that they still  do not know much about the physical brain , let alone about the mind, not even remotely close thus  : even the decade of the brain is still in its infancy stage and might deliver just what the human genome project did ,for example , despite both their bombastic talks .

As for consciousness , no single theory of consciousness can pretend to be really scientific , not even remotely close thus .

And since consciousness is still a big mystery , then none of all the interpretations of QM ,for example, can pretend to be scientific either .

Scientific humility cannot but dictate its terms regarding the above .

Besides, looking for the mind and consciousness , memories ....in the brain , equating them with or reducing them to the physical activity of the brain is an absurd and a  futile dead -end street or attempt , since consciousness and the mind +their related processes are neither in the brain , neither brain activity , nor that they can emerge from it , to say the least thus .


P.S.: What makes you think i haven't done your above "recommended" stuff ? and more .

furthermore , extrasensory perception like telepathy , remote viewing and other psi-phenomena + the effects of placebo/nocebo , the mindful trained informed effects of meditation, mindfulness ,the trained mindful informed self-directed neuroplasticity + our human ability to control the autonomic nervous system and more  via the mindful trained informed biofeedback ....are evidence enough for the fact that consciousness is a separate non-local and non-physical process .

NDE ,for example, together with the out of body experiences are not relevant in this context .

Consciousness might be a separate non-local and non -physical field of some sort , who knows?,that acts from outside of space and time and hence , does not obey any laws of physics , even thought some forms of consciousness are dependent on the brain and the senses  : (Don't confuse that with Libet's conscious mental field theory that considers consciousness as just some sort of emergent property or just like electromagnetic fields lol ) :

http://therealjeffhall.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fields-of-consciousness.html

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 08/01/2015 23:42:01
Ok, but what makes you so sure about those 60 % vegetative patients who seem to show no signs of consciousness ? They might experience some undetected yet minimal forms of consciousness too , who knows ?
The figures I gave are the current best approximation. I'm not going to argue definitions of consciousness, but in neurological terms, those vegetative patients with reticular brain stem damage cannot become conscious because that area controls all higher level arousal activity, including consciousness. Neither can those with certain high level cortical damage, or permanent axonal damage that impairs wide area connectivity. If you accept the evidence that consciousness awareness involves wide area rather than purely local activity of the brain, Stanislas Dehaene's techniques for elicitation of the characteristic P3 wave can positively determine conscious awareness for all patients (even for those in partial or total sensory isolation, tanscranial magnetic stimulation can be used). For those that show no global activation, consciousness, as generally recognised, doesn't occur. Dehaene has found patients whose RAS arousal level was just too low for consciousness, and used TMS to temporarily boost it so they became conscious, but to provide them with continuous consciousness would require some kind of stimulatory implant; near-future technology. This kind of empirical evidence provides some confidence that at least the gross functionality of the systems involved have been understood.

Quote
Vegetative patients may be more conscious of the world than we think:
Yes; this is the difference between the commonly accepted definition of the condition, and the clinical diagnosis of the condition. Those who demonstrate conscious activity have been misdiagnosed as vegetative (according to Dehaene's usage).

Quote
P.S.: In another context , A cousin of mine who was healthy and then pronounced dead , was almost buried 3 times .
Every time they tried to bury the poor lad , i was told , ( He lives in another country far away from mine ) , he would show signs of life at almost the last moment .

He even started to scream once , i was told , when they were ready to put his coffin into the grave .
It's possible, although unlikely (to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, once would be unfortunate, twice looks like incompetence, and three times smacks of fiction). But, if true, it would be another example of misdiagnosis - the diagnosis of clinical death not corresponding to the patient's actual condition.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 09/01/2015 23:27:37


Besides, looking for the mind and consciousness , memories ....in the brain , equating them with or reducing them to the physical activity of the brain is an absurd and a  futile dead -end street or attempt , since consciousness and the mind +their related processes are neither in the brain , neither brain activity , nor that they can emerge from it , to say the least thus .


P.S.: What makes you think i haven't done your above "recommended" stuff ? and more .



What makes me think that is the sentence above. If you start out with the assumption that the brain is no more than blinking indicator lights on the dash board of your vehicle, you are not likely to investigate what scientists say about how the brain functions, or even, working from your theory, "contributes" to mental. Consequently, you will  dismiss it as not very important or worth learning about in any great detail.

Although you often retreat and dig in your heels about the immaterial mind and souls, more and more I notice your excerpts contain references to neuroscience and things that the brain actually does - and not simply as a "transceiver" or interface with immaterial realm, but as the responsible agent for these functions. So you can either ignore all of neuroscience and be satisfied with "who knows how the mind and brain interact thus" or keep going.


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: alancalverd on 10/01/2015 08:09:45
A last word from me on quantum "enigmas" before I leave this discussion.

We have known for over 100 years that you can't predict quantum phenomena from classical physics, but the elementary test of a quantum hypothesis is that it must scale up to a macroscopic observation. (The jury is still out on gravity, admittedly, but I think we are getting there).

So instead of pretending that the double slit experiment is a mystery, we should start with wave functions and derive classical physics.

Every particle has an associated wave function, the square of which is the probability of finding it at a point in space. So if we set up double-slit experiment, we will see the transform of the pair of slits in terms of the particle wavelength. Which we do. Now if we close one slit, we see the transform of one slit (a sort of Gaussian with a single peak), and if we interpose  any other sieve such as a zone plate or an annulus, we will see its transform - which we do.

Fine. So how does this relate to classical physics? Let's look at throwing dice.

The wave function of one die is such that it can yield any number from 1 to 6 with equal probability. So we can't predict the outcome of one throw but if we throw it a zillion times, the average throw will obviously be (1+2+3+4+5+6)/6 = 3.5  Gamblers know this: "lucky 7" is the most probable throw of two dice. The most probable throw of n dice is 3.5 n, and the larger n gets, the less likely you are to get any other number. So if I have an avogadro of dice, I can confidently predict that the result of one throw will be 21.08 x 1023 with a very, very small error margin. In other words, the wave function of a large ensemble is very small in comparison with the size of the ensemble, and although I couldn't predict where one iron atom will be in a diffraction experiment, I can tell you pretty well exactly where to find a cannonball.

More to the point, I could study the number 21.08 x 1023  for ever and have absolutely no idea where it came from or how an iron atom will behave on its own, but there is no quantum enigma if you start with what we know now, instead of what our predecessors assumed.

Even more to the point, next time you meet a mug, invite him to an "advanced dice game". None of this two-dice kids' stuff, but the 6-dice game that the big boys play in the back room. Only rule is, 21 belongs to the house. You will make a fortune.

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: Ethos_ on 10/01/2015 15:32:43
In other words, the wave function of a large ensemble is very small in comparison with the size of the ensemble, and although I couldn't predict where one iron atom will be in a diffraction experiment, I can tell you pretty well exactly where to find a cannonball.

More to the point, I could study the number 21.08 x 1023  for ever and have absolutely no idea where it came from or how an iron atom will behave on its own, but there is no quantum enigma if you start with what we know now, instead of what our predecessors assumed.


Excellent comments alan,...........There is no reason or advantage in making these questions any more complicated than the example alan has given us. Reality is; "What you can see thru experiment is what you got."

No mystery about consciousness either, it is the function of our neural network and nothing more.

I been following this thread for way too long now and have decided it is going nowhere, will go nowhere, and is no longer worth the effort. The author of this thread is unwilling to deal with realities and therefore, it is a waste of time to continue giving him examples of it. To date, absolutely no progress has been made regarding the issues involved regarding this debate and will continue to remain such because the question Don has raised doesn't deal with scientific fact, it's a question about philosophy and mysticism.

In summation, I applaud Alan's comments for they should bring clarity to the mind of the honest reader and also offer much respect to Delorde and Cheryl j as well for their intelligent contributions. Nevertheless, I have exhausted all confidence in Don's ability to separate fact from fiction and will make my exit from this thread as well.

Sir Don.................I respect your persistence and the energy you've applied to this effort. If you had only applied such an effort to a worthwhile endeavor you would have surely profited greatly from it. Nevertheless, in all truth, you're spinning your wheels my friend, this exercise of yours has no future.

Good luck to all...................................... 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2015 18:27:00
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg448250#msg448250 date=1420760521]
Ok, but what makes you so sure about those 60 % vegetative patients who seem to show no signs of consciousness ? They might experience some undetected yet minimal forms of consciousness too , who knows ?
The figures I gave are the current best approximation. I'm not going to argue definitions of consciousness, but in neurological terms, those vegetative patients with reticular brain stem damage cannot become conscious because that area controls all higher level arousal activity, including consciousness. Neither can those with certain high level cortical damage, or permanent axonal damage that impairs wide area connectivity. If you accept the evidence that consciousness awareness involves wide area rather than purely local activity of the brain, Stanislas Dehaene's techniques for elicitation of the characteristic P3 wave can positively determine conscious awareness for all patients (even for those in partial or total sensory isolation, tanscranial magnetic stimulation can be used). For those that show no global activation, consciousness, as generally recognised, doesn't occur. Dehaene has found patients whose RAS arousal level was just too low for consciousness, and used TMS to temporarily boost it so they became conscious, but to provide them with continuous consciousness would require some kind of stimulatory implant; near-future technology. This kind of empirical evidence provides some confidence that at least the gross functionality of the systems involved have been understood.

Stanislas Dehaene's work is very interesting indeed ,to some extent at least, and i see not why future technology cannot come up with some sort of stimulatory implant , as you put it  , to boost the  consciousness of brain damaged or vegetative  patients.

But , Deheane's problem,as a materialist scientist ,  is that he assumes that when he and his team can map all brain regions involved in conscious or aware perception ,and hence discover all "signatures of consciousness " in the brain , then they would understand how consciousness works completely,as he so bombastically said in that book of his in question : "Consciousness and the brain , Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts " ,by assuming that consciousness ,the mind and all their related processes are in the brain  .

Dehaene then introduced what he called "Global neuronal workspace " hypothesis in Chapter 5  "Theorizing consciousness " ,in  his above mentioned book  ,as follows :

 Quote : "...to make sense of consciousness .The proposal is simple : consciousness is brain-wide information sharing .The human brain has developed efficient long distance networks, particularly in the prefrontal cortex , to select relevant information and disseminate it throughout the brain .Consciousness is an evolved device that allows us to attend to a piece of information and keep it active within this broadcasting system .Once the information is conscious , it can be flexibly routed to other areas according to our current goals.Thus we can name it , evaluate it , memorize it ,or use it to plan the future .Computer simulations of neural networks show that the global neuronal workspace hypothesis generates precisely the signatures that we see in experimental brain recordings .It can also explain why vast amounts of knowledge remain inaccessible to our consciousness ." End quote .

Well, of course computer simulations of those specific neural networks would show the same 'signatures " that he saw in experimental brain recordings lol , that's no evidence for his materialist false belief assumption or hypothesis that consciousness is generated by those specific neural networks : it's a bit like confusing music in CD's with the music itself lol

Nevertheless , Dehaene can't justify his extraordinary jump or leap from the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC to the latter itself , let alone that he could explain to us how consciousness or awareness occurs or arises from neurochemistry .


Besides, it has been proved by many experiments , like the binocular rivalry experiment ,that consciousness is not continuous but discontinuous (Binocular rivalry experiment has been used to be able to differentiate between the brain regions that are involved in conscious or aware perception and between the ones that are not , and hence to try to pinpoint exactly what specific regions of the brain are involved in conscious perception .) :  consciousness  works thus via gaps , or as lunatic Dennett said on the subject : " The discontinuity of consciousness is striking because of the apparent continuity of consciousness " .

Experiments involving experienced meditation practitioners proved  the  fact that meditation and mindfulness can also improve the power of focused attention of people by enabling them to voluntarily hold in place the  binocular rival images they choose to ....the same goes for the  dichotic listening task  experiment where different auditory stimuli are   presented simultaneously , one to each ear....

There are also many forms of waking consciousness , the phenomenal consciousness (the felt consciousness ) , access consciousness , the active and passive consciousness , the 'basic " consciousness, the life consciousness or sentience which is called by western philosophy of mind  "creature consciousness " that pertains to a whole subject of experience , not to the individual states of that subject ,self-consciousness that comes in different forms ...., to mention just those .Take your pick .

To pretend thus that neuroscientists  already understand how the sensory perceptual or gross consciousness or awareness are all about is a misguided and incorrect assumption .

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Vegetative patients may be more conscious of the world than we think:
Yes; this is the difference between the commonly accepted definition of the condition, and the clinical diagnosis of the condition. Those who demonstrate conscious activity have been misdiagnosed as vegetative (according to Dehaene's usage).

Misdiagnosed ? So, Cambridge scientists conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients ? lol Come on .

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P.S.: In another context , A cousin of mine who was healthy and then pronounced dead , was almost buried 3 times .
Every time they tried to bury the poor lad , i was told , ( He lives in another country far away from mine ) , he would show signs of life at almost the last moment .

He even started to scream once , i was told , when they were ready to put his coffin into the grave .
It's possible, although unlikely (to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, once would be unfortunate, twice looks like incompetence, and three times smacks of fiction). But, if true, it would be another example of misdiagnosis - the diagnosis of clinical death not corresponding to the patient's actual condition.

I concur . But , it did happen like i told you it did , unfortunately and unbelievably enough .It's hard to believe , but it was true , i was told at least .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2015 20:40:54


Besides, looking for the mind and consciousness , memories ....in the brain , equating them with or reducing them to the physical activity of the brain is an absurd and a  futile dead -end street or attempt , since consciousness and the mind +their related processes are neither in the brain , neither brain activity , nor that they can emerge from it , to say the least thus .


P.S.: What makes you think i haven't done your above "recommended" stuff ? and more .



What makes me think that is the sentence above. If you start out with the assumption that the brain is no more than blinking indicator lights on the dash board of your vehicle, you are not likely to investigate what scientists say about how the brain functions, or even, working from your theory, "contributes" to mental. Consequently, you will  dismiss it as not very important or worth learning about in any great detail.

Although you often retreat and dig in your heels about the immaterial mind and souls, more and more I notice your excerpts contain references to neuroscience and things that the brain actually does - and not simply as a "transceiver" or interface with immaterial realm, but as the responsible agent for these functions. So you can either ignore all of neuroscience and be satisfied with "who knows how the mind and brain interact thus" or keep going.

We have already talked about the above , on way too many occasions .

I am not gonna be tired of repeating the following any time soon : until you get it ,hopefully ,for your own sake :

You're making many straw arguments : i do not reject the findings of neuroscience or the latter (Who would do that ? ) , just the materialist interprétations of neuroscience, just materialist neuroscience thus that reduces consciousness to just brain activity or equates the latter with the former .

I do not reject science in general either (who would do that ? ) , otherwise i would not be here , would i ? .

I just reject materialist science that reduces everything to just matter ,assumes that all is matter ,and hence assumes so falsely that everything can be explained just by material biological or physical processes , just by material , biological or physical causes  .....

That's by the way what this whole thread is all about ,if you haven't noticed just that yet : about a certain manifesto for a post-materialistic science that embraces both the material and the immaterial alike in nature .


Once again , consciousness , the mind and all their related processes ,including memory ....are neither in the brain nor are they brain activity , let alone that they can emerge either from biology or from the biological evolution , and hence they can neither be reduced to nor equated with their neural correlates or brain activity , let alone that they can emerge from it ,which means that materialism is false , simply and mainly because it can intrinsically never account for consciousness , let alone for its related anomalies ,and hence consciousness cannot be a material process = can neither be reduced to nor equated with brain activity , let alone that consciousness can amerge from either biology or from the biological evolution .

In other words :

All what materialist science has been telling us all about the origin of the universe , the nature of life , the origin of life , the evolution of life and much more must be questioned radically in accordance with all the above, not to mention the obvious fact that materialism should be kicked out of science , the sonner the better thus  .

What part of the above you can't understand then , Cheryl ?

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2015 21:03:03
In other words, the wave function of a large ensemble is very small in comparison with the size of the ensemble, and although I couldn't predict where one iron atom will be in a diffraction experiment, I can tell you pretty well exactly where to find a cannonball.

More to the point, I could study the number 21.08 x 1023  for ever and have absolutely no idea where it came from or how an iron atom will behave on its own, but there is no quantum enigma if you start with what we know now, instead of what our predecessors assumed.


Excellent comments alan,...........There is no reason or advantage in making these questions any more complicated than the example alan has given us. Reality is; "What you can see thru experiment is what you got."

No mystery about consciousness either, it is the function of our neural network and nothing more.

I been following this thread for way too long now and have decided it is going nowhere, will go nowhere, and is no longer worth the effort. The author of this thread is unwilling to deal with realities and therefore, it is a waste of time to continue giving him examples of it. To date, absolutely no progress has been made regarding the issues involved regarding this debate and will continue to remain such because the question Don has raised doesn't deal with scientific fact, it's a question about philosophy and mysticism.

In summation, I applaud Alan's comments for they should bring clarity to the mind of the honest reader and also offer much respect to Delorde and Cheryl j as well for their intelligent contributions. Nevertheless, I have exhausted all confidence in Don's ability to separate fact from fiction and will make my exit from this thread as well.

Sir Don.................I respect your persistence and the energy you've applied to this effort. If you had only applied such an effort to a worthwhile endeavor you would have surely profited greatly from it. Nevertheless, in all truth, you're spinning your wheels my friend, this exercise of yours has no future.

Good luck to all......................................

lol

Sir Ethos : thanks for your concern and points of view anyway .

Science does not require or need materialism or any other ism for that matter, science is all about free inquiry that should be restricted by no ism or ideology like materialism  : science is all about methodology and epistemology , the naturalist ones .

There is nothing intrinsic in naturalist science ,in  its naturalist methodology and in its naturalist epistemology , that go beyond materialism,needless to add thus ,  that prevents it from exploring the existence of immaterial souls, spirits , aliens lol , or whatever .

And since materialism is false , mainly because it cannot account for consciousness , let alone for its related anomalies , then consciousness cannot be a material process ,and the universe , including ourselves thus , cannot be just physical or material but also mental .The latter is irreducible to the former , cannot be equated with it or emerge from it either = the universe , including ourselves thus , cannot be explained by just material , biological or physical processes or causes ....not to mention the obvious fact that materialism should be kicked out of science , the sonner the better thus .

I think that you're smart enough as to be able to understand the simple above and much much more indeed.

Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 10/01/2015 21:08:58
I agree with you Ethos_ that there has been no substantive progress made in terms of the OP, and no prospect of any; nevertheless I've found it a useful source of educational references (especially from Cheryl - thanks Cheryl!).
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 10/01/2015 21:18:03
I agree with you Ethos_ that there has been no substantive progress made in terms of the OP, and no prospect of any; nevertheless I've found it a useful source of educational references (especially from Cheryl - thanks Cheryl!).

Well, you should reject materialism if you wanna see some progress or if you wanna see science progress .The false materialism has just been holding science back by imprisoning it within its false prison ,and must be thus kicked out of science  ,the sonner the better .

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author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg448250#msg448250 date=1420760521]
Ok, but what makes you so sure about those 60 % vegetative patients who seem to show no signs of consciousness ? They might experience some undetected yet minimal forms of consciousness too , who knows ?
The figures I gave are the current best approximation. I'm not going to argue definitions of consciousness, but in neurological terms, those vegetative patients with reticular brain stem damage cannot become conscious because that area controls all higher level arousal activity, including consciousness. Neither can those with certain high level cortical damage, or permanent axonal damage that impairs wide area connectivity. If you accept the evidence that consciousness awareness involves wide area rather than purely local activity of the brain, Stanislas Dehaene's techniques for elicitation of the characteristic P3 wave can positively determine conscious awareness for all patients (even for those in partial or total sensory isolation, tanscranial magnetic stimulation can be used). For those that show no global activation, consciousness, as generally recognised, doesn't occur. Dehaene has found patients whose RAS arousal level was just too low for consciousness, and used TMS to temporarily boost it so they became conscious, but to provide them with continuous consciousness would require some kind of stimulatory implant; near-future technology. This kind of empirical evidence provides some confidence that at least the gross functionality of the systems involved have been understood.

Stanislas Dehaene's work is very interesting indeed ,to some extent at least, and i see not why future technology cannot come up with some sort of stimulatory implant , as you put it  , to boost the  consciousness of brain damaged or vegetative  patients.

But , Deheane's problem,as a materialist scientist ,  is that he assumes that when he and his team can map all brain regions involved in conscious or aware perception ,and hence discover all "signatures of consciousness " in the brain , then they would understand how consciousness works completely,as he so bombastically said in that book of his in question : "Consciousness and the brain , Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts " ,by assuming that consciousness ,the mind and all their related processes are in the brain  .

Dehaene then introduced what he called "Global neuronal workspace " hypothesis in Chapter 5  "Theorizing consciousness " ,in  his above mentioned book  ,as follows :

 Quote : "...to make sense of consciousness .The proposal is simple : consciousness is brain-wide information sharing .The human brain has developed efficient long distance networks, particularly in the prefrontal cortex , to select relevant information and disseminate it throughout the brain .Consciousness is an evolved device that allows us to attend to a piece of information and keep it active within this broadcasting system .Once the information is conscious , it can be flexibly routed to other areas according to our current goals.Thus we can name it , evaluate it , memorize it ,or use it to plan the future .Computer simulations of neural networks show that the global neuronal workspace hypothesis generates precisely the signatures that we see in experimental brain recordings .It can also explain why vast amounts of knowledge remain inaccessible to our consciousness ." End quote .

Well, of course computer simulations of those specific neural networks would show the same 'signatures " that he saw in experimental brain recordings lol , that's no evidence for his materialist false belief assumption or hypothesis that consciousness is generated by those specific neural networks : it's a bit like confusing music in CD's with the music itself lol

Nevertheless , Dehaene can't justify his extraordinary jump or leap from the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC to the latter itself , let alone that he could explain to us how consciousness or awareness occurs or arises from neurochemistry .


Besides, it has been proved by many experiments , like the binocular rivalry experiment ,that consciousness is not continuous but discontinuous (Binocular rivalry experiment has been used to be able to differentiate between the brain regions that are involved in conscious or aware perception and between the ones that are not , and hence to try to pinpoint exactly what specific regions of the brain are involved in conscious perception .) :  consciousness  works thus via gaps , or as lunatic Dennett said on the subject : " The discontinuity of consciousness is striking because of the apparent continuity of consciousness " .

Experiments involving experienced meditation practitioners proved  the  fact that meditation and mindfulness can also improve the power of focused attention of people by enabling them to voluntarily hold in place the  binocular rival images they choose to ....the same goes for the  dichotic listening task  experiment where different auditory stimuli are   presented simultaneously , one to each ear....

There are also many forms of waking consciousness , the phenomenal consciousness (the felt consciousness ) , access consciousness , the active and passive consciousness , the 'basic " consciousness, the life consciousness or sentience which is called by western philosophy of mind  "creature consciousness " that pertains to a whole subject of experience , not to the individual states of that subject ,self-consciousness that comes in different forms ...., to mention just those .Take your pick .

To pretend thus that neuroscientists  already understand how the sensory perceptual or gross consciousness or awareness are all about is a misguided and incorrect assumption .

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Vegetative patients may be more conscious of the world than we think:
Yes; this is the difference between the commonly accepted definition of the condition, and the clinical diagnosis of the condition. Those who demonstrate conscious activity have been misdiagnosed as vegetative (according to Dehaene's usage).

Misdiagnosed ? So, Cambridge scientists conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients ? lol Come on .

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P.S.: In another context , A cousin of mine who was healthy and then pronounced dead , was almost buried 3 times .
Every time they tried to bury the poor lad , i was told , ( He lives in another country far away from mine ) , he would show signs of life at almost the last moment .

He even started to scream once , i was told , when they were ready to put his coffin into the grave .
It's possible, although unlikely (to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, once would be unfortunate, twice looks like incompetence, and three times smacks of fiction). But, if true, it would be another example of misdiagnosis - the diagnosis of clinical death not corresponding to the patient's actual condition.

I concur . But , it did happen like i told you it did , unfortunately and unbelievably enough .It's hard to believe , but it was true , i was told at least .


Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 10/01/2015 21:34:21
... Dehaene can't justify his extraordinary jump or leap from the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC to the latter itself , let alone that he could explain to us how consciousness or awareness occurs or arises from neurochemistry .
That's not how science works. Falsifiable hypotheses are made, based on observation, then tested. So far, the hypotheses have not been falsified.

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Besides, it has been proved by many experiments , like the binocular rivalry experiment ,that consciousness is not continuous but discontinuous (Binocular rivalry experiment has been used to be able to differentiate between the brain regions that are involved in conscious or aware perception and between the ones that are not , and hence to try to pinpoint exactly what specific regions of the brain are involved in conscious perception .) :  consciousness  works thus via gaps , or as lunatic Dennett said on the subject : " The discontinuity of consciousness is striking because of the apparent continuity of consciousness " .
Indeed, there are several leading neuroscientists who support this view, and it's not that surprising, given that our vision is also discontinuous. It's yet another demonstration that subjective perception (in this case, of continuity) can be deceptive. It has no substantive effect on Deheane's interpretations.

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To pretend thus that neuroscientists  already understand how the sensory perceptual or gross consciousness or awareness are all about is a misguided and incorrect assumption .
No-one pretends that, but we do know the areas and structures involved, and their basic functions - from observation and experiment.

Quote
Misdiagnosed ? So, Cambridge scientists conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients ? lol Come on .
It's a question of definition. A vegetative state is one lacking conscious awareness, by general definition. If a patient diagnosed as vegetative is found to be consciously aware, he's been misdiagnosed.

Quote
... it did happen like i told you it did , unfortunately and unbelievably enough .It's hard to believe , but it was true , i was told at least .
Lol! You clearly don't believe everything you're told, but you choose to believe that 'hard to believe' anecdote, despite calling it unbelievable... why, because it was a relative?
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: cheryl j on 11/01/2015 00:52:37

What part of the above you can't understand then , Cheryl ?
I can read perfectly fine, thank you, and understand what you've said. I just don't happen to agree, hard as that may be for you to fathom.
You've arrived at the very same answer you started with, and if you're completely happy with that outcome, so be it. I'll leave you to whine about materialism unharassed.

I'm out. 
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/01/2015 18:20:24
Quote
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg448362#msg448362 date=1420925661]
... Dehaene can't justify his extraordinary jump or leap from the neural correlates of consciousness or NCC to the latter itself , let alone that he could explain to us how consciousness or awareness occurs or arises from neurochemistry .
That's not how science works. Falsifiable hypotheses are made, based on observation, then tested. So far, the hypotheses have not been falsified.


Deheane did reduce by the way the multifaceted forms of waking consciousness to just one of them : the most gross one of them all : access consciousness .

Would you , Deheane or any other materialist scientist for that matter tell us how, on earth , how in Zeus ' name lol, how  the qualitative experiential subjective personal ...consciousness can emerge from the quantitative "impersonal objective "... brain activity that materialist magical inexplicable way ?

None of you can ,obviously , despite all your materialist absurd fancy theories on the subject ( I went almost through  all of them ) that cannot but turn out to be  some sort of simplistic and primitive child's play in disguise under scrutiny , so absurd paradoxical childish  simplistic and false are they deep down ,  simply because consciousness can never be reduced to , equated with or emerge from brain activity , biology , physics and chemistry , or from biological evolution , no way : why can't you , materialists , understand this simple fact ?

You can't understand that simple fact ,simply because you have been confusing materialism with science ,or because you have been equating the former with the latter , that's why , simply because you have been assuming that materialism has been 'scientific " .

More simply put :

Identity theory as well as the emergent property theory regarding the origin nature function and emergence of consciousness are just acts of faith , no scientific theories = untestable+ false  .

Consciousness is neither reducible to nor can it be equated with brain activity , let alone that consciousness can emerge from biology or from biological evolution .

To assumes otherwise is just an act of faith = untestable+ false .

Dehaene 's " Global neuronal workspace " hypothesis or consciousness as just a  brain-wide information sharing process is a bit like the other related theory : consciousness as integrated information = untestable and false , otherwise , how come computers cannot be conscious or aware since they work the same way ? = via global information sharing ...

Not to mention that they replace a mystery by yet another one , replacing the mystery of consciousness by the mystery of information, whatever the latter might mean in this context , that's no explanation thus .

The computer or machine analogy or metaphor regarding the nature , origin , emergence and function of life in general and consciousness and its brain in particular are obviously false , since life cannot but be conscious and aware ,unlike computers or machines , to say just that .

There are also major differences in kind between life and machines or computers as you should know as a biologist .

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Besides, it has been proved by many experiments , like the binocular rivalry experiment ,that consciousness is not continuous but discontinuous (Binocular rivalry experiment has been used to be able to differentiate between the brain regions that are involved in conscious or aware perception and between the ones that are not , and hence to try to pinpoint exactly what specific regions of the brain are involved in conscious perception .) :  consciousness  works thus via gaps , or as lunatic Dennett said on the subject : " The discontinuity of consciousness is striking because of the apparent continuity of consciousness " .
Indeed, there are several leading neuroscientists who support this view, and it's not that surprising, given that our vision is also discontinuous. It's yet another demonstration that subjective perception (in this case, of continuity) can be deceptive. It has no substantive effect on Deheane's interpretations.

Well, that's a matter of opinion , not a matter of fact . Human perception is deceptive anyway ,so what makes you think that Dehaene 's interpretation is not yet another illusion or an elaborate self-deceit ,since he tries to fit the empirical evidence into his a -priori held materialist production theory regarding the relationship between consciousness and its brain, not the other way around .

In other words :

Any scientific theory should be falsifiable and hence should be either supported corroborated verified predicted reproduced ... by the empirical evidence or rejected by the latter : Deheane 's interpretations of the empirical evidence is delivered by his a -priori held materialist beliefs that shape his own consciousness on the subject , instead of the other way around : that's the most unscientific form of confirmation bias .

There is thus no empirical evidence whatsoever that supports his production or emergent property theory regarding consciousness .

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To pretend thus that neuroscientists  already understand how the sensory perceptual or gross consciousness or awareness are all about is a misguided and incorrect assumption .
No-one pretends that, but we do know the areas and structures involved, and their basic functions - from observation and experiment.

Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, once again .
What Dehaene delivers on the subject of the nature , emergence and function of consciousness has not been supported by any empirical evidence whatsoever : he just takes for granted  his materialist interpretations of the empirical evidence as the real thing , simply put,by confusing  the forest with the tree that hides the forest  , so to speak  .

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Misdiagnosed ? So, Cambridge scientists conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients ? lol Come on .
It's a question of definition. A vegetative state is one lacking conscious awareness, by general definition. If a patient diagnosed as vegetative is found to be consciously aware, he's been misdiagnosed.

So, those Cambridge neuroscientists in question were so incompetent as to not be aware of the "fact " that they conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients lol , were so incompetent as not to able to tell the difference between real vegetative patients and between the misdiagnosed ones lol

Come on, dlorde .I know you can do much better than that . lol

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... it did happen like i told you it did , unfortunately and unbelievably enough .It's hard to believe , but it was true , i was told at least .
Lol! You clearly don't believe everything you're told, but you choose to believe that 'hard to believe' anecdote, despite calling it unbelievable... why, because it was a relative?

Nevermind . I lost sight of the man in question, so to speak, during a period of over 20 years just to hear that story of his alleged multiple "deaths " ,later on . I had no contact with him whatsoever all that time .

I can't verify that story  thus, either way  . I should adopt an agnostic position about it , i guess indeed, a bit like (kidding ) when Joy Jim claimed that he could adopt an agnostic position regarding all interpretations of QM which  are all "equally valid " as he added , just to say later on that the consciousness -based interpretation of QM is no longer  taken seriously by hardly anyone lol  .

It' not that i have been building some scientific theories on that alleged story of my cousin in question thus , like materialist scientists have been doing , in another major context ,  by confusing their materialist beliefs with science or by equating the former with the latter . lol

Oh, man : most of what materialist science has been telling us all regarding the origin of the universe , the nature of life , the origin of life , the evolution of life and much more has to be seriously and radically questioned ,to say the least, you have no idea  .

In other words :

Most of what the majority of scientists ,together with most people, have been taking for granted as science or as "the scientific world view " , without question, since the second half of the 19th century at least and counting , has been just the false materialist dogmatic belief system at the very heart of science , not the latter .

Most scientists thus and most people have been taking the false dogmatic ideological materialist belief system for granted as science or as "the scientific world view " ,all that time and counting .

What a serious and tragic predicament .Unbelievable .

Congratulations, scientist .
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/01/2015 19:06:01
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author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg448377#msg448377 date=1420937557]

What part of the above you can't understand then , Cheryl ?
I can read perfectly fine, thank you, and understand what you've said.

Well, it's not that you don't understand what i have been saying all along and on way too many occasions , you just don't want to understand that , so blinded have you been by your own materialist belief system , the one you have been taking for granted as science or as "the scientific world view " , like the majority of scientists today have been doing by the way .

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I just don't happen to agree, hard as that may be for you to fathom.
You've arrived at the very same answer you started with, and if you're completely happy with that outcome, so be it. I'll leave you to whine about materialism unharassed.

The fact that materialism is false ,including all its extensions ,including all materialist theories of mind , is not a matter of opinion, lady : it is a matter of fact .

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I'm out.

Well, that's too bad then . Your own choice .I respect that . But that won't make the above mentioned fact go away anyway .

That won't make the fact go away that science has to reject materialism and move on beyond it : that's what science usually does anyway  when it stumbles upon anomalies such as consciousness that explode in its scientific face ,and hence make science question its prevailing 'wisdom " of the moment .That's the only way science can progress :

 Imagine with me for a moment that Planck's work,for example,  was rejected by the mainstream scientific community , we would still be stuck within the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical deterministic mechanical Newtonian world view upon which materialism was built , ironically enough .

In fact , as materialists yourselves, guys , you are really still stuck within that false classical world view anyway . Congratulations .

I don't recall how many times i wanted to leave this forum,since i saw/ see no point in continuing this discussion ,simply because none of you , guys , was/is ready yet to consider the simple fact that materialism is false , let alone ready to change your minds on the subject .

Take care , best wishes,lady  .Thanks for all your valuable contributions .You've been a major and valuable contributor to this thread and certainly the most open-minded one . Cheers.

Science will be forcing you to become even more open-minded ,whether you would like it or not , if you live long enough to witness that inevitable fact .

It is only a matter of time thus before science ,all sciences for that matter , rejects materialism ,otherwise science will  remain just a dogmatic ideology or just a secular dogmatic materialistic atheistic religion deep down ,and hence loose its credibility and reliability as a valid source of knowledge ....

Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: DonQuichotte on 11/01/2015 21:07:19
Final thoughts , very quickly then  :

There is a lot more to say about the following , but i will have to leave it at that then :

Materialist science is in fact so primtitive and so fundamentally false ,so fundamentally way behind , thousands of years behind some aspects of some ancient wisdom , behind some aspects of human expériences , knowledge and wisdom, as to assume that all is matter ,thanks to materialism,  that all can be reduced to just matter or to just material ,physical or biological processes or  causes  :

So, You , all your joys , sorrows , your sense of self , your sense of free will , your thoughts , your dreams, imagination, creativity , love , beliefs and the rest are just some sort of sexy "ritual " lol strip-tease dances , oscillations or vibrations of your neurons or neurochemistry ,as some savant -idiot scientist said on the subject in other words of his (Francis Crick ) : absurd and paradoxical non-sense .

There are also a lots of "scientific " fairy tales regarding the origin of the universe , the nature of life , the origin of life , the evolution of life ....thanks to materialism ,that one is extremely perplexed by the fact that materialist 'science " is called science lol , seriously .

Materialism has been just imprisoning science within its false materialist theory of the nature of reality , and hence has been making science deliver a highly distorted and fundamentally false version of the nature of reality, to say the least , while holding the free inquiry spirit of science back by making it  explore only the false materialist version of the nature of reality and hence preventing science from going beyond that , despite the fact that naturalist science , its naturalist methodology and its naturalist epistemology do go beyond materialism and can be either dualist , idelalist monist or even theistic  .

Science should in fact neither be materialist nor otherwise , science should be metaphysically neutral , but that remains just a naive idealistic utopia so far , since science is just a human social activity ,and to some extent just a cultural one as well ( see how the Eurocentric ethnocentric and exclusive materialism has been equated with science for relatively so long now and counting .),so the old Cartesian dichotomy between the observer and the observed , between the subjective thus and the objective is false : there is no such thing as the independent observer or independent observed , they are inseparably and inescapably intertwined with each other  .

All scientific discoveries though , all scientific progress , all scientific material and technological advances have been the results of applying the scientific method by materialist and non-materialist scientists alike , so all that has been having absolutely nothing to do with materialism that's just a false conception of nature , a false belief , a philosophy , an outdated and supreseded 19th century ideology or world view that was built upon the approximately correct and fundamentally false classical mechanical deterministic Newtonian world view .

It's about time that science gets rid of materialism and for good , the sonner the better ,for the benefit and  progress of  both science and humanity as a whole .

It's about time for a post-materialistic science as the subject matter of this thread by the way .

P.S.: The above was /is no whining about materialism, Cheryl : the above is simply just facts , undeniable ones at that , that is .

Denying the latter won't make it go away either thus.

Have fun with your 'scientific " materialist délusions , guys then . Thank you all  for your valuable contributions , time , relative knowledge , and energy , appreciate indeed .Best wishes to all of you . See ya all in another life , so to speak .Cheers.
Title: Re: Major Bombshell : Manifesto For A Post-Materialistic Science :
Post by: dlorde on 11/01/2015 21:29:56
So, those Cambridge neuroscientists in question were so incompetent as to not be aware of the "fact " that they conducted that simple test on misdiagnosed vegetative patients lol , were so incompetent as not to able to tell the difference between real vegetative patients and between the misdiagnosed ones lol

No. It's really very simple. I'll explain one last time. There were a number of patients who had previously been diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. The neuroscientists gained access to them and carried out their tests, finding some of them to show characteristic signs of conscious awareness, contrary to the diagnosis they had been given.

Now I'm out.