by I have read
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormal ... t-ted.html and from there
As Stephen hasn't replied as yet I would venture to suggest that he may mean the following:
The existence of dark matter / dark energy carries no "spiritual" implications and hence is not a taboo subject among materialists.
The existence of psi, however - if shown to be valid - would imply that the mind operates beyond the brain. This poses all sorts of problems, because it might imply the existence of a "soul" or non-material aspect of the mind.
For materialists this is taboo.
I personally like the statement by Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Johns Hopkins, that after 40 years of teaching physics he realized he could no longer remain a materialist, for the simple reason that there is no material! (See his essay 'The Mental Universe' - published in 'Nature', no less - available online.) In Henry's view, the universe is entirely mental. This was also the opinion of his scientific hero Sir Arthur Eddington.
Professor Henry has said much the same as Stephen's comment - he said that quantum physics shows the universe to be wholly mental in character, (a Great Thought rather than a Great Machine, in Eddington's phrase) and that the failure of most scientists to accept this is a psychological problem, not a physics problem. In other words, "non-scientific factors" influence scientists' beliefs.
See also the books of scientist/philosopher Bernardo Kastrup for a similar explanation of our "dreamed-up reality".
I have done some research on that guy 'Bernardo Kastrup'
(Both of these talk about his ideas and aligning them with Sheldrake's Morphic Field)
http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/03/ ... rphic.html
http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/03/ ... brain.html
Now here is the crucial point I want to make: According to the non-materialist hypotheses, certain brain activity patterns are, in a way, analogous to 'keys' that 'unlock' (not necessarily in a causal, but perhaps a synchronistic manner) the awareness of certain phenomena; phenomena that would otherwise be either unavailable to consciousness ('transmission' hypothesis) or kept out of it ('filter' and 'knot of consciousness' hypotheses). So why should it be different in the case of memories? Why shouldn't access to memories be correlated to 'keying' brain activity (which Rupert Sheldrake would call 'resonant' activity)? If the non-materialist hypotheses are to be internally consistent, that should in fact be the case. If physical events are found in the brain that correlate with memory access, that in itself would not contradict any of the non-materialist hypotheses, but in fact reinforce their internal consistency. Proponents of the non-materialist hypotheses should look forward to the discovery of clear physical correlates of memory access.
But one thing must be made clear: The non-materialist hypotheses entail that certain activity in the brain should correlate with memory access; but not necessarily that these physical correlates carry the entire information entailed by the corresponding memory. As Sheldrake explained through a clever metaphor, the 'transmission' hypothesis, for instance, looks upon the brain as a kind of TV tuner. Think of an old analog TV set: The electrical activity in the tuner circuitry causes it to resonate with a broadcast electromagnetic field in the air. It is the latter that carries the information of the TV show one watches, not the tuner. Nonetheless, activity in the tuner correlates well with the programming and, in fact, 'keys' into it. Naturally, trying to crack the TV tuner open to find the information corresponding to last night's show is futile, despite the correlation observed when the show was being watched through the 'keying' action of the tuner.
I've read it here: http://userpages.umbc.edu/~braude/pdfs_ ... ialism.pdf. I agree with Braude's key criticism that morphic fields cannot be objective, autonomous, mechanistic entities in nature, as proposed by Sheldrake (a criticism Braude repeats in different forms, and justifies in different ways, throughout the paper above). As Braude put it: "Sheldrake seems to take the hard-line Platonist view that morphic units and their associated morphic fields are natural kinds -- i.e. items in an interest-, purpose-, and context-independent set of natural furniture." As Braude, I also disagree with Sheldrake's views here, and wrote about it before: http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2012/03/ ... rphic.html. I think the evidence Sheldrake assembles for the hypothesis that nature forms "habits" is indeed compelling, but it is rather evidence of idealism (i.e. nature as essentially mind, since mind forms habits), instead of objective morphic units as autonomous parts of the "furniture of nature." Morphic fields, in my opinion, are still valid as explanatory metaphors, not autonomous ontological entities, and Braude himself seems to agree.
I do disagree with Braude in his criticism of the resonance model. He claims that resonance doesn't work since similarity is not built into nature but depends on a subjective evaluation by human minds. The latter point is true, but Sheldrake uses the word "similarity" metaphorically. Resonance is a physical phenomenon that does happen between two systems capable of resonating with each other regardless of our opinions regarding their similarities. A famous example of resonance is between wind and a bridge (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Nar ... nal_bridge), which are hardly similar entities. Therefore, on this point, I depart from Braude and stay with the resonance metaphor, which I think is valid. Braude's argument rests entirely on Sheldrake's use of the word "similarity" and misses the deeper point. Under idealism, you could say that thoughts (oscillations in the medium of mind) can indeed resonate with other thoughts that are amenable to resonance (whether we think these thoughts are similar or not; in fact, we could even _define_ "similar" as "amenable to resonance").
I have also found articles relating to link ESP and his dualism world view.
Great interview, although I have some points to discuss.First, it seems clear that the fact that decreasing brain activity tends to increase mental activity, falsifies the production hypothesis and confirms the filter hypothesis, but I believe that psi phenomena such as clairvoyance are a stronger support for the filter hypothesis, because the ESP would be just what happens when consciousness reaches certain information that has not been filtered by the brain.And second, over idealism, materialism and dualism, I would stay with dualism due to psychic phenomena, but rejected the idealism because it seems rather unintuitive. I only accept idealism if the connection between our will and events materials be stronger and more obvious, but considering that the reality actually offers considerable resistance to our will, idealism does not seem reasonable.[/quote]
Then, Bernardo responds by
Juan, depth psychology has consistently shown that aspects of our unconscious minds are quasi-objective; that is, independent of egoic will. If those unconscious aspects are productive, they could reconcile idealism with the indisputable fact that reality is not very acquiescent to our egoic wishes. There are other explanations though, like the idea that reality may be an emergent phenomenon of mind interactions. All this said, I personally entertain Dualism as a valid metaphor... as something perhaps "true enough," even while not considering it the ultimate truth.
Found in the comments section http://www.skeptiko.com/bernardo-kastru ... -research/
He is interviewed here as well, http://www.exploreyourspirit.com/blog/t ... RIq6v.dpbs and here http://www.etvita.com/2013/03/making-ca ... -vita.html
What the hell are they talking about? Can you guys help disprove it?
Wow I feel like I have gone down a deep rabbit hole. My attempts to disprove ESP really made me go much deeper in deep subjects like materialism vs idealism vs dualism. I myself, am an objectivist and a materialist. I read up the wikipedia article on Quantum Mysticism and they have really radical ideas. I have absolutely no idea what they talk about there. The scientists I have mentioned from the comments above, Richard Conn Henry/Sir Arthur Eddington and also from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism, Professors Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist, commenting on that paper, stated: "Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: 'it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked')." They concluded their commentary by adding that in their view, because of these findings, "a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism
. I really have a hard time accepting that the mind is all there is or whatever the $%^& they are saying or even yet we are in a dream? or solipsism? or that we are in a matrix? What the hell are they saying.Professors Richard Conn Henry and Stephen R. Palmquist, commenting on that paper, stated: "Now we are beginning to see that quantum mechanics might actually exclude any possibility of mind-independent reality and already does exclude any reality that resembles our usual concept of such (Aspect: 'it implies renouncing the kind of realism I would have liked')." They concluded their commentary by adding that in their view, because of these findings, "a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism
So can you try to debunk the Bernardo guy with his links to morphic resonance/telepathy? Or basically if you cant, can you guys tell me what he is talking about? I have no idea.
And btw, does anybody know why google search suggestions has Rupert sheldrake and alan watts summed together? Any similarities between them?
