Between Science and Spirituality

The Chronicle of Higher Education ^ | Nov. 29, 2002 | John Horgan

[betty boop]

Though not conclusive, the phenomenon fits my contention that knowledge is assembled apart from the transceiver-brain, i.e. in a non-temporal consciousness.

That's what it looks like to me, too, Alamo-Girl. And testing this postulate might be awfully difficult for traditional science. Seems a whole lot of the most brilliant minds in physics, for instance, have just decided to "take a pass" on the problem. Heck, they deny there even is a problem.

Yet it seems to me precisely this problem is what constitutes the "measurement problem" of QM.

It all boils down to the basic epistemological questions: What does man kow? How does he know it? And how does he know he knows it?

If science is determined to leave "man" out of its equations -- that is, human consciousness (not even to mention the unconscious)-- then, what purpose does it serve?

[cornelis]

You must be thinking of T-U-L-I-P or the Grim Snipper.

[betty boop]

Alamo-Girl, thanks so much for asking for the elaboration on the Lockean-Berkeleyan “dispute.” I’m going to have to go by memory here. The main thing is, I can’t lay my hands on Berkeley!! (so to speak). Yet I held him in my hands, not three months ago. I just don’t remember where I put him down.

But this will be my best recollection of their dispute, which IMHO should be a lot more “famous” than is recognized today.

John Locke, esteemed British Empiricist philosopher, among other things forayed into the thorny field of epistemology.

He thought that the reality of “objects” of experience could be validated by means of human sense perception; and because the sensory apparatus of human beings was assumed not to vary very much from one individual to the next, then if you got “consensus” that a thing exists on the basis of shared perceptions, then you’ve proved its existence. Such that, if you had two guys sitting around a black table, the following reasonable discourse might ensue:

“A: So here we are, sitting around this table. You do see this table, don’t you?

B: Well, sure. There it is.

A: Well, just to be sure, why don’t you try knocking on it?

B: Okay. Yep, I’ve knocked on it. That’s a table all right.

A: Q.E.D.!!!! Now, surely you’ve noticed the table is black.”

B: Huh??? What’s ‘black?’”

IMHO, B’s last response was the death of Locke’s argument, even before QM burst into the human imagination.

As mentioned earlier, a certain Irish philosophical Idealist by the name of Berkeley took issue with the Lockean model.

As an Idealist, Berkeley should have been opposed in this debate by a Realist; but I gather there wasn’t one to be had, in his day and age. That being the case, I further gather he decided to settle for the best Empiricist he could find at the time -- and that would be Locke – against whom to mount his challenge.

Which boils down to this: The Truth of reality isn’t what’s “in your eyes,” as mediated by the sense apparatus and ultimately by the brain. There is no particular “thing” about which human beings can be relied upon always to agree, presumably after having consulted with the operations of their sensory processing taking place in them somewhere. There is, in fact, absolutely nothing material in the world at all.

For all the “objects” you see are in their essence the immaterial “signs” of the activity of the divine Mind. The Lockean postulate rests on the assumption that there is little variability in the way human individuals process information. QED, the “object” must be “real,” if you can get at least two people to agree on its validating criteria.

To which Berkeley said: This is not about “objects” of “sense perception.” This is about “acts” of “pure” cognition. This is about something closely analogous to language: these objects you “see” are not physical things; they are “signs” in a system of significance directly analogous to the “words” of human language. There is little or nothing “physical” about the object in view. It merely stands either as a discrete “word,” or perhaps a part of speech, in a discourse – the discourse being God’s. Reasoning further, God’s speaking this discourse – or at least thinking about it maybe -- is what upholds the universe, in the end. Berkeley being Berkeley – he started out as a philosopher, but ended up taking religious orders – the “discourse,” of course, had to be God’s.

And he assumed man was tuned to God’s language, man being “made in the Image.” Or at least, any man could tune in, if he troubled himself to learn the language.

But whether or not he did, Berkeley’s insight “explains” why a tree could “factually” fall in the forest, even if there were “no one there” to hear the sound of the fall. For Berkeley’s theory did require there be a conscious mind to engage the “sign” in order to invest the “sign” with meaning; that is, with existence. So if a tree fell in the forest, with no man to see/hear the event, there would always be Infinite Mind, the Omniscient God Who sees and hears and knows everything, including a tree falling in a forest with no one around as witness to the event.

God sees it. And therefore, it is. It is His “active intervention” in the world of His Creation – what Christians call Divine Providence or Grace – that upholds all by itself the entire order of being and provides its constant sustenance, without which it would imminently, utterly perish. He is the One indisputable Source and Sustainer of Reality.

It all seems so simple as to be childish -- yet a “childishness” somehow more “sophisticated” than what Locke came up with.

Anyhoot, IMHO QM has nailed Locke to the barnyard door. Berkeley, as far as I can tell, is still “out there,” floating around in human consciousness, beckoning yet unresolved.

And unresolved because there is no way to “resolve” any original work of human experience, intellect, and spirit in terms of the scientific method. The method is supposed to be our tool, not our master.

It’s really just that simple. JMHO FWIW

[VadeRetro]

The Truth of reality isn’t what’s “in your eyes,” as mediated by the sense apparatus and ultimately by the brain. There is no particular “thing” about which human beings can be relied upon always to agree, presumably after having consulted with the operations of their sensory processing taking place in them somewhere. There is, in fact, absolutely nothing material in the world at all.

Here's where philosophy and science part company. I can see your fascination with this premise. It does spin the brain. Scientifically, this idea is useless. It doesn't take you anywhere or tell you anything. You mull it over, then just file it and go back to presuming that the black tables in your environment really are black tables.

That's all you can do.

[Kevin Curry]

A = A far beyond its utility. It's fine, but in the end it is a banal observation.

Sums it up about as well as I have ever seen it summed up.

[Kevin Curry]

Someday you really ought to try thinking instead of mentally knee-jerking your way to confirming your meager materialist biases and prejudices.

But that might frighten you. Better to stay safe.

[VadeRetro]

... confirming your meager materialist biases and prejudices.

Just keeping a nodding acquaintance with the real world. I'll tell it I heard from you.

[js1138]

Someday you really ought to try thinking instead of mentally knee-jerking your way to confirming your meager materialist biases and prejudices.

That's what I call a home run in philosophical discourse.

Well reasoned and crushing. Worthy of the azure coprophilia award.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing these different points of view!

Ortega's notice of the consiousness as relational helps me connect the dots: there is common confusion as to when we are speaking of the action or passion of the one, or the action or passion of the other. Even if we set aside the slip of the sinful moment when we did not make ourselves clear, there still remains the revolutionary jack in the box or the cameleon, the poikilos, who plays the game well, now preferring to talk about the one and now the other in an attempt to outwit existence as he wishes it.

This makes sense, but would you say that consciousness can also be self-contained in other situations?

[cornelis]

Yes, we can withdraw from actual relations (Ortega makes note of that).

Yet in the history of philosophy and science this withdrawal has occured to an extreme. Even Marx capitalized on this extreme when he engaged his jargon of alienation. And at least since him, a withdrawal has occured to such an extent that it has been raised to a "supreme virtue." Or, --with other words and another example-- when we recognize how an epistemology chosen in a state of withdrawal obliviates the primary relations, then we begin to see what Voegelin calls a "second reality." It is secondary because it is derivative. And when that first relation is ignored, and the second abstracted system is taken as primary through an "imaginative oblivion" then we can no longer call it a science or philosophy marked by integrity.

It would be helpful if in each instance we make clear and distinct the alienated conscious from the relational.

An important point to add is that this problem besets science and philosophy alike. An attempt to safeguard science (or philosophy) from the fault is merely another example of further self-alienation.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post, Nebullis! Betty boop, I'm pinging you because you might be interested in some of these links.

I suppose someone could rig up a device that could receive this signal noise- and damage-free. Then it could be broadcast to everyone!

I suspect the signal is non-temporal to our perceived space/time coordinates, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look for it. After all, for a long time there was a question whether neutrinos had mass, and the question was answered by inference, e.g. rare collisions with electrons (as I recall.)

I am very keen on harmonics. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe harmonics is the mechanism underlying the big bang, which gave rise to fields, then geometry/dimension, particles, physical laws, etc.

I was encouraged when sound waves were found recorded in the cosmic background radiation at the moment photons decoupled and light went on its way. Likewise, I am encouraged by the super-string theories which include resonance. Super String Theory

Even now, in the quest for the Higgs boson, Fermilab may have a lot to tell us about super-symmetry: Supersymmetry Prospects at an Upgraded Fermilab Tevatron Collider

The basics on super-strings and super-symmetry

The basics on dimensions

The basics at inception

If harmonics are the mechanism at inception, as I suspect they are, the astronomers may hold the key - because they are uniquely able to look back in time. IMHO, there may be more imprintings found - or a projection of quantum activity to the astronomical scale - or an accumulative effect of resonance.

In sum, I expect all of these efforts to provide the clues to explore consciousness as existing apart from a transceiver brain.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your post and for your agreement!

Seems a whole lot of the most brilliant minds in physics, for instance, have just decided to "take a pass" on the problem. Heck, they deny there even is a problem.

Indeed, but as I just posted to you above - I suspect they are getting into the very same subject through the backdoor. LOL!

If science is determined to leave "man" out of its equations -- that is, human consciousness (not even to mention the unconscious)-- then, what purpose does it serve?

Sadly, many scientists are loath to broach beyond the known physical realm. This is particularly true in natural sciences.

Frankly I don't see how any progress could be made if scientists limited themselves to only exploring that which is already physically known to exist. And fortunately, they haven't. The biggest leaps, IMHO, have been made by the physicists and mathematicians who are not narrowly constrained.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for "taking us there" in the debate between Locke and Berkeley! Fascinating!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the further explanation!

It would be helpful if in each instance we make clear and distinct the alienated conscious from the relational.

I agree!

[betty boop]

I can see your fascination with this premise. It does spin the brain. Scientifically, this idea is useless.

I must protest, my strong and lovely dance partner -- BUT: My entire point is that, not only is "this premise" NOT scientifically "useless"; but that it is perhaps the problem that science most urgently needs to engage -- in order to advance a truly human future.

The daunting problem mitigating against any such easy scientific solution seems to be (IMHO) that science, in our time, overwhelmingly relies on the "instrumental consciousness."

Instumental consciousness essentially boils down to a theory of knowledge based on computation.

But just take a look at extant human culture and history, where you will find copious refutation of this hypothesis: in human language, art, music, literature, science, etc.

It's like I said before: If science is determined to leave "man" out of its equations, then what purpose does science serve?

Well, I don't know quite what to make of all this myself really, but I'm working on it. But it's time to go to bed.

Good Night, VadeRetro. May you have pleasant dreams.

[BraveMan]

Ecclesiastes 1

Everything Is Meaningless

1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

3 What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

[Cvengr]

Here's a slightly different twist.

Let's say that the local fire inspector is touring facilities. He enters a building where an owner has recently installed a warehouse office using off-the-shelf components and nobody has ever really inspected the facility.

Those people who installed the facility really didn't know much about construction nor plumbing codes or fluid mechanics.

Over a period of years, a trend develops where warehouse components are built without properly designed fire protection water sprinkler systems. Year after year the problem is believed to exist by others and funds solicited to solve the problem. A contract is let to install fire sprinklers but in the mean time, more offices are installed without sprinklers.

So now the building has some temporary offices protected and others not protected, but a new owner arrives and contracts out to remove all the temporary offices.

The warehouse is secured with few visitors and those who do see the area have authority to be there, generally unguarded, but not so as to allow unauthorized work in the area.

Now the inspector comes along, looking at an office to be demolished along with new fire sprinklers which were just installed. Upon closer inspection, he discovers one of the offices had sprinklers installed below the ceiling and penetrating the ceiling, but above the ceiling, there was no connection to any fire main. In fact the piping had been cut, left in place, unconnected to any water source and none immediately available except maybe 30 feet away. The observation of the isolated pipe only comes after the inspector nearly cuts his back on the exposed sharp edges of the cut end of the pipe, not yet threaded, but which still had dust caked on the pipe indicating it had been left abandoned for some time.

The inspector even spends a little time thinking to himself as he departs that maybe it wasn't a big deal. Nobody ever used it, nobody else knew about it, the people who installed it didn't know what was involved to connect it to a main, the engineers weren't made aware of the installation and those removing it could care less and it wasn't ever used anyways.

The inspector departs puzzled a bit, but thinking how queer the observation was but that perhaps it was connected otherwise and leaving it alone. He departs for the weekend as the warehouse is locked up and placed under tight security.

The following Monday, the inspector decides to return to look again at the water system to see what it would take to connect to another water line which he remembered connected another part of the building.

Upon returning, he discovers the exact same line he nearly injured himself on previously, was now indeed reconnected to a nearby watermain. The pipe had caked on dust, had been in place for several years, and the exposed lateral nowhere to be found other than the connected system.

The inspector checks and nobody had entered the warehouse, only he was aware of the situation.

he now thinks to himself that even though he was quite convinced of his memory that the previous disconnected isolated piping was very real several days before, that the same situation could not be explained since nobody had either reason nor time nor access to correct the situation and the material evidence of the site indicated the pipe had always been connected. His only conclusion was that his memory was in error as he returned a bit puzzled to his office. As he sat to his desk, laughing at himself, that he could have been so convinced by a mistaken memory to actually believe somebody could have snuck in to change the piping,..he moves a set of drawings of his desk of the site. The same set of drawings, he had forgotten that he had taken with him on his first visit and had made a few measurements and notes of the cut pipe when he had previously noted the abandoned pipe originally.

Now in this situation, several quandries arise.

1) How could this have occured?
2) Perhaps Berkeley's argument about a tree falling in a forest without somebody around to think about it has further reaching physical consequences.
3) SciFi literature and some fiction touches upon simialr scenarios. Jouneys to Trafalmadore in Kurt Vonnegut novels touch perhaps upon the spiritual domain although perhaps not expressed as such.
4) Perhaps, the same phenomenon touches upon gnostic arguments. Not that I assert gnosticism is sound, quite the contrary, I assert some aspects might be valid but unsound, i.e. not true.
5) I've been led to consider the epistemilogical foundations of materialism and empiricism and science in general from this episode. What if the existence of that pipe was somehow implicit from man's reason, thought, belief, or even faith? Perhaps a little Twilight Zone corner of the world for a time and local place, hadn't experienced any work or thought by man that certain things needed to have been in place a certain way, yet upon their discovery nonchalently, the laws of the universe fell into place and the components fell back into existence.

A sort of 'Truman Show' made known only to the angels and God might account for some things not explicable otherwise.

Such incidents aren't that common, but not that uncommon either. I've encountered perhaps 5 over 30 years which I become cognizant about in various circumstances. No law of physics seems to explain, yet nonetheless real. The far vast realm of possible physical phenomenon always obeys the common laws of science we have observed, yet these handful periodically arise.

It would be as disingenous to disregard these isolated counterexamples to our understanding of reality as to accept them.

I happen to work in a more isolated remote area, where such anamolies are more obvious or less explicable than in a more metropolitan area. I have considered that perhaps the more people conceive or perceive a particular order in the world, the more likely it is established. In order to balance all the ideas, ideas such as nothing happens without hard work, then accordingly much of what we need must be produced from hard work.

Unanticipated events seem to act as a check and balance to such notions, but then again what drives those events other than what might seem the obvious?

Scripture takes on an even more powerful note after considering such possible worlds and then abiding by Scripture. One doesn't need to appeal to gnosticism to explain the events, but on the contrary, those who lack faith might errantly formulate gnostic doctrines in order to explain some very real things they have experienced.

I want to say that upon departing the area originally I had asked a simple prayer regarding Christ's ability to perform miracles associated with the loaves and the fishes and that perhaps the pipe was severed in similar vein since nobody else could perceive it, it wouldn't harm to place the issue under faith. However, I am also scarred enough in my soul, to not remember exactly how my prayers at the time were formulated. Interesting testimonial though,..it is indeed true.

[betty boop]

Pretty amazing, Cvengr. And totally inexplicable....

You wrote, "I have considered that perhaps the more people conceive or perceive a particular order in the world, the more likely it is established." I've considered that, too. It would help to explain why progressive ideologues do not brook competition to their ideas, and insist on controlling the institutions of popular culture -- e.g., the public schools, media, academe, etc. Let people see only the ideologue's view of reality, then just keep reinforcing it (propagandize), and pretty soon you get a "brave new world." It's a form of magic...the intentionalist consciousness of wizards at work....

Thank you for sharing a most perplexing experience. I credit it, but sure can't explain it.

[Phaedrus]

The method is supposed to be our tool, not our master.

The daunting problem mitigating against any such easy scientific solution seems to be (IMHO) that science, in our time, overwhelmingly relies on the "instrumental consciousness."

Instumental consciousness essentially boils down to a theory of knowledge based on computation.

But just take a look at extant human culture and history, where you will find copious refutation of this hypothesis: in human language, art, music, literature, science, etc.

It's like I said before: If science is determined to leave "man" out of its equations, then what purpose does science serve?

As a battle scarred veteran of the Evo Wars, I am acutely aware of the pernicious ends to which language can be put and so am not fond of the language analogy. It is instructive and hugely ironic, I think, that among the most effective and penetrating critiques of Darwinism were books written by lawyers, Norman MacBeth (Darwin Retried) and Phillip Johnson (Darwin On Trial). And yet, the most devastating treatment of Darwin's work was produced, IMHO, by Gertrude Himmelfarb (Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution), a genius-class intellectual who makes clear in stunningly penetrating detail that almost the whole of Darwin's argument was an exercise in sophistry.

Language plus honesty will get you there, I suppose is the lesson, but honesty seems to be in short supply among the designated university intellectuals these days, at least insofar as their pronouncements reach the public. I also suppose their "out" is that one must know truth before one can express it, assuming that is the intent, and knowing truth is extremely difficult. But I think that their intent is suspect. I think that there is too much insecurity among the professoriate. I think they hide from reality and that this insecurity leads them toward materialism, bias, sophistry and a denial of God.

This is, I know, digression, but interesting digression, would you not agree?

If nothing else, the physicists have shown us that math works better as a tool to penetrate reality. It is a language with built-in integrity, and productive.

Enter QM. A century ago. We have been stuck on the horns of the "observer" dilemma for a very long while and every turn of phrase imaginable has been employed to circumscribe and explain away this deep mystery in material terms. In recent decades, math and experiment have fianlly and firmly established the fundamental reality of that mystery. At the micro level, we have indeterminacy, at the macro, hard reality. One becomes the other. How?

Well, if nothing else, we have established that materialist science doesn't have the answer and it is in headlong, fervent denial about it. And Yes, "The method is supposed to be our tool, not our master."

More observational irony: A few centuries ago, it was understood that science was the pursuit of understanding of God's design. That pursuit has been stunningly successful. Yet language has been tasked with turning this truth on its head, to deny the existence of God. But that's all it is, sophistry. Design is self-evident and it takes many volumes of treacly language to move us away, intellectually, from this truth. Let me repeat this: The Design Is Self-Evident.

I will stop now.

[js1138]

Sadly, many scientists are loath to broach beyond the known physical realm. This is particularly true in natural sciences.

Frankly I don't see how any progress could be made if scientists limited themselves to only exploring that which is already physically known to exist. And fortunately, they haven't. The biggest leaps, IMHO, have been made by the physicists and mathematicians who are not narrowly constrained.

Being "known to exist" requires a handle. Althouth QM is the weirdest phenomenon ever approached by science, it is the result of experimental data, collected by equipment designed for research. It is the obligation of anyone hypothesizing a previously unknown phenomenon, to invent the equipment needed to study it.