Posted on 08/02/2003 4:43:59 PM PDT by betty boop
The following theory is proposed to explain the observed phenomena of thought and spiritual/mystical experience/creativity:
PROBLEM:
(a) Thought is the subtlest emergent entity from the human brain. As of now, though it is taken to arise from complex biochemical (neuronal) processes in the brain, we have no means of detecting any physical aspect of thought.
(b) All sensory experiences (light, sound, smell, taste, sound) result from an interaction between an external agent (photon, phonon, etc.) and some aspect of the brain.
HYPOTHESIS:
(a) It is proposed that, like the electromagnetic field, there is an extremely subtle substratum pervading the universe which may be called the universal thought field (UTF). This may even be trans-physical, i.e., something that cannot be detected by ordinary physical instruments. Or it may be physical and has not yet been detected as such.
(b) Every thought generated in the brain creates its own particular thought field (PTF).
Theory based on the above hypotheses:
(a) Just as EM waves require the complex structure of the brain to be transduced into the experience of light and color, the UTF requires the complex system of the human brain to create local thoughts. In other words, when the UTF interacts with certain regions of the brain, thoughts arise as by-products.
(b) Interactions between PTFs and brains generate other PTFs. Indeed every thought is a different reaction-result to either the UTF or to a PTF.
(c) There is an important difference between UTF and PTF. UTF does not require a material medium for acting upon a brain. But a PTF cannot be transmitted from one brain to another without a material medium, such as sound, writing, signs, etc.
(d) In some instances, as with molecular resonance, certain brains are able to resonate with the UTF in various universal modes. Such resonances constitute revelations, magnificent epic poetry, great musical compositions, discovery of a mathematical theorem in a dream, and the like, as also mystic experiences.
(e) This perspective suggests that there can be no thought without a complex brain (well known fact); and more importantly, that there exists a pure thought field (UTF) in the universe at large which may be responsible for the physical universe to be functioning in accordance with mathematically precise laws.
ANALOGIES:
The following parallels with other physical facts come to mind:
(a) Phosphorescence & luminescence: When radiation of shorter wavelengths falls on certain substances, the substances emit visible light immediately or after some time. Likewise when the UTF falls on a complex cerebral system, it emits thoughts of one kind or another.
(b) One of the subtlest entities in the physical universe is the neutrino, which does not interact with ordinary matter through gravitation, strong, or electromagnetic interaction. Being involved only in the weak interaction, it is extremely difficult to detect it. The UTF is subtler by far than the neutrino, and may therefore (if it be purely physical) it may be far more difficult to detect.
Actually Consort, on my reading, Neils Bohr's quantum epistemology ensures that it cannot be metaphysical at all. Ensuring that is its entire point. Certainly the Copenhagen Interpretation has no metaphysical taint to it: It is relentlessly, "brutally realistic."
The point of that epistemology is to keep all ontological questions beyond the pale of physics. The reason for that, I gather, is to purge the "hidden ontology" -- that has informed classical science since the 17th century -- from science altogether. That hidden ontology is comprised of two components. The first lies at the heart of Newtonian mechanics and classical (pre-Einsteinian) physics: that physical theory "exists" in a one-to-one correspondance with every physical object it describes. The second is the Cartesian ontological dualism which utterly separates mind from the world. On closer inspection, both of these turn out to be metaphysical ideas. And, on my reading of Kafatos and Nadeau et al., quantum theory has decisively falsifed both.
The new ontology is based, not on classical science's correspondance principle, but on the principle of complementarity. It takes for granted that the Universe and the outcomes of all events taking place within it cannot be certainly known. Scientific observation can only be done on the "parts" of a system. But the epistemology reflects the fact that the investigation of parts cannot give you the complete description of the whole of which they are parts. One may make inferences; but the whole, per se, is never available for scientific investigation, on principle. To speculate about the whole is effectively to engage in metaphysics. Which is not the business of science.
The main purpose of Bohr's quantum epistemology is to serve and preserve the integrity of science. But I suspect it has relevance outside of science.
Thanks for writing, Consort!
Don't leave out the possibility of hypnotic qualities, RightWhale.
On our 4D macroworld view, persons are all physically "separate" from each other. A given person's subjectivity, preeminently including mind or consciousness, is assumed to be perfectly "separate" from anybody else's subjectivity. We are our physical bodies, nice and solid and discrete.
But on the microworld or quantum view, at all levels of our being we are all parts and participants in a great variety of fields (e.g., gravitational, electromagnetic, quantum) that we are all concurrently "sharing." Fields have inductive properties. Fields mediate ceaseless exchanges of quanta from all other parts of the field. And fields are infinite in size.
This is the basis for speculation about the collective consciousness field.
I don't think we know enough about it yet to be able to characterize is properties or processes. But these are being studied.
There may be some like that, but most of the atheists I know simply see no evidence for any god, the Christian version included.
In fact, it's often an extrapolation from the fact that there is no evidence for any sort of 'spirit world' (anything from elves to angels to djinns to ESP to 'souls').
Sure, there are a lot of stories and scriptures, (many of which contradict each other - the Bible doesn't teach transmigration of souls, the Hindu Scriptures do) and some personal anecdotes (none of which is believable *as evidence for unseen 'dimensions' or 'disembodied intelligences' or whatever* - Occam's Razor tells me they're evidence of psychological processes.)
From the Church of Apatheism website:
Simply put, theists don't deny, agnostics don't know, atheists don't believe, and apatheists don't care about the existence of gods.
I'm familiar with the "You are there" show but can't recall it exactly - and I'm not sure why. Hmmmm...
Hidden flame placemarker.
The fields accepted by conventional science have the property of being quantifiable. They do not vanish under the spotlight of skepticism.
I am trying tho see the point of this by can't. Are you suggesting that people isolated from the rhetoric and crowd noise would be affected by some non-physical emanation? What exactly do you mean by group effect?
It's actually simple, as basic things tend to be. The most foundationally honest and stable way to look at anything is in God's light. No matter the subject, this is the case. If it is the science of chemistry, astrophysics, quantum physics, meteorology, or the study of G.W. Carver's peanut, the question should be, "God, how is it that Your (peanut) is the way it is and functions as you have made it?" Quarks and consciousnesses too.
It gets said over and over that science is science and to consider God, it ceases to be science and becomes tainted with something people call "theology." Nothing is further from the truth. There is no such thing as proper science that does not include God, just as there is no such thing as the study of anything else that does not include God. (Remember the false dichotomy of dualism?)
Is there any truth, any fact anywhere, that is not God's truth and God's fact? We are told the answer to this question -- by God.
Trading materialism in for ideas of collective consciousness doesn't bring about the proper understanding for how things are and how they function. It may provide more conceptual gem stones for us, but it does not make jewelry. To understand even the most mundane technology aptly, it must be seen in its setting.
Whatever field is being studied, it is God's field and it is for His pleasure and He is there and involved with utter intentness and purpose, utter power and utter subtlety, sowing and reaping in that field. I'll let you finish the quote, "...for from Him and through Him and to Him are ___ ______."
There is no such thing as the divorce of the whats and the hows from the Utterly Personal whys. Attempts to make this separation are fundamentally and effectively insane.
Scientific speculation is laudatory, but like all our observations and conceptualizations, it is dark and our job is to shed light upon it, not to call it light.
Big step, jumping from "group effect" to a proposed field that no one has yet managed to observe or describe in any detail. I merely suggest that we take care not to violate the 11'th commandment of scientific investigation - "Thou shalt not multiply entities without necessity" ;)
You have to look at it yourself, js1138, and come to your own conclusions. Probably the easiest place to observe the "group effect" would be to look at footage of any of Hitler's speeches to mass gatherings. People were whipped up into a frenzy, and there was a kind of emotional infection or induction going on which rendered the total consciousness of the group field more than the sum of its individual parts. I suggest the people's love of and devotion to Hitler was largely cooked up in a group "consciousness incubator" involving great masses of people, all resonating to the passionate rhetoric of Hitler. The fact that Hitler was mainly spewing vile hatred that should have offended the largely Christian German people is the crux of my perplexity. What was it about Hitler and/or this setting that could work people up into such a frenzy, bordering on mass hysteria, that could make them forget about their own supposed moral values? What dynamics could produce such an effect?
You asked: "Are you suggesting that people isolated from the rhetoric and crowd noise would be affected by some non-physical emanation?" No, I'm not suggesting that, js1138. (Though I do imagine that "emanations" have a physical basis.) This is probably a case of "you had to be there." But the point is, people leaving the stadium would have left with an individual consciousness that had been altered by the experience (favorably, in Hitler's case). And the subsequent attitudes and "values" would have become a "normal" part of daily consciousness for those individuals, from that point on. They, in turn, could convey these attitudes and values to the people with whom they came into contact in their daily lives, and this would further propagate the favorable values and attitudes with respect to Hitler to people who may not even have been part of the original mass gathering.
Don't know whether this helps at all. I have tried to be descriptive, because as I've said before, the field dynamics of the group effect are not yet well understood, and I'm not making any hypotheses yet. (I'll wait for the experiments to be done.) Which is why I invite you simply to take a look for yourself, then think about what you've seen. Thanks for writing, js1138.
I never said it was a new field, general_re. Think of it as an instantaneous combination of a vast number of consciousness events that are being coordinated and mediated by fields that have been well studied, such as EM and quantum fields. Whatever is going on in the group effect is using these fields to do it. I am not multiplying entities here.
You've added a field to the explanation of mob psychology, where no field was posited before. Well, you didn't, but the author above seems to be tending that way. Before I sign on to such a thing, I'd like to see why the field is the best possible explanation for the way people behave in groups, and therefore why it is necessary to postulate the existence of such a field in order to explain same. In a nutshell, what does having a field do for us that conventional psychological explanations about group dynamics do not?
You might read some of the European biographies of Hitler and some histories (from various viewpoints) of the times. The Nazis appealed very much to the agricultural community (this was the biggest surprise to me.) The Versailles Treaty had drained Germany of much of its capital. There was 25% to 40% unemployment; street battles between Communists and Nazis happened regularly. Historically German Christians were anti-Semitic (see the writings of Martin Luther.) It was easy (and successful) to blame things on "The Jews" and the Stab-in-the-Back Weimar Democrats.
Combine a bunch of anti-Semitism, populist appeal, inflation about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 marks to the pre-war mark, continuing Versailles payments, unemployment, rioting the streets, and a bit of chrisma from an orator such as Hitler, the Nazis get a much better chance.
What was it about Hitler and/or this setting that could work people up into such a frenzy, bordering on mass hysteria, that could make them forget about their own supposed moral values? What dynamics could produce such an effect?
-BB-
Implying of course, that it is the peoples lack of REAL moral values.
"Combine a bunch of anti-Semitism, populist appeal, inflation about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 marks to the pre-war mark, continuing Versailles payments, unemployment, rioting the streets, and a bit of chrisma from an orator such as Hitler, the Nazis get a much better chance."
-Doc-
Your answer doc, empathizes cicumstances, which agreed, have much to do with ~when~ these events occur.
But only Koestler says that the real problem is an inate 'urge' to fanatical devotion.
People have an inborn desire, [a tribal instinct?] to 'belong', to seek a strong leader.
Pandering to this 'group think' motivation is the opposite of what we, as a free society, should be teaching.
We should be encouraging independant thinking, not devotion to a cause.
"The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion." -Arthur Koestler-
I have, Doc. Eric Voegelin, among others, has had some particularly devastating things to say about developments in German national consciousness that culminated in the rise of Hitler, who was elected chancellor in a perfectly democratic election. Meaning: the "Volk" really wanted this guy. I know about the social breakdown of Weimar, the hyperinflation, and the disgrace of the heavy-handed "peace" that concluded WWI, including massive reparations, annexations, confiscations, and bans on German rearmament. Germany was humiliated. All of which Hitler masterfully exploited.
I can know these things, and still imagine that all these inputs do not necessarily equal the output of mass hysterical ardor for Hitler, which considered as a "whole," seems to be ever so much more than the simple sum of its "parts".... It's one thing to think highly of a political figure who promises to solve pressing social and economic problems. But to worship a man who explicitly said he was building a "master race" -- this just doesn't seem to add up. The German people had to massively overlook the depredations of this monster -- which involved the extermination of Jews, but not only of Jews -- that were going on right under their noses. They weren't just "admirers" of Hitler; they were de facto collaborators.... How did this happen?
Forgive me, tpaine, but people who stand by and watch the murder of helpless innocents objectively lack REAL moral values.
Hello Brother A! On the one hand, I can grant the truth of what you say here; on the other, I would suggest that putting religious consciousness in the forefront of scientific investigation will probably get you "science" that isn't science. Religion is not science, and vice versa. They are two separate domains -- complementaries -- both of which are necessary. And because they are necessary, they must be kept separate in order to preserve the integrity of their unique functions in human life. At the end of the day, a believer such as myself doesn't feel "threatened" by science; for science can only make its discoveries based on what is; and what is is what God made.
IMHO, Neils Bohr's quantum epistemology is a work of both astonishing grandeur and human humility. Effectively he is saying that science must not be in the religion business (presumably because if it were so engaged, it would "screw up," not only science, but religion, too). And the reverse is true: religion souldn't be in the science business, for the same reason.
I agree with Profs. Kafatos and Nadeau that there needs to be a dialogue between the two knowledge domains -- science and metaphysics. The two are integrated at a much higher level than either of them on their own level. And ultimately, that will be at the level of the religious consciousness, of whatever description. FWIW.
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