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.
An example of non-rigorous logical thinking. Accurate critical thinking recognizes the fallacy in this subjective morality.
Please demonstrate the fallacy, RightWhale.
betty boop: 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.
Moral values, it seems to me RightWhale, are always about the survival of the human community.
Forgive me, tpaine, but people who stand by and watch the murder of helpless innocents objectively lack REAL moral values. -479-
Indeed they do, Betty.
But the masses of european peoples of the early 20th century who 'stood by' watching [ thus supporting] socialism/fascism in the USSR, Italy, Germany & Spain, were all supposedly good christians. True?
Yet you attempt to put the blame on atheism:
I think that moral systems built on atheist premises/worldviews have, on the historical record, tended to tyranny and repression, not to human individual and social welfare.
It is only in postmodern times that people have tried to detach morality from its (historically) divine and transcendant Source. The result has produced personal disorder and alienation, and a breakdown in public discourse and civil order. Among other things.
410 -BB-
Thus, just as Koestler notes, you are diverting the blame from the very mindset that is at fault. It is the fanatical devotee to 'the cause' that allows these continuous disasters of history.
The independent thinker, the a-theistic, iconoclastic personality type, is not to blame for the holocasts of history.
We 'independents' have prevailed in America, and fought ~overt~ socialsm, but we are losing to big brother.
Now is not the time to be preaching for more 'public order' type dogma. If anything we need more emphasis on idependence & liberty.
Utimately it may be, or maybe not. There may be levels above that, and there are certainly levels below: gradations of moral judgement, levels of immediacy, degrees of universality, ranges of relevance. There are levels, and each individual may postulate as many levels as he wants. The judgements must be rational, otherwise the target audience may simply share a momentary feeling of revulsion and move on. One's attitude may be transmitted as a moral command to others, but the recipient may be in a different context and receive the attitude as simply another instance of Western preachiness.
By all means we must eschew scientific materialism! But that science pertains only to the material is the classical view, which seems increasingly displaced by the insights of quantum theory. Of course, I am hardly an expert on that, and the learning curve has a long ways to go. But when one reads statements such as the following by Henry Stapp, one gets the sense that there is an impending sea change in the self-understanding of science:
"...[E]ach atom turns out to be nothing but the potentialities in the behavior patterns of others. What we find, therefore, are not elementary space-time realities, but rather a web of relationships in which no part can stand alone; every part derives its meaning and existence only from its place within the whole."
Thus the purely reductionist approach to understanding physical reality -- the goal of classical physics -- seems no longer appropriate.
Kafatos and Nadeau write:
"While the formalism of quantum physics predicts that correlations between particles over space-like separated regions is possible, it can say nothing about what this strange new relationship between parts (quanta) and whole (cosmos) means outside of this formalism.... Wholeness requires a complementary relationship between unity and difference and is governed by a principle of organization determining the interrelationship between parts. This organizing principle must be universal to a genuine whole and implicit in all parts that constitute the whole, even though the whole is exemplied only in its parts."
That is to say, neither the organizing principle nor the whole itself is directly accessible to scientific observation. So Kafatos and Nadeau say, "this does not, however, prevent us from considering the implications in philosophic terms."
And the implication of that statement, to my mind, is that science is not the proper domain for such questions. Philosophy must step in here. Science needs a strong epistemology in order to ensure the accuracy of the descriptions it makes. But it simply isn't geared to metaphysical/ontological questions; and when it nevertheless engages them -- consciously or unconsciously -- in its descriptions of reality, the result may be only ambiguity, or just plain "bad" science.
That is the sense in which I meant that I thought science needed to be separate from philosophy/ontology/metaphysics.
One can understand the complete relationality of all the constituting parts of the whole -- and science can observe the relationality. And yet it can only infer the whole: It can never observe it directly, nor describe it -- there is no language in science to describe it. That "description" must come from outside of science. And historically, from the earliest times, it has been the religious consciousness that has engaged the "wonder of the Whole."
The authors write further:
"But since the actual character of this seamless whole cannot be represented or reduced to its parts, it lies, quite literally, beyond all human representations or descriptions. If one chooses to believe that the universe is a self-reflective and self-organizing whole, this lends no support whatsoever to conceptions of design, meaning, purpose, intent, or plan associated with any mytho-religious or cultural heritage. However, if one does not accept this view of the universe, there is nothing in the scientific description of nature that can be used to refute this position. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to argue that a profound sense of unity with the whole [or with God, Who made the whole], which has long been understood as the foundation of religious experience, can be dismissed, undermined, or invalidated with appeals to scientific knowledge. While we have consistently tried to distinguish between scientific knowledge and philosophical speculation based on this knowledge, let us be quite clear on one point -- there is no empirically valid causal linkage between the former and the latter."
It's as if quantum epistemology [science, the study of the physical world] and ontology [the study of Being, essence] are yet two more "complementaries"; and both are needed to conceptualize the idea of the whole, the "total system," which is the Universe. And to me, that conceptualization/contemplation leads us to the contemplation of God.
I'm reflecting on this entire issue, and expect I will be reflecting on it for some time to come. I may yet come to a better understanding. But this is the best I can do for now.
Thank you so much, A-G, for your thoughts, which are deeply appreciated.
...and at the same time, eschew any kind of error, yes, and of course whether a statement is an error or not is not up to us nor any of our methods.
Your maxim sounds like something Hamlet's uncle or whomever he was, would/should have told him prior to going to University, A-G. ;-) Amen.
I intend to read your next post cc'ing me, bb, after going home from work. (I be a borrower with lenders.)
So are Professors Kafatos and Nadeau:
“We are … personally in agreement with [Fritjof] Capra, who has consistently argued that the global revolution in ethical thought and behavior that is prerequisite to human survival may not occur unless intellectual understanding of the character of physical reality is wedded to profound religious or spiritual awareness…. Religious thinkers can enter this dialogue knowing that metaphysical questions no longer lie within the province of science and that science cannot in principle dismiss or challenge belief in spiritual reality....
"But if these [religious] thinkers elect to challenge the truths of science within its own domain, they must either withdraw from the dialogue or engage science on its own terms. Applying metaphysics where there is no metaphysics, or attempting to rewrite or rework scientific truths and/or facts in the effort to prove metaphysical assumptions, merely displays a profound misunderstanding of science and an apparent unwillingness to recognize its successes. Yet it is also true that the study of science can indirectly serve to reinforce belief in profoundly religious truths while not claiming to legislate the ultimate character of these truths….
“Science in our new situation in no way argues against the existence of God, or Being, and can profoundly augment the sense of the cosmos as a single significant whole. That the ultimate no longer appears to be clothed in the arbitrarily derived terms of our previous understanding may simply mean that the mystery that evades all human understanding remains.”
Kafatos and Nadeau also wrote this:
“But dreams of reason based on this ideal – [i.e., ‘the Enlightenment ideal of unifying knowledge by revealing all the lawful mechanisms that govern or inform the vast panoply of human thought and behavior’] – are anything but innocent. They not only foster the belief that science is religion, or a religious ethos at least, and that all nonscientific or extra-scientific knowledge must and will be subsumed by this ethos. They also allege that since what we are as human beings is largely predetermined by deterministic natural laws, human freedom is, in some sense, and illusion; therefore, the exercise of this freedom can best be accomplished by sacrificing it to the dictates of higher natural laws.”
* * * * * * *
The way things are going presently, we humans are gonna get stuck with that last group of guys and gals “in the saddle.” It is not a future one wants to contemplate. It is spiritually bleak, abandoned….
IMHO The Non-Local Universe is an extraordinarily well-meditated and informative work. I hope you will read it. I have some issues on certain points that I’d love to discuss with you all.
Ultimately it [i.e., the moral code] may [serve the survival interest of the human community] … or maybe not.
RightWhale, it seems to me that we all have to “pick one.” Realistically, rationally, one cannot have it both ways.
I think the following is an excellent description of the “intellectual fall-out,” should one path be chosen over the other – a choice that would seem to involve profound social consequences:
There may be levels above that, and there are certainly levels below: gradations of moral judgment, levels of immediacy, degrees of universality, ranges of relevance. There are levels, and each individual may postulate as many levels as he wants. The judgments must be rational, otherwise the target audience may simply share a momentary feeling of revulsion and move on. One's attitude may be transmitted as a moral command to others, but the recipient may be in a different context and receive the attitude as simply another instance of Western preachiness.
My sincere congratulations on the lucid presentation of this "Gordian knot" of post-modern society.
Of course, what this isn't is any kind of description or validation of any moral code. What it is, is the spectacle of people haggling over the possible terms of a moral code; and they will never, in all likelihood, ever agree on its foundation.
The dispute reeks of moral relativism. Any “grace note” of a moral code operating here is buried in the noise of this “two-culture dispute.”
Clearly, any moral code of whatever description is a “maybe not” for some people.
In which case, they need to explain, it seems to me, why they wish to attack the one thing that, on the historical record of mankind, fundamentally enables human society to cohere, on the basis of free mutual exchanges, and persevere over time. Thus to survive, hopefully unto their generations….
We have a great deal of knowledge of the cultural anthropological record of homo sapiens sapiens by now. It goes back about 40,000. Based on what is now known on both the anthropological and historical records (primitive societies are still extant today), ample research suggests that “order” – and then a sanctified and sanctifying base for that order – were the first two “orders of business” for the human imagination, once man began to settle into communitarian (e.g., pair-bonded and tribal) life.
One thing’s for sure: There can be no moral code in a situation where everybody is “free” to make up his own as he goes along. The false expectation that this might be possible probably stems from the currently fashionable “radical individualist” interpretation of human meaning.
To which one might reply: Man is doubtlessly “individual”; but he is also by nature a “social animal.” And both individual and group potential got its first huge boost by man's association with mutually-sustaining, cooperative communities. Which definitely improved his overall survival prospects, and that of his progeny – and also that of his community.
No question we are at this moment on this thread immersed in cultural relativism. They are of course attacking at the weak point, the point where most people have not studied ethics deeply enough to recognize the failings of early ethics science. What I hope to see accomplished is development of improved theories that will bring these attacks to an end, for the time being anyway. I believe we are at the beginning of a new path that will lead us surely and certainly to vast social improvements, but all the signs point to old forest trails that lead to the gingerbread house and we have used up our breadcrumbs. It doesn't matter what ideology we use, the signposts are all old, turned around backwards, and simply falling over into piles of detritus.
Anyway, as to having it one way or the other, no, there is considerable and growing interest in the possibility that the dichotomy is false. The strongest interest is in China and Japan, where they have perhaps more experience in gradation, shades of meaning. It might not be necessary to choose A or not-A. After all, negative thinking gives us philosophic reason, something lacking in positive thinking and therefore in science.
To think philosophically is becoming a lost art: science has no use for meta-physics, denies it reality. However, in studying some foreign languages, I came across an interesting comment about Persian-Hindi, that some scholars appear to be confused by entirely different words that happen to be spelled the same and pronounced the same. We ought to look at our words, with the understanding that we have never used them precisely and haven't been bound strongly to them. We go on with our lives and use words here and there thinking that we communicate, but such communication is vague. We are bound by our dictionaries if we are bound at all, but all the dictionaries do is present lists of other words that overlap in meaning to some extent. In spite of this, we who are still on this thread intend to get to some level of rationality that may be near impossible, but which was entirely possible in pre-industrial society.
But I think we are on our own.
I think this is the conclusion that Niels Bohr reached, and it is reflected in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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