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.
Methinks you are trying to avoid personal responsibility here for any of the items in contention, tpaine. Which may suggest (but not necessarily) that you don't have an informed point of view from which to prosecute what passes for a formal argument.
I would be most pleased to be mistaken about this.
And that would mean that chaos and disorder relate most with, and are defined most aptly by..(well, you know).
This leads to the conclusion that anything we don't understand or can't recognize the order in must be evil. While I won't argue that there is a considerable historical precedent for such an outlook, I can't say I agree with it.
Not really. From what I see, anything and everything is defined by God and its existence is what it is, by the relationship it has with God, whether we understand a smidgen about it or not.
BTW, when I said this, I wasn't referring to order being defined by its human beholder, not relativism, just relationality, as per Reality.
Indeed, "in him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts 17:28)
Zealot, eh? Take a deep breath. I don't argue that you go through the motions regarding your freedoms. I argue that the success of our constitutional republic relies on more than the "rule of law." Or more precisely, that a successful implementation of the "rule of law," necessary for the success of the republic, relies on a certain goodness (moral structure) of the public at large.
You seem to argue that this requisite moral structure of the populace is a natural outgrowth of the "self interest" of the citizens. While clearly, our system of government allows for people's self interest to contribute positively to the overall system (unlike theoretical communism, which asks that people act counter to their self interest), I contend that self-interest alone does not guarantee the requisite moral structure of the populace (it is on this point which we likely disagree).
And in the absence of that structure, our system degrades to a "hooray for me, F*&# You" posture. I see your view as almost tautological, as in "as long as the rule of law is there, the system is working." But the deeper question is, "as long as the rule of law is there, will the system keep working?" I think history might show we were perilously close to losing that system under the previous administration, aided and abetted by the Clinton sycophants who thought that trashing the system was in their self interest.
The laws of "self interest" make great sense in keeping the economic system healthy. I don't think the same can be said when "self interest" is applied to a political system.
Do you extend "things" to include abstract concepts like "order"?
Individuals are the coming thing, the avant gard trek to Aspen and the Chinese virgin white kayak water and Costa Rica in search of individualism. Radical professors mention individualism--carefully, en passant--in upper level classes.
Another characteristic that increases with entropy: symmetry.
One gathers you take great pleasure in abstraction, RightWhale! But particularity -- living organisms participating in/with/through their environments, and even human individuals doing the same (how shocking!) -- is not abstract. It is real.
To quote Christoph Adami, "Entropy can never be a measure of complexity. Measuring correlations within a sequence, like Kolmogorov and Chaitin (and Lempel-Ziv, and many others) is not going to reveal how that sequence is correlated to the environment within which it is to be interpreted. Information is entropy 'shared with the world,' and the amount of information a sequence shares with its world represents its complexity."
And probably also its "symmetry."
It seems to me that living beings are not "closed" thermodynamic systems at all. And neither are any of their "constituting parts," down to the level of cells, DNA, etc. Why would you want to treat them as such? They are conscious information processers/users in some degree. And the one species that preeminently thinks, that is capable of self-reflection, is also considered the most complex. I refer to homo sapiens sapiens, of course.
Living organisms are open systems.... In other words, they possess degrees of freedom; they choose and process information; they display emergent, self-organizing and self-regulatory abilities; thus they are neither closed systems, nor fully pre-determined and pre-specified "machines" -- with all their "engineering" done from the "outside." Thus I strongly doubt it is appropriate to apply closed-system analogies to them. FWIW
Complexity is the opposite of order, but synomymous with organization.
I've seen entropy, in this case Shannon information entropy, used to determine whether or not the given time scales (et al) are sufficient to allow for autonomous self-organizing complexity of life from non-life (abiogenesis.) Hubert Yockey's determination is that they are not sufficient. One counter argument is that he should have used Kolmogorov complexity/Solomonoff induction.
However, many of the articles I've read prefer Shannon entropy for the biological question proposed by Yockey. The second link above is heavy on details and extremely biased against Dembski's additional definition of complexity.
BTW, the first link is particularly handy for keeping all the terms defined wrt complexity, etc. Here's more on the last item in the definition list, functional complexity wrt biological systems.
Yes, where they are God's concepts.
LOL, RW!
Hey, aren't you the guy who wants to repeal the law of the excluded middle? Well, here's your big chance!
If we do in fact live in a non-local universe (and it seems likely to me), then Bohr's law of complementarity would appear to hold. Thus, in order to have the complete description of a system, you have to deal with apparently irreconcilable "opposites," such as position/momentum, particle/wave, quanta/fields, etc., Bohr's "complementaries." Neither complementary gives you the complete description of the system (i.e., of the unobservable whole of which these are observable "parts"). You have to observe and understand both for that. So you do not have an "either/or choice" here. You have a "both."
But if complementarity is the law of the non-local universe, then why stop at the microworld? One can find all kinds of interesting (possible) complementaries. For instance, mass/energy, space/time, etc., etc. Or even Planck's "action principle"/Bauer's "life principle." Or my favorite, which I've been mulling over recently: Bohr's own "quantum epistemology"/ontology (the complementarity of knowledge/being)....
RW, I'm going on vacation tomorrow, and won't be returning til Labor Day. I will be off-line (gasp!!!! horror of horrors!) all that time. (Unless the weather on Cape Cod turns bad, in which case I might come home a bit earlier than planned.) So, just in case I don't have an opportunity to speak with you again before I leave, thank you for the stimulating discussion. I hope we can pick up where we left off when I get back.
Induction, inference are invalid in science in the sense that you cannot go from a specific instance to the general by inference. Only inductive sets are susceptible to inductive proof. There are no inductive sets in science.
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