Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Spirit

[Why Syzygy]

Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Spirit
Video Soundtrack

Growing up in England I thought I had no interest whatsoever in spirituality–I never thought I’d be speaking at places like this–or even an interest in consciousness. In my youth I was fascinated by mathematics, theoretical physics. I quit church when I was about 13, when I was brought up regular Anglican-Protestant. Which meant kind of going to church with my parents about once a month or so. That was considered enough to clear any sins we’d committed.

Then I went through the process of confirmation. First we were told the facts of life, which was wonderful. And then what we were meant to believe. I suddenly realize this thing I was chanting in church every Sunday morning, at least once a month or so, The Nicene Creed, I was actually meant to believe it. This was The Creed. This is what I actually meant to believe it. I just realized it didn’t go with what I was learning in physics. With all this stuff that had been laid down in 300 AD about what was meant to believe, the basics. And what physics was telling me about the universe–it wasn’t created about 4000 years ago, it was millions of years old and there wasn’t a heaven up there and all that stuff. So it was a choice. And I decided physics was my way, mathematics and physics. So I told my parents, "That’s it," I was quitting church. Fortunately, they were fine. They just said that’s great. And interestingly enough, when I gave an advanced copy of my new book, From Science to God, to my mother she said, "You know I never believed that stuff my self really."

So I went off to university and I was studying physics, well applied mass theoretical physics. I was actually fortunate enough to be in the same place as Stephen Hawking. He was actually my tutor for a while. He had just completed his own research. He could still walk and talk then. He had to have a stick. But his disease was only just beginning to come on and he hadn’t actually published any of his major work. It was just wonderful just sitting with him and working with him.

I had reached the stage where I could solve Shrödigner’s equation, which–for most of you unless you majored in physics–means absolutely nothing and I’m not going to try and explain it to you. But what it does signify though, which is just fascinating, is that just from pure mathematics you can start deducing the structure of the hydrogen atom, of any atom, and from that the universe starts to unfold. It’s like how mathematics underlies the universe. Then I realized there was a much more interesting question, which was ‘How come I could do that?’ Not how come I could do the mathematics, but how come there were beings in the universe that could actually begin to understand the universe and do the mathematics. I was studying hydrogen–the universe had started off from the simplest element, clear colorless gas. How did that evolve into all the other elements, into life and into beings such as myself who could actually stop and do the mathematics of hydrogen structures. So, to put it another way, ‘how had the universe become self-reflective?’, how had consciousness arisen? And how could I actually stop and ask that question and wonder how I could study hydrogen. So more and more I started getting interested in consciousness and what consciousness was doing in the universe, how it had emerged, because that was the really fascinating thing. I think Einstein had put it very wonderfully himself when he said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible" –the fact that we can actually understand it, how it has arisen.

Science, then and pretty much still today, didn’t want to engage with consciousness. It didn’t know what to do with consciousness. And science has ignored it, for very good reasons for it’s own part. First you can’t measure consciousness. You can’t weigh it. You can’t put a ruler up against it. You can’t time it. It doesn’t fit into the things that science likes to get a hold of and measure. You can’t put numbers against consciousness. Also, science wants to be objective. It wants to look at the objective world. The very essence of consciousness is that it’s subjective. And science tries to get rid of all that subjectivity, which is so variable. You can’t control it. Thirdly, the universe according to modern science seems to work perfectly well with out any need for consciousness. It doesn’t need to engage it. It can understand atoms and living cells and what’s happening out in space. Everything works pretty well without having to explore consciousness.

So there seems to be no need for science to explore consciousness. And yet, this is the interesting thing, consciousness is the one thing of which we are absolutely certain. And we can doubt everything else. I mean right now, who knows, it could be your brain is plugged into some virtual reality machine, which is giving you this experience. We could all be sitting in the Matrix. But even if you’re sitting in the Matrix, you’re still a conscious being having a different experience.
(...)
http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/CVid/ConscVidText.php

[patrice]

1. Thanks for this! I used to use Peter Russell's video The Global Brain in my Psychology classes

as part of the standard college text-book chapter on Altered States of Consciousness.

I will look up a piece of his poetry for you.

Later.

:hi:

[Beam Me Up]

2. I'll rec this and add commentary:

Consciousness is the fundamental experience and "attention" is the key to everything. What our society has yet to grasp is the significance of the various qualities of consciousness and how they are directly connected to any possibility of true human evolution.

We are now at the point of an evolutionary imperative. We are now up against the limits of a particular frame of consciousness that arose during the Renascence and has become increasingly cemented in place since the industrial revolution. Here is what Gregory Bateson, who I regard as one of the geniuses of the last century, had to say about it:

The cybernetic epistemology which I have offered you would suggest a new approach. The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in pathways and messages outside the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem. This larger Mind is comparable to God and is perhaps what some people mean by "God," but it is still immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology.

Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include the whole communication system within the body—the automatic, the habitual, and the vast range of unconscious process. What I am saying expands mind outwards. And both of these changes reduce the scope of the conscious self. A certain humility becomes appropriate, tempered by the dignity or joy of being part of something much bigger. A part—if you will—of God.

If you put God outside and set him vis-a-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will seem to be yours to exploit. Your survival unit will be you and your folks or conspecifics against the environment of other social units, other races and the brutes and vegetables.

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over-population and overgrazing. The raw materials of the world are finite.

If I am right, the whole of our thinking about what we are and what other people are has got to be restructured. This is not funny, and I do not know how long we have to do it in. If we continue to operate on the premises that were fashionable in the prescybernetic era, and which were especially underlined and strengthened during the Industrial Revolution, which seemed to validate the Darwinian unit of survival, we may have twenty or thirty years before the logical reductio ad absurdum of our old positions destroy us. Nobody knows how long we have, under the present system, before some disaster strikes us, more serious than the destruction of any group of nations. The most important task today is, perhaps, to learn to think in the new way. Let me say that I don't know how to think that way. Intellectually, I can stand here and I can give you a reasoned exposition of this matter; but if I am cutting down a tree, I still think "Gregory Bateson" is cutting down the tree. I am cutting down the tree. "Myself" is to me still an excessively concrete object, different from the rest of what I have been calling "mind."

The step to realizing—to making habitual—the other way of thinking so that one naturally thinks that way when one reaches out for a glass of water or cuts down a tree—that step is not an easy one.

And, quite seriously, I suggest to you that we should trust no policy decisions which emanate from persons who do not yet have that habit.

Link to whole essay: http://www.rawpaint.com/library/bateson/formsubstancedifference.html

This was presented almost 40 years ago and what we are witnessing unfolding around us today is the direct result of people not understanding what Bateson and so many others at that time -- the late Sixties, early Seventies -- were saying. Of course it isn't only a matter of "thinking" differently superficially, as in "words in my head." That is part of it. But what is really demanded is that we begin to feel a completely different sense of self in relation to everyone and everything else around us. This is what Bateson is calling "mind" -- not something that exists only inside our heads but in all the pathways of information exchange (matter itself being a form of information) that go on between individuals, between individuals and larger social units, and between those larger social units and the diversity of the Earth's ecosystem itself. These are ALL conscious entities from which the particular frame of consciousness Western civilization has adopted for the last 500+ years has separated itself. The evolutionary imperative before us is to CHANGE that consciousness and to radically redesign our social and economic systems.

Everyone not familiar with the economic/environmental aspects of this question should watch: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ -- it takes about 20 minutes. If we fail to fulfill this imperative the consequences will be too dire to contemplate.


edit typo

[Why Syzygy]

5. Thanks!

That sounds interesting. I'll follow up. :thumbsup:

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Parts of Christian scripture clarify this oneness with God. In the Gospel,

when Jesus was accused by the scribes and Pharisees of setting himself up as God, he didn't go into the technicalities of his own proper nature as God and that divine nature bestowed on us by adoption, although he did elsewhere in principle. He himself quoted to the scribes and Pharisees, from Psalm 82, 6: "Is it not written in your law, 'Ye are gods?' If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the words of scripture are binding; Say you of him, whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into the world, You blaspheme; because I said, I am the Son of God?" John 10: 34-36

However, the Catholic Church teaches that, while God is the light of everyman who comes into the world, those he calls the Children of Light, those who obey his word, whether or not as conscious believers (Matthew's Gospel), are divine by adoption; adoption by the Holy Spirit, ultimately and ideally directly by baptism and the mysterious assent by the baptised, even infants. Presumably, some do not assent. Do they later in their life? Who knows? In one curious passage in the Epistles, however, reference is made to baptism for the sake of others: "Otherwise, what will those people do who are being baptized because of those who have died? If the dead are not raised at all, why are they being baptized because of them?" I Corinthians 15:29. Our whole life is a gradual process of divine grace building upon nature, our human nature; more broadly our grafting into the true vine, the Mystical Body of Christ (The poet, Donne's "continent" and "main", of which we are part).

In one particularly significant passage in the Gospels, in which Christ is talking to his Father in Heaven (from whom all fatherhood emanates), he describes himself as being where he is, i.e. there, the place where he is speaking from, in his historical existence as a man, born fully human, and living as a human being in Israel, while at the same time remaining God by his own nature, at his Father's side in Heaven - having never left there. This would seem to have the most amazing implication, namely, that via our baptism and faith, we too are, in some very arcane, recondite way, living with the Father in Heaven at this moment - albeit via our adoption by the Holy Spirit. But these mysteries are so deep and paradoxical, such an extrapolation with regard to us might be mistaken. How about when a person has the Holy Spirit, and then rejects it? The grafting into the True Vine obviously would not have "taken". Then they would not be included among the Children of Light.

The Church stresses the fulness of Christ's humanity as well as the fulness of his divinity, and it is obviously pivotal to this issue. He learnt (most importantly, it seems from scripture, through suffering) like us, but also evidently from daily experience. To be fully human in this way, he must have accepted in some preternatural way, a mortal limitation on his human understanding. However, because though the process of his learning and his level of understanding, both unaffected by sin, were evidently extraordinary, they led to many incidents of mutual incomprehension between himself and his apostles, which could be viewed as quite comical. He certainly berated them on a number of occasions for their incomprehension - notably, on one occasion, (or as it two occasions? Philip and Thomas both spring to mind) their failure to grasp the elements of the Holy Trinity, which it took the Church centuries to tease out from scripture.

There also seems to be shades of the profound mystery of some kind of version of eternal "time" we can't begin to understand before the creation of the universe at the Big bang, in the glorified body we shall have in Heaven. Apparently, we will not be absolutely pure spirits like the angels.

I believe Aldous Huxley probably had an enormous influence in this growing spiritual awareness in the West, most notably with his books on the hallucinogenic affect of lysergic acid: Heaven and Hell: The Doors of Perception, and on comparative religion, The Perennial Philosophy.

More recently, I think it quite probable that the blog of American author and blogger, Joe Bageant, who writes sublimely on spiritual themes, as well as the apocalyptic effects, positive and negative, of hallucinogenic drugs, has received very wide attention throughout the world via the Internet.

Baptisms are a characteristic feature of the Easter Sunday liturgy, which are based on the theme of Light, the dawning of the light of eternal life via Christ's Resurrection, symbolised by the Red Sea crossing of the ancient Israelites in the baptismal ceremony. It seems particularly germane to me that light has a measured speed that is independent of observers, and that it indicates that light is not proper to space-time, at least in any co-terminous sense, even though we are proximately empowered to generate it at will.

[skepticscott]

7. Only in the most hallucinogenic world

Could statements like these:

"Is it not written in your law, 'Ye are gods?' If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came, and the words of scripture are binding; Say you of him, whom the Father has sanctified, and sent into the world, You blaspheme; because I said, I am the Son of God?"


"Otherwise, what will those people do who are being baptized because of those who have died? If the dead are not raised at all, why are they being baptized because of them?" I Corinthians 15:29.

In one particularly significant passage in the Gospels, in which Christ is talking to his Father in Heaven (from whom all fatherhood emanates), he describes himself as being where he is, i.e. there, the place where he is speaking from, in his historical existence as a man, born fully human, and living as a human being in Israel, while at the same time remaining God by his own nature, at his Father's side in Heaven - having never left there. This would seem to have the most amazing implication, namely, that via our baptism and faith, we too are, in some very arcane, recondite way, living with the Father in Heaven at this moment - albeit via our adoption by the Holy Spirit.

qualify as clarification. Or pretty much anything else in your post, for that matter. Just more pseudo-theological babble enjoying no grounding in reality or even consensus that would imply that anything has been "clarified".

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. Pardon me, if I forbear from casting pearls before you. Impressive microscope

you have there by the way, Mr MaGoo.

[skepticscott]

11. The sad thing is

that what you regurgitated ARE pearls as far as Christian theology is concerned. Despite almost 2000 years of spilling ink, that's as good as anything that has been accomplished with regard to explaining Biblical technobabble. Sad, but true.

Even Mr. Magoo could see that this emperor has no clothes.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. Well, I thank you for that compliment, skeptiscott, although I trust you will forgive me

for regretting that it didn't emanate from an ever-so-slightly, more authoratitive source. Life is seldom perfect. We must simply count our blessings and thank the Almighty, mustn't we?

[skepticscott]

24. Ah, if only there were such a thing

as an "authoritative" source in theology. Apparently you've convinced yourself that simply writing and talking about a subject for decades (as opposed to actually gaining knowledge and understanding) makes you an authority, but it just ain't so. But cheer up...maybe in another 2000 years a glimmer of enlightenment will break through.

And feel free to thank the Almighty all you wish...let me know how that works out for you.

[Joe Chi Minh]

28. Well, a minute ago my eyes alighted on the term, "Immune system", and as they did so, my wife

read those same two words aloud to me from a newspaper: "immune system". So, maybe he does give me a thought or two, now and again. Every believer has a hot-line to God, he just keeps in the background.

I never normally presume to say anything like, "I'll pray for you", but as I know it would wind you up no end, and judging from scripture, God seems to have quite a black sense of humour at times, I'LL PRAY FOR YOU! There! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

[Why Syzygy]

30. heh.

There does seem to be a commandment to pray for one's enemies. That could get touchy in a group full of atheists, couldn't it? When I was a 'non-Christian', which was usually the disclaimer I had to use, I actually modified my communications to certain people in an effort to avoid their prayer list!

[Joe Chi Minh]

37. You were obviously like the Unjust Steward in the parable! God would have commended your

resourcefulness to your perceived enemies!

[skepticscott]

41. Wow

Your God has some really, really cool ways to let you know he's out there. "Immune system"...who'da thought? But after all those bazillions of prayers, I'm still waiting for the world to look any different than it would if there were no God. Maybe that will take a few thousand years more too, but I have the patience of a saint. YHWH must be answering a lot of prayers "No" these days, but maybe he'll get tired of jerking your chain soon.

[Joe Chi Minh]

49. Wow. We are getting worked up, aren't we...?!? It worked a treat, Win Syzygy. Tee hee!

And he even saw it coming, but was powerless to contain his rage!

[tinrobot]

4. Great stuff...

I particularly like this passage:

If you look at most of the scientists are doing, they are trying to explain consciousness within the current worldview. And the current worldview says the real world is the world of matter, space, time and matter. And so they’re struggling with how does consciousness come out of that. Some people are looking to quantum physics, others are looking to chaos theory. Some people think it’s all to do with the chemicals in the brain. But they’re all stuck in this idea that consciousness has to come out of matter.

What I think, what I am proposing, is we actually skip that and say let’s just accept that consciousness is. Period. Consciousness is absolutely fundamental to the cosmos, that everything is conscious. And I don’t think that consciousness is limited to human beings.

One thing that crosses my mind when reading this is that, instead of consciousness arising from matter, perhaps matter is in itself, conscious. There was a paper by John Conway I ran across recently that proved if human beings truly have free will, then so do elementary particles such as protons and electrons.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S23/75/58A30/index.xml?section=featured

[Why Syzygy]

6. Are you familiar with ..

Complex adaptive system?

Overview

The term complex adaptive systems, or complexity science, is often used to describe the loosely organized academic field that has grown up around the study of such systems. Complexity science is not a single theory— it encompasses more than one theoretical framework and is highly interdisciplinary, seeking the answers to some fundamental questions about living, adaptable, changeable systems.

Examples of complex adaptive systems include the stock market, social insect and ant colonies, the biosphere and the ecosystem, the brain and the immune system, the cell and the developing embryo, manufacturing businesses and any human social group-based endeavour in a cultural and social system such as political parties or communities. There are close relationships between the field of CAS and artificial life. In both areas the principles emergence and self-organization are very important.

CAS ideas and models are essentially evolutionary, grounded in modern biological views on adaptation and evolution. The theory of complex adaptive systems bridges developments of systems theory with the ideas of generalized Darwinism, which suggests that Darwinian principles of evolution can explain a range of complex material phenomena, from cosmic to social objects.(...)


In this hypothesis, the apparent trend towards more complex organisms is an illusion resulting from concentrating on the small number of large, very complex organisms that inhabit the right-hand tail of the complexity distribution and ignoring simpler and much more common organisms. This passive model emphasizes that the overwhelming majority of species are microscopic prokaryotes,<9> which comprise about half the world's biomass,<10> constitute the vast majority of Earth's biodiversity.<11> Therefore, simple life remains dominant on Earth, and complex life appears more diverse only because of sampling bias.

This lack of an overall trend towards complexity in biology does not preclude the existence of forces driving systems towards complexity in a subset of cases. These minor trends are balanced by other evolutionary pressures that drive systems towards less complex states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

[Silent3]

20. We have to look at how "free will" is being defined.

When I first heard about this work, the first question that sprang to mind for me was, "How do you represent 'free will' in a mathematical proof?" The meaning of free will is itself something that's not exactly a settled debate. To make free will the subject of mathematical analysis, you have to pick a particular clearly defined meaning, one that everyone might not agree with.

Unless I'm missing something, the meaning Conway has chosen apparently boils down to this: can a particle or system of particles in one given state lead to more than one new state. That seems to me to be a question about determinism. While you can't have free will if the universe is completely deterministic, I don't know that it's fair to say that lack of determinism equates to the presence of free will. That which is not deterministic could simply be purely random.

It's important not to forget the big IF in Conway's theorem: IF people have free will, then so do elementary particles. It could be simply that neither has free will.

[DLnyc]

8. Great stuff

Bringing together scientifically rigorous methods of teasing out the deeper truths of things with the insights which come from careful meditation (along the model of Descartes).

I would agree that the fairy-tale-like concept of God as a huge bearded guy rewarding and punishing each individual human is not a particularly useful tool to developing an understanding of the Universe. However, the idea that one can arrive at a deep understanding of all of reality without considering the meaning of concepts like 'consciousness' and 'spirit' is perhaps also misguided.

[Odin2005]

10. Looks like BS woo-woo to me.

When I see "consciousness" and "quantum" appearing together by BS Detector goes off. I don't get the "mystery of consciousness" thing, it seems to me like an expression of an unspoken desire to protect dualistic and anthropocentric notions of the mind ingrained in Western culture. These notions are seen in the popular perceptions of robots I run into when I get into discussions about creating a sapient artificial intelligence. It is popularly assumed by many that sapient AI is impossible because they won't have a "special something" that makes them "truly conscious", an argument I consider BS special pleading.

[Why Syzygy]

12. I'm sorry

that your emotional reaction is limiting your ability to explore concepts.
Right off hand, I don't see "consciousness" and "quantum" appearing right together here.

Russell might respond:

The illusion comes when we confuse our experience of the world with the physical reality, the thing-in-itself. The Vedantic philosophers of ancient India spoke of this as "maya." Often translated as illusion (a false perception of the world), the word is more accurately translated as delusion (a false belief about the world). I suffer a delusion when I believe that the manifestations in my mind are the external world. I deceive myself when I think that the tree I see is the tree itself.

If all that we ever know are the images that appear in our minds, how can we be sure there is a physical reality behind our perceptions? Is it not just an assumption? My answer to that is: Yes, it is an assumption; nevertheless, it seems a most plausible assumption.
http://www.peterrussell.com/SG/IONS.php

[Odin2005]

13. Sorry, my bad.

Must of read it too quickly *facepalm!*

[bigmonkey]

14. Perhaps this is a helpful demonstration

that your "BS detector" is not properly calibrated. :-)

[Odin2005]

15. LOL!!!

[Silent3]

23. My BS detectors need constant maintenance and repair.

They're always being driven into overload by threads like these. I've gone through three this year so far.

One thing I've learned: never hook a BS meter up to a Boojatta poll. They aren't designed for that sort of strain.

[cosmik debris]

16. It is amazing how people can ignore the obvious

When they are trying to prove that they are right.

Science, then and pretty much still today, didn’t want to engage with consciousness. It didn’t know what to do with consciousness. And science has ignored it, for very good reasons for it’s own part.

So there seems to be no need for science to explore consciousness.

Psychologists and Psychiatrists have been studying consciousness for over a century. But the author chose to ignore that because it contradicts his premise.

It is a lot easier to ignore contradictory evidence than to explain it.

[Why Syzygy]

31. Behaviorial Science

You could be right about that. I have no way to quantify or qualify the statement. Some folks maintain that psychiatry is not a science.

Russell does go on to describe the groups who did study consciousness. They are often termed 'pseudo' science.

Meanwhile, for thousands of years, the great mystics, saints, spiritual people, have been exploring consciousness first hand. Not trying to look at it theoretically, but getting in there, meditating, whatever, exploring consciousness. And one of the key questions has been, What is the very essence of consciousness? What is the self? What is the "I"? And this was a statement from the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." It comes up again and again and again. What is the self, the essence of consciousness? Very simply, what is the "I"? What do we mean by "I"? I is a word that I use. I’m using it already. Many, many times I use the word. I don’t even count how many times I use it each day. We all know what we mean by "I", right. Until you come to define it. We think we know what we mean by it. I am Peter Russell. That’s just my name. I am British. That just happens to be my passport, my accent, what I identify with. But it’s not "I". I am a male. I could imagine myself being in a female body. I would have the same sense of I-ness. My thoughts, feelings, experiences, view of the world, might be quite different. But that deep sense of I-ness, I think, would be exactly the same. It’s just that I would identify with different characteristics.

I think what I mean by I-ness, what I feel is my I-ness, is exactly what everybody else feels, there’s no difference. At that deepest level we’re all exactly the same. It’s just the stuff that gets built around it is different. But at that deepest level we’re all exactly the same. And this was something actually, going back to Shrödinger–the quantum physicist. He was fascinated by the whole subject of consciousness. And he actually wrote something very beautiful about this. He was writing about the 1930s. And he said, "What is this ‘I’? You will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by ‘I’ is the ground stuff upon which all experience is based."

So what he’s really saying is that the I-ness is consciousness. It’s that feeling of Being-ness. It’s not so much that you are a being who has consciousness. It’s that you are consciousness, period. And within all that self-identity and stuff grow up. Now what the mystics have said–and this is almost a universal statement from across all cultures, histories– is that when you get down and really start exploring the nature of the essence of I-ness, that universal I-ness, is when you come across the Divine, God, whatever you want to call it. That is the Divine.

[cosmik debris]

38. How gracious of you to acknowledge the possible existence of psychology.

"You could be right about that."

:rofl:

[Odin2005]

34. People want to create a "mystery" about consciousness where non exists in order to appease...

...their own philosophical and religious biases. An example of this nonsense is the whole concept of "philosophical zombies", beings that are identical to you and me in every way except that they are not "conscious", it's a loaded notion that gives a loaded answer and really makes no sense. Another is John Searle's "Chinese Room", which is pretty much a big strawman. Philosopher Dan Dennett talks about that nonsense a lot in his book Consciousness Explained.

[Silent3]

44. There is no such book! There can't be!

Scientists refuse to address consciousness, so how could a scientist write a book about it? :)

[moobu2]

18. Wonder if this guy wears a healing crystal to align his chakras?

Really, this looks like new age philosophy without the references to astral projection and crop circles etc.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. That is how cosmik debris and his fellow-scientismificists view psychology and psychiatry,

isn't it? As "voodoo" sciences. And quite right, too. Social scientists, generally, including of course, economists, want to hitch their waggons to the all-powerful, all-glorious paradigm of empirical science, but, in doing so, they demean themselves (literally) immeasurably; selling their birthright for a mess of potage. The study of the meanest, basest, most haplessly limited aspect of creation: matter.

Sure, there is a scientific component in the area of psychology, generally, but the latter utterly transcends the former. Medicine, itself, in its higher reaches, is at least as much an art as a science.

A holistic approach, you see; the body as a living organism in constant flux, taking account of non-empirical factors. Thinking, like all the greatest scientific thinkers, inductively. The deductive elements can be left - whether safely or not is often another matter - to the Magoos, the scientismificists.

Adam Smith realised that economics was essentially the study of human greed, and how to harness and control it. Believing, as he did, that everyone should be taxed as closely as possible on the basis of their income, and expessing radical concern for the commonweal and, more particularly for the labour force, he was evidently well to the left of most of today's Socialists. In fact, I doubt if Dennis Kucinich could have taught him much at all. More likely, the other way round. Smith would certanly be demonised in rag-time by the M$M, in the UK and the US, today. But I digress.

[Silent3]

22. I hardly know where to begin with such confused rambling.

First of all, one post right before yours, cosmik debris used psychology and psychiatry as EXAMPLES of SCIENCE, to counter the OP-contained claim that science "ignore consciousness", which is absolute bullshit. Yet you blithely decide you can speak for CD an claim that he would dismiss psychology and psychiatry as "voodoo".

I'd guess that CD, like myself, would find some of the content of psychology and psychiatry often doesn't live up to good scientific standards, but that's not at all the same as dismissing those areas of study in their entirety.

If not to science, to what else would you have psychology and psychiatry "hitch their waggons (sic)"? Since you seem to either loathe empiricism, or consider it no more than an incredibly limited tool, so what's left? Psychologist should "expand" into more non-repeatable, unverifiable work?

On what basis will we judge the quality of their work? How good it sounds? If you get the right kind of tingle when you read about it?

A holistic approach, you see; the body as a living organism in constant flux, taking account of non-empirical factors. Thinking, like all the greatest scientific thinkers, inductively. The deductive elements can be left - whether safely or not is often another matter - to the Magoos, the scientismificists.

What exactly is a "non-empirical factor"? Can you give me a few examples?

Can you give me an example of science working as if human beings AREN'T "living organism(s) in constant flux"? I don't seem to recall much scientific work based on the concept of human beings being static, unchanging entities.

Where did you get the impression that science is ONLY based on deductive reasoning, that inductive reasoning or intuition are ruled out? The chemist Friedrich August Kekulé claimed that he figured out the structure of benzine after having a dream about a snake eating its own tail. Science is fine with that -- as long as experiment bears out the idea from the dream, which indeed it does.

As for Adam Smith... whatever inspired you to go off on that tangent, I have no idea.

[skepticscott]

26. Thank you...

You saved me the trouble of writing the same smackdown. One gets tired of debunking the same baloney on a weekly basis...

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. "Psychologist should "expand" into more non-repeatable, unverifiable work?"

Precisely. The mind isn't a mineral, you know. Are you going to put thoughts in a pipette?

I'll cut to the chase and ask you what you consider to be the likely implications for further scientific discoveries after near-death experiences of patients, monitored under the strictest laboratory conditions by the neurosurgical team involved, and ending in the unambiguous brain death of the patients, provided equally unambiguous evidence that the patient's mind was NOT co-terminous with his/her physical brain, but independent of it.

Now you people - and I recognise you're a cut above the garden variety scientismificists here - should you not have been all over this. But nary a word. It should have been a major world-wide sensation. Not that it wasn't known by the vast body of mankind from time immemorial, but the scientific "leaders" of our Brave New World, needed education in some fundamentals. Still do, it seems.

A little respect for the anecdotal testimony of that same vast body of mankind wouldn't come amiss. But then those superstitious, uneducated people, what could they know? They obviously weren't able to build a career on that kind of knowledge, or contribute to those of the scientists, so it was evidently deemed false, until proven otherwise under laboratory conditions. Well, now it has been. Are you absolutely fascinated by it? Or do you think it might diminish the priestly caste of the scientist as the gateway to all knowledge.

"http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/nobrainactive.html"

Another interesting article:

http://www.abm.university-trust.wales.nhs.uk/news.cfm?orgId=743&contentId=10025

Dr Peter Fenwick, a consultant neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist, and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists wrote a description of an operation, monitored under strict scientific conditions, leading to a near-death experience, and conclusively proving that the mind could operate independently of the clinically-dead brain and, of course, body of a patient. Unfortunately, I no longer have the link, though multiple links to articles on Dr Peter Fenwick, and indeed, after-life experiences, are given in Google.

How is it you have the temerity to continue with this materialist piffle?

[Silent3]

42. What's so surprising about consciousness surviving a flat EEG?

By analogy, it's not much more surprising that turning a computer off, then back on again, and the computer still runs and most of the data is still there.

There's nothing about an eeeeeevil, close-minded materialistic view of consciousness that requires that consciousness be continuous until it ceases once, and from then on never start up again. You're simple conflating a straw man of your own creation with materialism. So long as the brain doesn't suffer so much damage that large numbers of brain cells die, and so long as the connections between neurons don't break down, why shouldn't conscious be able to restart after a flat EEG?

I'm sorry if that too much "temerity" for you to deal with. Given your "pipette" comment, you clearly don't know much about science or the scientific process, all you have is your own parody of cartoonish close-mindedness which you mistake for the real thing.

[Name removed]

50. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Silent3]

51. What's a "numpty"? And they're murderous? And I'm one of them?

I might think about responding to your post if you can tone down the ad homs a bit. It's one thing to argue your case forcibly, or even to be ungentle in how your characterize someone's viewpoint or the argument they're making (I'll admit I do that myself), but it's become routine with you to engage in simple, childish name calling.

In the meantime, a completely valid alternative to having an explanation is to say "I don't know". If person A says they don't know X, person B says they do, it is perfectly valid for A to challenge B's claims without offering an alternative. If a bank has been robbed, I say I don't know who robbed the bank, and you claim a time-traveling Yeti robbed the bank, I am under no obligation to come up with an alternate suspect in order to point out the ridiculous of your suspect.

Taking that attitude hardly makes one a "high priests of all knowledge".

[Why Syzygy]

36. The "non-empirical factor"

is the consciousness. It is the awareness of all the stimuli transmitted by the sensory receptors.
That's the question posed; why doesn't it all just go on in the dark. Why the awareness, which gives rise to the ability to study oneself...

[Silent3]

43. How do you know anyone other than yourself has self-awareness?

You can't know for sure. There's no absolute philosophical escape from the possibility of solipsism. As long as you're going to talk to other people about things like awareness or consciousness, however, as if those other people aren't just automatons or figments of your own imagination, you implicitly enter a realm where you have to equate awareness and consciousness with the external signs of these things, starting with the behaviors other people engage in which lead you to believe that they are similar to you and share a similar experiences of self awareness.

As for the this tired old gambit: Being able to ask a question which science can't answer doesn't mean that some other "approach" can or will lead to an answer. It's almost as if people have some strange idea that "it wouldn't be fair" for us to be cut off from the answers we want, so if science can't answer something, the universe is somehow obligated to provide an alternate path to the desired knowledge.

Sometime we just don't know some answers yet. Sometimes, it might turn out, we may never know.

[Why Syzygy]

45. I'll skip your first question

and allow that you must have totally slipped a gear somewhere to pull that one out.

As for the second, you ALMOST engaged the gear. All he suggests is allowing that consciousness just IS, it simply exists. There's nothing there suggesting "alternate paths" and "answers". Unless your perceptive skills see something I don't.

[Silent3]

46. No, don't skip the first question.

The first question is basic Philosophy 101 stuff. If you think it's "slipping a gear" to bring it up, well, you simply haven't thought very much then.

As for saying consciousness "just IS"... what's so amazingly profound or useful or less than blindingly obvious or special in a not-blindingly-obvious way about that? Is my car or a tree is-ing in a way that isn't as just-is-y as consciousness just is? Other stuff does its is-ing in a complicated way, but consciousness just IS? Other stuff does its is-ing in a derivative way as a consequence of other things, but consciousness just IS?

[Why Syzygy]

47. You obviously haven't

read the material. Your discussion reflects that.

[Silent3]

48. "The material" doesn't refer to consciouness as "non-empirical".

You did that, and my question refers to that.

As for "the material", it proves nothing, it merely muses and speculates about how nice and neat everything turns out if we treat consciousness as fundamental, throws in some warm fuzzies, the usual claims that the world is heading in the wonderful direction that the author believes in, and then the patently false claim that science has ignored and wouldn't engage with consciousness as the cherry on top.

[cosmik debris]

25. .

:crazy:

[Joe Chi Minh]

29. Well said!

[TCJ70]

60. Shoot...I'm a believer and...

...I find myself shaking my head at this guy. Yikes...

[Why Syzygy]

32. +1 . Great post.

[Odin2005]

35. What a streaming pile of meaningless nonsense.

[Jim__]

21. If Peter Russell seriously believes that science has not engaged with consciousness ...

... I suggest he read Gerald Edelman. Edelman is a quite serious scientist, a nobel prize winner who has spent years studying and has published numerous books on the topic of consciousness.

A brief excerpt from wikipedia:

Edelman proposes a biological theory of consciousness, based on his studies of the immune system. He explicitly locates his theory within Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, citing the key tenets of Darwin's population theory, which postulates that individual variation within species provides the basis for the natural selection that eventually leads to the evolution of new species<9>. He rejects dualism and also dismisses newer hypotheses such as the so-called 'computational' model of consciousness, which liken the brain's functions to the operations of a computer.

Edelman argues that the mind and consciousness are wholly material and purely biological phenomena, arising from highly complex cellular processes within the brain, and that the development of consciousness and intelligence can be satisfactorily explained by Darwinian theory.
In Edelman's view, human consciousness depends on and arises from the uniquely complex physiology of the human brain:

• the vast number of neurons and associated cells in the brain
  
• the almost infinitely complex physiological variations in neurons (even of the same general type) and in their connections with other cells
  
• the massive multiple parallel re-entrant connections between individual cells, and between larger neuronal groups, and so on, up to entire functional regions and beyond.
  

Edelman's theory is strongly anti-reductionist and seeks to explain consciousness by reference to the uniquely rich and complex morphology of the brain. A newborn baby's brain contains a massive population of neurons (approx. 100 billion cells) and those that survive the initial phases of growth and development will make approximately 100 trillion connections with each other. A sample of brain tissue the size of a match head contains about a billion connections, and if we consider how these neuronal connections might be variously combined, the number of possible permutations becomes hyper-astronomical -- in the order of ten followed by millions of zeros<10>. The young brain contains many more neurons than will ultimately survive to maturity, and Edleman argues that this redundant capacity is needed because neurons are the only cells in the body that cannot be renewed and only those cells and networks best adapted to their ultimate purpose will be selected as they organise into neuronal groups.

[Why Syzygy]

39. Did you read

the entire piece linked in the OP? If so, I can point you to the section where he addresses the chemical brain theory.

I'll look into Edelman a bit more. But your post leaves the same taste as a bit of RW radio I heard last night, where they were roasting NANCY PELOSI about torture, oblivious that it is a gnat brained reaction and obviously intended for dupes. I could be wrong about you. I know I'm right about them.

[Jim__]

40. Yes I did read the "entire" piece linked at the OP.

There's really not much there. There is no serious arguement in support of his claim that consciousness "just is". He's entitled to his view. But just accepting such claims is precisely what science doesn't do. You can point me to any part of the article that you want. I don't think you can point me to anything that resembles a cogent argument; nothing beyond the purest speculation.

In this: Science, then and pretty much still today, didn’t want to engage with consciousness Russell is ignoring what is currently being engaged in science, for instance, Edelman. That invalidates his argument. He's free to express his opinion. He is not free to deny that science is doing what it is clearly doing.

As to your claim that my post has some resemblance to a right wing argument about Nancy Pelosi, please ...

[DU GrovelBot]

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[centristgrandpa]

52. Interest article about...

consciousness, how is it define...
http://www.enspirepress.com/hypnosis_information_articles/what_is_consciousness/what_is_consciousness.html

[Why Syzygy]

53. Welcome to DU

centristgrandpa . :hi:

Thanks for the link. I disagree with the opening paragraph. Consciousness was a matter of interest way before William James (1842-1910).

[Silent3]

54. Interesting, but the part about quantum mechanics is misleading.

There is no proof -- repeat, there is no proof -- in the world of physics about a link between consciousness and the outcome of quantum mechanical measurements. This is an extremely popular bit of pseudoscience with just enough basis in fact to keep the meme alive.

What QM does show is a link between the act of observation and the results of measurement. This leads to some interesting philosophical questions about what's so special about the act of observation, and where observation finally occurs. People are composed of particles that obey the laws of QM too, and people can observe people observing QM experiments, and other people can observe those people, etc. There's no clear answer as to where the "collapse of the wave function" takes place.

That human consciousness has anything to do with QM measurements is an interesting thing to ponder, BUT IT IS ONLY SPECULATION. Even when physicists themselves do this kind of speculation, it's still only speculation. There is no experimental support for the idea.

Further, even if such a connection between consciousness and QM outcomes does exist, it's a completely, utterly different thing to think that outcomes are related to meanings of our thoughts. Imagine you have a soda machine connected to a keyboard. You type, "I want a coke." on the keyboard, hit return, and out pops a diet root beer. You try again, typing "I said I want a coke!", and out pops a 7-Up. Well, as it turns out, the control program knows not a single word of English, and it's just using the number of characters you type, divided by the number of drink options, to come up with a number which represents a slot inside the dispenser. Not knowing the rules of the game, your attempts to communicate are fruitless, or only randomly correct if you do manage to get a coke.

If there is a connection between consciousness and QM measurement, and other real-world consequences, it's actually a lot more likely to work like the annoying soda machine than for some complex mechanism to exist which interprets our thoughts into desired (or feared) outcomes. It's a complete abuse of QM and real science when people try to use the respectability of science to bolster claims for crap like, oh, "The Secret".

One fascinating (and equally unproven) interpretation of the QM measurement/observation dilemma is that the wave function never collapses at all -- every possible outcome happens. In this view the universe is constantly splitting off into more and more universes representing all possible outcomes. You still can imagine a role for consciousness here -- as somehow steering one's awareness along a particular path in the ever-branching solution space -- but you can also imagine that there are different versions of individual conscious minds spinning off along with all of those branching universes.

[centristgrandpa]

55. QM, valid tool...

Math is the playground where other dimensions exist. QM found rogue waves over 90 feet in height, something most scientist said couldn't and shouldn't exist. QM has been instrumental with space exploration to mention a few. Math in my opinion is a valid search engine procedure when dealing with measurements relating to scientific inquiry...

[Silent3]

56. Huh?

What does the concept of mathematics being a "valid search engine procedure" (curiously phrased, but I think I know what you mean) have to do with the subject at hand? Likewise, what's up with "other dimensions"? The mathematical meaning of "other dimensions" can be very prosaic (a system that records temperature, pressure, and humidity over time is a four dimensional system), and has little or nothing to do with whatever the hell it's supposed to mean when "spiritual" people start talking about "other dimensions".

[centristgrandpa]

58. to all the Huh-er's

The world of mathematics is double edged, math in it's rawest form predicts while on the other side, it validates. "valid search engine procedure" in my opinion is inquiry. "other dimensions" is just a fun topic with no implied connection...

[Silent3]

61. My "huh" still remains.

Talking about the value of mathematics for predication or validation doesn't really address anything in the article you linked to, at least not that I can see, nor does it address my comments about the article. If you were just making a non sequitur, well, okay then, but I'm trying to figure out if you intended more than that.

[centristgrandpa]

62. probability is an understatement....

In the abstract world of math, I subscribe to these two conclusions...

(source quote) "Due to the dynamic nature of consciousness the most recent definitions consider consciousness to exist at many levels- defining consciousness as the processing of information at various levels of awareness. Rather than excluding all phenomenon outside the realm of rational thought, this more inclusive definition allows for the existence of altered states, paranormal occurrences, as well as multiple levels/ degrees of consciousness. An expanded view of consciousness may be the only way to really begin to understand what consciousness is and the forms that it takes."

“The Copenhagen Interpretation (CI) is the standard interpretation of the quantum world. It offers a rare explanation for the otherwise incredulous experimental outcomes of the famous two-slit experiment and the EPR experiment. The theory maintains that reality exists in the form of probability waves. Physical objects only "appear" due to the collapse of their probability waves by a conscious observer. Thus, according to the majority of quantum physicists, consciousness can, and does, affect matter existing beyond the boundaries of the physical body.”

[Silent3]

63. In the abstract world of theoretical physics...

...I subscribe to the notion that the owls are not what they seem. :wtf:

Do you think you're making sense, and that I'm not getting it, or are you aware that your train of thought is something less than blindingly obvious, by several orders of magnitude?

All you did was quote back two paragraphs from the article, then stick the words "In the abstract world of math..." in front of them. It takes a little more than that to demonstrate a meaningful connection.

[cosmik debris]

64. I think we need to introduce centristgrandpa to Boojatta. n/t

[Silent3]

65. Dare we risk that?

It might tear a hole in the space/time continuum. :scared:

[cosmik debris]

66. It would be entertaining

And the purpose of the universe is to entertain me.

So let's do it!

[Silent3]

67. Okay, okay.

Last one through the event horizon has to buy the beer.

[centristgrandpa]

68. blindingly obvious...

Comparatively speaking, it’s quite obvious how I frame my reply; it does not take a scientist to figure it out, wow what an observation. Expand on this debate and give your expert retort, criticism is double edge.

(source quote) "Today the functions of theory and observation are divided into two distinct communities in physics. Both experiments and theories are much more complex than back in Newton's time. Theorists are exploring areas of Nature in mathematics that technology so far does not allow us to observe in experiments. Many of the theoretical physicists who are alive today may not live to see how the real Nature compares with her mathematical description in their work. Today's theorists have to learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty in their mission to describe Nature using math."

[cosmik debris]

69. Seriously, have you met our friend Boojatta?

I think you will enjoy his posts. Here are a few samples.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=195832&mesg_id=195832

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=170376&mesg_id=170376

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=173586&mesg_id=173586

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=199202&mesg_id=199202

And best of all:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=189126&mesg_id=189126

[centristgrandpa]

71. seriously....

It’s quite obvious that you are the leader to the conformist group here in DU whose sheep like tradition you want to enforce using patronizing methods with hopes to add to your collection, too bad…you talk a lot of shitt but no substantive retort, what a surprise…quite pathetic… or would you like to add to the discussion about “Consciousness: The Bridge Between Science and Spirit”

[cosmik debris]

74. That's flattering.

But nonsensical.

[Silent3]

70. First of all...

...you didn't quote that quote until now. Second, that quote still doesn't address anything about consciousness, unless you're harboring some secret knowledge (or just a misimpression) that there's an equation out there developed via the "abstract math" you love to keep referring to that somehow proves/demonstrates/describes/explains consciousness.

That abstract math can be useful is not in dispute. Whether it's "enough" when you're trying to prove something in physics is an interesting debate, especially when you get to something like string theory where experimental data may be out of reach, but that's a whole other subject.

The Copenhagen Interpretation, in case you aren't aware of this, is NOT a mathematical construct. It is merely verbal theorizing with no mathematical or physical proof behind it. The math of the wave function and the uncertainty principle do not contain terms that represent consciousness. The Copenhagen Interpretation is simply one way (or several related ways) of trying to philosophically digest the strange implications of the math of quantum mechanics -- something which is often abused and misrepresented by people trying to justify supernatural beliefs.

[centristgrandpa]

72. second of all...

Both quotes used in my opinion offer possibility, no more, no less. as to your supernatural comment, i never imply such nonsense...How can you have inquiry using math without philosophical debate, whose really naive?

[Silent3]

73. Half of this discussion seems to be taking place...

...inside the privacy of your own mind, about tangents and meanderings you haven't bothered to mention aloud.

Both quotes used in my opinion offer possibility, no more, no less.

Possibility of what?

as to your supernatural comment, i never imply such nonsense...

I never said you did. That's why my initial response to the link you posted was a general comment about how QM gets abused, without any direct or implied accusation that you were personally one of the people who abuse QM to bolster supernatural claims. All I did was state my concerns about the way the article brought up QM. From that point on, all I can tell is that you somehow, someway, have some sort of objection to or clarification of my comments you want to make. What that might be is clear as mud.

How can you have inquiry using math without philosophical debate, whose really naive?

How can you have a philosophical debate when someone won't even clarify what the heck it is they think they're debating? I hope you aren't playing the tired old gambit of "Well, if you were up to my level in this discussion, you wouldn't even have to ask!".

I challenge you to state, in your own plain straight-forward words, what, if any, point you want to make about QM and consciousness, without relying on anything you think has already been established in this thread. If it helps you to imagine that I'm being a terribly slow idiot unable to follow your brilliance, fine. Whatever it takes. Spell it out for me, slowly.

[centristgrandpa]

75. i accept...

"I challenge you to state, in your own plain straight-forward words, what, if any, point you want to make about QM and consciousness, without relying on anything you think has already been established in this thread. If it helps you to imagine that I'm being a terribly slow idiot unable to follow your brilliance, fine. Whatever it takes. Spell it out for me, slowly."

My schedule is somewhat crazy today but i accept your thoughtful challenge, will reply in the pm, also i don't think you're a slow idiot, just the opposite; an articulate well spoken debater.

[centristgrandpa]

76. sorry 4 the late reply, forgot about MD weekend

(I challenge you to state, in your own plain straight-forward words, what, if any, point you want to make about QM and consciousness, without relying on anything you think has already been established in this thread. If it helps you to imagine that I'm being a terribly slow idiot unable to follow your brilliance, fine. Whatever it takes. Spell it out for me, slowly.)

If you accept “Quantum mechanics” as a valid scientific method of predicting “probability” hopefully my opinion is rational.

When dealing with consciousness, in my opinion, it cannot be measure or mapped by way of classical scientific inquiry because of the inimitable circumstance. The resource of realization is the process of accumulating life’s experience through trial and error. The sun of this know-how is consciousness.

In order to explain “the consciousness” one must appreciate the classic definition; (Consciousness emerges as a novel property of computational complexity among neurons, which is neither random, nor algorithmic)

The applicability of theoretical math (QM) to predict the existence of our consciousness is the only option. QM contributions to the scientific world are indisputable; presently there are no other means to adequately give details about our consciousness unless one believes in the supernatural which i do not subscribe to.

[Silent3]

77. The Emperor's New Mind?

Sounds like you might be referring to the work of Roger Penrose, or something much like it.

I read "The Emperor's New Mind" many years ago, so it's not exactly fresh in my mind. It was very interesting, and Penrose provided a lot to think about, but I still wasn't thoroughly convinced.

His argument, at least in part as well as I can recall, went something like this: many problems can't be solved algorithmically; if the human brain functions in a classical, non-quantum way then anything that it does can be modeled as a Turing machine; the human brain seems to solve problems that go beyond what a Turing machine can do without suffering a failure to reliably halt; the human brain must therefore have access to some non-classical, non-Turing machine way to reach solutions; some of the properties of quantum mechanics seem to fit the bill for escaping classical limitations.

My biggest objection to this train of thought comes down to this: humans make mistakes.

We make lots of mistakes. Only if you view consciousness as something that needs to reliably reach perfect solutions does the halting problem arise. As soon as you allow for error, I don't see any reason why thought processes can't simply be classical algorithms which simply terminate well short of perfect accuracy and certainty. We need do nothing more than iterate until we reach arbitrary degrees of accuracy and certainty, doing so successfully enough to have gained a survival advantage in our evolutionary past.

[centristgrandpa]

78. Thank you...

Actually i read works by R. Penrose and H. Everett to name a few. You nail the Roger P workings.

As to your last paragraph; in my opinion, the consciousness is the total sum of "free will and reason" (there’s more to that but some other time). i believe when we make mistakes or gain insight, that becomes part of the DNA coding which in turn is applied to the evolutionary process.

I also believe that the consciousness mirrors right and wrong from the point of each individual’s perspective, and it seemingly does not filter out bad from good. The global population is a perfect example of chaos and mayhem. If there is a collective consciousness, I have not witness it yet.

It was difficult trying to explain my view relating to QM and Consciousness. Hopefully my reply was rational. Thank you for an interesting and thought provoking debate.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/manyworlds/

[tinrobot]

57. Not sure what you mean there...

Spaceflight is calculated using Newton's laws of motion. F=MA is the mantra of rocket scientists.

Rogue waves? Like ocean waves? That would be fluid dynamics - developed by Bernoulli and others.

These are all big things, QM is about really small things.

[centristgrandpa]

59. small is a good thing..

When observing big things, they seem quite small at it's core mathematicly speaking...