Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

What's also interesting is that some plants trigger their own death. Basils for example pretty much stop growing once they've flowered, and the actual flowering is what somehow triggers the change. If you pick off the flowers before they form then the plant doesn't go into its seed stage and keeps growing. I have basils that are several years old that I've been pruning carefully to keep them producing leaves, some times aggressively cutting portions of it back to get it to bud more towards the base of the plant because they become very leggy and deformed with age after a while.

I can understand how manipulating the budding process can alter the behavior of certain plants.
What I find interesting is how plants have seemingly responded via evolution to develop protective spines for example…how did the plant know that a pointy spine would keep said animal from eating it? Did it just run a gambit of trial and error over millions of years?
Or are plants on some scale aware of the world around it?
And if so…there seems to be some form of reasoning going on.

 

[sprinkles]

I can understand how manipulating the budding process can alter the behavior of certain plants.
What I find interesting is how plants have seemingly responded via evolution to develop protective spines for example…how did the plant know that a pointy spine would keep said animal from eating it? Did it just run a gambit of trial and error over millions of years?
Or are plants on some scale aware of the world around it?
And if so…there seems to be some form of reasoning going on.

There might be some kind of reasoning I think, but I don't think it is in the plant itself because one plant doesn't live long enough to make these changes as it takes generations.

I think the plant and the animal are a unit because even as a plant develops thorns, some animal will develop a tough mouth to eat it. For example a giraffe is adapted to eat acacia which has some pretty gnarly thorns the size of nails.

 

[Skarekrow]

[video=youtube;CRkDicwjRQs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CRkDicwjRQs[/video]

"All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration.
We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
There is no such thing as death, life is a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves."

~ Bill Hicks

​

 

[Skarekrow]

I dig this article…very interesting.

Head Cases: Anomalous Monism and Strange Phenomena

“How to achieve such anomalies, such alterations and re-fashionings of reality so what comes out of it are lies, if you like, but lies that are more than literal truth” — Vincent Van Gogh

Ever see a ghost?
It’s all in your head.

Well, your heads.
You have two, you know.

Or rather, you have a physical head, and then you have all the puzzling stuff that goes on inside that physical head.
This gives those sourpuss physicalists who want to reduce psychology to physics conniptions.

Or maybe it doesn’t.
My suspicion is that they have to drink a lot to quiet the disembodied voices inside their own skulls, which while an ineffective long-term strategy will likely get you through a debate on the subject.

The whole thing seems to have bothered American philosopher of the mind Donald Herbert Davidson (1917- 2003), considered one of the pre-eminent philosophers of the 20th Century, so much that he turned his considerable cranium to precisely the question of the relation between mental and physical states.

Like any self-respecting academic, he decided to write an essay, in particular his seminal work Mental Events, propounding his theory of anomalous monism, or what I like to think of as an eminently reasonable philosophical poke in the eye of devoted skeptics who chalk up all the anomalistic experiences abundant in the universe to bad brains, although it has largely been ignored by skeptic and believer alike.

No judgement.
Everyone has to have their thing.

I liked the television show Farscape.
Some people get off on being right.

At any rate, anomalous monism strikes me as a useful philosophy in the toolkit of an anomalist.
Pick one up.

Keep it next to your tin foil hat.
What?

You don’t have a tin foil hat?
Pretty edgy, my fortean friend.

Anyhow, at the core of anomalous monism is the curious conundrum that previous theories of mind held that mental and physical events (tokens), to be reducible to one and the same, require lawlike relations between mental and physical properties (types).

This is functionally useless to the philosophically-challenged like myself when phrased this way.
Consider this.

A flock of birds is made up of the same type of bird, but each individual bird is a token.
Translated into psychological phenomena, this means that “thinking the sky is blue” (a mental event) and the pattern of firing neurons (a physical event) that caused you to think the sky is blue would seem superficially to be the same physical event, except that the sky could be grey and you simply “believe the sky is blue”, or are wearing blue tinted glasses, or are batshit insane and think everything is blue.

Obviously, I’m paraphrasing, but the problem is causality.
Basically, a great number of mental events may precipitate your appreciation of a blue sky, the fact that the sky is or is not blue notwithstanding, and how does one choose among the causal relations that led you to conclude the sky was blue?

And if one cannot choose a causal relation, it becomes very difficult to maintain a relation of identity between mental and physical types of experiences, or in layman’s terms, “Lucy, we got a problem”.

Now, nobody remembers you if your philosophy is simple.
Don’t kill people.

Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife.
Love both enemy and friend.

Be kind.
Pretty straightforward.

But by the way, there is a bizarre mystical trinity of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost and some infallible human dude wandering around making arcane proclamations about the latest technology.

Oh, and eat fish on Fridays.
See what I mean.

The guys who come up with this stuff realize life can get complicated, so why shouldn’t philosophy.
Davidson was no slouch in the esoteric argument department.

He was at heart a monistic physicalist, but didn’t think reductive approaches to the mind-body problem were particularly helpful.
He posited three arguments central to his proposition of anomalous monism:

(1) there exist both mental-to-physical as well as physical-to-mental causal interactions;

(2) all events are causally related through strict laws; and

(3) there are no psycho-physical laws which relate the mental and the physical.

The first proposition is easily summarized as “shit happens”.
We call that shit “events”, and events form the irreducible building blocks of the universe.

The second proposition amounts to the corollary that “shit always happens for a reason”, that is cause precedes effect by strict laws of the physical universe.
Always.

Your garden variety physicalist was nodding his head and patting himself on the back until Davidson’s third proposition, which concludes “the mental cannot be linked up with the physical in a chain of psycho-physical laws such that mental events can be predicted and explained on the basis of such laws”.

Hence the name “anomalous monism”.
Mental states are indeterminate translations.

Physical states are deterministic and rule-based.
This makes the fundamental point that even though mind and body share a physical ontology, mental events can only be said to be preceded both by physical events and irreducibly, non-physical mental events, and while conscious experience tends to converge with physical experience, this is not necessarily the case, making any given mental state, concisely put, anomalous.

How does this relate to anomalistics and inquiry into strange phenomena?
You may have noticed that a common characteristic, one might go as far as to say a defining quality, of anomalous experience is a certain scoffing at physical law.

Things don’t seem to behave as if they are bound to what we generally understand the rules of the universe to be (think ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, psychic phenomena), and we attempt to translate the experience into a comprehensible idiom that nonetheless fails to converge with anything that resembles concrete reality.

The translation is a mental event, incommensurable with the physical event.
Thus, things that occur in our minds need not be governed by the same strict laws as the physical events that precede or antecede them, or rather may operate under a set of laws that for all intents and purposes have no causal relationship to the physical world.

Therefore, when someone says, “it’s all in your head”, you can confidently answer, “Yes. Yes it is”, without diminishing the significance of the experience.

A strict scientific physicalism proposes that this is hogwash, as it only illuminates the fact that we haven’t comprehensively cataloged physical law, but as sociologist of science Thomas Kuhn observed,

“Scientific development depends in part on a process of non-incremental or revolutionary change. Some revolutions are large, like those associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, or Darwin, but most are much smaller, like the discovery of oxygen or the planet Uranus. The usual prelude to changes of this sort is, I believed, the awareness of anomaly, of an occurrence or set of occurrences that does not fit existing ways of ordering phenomena. The changes that result therefore require ‘putting on a different kind of thinking-cap’, one that renders the anomalous lawlike but that, in the process, also transforms the order exhibited by some other phenomena, previously unproblematic”.

​

References
“Mental Events,” in Experience and Theory, Foster and Swanson (eds.). London: Duckworth. 1970.

 

[INFJ16]

Thought you might find interesting:

[video=youtube;G50hnjx-7XQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G50hnjx-7XQ[/video]

 

[Kgal]

"All matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration.
We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively.
There is no such thing as death, life is a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves."

~ Bill Hicks

​

He was brilliant!

I am signing up for a series of 12 Indoctrinations to help me grasp the idea I am the only one here creating my world. I can sense this truth at the edge of my awareness but my ego freaks out whenever it contemplates being all alone in the void of space as it were. There are many many teachings out there all leading to this truth.
You are the creator of your world and all I'm doing is agreeing to co-create with you if I can access (maintain) the same frequencies you are vibrating at.

It makes me remember Joseph Campbell in Power of Myth series describing a Bodhisattva - or was it a Brahman - sitting on a Lotus Flower. When he opens his eye(s) a world is created. When he closes his eye(s) a world is deformed or destroyed. He opens an eye and another world is created etc.

It is said when one is living in the 5th frequency you can create something and then if you don't desire it anymore - you can destroy and create something new - purely on your creative spark and motivations.

I don't know if this video describes what Joseph says...but it's cool anyway.

[video=youtube;pYVjo9FwiQw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYVjo9FwiQw&index=27&list=PL0mcZSbIleZYwS1 XSx2UVQM_W24zIphmU[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

Jacobi’s Inspirational Poster of the Week
[MENTION=5667]Jacobi[/MENTION]
(couldn’t be more fitting)

 

[Kgal]

Have you tried your pendulum yet?!?!?!

I did mine last night for the first time since before B died last November. It was a phenomenal experience! Woot!

http://www.infjs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26966&page=50&p=835779&viewfull=1#post835779

 

[Skarekrow]

Have you tried your pendulum yet?!?!?!

I did mine last night for the first time since before B died last November. It was a phenomenal experience! Woot!

http://www.infjs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26966&page=50&p=835779&viewfull=1#post835779

I have not….been trapped up in my head too much lately.
Actually though, was going to stop by the “metaphysical” shop down on main st later so I may pick up a pendulum then.
I will keep you updated!!

Sounds like you had an amazing experience!

 

[Skarekrow]

Quantum Physics Explains Coincidences?

When surprising coincidences occur, it seems we are connected to the world around us in a mysterious way.
For example, you are thinking about a song you haven’t heard in years, and as you have this thought the song starts playing on the radio.

In this case, it seems your mind is connected to the world around you–the coincidence occurs between a mental state and a physical state.
Coincidence also appears between the psyche of two individuals.

For example, you and your friend simultaneously buy identical shirts without knowing it.
“Synchronicity phenomena are characterized by a significant coincidence which appears between a (subjective) mental state and an event occurring in the (objective) external world,” explained Francois Martin, Ph.D., of the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the University of Paris, and Federico Carminati, Ph.D., Physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in a paper titled “Synchronicity, Quantum Information and the Psyche,” published in the Journal of Cosmology in 2009.

Martin and Carminati say that synchronicity cannot be explained by classical physics.
They look to quantum entanglement for an explanation of the connection between mind and matter and between the minds of multiple people.

They use quantum physics to examine the relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, and to examine free will.

How the Conscious Mind Interacts With the Unconscious

In quantum physics, an electron exists in an oscillating wave form–it isn’t in one fixed state until it is measured.
Measurement collapses the wave-function.

Martin sees the unconscious mind as similar to an electron in this regard.
It’s in various potential states, and the conscious mind acts like a measuring device that fixes it (at least temporarily) into a particular state.

The conscious mind collapses the wave-function of the unconscious mind.

“Free will plays a central role in the transition from potentiality to actuality and vice versa,” he wrote in another paper titled, “Quantum Psyche: Quantum Field Theory of the Human Psyche,” published in 2005 in NeuroQuantology.

So, according to this theory, there’s a quantum process occurring between different parts of your mind.
But the process extends beyond the individual mind in synchronistic events.

Martin and Carminati wonder if the mind of an individual is connected to a collective unconscious through entanglement.

How Two or More People May Be Entangled

Quantum entanglement is a phenomenon in which pairs or groups of particles that have been in contact with each other seem to remain connected over vast distances.
When actions are performed on one of the particles, corresponding changes are observed on the others.

“The analogy for the human psyche of a bound state is a nuclear family, where all the elements of a family are kept ‘bound’ together by constant interaction, be it emotional, financial, [or] social interactions that arise due to living in the same household,” wrote Martin in his 2005 paper. “The analogy of the entanglement between two individuals is, for example, the continuing bonds between children who are adults with their aging parents; for such a case there is no longer any common household, and no financial or other co-dependence; but entanglement can continue to exist over great distances and over many decades. The correlation between such apparently disconnected individuals is very well represented by the concept of the quantum entanglement of two or more psyche.”

Quantum Information Transfer

Martin acknowledges that his hypothesis requires further investigation–there’s still much to discover in the field of quantum physics as it applies to particles let alone to the human psyche.

Garret Moddel, an engineering professor at the University of Colorado who has worked extensively with quantum mechanics, explained to how easy it may be to oversimplify entanglement.

The effect “is a very subtle one. It’s not a causal effect, it’s a correlational effect. What the distinction between those two is requires a rather patient and detailed explanation.”
“People tend to think that quantum entanglement means that when I shake one particle, I’ll be able to see the effect on another, but that’s not so,” he said.

There’s no indication that information can be communicated through entanglement–or at least not as we would think of “information” within the framework of classical physics.
In classical information, there’s a binary system of bits, which can take only two values: 0 or 1.

“A quantum bit (in a shortened form qu-bit) can take simultaneously the values 0 and 1,” explained Martin and Carminati.
Qubits are in a superposition of both states at the same time.

A preliminary step toward quantum data storage occurred in 2008, when scientists transferred a superposition state from one qu-bit to another qu-bit.
Martin and Carminati wrote: “We suppose that the mental systems first proposed by Freud, i.e. the unconscious, pre-consciousness, consciousness, are made up of mental qu-bits. They are sets of mental qu-bits.”

They said these different levels of consciousness may be quantum entangled.
The entanglement of the conscious mind with the collective unconscious (of people with whom we have emotional bonds, et cetera) could explain coincidences in which the psyche of two or more people are shown to be connected.

But the conscious mind may also be entangled with matter, they said, explaining coincidences in which the physical world around us seems to mirror our thoughts.
“One can possibly see synchronistic events between the mental and the material domains as a consequence of a quantum entanglement between mind and matter. For us mental and material domains of reality will be considered as aspects, or manifestations, of one underlying reality in which mind and matter are unseparated,” they wrote.

For them, the existence of synchronicity refutes the strict materialist point-of-view: “The projection of our subjectivity in the environment in which we live (synchronicity phenomena … ), in agreement with quantum mechanics, refutes the local hypothesis (‘each individual is in his parcel of space-time’) as well as the realistic hypothesis (‘the object has a reality well defined independent of the subject who observes it’).”

Collective, Global Behavior

Martin and Carminati close with a reference to the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC).
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines BEC as “a state of matter in which separate atoms or subatomic particles, cooled to near absolute zero … coalesce into a single quantum mechanical entity.”

Martin and Carminati wrote: “As an end let us mention a quantum effect that can have important consequences in mental phenomena, for example for awareness (for the emergence of consiousness). It is the Bose-Einstein condensation, in which each particle loses its individuality in favor of a collective, global behavior.”

 

[Skarekrow]

Fascinating!

Could Travelling Waves Upset Cognitive Neuroscience?

​

A new paper published in Cognitive Processes argues that neuroscientists may need to look at brain activity from a new angle, in order to understand neural dynamics.

According to the authors, David Alexander et al. of Leuven in Belgium,

A ubiquitous methodological practice in cognitive neuroscience is to obtain measure of brain activity by analyzing the time course of activity alone, or the spatial topography of activity alone.
This usually results in throwing away most of the data as irrelevant: It is considered enough to analyze the time series at a site of interest, or to take spatial snapshots at some relevant times.
This practice boils down to treating brain data as if it were space—time separable.

​

If a signal is ‘space-time separable’, this means in effect that one can hold either space or time constant, and then measure the other.
For instance, in an EEG experiment, we typically consider the signal from one particular electrode (i.e. holding space constant) and plot a graph of how it varies over time.

In a task-based fMRI experiment, we hold time constant and plot the spatial extent of activity at that time point.
By doing this, we are assuming that activity in the brain takes the form of standing waves.

However, Alexander et al. say that while we can treat brain activity in this way, we shouldn’t, because brain activity is dominated by travelling waves, activations or deactivations which move through the brain, and in which the temporal and spatial dimensions are therefore not distinct.

Recent research has suggested the importance of traveling waves of activation in the cortex… Critically, traveling waves are not space—time separable.
Traveling wave activity has been measured in the cortex at a number of scales, including columns, Brodmann areas, and whole cortex… Large-scale cortical waves have been shown to arise at a variety of frequencies, from the subdelta through to gamma bands.
Their prominence suggests that the correct frame of reference for analyzing cortical activity is the dynamical trajectory of the system, rather than the time and space coordinates of measurements.

​

Here’s my illustration of the problem, adapted from one of Alexander et al.’s figures:

​

On the left we see a scenario in which a negative (blue) activation in one area is followed by a positive (red) activation in a nearby area.
These ‘blobs’ are standing waves.

But what if the positive and negative activations travel through the brain, as on the right?
Recognizing the importance of travelling waves means adopting a new approach to data analysis.

So what do we need to do?
Alexander et al. say that we need to find a coordinate transformation, that converts the space and time dimensions into a new coordinate space.

They liken this to looking at the data from an angle:

​

Once we do this, we would finally be able to assume something like space-time separability.
In particular, the coordinate transformation would allow us to assume that neural activity is additive, meaning that the subtraction method would be valid.

Currently, much of cognitive neuroscience is based on applying the subtraction method in space and in time.
According to Alexander et al. this is probably a mistake, and means that we are ‘barking up the wrong tree’ in a general sense.

They conclude

We question the very notion that neurological entities are events occur at certain locations and times, rather than being comprised of trajectories that extend over locations and times…
If cortical activity is not space—time separable, then it seems likely that neither are perception or action. We take the view that measurements in neuroscience are not of events but of trajectories.

​

It’s fascinating stuff, although Alexander et al. don’t go into detail about how this works in practice.
How are we to find the coordinate transform that allows us to rule these traveling waves, in any given case?

And just what kind of additional understanding can we hope to find once we do so?

Alexander DM, Trengove C, & van Leeuwen C (2015).
Donders is dead: cortical traveling waves and the limits of mental chronometry in cognitive neuroscience.
Cognitive ProcessingPMID: 26139038​

 

[Kgal]

I have not….been trapped up in my head too much lately.
Actually though, was going to stop by the “metaphysical” shop down on main st later so I may pick up a pendulum then.
I will keep you updated!!

Sounds like you had an amazing experience!

:love: I enjoyed it very much - that's for sure! Although I didn't hear the answers I wanted...but it's okay.... I feel rock solid in my core now.

Oooo...I hope you DO pick up a pendulum....and play around with it.

 

[Skarekrow]

:love: I enjoyed it very much - that's for sure! Although I didn't hear the answers I wanted...but it's okay.... I feel rock solid in my core now.

Oooo...I hope you DO pick up a pendulum....and play around with it.

Bought a silver one…it’s the one that seemed right.

 

[sprinkles]

[video=youtube;gwg5PtOngGk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwg5PtOngGk[/video]

 

[Skarekrow]

[MENTION=2578]Kgal[/MENTION] [MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION]

Do Plants Respond to Pain?

[video=youtube;fGLABm7jJ-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fGLABm7jJ-Y[/video]

Scientists conduct a plant experiment that may make you rethink those veggie burgers.​

 

[sprinkles]

Do Plants Respond to Pain?

[video=youtube;fGLABm7jJ-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fGLABm7jJ-Y[/video]

Scientists conduct a plant experiment that may make you rethink those veggie burgers.​

The creepy thing is that separated plant parts don't die or stop functioning. For example, when I take basil cuttings to root new plants, the cuttings still turn to the sun even though they're not attached to the parent plant anymore. And placed in water with some nutrient content they will still grow and feed, and eventually grow roots out of places that would normally grow leaves.

So not only is the cutting still functional but can change its growing functions as needed. The cutting can turn on the switch that says "grow roots instead of leaves in this spot" and it does.

 

[Skarekrow]

The creepy thing is that separated plant parts don't die or stop functioning. For example, when I take basil cuttings to root new plants, the cuttings still turn to the sun even though they're not attached to the parent plant anymore. And placed in water with some nutrient content they will still grow and feed, and eventually grow roots out of places that would normally grow leaves.

So not only is the cutting still functional but can change its growing functions as needed. The cutting can turn on the switch that says "grow roots instead of leaves in this spot" and it does.

I find plants fascinating!
I remember my brother used to own this house in the older part of town when I lived in CA.
Anyhow they had this huge pecan tree in the backyard…well, one year, it decided to produce cherries instead of pecans.
So, apparently they used to graft cherry trees on lots of different varieties of trees as it made their branches stronger I think (?), anyhow…after the tree being there for probably at least 80 years it switched it up.
How bizarre.

 

[sprinkles]

I find plants fascinating!
I remember my brother used to own this house in the older part of town when I lived in CA.
Anyhow they had this huge pecan tree in the backyard…well, one year, it decided to produce cherries instead of pecans.
So, apparently they used to graft cherry trees on lots of different varieties of trees as it made their branches stronger I think (?), anyhow…after the tree being there for probably at least 80 years it switched it up.
How bizarre.

Yeah that can happen with grafts. Grafted trees can grow both types of fruit in addition to hybrid fruits in some cases.

 

[Skarekrow]

Yeah that can happen with grafts. Grafted trees can grow both types of fruit in addition to hybrid fruits in some cases.

A cherry with a pecan in the center instead of a pit would have been fucking awesome.
Just saying...

 

[sprinkles]

A cherry with a pecan in the center instead of a pit would have been fucking awesome.
Just saying...

What's really crazy is that cuttings can just keep growing and growing. Granny Smith apples? All of them came from one single source tree. They're all extensions of the same tree that was discovered almost 150 years ago. Literally. There's no other way to make them.