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- Thread starter Skarekrow
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Me too. My little getaway out into the middle of now where with a hot tub was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!!
Did you know I arranged that for myself after your tarot card reading suggested I take some time off for myself.
Thank you for that. No...I haven't seen Tomorrowland...and have no plans to watch it. So you can discuss any aspect of it you wish with me.
It's interesting how they put the truth out there in fictional movies.
Although I hadn't heard the Fear programming put exactly in the way of one machine...but I have no doubt technology has been affecting the minds of humanity.
Oh really?
Maybe I’ll have to start watching it.
I should probably go back and watch the original series first tbh….not sure if I will remember all the finer nuances.
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You don't have to know anything from the original really. You might not get all of the subtle things but Reborn is its own thing, picking up where the original left off, which they refresh you on in Reborn.
Spoiler-y:
Anyway, this season focuses on an impending doom of the current timeline and a solution is to create a new world in the future. They create a machine that transports people into the future. There is also an Evo that has the power to negate others powers. So you have this element of growing fear in a lot of ways. It parallels Tomorrowland in a lot of ways I think.
I will watch it for sure then…sounds great!
I liked the concept of Tomorrowland, the idea that they had found a parallel universe and were building Utopia basically.
Until they built “the thing they shouldn’t have built”, which (spoiler) was a machine that allowed them to see into the future.
However the machine not only saw into the future but acted as a signal boosting antenna and then was caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of fear and destruction.
They could have done so much more with that…but, it was Disney, and basically one big commercial for their theme park so go figure hahaha.
Me too. My little getaway out into the middle of now where with a hot tub was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G.!!!
Did you know I arranged that for myself after your tarot card reading suggested I take some time off for myself.
No...I haven't seen Tomorrowland...and have no plans to watch it. So you can discuss any aspect of it you wish with me.
It's interesting how they put the truth out there in fictional movies.
Although I hadn't heard the Fear programming put exactly in the way of one machine...but I have no doubt technology has been affecting the minds of humanity.
I’m glad the reading was helpful!
I still have some self-doubt regarding my readings so constructive criticism is appreciated.
You aren’t missing anything by missing that movie…it just had some interesting ideas.
Speaking of kids movies…have you seen “The Last Mimzy”?
I get to see these movie as a Dad and this happens to be one of my favs.
I bet you would like it.
[video=youtube;MSHhmwGzN8w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=MSHhmwGzN8w[/video]
What does the end of materialism mean for political science?
Dr. Alexander Wendt examines the implications of consciousness science for the social sciences.
Dr. Alexander Wendt examines the implications of consciousness science for the social sciences.
I was introduced to the power of interdisciplinary thinking when I found myself way over my head in a graduate course in cognitive psychology.
I had gone back to school at the University of Arizona to pursue a PhD in this new, cool thing called “Artificial Intelligence.”
Once there, I met a wonderful classmate from Norway with a similar interest.
Oystein was a lot smarter than me, and a much better programmer, so I was willing to follow his lead when he suggested we take a graduate course in cognitive psychology.
After a week I was lost and ready to throw in the towel, but everything changed when Oystein brilliantly turned the discussion toward the latest advances in computer architecture and the possible implications for cognitive psychology.
As it turned out, the professor and his graduate students were very aware that their models were largely based on computer models, so they were eager to find out how advances in computer science might effect them.
The course was a breeze from then on.
The lesson stayed with me, it’s okay to borrow models from other fields, but it’s a good idea to reassess how you’ve applied them when those interdisciplinary models change.
Today on Skeptiko we look at a paradigm busting interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences by way of Dr. Alexander Wendt from the Ohio State University and his new book, Quantum Mind and the Social Sciences.
Read Excerpts:
Alex Tsakiris: Why is consciousness important to Social Science?
Dr. Alexander Wendt: Well, not everybody would say that it is.
I think most of my colleagues ignore consciousness or just take it for granted and would say that it doesn’t necessarily add anything to the kind of explanations that social scientists typically develop.
On the other hand I do think that it is implicit in almost all explanations social scientists come up with…
Alex Tsakiris: What are some of the ways in which these assumptions about consciousness are implicit in the assumptions we’re making when we look at political groups or the social sciences in general?
Dr. Alexander Wendt: The key argument that I make is that… anything that has to do with the mind; that has to do with intentional phenomena—beliefs, desires, even the unconscious… imply consciousness.
And in the social world, if you think about the kinds of things social scientists are interested in like states for example in my own field of International Relations, these are collective intentional phenomena.
These are collective states of mind.
They have no material existence out there.
You can’t see them from space or anything.
So they’re all implicated or dependent upon us being conscious as well.
To put it in a different way, if human beings were just robots with no consciousness I don’t think we would have intentional states of mind.
We wouldn’t have minds at all.
And there wouldn’t be states.
There wouldn’t be churches or corporations or anything like that.
Dr. Alexander Wendt: If you really think about it, most social scientists or many of them anyway…one of the reasons we do social science is to enhance human agency and to sort of empower human beings to solve problems by helping us understand what’s going on around us thereby empowering us to make changes.
So there’s an implicit assumption that human beings do have free will.
If we didn’t have free will why bother doing Social Science?
Alex Tsakiris: I think sometimes in the process we forget that we sidestep the real, deeper philosophical issues of what it means to be nonlocal; what it means to be connected at that level; what it means to be more than a biological robot in a meaningless universe.
So I wonder if the social sciences have really grappled with that or whether they’re just doing the ‘shut up and calculate’ thing.
This works, let’s just continue down our probability models here because they seem to be getting us someplace.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
Dr. Alexander Wendt: A couple of things: I think the ‘shut up and calculate’ mentality—my brother’s a physicist as I mention in the book—and that’s very much his view.
That’s what [physics] is for, to calculate things and to make things, and that’s great.
I understand that.
Clearly it’s had tremendous technological results by that kind of thinking.
But I agree with you—there are these latent, philosophical issues that have never really been solved.
And I think that by bringing the whole physics discussion into the social domain it makes those philosophical issues much more salient.
It brings them to the fore in a sense.
Certainly most social scientists are also not interested in the philosophy of science [or] philosophy of mind.
They’re in the shut up and calculate mode also.
Of course all the calculations they’re doing are classical and not quantum.
And it turns out as I discuss in Chapter 8 about Quantum Decision theory, the model social scientists had built on that shut up and calculate approach, actually don’t predict behavior as well as the quantum version of those models do.
So if we’re going to calculate let’s at least calculate with Quantum Probability theory and not Classical Probability theory.
So that would be one implication if we’re going to stay on that train of thinking.
But I do think the social context brings the philosophical stuff—it makes it harder to avoid.
Because if the implication of a materialist worldview is that consciousness is an illusion, and that free will is an illusion then social scientists have got to change a lot of their fundamental practices because a lot of our models assume consciousness, and they assume free will.
I just don’t think you can do social science without making those assumptions.
Alex Tsakiris: Excellent point.
So to a certain extent by drawing a quantum consciousness model into the social sciences you’re kind of forcing a choice there.
You’re saying, okay, accept this or fully accept what it means to be this biological robot in a meaningless universe with no free will, no emotions, no experience even, right?
You don’t really have experience in the classical model, you just have the illusion of experience.
Everything is an illusion.
So you’re kind of forcing their hand in a way aren’t you?
Dr. Alexander Wendt: I like the way you put that.
I hadn’t thought of [looking] at it that way but it is trying to force choice because there are now all of these quantum decision theory people, many of whom are mathematical psychologists.
And they’re advancing their work very successfully but they too do not want to get into the philosophical questions.
They just want to shut up and calculate.
And that’s working well and I make good use of their work.
But I think they too in the end have to choose because we are either quantum systems and consciousness is quantum mechanical or we’re not.
If we’re not, and it is all an illusion, then I think we’ve got a big problem in Social Science.
So at the end of the day I think it is one or the other.
Actually I was telling a colleague of mine recently, this is the first thing I’ve written in my career, 25 years now, that I think is either true or false.
Hardly any social scientists would want to use those terms but the argument in [Quantum Mind and the Social Sciences] is it’s either right or it’s wrong.
So it was kind of a relief in a way to come to that realization.
for this interview, I watched the interview you gave with Dan Harris of ABC News. Dan Harris is quite a guy.
He’s been on this show I enjoyed him and enjoyed his book, 10% Percent Happier.
In that interview, and I think this was for Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist[/], you said, “I’m a naturalist. A materialist. I believe that this world is mediated through this body and this brain—and that’s all there is.”
Would you say that’s pretty accurate of the conclusion you’ve come to?
Another great interview!
Read It:
Today we welcome Dr. Rupert Sheldrake back to Skeptiko.
Many of you know the work of Cambridge biologist, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, including his latest book, Science Set Free.
But now you may have heard that this book has seemed to have struck quite a nerve because Dr. Sheldrake has found himself in the middle of a controversy surrounding the censorship of a video lecture that he presented and that was then posted on the very popular TEDx YouTube channel.
It was then removed after–and get this–an anonymous scientific board deemed it unscientific.
Rupert, welcome back to Skeptiko.
Thanks for joining us.
Tell us what’s happened here.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Well, you summarized it more-or-less.
I gave a talk at the TEDx series of talks in London in Whitechapel.
The organizers were young women, students at London University, who organized a very lively event.
It was called Challenging Existing Paradigms.
They asked me to talk about challenging existing paradigms, which seemed just the right theme for my book, Science Set Free.
So I did a TEDx talk for it.
It was extremely popular; the event was sold out.
There was a lot of lively discussion that was really fun.
It went up on the TEDx website, as these TEDx talks often do, and all was well until it was denounced by two of America’s leading militant skeptics, PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, who didn’t like it because it upset their rather dogmatic materialist worldview.
So they called for it to be taken down and they said it discredited itself, etc.
They put enormous pressure on TED and then they got armies of their supporters to send emails to TED and put comments on websites.
So the TED people backed down.
They removed it.
Then having removed it, they had to justify removing it so they had this report from their so-called “scientific board,” an anonymous board.
I don’t know if it includes PZ Myers or people like that.
We don’t know who it includes.
They wouldn’t reveal it.
And they took it down.
It’s not exactly censorship, as they insist on pointing out.
They put it with a kind of health warning.
It was still there but it had been put in a kind of Naughty Corner of the Internet, not on the main TED site.
That started off a very big controversy and I replied to the accusations of their science board, one by one.
They were very easy to refute.
But then the thing spiraled out of control and a huge controversy blew up all over the Internet, with lots of people taking it up on Facebook and blogs.
Things were going pretty badly for TED.
I then had a call about a week ago from Chris Anderson himself, the head of TED.
He was obviously really worried about this and was trying to calm the situation down, which they’ve now done by putting my talk on a separate blog, separate from the other one they took down, by Graham Hancock.
He said it was a debate and had people put comments online, the great majority of which supported my talk and not the actions of TED or the very intemperate and emotional—and I have to say—unintelligent remarks of Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers.
Alex Tsakiris: Right.
As you mentioned, Chris Anderson is the founder and the head idea-spreader, if you will, at TED.
It’s nice to know that he’s connected with you personally.
I would have loved to have had Mr. Anderson or any of his scientific advisors on Skeptiko.
I think it would have been quite a debate.
Really not much of one because as you alluded to, to anyone who reads your point-by-point counter to their claims, it’s pretty one-sided.
I think most of the commenters on the TED website would agree with that.
What I thought we might do today is to give folks a little sense for the spirit of this discussion and, in a broader sense, this controversy that you bring up in your book, Science Set Free, about whether or not science is dogmatic.
Whether or not science can get itself out of this rut it’s in.
What I thought we might use as a vehicle for that is for me to play the role of Chris Anderson and use some of the words and ideas that he spread on his blog about this controversy and get a response from you.
Does that sound like something we might be able to do?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes, okay.
Alex Tsakiris: So let’s start with this one.
First off, Dr. Sheldrake, you’ve got to appreciate the position that TED is in.
I mean, the TED conference, TEDx, these are important worldwide brands.
We’re the ideas worth spreading to people and we have to make sure that the ideas on our site are really worth spreading.
To that end–I’m going to have a hard time keeping a straight face on this–one of the hardest lines for us to draw is this line between science and pseudo-science.
At TED, let me tell you, we’re committed to science but we think of it as a process, not as a locked-in body of truth.
I want you to know that.
But some speakers, as you know, will use the language of science to promote views that are incompatible with all reasonable understanding of the world and giving them a platform is counterproductive.
So, Dr. Sheldrake, you have to understand our position here.
I mean, we do have to look into these ideas that are presented on our website.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I do see Chris Anderson’s point of view and indeed, I had a long conversation with Chris Anderson on the telephone.
We got on perfectly well.
I wasn’t particularly angry with him or anything like that.
It was a reasonable conversation.
They do have a point.
There’s a lot of rubbish and there has to be some kind of filter.
So I’m not against the idea of a filter but what I am against is the idea of applying the filter in a very partial kind of way.
There are lots of things up on the TEDx website which are controversial.
For example, there are a lot of talks by militant Atheists which a lot of people find controversial.
A lot of people disagree with what they say and think they’re actually wrong in a variety of ways.
But those haven’t been flagged up or put in the Naughty Corner.
Those have been allowed absolutely free run on the Internet.
They’re put up on the main website, talks by people like Richard Dawkins, for example.
The difference here is that my talk was flagged up as being pseudo-scientific because Jerry Coyne didn’t like it.
Well, Jerry Coyne is a very bigoted man who writes very loud-mouthed things on his website.
I don’t take him very seriously.
I mean, he’s a polemicist, a kind of Dawkins-type polemicist.
So they pay a lot of attention to what Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers said on their websites.
If there had been a similar attack by, for example, Christian Fundamentalists on Dawkins they would have ignored it.
But if it’s by scientific fundamentalists then they pay attention, and what’s more don’t just pay attention but dig themselves into a hole trying to justify this.
So I think the problem here is an attempt to filter out content was done in an extremely biased way.
If every TED talk which is controversial was flagged up by somebody who didn’t like it and put in the Naughty Corner, all the most interesting talks would be in the Naughty Corner.
Only the dullest would be on the main website.
What’s more, TED in their instructions to the organizers of the TEDx events told them they wanted controversial talks.
They said controversy energizes.
When it’s in a particular area, one that upsets the dogmatic materialists, then they back down and say it’s not the right thing to have.
So I think that it’s been inconsistent.
They’ve paid far too much attention to these very biased and I think minority and strident voices.
Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, but see Dr. Sheldrake, that’s not the case because when they went to their scientific board, the majority of them agreed that your and Graham Hancock’s videos should be removed from circulation.
Didn’t they do the right thing?
They went to their anonymous scientific board.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: We don’t know who the scientific board are so we don’t know if it’s the right thing.
If we look at the TED board of advisors, the brain trust for TED as they’re called on the website, the main people in the area of consciousness studies are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, both of whom are extreme militant Atheists and materialists.
So we just don’t know what kind of people are on the scientific board and we don’t know how many are consulted.
Is the majority two out of two?
Or is it 20 out of 30 or something?
We don’t know.
I imagine it was just one or two phone calls.
Alex Tsakiris: You have to acknowledge that these folks have to remain anonymous, right?
I mean, they’re a scientific board.
They have to be anonymous for obvious reasons.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I took this up with Chris Anderson.
I said, “Why didn’t they come out of the shadows and tell us who they are? It’s hard to face anonymous accusers.”
So he said, “Well, we can’t ask the scientific board to be named or to come out in public because if they did, they might get attacked. They might even get pilloried.”
I said to him, “Don’t you think that by making these unreasonable attacks on my talk and accusing me of numerous factual errors and pseudo-science, etc., you’re pillorying me?”
I think he said, “That’s good for you.”
I said, “Well, why is it different?”
He said, “Well, because you gave the talk.”
I gave the talk at their invitation, after all.
I didn’t get paid for it and I fulfilled all the criteria of contradicting existing paradigms and so forth.
Anyway, I think this is a very unreasonable objection and I think that the science board should be named.
After all, he said the analogy was a peer review in journals.
In peer review in journals, the peer reviewers are anonymous but so are the people whose papers they’re reviewing.
The authors are removed from the papers that are submitted to peer reviewers.
The whole thing is anonymous.
The editor of the journal who makes the decisions is not anonymous.
You can look up the editorial board of any scientific journal and their names are given there.
So you know who’s ultimately responsible.
In this case, you don’t.
So it’s very hard to know whether the scientific board even exists or how credible they are.
And if they’re requiring scientific credibility then we do need to know who they are.
They might just be flakey Coyne-ites or Myers-ites.
Alex Tsakiris: Finally, let me hit you with one more point that the TED people make.
TED and TEDx are brands that are trusted in schools and homes.
They don’t want to hear from some parent whose kid went off to South America to drink Ayahuasca because TED said it was okay.
I mean, Dr. Sheldrake, think of the children.
Or for that matter, some kid who winds up going to school thinking that telepathy is real or that consciousness extends beyond the brain.
We don’t want that.
There’s a limit to how far you can push an idea until it reaches a point where it’s no longer worth spreading, wouldn’t you agree?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Well, I agree.
Some ideas are not worth spreading.
I do agree with that.
But exactly how you make the criterion is another question.
This sudden concern for children seems to me rather misplaced.
There are already quite a few talks about psychedelics on the TED website and there is no objection to those apparently except for a recent one by Graham Hancock.
So I don’t think this is a consistent objection about children.
The other thing is TED recently sent around a guideline to TEDx organizers, telling them how to tell science from pseudo-science.
It’s rather an interesting document.
What it says is how to tell genuine science is basically genuine science is what’s being done by quite a lot of people in universities, approved and published in leading peer-reviewed journals and if you’re in doubt call up a professor at your local university and ask him about it.
If it’s pseudo-science or if it’s not genuine science he’ll tell you.
That would be a perfect way of eliminating anything to do with parapsychology from the TED talks.
And also, several people pointed out on their blogs that it would also have eliminated Albert Einstein because only people holding academic posts should be considered to be real scientists.
Einstein was a clerk in the patent’s office when his great papers on quantum theory and relativity were published in 1905.
Charles Darwin never had an academic post. Darwin would have been classified as pseudo-science straight away on the TED criteria.
So they’ve made a rash decision hurriedly and they’re trying to justify it, and the more they try to justify it the more difficult their position becomes.
And also, if they want to protect children then why not protect them from some of the militant Atheists who may have a very disturbing effect on the children’s thinking?
So I think that the whole attempt is actually one where TED has done themselves quite a lot of harm by taking an irrational decision and then trying to justify it in a way that is pretty unconvincing.
I mean, I sympathize with them and indeed, when I talked with Chris Anderson I sympathized with him.
I wouldn’t like to be an editor of a series like that because there are people who are borderline cases.
You do have to draw lines somewhere.
I’m not against drawing lines; I think they have to be drawn.
I just think they’ve handled it pretty badly.
Alex Tsakiris: So let me switch out of the mode of trying to put forth the TED ideas as much as I can glean them from their numerous blog posts and website comments.
Let me ask you a couple of questions in general about this because the irony of this is, if not hilarious it’s certainly inescapable.
I mean, a reputable scientist like yourself publishes a book claiming that science is dogmatic and then is censored by an anonymous scientific board.
It’s like you can’t script that any better.
What does this say about really the whole topic of your book?
And about how science can be dogmatic without even realizing it’s dogmatic?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think in a way this whole controversy and the people who have weighed in in favor of TED’s actions do indeed confirm what I’m saying.
These dogmas are ones that most people within science don’t actually realize are dogmas.
They just think they’re the truth.
The point about really dogmatic people is that they don’t know that they have dogmas.
Dogmas are beliefs and people who have really strong beliefs think of their beliefs as truth.
They don’t actually see them as beliefs.
So I think this whole controversy has actually highlighted exactly that.
The other thing that is highlighted is that there are a lot of people, far more than I imagined actually, who are not taken in by these dogmas, who do want to think about them critically.
One of the remarkable things about these discussions is lots of people are really up for the discussion of these dogmas.
They really want it to happen, far more than I’d imagined, actually.
I’m impressed by that and I think this TED debate has actually helped show that the paradigm is shifting.
There’s no longer a kind of automatic agreement by the great majority of people to dogmatic assertions by materialists.
Alex Tsakiris: It’s almost as if this is somewhat of a marker of the kind of events that would happen in the process of changing a paradigm.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes. This is actually, to me, an illustration of actually seeing a paradigm shift in action.
I think this controversy wouldn’t have been a controversy after all if a lot of people hadn’t thought that TED had made the wrong decision.
There wouldn’t have been large amounts of thousands of comments on blogs all over the Internet.
That wouldn’t have happened if the majority thought TED had made the right decision and it was more-or-less a done deal that materialism is the only acceptable form of science.
Now, I think the fact that so many people strongly about it is why there’s been a controversy and I do think we’re actually seeing a shift.
Also on these various blogs and discussion forums now and then one of these standard skeptic voices comes up with all the standard arguments that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before but now they’re being shot down by people who are saying, “Okay, where’s your evidence?” and calling them on things which normally they’d get away with.
That, too, is a change.
It’s a kind of empowerment of people to challenge this dogmatic materialism.
Alex Tsakiris: And maybe in a way Chris Anderson has unwittingly done you a favor and done this cause, if you will–I hate to say it that way–but has done certainly your book a favor in drawing contention to your ideas.
Do you think that might be true?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think it is, actually.
I don’t think he’s done it on purpose and I don’t have any personal grudge against Chris Anderson.
When I talked to him I found him a perfectly reasonable chap and I enjoyed our conversation.
Alex Tsakiris: But Rupert, he does seem incredibly unaware of the situation as it exists.
I mean, even when he tries to recover and says, “Okay, I understand consciousness is controversial,” he has such a kindergarten appreciation for the issues that really are at hand and the controversy that really lies at the core of that issue of are we these biological robots that are purely a product of our brain or not?
It’s going to take him a lot of education to get where he could have an intelligent discussion about these issues, no?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think he’s personally quite interested.
He studied philosophy at Oxford.
He told me and I think it’s probably true that he’s always been interested in the nature of consciousness so he probably is.
I didn’t think he was making it up.
I thought he was sincere.
I think he is a bit behind.
He’s surrounded himself with the kind of materialist establishment.
If you look at his board of advisors, many of them are people who do have this very limited mechanistic view of consciousness.
So I think he’s living in a kind of mainstream world where he only gets to hear a rather limited range of opinions.
I think this controversy has made him aware that there are a lot more voices out there and a lot of people who don’t think in that way.
I think it’s probably a steep learning curve he’s on because he obviously was very naïve to start with and he’s realizing that actually a lot of people think differently.
Alex Tsakiris: Right.
Well, Dr. Sheldrake, we’ll keep an eye on this issue and report to people if anything new happens.
Other than that, can you tell us briefly what’s going on with you and upcoming presentations you might have or anything else that’s in the works?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I’m doing various presentations in Europe and in Britain about my books, The Science Delusion and Science Set Free.
The details are on my schedule.
I’m doing a program in Dublin, Ireland on science and spirituality in April.
Again, that’s on my schedule.
That’s happening at Christ Church Cathedral. I’m doing it with the Dean of Christ Church.
I haven’t met him yet but I’m looking forward to that because I think that would be a chance for a dialogue in a relatively orthodox spiritual setting and to see how these new ideas in science play out in that kind of dialogue.
In the summer much further ahead, I’m doing a program at Hollyhock in British Columbia in Canada in the end of July, beginning of August.
It’s a remote and beautiful island where I go every summer with my family.
This time, for the first time I’m doing it with my two sons, Merlin and Cosmo.
Cosmo’s an anthropologist and musician and Merlin is tropical ecologist.
He’s doing a Ph.D. on tropic ecology in Panama.
He’s a Smithsonian Research Fellow and he’s in England now but is just about to go back to the jungle.
We’re doing called “Plants, Minds, and Resonances.”
They’re both musicians and we have lively discussions at home.
It’s the first time we’ve ever done something together.
So I know it’s going to be fun for us.
I hope it will be fun for others, too.
So anyone who’s interested in going to something where no one knows where it’s going to lead, it’s almost certain to be fun.
That would be a good place to go.
And then I’m doing a workshop in September with Marc Andrus, who’s the Bishop of California at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
Again, that will be something that will go where these discussions don’t normally go.
It will be with a remarkably open-minded bishop, but a bishop all the same in California.
It’s on his patch.
Again, what we’re going to be doing is looking at morphic resonance and holistic thinking in relation to spiritual practices.
Not spiritual dogmas but spiritual practices.
The things people actually do like pilgrimages and prayers and mantras and chanting and ceremonies and rituals.
So those are some of the things coming up ahead.
Meanwhile, my main activity, as always, is research.
I’ve got various research projects afoot at the moment, particularly ones on morphic resonance, which I’m planning in several laboratories in different parts of the world and engaged in discussing them with the scientists I’ll be collaborating with.
So more on that later.
I don’t want to talk too much about this now because they’re in the planning stage still and we hope to get them started within the next few months or even weeks.
Alex Tsakiris: Excellent.
We’ll certainly look forward to hearing more about that as it unfolds.
It sounds like you have some great forums in which people can meet you and see these ideas take life.
Anyone who’s interested, I’m sure they’ll check out your website and find you there.
Dr. Sheldrake, thanks for coming on and talking about this interesting little controversy that has brewed.
Thanks again for joining me.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Always a pleasure, Alex.
Rupert Sheldrake Censored by TED Conference’s Anonymous Scientific Board
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Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s Website
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Today we welcome Dr. Rupert Sheldrake back to Skeptiko.
Many of you know the work of Cambridge biologist, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, including his latest book, Science Set Free.
But now you may have heard that this book has seemed to have struck quite a nerve because Dr. Sheldrake has found himself in the middle of a controversy surrounding the censorship of a video lecture that he presented and that was then posted on the very popular TEDx YouTube channel.
It was then removed after–and get this–an anonymous scientific board deemed it unscientific.
Rupert, welcome back to Skeptiko.
Thanks for joining us.
Tell us what’s happened here.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Well, you summarized it more-or-less.
I gave a talk at the TEDx series of talks in London in Whitechapel.
The organizers were young women, students at London University, who organized a very lively event.
It was called Challenging Existing Paradigms.
They asked me to talk about challenging existing paradigms, which seemed just the right theme for my book, Science Set Free.
So I did a TEDx talk for it.
It was extremely popular; the event was sold out.
There was a lot of lively discussion that was really fun.
It went up on the TEDx website, as these TEDx talks often do, and all was well until it was denounced by two of America’s leading militant skeptics, PZ Myers and Jerry Coyne, who didn’t like it because it upset their rather dogmatic materialist worldview.
So they called for it to be taken down and they said it discredited itself, etc.
They put enormous pressure on TED and then they got armies of their supporters to send emails to TED and put comments on websites.
So the TED people backed down.
They removed it.
Then having removed it, they had to justify removing it so they had this report from their so-called “scientific board,” an anonymous board.
I don’t know if it includes PZ Myers or people like that.
We don’t know who it includes.
They wouldn’t reveal it.
And they took it down.
It’s not exactly censorship, as they insist on pointing out.
They put it with a kind of health warning.
It was still there but it had been put in a kind of Naughty Corner of the Internet, not on the main TED site.
That started off a very big controversy and I replied to the accusations of their science board, one by one.
They were very easy to refute.
But then the thing spiraled out of control and a huge controversy blew up all over the Internet, with lots of people taking it up on Facebook and blogs.
Things were going pretty badly for TED.
I then had a call about a week ago from Chris Anderson himself, the head of TED.
He was obviously really worried about this and was trying to calm the situation down, which they’ve now done by putting my talk on a separate blog, separate from the other one they took down, by Graham Hancock.
He said it was a debate and had people put comments online, the great majority of which supported my talk and not the actions of TED or the very intemperate and emotional—and I have to say—unintelligent remarks of Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers.
Alex Tsakiris: Right.
As you mentioned, Chris Anderson is the founder and the head idea-spreader, if you will, at TED.
It’s nice to know that he’s connected with you personally.
I would have loved to have had Mr. Anderson or any of his scientific advisors on Skeptiko.
I think it would have been quite a debate.
Really not much of one because as you alluded to, to anyone who reads your point-by-point counter to their claims, it’s pretty one-sided.
I think most of the commenters on the TED website would agree with that.
What I thought we might do today is to give folks a little sense for the spirit of this discussion and, in a broader sense, this controversy that you bring up in your book, Science Set Free, about whether or not science is dogmatic.
Whether or not science can get itself out of this rut it’s in.
What I thought we might use as a vehicle for that is for me to play the role of Chris Anderson and use some of the words and ideas that he spread on his blog about this controversy and get a response from you.
Does that sound like something we might be able to do?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes, okay.
Alex Tsakiris: So let’s start with this one.
First off, Dr. Sheldrake, you’ve got to appreciate the position that TED is in.
I mean, the TED conference, TEDx, these are important worldwide brands.
We’re the ideas worth spreading to people and we have to make sure that the ideas on our site are really worth spreading.
To that end–I’m going to have a hard time keeping a straight face on this–one of the hardest lines for us to draw is this line between science and pseudo-science.
At TED, let me tell you, we’re committed to science but we think of it as a process, not as a locked-in body of truth.
I want you to know that.
But some speakers, as you know, will use the language of science to promote views that are incompatible with all reasonable understanding of the world and giving them a platform is counterproductive.
So, Dr. Sheldrake, you have to understand our position here.
I mean, we do have to look into these ideas that are presented on our website.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I do see Chris Anderson’s point of view and indeed, I had a long conversation with Chris Anderson on the telephone.
We got on perfectly well.
I wasn’t particularly angry with him or anything like that.
It was a reasonable conversation.
They do have a point.
There’s a lot of rubbish and there has to be some kind of filter.
So I’m not against the idea of a filter but what I am against is the idea of applying the filter in a very partial kind of way.
There are lots of things up on the TEDx website which are controversial.
For example, there are a lot of talks by militant Atheists which a lot of people find controversial.
A lot of people disagree with what they say and think they’re actually wrong in a variety of ways.
But those haven’t been flagged up or put in the Naughty Corner.
Those have been allowed absolutely free run on the Internet.
They’re put up on the main website, talks by people like Richard Dawkins, for example.
The difference here is that my talk was flagged up as being pseudo-scientific because Jerry Coyne didn’t like it.
Well, Jerry Coyne is a very bigoted man who writes very loud-mouthed things on his website.
I don’t take him very seriously.
I mean, he’s a polemicist, a kind of Dawkins-type polemicist.
So they pay a lot of attention to what Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers said on their websites.
If there had been a similar attack by, for example, Christian Fundamentalists on Dawkins they would have ignored it.
But if it’s by scientific fundamentalists then they pay attention, and what’s more don’t just pay attention but dig themselves into a hole trying to justify this.
So I think the problem here is an attempt to filter out content was done in an extremely biased way.
If every TED talk which is controversial was flagged up by somebody who didn’t like it and put in the Naughty Corner, all the most interesting talks would be in the Naughty Corner.
Only the dullest would be on the main website.
What’s more, TED in their instructions to the organizers of the TEDx events told them they wanted controversial talks.
They said controversy energizes.
When it’s in a particular area, one that upsets the dogmatic materialists, then they back down and say it’s not the right thing to have.
So I think that it’s been inconsistent.
They’ve paid far too much attention to these very biased and I think minority and strident voices.
Alex Tsakiris: Yeah, but see Dr. Sheldrake, that’s not the case because when they went to their scientific board, the majority of them agreed that your and Graham Hancock’s videos should be removed from circulation.
Didn’t they do the right thing?
They went to their anonymous scientific board.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: We don’t know who the scientific board are so we don’t know if it’s the right thing.
If we look at the TED board of advisors, the brain trust for TED as they’re called on the website, the main people in the area of consciousness studies are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett, both of whom are extreme militant Atheists and materialists.
So we just don’t know what kind of people are on the scientific board and we don’t know how many are consulted.
Is the majority two out of two?
Or is it 20 out of 30 or something?
We don’t know.
I imagine it was just one or two phone calls.
Alex Tsakiris: You have to acknowledge that these folks have to remain anonymous, right?
I mean, they’re a scientific board.
They have to be anonymous for obvious reasons.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I took this up with Chris Anderson.
I said, “Why didn’t they come out of the shadows and tell us who they are? It’s hard to face anonymous accusers.”
So he said, “Well, we can’t ask the scientific board to be named or to come out in public because if they did, they might get attacked. They might even get pilloried.”
I said to him, “Don’t you think that by making these unreasonable attacks on my talk and accusing me of numerous factual errors and pseudo-science, etc., you’re pillorying me?”
I think he said, “That’s good for you.”
I said, “Well, why is it different?”
He said, “Well, because you gave the talk.”
I gave the talk at their invitation, after all.
I didn’t get paid for it and I fulfilled all the criteria of contradicting existing paradigms and so forth.
Anyway, I think this is a very unreasonable objection and I think that the science board should be named.
After all, he said the analogy was a peer review in journals.
In peer review in journals, the peer reviewers are anonymous but so are the people whose papers they’re reviewing.
The authors are removed from the papers that are submitted to peer reviewers.
The whole thing is anonymous.
The editor of the journal who makes the decisions is not anonymous.
You can look up the editorial board of any scientific journal and their names are given there.
So you know who’s ultimately responsible.
In this case, you don’t.
So it’s very hard to know whether the scientific board even exists or how credible they are.
And if they’re requiring scientific credibility then we do need to know who they are.
They might just be flakey Coyne-ites or Myers-ites.
Alex Tsakiris: Finally, let me hit you with one more point that the TED people make.
TED and TEDx are brands that are trusted in schools and homes.
They don’t want to hear from some parent whose kid went off to South America to drink Ayahuasca because TED said it was okay.
I mean, Dr. Sheldrake, think of the children.
Or for that matter, some kid who winds up going to school thinking that telepathy is real or that consciousness extends beyond the brain.
We don’t want that.
There’s a limit to how far you can push an idea until it reaches a point where it’s no longer worth spreading, wouldn’t you agree?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Well, I agree.
Some ideas are not worth spreading.
I do agree with that.
But exactly how you make the criterion is another question.
This sudden concern for children seems to me rather misplaced.
There are already quite a few talks about psychedelics on the TED website and there is no objection to those apparently except for a recent one by Graham Hancock.
So I don’t think this is a consistent objection about children.
The other thing is TED recently sent around a guideline to TEDx organizers, telling them how to tell science from pseudo-science.
It’s rather an interesting document.
What it says is how to tell genuine science is basically genuine science is what’s being done by quite a lot of people in universities, approved and published in leading peer-reviewed journals and if you’re in doubt call up a professor at your local university and ask him about it.
If it’s pseudo-science or if it’s not genuine science he’ll tell you.
That would be a perfect way of eliminating anything to do with parapsychology from the TED talks.
And also, several people pointed out on their blogs that it would also have eliminated Albert Einstein because only people holding academic posts should be considered to be real scientists.
Einstein was a clerk in the patent’s office when his great papers on quantum theory and relativity were published in 1905.
Charles Darwin never had an academic post. Darwin would have been classified as pseudo-science straight away on the TED criteria.
So they’ve made a rash decision hurriedly and they’re trying to justify it, and the more they try to justify it the more difficult their position becomes.
And also, if they want to protect children then why not protect them from some of the militant Atheists who may have a very disturbing effect on the children’s thinking?
So I think that the whole attempt is actually one where TED has done themselves quite a lot of harm by taking an irrational decision and then trying to justify it in a way that is pretty unconvincing.
I mean, I sympathize with them and indeed, when I talked with Chris Anderson I sympathized with him.
I wouldn’t like to be an editor of a series like that because there are people who are borderline cases.
You do have to draw lines somewhere.
I’m not against drawing lines; I think they have to be drawn.
I just think they’ve handled it pretty badly.
Alex Tsakiris: So let me switch out of the mode of trying to put forth the TED ideas as much as I can glean them from their numerous blog posts and website comments.
Let me ask you a couple of questions in general about this because the irony of this is, if not hilarious it’s certainly inescapable.
I mean, a reputable scientist like yourself publishes a book claiming that science is dogmatic and then is censored by an anonymous scientific board.
It’s like you can’t script that any better.
What does this say about really the whole topic of your book?
And about how science can be dogmatic without even realizing it’s dogmatic?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think in a way this whole controversy and the people who have weighed in in favor of TED’s actions do indeed confirm what I’m saying.
These dogmas are ones that most people within science don’t actually realize are dogmas.
They just think they’re the truth.
The point about really dogmatic people is that they don’t know that they have dogmas.
Dogmas are beliefs and people who have really strong beliefs think of their beliefs as truth.
They don’t actually see them as beliefs.
So I think this whole controversy has actually highlighted exactly that.
The other thing that is highlighted is that there are a lot of people, far more than I imagined actually, who are not taken in by these dogmas, who do want to think about them critically.
One of the remarkable things about these discussions is lots of people are really up for the discussion of these dogmas.
They really want it to happen, far more than I’d imagined, actually.
I’m impressed by that and I think this TED debate has actually helped show that the paradigm is shifting.
There’s no longer a kind of automatic agreement by the great majority of people to dogmatic assertions by materialists.
Alex Tsakiris: It’s almost as if this is somewhat of a marker of the kind of events that would happen in the process of changing a paradigm.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Yes. This is actually, to me, an illustration of actually seeing a paradigm shift in action.
I think this controversy wouldn’t have been a controversy after all if a lot of people hadn’t thought that TED had made the wrong decision.
There wouldn’t have been large amounts of thousands of comments on blogs all over the Internet.
That wouldn’t have happened if the majority thought TED had made the right decision and it was more-or-less a done deal that materialism is the only acceptable form of science.
Now, I think the fact that so many people strongly about it is why there’s been a controversy and I do think we’re actually seeing a shift.
Also on these various blogs and discussion forums now and then one of these standard skeptic voices comes up with all the standard arguments that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before but now they’re being shot down by people who are saying, “Okay, where’s your evidence?” and calling them on things which normally they’d get away with.
That, too, is a change.
It’s a kind of empowerment of people to challenge this dogmatic materialism.
Alex Tsakiris: And maybe in a way Chris Anderson has unwittingly done you a favor and done this cause, if you will–I hate to say it that way–but has done certainly your book a favor in drawing contention to your ideas.
Do you think that might be true?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think it is, actually.
I don’t think he’s done it on purpose and I don’t have any personal grudge against Chris Anderson.
When I talked to him I found him a perfectly reasonable chap and I enjoyed our conversation.
Alex Tsakiris: But Rupert, he does seem incredibly unaware of the situation as it exists.
I mean, even when he tries to recover and says, “Okay, I understand consciousness is controversial,” he has such a kindergarten appreciation for the issues that really are at hand and the controversy that really lies at the core of that issue of are we these biological robots that are purely a product of our brain or not?
It’s going to take him a lot of education to get where he could have an intelligent discussion about these issues, no?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I think he’s personally quite interested.
He studied philosophy at Oxford.
He told me and I think it’s probably true that he’s always been interested in the nature of consciousness so he probably is.
I didn’t think he was making it up.
I thought he was sincere.
I think he is a bit behind.
He’s surrounded himself with the kind of materialist establishment.
If you look at his board of advisors, many of them are people who do have this very limited mechanistic view of consciousness.
So I think he’s living in a kind of mainstream world where he only gets to hear a rather limited range of opinions.
I think this controversy has made him aware that there are a lot more voices out there and a lot of people who don’t think in that way.
I think it’s probably a steep learning curve he’s on because he obviously was very naïve to start with and he’s realizing that actually a lot of people think differently.
Alex Tsakiris: Right.
Well, Dr. Sheldrake, we’ll keep an eye on this issue and report to people if anything new happens.
Other than that, can you tell us briefly what’s going on with you and upcoming presentations you might have or anything else that’s in the works?
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: I’m doing various presentations in Europe and in Britain about my books, The Science Delusion and Science Set Free.
The details are on my schedule.
I’m doing a program in Dublin, Ireland on science and spirituality in April.
Again, that’s on my schedule.
That’s happening at Christ Church Cathedral. I’m doing it with the Dean of Christ Church.
I haven’t met him yet but I’m looking forward to that because I think that would be a chance for a dialogue in a relatively orthodox spiritual setting and to see how these new ideas in science play out in that kind of dialogue.
In the summer much further ahead, I’m doing a program at Hollyhock in British Columbia in Canada in the end of July, beginning of August.
It’s a remote and beautiful island where I go every summer with my family.
This time, for the first time I’m doing it with my two sons, Merlin and Cosmo.
Cosmo’s an anthropologist and musician and Merlin is tropical ecologist.
He’s doing a Ph.D. on tropic ecology in Panama.
He’s a Smithsonian Research Fellow and he’s in England now but is just about to go back to the jungle.
We’re doing called “Plants, Minds, and Resonances.”
They’re both musicians and we have lively discussions at home.
It’s the first time we’ve ever done something together.
So I know it’s going to be fun for us.
I hope it will be fun for others, too.
So anyone who’s interested in going to something where no one knows where it’s going to lead, it’s almost certain to be fun.
That would be a good place to go.
And then I’m doing a workshop in September with Marc Andrus, who’s the Bishop of California at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.
Again, that will be something that will go where these discussions don’t normally go.
It will be with a remarkably open-minded bishop, but a bishop all the same in California.
It’s on his patch.
Again, what we’re going to be doing is looking at morphic resonance and holistic thinking in relation to spiritual practices.
Not spiritual dogmas but spiritual practices.
The things people actually do like pilgrimages and prayers and mantras and chanting and ceremonies and rituals.
So those are some of the things coming up ahead.
Meanwhile, my main activity, as always, is research.
I’ve got various research projects afoot at the moment, particularly ones on morphic resonance, which I’m planning in several laboratories in different parts of the world and engaged in discussing them with the scientists I’ll be collaborating with.
So more on that later.
I don’t want to talk too much about this now because they’re in the planning stage still and we hope to get them started within the next few months or even weeks.
Alex Tsakiris: Excellent.
We’ll certainly look forward to hearing more about that as it unfolds.
It sounds like you have some great forums in which people can meet you and see these ideas take life.
Anyone who’s interested, I’m sure they’ll check out your website and find you there.
Dr. Sheldrake, thanks for coming on and talking about this interesting little controversy that has brewed.
Thanks again for joining me.
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: Always a pleasure, Alex.
“To laugh often and love much;
to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children;
to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends;
to appreciate beauty;
to find the best in others;
to give of one’s self;
to leave the world a bit better,
whether by a healthy child,
a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation;
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived–this is to have succeeded.”
~ Bessie Anderson Stanley
Heinrich Vogeler - Dreams II
In our travels we’ve recently stumbled across this grouping of Native American codes of ethics.
In our studies, we’ve discovered that they have an origination in the Four Worlds Development Project at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta in 1982.
Regardless of the origin, it is a set of common sense practices for respecting the Earth and every creature that makes this planet their home.
No Native culture was perfect, of course, but it seems to us that European colonialists could have endeavored to learn more about the culture that they would so readily replace.
Without further ado:
Native American Code Of Ethics
Rise with the sun to pray. Pray alone. Pray often.
The Great Spirit will listen, if you only speak.
~
Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path.
Ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy and greed stem
from a lost soul. Pray that they will find guidance.
~
Search for yourself, by yourself. Do not allow others
to make your path for you. It is your road, and
yours alone. Others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.
~
Treat the guests in your home with much consideration.
Serve them the best food, give them the best
bed and treat them with respect and honor.
~
Do not take what is not yours whether from
a person, a community,the wilderness or from a
culture. It was not earned nor given. It is not yours.
~
Respect all things that are placed upon
this earth — whether it be people or plant.
~
Honor other people’s thoughts, wishes and words.
Never interrupt another or mock or rudely mimic them.
Allow each person the right to personal expression.
~
Never speak of others in a bad way. The negative
energy that you put out into the universe
will multiply when it returns to you.
~
All persons make mistakes.
And all mistakes can be forgiven.
~
Bad thoughts cause illness of the mind,
body and spirit. Practice optimism.
~
Nature is not FOR us, it is a PART of us.
They are part of your worldly family.
~
Children are the seeds of our future. Plant
love in their hearts and water them with
wisdom and life’s lessons. When they
are grown, give them space to grow.
~
Avoid hurting the hearts of others.
The poison of your pain will return to you.
~
Be truthful at all times. Honesty is the
test of one’s will within this universe.
~
Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental self, Spiritual
self, Emotional self, and Physical self — all need
to be strong, pure and healthy. Work out
the body to strengthen the mind. Grow
rich in spirit to cure emotional ails.
~
Make conscious decisions as to who
you will be and how you will react. Be
responsible for your own actions.
~
Respect the privacy and personal space of
others. Do not touch the personal property of
others — especially sacred and religious
objects. This is forbidden.
~
Be true to yourself first. You cannot
nurture and help others if you cannot
nurture and help yourself first.
~
Respect others religious beliefs.
Do not force your belief on others.
~
Share your good fortune with others.
Participate in charity.
In our studies, we’ve discovered that they have an origination in the Four Worlds Development Project at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta in 1982.
Regardless of the origin, it is a set of common sense practices for respecting the Earth and every creature that makes this planet their home.
No Native culture was perfect, of course, but it seems to us that European colonialists could have endeavored to learn more about the culture that they would so readily replace.
Without further ado:
Native American Code Of Ethics
Rise with the sun to pray. Pray alone. Pray often.
The Great Spirit will listen, if you only speak.
~
Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path.
Ignorance, conceit, anger, jealousy and greed stem
from a lost soul. Pray that they will find guidance.
~
Search for yourself, by yourself. Do not allow others
to make your path for you. It is your road, and
yours alone. Others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you.
~
Treat the guests in your home with much consideration.
Serve them the best food, give them the best
bed and treat them with respect and honor.
~
Do not take what is not yours whether from
a person, a community,the wilderness or from a
culture. It was not earned nor given. It is not yours.
~
Respect all things that are placed upon
this earth — whether it be people or plant.
~
Honor other people’s thoughts, wishes and words.
Never interrupt another or mock or rudely mimic them.
Allow each person the right to personal expression.
~
Never speak of others in a bad way. The negative
energy that you put out into the universe
will multiply when it returns to you.
~
All persons make mistakes.
And all mistakes can be forgiven.
~
Bad thoughts cause illness of the mind,
body and spirit. Practice optimism.
~
Nature is not FOR us, it is a PART of us.
They are part of your worldly family.
~
Children are the seeds of our future. Plant
love in their hearts and water them with
wisdom and life’s lessons. When they
are grown, give them space to grow.
~
Avoid hurting the hearts of others.
The poison of your pain will return to you.
~
Be truthful at all times. Honesty is the
test of one’s will within this universe.
~
Keep yourself balanced. Your Mental self, Spiritual
self, Emotional self, and Physical self — all need
to be strong, pure and healthy. Work out
the body to strengthen the mind. Grow
rich in spirit to cure emotional ails.
~
Make conscious decisions as to who
you will be and how you will react. Be
responsible for your own actions.
~
Respect the privacy and personal space of
others. Do not touch the personal property of
others — especially sacred and religious
objects. This is forbidden.
~
Be true to yourself first. You cannot
nurture and help others if you cannot
nurture and help yourself first.
~
Respect others religious beliefs.
Do not force your belief on others.
~
Share your good fortune with others.
Participate in charity.
Compassionate wisdom teaching kindness, respect, and cooperation.
Each section could be an entire teaching.
Free Will, Transformation, and Us
19 November 2015
Julia Mossbridge
19 November 2015
Julia Mossbridge
One of the most fundamental dualities in our everyday experience is the duality between consciousness and nonconsciousness; the contrast between that of which we are aware in our everyday experience (individual consciousness) and that of which we are not aware (everything else – all nonconscious processes).
For example, your awareness of reading this blog post is conscious.
But the mechanisms that allow you to read this post and become aware of it are entirely nonconscious.
I use “nonconscious” instead of “unconscious” because “unconscious” has connotations in psychology that I don’t want to evoke.
Also, based on my reading of Freud, he would consider “unconscious” to be only a portion of the nonconscious processes, which would include the preconscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious.
This duality is so fundamental because we literally cannot ever know what it is like to be our nonconscious processes.
By definition.
The only thing that we can know what it’s like to be is our conscious awareness.
By definition.
So, by definition, the duality is there.
But we need to keep in mind that the existence of the duality does not mean that there is nothing that transcends it.
It is easy to decide that whatever is true of one aspect of the duality is also true of the other.
Just because dogs are not cats does not, of course, indicate that they don’t share the annoying trait of making me sneeze.
In the world of neuroscience, it is common to believe that because we are not aware of what it is like to be our nonconscious processes, then our nonconscious processes are not themselves aware.
Most of us neuroscientists say that we have consciousness, but that our nonconscious processes create this consciousness.
These nonconscious processes, including most of the neural activity in our brains, are not self-aware, according to mainstream neuroscience.
How do we know this?
We don’t.
It’s an aesthetic choice.
It bothers us to think of our neurons being self-aware, because as neuroscientists most of us have the opinion that our neurons are in charge of what we experience in our conscious awareness.
And, if that’s the case, AND they are aware, then we are just puppets with puppet masters that are actually not only in control of us, but are consciously creating our delusion that “we” (our conscious awarenesses) are in control.
In fact, examinations of the evidence suggest that all the processes of which we are unaware, including the processes going on in our brains and bodies, are at least as aware if not more aware than our individual conscious awareness.
So if this is true, do we have free will?
And what is the point of transformation if my conscious awareness is really a puppet?
Let’s start with free will.
The answer to “Do I have free will?” depends on who “I” is.
If I consider “I” to be only my individual conscious awareness, then no, I don’t have free will – my nonconscious processes are in charge. But if I consider “I” to be my conscious awareness PLUS all of the nonconscious processes that influence my conscious awareness, you bet your booty I’m in charge.
Why?
Because I just included the entire universe that influences my conscious awareness in my definition of “I.”
The point of transformation then becomes recognizing that the way that we can transcend the duality of awareness versus non-awareness is to recognize that they are both elements of who we are.
We, ourselves, who we are as beings, transcend the most fundamental division that we know.
How very interesting.
I’m no big advocate for any religious institution as many of you know.
These are actually from the Church of Satan ( no big personal fan ).
But I think it’s curious IMO that their version of the 10 commandments are more logical and intelligent than those in the Bible.
You be the judge.
Anyhow…I’m not going to NOT post something because of the name attached.
There is wisdom to be learned everywhere, it’s how we use that wisdom that matters.
I’m no big advocate for any religious institution as many of you know.
Seven Tenets
- One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
- The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
- One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
- The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own.
- Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
- People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
- Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word
These are actually from the Church of Satan ( no big personal fan ).
But I think it’s curious IMO that their version of the 10 commandments are more logical and intelligent than those in the Bible.
You be the judge.
Anyhow…I’m not going to NOT post something because of the name attached.
There is wisdom to be learned everywhere, it’s how we use that wisdom that matters.