Mind vs. spirit vs. soul

[Skarekrow]

Rupert Sheldrake - The Extended Mind - The Sense Of Being Stared At.


[video=youtube;U7HwjYrbwEM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=U7HwjYrbwEM[/video]

[video=youtube;P2r-klQLq34]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=P2r-klQLq34[/video]

[video=youtube;WcD_0-FrSd8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=WcD_0-FrSd8[/video]


Rupert Sheldrake is a British former biochemist and plant physiologist who now researches and writes on parapsychology and other controversial subjects.
His books and papers stem from his theory of morphic resonance, and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory, telepathy and perception.

In 2003, Sheldrake published The Sense of Being Stared At on the psychic staring effect, including an experiment where blindfolded subjects guessed whether persons were staring at them or at another target.

He reported that, in tens of thousands of trials, the scores were consistently above chance (60%) when the subject was being stared at, but only 50% (random chance) when the subject was not being stared at.

This suggested a weak sense of being stared at but no sense of not being stared at.
He also claimed that these experiments were widely repeated, in schools in Connecticut and Toronto and a science museum in Amsterdam, with consistent results.

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[sprinkles]

Exactly, and people don’t seem to understand just how spread out your thinking process is.
(you probably know this but I will reiterate it for the thread)
There are more Neurons in your bowels than are in your brain (not to mention that your brain goes all the way down your back in your spinal cord).
There are Neurons in your heart, and your heart actually sends three times as many signals to the brain as the brain sends to the heart.
We all have a measurable electromagnetic field around us, they have done many experiments that show we are aware of the field on an unconscious level (via fMRI imaging).
A Mother and her infant child’s hearts will actually sync up when they are within 5 ft or closer to one another in many cases.
There is far more then we could ever even imagine going on on an unconscious level.
There is even a line of thinking (that stretches back to Plato) that believes that the mind actually projects our reality and that’s what makes it so.
Very fun to think of such things for me.

Yes. We're information. Genetic and electronic and maybe other kinds of information. The body is hardware. The stuff that makes it tick is software. Software is abstract nonlocal information.

 

[Skarekrow]

Yes. We're information. Genetic and electronic and maybe other kinds of information. The body is hardware. The stuff that makes it tick is software. Software is abstract nonlocal information.

This I agree with.
It’s like a computer with no operating system…all the components are there to work and will when electrically tested…just as we can stimulate our own minds to induce certain results.
What I find really fascinating is things like people under the influence of “magic mushrooms”, depending on how much you take of course, but many people feel more “oneness” with everything…one would think that the mind would be going crazy electrically…sending signals like crazy…but the drug actually induces the mind to work in unison instead of competing and reacting signals.
And of course we can get into the data collected by the Global Consciousness Project ( http://noosphere.princeton.edu )…who have odds in the range of trillions to one in some cases that SOMETHING is going on…our minds are not just nonlocal in our brain and body but there is a collective aspect too.
Just how collective that is, is debatable.
Then we start talking about Source consciousness and the like.

 

[Skarekrow]

From the Princeton Labs

[video=vimeo;4359545]https://vimeo.com/4359545[/video]

A very brief synopsis of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory of Princeton University, whose research into mind-matter interaction forms the foundation of Psyleron Technology.

Watch interviews with key PEAR lab staff, as they explain their experiments, including random event generators, their findings, and finally some of their implications.

This is footage edited from Aaron Michels' The PEAR Proposition - an 8-hour DVD set detailing the PEAR laboratory and its discoveries.
You can find it on the Psyleron website.




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[BrokenDaniel]

Spirit it is mainly motion, it haves to do with vitality and the air you breathe and exhale. Soul by contrast, it haves to do with depth, and the assumption that there's something held in our consciousness that's atemporal in a way, disengaged and independent from our spirit, it doesn't have to do with life after death as some may assume, it haves to do with the abstract and disengagement from our physical reality for better or worse. Some assume by this that we contain immortal souls, honestly i don't even think that was the intention of this concept in the first place, but rather an invitation to see reality from a much philosophical/abstract/disengaged perspective, specially when taking into account that quote that says that all philosophy is just a preparation for death.
Mind can be said to be our capacity of discerning in a nutshell.

 

[Matt3737]

Information is not dependent on form. It can be light beams, sound waves, writings on paper, an arrangement of poker chips, streams of water, springs and gears... the information is abstract yet we can convey it reliably through all kinds of modulations. Just look at the entire internet - that's what it's all about.

While being distinct from its medium, information is not entirely independent from form in that it must be transmitted in some form regardless and hence is emergent from it. I think these three concepts can be more or less distinct or synonymous depending upon the definitions and context being used.

 

[sprinkles]

While being distinct from its medium, information is not entirely independent from form in that it must be transmitted in some form regardless and hence is emergent from it. I think these three concepts can be more or less distinct or synonymous depending upon the definitions and context being used.

That would mean information is dependent on transmission, not form. There's a difference. It doesn't matter how it exists or what it is made of so long as it exists somewhere. Therefore it does not depend on form.

Moreover, form of information depends more on the receiver than the information itself in that if you don't know that a string of something holds information, it doesn't look like information.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=4822]Matt3737[/MENTION]

Also the fact that something must incidentally have a property does not mean it depends on that property. The price of a car doesn't have to depend on the car's color even though every car must have a color.

Information must have a form but this fact is incidental because you can change the form to anything you want. It's not what makes the information be, it's a side effect of what it is.

Edit:
Also transmission is not dependent on form either. If transmission were dependent on form, there would be no such thing as a garbage transmission. But there is such a thing. It also wouldn't be possible to transmit randomness, but it is possible because the act of transmitting is abstract.

 

[Matt3737]

That would mean information is dependent on transmission, not form. There's a difference. It doesn't matter how it exists or what it is made of so long as it exists somewhere. Therefore it does not depend on form.

Moreover, form of information depends more on the receiver than the information itself in that if you don't know that a string of something holds information, it doesn't look like information.

Well, I'm not entirely sure I see what you're getting at. I don't necessarily see the difference you suggest or if it is a relevant distinction. You say "information is dependent on transmission" which is a restatement of what I said yet suggest the distinction between "transmission" and "form" somehow negates or causes the previous statement to be irrelevant itself.

I do agree with you that information is emergent from and distinct from the entity it emerges from, but I disagree that it is some kind of a separate, hypostatized entity in its own right.

I don't see how you are able to say "so long as it exists somewhere" while simultaneously saying "it does not depend on form". I think you may be using the qualifier of 'existence' in an inconsistent manner for this reason. How or in what manner would something be said to exist in such a case?

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=4822]Matt3737[/MENTION]

Also information depending on form would have to mean that every bit of information that could ever exist for all eternity must meet the criteria of a form, and any unforeseen form is simply not information.

For example you wouldn't be able to invent Morse code without having a manual for every way to transmit it. Since if it depends on form then an unforeseen method of transmission could stop it from being Morse code. Trying to send Morse code by banging on pipes might not count as Morse code if the method of transmission never said that it could be used on pipes.

 

[Matt3737]

Information must have a form but this fact is incidental because you can change the form to anything you want.

I disagree. Form does matter to a degree otherwise we would be unable to make a distinction between forms or between information/noise or language/gibberish or meaning/absurdity. You can convert it into a wide variety of mediums, but it must have some regularly patterned form to transmit it. This patterning can have an important impact on HOW information is processed rather than WHAT information is being processed.

I'm not saying it is dependent entirely, but rather to a degree. There is a degree of separation. I'm beginning to think we are just quibbling over the semantics of the word "independent".

 

[sprinkles]

I disagree. Form does matter to a degree otherwise we would be unable to make a distinction between forms or between information/noise or language/gibberish or meaning/absurdity. You can convert it into a wide variety of mediums, but it must have some regularly patterned form to transmit it. This patterning can have an important impact on HOW information is processed rather than WHAT information is being processed.

I'm not saying it is dependent entirely, but rather to a degree. There is a degree of separation. I'm beginning to think we are just quibbling over the meaning of the semantics of the word "independent".

By form I mean physical form. The 'pattern' you speak of is the content of the information. I'm talking about the vehicle of the information.

You're talking about the ideal abstract form which is not what I'm talking about. The point being that this pattern that you speak of doesn't have to be made of anything particular.

I mean, where is English? Where does it exist? What is it made of? It's just a set of rules isn't it? But how do we have them if it's not made of anything in particular? So that's the point. Information is transcendent. This regular patterning you're talking about IS information and it is abstract.

 

[Matt3737]

[MENTION=4822]Matt3737[/MENTION]

Also information depending on form would have to mean that every bit of information that could ever exist for all eternity must meet the criteria of a form, and any unforeseen form is simply not information.

For example you wouldn't be able to invent Morse code without having a manual for every way to transmit it. Since if it depends on form then an unforeseen method of transmission could stop it from being Morse code. Trying to send Morse code by banging on pipes might not count as Morse code if the method of transmission never said that it could be used on pipes.

That's right. It does need to meet some form or else it may be considered random noise.

 

[Skarekrow]

[video=youtube;RS4PW35-Y00]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RS4PW35-Y00[/video]


[video=youtube;RZTCK8ZluEc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=RZTCK8ZluEc[/video]

Examining the view that mind and body are separate substances.

Note at 7:08 A reductio ad absurdum argument (one which attributes a machine with thought purely for the sake of argument, to demonstrate that genuinely absurd / contradictory consequences follow) would be valid. We can see immediately that Plantinga's thought experiment doesn't achieve this: failure to discern how a thinking machine is thinking indicates only lack of comprehension, not a genuine absurdity / contradiction.

But his use of Leibniz' scenario isn't valid. Leibniz doesn't just propose a thinking machine, but one we can enter and inspect. If physical thinking things are impossible - as Plantinga claims - then whatever machine we conjure up in our imagination to enter and inspect, it can't be a genuine physical thinking thing, just as it would be impossible to inspect a machine that prints square circles. (Besides, if there's truly nothing we could be faced with inside the machine that would signal thought, it makes no sense to ask us to inspect it, since no inspection could help us discern thinking machines from non-thinking ones anyway.) It is this sense in which Plantinga cannot use thinking machines to show machines can't think. His argument is incoherent. It is certainly not a valid reductio ad absurdum.​

 

[Matt3737]

By form I mean physical form. The 'pattern' you speak of is the content of the information. I'm talking about the vehicle of the information.

Well, that's still what I'm trying to get across. That these two are not entirely separate from each other and work in tandem to convey information. Let me come back to this a little later.

 

[sprinkles]

Well, that's still what I'm trying to get across. That these two are not entirely separate from each other and work in tandem to convey information. Let me come back to this a little later.

I didn't say they were entirely separate.

 

[sprinkles]

That's right. It does need to meet some form or else it may be considered random noise.

Random noise can be information by the way.

Not to mention some forms of information transmission are lossy and include artifacts and background noise.

For example we can interpolate lossy images on computers.

Are these the same tiger eye?

Abstractly, they are the same eye, but in strict terms they're not even close. The abstract idealization of the tiger eye is what makes the lossy image work even though most of the pixels are off.

Getting information out of something like that is more about fuzzy approximations with the surrounding context than the form of the information itself. Logically speaking you cannot identify that lossy tiger eye if you strictly follow the information form because there's no precise limit to how arbitrarily close the artifacts have to be to the original.

We just somehow decide that it is close enough even though no individual piece of it could actually indicate that it is.

 

[ThomasJ79]

My understanding is the mind is not the same as the spirit or soul. I personally believe that spirit is the essence of all things all that exists is a manifestation of an invisible spiritual realm, something which cannot be approached scientifically, but intuitively. Our brain and the mind it creates are one of such manifestation. The soul is not the same as spirit, with the soul being more fixed and created individually and applies to humans only. The spirit is a more flexible, pertains to all things, and is an interconnected concept. Forgive me for vagueness, as such concepts are incredibly difficult to describe or articulate.

 

[Misadventure]

I feel the mind, the spirit, and soul are all one, not three separate entities to form a singular being that is you, but all one thing entirely.