Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of existence.
Science is essentially objective while consciousness is essentially subjective. So far they just don't seem fit together comfortably. In the past couple of decades neuroscience has made considerable progress in describing the constituent parts of the brain and which parts control or are related to various physical, and emotional behaviors. But actually remarkably science has learned little about what consciousness really is. Two scenarios have been put forth as to the nature of consciousness. Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. Panpsychism, taken literally, is the doctrine that everything has a mind: plants, bacteria, even stones. This is an ancient philosophical doctrine. There is another, emerging idea that consciousness is an essential part of the universe, like space, time, mass, and energy. So it is something like electricity that automatically exists but is not yet explained. In recent years, scientists have discovered that 95% of the contents of the cosmos are invisible to our current methods of direct detection. Yet something is holding galaxies and galaxy clusters together, and something else is causing space to fly apart. It may or may not be Dark matter and dark energy Physicist Hans-Peter Durr, recently stated that "Matter is not made of matter...and exists only in the mind." In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. The phenomenon so riled Albert Einstein that he called it "spooky action at a distance." Our view of reality has changed in just the last decade so that we are apparently seeing the beginning of an important new chapter in human history. This is the result of significant discoveries, the combined effect of which appears to be ushering in a whole new paradigm of human understanding. We no longer see the world as solid and mechanical. We seem to be entering a new era where consciousness is fundamental, and the universe seems to be a giant hologram. This new paradigm appears to be replacing the old one which was the result of a philosophical belief that every event is the inevitable result of antecedent causes. Applied to ethics and psychology, it amounted to the denial of free will. For every event, including human action, there was supposed to exist conditions that could cause no other event. Karl Popper and Stephen Hawking have called this scientific determinism. The idea of Determinism in philosophy, was a theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. In Psychology, genetic predisposition has been the term describing the tendency for a physical or mental condition or disorder to be able to be inherited by the next generation. Peer groups were even supposed to be the result of. genetic influences. This proved to be a monster of great complexities, in which genes trump environment. There was a wide-spread victim mentality, an acquired (learned) personality trait in which a person tends to regard him or herself as not good enough, a victim of the negative actions of others, and to think, speak and act as if that were the case — even in the absence of clear evidence. A few hundred years ago the clergy could decide not just what was right and wrong, but what was true and false. Their power was absolute and intolerable - comply or die. And indeed scientists have died when they began to show that the church was not infallible. The earth was not flat, and not the center of the physical universe, etc. But the tables turned. Scientists decided that anything non-physical is mere superstition and not real. Everything has been quantified and commodified. The invention of machines delivered power into the hands of the wealthy and the greedy. Their exploitations yielded a terrible new tyranny that became ever more unsustainable and intolerable. Science dogma has become detached from reality and detached from humanity. Even consciousness itself has been relegated to be just another part of the body. In effect, the baby was thrown out with the bath. Determinism is the old philosophical position that for every event, including human action, there exist conditions that could cause no other event. Environmental Determinism is the assumption that the physical environment predisposes human social development towards particular trajectories. Combined with behaviorism this described life in a world that became grimmer each day. Behaviorism is a worldview that operates on a principle of "stimulus-response," and behavior was thought to be caused by external stimuli (operant conditioning). This belief was that all behavior can be explained without the need to consider internal mental states or consciousness and behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement, which would increase the probability that the antecedent behavior will happen again. This led to arbitrary values and oppressive behavior, unjust severity, tyrannical parenting, and oppressive laws. It seems that we have been drifting towards full scale genetic and medical tyranny. Our brain receives a lot more data than we can process, so we have become quite good at filtering out what we expect or need to see. Selective vision is the act of seeing things as you choose - creating your own reality within your mind and overlooking things outside their focus of interest. A person can be keenly observant about one thing, and totally oblivious to something going on right next to them. Selective perception is the tendency to not notice, or quickly forget stimuli that causes emotional discomfort and contradicts our prior beliefs. And selective hearing is also very real, and necessary. In a crowded room we can filter out everything except a single conversation. A lover only sees the beloved. So we are prone to tunnel vision often we don't see stuff that's right in front of us. But the idea that consciousness is produced by the brain belongs to old Newtonian Physics. The very formulation of the newer Quantum Physics requires an independent consciousness. The new paradigm is a happier, more productive and much more compassionate, wise, creative, and graceful place, where at any age your brain has the ability to change, learn, grow and be enhanced. And you can learn how to focus your attention on the internal world of the mind in a way that will literally change the wiring and architecture of their brain. Neuroscience research focuses on understanding the structure and function of the brain from molecule to mind. It is the process of examining the basic biological, physiological, and molecular processes that mediate behavior. Dan Siegel's Mindsight allows you to make positive changes in your brain-and in your life. His groundbreaking book on the healing power of "Mindsight," describes the potent skill that is the basis for both emotional and social intelligence. Rupert Sheldrake is the modern champion of the Hypothesis of Formative Causation and Morphic Resonance, which in effect proposes that, "Morphic resonance occurs between... rhythmic structures of activity on the basis of similarity, and through this resonance past patterns of activity influence the fields of subsequent similar systems." (P109, Presence of the Past, Sheldrake). An example might be that apparently some genes are passed on from parent to offspring without ever being part of a nuclear chromosome, which amounts to a non-DNA-based inheritance. This morphic resonance is becoming more in vogue as quantum uncertainty principles are studied. Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona is known for his studies of consciousness. At the very beginning of Hameroff's career, cancer-related research work piqued his interest in the part played by microtubules in cell division, and led him to speculate that they were controlled by some form of computing. It also suggested to him that part of the solution of the problem of consciousness might lie in understanding the operations of microtubules in brain cells, operations at the molecular and supramolecular level. The operations of these microtubules are remarkably complex and their role pervasive in cellular operations; these facts led to the speculation that computation sufficient for consciousness might somehow be occurring there. These ideas are discussed in Hameroff's first book Ultimate Computing (1987) which dealt with the scope for information processing in biological tissue and other parts of the cytoskeleton. Hameroff argued that these subneuronal cytoskeleton components could be the basic units of computation rather than the neurons themselves. The book was primarily concerned with information processing, with consciousness being secondary at this stage. Roger Penrose's first book on consciousness, The Emperor's New Mind argued on the basis of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, that the brain could perform functions that no computer or system of algorithms could. From this it could follow that consciousness itself might be fundamentally non-algorithmic, and incapable of being modeled as a classical Turing machine type of computer. By contrast, the idea that it could be explained mechanistically was prevalent in the field of Artificial Intelligence at that time. Penrose saw the principles of quantum theory as providing an alternative process through which consciousness could arise. He further argued that this non-algorithmic process in the brain required a new form of the quantum wave reduction, later given the name objective reduction (OR), which could link the brain to the fundamental spacetime geometry. At this stage, he had no precise ideas as to how such a quantum process might be instantiated in the brain. Hameroff was inspired by Penrose's book to contact Penrose regarding his own theories about the mechanism of anesthesia, and how it specifically targets consciousness via action on neural microtubules. The two met in 1992, and Hameroff suggested that the microtubules were a good candidate site for a quantum mechanism in the brain. Penrose was interested in the mathematical features of the microtubule lattice, and over the next two years the two collaborated in formulating the orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR) model of consciousness. Following this collaboration, Penrose published his second consciousness book, Shadows of the Mind. Peter Russell proposes that mind is more fundamental than matter. He explores the problems science has in explaining consciousness and argues that consciousness is not created by the brain, but is inherent in all beings. He states that energy, matter, space and time aren't fixed and possibly there is no material, physical world except in our minds. He also states that science is actually in a state of crisis because we have really no idea what matter is or what consciousness is. The study of consciousness has intensified over the past few years as new technological developments in measurement and computer simulation have enabled the closer investigation of one the most "mysterious" phenomena in nature, namely the subjective experience of awareness. There is a whole new field of noetics that has to do with structures of thought and what it means to be human. Experts at the very cutting edge of science seem poised to turn our world view upside down. To mention just a few: Gary Schwartz, Dr Bruce Lipton, Dr Amit Goswami, Dr Joe Dispenza, Dr Jude Currivan, Dr Manjir Samanta-Laughton, and Anthony Peake. The popular media is increasingly concerning itself with New Age mysteries and deep questions. What the Bleep Do We Know!? is a 2004 film that combines documentary-style interviews, computer-animated graphics, and a narrative that posits a spiritual connection between quantum physics and consciousness. The Secret (2006) posits that the law of attraction is a natural law which determines the complete order of the universe and of our personal lives through the process of "like attracts like". Lynne McTaggart was an author, researcher and lecturer, was one of the central voices in the new consciousness movement bridging science and spirituality. An award-winning, best-selling journalist and author of six books, she became a leading spokesperson "on consciousness, the new physics, and the practices of conventional and alternative medicine," and what she called a whole "new science." The notion of conscious hologram is based on the generalization of the idea about brain as a hologram. Mounting evidence seems to indicate that every physical object (both living and nonliving) has its own unique resonant holographic memory and this holographic image is stored in the Zero Point Field. Links
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Showing posts with label Morphic Resonance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Morphic Resonance. Show all posts
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Consciousness
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Rupert Sheldrake
AN EVENING WITH RUPERT SHELDRAKE We are in an extraordinarily unusual time in relation to science and spiritual practices it’s particularly unusual because we are in the stage at which the pursuit of organized religion has declined to a remarkable degree. Only about 5% of the population of Britain regularly attend church services, for example. Yet at the same time there is a tremendous growth in the interest in spiritual practices. And we now have access to spiritual practices from all the world's traditions. Millions of people practice Yoga and Meditation, for example. When I was a child most people had never heard of Yoga and Meditation, outside India, or outside Theosophists, and possibly… But now it is very common. Every small town has Yoga studios. At the same time these practices are being investigated scientifically which had not happened before. And in 2001 a huge handbook was published called The handbook of Religion and Health, and a second edition was published in 2012, reviewing more than 2,500 papers in peer reviewed journals, studying the effects of spiritual and scientific practices. The overwhelming consensus was that these practices have very beneficial affects make people healthier, happier and live longer. Presumably the opposite must be true. People who don’t have these practices are unhappier, unhealthier, and live shorter. Which is why I think militant atheism should come with a health warning. Because when people are persuaded to give up religious practices it leaves them with a kind of void. And because of thet a new generation of atheists are advocating spiritual practices. We now have the strange situation in which we have Sam Harris, one of the new atheists, is now giving online meditation courses. And Alain de Batton, one of our leading aethist philosophers in Beitan, recently wrote a book called, Religion for Atheists, in which he points out that when people loose their traditional religious practices and faith, then they loose out on a whole range of things, which are helpful for religious people: gathering together regularly, being supported by that community in times of adversity, having a sense of community, praying, singing together, celebrating festivals, having rites of passage, praying. If people give up traditional practices, they usually give up all these things as well. And Alain de Batton recognizes that these are very important for human health, well being, and flourishing. Which he is trying to re-invent atheists versions of these practices. The above is a paraphrased excerpt from a transcription of the YouTube presentation
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, one of the world's most innovative scientists, who, while having a perfectly good PhD in biochemistry, prefers to spend much of his time on parapsychology with some truly amaising results. In his quest to explore phenomena that science finds hard to explain, he has been condemned "in exactly the language that the pope used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reason. Dr. Sheldrake shows the ways in which science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls while societies around the world are paying the price. In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery. Science Set Free will radically change your view of what is real and what is possible.
"I think what we’re heading for is a post-materialist worldview which is what my book (Morphic Resonance) is
trying to point the way towards. We could have a holistic way of
looking at things, a scientific investigation into things, which leaves
these bigger questions open. For example, in one chapter of the book
where I’m dealing with the dogma that memories are stored as material
traces inside the brain that becomes the question, are memories stored
as material traces in the brain?
I’m not confident memories are stored in brains. I think that brains are more like tuning devices, more like TV receivers than like video recorders. Now that’s really a scientific question, how is memory stored? We can do experiments to try and find out how memory works. So for materialists it’s a simple two-step argument. Memories are stored in brains; the brain decays at death, therefore, memories are wiped out at death. Whereas, if memories are not stored in brains then the memories themselves are not wiped out at death. They’re potentially accessible. That doesn’t prove they are accessed, that there is personal survival. It just means that’s a possibility whereas with materialism it’s an impossibility. So one position leaves the question closed and the other leaves it open." - Interview with Alex Tsakiris Why do many phenomena defy the explanations of conventional biology and physics? For instance, when laboratory rats in one place have learned how to navigate a new maze, why do rats elsewhere seem to learn it more easily? Rupert Sheldrake describes this process as morphic resonance: the past forms and behaviors of organisms, he argues, influence organisms in the present through direct connections across time and space. Calling into question many of our fundamental concepts about life and consciousness, Sheldrake reinterprets the regularities of nature as being more like habits than immutable laws. The first edition of A New Science of Life created a furor when it appeared, provoking the outrage of the old-guard scientific community and the approbation of the new. The British journal Nature called it "the best candidate for burning there has been for many years." A lively debate ensued, as researchers devised experiments testing Sheldrake's hypothesis, including some involving millions of people through the medium of television. These developments are recorded in this revised and expanded edition of New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance Sheldrake explains how past forms and behaviors of organisms determine those of similar organisms in the present through morphic resonance. The Hypothesis of Formative Causation proposes that the forms of self-organizing systems are arranged and fashioned by "Morphic fields." He proposes that the process of morphic resonance leads to stable morphic fields, which are significantly easier to tune into. He suggests that this is the means by which simpler organic forms synergetically self-organize into more complex ones, and that this model allows a different explanation for the process of evolution itself, as an addition to Darwin's evolutionary processes of selection and variation. There is a fine line between moderation and censorship. At TED.COM (Technology, Entertainment and Design) on January 13, 2013, Rupert Sheldrake gave a talk in which he suggests that the modern scientific worldview has become associated with ten dogmas, and makes the case that none of them hold up to scrutiny. According to him, these dogmas — including, for example, that nature is mechanical and purposeless, that the laws and constants of nature are fixed, and that psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible — are holding back the pursuit of knowledge. TED’s scientific advisers have questioned whether his list is a fair description of scientific assumptions, and TED administrators have publicaly aligned themselves with the old paradigm of materialism, which has dominated science since the late nineteenth century. TED have decided to censor Rupert Sheldrake and remove this video from the TEDx YouTube channel. This has caused some controversy and should make Sheldrake all the more interesting.
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