Science is entirely based on faith

[Dominic]

There a couple of things worth mentioning here -

2. Physical / Spiritual  If we are talking about messages being received from a god - one that is spiritual in nature and not physical - then we need to tackle the tough question of how the non-material can affect the material. Like it or not, we are physical beings and to implant any thoughts requires some very skilful 'adjustments' to our brain chemicals and our neuron connections. We need to get down to the mechanics of how this might be possible and how we might test to see if it can be detected. Any ideas on this one Dominic?

In answer to 'how does the non material affect the material'.   Consciousness = non-material.  Sensual perception = material.  Consciousness produces perception.

[ I am also equating consciousness = non physical = spiritual = soul, not as dogma or faith but as my definition of 'spiritual' and 'soul' - but the answer to your question is just the paragraph above this one.]

PS:  Re how the non-material 'world' can be detected my response is in whatever ways consciousness can be detected.

[William]

... or matter is a sub-set of consciousness ...

Under paradigm 2, what part/aspect of consciousness would produce zits?



Original sin maybe? 

[screwtape]

dominic,

you've not answered my questions from earlier.  IN paradigm 1, there is reason to believe it is so.  As Kcrady once said, if you think reality is a matter of faith, then have faith an anvil is lightweight rubber and drop it on you foot several times.  If that fails to convince you, drop it on your head. 

In paradigm 2, however, I have seen no reason to believe it.  It is a statement like "everything in the universe is growing, including our measuring sticks".  So how do you know it is growing?  Similarly, on what basis do you say the physical arises from the "conscious"?  What reason do I have to believe it?

[wheels5894]

Dominic,

Can you point us to the source of the second paradigm - maybe a web page of the author, please?

[pianodwarf]

Dominic,

Can you point us to the source of the second paradigm - maybe a web page of the author, please?

There are various takes on it (as you would probably imagine).  I'm somewhat familiar with at least one of them, having been a proponent of it during my brief "woo" period in the late 1980s.  I suggest the novel "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah", by Richard Bach, as a good introduction.
http://www.amazon.com/Illusions-The-Adventures-Reluctant-Messiah/dp/0385319258/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357233364&sr=8-1&keywords=richard+bach+illusions

Apart from giving you some preliminary information about the subject, it's an enjoyable read even if you think the ideas presented are nonsense.  Bach remains one of my favorite authors to this day, although I no longer subscribe to most of his ideas.

[jaimehlers]

There's plenty of things outside of what we can perceive with our limited senses.  We can see light and feel infrared; we can smell and taste a limited range of chemical reactions; we can hear a limited range of movements.  Even with technology to assist, there's still limits to what we can detect.  But those limits in no way suggest what Dominic is arguing - that because of our limited senses, what we can detect is somehow based on 'faith'.  That's because what we can detect is consistent between different viewpoints.  Multiple people examining a slide under a microscope will see the same thing, for example.

What Dominic has to show is that those individual perspectives are not consistent, that they differ to the point where they cannot be used reliably.

[pianodwarf]

There's plenty of things outside of what we can perceive with our limited senses.  We can see light and feel infrared; we can smell and taste a limited range of chemical reactions; we can hear a limited range of movements.  Even with technology to assist, there's still limits to what we can detect.  But those limits in no way suggest what Dominic is arguing - that because of our limited senses, what we can detect is somehow based on 'faith'.  That's because what we can detect is consistent between different viewpoints.  Multiple people examining a slide under a microscope will see the same thing, for example.

What Dominic has to show is that those individual perspectives are not consistent, that they differ to the point where they cannot be used reliably.

Exactly.  And as the old saying goes, "Good luck with that."

[Dominic]

Dominic,

Can you point us to the source of the second paradigm - maybe a web page of the author, please?

I can't point to a precise source because this idea goes way back to ancient philosophers probably before the origins of Hinduism but I can point to a recent proponent who has tried to bring the concept to a more mainstream audience.  His name is Peter Russell.

This could be a good place to start for a summary -
http://www.peterrussell.com/SCG/ideal.php

This is his home page -
http://www.peterrussell.com/index2.php

This is an hour talk he did on the topic -



And here is the first 9 mins if you'd rather have it in easier to manage chunks -

[wheels5894]

Thanks for the links. I'm sorry to say I haven't had the time to watch the 1 hour video though.

Are their others with the same ideas - maybe published in proper journals. A quick search suggests this guy is sort of alone in his ideas and his website seems more concerned with selling courses, books and tapes rather than anything like a good explanation as such.

[Dominic]

Thanks for the links. I'm sorry to say I haven't had the time to watch the 1 hour video though.

Are their others with the same ideas - maybe published in proper journals. A quick search suggests this guy is sort of alone in his ideas and his website seems more concerned with selling courses, books and tapes rather than anything like a good explanation as such.

How about this, which I think is closely related -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)

[wheels5894]

Thanks for the link, Dominic. It sounds to me as though this might have been Russell's source for his own ideas - it certainly bears a close resemblance.

The problem I have with this is that it is simply ideas - old ideas and new ideas but lacking in the sort of thinking that might allow us to examine it more closely and to conclude if it is right or not. of course, most people never even think of this sort of problem as they have much more pressing issues to attend to but even to the few there does seem to be some problems.

the principle problem with this idea is that if everything proceeds from the consciousness, how come we all experience the same 'outside world'? Leaving aside some obvious problems (I have no idea what you might call yellow and I can't explain what I see either - the same applying to taste and smell) if we both looked out of the same window we would see the same things are we could both go together and experience what we could see too. We could even invite more people and they would agree with us on what they experienced. Now, if each of us has a consciousness and the 'outside world' emerges from that consciousness then what mechanism can we invoke to explain how each up us comes up with the same outside world'?

Of course, if we imagine that the consciousness is and emergent property of the material brain, which would be the vast majority view, then these problems disappear and we can explain that there is only one 'outside world' and that our consciousness takes it in.

Would you care to put something forward that argues for Russell's view that I haven't?

[jaimehlers]

Indeed.  Whether we're dealing with the actual universe or the equivalent of a computer program like the Matrix, it's basically communicated to us through our senses.  Those senses may not be especially good, but they're consistent - if several people all look at a scene, they will all see the same scene.

Compare this to the imagination, which is pretty close to what a "world produced by consciousness" would be like.  If I imagine something, say an imaginary world, it is extremely unlikely that someone else's imaginary world will be anything like my own without an external framework (for example, if we both imagined Tatooine from Star Wars).  And even then, there will be dramatic differences between the two.

I only see two ways to produce a consistent "imagined world".  One is for it to be the product of only one mind, with everyone else a figment of that mind; the other being that there's some kind of mechanism for each individual consciousness to share what it produces.  Neither adequately explains the universe as it exists.

If the universe is simply imagined, then there's no reason for it to stay consistent and produce, say, a coherent timeline.  When I imagine things, I seldom concern myself with the kind of linearity that we see in the actual world.  I jump around depending on what I'm thinking about.  I don't even imagine stuff from the same continuity a lot of times - it depends on what I'm actually thinking about the time.

And sharing information between consciousnesses gets to be problematic.  How would this system determine which consciousness was 'dominant' for a given place or time?  How would it ensure that they were all consistent with each other, so as to prevent continuity problems (like magic working in one place and science another, and a third where both worked)?  How would it share information between consciousnesses to begin with, given that the 'world' wouldn't be a valid way to communicate information?

Like it or not, the idea of us experiencing a reality that exists whether we're here to see it or not just makes more sense than any other.

[ParkingPlaces]

What Dominic has to show is that those individual perspectives are not consistent, that they differ to the point where they cannot be used reliably.

The problem with this perspective from Dominic isn't that it is wrong, but that it is of little use. i just drove 140 miles today. All of the drivers I shared the road with were doing a good enough job dealing with reality (along with me) that there were no incidents. I made the trip safely.

Our senses suck if what we are after is actual reality. But they are adequate. And in our case, that is usually good enough.

But are we measuring faith with our mental/physical inadequacies? No, we are measuring how our mind's world compares with whatever it is that is real. And the type of faith involved, if one must use that word, has nothing to do with the faith of religion. If my son wants a red ball, and if he inherited normal color perception from his mom and myself, I have no trouble going to the store and finding one that will meet his requirements. I have faith that his view of red and my view of red are in some sort of agreement, even if, technically, I see red differently than he does. It doesn't matter. Whatever we have works.

[William]

I watched the Russell video to about 30 min and lost patience where Russel starts talking about the “contents of consciousness evolving”.  That is just ridiculous – off the Richter scale of ridiculous and ignorant - how would natural selection operate on phenotypes in the ether of consciousness?

Diminic my question about zits under your paradigm 2 is a serious one.
Why would consciousness give rise to things of no utility?  Or any of the chaos and suffering in reality? 

Is Alzheimer’s a disease of the brain organ or a disease of consciousness? i.e. consciousness deliberately giving rise to its own diming by generating amyloid plaques?

Time is also a problem.  What is built into consciousness that makes us age? Did the dinosaurs exist when none of us existed by virtue of their consciousness?

What about anaesthesia? How do chemicals dim consciousness and then let it return? And brain damage, alcohol, and hallucinogens?  Does consciousness continue when you’re knocked unconscious – why don’t we remember what happened except for the brief blurry and distorted moments when we are going under or resurfacing?

Is a higher being/deity pulling the strings of our consciousness? If so why have so many various gods entered  the consciousness of humans over time?  Why the fuck is Ganesha still riding on the back of a mouse – the correct god should have been able to fix that blip in hindu consciousness by now.



Most of my questions have plausible answers under your paradigm 1, where reality and our consciousness of it is a product of matter and its chaos, and it exists only in the little energy eddies in the decay of the universe that we briefly parasite for our own little period of life.

[Gnu Ordure]

Those senses may not be especially good, but they're consistent - if several people all look at a scene, they will all see the same scene.

If ten people are looking at a rainbow, they don't see the same rainbow, because the arc of a rainbow is always perpendicular to the line of vision of the observer.

Likewise, the colours of the sunset are a creation of consciousness - there are no colours in the real world, only electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths.

To a certain extent then, our experience of the world is the creative product of our consciousness. Our experience of our inner worlds even more so.

[Dominic]

I watched the Russell video to about 30 min and lost patience where Russel starts talking about the “contents of consciousness evolving”.  That is just ridiculous – off the Richter scale of ridiculous and ignorant - how would natural selection operate on phenotypes in the ether of consciousness?

You are thinking in the Physical Paradigm where consciousness somehow emerges from matter.

Russell is talking about consciousness being the most basic 'unit' of reality.  Natural selection then is a phenomenon or process within consciousness.  In this framework (paradigm) natural selection is in fact consciousness at work.  ['Unit' is an inappropriate word but it gives the gist]

Diminic my question about zits under your paradigm 2 is a serious one.
Why would consciousness give rise to things of no utility?  Or any of the chaos and suffering in reality? 

I did wonder if it was a serious question : - ).

If consciousness is the basis of reality then physical manifestations such as zits are (to borrow from Douglas Adams) mostly harmless.

I'll give a hypothetical answer for zits but its not meant to be literally true but it will explain the principle at work.

Zits are a sign that something is not quite right.  It is a signal to the individual that he needs to look at his diet and/or environment to see where some beneficial changes could be made.  The zits themselves are very rarely dangerous but if it is an extreme case then perhaps there is a more urgent need to assess diet and lifestyle.

Zits then are a feedback system designed to inform and assist the 'sufferer'.

To use an analogy, a warning alarm is often an annoyance but it is there for our benefit so we shouldn't resent it.

Is Alzheimer’s a disease of the brain organ or a disease of consciousness? i.e. consciousness deliberately giving rise to its own diming by generating amyloid plaques?

Until I have better knowledge I will put Alzheimer's into the same category as zits but a more extreme example indicating a more serious warning about diet and lifestyle - possibly a long term effect of ingesting unhealthy substances which find their way into our processed food supply.

We as individuals are not expected to fully understand consciousness and the way it works but it makes a lot of sense to study it and see what can be learned.

Time is also a problem.  What is built into consciousness that makes us age? Did the dinosaurs exist when none of us existed by virtue of their consciousness?

My attempts at explaining time would be amateur if I attempted it.  But I'll make this suggestion - consciousness as a whole does not age.  Consciousness experiences, observes and learns.  The perception of a physical universe manifests mostly as changing forms but these are simply images presented to consciousness or within consciousness.  They are just one particular subset of consciousness.  To use an analogy, the images in a movie may convey twenty years of change under the influence of time in the story, while the observer (viewer) is largely unaffected by time.

What about anaesthesia? How do chemicals dim consciousness and then let it return? And brain damage, alcohol, and hallucinogens?  Does consciousness continue when you’re knocked unconscious – why don’t we remember what happened except for the brief blurry and distorted moments when we are going under or resurfacing?

NDEs suggest that consciousness continues even when the heart and breathing are stopped and when brain activity is minimal.  I know that we talk of 'unconsciousness' from anaesthesia and/or from bodily injuries but I suggest that this is a change of consciousness states, not an ending of consciousness.  During NDEs people report more vivid, coherent, meaningful and 'real' experiences than in their normal lives.  We actually know very little of what consciousness is capable of.

Is a higher being/deity pulling the strings of our consciousness? If so why have so many various gods entered  the consciousness of humans over time?  Why the fuck is Ganesha still riding on the back of a mouse – the correct god should have been able to fix that blip in hindu consciousness by now.

One theory is that the 'higher being' is the totality of consciousness (whatever that may turn out to be) and we as individuals are each experiencing a subset of that totality in accordance with our current beliefs, senses, understanding.

This limited experience (as a subset) may in fact be essential for slowly gaining an understanding of the whole.

[wheels5894]

You are thinking in the Physical Paradigm where consciousness somehow emerges from matter.

Russell is talking about consciousness being the most basic 'unit' of reality.  Natural selection then is a phenomenon or process within consciousness.  In this framework (paradigm) natural selection is in fact consciousness at work.  ('Unit' is an inappropriate word but it gives the gist)

This is all very well and is very interesting too but is there any way to show it to be correct? Is there some sort of test we can do to see if Russell is right?

To be fair, it would seem that the universe began 13 odd billion years ago, produced our sun and hence our planet 4 billion years ago and the planet has been around since then with varying lifeforms. I don't see how Russell's idea make any sense against this very long existence of matter. After all, before people acquired the necessary brain structures and manged to have consciousness to the extent we have it today,

[Anfauglir]

the principle problem with this idea is that if everything proceeds from the consciousness, how come we all experience the same 'outside world'?

This is the nub of things for me.

We all experience the same reality - assuming for the sake of argument that there IS a "we", and everything I experience (including Dominic and Wheels) are not simply hallucinations from the lone consciousness in the universe that is "I".  I'll presume for the moment that we are, indeed, working on the basis that there are numerous "identities" in the universe.

Given that that is the case, the physical universe (with emergent consciousness) explains - or can be extrapolated to explain - all the physical and sonsciousness-related aspects of the world.  Including (and I forget who posted this) how thousands of drivers can navigate their cars successfully through rush hour.

However, the reverse does not apply - or, at least, I've yet to hear a convincing explanation.  What IS the mechanism by which Dominic's consciousness, and mine, and Wheels', all share the same consciousness-originating universe?  Does conscsiousness somehow create matter and physical form?  If so, why can individual (or massed) consciousnessess not change/delete/create more physical forms?  Or is the suggestion that the "physical" universe is simply a shared set of hallucinations that are perceived as physical?  In which case, why and how are the perceptions shared?  Why do both Dominic AND me both perceive that we are "typing" on a "keyboard" to disply on a "screen"?  What prevents me from perceiving that I am not tickling the cat in certain ways, and seeing colours form on the wall that convey my thoughts?  WHY do we all create the same reality?

These are the questions that need to be addressed before the consciousness paradigm becomes more plausible than the physical one - which, as I said, already satisfactorily explains the universe - or even begins to come close to it as an explanation.

Like I said in (this? another?) thread - fine to propose "woo, what about THIS as reality?".  But to give it any credence or require consideration beyond the late-night student dope session, it needs to at least begin to answer those questions.

[Azdgari]

Anfauglir and Jaimehlers:

The problem with your objection is that under Dominic's paradigm, the confirming observations of others are also creations of your consciousness.  They too are figments of your dream.  You imagine a chair, and you also imagine other people seeing a chair and telling you about it.

There is no way to falsify this paradigm because anything can be just claimed to be a part of the dream, or of how the dream works.

[screwtape]

All of the drivers I shared the road with were...

...just figments of your imagination.

I made the trip safely.

No you didn't.  You did not actually go anywhere.  You only imagined it.  You are really just a brain in a jar and you cannot prove otherwise.  You have to have faith to think the world you live in is reality.

[Anfauglir]

Anfauglir and Jaimehlers:

The problem with your objection is that under Dominic's paradigm, the confirming observations of others are also creations of your consciousness.  They too are figments of your dream.  You imagine a chair, and you also imagine other people seeing a chair and telling you about it.

There is no way to falsify this paradigm because anything can be just claimed to be a part of the dream, or of how the dream works.

If that's what Dominic is suggesting, then Dominic is choosing to argue with himself about the position that he believes he holds.....I suppose if you are the only person in the universe, then you've got to get your giggles somehow.  To be honest, if it were MY mind that was determining my reality, I'd be having a lot better time, on the whole.  I can't imagine there would be any constraints on it all either, once I'd realised that that was the way the universe is.

So if that IS the case, Dominic, why have you decided that your imaginary friend Anfauglir is continuing to argue with you?

And if I'm NOT imaginary, how IS it that you and I are imagining exactly the same physical universe?

[wheels5894]

Sorry but I think we need to go back to basics. We have two different explanation for the material world we see -

1, It is that is created by each and every one of our consciousnesses

and

2. It is that our consciousness is an emergent property of our brain.

Other above have explained why it is that the second explanation manages to explain very well the way things are in the world. For the first explanation we can only think that each of us is actually alone in a place where we each create, in our consciousness a world in which we imagine each other as well everything else that makes up the material universe.

So, come on Dominic, how do we use explanation 1 to explain what we all seem to be doing now - interacting with a material universe together?

[Add Homonym]

Zits then are a feedback system designed to inform and assist the 'sufferer'.

My cousin-in-law has full brain epilepsy and severe autism. He is 11 and just blows raspberries.

Have you tried moving beyond the Naturopathic paradigms of the 19th century. Have you heard of germ theory?

NDEs suggest that consciousness continues even when the heart and breathing are stopped and when brain activity is minimal. 

Yes, then the spirit knocks on the table and ectoplasm comes out of his mouth. I saw this one on Madame Blavatsky's 19th Century TV show.

I know that we talk of 'unconsciousness' from anaesthesia and/or from bodily injuries but I suggest that this is a change of consciousness states, not an ending of consciousness.

Had an NDE yourself? Or are you just going by what your lying hallucinating friends say?

[jaimehlers]

There is no way to falsify this paradigm because anything can be just claimed to be a part of the dream, or of how the dream works.

If it's not falsifiable, it's useless as an explanation about anything.  So it's Dominic's job to show us how it is falsifiable.

[screwtape]

If it's not falsifiable, it's useless as an explanation about anything.  So it's Dominic's job to show us how it is falsifiable.

good luck with that.

[Azdgari]

If it's not falsifiable, it's useless as an explanation about anything.  So it's Dominic's job to show us how it is falsifiable.

Dominic will claim that the physical-reality paradigm is also unfalsifiable.  And he's right.

[jaimehlers]

That's true.  However, the physical-reality paradigm better explains why we all experience the same universe with different senses than the reality-from-consciousness one.  So I'll rephrase; Dominic has to show us that the second paradigm actually explains things better with less assumptions than the first does.

[Azdgari]

Ahh but as long as he goes with the "we can't prove that there really are other people outside of our imaginations" route, then he doesn't have to explain that.

[Graybeard]

Dominic,

Can you point us to the source of the second paradigm - maybe a web page of the author, please?

I can't point to a precise source because this idea goes way back to ancient philosophers probably before the origins of Hinduism but I can point to a recent proponent who has tried to bring the concept to a more mainstream audience.  His name is Peter Russell.

This could be a good place to start for a summary -
http://www.peterrussell.com/SCG/ideal.php

This is his home page -
http://www.peterrussell.com/index2.php

This is an hour talk he did on the topic -

And here is the first 9 mins if you'd rather have it in easier to manage chunks -

The problem that Descartes had, and I pointed this out earlier, was that to have a conciousness, you have to have an organ that will recognise that consciousness. The organ has to be physical. If it is physical, it occupies space and time.

We call it our "brain" and it must be a part of reality. For a brain to exist, there must be a supply of energy from somewhere.