Consciousness and the Paranormal

[smcder]

I made it using Word.

Regarding unconscious and conscious awareness, ITT has this to say:

In other words, if a person witnesses, say, a car crash, all the stimuli will physically reach the body at different times (light travels faster than sound, sound travels fast than smell, etc.). Then, the different "elements" of the organisms will begin to process the stimuli - eyes, ears, nose, etc. At this point in time, this information is still in the "unconscious." However, within milliseconds, all this information will be integrated into coherent qualia, that is to say, a stream of consciousness.

Thus, we would expect to see various neurological activity in the brain - and even physiological responses - before an organism is consciously aware. Back to the music analogy: we would expect to see the instruments being played before the music was produced.

This is related to, but not the same as, mental causation. While the mind may be emitted/produced by the brain, once the mind is emitted, it can still influence/affect the brain - just as the music (sound waves) produced by an instrument can affect the instruments. The sound waves emitted from a base drum can cause it and other instruments to rattle, etc.

@smcder Entangled Minds: "Predicting the unpredictable" in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

PAA is an unconscious phenomenon that seems to be a time-reversed reflection of the usual physiological response to a stimulus. It appears to resemble precognition (consciously knowing something is going to happen before it does), but PAA specifically refers to unconscious physiological reactions as opposed to conscious premonitions. Though it is possible that PAA underlies the conscious experience of precognition, experiments testing this idea have not produced clear results."

Try as I might, I can't seem to grasp what is being said here.

Are these studies suggesting that organisms react physiologically to events before they have conscious awareness of events?

also good:

http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/evidence.htm



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/PropertydualismFNL.doc

Searle is another "grand old man" of Phil of Mind - formulated the Chinese Room problem and would be on a par w Nagel in terms of imminence


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Soupie]

that is my understanding that there is a physiological response prior to exposure to the stimuli

Wow. I'll have to look at this more deeply.

 

[smcder]

Wow. I'll have to look at this more deeply.

yes please do


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

Wow. I'll have to look at this more deeply.

full article if I didn't post it:

Frontiers | Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Summary & Conclusions

In summary we have made the following points in this article.

• PAA, the predictive physiological anticipation of a truly randomly selected and thus unpredictable future event, has been under investigation for more than three decades, and a recent conservative meta-analysis suggests that the phenomenon is real.

• Neither QRP, expectation bias, nor physiological artifacts seem to be able to explain PAA.

• The mechanisms underlying PAA are not yet clear, but two viable yet difficult-to-test hypotheses are that quantum processes are involved in human physiology or that they reflect fundamental time symmetries inherent in the physical world.

• The evidence indicates that there is a temporal mirroring between pre- and post-event physiological events, so that the nature of the post-event physiological response is a reflection of the characteristics of the PAA for that event.

• Temporal blurring, in which closely overlapped emotional events may confuse or minimize both post-event responses and PAA before the event, may be a critical factor in isolating and amplifying PAA. %However, the noise introduced by this blurring may be limited by strictly “closing the temporal loop” between pre-stimulus and post-stimulus responses.

• The principles of temporal mirroring and temporal blurring both guide the recommendations for designing reliable PAASTs.

• Future research with multiple stimulus modalities, long inter-trial intervals, multiple individuals simultaneously exposed to the same stimulus, and machine-learning techniques will advance our understanding of the nature of PAA and allow a better harnessing of the delay before future events unfold.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

What if in fact there is no subconscious mind at all, and all that is being observed is the totality or expanse of our natural cognitive relationship to consciousness? How do we know that it's not merely the physical portion of ourselves, the organic temporal machine upstairs, the rest of us included, *is* that which* is*, the very nature of that which regulates a very limited relationship to consciousness producing reality specific experience?

Is not the subconscious mind merely a "view"? How can such a view be truthfully substantiated? Even if we (humanity) produce a model explaining cognizant awareness based on Freud's views, do we really have anything substantial apart from the language of mathematics that supports the hypothetical?

This is not meant as an attention getting wrench in the works here in the least. I REALLY don't get this aspect of consciousness research.

I think there are definite limts to the research and there is a larger view here - what specific aspects do you not get?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

mindfulness of thinking - when a thought arises you label it "thought" and go back to the breath. also known as "noting" you become aware that a thought is arising and what type it is before it is fully formed - worry, planning etc - would performing these experiments on persons trained in awareness of thought formation have a different outcome? or could u use biofeedback to train subjects to "catch" thoughts in early formation and defeat the predicted outcome?

That's a very interesting suggestion. Mindfulness already does this for people trained in the practice, but perhaps biofeedback could help people unable to quiet their minds sufficiently to pay attention to their unfolding thoughts. I think this is being done with people afflicted with PTSD such as American soldiers coming back from traumatic experiences in our wars in the Mideast. Such biofeedback has also been useful in helping children who have ADHD/ADD to train themselves to focus their thinking.

 

[smcder]

That's a very interesting suggestion. Mindfulness already does this for people trained in the practice, but perhaps biofeedback could help people unable to quiet their minds sufficiently to pay attention to their unfolding thoughts. I think this is being done with people afflicted with PTSD such as American soldiers coming back from traumatic experiences in our wars in the Mideast. Such biofeedback has also been useful in helping children who have ADHD/ADD to train themselves to focus their thinking.

i practice mindfulness of breath and emotions as well and meta (loving kindness)

there are a number of guided meditations on the web

Malcolm Huxter
Zencast.org



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jeff Davis]

I think there are definite limts to the research and there is a larger view here - what specific aspects do you not get?



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

smcder,
It's almost a matter of philosophy. How can we know that we are not assembling knowledge to fit patterns that we ourselves create? For instance, when someone constructs a mathematical model in support of their views, how do we know that we are merely not describing a false principle via the logic and linearity of mathematics? Shouldn't such absolutes produce absolutely verifiable conclusions in demonstration?

I was reading yesterday about the subconscious and conscious states of mind and how one cannot know the other. How is it that people are instructed in hypnosis to retrieve factually verifiable information from their subconscious minds that they do not readily remember in a waking state? If it is true that each maintains it's own and distinctive set of cognitive undertakings, apart from one another, how can the hypnotized conscious mind be instructed to retrieve information across such a barrier?

My point is that possibly it may be a matter of energy requirements wherein our physical expense of energy robs the mind of it's ability to fully potentiate conscious experience.

 

[Constance]

I made it using Word.

Regarding unconscious and conscious awareness, ITT has this to say:

In other words, if a person witnesses, say, a car crash, all the stimuli will physically reach the body at different times (light travels faster than sound, sound travels fast than smell, etc.). Then, the different "elements" of the organisms will begin to process the stimuli - eyes, ears, nose, etc. At this point in time, this information is still in the "unconscious." However, within milliseconds, all this information will be integrated into coherent qualia, that is to say, a stream of consciousness.

Thus, we would expect to see various neurological activity in the brain - and even physiological responses - before an organism is consciously aware. Back to the music analogy: we would expect to see the instruments being played before the music was produced.

This is related to, but not the same as, mental causation. While the mind may be emitted/produced by the brain, once the mind is emitted, it can still influence/affect the brain - just as the music (sound waves) produced by an instrument can affect the instruments. The sound waves emitted from a base drum can cause it and other instruments to rattle, etc.

@smcder Entangled Minds: "Predicting the unpredictable" in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

PAA is an unconscious phenomenon that seems to be a time-reversed reflection of the usual physiological response to a stimulus. It appears to resemble precognition (consciously knowing something is going to happen before it does), but PAA specifically refers to unconscious physiological reactions as opposed to conscious premonitions. Though it is possible that PAA underlies the conscious experience of precognition, experiments testing this idea have not produced clear results."

Try as I might, I can't seem to grasp what is being said here.

Are these studies suggesting that organisms react physiologically to events before they have conscious awareness of events?

Good question. It increasingly seems to me, based on the various recent experiments we've been discussing, that what's being revealed is [edit] subconscious presence to/awareness of the physical macro-level of reality we live in consciously, and reactivity of our subconscious minds to phenomena presenting in it, as well as to past experiences of our own and our species remembered in the unconscious/subconscious precincts of our minds. Parapsychologists and paranormal researchers have been aware for more than a hundred years that the boundaries between the conscious and subconscious mind are porous. (see F.W.H. Myers's major work Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death published in 1903 and the recent study Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, ed. Kelly and Kelly et al., further developing numerous insights obtained by Myers and his colleagues in psychical research more than a century ago. Description of the latter:

Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.

Links:



What I had hoped Tonini's Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness would do is to begin the demanding task of revealing the complex nexus between bodily experience and knowledge and mental experience and knowledge constituted in embodied consciousness (clearly not a single point of connection but many points). Alva Noe and J. Kevin O'Regan have come closest to attempting to articulate the nature of this nexical relationship of mind and body in their paper "A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness" at http://cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/NBP/PDFs_Publications/ORegan.BBS.01pdf.pdf

Also relevant concerning subconscious mind is the paper by two Yale psychologists I linked in this thread last week which I'll link again after I locate it here.

 

[Constance]

Here's that link:

Consciousness and the Paranormal | Page 67 | The Paracast Community Forums

 

[Soupie]

mindfulness of thinking - when a thought arises you label it "thought" and go back to the breath. also known as "noting" you become aware that a thought is arising and what type it is before it is fully formed - worry, planning etc

This brings to mind a vision of thoughts as bubbles percolating up from the unconscious. I picture a little golden Buddha in the lotus position levitating beside a quiet pond, non-judgmentally observing these bubbles of thought emerge from the waters.

As Graham Hancock often says, our culture has put a premium on the alert state of being; on the conscious, rational aspect of the mind. I'm guilty of this myself. Two strategies I use to counter this (a bit) are silent morning and evening commutes to work and a strict sleeping schedule. I'd like to find an activity that allows me to enter the "flow" state of mind, but my current schedule doesn't allow.

@smcder Frontiers | Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity | Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Until there is a gold standard experiment that is replicated across laboratories using exactly the same experimental procedure, physiological measures, and statistical analyses, there remains the possibility that multiple analyses could influence the body of evidence supporting PAA. ...

A seemingly paradoxical PAA experiment called a “bilking experiment” is one in which a participant’s PAA response is used to avoid a future emotional event that presumably caused the PAA response to occur in the first place. If such a PAA response can be shown to exist when there is no accompanying future emotional event, this would invalidate the idea that PAA requires a post-stimulus response and would support the idea that PAA predicts probable vs. actual events. One of us (Tressoldi et al., 2013) has preliminary data that support this idea. However, such bilking experiments are in their infancy, making it difficult to draw conclusions.

Incredible interesting for sure, but those two quotes me to hesitate before speculating too much about what this phenomena may be/mean.

@Constance The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience.

Sounds fascinating and extremely relevant to the discussion. Will check out asap. I wonder if there is an article/essay describing this "filter" theory?

 

[smcder]

This brings to mind a vision of thoughts as bubbles percolating up from the unconscious. I picture a little golden Buddha in the lotus position levitating beside a quiet pond, non-judgmentally observing these bubbles of thought emerge from the waters.

As Graham Hancock often says, our culture has put a premium on the alert state of being; on the conscious, rational aspect of the mind. I'm guilty of this myself. Two strategies I use to counter this (a bit) are silent morning and evening commutes to work and a strict sleeping schedule. I'd like to find an activity that allows me to enter the "flow" state of mind, but my current schedule doesn't allow.

Incredible interesting for sure, but those two quotes me to hesitate before speculating too much about what this phenomena may be/mean.

Sounds fascinating and extremely relevant to the discussion. Will check out asap. I wonder if there is an article/essay describing this "filter" theory?

you can start meditating as little as 5 minutes a day and you will find you have more time as a result



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

@Soupie the bubble buddha (bah-fah) description is all but identical to a guided meditation on thoughts

... for an entirely different style of meditation search "AODA" discursive meditation


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Constance]

smcder,
It's almost a matter of philosophy. How can we know that we are not assembling knowledge to fit patterns that we ourselves create? For instance, when someone constructs a mathematical model in support of their views, how do we know that we are merely not describing a false principle via the logic and linearity of mathematics? Shouldn't such absolutes produce absolutely verifiable conclusions in demonstration?

I was reading yesterday about the subconscious and conscious states of mind and how one cannot know the other. How is it that people are instructed in hypnosis to retrieve factually verifiable information from their subconscious minds that they do not readily remember in a waking state? If it is true that each maintains it's own and distinctive set of cognitive undertakings, apart from one another, how can the hypnotized conscious mind be instructed to retrieve information across such a barrier?

I think what happens is that hypnotic regression takes down/dissolves the barrier of waking consciousness and all the expectations, day to day activities and interactions, general noise {we are overloaded with this in the world we live in today}, dysfunctional reactions and behaviors, false presuppositions, and other blockages to our subconscious minds. Remote viewers and mediums are able to learn how to shut off their ordinary waking consciousness and mindset to open the mind to their own subconsciousness where they are able to receive information otherwise unreachable. In the case of many of the mediums of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially the powerful ones studied for decades by the SPR in England, France, Germany, etc., and then soon in America, the ability to block the conscious mind and access the subconscious mind came about without intention or effort; they found themselves developing precognitive abilities; becoming aware of the proximity of discarnate individuals, receiving often veridical information from them, and began sharing it with researchers and the living people these discarnate consciousnesses sought to communicate with. This has also been the case with some more recent mediums such as Eileen Garrett. Extensive reading of the archives containing the transcriptions of 'sittings' with mediums arranged and observed by the SPR and similar psychologists, scientists, and psychical researchers elsewhere over many decades was enough {supplemented by some personal experiences} to persuade me that consciousness, personality, memory, and deep emotional bonds do survive bodily death to some unknown extent. To return to the first questions you asked:

How can we know that we are not assembling knowledge to fit patterns that we ourselves create? For instance, when someone constructs a mathematical model in support of their views, how do we know that we are merely not describing a false principle via the logic and linearity of mathematics?

Re the first question, SPR and other psychical researchers developed the Super-Psi hypothesis as an alternative to the survival of consciousness hypothesis but they have by and large discarded it as impossibly complex. Re the second question, you do realize you're engaging in heresy in this still dominantly materialist scientific age?

My point is that possibly it may be a matter of energy requirements wherein our physical expense of energy robs the mind of it's ability to fully potentiate conscious experience.

 

[Constance]

This brings to mind a vision of thoughts as bubbles percolating up from the unconscious. I picture a little golden Buddha in the lotus position levitating beside a quiet pond, non-judgmentally observing these bubbles of thought emerge from the waters.

As Graham Hancock often says, our culture has put a premium on the alert state of being; on the conscious, rational aspect of the mind. I'm guilty of this myself. Two strategies I use to counter this (a bit) are silent morning and evening commutes to work and a strict sleeping schedule. I'd like to find an activity that allows me to enter the "flow" state of mind, but my current schedule doesn't allow.

Incredible interesting for sure, but those two quotes me to hesitate before speculating too much about what this phenomena may be/mean.

Sounds fascinating and extremely relevant to the discussion. Will check out asap. I wonder if there is an article/essay describing this "filter" theory?

Both of the books I linked are lengthy and deeply footnoted, especially the latter. They require gradual reading unless one has a sizeable block of free time. But they're both extremely significant for anyone attempting to understand the complexities of consciousness and mind. I think both can purchased for online reading to allow for periodic progress in getting through them. I still have more than half of Irreducible Mind to read.

 

[Michael Allen]

This is close to the crux of the issue IMO, "what makes me, 'me'--what makes you, 'you' ", as the old Cat Stevens line goes. Neurology tells us that specific structures and processes within the brain are devoted to making distinguishing ourselves as discrete entities from the larger world. Clinical terms for the failure of this function may come under the heading of "depersonalization" or "dissociation". This can make for some very interesting reading.

So--and no, I have not properly done my homework by reading in detail everything posted here. So apologies for good points I have surely missed. But discussion seems to be orbiting variations of the mind-body problem and the substrate dependence vs non-dependence of consciousness. I would note that we often fail to define what aspects of consciousness are being discussed: Immediate self-awareness, the individual subconscious from which it is seemingly derived, a larger collective unconscious (as per Jung) composed of dispersed but interacting non-individuated processes that may possess a different quality of consciousness, and therefore speak (as does the individual subconscious) its own language.

Crude categories:

-The existence of consciousness is dependent for its existence upon matter and energy (as we define them by strict scientific method). But matter and energy are not conversely dependent on the existence of mind. This might be akin to the theory of an emergent consciousness arising from an orchestration of simpler algorithms.

-Mind and matter are mutually dependent. One cannot exist without the other.

-Mind and matter may or may not interact: are mutually non dependent.

-The existence of matter and energy are solely dependent on the existence of mind. This view might see the entire universe as a manifestation of consciousness; i.e. as pure information.

The weird problem about talking about "emergent consciousness" is that you must make such a derivation from the very thing you attempting to derive. For you "emergence" is of a world unfolding within which you more and more learn how to interact and dwell in.

 

[Michael Allen]

I've been re-reading your post . . . but can't understand most of it - I feel like what I understand of it, I agree with (generally) . . . the example of breathing is similar to something I remember reading by Alan Watts - I think he used the skin as an example (maybe in The Book On The Taboo Against KNowing Who You Are - I'll have to look it up)

In general, is there some context you can provide or expand on these ideas?

Other divisive terms like "conscious" and "unconscious" accomplish the same feat of confusion. We seem to think that we know what we're talking about when we talk about "mind," "consciousness" or "awareness," when the reality is that regardless of the label, all of these formations of reality are seemingly dependent on something we can never be mentally connected to.

Vocabulary is definitely a big piece of the discussion . . . what do we mean by such and such - some of this comes out of the context of the discussion, sometimes we refer to other sources ...

There's an interesting inverse relationship between two polarized states of existence:

(1) Complete theoretical omniscience destroying consciousness
(2) Complete omniscience and awareness in a limited finite domain requires a domain of not knowing.

What is "complete theoretical omniscience"?

I've probably stated this in other ways in earlier posts and discussion. The very fact that we can live in a world and be comfortable with "knowing" and "doing" things and yet stand outside this framework as if it were utterly incomprehensible and alien means that some how, in some manner, our existence somehow thrives on mystery. Weird that it may be, mystery, incomprehensibility, and confusion may lie as the fundamental bedrock for all sensual experience. The wavering line between breathing as voluntary and as involuntary is a division forced on us.

It does seem strange that we can "stand outside" and alienation has been a perennial theme of Western thought ... otherwise I'm not following this part very well.

Conscious experience wouldn't exist without the curious human ability to think we know what we are talking about without actually knowing anything at all.

If you can expand on this last part particularly . . . ? Maintaining a keen awareness of our ignorance can definitely be helpful. Piaget talked of meaning in terms of embodiment, constructing our way through the world . . ..

Well to start with the last question first, I probably made the last statement more "ethical" sounding than I wouldn't liked--the tone almost sounds condescending now that I re-read my own writing. What I meant to say (and this will probably help to answer another question in this thread on the same notion) was that our own ability to be ignorant (in the most clinical sense--not meant to be an insult against our species) is somehow essential for our own consciousness to be what it is. I think sometime afterward I noticed some posting observations regarding an apparent pre-cognitive "cognition" involved in our anticipatory response to future stimuli (to be blunt). So some may have already discussed the roots of this phenomenon.

Which gets me to the "theoretical omniscience" point: this is merely a device I used to contrast extreme limits of consciousness. I should have said something like the ability to be fully aware of every single aspect of reality in the universe of total existence. I wrote something on this in a gather post which may either further confuse or help you understand where I was going with this line of thought.

Grounds for Awareness and Consciousness | Gather

An excerpt

Now within our own minds, things are distinguished in thought. We are able to stand inside our minds and visualize the presence of an object. In doing so we simulate ourselves looking at the object directly. So the very ability to recall objects in our consciousness is dependent on this initial state of graphing the contents from our senses into our visual cortex and then finally into the recesses of our memory. An analogous situation occurs when we place a disk with groves of pits and valleys onto a phonograph player and reproduce the sound through the re-action of the needle to the differences scored into the record. This means that, loosely speaking, our own awareness of ideas in our mind are dependent on the succession of states of not-knowing transitioning to knowing; i.e. a constant fulfillment of expecting something to change and seeing a change that was not fully expected. The same can be said for things that appear to remain the same (and yet are objectively different, but in ways we cannot see). To our senses, a stream of water out of a hose can appear as a frozen concrete particular--and yet the objective reality changes from moment to moment.

In essence, the act of thinking requires an environment of novelty to spring sudden knowledge from a state of ignorance.

And yes, I am in great debt to Alan Watts, who's lucid examples on the ideas of a consciousness as "the head of a pin attempting to stick itself" gave me the necessary tools to at least unravel the "mystery" of consciousness.

 

[smcder]

That's a very interesting suggestion. Mindfulness already does this for people trained in the practice, but perhaps biofeedback could help people unable to quiet their minds sufficiently to pay attention to their unfolding thoughts. I think this is being done with people afflicted with PTSD such as American soldiers coming back from traumatic experiences in our wars in the Mideast. Such biofeedback has also been useful in helping children who have ADHD/ADD to train themselves to focus their thinking.

a couple of good resources are isochronic tones: free mp3 library at ISO-tones.com and jetcityorange.com (I think) had binaural mp3s - also lots on YouTube you can convert with keepvid.com - or just search, both entrained the brain to certain frequencies - I feel they are effective



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smcder]

smcder,
It's almost a matter of philosophy. How can we know that we are not assembling knowledge to fit patterns that we ourselves create? For instance, when someone constructs a mathematical model in support of their views, how do we know that we are merely not describing a false principle via the logic and linearity of mathematics? Shouldn't such absolutes produce absolutely verifiable conclusions in demonstration?

I was reading yesterday about the subconscious and conscious states of mind and how one cannot know the other. How is it that people are instructed in hypnosis to retrieve factually verifiable information from their subconscious minds that they do not readily remember in a waking state? If it is true that each maintains it's own and distinctive set of cognitive undertakings, apart from one another, how can the hypnotized conscious mind be instructed to retrieve information across such a barrier?

My point is that possibly it may be a matter of energy requirements wherein our physical expense of energy robs the mind of it's ability to fully potentiate conscious experience.

smcder,
It's almost a matter of philosophy. How can we know that we are not assembling knowledge to fit patterns that we ourselves create? For instance, when someone constructs a mathematical model in support of their views, how do we know that we are merely not describing a false principle via the logic and linearity of mathematics? Shouldn't such absolutes produce absolutely verifiable conclusions in demonstration?

I think people do mistake the model for reality and sophisticated mathematical truths are endlessly debatable or inaccessible to all but a few - see the story of the proof if fermats last theorem or Godels ontological proof for example and mathematics underpinnings are not so firm as the layperson thinks - basic questions in the philosophy of mathematics are outstanding ... so, yes - I agree ... but absolutely verifiable conclusions are a horse of another color - (I will provide a proof) see also "Cosmic Habituation"



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk