Philosophy, Science, & The Unexplained - Main Thread

[Muadib]

Please don't think I am angry however, just intent on getting some hopeful answers. Naturally as we all do, certainly not just myself, we all hope those answers are the ones that we want to hear.

On this we can agree, though in my own case I have to admit that sometimes I hope I'm completely and utterly wrong, case in point issues like consciousness or continuation of consciousness. It can be a grim thought to think that this life is all we have and I would love nothing more than for myself and science in general to be proven completely and utterly wrong on that front, though as I said before, the fact that I want something to be true isn't sufficient reason to believe in it, I need more than that.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Well, you're entitled to believe whatever you want about my intentions, but the only ignorance I've seen in this thread is your complete ignorance of what we knew and what was speculated about in regards to Jupiter prior to this remote viewing by Ingo Swann. The idea that there was no prior speculation or study of Jupiter that he could've easily used to inform his own speculation is the height of that ignorance which you claim to loathe.

I am not calling you ignorant in the least. I am merely stating that ignorance is the motivating force that drives me. I am merely stating that I justify lashing out in an attempt to get to the bottom of my ignorance. Ignorance is not a bad thing if it's recognized. I don't have the answers here and it is that precise driver that fearfully encourages my forward momentum as I forge my way through the brutal environment of complete uncertainty. Dig?

 

[Muadib]

All evidence with respect to the paranormal is statistically associative by corollary, or observationally phenomenal by nature IMO. We can compile vast amounts of this evidence and never have real substantiation. So ultimately, I don't soundly "believe" any of this. That's why IMO it's so important to encourage one another in adopting and researching as many alternate hypothetical possibilities as is cumulatively imaginable.

If this is truly the case then I don't see why you get so combative whenever someone provides an alternative look at something you're presenting like I did above with the skeptical take on Swann's Jupiter information. I can understand your desire to provide counterpoint but you always seem to take it a step further and question people's motivations and intent in presenting their own information. Anyway, I can agree with you 100% that we need to all keep our minds open to the possibilities.

I am not calling you ignorant in the least. I am merely stating that ignorance is the motivating force that drives me. I am merely stating that I justify lashing out in an attempt to get to the bottom of my ignorance. Ignorance is not a bad thing if it's recognized. I don't have the answers here and it is that precise driver that fearfully encourages my forward momentum as I forge my way through the brutal environment of complete uncertainty. Dig?

I wasn't calling you ignorant, either, if you read my post you'll see that I was calling the idea that Swann had nothing on which to base his own speculation ignorant. I actually think you're one of the most intelligent posters on this forum, Jeff. I sincerely mean that.

 

[smcder]

Ufology is a brilliant man. I wish I had the kind of free time that both you ,and he, seem to endure the liberty of enjoying on this forum. Being so insanely busy at work this past week, all I have been able to do is to spy tantalizing tidbits of postings from those I enjoy reading here.

I'm afraid this liberty is short-lived for me so I am enjoying all the mental aerobics while I can! ;-)

 

[Jeff Davis]

On this we can agree, though in my own case I have to admit that sometimes I hope I'm completely and utterly wrong, case in point issues like consciousness or continuation of consciousness. It can be a grim thought to think that this life is all we have and I would love nothing more than for myself and science in general to be proven completely and utterly wrong on that front, though as I said before, the fact that I want something to be true isn't sufficient reason to believe in it, I need more than that.

Think about what you just stated here! Common sense has revealed to you instinctively via intuition that you KNOW there is MORE here to understand. Far more. It's in us, and that is your survival instincts begging off that ignorance I referred to earlier. The same precise ignorance that drives myself. We are all the same. We are the center of experience and that experience teaches us to adaptively survive. The behest of our drive is survival itself. This is IMO environmentally relevant progressive sentient evolution apart from the physical environmental evolution that did away with our appendix many moons ago.

 

[Jeff Davis]

I'm afraid this liberty is short-lived for me so I am enjoying all the mental aerobics while I can! ;-)

Please keep it up as long as possible, I too wish I could be around more, but while I am, I have certainly enjoyed reading what you have posted.

 

[smcder]

Please keep it up as long as possible, I too wish I could be around more, but while I am, I have certainly enjoyed reading what you have posted.

Thank you Jeff!

 

[Jeff Davis]

Did Ben Rich refer to taking ET home via ESP? I must admit I'm not up to speed on that whole thing, I've heard about it of course, but I remember the statement being much more general, IE that we now had the ability to take ET home or something like that, I don't remember it referencing ESP. In any case, like I said I find it interesting and I also find your speculation to be very interesting, but where's the evidence? Where's the evidence of someone 25 times more prone by natural disposition to exercise and deploy such capabilities? If I were confronted with such evidence and it held up to scrutiny, I would obviously have to change my stance on remote viewing and possibly even consciousness itself. Truthfully, nothing would make me happier, I'd love to believe that we're more than just the physical material of which we are made, however, I can't believe something just because I want to, I need evidence.

Yes, yes, yes! See Don's commentary here: A question for Don. | The Paracast Community Forums

I'm afraid obviously there is zero substantiation, but there is at least a possible connection.

 

[smcder]

Yes. Some points of view like the idea of spiritual entities inhabiting bodies seems self-evident to some people, but break down rather quickly. However other things like being able to image our red Ferarri is an ability that is self-evident and undeniably real within the framework of mental visualization.

There sure are a lot of differing opinions, theories and models to look at, which is why I think it's important not to get bogged down in the philosophese. That's for those who pride themselves in recalling the minutiae of philosophical trivia. It's fine to lookup what one needs as one goes in order to determine what's relevant and what's not.

I think GH Hardy's general premise is true to the extent that we can create abstract mathematical representations of entirely fictional things, and often compare this to the work of artists, particularly Escher, whose impossible staircase is IMO a near perfect analogy. Math is an abstract form of representation that takes place in the mind. It may not have any direct correlation to the so-called real world, but that doesn't mean it may not have relevance. That's the key word. A purely geometrical figure as defined in math may not actually exist in the real world, but it can still be relevant to those who want to do something like build a pyramid.

There sure are a lot of differing opinions, theories and models to look at, which is why I think it's important not to get bogged down in the philosophese. That's for those who pride themselves in recalling the minutiae of philosophical trivia. It's fine to lookup what one needs as one goes in order to determine what's relevant and what's not.

Sure, you can't afford to get bogged down if you are constructing a theory/model and devising experiments - you do need a map of the territory to make sure you aren't trodding old ground, but you also can't know what in time will come out of philosophical activity in terms of interpreting the results of those experiments and evaluating those theories - and you can't worry about that, you're just trying to establish a temporary position anyway.

The last part of the Stanford article addresses this:

A common eliminativist response to this argument is to re-emphasize a lesson from the philosophy of science; namely, that any theory—especially one that is as near and dear to us as folk psychology—can often appear successful even when it completely misrepresents reality. History demonstrates that we often discount anomalies, ignore failures as insignificant, and generally attribute more success to a popular theory than it deserves.

But, I don't want to get bogged down here either - I don't think the point of the above is to discourage theorizing and experimentation but rather to remind us that philosophy will never stop evaluating those activities.

 

[Muadib]

Think about what you just stated here! Common sense has revealed to you instinctively via intuition that you KNOW there is MORE here to understand. Far more. It's in us, and that is your survival instincts begging off that ignorance I referred to earlier. The same precise ignorance that drives myself. We are all the same. We are the center of experience and that experience teaches us to adaptively survive. The behest of our drive is survival itself. This is IMO environmentally relevant progressive sentient evolution apart from the physical environmental evolution that did away with our appendix many moons ago.

Actually, I'd chalk this one up more to my strong desire to have answers to my deepest questions about the nature of the universe and to know how this whole thing we like to call humanity is ultimately going to play out, rather than any intuition I have.

 

[Jeff Davis]

more possible pertinent links: ESP ‘Extrasensory Perception’ the Key to Interstellar Travel |UFO Sightings Hotspot

Extraterrestrial UFO Are Real : Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works Director Admitted In His Deathbed Confession - UFO Blogger : Exclusive 2013 UFO News Stories, Flying Saucers and UFOs Sightings Videos

 

[Muadib]

Yes, yes, yes! See Don's commentary here: A question for Don. | The Paracast Community Forums

I'm afraid obviously there is zero substantiation, but there is at least a possible connection.

Thanks for that, it's very interesting even though it's unsubstantiated as you pointed out. I still have to ask where you're getting the whole ESP angle as far as what Don and Ben Rich said, I see nothing that mentions ESP in Don's comments and I don't see anything involving ESP in what Don reported about what Ben Rich told him. Though if you already believe that UFO's are controlled via some form of ESP, then I can see how you make the connection, but it doesn't really prove anything, much like all the speculation in the world about UFO's from the nuts and bolts crowd doesn't really prove anything. One of the original links in the post was broken so maybe that's where the ESP stuff comes in? Or maybe it's in Ben Rich's book that Don mentions? I'll have to track down a copy and check it out, ultimately whether it's ESP or high technology I still find it fascinating that a man of his position would make those kind of comments.

 

[Jeff Davis]

Thanks for that, it's very interesting even though it's unsubstantiated as you pointed out. I still have to ask where you're getting the whole ESP angle as far as what Don and Ben Rich said, I see nothing that mentions ESP in Don's comments and I don't see anything involving ESP in what Don reported about what Ben Rich told him. Though if you already believe that UFO's are controlled via some form of ESP, then I can see how you make the connection, though it doesn't really prove anything, much like all the speculation in the world about UFO's from the nuts and bolts crowd doesn't really prove anything. One of the original links in the post was broken so maybe that's where the ESP stuff comes in? Or maybe it's in Ben Rich's book that Don mentions? I'll have to track down a copy and check it out, ultimately whether it's ESP or high technology I still find it fascinating that a man of his position would make those kind of comments.

This is a fairly comprehensive link. Entertaining if nothing else. It's VERY alluring with respect to what I have imagined to be the case for MANY moons now. But not nearly as many moons as that poor lost appendix has endured. lol!

Extraterrestrial UFO Are Real : Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works Director Admitted In His Deathbed Confession - UFO Blogger : Exclusive 2013 UFO News Stories, Flying Saucers and UFOs Sightings Videos

Enjoy your weekend my FRIEND.

 

[Muadib]

This is a fairly comprehensive link. Entertaining if nothing else. It's VERY alluring with respect to what I have imagined to be the case for MANY moons now. But not nearly as many moons as that poor lost appendix has endured. lol!

Extraterrestrial UFO Are Real : Ben Rich Lockheed Skunk Works Director Admitted In His Deathbed Confession - UFO Blogger : Exclusive 2013 UFO News Stories, Flying Saucers and UFOs Sightings Videos

Enjoy your weekend my FRIEND.

Thanks for the link and you do the same, Jeff.

Edited to say after reading part of the link I now see where the ESP angle comes in, and it's extremely interesting coming from someone with his credentials and experience in the aerospace field. Definitely going to have to track down his book, I wonder if there's a PDF version available online, I hate waiting for shipping!

 

[Muadib]

Interestingly enough, there was a recent article written about this whole Ben Rich thing by Peter W. Merlin and published in Tim Printy's SUNlite. Now, I'm going to state right off the bat that I don't know enough about this whole thing to make any kind of judgement here, I need to do a lot more research on both sides of this story before I form an opinion, I'm simply presenting this as a more skeptical take on the Ben Rich story.

I'd be interested in hearing what other members who've looked deeper into this situation have to say about this, especially Don Ecker since he knew people who met Ben and might be able to inform us as to their thoughts on this article. I found this article thanks to a post on this forum made by Sentry. You can read the article in PDF form here:

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite5_6.pdf

 

[smcder]

Sure, the above is coherent and deserves to be addressed, but before that, let me say that I've been discussing the issue you mentioned with respect to Dennett for years because it's obvious that because of how the brain works, we cannot possibly have free will in the way that people usually define it ( as the ability to freely make conscious decisions ). In recent years EEG and other scanning techniques have provided empirical evidence that also proves it scientifically rather than logically.

Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

"Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem. This philosophical problem concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed in terms of a compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism."

and of course, see also incompatibilism in the same and other sources . . .

Dennett, by the way, is a compatibilist.

 

[smcder]

Again, for completeness on this thread - not in specific response to any previous post -

Qualia: The Knowledge Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The gist:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.

 

[smcder]

One more: . . . I don't know of anything else out there like it:

Aldous Huxley called humankind's basic trend toward spiritual growth the "perennial philosophy." In the view of James Austin, the trend implies a "perennial psychophysiology" -- because awakening, or enlightenment, occurs only when the human brain undergoes substantial changes. What are the peak experiences of enlightenment? How could these states profoundly enhance, and yet simplify, the workings of the brain? Zen and the Brain presents the latest evidence. In this book Zen Buddhism becomes the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness. In order to understand which brain mechanisms produce Zen states, one needs some understanding of the anatomy, physiology, and chemistry of the brain. Austin, both a neurologist and a Zen practitioner, interweaves the most recent brain research with the personal narrative of his Zen experiences. The science is both inclusive and rigorous; the Zen sections are clear and evocative. Along the way, Austin examines such topics as similar states in other disciplines and religions, sleep and dreams, mental illness, consciousness-altering drugs, and the social consequences of the advanced stage of ongoing enlightenment.

 

[Randall]

Again, for completeness on this thread - not in specific response to any previous post -

Qualia: The Knowledge Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

The gist:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false.

But Mary obviously hasn't discovered all the "physical information" as has been claimed. She's overlooked what the cones in the retina are for. So her incompleteness of experience matches her incompleteness of the physical information, therefore the argument isn't coherent. Still it's my view that Physicalism fails because of the way it's generally defined. There also seems to be contradicting points of view about it. Personally I don't see Physicalism as Monism because the two types of realities ( subjective versus objective ) obviously exist.

The contention seems to be with what the word "physical" means. For some it seems to be synonymous with "material" while with others it seems synonymous with "physical processes or phenomena" which may include such things as magnetism, which is non-material, yet physical ( within one context of the word ). So which version is correct? Is this just a matter of consensus? I think what's missing is the third option that treats dualism in a general fashion based on the idea of mind as virtual versus brain as material, yet both working within the bounds of the physical ( as per the second definition that includes non-material phenomena and processes ).

 

[trainedobserver]

I think what's missing is the third option that treats dualism in a general fashion based on the idea of mind as virtual versus brain as material, yet both working within the bounds of the physical ( as per the second definition that includes non-material phenomena and processes ).

I think the mind can be considered to be composed of the same matter as the brain itself. The mind is a process occurring in the various parts of the brain in a nonsynchronous fashion that only appears to happening synchronously and in real time. Yet, this process is entirely chemical and linked directly to the physical configuration and make-up of the brain. It is a physical thing in as much as the brain itself is physical.

We're hamstrung by the fact that we are viewing all of this through the simulation itself. That's why the distinction between what is physical and what isn't is so difficult to make. We've never experienced actual physical reality, we have only experienced the virtual reality of our own consciousnesses.

We might imagine that "the mind" is a real thing hanging out somewhere, however the way I understand things to be, it only exists from moment to moment within the chemical processes within brain as dictated by its physical configuration. This is why you can loose consciousness and regain it and still be the same "you". The physical and chemical configuration is the same.

I honestly think the pursuit of consciousness as some sort of separate energetic entity is as fruitless and doomed as the search for an ethereal human spirit or soul.