Mod+ 274. DR. BERNARDO KASTRUP, WHY OUR CULTURE IS MATERIALISTIC

Alex

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Alex's questions at the end of the interview:

Do you think there's a synergistic relationship between materialism and our economic system? how do you think it might come into being and what does it say about what might lie beyond the materialistic paradigm?
 
I shan't address Alex's question yet because the transcript of Bernardo's view of organic evolution has given me some pause for thought:

Alex Tsakiris: One other topic to touch on because it’s always interesting to me and that’s Darwinian Evolution. And I think you make a great point about random mutation but tell us about what you think is one of the missing points there in neo-Darwinism.

Dr. Bernardo Kastrup: I probably will make some of your listeners not too happy with what I’m about to say but bear with me because it gets better later on. I personally grant validity to Darwinian Evolution. I think it makes sense. I think the evidence supports it. And there is sufficient evidence out there, not only in the fossil record but in genetic studies, even laboratory experiments that manage to reproduce some small aspects of the process. So until I see more evidence coming up, or a good argumentation against it, I grant validity to evolution by natural selection. In other words, the idea that species evolved from other species by the accrual of genetic mutations that lead to competitive advantage in their environment. Maybe the word competitive is not the right one, to survival advantage in the environment. The problem is that many materialists and neo-atheists conflate this notion I just described and for which I believe there is overwhelming evidence. They conflate that with another notion for which there is exactly zero evidence. And that is the notion that the mutations at the root of the entire process, the genetic mutations which are quantum events, that they too are random in the sense that they do not have any pattern. They do not reflect any trend, any goal, any telos. We do not know that. To know that we would have to have a fairly complete set of raw genetic mutations before natural selection kicks in to discard or reinforce some of them thereby creating a pattern. We would need a complete set of raw genetic mutations and run a randomness test on that set to see if there are any trends; if there are any patterns; if the raw mutations themselves didn’t favor certain physiological and anatomical trends in different points in the evolution of life. We do not know that that is not the case but the orthodoxy will say, hey, the raw mutations have no pattern; reflect no trend; reflect no intent. All the patterns that we see in nature today have been created by selection–by natural selection — and they were not there in the raw mutations themselves. I would question that. I’m not saying that there were these trends; I do not know because we don’t have the data to say it either way. All I’m saying is the certainty with which the orthodoxy conflates randomness of mutations; with evolution by natural selection, for which there is evidence, that conflation–the certainty of that conflation — is based solely on a subjective belief system.

It's getting late now and I'll need to think about this before I respond: but for now I'll post it and come back to it later on.
 
When Bernardo speaks of "evolution by natural selection", I wonder if he's treating it in the same way that neo-Darwinists do. Many ID proponents and sympathisers accept common descent and certainly, the evidence of the fossil record; which latter, by the way, is saltational (e.g. the Cambrian explosion, where the majority of phyla extant today arose in a very short period).

True neo-Darwinism is still associated with gradualism, i.e. the gradual development of new species over time, and sees macroevolution as an extension of microevolution. I'm prepared to accept microevolution and natural selection at lower cladistic levels, e.g. species within a genus. But I don't accept that it accounts adequately for change over time at higher levels, such as occurred in the Cambrian Explosion at the phylum level, or in various other explosions (e.g. mammals) at lower levels (higher than species), e.g. as illustrated by the distinction between bears, cats, dogs, mustellids, and so on. There's no way that natural selection coupled with random mutation could account for these explosions: there simply hasn't been enough time.

As indicated, common descent is something that ID proponents can and often do accept: organisms have complexified over time, i.e. simpler organisms have given rise to more complex ones through normal reproductive mechanisms. "God", or mind-at-large, didn't create new organisms ex nihilo, but took advantage of such mechanisms, possibly including hybridisation of cladistically disparate organisms: (e.g pigs and chimpanzees? See http://www.macroevolution.net/index.html).

Whatever, Bernardo's view seems to be broadly in alignment with some versions of ID: he seems to be saying that mutations aren't necessarily random: that they could be subject to some kind of purposeful influence or direction by mind-at-large. If so, he seems more in the ID camp than the neo-Darwinist one.

It's a mistake to think that ID proponents don't believe in evolution: they do, in the sense of change over time. It's mainly the overriding importance of random mutation that they disagree with. Certainly, once an organism has arisen, it faces, to some degree, a fight for survival; but whether it has arisen as a result of such competition is another thing entirely.

Moreover, the evidence points more to top-down diversification in time than it does to bottom-up diversification. Already, way back in the Cambrian, the "notions" of the major animal phyla arose well before subsequent elaborations built on their body plans. One would have expected to find evidence in the fossil record for the reverse under neo-Darwinism: that body plans gradually developed over long periods of time.

All in all, the fossil record resembles what has happened with the development of human technologies: organisms evolve in much the same way as Ideas. Someone gets an idea, and subsequently, that idea is explored and elaborated upon. The idea of the internal combustion engine has led to diversity of its application: to cars, boats, planes, trains, etc., and within that, to different categories of each. When we look at organisms, which even at the unicellular level are vastly more complex than anything we can create, it stretches credulity to believe that in the end, randomness coupled with natural selection can do the job. Probabilistically, the chances against that happening are astronomically high.
 
I am afraid Bernado is not familiar with the otherside of the evidence.
Genetic studies, fossil evidence, lab experiments? I think you need to look again Bernado.
 
Do you think there's a synergistic relationship between materialism and our economic system? how do you think it might come into being and what does it say about what might lie beyond the materialistic paradigm?

Is there is a synergistic relationship between any philosophy or religion and the reigning economic system? In an age when Christianity was more to the fore, the economic system was different: for example, usury was frowned upon. We're all condemning the present economic system, but it brings many advantages, such as the ability to buy a house by mortgage, to borrow money to build a business, and so on. In times past, this would have been difficult or impossible.

I'm not saying the present economic system is perfect: witness banking crashes and the huge expansion of the derivatives market. But there have been problems with all financial systems throughout human history: and things like inflation have been with us since at least Roman times. Let's face it, money has always been important, but today, more of it gets to more people than ever before, and so on the whole, things have improved.

Materialism has at least two connotations, A and B. A is belief that everything is ultimately made from matter/material forces. B relates to conspicuous consumption. It's possible to hold belief A but not exhibit B; or to exhibit B but not believe in A, so the two things don't necessarily go hand in hand.

Overall, I'm unsure about the linkage in respect of B. Economic systems come into being, and disappear, as a result of pragmatic necessity. If and when the present economic system gets overhauled, it will be because it has ceased to meet human needs. Something else will emerge and abide for a time. There will always be opportunities for the unscrupulous to take unfair advantage, and the unscrupulous may or may not have a belief in something transcendent.

They may not even be aware that they are being unscrupulous: how many of us go into discount stores in search of bargains produced by underpaid workers in less advanced countries? How many of us care to the extent that we're prepared to spend more on things more ethically produced?

As regards belief A, well, I suppose you could say that if you believe that everything is material and without meaning or purpose, then it makes it somewhat easier to not give a damn and just go out to make a quick buck, but again, there are many materialists who have a strong ethical sense despite themselves. It's illogical by their own lights, but there you go.

I'm looking forward to what people think about this issue; at the moment I'm undecided and open to persuasion either way.
 
Do you think there's a synergistic relationship between materialism and our economic system? how do you think it might come into being and what does it say about what might lie beyond the materialistic paradigm?

Yes but it is not unique to our system. Communism was worse (1). Any philosophy will be perverted by those in power. It happens with political philosophy, with economic philosophy, with science, and with religion. The elite foster belief in materialism because they don't want to compete with a higher power for authority. But materialism was instantiated, not by the elites, but by certain scientists because they hated religion . But the elites will corrupt whatever is handy for their purposes.

Even if a sort of "scientific spirituality" replaced materialism and became prevalent in society, those who are interested in power and control would abuse it to further their personal ambitions. I have seen this happen at a Spiritualist church. The problem is not metaphysics we see science abused also (2). The problem is with human nature and philosophy alone cannot solve the problem. It is absolutely essential for spiritual teachers to refrain from commenting on politics because when they do some people will start claiming opposing political views are not spiritual, are evil, and those who espouse them are also evil people. Demonization of political opponents are is the first step toward atrocities.



Darwinian evolution is the theory that random variation and natural selection led to gradual changes in living organisms over time which produced, from a common ancestor, all the living things alive today and all the living things of the past recorded in the fossil record.

From transcript:

" I personally grant validity to Darwinian Evolution. I think it makes sense. I think the evidence supports it. And there is sufficient evidence out there, not only in the fossil record but in genetic studies..."

and

"They conflate that with another notion for which there is exactly zero evidence. And that is the notion that the mutations at the root of the entire process, the genetic mutations which are quantum events, that they too are random in the sense that they do not have any pattern. They do not reflect any trend, any goal, any telos. We do not know that."

You can't grant Darwinian evolution and deny random variation. Random variation is key to Darwin's theory of evolution, before Darwin incorrectly advocated the creative power of random variation, natural selection was correctly believed to be responsible for preserving species by eliminating defective individuals and not for creating new species.

Furthermore the evidence does not support evolution from a common ancestor by natural selection.

Genetic studies falsify common descent:

The Flawed Evidence for Evolution. Genetic analysis falsifies common descent. An evolutionary tree can be made by comparing the same gene in different organisms, but different genes produce widely divergent trees.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-flawed-evidence-for-evolution.html
“Ever since Darwin the tree has been the unifying principle for understanding the history of life on Earth,” but because “different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories,” the notion of a tree of life is now quickly becoming a vision of the past — as the article stated “today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence. Many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded,” and as scientists quoted in the article said, “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality” or the tree is being “annihilated.”​

The pattern of fossils is consistent with design not natural selection.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-cambrian-explosion-is-best.html
Darwinism predicts new phyla should evolve from existing species but the fossil record shows the new phyla appearing without ancestors. This sudden appearance is what one would expect if the new phyla were created by a designing intelligence. There are sufficient fossils of soft bodied animals from before the Cambrian explosion that if the phyla that appeared during the Cambrian explosion had ancestors, fossils of them would have been found.

Darwinism predicts that new phyla will arise as new species repeatedly branch off and diversify until a new species is so different that it merits classification as a new phylum. Therefore there should be many species existing when a new phylum arises. However contrary to these predictions of Darwinism, during the Cambrian explosion, many new phyla arose but there were relatively few species at the time. This dearth of species is exactly what would be expected if the new phyla were created by a designing intelligence.

Darwinism predicts existing phyla should produce new phyla as species branch off and diversify until a new species is so different it merits classification as a new phylum. However no phylum has ever produced a species so different that it could be classified as a new phylum. But this is exactly what we expect from designed objects, cars change each year but do not become airplanes.

Other types of evidence which are claimed to demonstrate macroevolution (large changes such as evolution of a land mammal into a whale) by natural selection are either frauds or examples of microevolution (changes within a species such as we see in different type of dogs) which is not in dispute.

Survival of the fakest. Many of the examples claimed to prove Darwinism (the Miller-Urey primordial soup experiment, the similarity of early embryos in different species, the evolutionary tree, homology in vertebrate limbs, peppered moths evolving a darker color as air pollution darkened tree trunks, Darwin's finches, evolution from apes to humans) are false or misleading.
http://www.discovery.org/articleFiles/PDFs/survivalOfTheFakest.pdf

Newly discovered whale fossil, older than its supposed ancestor species, proves Darwinists rely on flawed logic.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/09/newly-discovered-whale-fossil-older.html

Nature's best evidence for natural selection does not show that natural selection can cause macroevolution.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/09/natures-best-evidence-for-natural.html

More on intelligent design here:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_id



There is no conflict between evidence said to show that memory is stored in the brain and the belief that consciousness is non-physical. Memory could be stored in the brain and also in the spirit. The question is only important to materialists who deny the existence of spirit and need to prove that memories are stored in the brain in order to prove the brain produces consciousness. If you are not a materialist there is no need to prove that memory is only stored in the spirit. We know from reports of NDErs and evidential mediums that spirits have memory and if the brain also stores memories it does nothing to contradict this evidence.



Regarding the evolution of human intellect and materialism... Materialism is not a necessary stage in our development. The early scientists, those who invented science, all believed that studying nature revealed how God created the world. There is no conflict between theism and science. The conflict is between atheism and theism and was started by the atheists.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html


http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2015/05/zack-kopplin-there-is-no-scientific.html
Kopplin explains that the church burned people alive for believing the Earth was round and that the Earth rotated the sun. A myth such as this is sure to move audiences, and is red meat for evolutionists, but it is, nonetheless, a myth. Historians call it the Warfare Thesis myth, but evolutionists won’t stop using it.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html
Richard Feynman
God was always invented to explain mystery. God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand. Now, when you finally discover how something works, you get some laws which you're taking away from God; you don't need him anymore. But you need him for the other mysteries. So therefore you leave him to create the universe because we haven't figured that out yet; you need him for understanding those things which you don't believe the laws will explain, such as consciousness, or why you only live to a certain length of time — life and death — stuff like that. God is always associated with those things that you do not understand.​

It is a rhetorical trick to force people to choose between science and God. There are many examples where the progress of science refuted materialist predictions instead of proving them. Furthermore, theism does not deny science and is not diminished by science. Theists believe that God created the natural laws that scientists are so interested in studying. And science itself has provided evidence that this is true in the evidence for the fine tuning of the universe to support life:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-fine-tuning-of-universe-to-one-part.html
And multiverse theories don't explain it:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/08/multiverse-theories-fail-to-explain-our.html
More here:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-...-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_cosmology

More on the history of religion and materialism:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/imagine_a_world095621.html


Notes:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html
1)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”

2)
Viktor Frankl:
“If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.

“I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment; or as the Nazi liked to say, ‘of Blood and Soil.’ I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers [emphasis added].”
 
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...the evidence of the fossil record; which latter, by the way, is saltational (e.g. the Cambrian explosion, where the majority of phyla extant today arose in a very short period).

As someone who worked with complex systems for a while, the saltational aspect of the fossil record doesn't seem so peculiar to me. Even fairly simple systems like cellular automata -- governed by simple, deterministic rules and random initialization -- display saltational behavior: long periods in which nothing happens, followed by periods of spectacular, complex changes, followed by boring periods again, etc. I created several of these systems myself, as you can see in the background images of some of my Story Time videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL78E9FC4D0B807CAE). The images in episodes 1 and 4 show clear 'punctuated equilibrium' and, I promise you, they are entirely deterministic, autonomous and intentionality-free. They were also randomly initialized in every case. In general, thus, I think non-Darwinists make a little too much of the saltational aspect of the evidence.

That said, it is indeed true that this very aspect is consistent with, and suggestive of, non-random mutations at the root of the process, for the reasons you so-well describe yourself:

All in all, the fossil record resembles what has happened with the development of human technologies: organisms evolve in much the same way as Ideas. Someone gets an idea, and subsequently, that idea is explored and elaborated upon. The idea of the internal combustion engine has led to diversity of its application: to cars, boats, planes, trains, etc., and within that, to different categories of each. When we look at organisms, which even at the unicellular level are vastly more complex than anything we can create, it stretches credulity to believe that in the end, randomness coupled with natural selection can do the job. Probabilistically, the chances against that happening are astronomically high.

To me, the strongest argument in favor of non-random mutations (i.e. mutations favoring physiological or anatomical trends at different points in the history of life) is the very richness and complexity of nature today. Neo-Darwinists will say all this could have been created by natural selection alone but, as I say in the book,

Bernardo Kastrup in Brief Peeks Beyond said:
that, of course, begs the question: we simply don’t know whether natural selection really is sufficient as far as its explanatory power. We haven’t run a controlled evolution experiment at the scale of the Earth, over almost four billion years, wherein all genetic mutations were generated strictly randomly, to see if similar variety and richness of life would have emerged under those controlled conditions. So we just don’t know. If anything, the astonishing richness and variety of life we see around us today seems to suggest precisely that some form of built-in intentionality is at play at the root of the evolutionary process.
 
You can't grant Darwinian evolution and deny random variation.

Terminology aside, I hope the essence of what I meant was understood: I grant validity to the idea that species evolve from other species by the accrual of genetic mutations fixed by natural selection. And I deny that it is a proven case that those genetic mutations are random (i.e. trendless) at origin.
 
Memory could be stored in the brain and also in the spirit.

Oh... why stop there? Maybe it could be stored in the brain, in the spirit, in extra dimensions, in the aether, in blackholes through holographic resonance, etc. etc. etc. :) Sorry about being a little sarcastic here. But you see the point: if one breaks away with parsimony in one's speculations, nothing stops one anymore and there is no meaning left in what one says.
 
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As someone who worked with complex systems for a while, the saltational aspect of the fossil record doesn't seem so peculiar to me. Even fairly simple systems like cellular automata -- governed by simple, deterministic rules and random initialization -- display saltational behavior: long periods in which nothing happens, followed by periods of spectacular, complex changes, followed by boring periods again, etc. I created several of these systems myself, as you can see in the background images of some of my Story Time videos (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL78E9FC4D0B807CAE). The images in episodes 1 and 4 show clear 'punctuated equilibrium' and, I promise you, they are entirely deterministic, autonomous and intentionality-free. They were also randomly initialized in every case. In general, thus, I think non-Darwinists make a little too much of the saltational aspect of the evidence.

However none of those patterns carry any functional information. The defining quality of biological information.
I have made an argument here for a long time that semantic information must come from a mind. As in order to transfer information physical tokens representing things other than themselves must be used. There is no physical law defining the relationship. That is defined by formal rules, code.
A code is not physics. A semiotic system, any communication system is irreducible and by the nature of information cannot be deterministic, only deterministic by nature of formal operating systems driven by physical law but not determined by it.

There is no semantic meaning anywhere in physics because the heart of semiosis is mental, abstractions and meaning. Consciousness is the only thing that applies meaning.

The issue with evolution and in particular the origin of life, is the origin of information and sign systems comprising the digital code and semiosis.
I believe information exclusively comes from a mind, in the case of semantic information this is the only known and coherent choice. There is no material mechanism for the formation of digital code.

If everything is in mind then it naturally follows that the mystery of emergence of information stems from mind at large. In fact I think it supports that view because of the clear and apparent abstract relationships in language, software, text or any code for that matter. They are things we only ever know to exist in minds. Yet it is where evolution begins.
 
If everything is in mind then it naturally follows that the mystery of emergence of information stems from mind at large. In fact I think it supports that view because of the clear and apparent abstract relationships in language, software, text or any code for that matter. They are things we only ever know to exist in minds. Yet it is where evolution begins.

Yes. But I don't see why any of what you say contradicts my original point. As you know, my claim is that all nature -- including our bodies and brains -- are in consciousness, not consciousness in our brains. So even if Darwinian evolution and random mutations were true, that would all still play out in consciousness. The question here is different: we know that there are plenty of mechanical, algorithmic processes unfolding in consciousness, and other processes that seem pregnant with feeling-toned intentionality. For instance, my little cellular automata, despite being computer programs using symbolic tokens to convey information, are also in consciousness, just as my behavior towards by girlfriend. So the question is: is the saltation observed in the fossil record evidence for evolution being a feeling-toned intentional processes in consciousness, as opposed to an algorithmic one? I don't think it is, even though I suspect evolution does reflect intentionality. I don't dispute the conclusion; I dispute what constitutes valid evidence for arriving at the conclusion.
 
Yes. But I don't see why any of what you say contradicts my original point. As you know, my claim is that all nature -- including our bodies and brains -- are in consciousness, not consciousness in our brains. So even if Darwinian evolution and random mutations were true, that would all still play out in consciousness. The question here is different: we know that there are plenty of mechanical, algorithmic processes unfolding in consciousness, and other processes that seem pregnant with feeling-toned intentionality. For instance, my little cellular automata, despite being computer programs using symbolic tokens to convey information, are also in consciousness, just as my behavior towards by girlfriend. So the question is: is the saltation observed in the fossil record evidence for evolution being a feeling-toned intentional processes in consciousness, as opposed to an algorithmic one? I don't think it is, even though I suspect evolution does reflect intentionality. I don't dispute the conclusion; I dispute what constitutes valid evidence for arriving at the conclusion.

Oh no don't get me wrong. What I am saying is that it is entirely consistant with your views. That do align closely with my own.
I think the problem comes down to the abused term evolution here. Which has been hijacked by Darwinism to mean something that is mindless and has no goals. The opposite of your views I think? It also assumes the translation machinery to exist in order to even have random mutation. it takes for granted the emergence of functional information, for which even a simple protein or even a simple multi step mutation is a probabilistic nightmare under those assumptions. The generation of information even within an existing code is taken for granted. It acts only on what already exists and does not explain the emergence of novelty.

I just think you are granting undue credit. The Lab tests you may think of, such as Lenski etc.. have shown only adaption by loss of function, decades of experimenting with fruit flies has only shown defective flies. The fossil record was a problem for Darwin in his time and is even more so today. Genetic evidence routinely conflicts with fossil evidence, with different genes creating completely different and conflicting trees. Convergent evolution is a complete contradiction and undermines homology assumptions, as well as a good proportion of genes that are completely unique in all species.

The last couple of decades have shown other processes at work, that by definition are non Darwinian. All of which appear to be regulated cellular processes. In other words aspects of evolution are actually organised cellular functions and not entirely random. What we are finally starting to realise is that we really do not know how evolution works.
 
I think the problem comes down to the abused term evolution here. Which has been hijacked by Darwinism to mean something that is mindless and has no goals.

Yes, exactly. It has been hijacked by neo-Darwinism.

I just think you are granting undue credit. The Lab tests you may think of, such as Lenski etc.. have shown only adaption by loss of function, decades of experimenting with fruit flies has only shown defective flies. The fossil record was a problem for Darwin in his time and is even more so today. Genetic evidence routinely conflicts with fossil evidence, with different genes creating completely different and conflicting trees. Convergent evolution is a complete contradiction and undermines homology assumptions, as well as a good proportion of genes that are completely unique in all species.

IF you are right, then the idea that the mutations themselves aren't random, but follow teleologic trends instead, would harmonize and explain the whole thing. Under materialism this idea wouldn't make sense, since nothing in unconscious matter could explain intent, so one would end up with a bigger problem than the one it purports to solve. That's why materialists must insist that the mutations are random despite no evidence for it. But under idealism it would indeed make sense, since intentionality -- a sense of preference -- seems to be inherent to mentation and, as such, to all nature.
 
I'm sorry to see that you consider what is basically abstract nonsense as valid.
I wonder if you got what (at least I think) he was saying. He thinks those mutations happened, but they were not random, but deliberate (at least some of them).

David
 
Bernardo,

I know we have discussed this before, but whenever I read your ideas, I am always struck by two thoughts:

1) Yes - Idealism is probably the ultimate explanation of reality.

2) Idealism is too far removed from Materialism for anyone to really make the jump.

What I mean by that, is that your form of Idealism (I am not sure if there is another form) seems to permit anything - which means it is impossible to test, or to 'use' in any practical, persuasive sort of way.

I have long thought that science needs Dualism as a stepping stone - just as GR needed Newtonian gravity as a stepping stone.

I mean, suppose you had a science budget, what would you spend it on to further your ideas?

David
 
But there have been problems with all financial systems throughout human history: and things like inflation have been with us since at least Roman times. Let's face it, money has always been important, but today, more of it gets to more people than ever before, and so on the whole, things have improved.
agreed

Materialism has at least two connotations, A and B. A is belief that everything is ultimately made from matter/material forces. B relates to conspicuous consumption. It's possible to hold belief A but not exhibit B
agree... for the most part, but I do think there's a huge difference between those who are aware of linkage and those who are not.
 
What I mean by that, is that your form of Idealism (I am not sure if there is another form) seems to permit anything - which means it is impossible to test, or to 'use' in any practical, persuasive sort of way. ... I mean, suppose you had a science budget, what would you spend it on to further your ideas?

Idealism isn't a scientific theory. It doesn't aim to model the patterns and regularities of nature. Instead, it's an ontology: a framework for interpreting scientific theories as far as the underlying nature of things and phenomena. That said, it does have implications that depart from materialism. Chapter 8 of Brief Peeks Beyond is entirely about it. A quick overview is available here:

http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/09/does-it-matter-whether-all-is-in.html

Idealism is too far removed from Materialism for anyone to really make the jump. ... I have long thought that science needs Dualism as a stepping stone

The jump is a subtle, remarkably small shift in perspective. Once you make it, you find it astonishing that you hadn't seen it before, so self-evident it is. The only difficulty comes from the cognitive pollution we get from the culture, with the myriad hidden assumptions we constantly absorb since childhood.

I have thought about substance dualism as a stepping stone for the culture at large -- not for science -- for a long time now. I have some sympathy for it. My first book was even written under a dualist metaphor. But ultimately, promoting substance dualism just adds more pollution, reinforces the confusion, and hides the key strengths of idealism: it's parsimony, logical coherence, and empirical honesty. Substance dualism may be handy from a spiritual perspective, but it simply cannot replace materialism as the ontology of science, for it isn't internally coherent or empirically grounded.
 
Yes but it is not unique to our system. Communism was worse (1). Any philosophy will be perverted by those in power. It happens with political philosophy, with economic philosophy, with science, and with religion. The elite foster belief in materialism because they don't want to compete with a higher power for authority. But materialism was instantiated, not by the elites, but by certain scientists because they hated religion . But the elites will corrupt whatever is handy for their purposes.
agreed. it's always a "compared to what" situation.



You can't grant Darwinian evolution and deny random variation. Random variation is key to Darwin's theory of evolution, before Darwin incorrectly advocated the creative power of random variation, natural selection was correctly believed to be responsible for preserving species by eliminating defective individuals and not for creating new species.
good historical point. thx.
 
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