A Breakthrough?

ecp

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I know this question has been asked many times, but, do you think science is at the tipping point of a revolution when it comes to consciousness?

I find it amazing and overwhelming about all the philosophies and results that come from it. I am twenty years old and many people my age have taken on a more holistic approach to life, which makes me wonder if what science needs is its new generation of leaders.

Hearing your opinions on it will be wonderful. (:
 
I wouldn't try to guess how long it will take but I am beginning to think something is happening....

I am beginning to agree with this point of view. For a while now I have been asking cynically what is different now that could allow for a paradigm shift that hasn't existed since the beginning of psychical research 150 years ago. But now I see what is different is that there are many independent factors all leading to the same place. There are mediums on TV. Parapsychologists studying psi. Near-death experience research in hospitals, and because of improved medical technology, more people are surviving near-death experiences. And experiencers of all types are reporting their experiences. There is research into intelligent design in cosmology and biology, and mainstream materialist scientists are also running into the limits of materialism in cosmology and biology and are willing to say the old theories are not good enough and I think that is an important sign. There is also quantum mechanics, philosophers studying consciousness, and ufology, plus the internet to facilitate communication. There was a time when you had to listen to late night radio to learn about these subjects. Now you can watch PhD scientists talking about their original research on youtube and click on a link to read their peer-reviewed papers. It is beginning to look like the tipping point to me.

The general public is way ahead of the scientific orthodoxy on this subject. Many scientists are also aware but afraid to speak out. When the public demands government funding for scientific research in this area, scientists will be able to publicly admit there is already ample evidence of the afterlife and creation in and of the universe. But it will take significant funding to bring this subject into the mainstream. Money talks.

However there are also obscure forces, working through national governments holding back the paradigm shift. http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/suppressed_parapsychology

When a majority of scientists are able to say that the evidence supports belief in the afterlife, that will indicate a victory over the forces that control the world from behind the scenes and it may be a tipping point for more than just consciousness research.
 
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The problem with science, if you want to be lectured by an older person :), is that it is entrenched as any other Big Money industry. Money has corrupted the system as it always does. Specific research is funded.

I remember when I took a class in bio-psych years (15? maybe) ago, my professor told us that if you were interested in consciousness (which I was!), that you would not find much funding. And if you did want funding, you would have to come up with creative names for your research to hide what you were really researching.

That is a sad state for science.

More and more funding for science and universities comes from corporations with an agenda. For example, UC Berkeley is totally beholden to biotech companies as universities lean on private funding.

So yes, it is up to younger people like you to change this. I am not sure others will in mass.

The problem is money, as usual. It needs to be out of politics, science, health care, etc.

Sorry if this is not coherent. Half of my message got erased while writing it and I couldn't be bothered to write it again! ;)

But yes, I would love to see a "revolution of consciousness" happen.
 
I am twenty years old and many people my age have taken on a more holistic approach to life, which makes me wonder if what science needs is its new generation of leaders.
\Max Planck would say yes to that. " A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
 
I know this question has been asked many times, but, do you think science is at the tipping point of a revolution when it comes to consciousness?

I find it amazing and overwhelming about all the philosophies and results that come from it. I am twenty years old and many people my age have taken on a more holistic approach to life, which makes me wonder if what science needs is its new generation of leaders.

Hearing your opinions on it will be wonderful. :)

Well i dont know if im from the same generation as you are since im 5 years older (im atleast close though), but its hard to say if a revolution is close. I personally think that things will change slowly. The increasing popularity of stuff like pansychism is a sign for that in my opinion. I find it hard to imagine that everything will change just like that because there will be different people doing science. Those people may be more holistic then others before them, but well, if you take reddit as a example, there will still be enough humans who want to eradicate every possible change regarding consciousness at its core (the neuroscience section at reddit is crowded as hell...). Its propably not enough to wait for people with old paradigms to die. Their ideas have to die too. Otherwise that wont work. And you shouldnt underestimate the propaganda of atheistic physicalism or whatever you want to call it. Their apparatus is strong, it wont break that easily.

And as Doppelgänger point out before, money is also a huge problem. As long as money is involved the chances are quite a bit lower. But thats a problem of the whole system.
 
However, I have a nephew in his early 20's and he seems to be buying into the Dawkins and Harris worldview based on some brief conversations I had with him. He likes Sam Harris, especially after reading a couple of his books. So naturally ... my nephew is currently in line with the atheism/physicalism philosophy. It seems to me that this new Atheistic movement consist on many representing the millennial generation. So, I guess I'm not as optimistic.
 
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I think what interests me is knowing what the future will be like. Seeing as I am only 20, I have a long time to go to see the transformations. I also wrote another post saying if science might be hard to shift because it is mainly compromised of white men, which, who knows?

With studies like AWARE, I'm interested to know. I think it's good to know that panphyscism is generating such ground, isn't it? I stumbled upon a book from seven years ago talking about its important and look at where we are now.

I do worry about money and science, but I hope that people with an interest in that will somehow cultivate money and minds into this. Consciousness, I noticed, has recently become THE hot topic.
 
I think what interests me is knowing what the future will be like. Seeing as I am only 20, I have a long time to go to see the transformations. I also wrote another post saying if science might be hard to shift because it is mainly compromised of white men, which, who knows?

With studies like AWARE, I'm interested to know. I think it's good to know that panphyscism is generating such ground, isn't it? I stumbled upon a book from seven years ago talking about its important and look at where we are now.

I do worry about money and science, but I hope that people with an interest in that will somehow cultivate money and minds into this. Consciousness, I noticed, has recently become THE hot topic.

Yes, that is true, consciousness is a hot topic right now, but all the wrong propaganda is out there about it. I am also very cynical about why both the Obama admistration and the EU want to pour money into brain/neuro research. I am guessing it is not for uplifting humanity. Just a guess...
 
I think what interests me is knowing what the future will be like. Seeing as I am only 20, I have a long time to go to see the transformations. I also wrote another post saying if science might be hard to shift because it is mainly compromised of white men, which, who knows?

With studies like AWARE, I'm interested to know. I think it's good to know that panphyscism is generating such ground, isn't it? I stumbled upon a book from seven years ago talking about its important and look at where we are now.

I do worry about money and science, but I hope that people with an interest in that will somehow cultivate money and minds into this. Consciousness, I noticed, has recently become THE hot topic.

Well yeah, who knows. The whole black-white thing isnt that much of a big deal over here, but it could be a reason.

Hm well, i dont know. Panpsychism in some of its forms excludes human consciousness. Not sure of how much worth something like that is for us if it cant explain our own consciousness. But thats philosophical blabla. And well, its better than nothing, right? :P

I dont know about consciousness being the thing right now. At the country were i live it isnt much of a big deal. I mean, our culture over here in europe is heavily influenced by the US, no doubts there, but in that regard...na. I even live in a rural region - if i would talk to someone young and educated over here about that stuff they'd ask me if im insane. People over here seem to care more about materialistic things (it even seems to me like materialism/physicalism is the unparalleled paradigm over here. No one seems to question that in public). Like money. And theres that again. That may be also because europe is still a bit more "passive influenced" by the church then other continents - therefore there isnt much interest for explanaitions of our own subjective experiences(the church soiled that ground pretty hard, even so they are not directly connected to those things :( ). If the internet wouldnt be a thing i wouldnt know anything about that whole hype about that stuff.
 
It's interesting reading your comments, I've seen more and more strange interpretations of quantum mechanics, which really attempt to put some sort of classical spin on QM.

I was interested to see Aharonov awarded a medal by Obama recently... it did make me wonder what exactly is motivating the establishment to reward scientists with strange viewpoints.

I mean, I'm disapointed why quantum mechanics isn't introduced into the UK school curriculum, as well as colour constancy (Edwin Lands work).

Can't help but feel we're slipping backwards at present... Rather than moving forwards... :-(
 
It's interesting reading your comments, I've seen more and more strange interpretations of quantum mechanics, which really attempt to put some sort of classical spin on QM.

I was interested to see Aharonov awarded a medal by Obama recently... it did make me wonder what exactly is motivating the establishment to reward scientists with strange viewpoints.

I mean, I'm disapointed why quantum mechanics isn't introduced into the UK school curriculum, as well as colour constancy (Edwin Lands work).

Can't help but feel we're slipping backwards at present... Rather than moving forwards... :-(

Maybe because they hate the idea of a world that is not fully objective. Like it or not Quantum physics is the most successful scientific endeavour we've ever embarked on. And as Jim Al-Khalili said in his programme last week "the weirdness isn't going to go away"
 
Maybe because they hate the idea of a world that is not fully objective. Like it or not Quantum physics is the most successful scientific endeavour we've ever embarked on. And as Jim Al-Khalili said in his programme last week "the weirdness isn't going to go away"

Thats a good thing, isnt it? That the weirdness isnt going away just because some wish for that.
 
I find it amazing how much things seemed to have changed already, thinking about it. Penny Santori published her book, which actually helped a spike in the interest about the subject.

I can't help but feel people are trying, as hard as they might, to contain something into a box that can't be contained. I can soon see people letting the research speak for itself.

I also can't help but find it interesting and exciting that there is more traction on the thought that consciousness is a fundamental building block to existence itself?
 
You never know, ecp, there could just be some really ground-shaking discovery that would generate the tipping point. At your age, over 40 years ago, I was in my materialist phase as a reaction to Catholicism: so there's hope yet for young and staunch materialists. There's even hope for Sam Harris: I listened to him reading a bit from his latest book and he's by no means a lost cause a la Dawkins et al.

I suppose I'm an incorrigible optimist. We have definitely moved on from ancient times, and sooner or later I think we'll be due for the next seismic shift of the same magnitude as, say, the Renaissance or Enlightenment periods. I'll bet that early in those periods, most people weren't aware that that massive shifts were underway. Plus, of course, as time has progressed, the rate of change has accelerated considerably. The world today is vastly different from what it was during my childhood in the 1950's.

Trouble is, there are reactionary forces, and a transition is hardly guaranteed to be smooth.
 
Of course there will be resistance, I have no doubt about that. I find it interesting that people like Chalmers, who I watched a tedtalk about recently, discussing that Daniel Dennet was in the audience, and they were friends with different outlooks.

I do wish that people like Chopra and the like were not the forefront of this movement, as it gives it too much of a magical name. I won't say woo, as I think it's pointless to discuss that.

I think what overwhelms me is that there are so many philosophies about consciousness, that I would one day hope for it to be one, haha. Too bad there is so much being discovered at a rapid rate that you're never quite sure what will come out of it.

I wonder if there is a revolution of some sort going behind closed doors we don't know about. That would fascinate me.
 
[quote="ecp, post: 49150, member: 633"I think what overwhelms me is that there are so many philosophies about consciousness, that I would one day hope for it to be one, haha. Too bad there is so much being discovered at a rapid rate that you're never quite sure what will come out of it.

I wonder if there is a revolution of some sort going behind closed doors we don't know about. That would fascinate me.[/quote]


I find myself believing the universe either doesn't make sense in the way we'd expect it to (Absurdism), or we simply can't make sense of it though it is intelligible at its root (Mysterianism).

Regarding revolutions, the works of Zeilinger that RadicalPolitik along with others posted give me hope. As does the conclusion of Smolin's Time Reborn:

The problem of qualia, or consciousness, seems unanswerable by science because it’s an aspect of the world that is not encompassed when we describe all the physical interactions among particles. It’s in the domain of questions about what the world really is, not how it can be modeled or represented.

Some philosophers argue that qualia simply are identical to certain neuronal processes. This seems to me wrong. Qualia may very well be correlated with neuronal processes but they are not the same as neuronal processes. Neuronal processes are subject to description by physics and chemistry, but no amount of detailed description in those terms will answer the questions as to what qualia are like or explain why we perceive them.”

We don’t know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron. We can only observe how they interact with other things and thereby describe their relational properties. Perhaps everything has external and internal aspects. The external properties are those that science can capture and describe – through interactions, in terms of relationships. The internal aspect is the intrinsic essence, it is the reality that is not expressible in the language of interactions and relations. Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains.

One further aspect of consciousness is the fact that it takes place in time. Indeed, when I assert that it is always some time in the world, I am extrapolating from the fact that my experiences of the world always takes place in time. But what do I mean by my experiences? I can speak about them scientifically as instances of recordings of information. To speak so, I need not mention consciousness or qualia. But this may be an evasion, because these experiences have aspects that are consciousness of qualia. So my conviction that what is real is real in the present moment is related to my conviction that qualia are real.
 
I think what overwhelms me is that there are so many philosophies about consciousness, that I would one day hope for it to be one, haha. Too bad there is so much being discovered at a rapid rate that you're never quite sure what will come out of it.

It will be nice to simply accept that the mind does NOT equal brain paradigm first.
 
haha, right? I think if that became the mainstream paradigm, my interest in this field would decrease, because I already know.

I don't know. We all know the earth orbits the sun and other workings of our solar system. That doesn't stop someone from studying Planetary science even further as there is still interest in the subject.
 
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