Matt Lambeau, Tree of Self-Evident Truth |546|

Can you be more specific about what assumption you think I'm making, because so far as I can tell, I'm not making any assumptions. I'm making a logical evaluation — that's very different.
You said: "there can be no level 3 that allows for the non-physical to communicate with the physical." That's a huge assumption. Perhaps you meant that it doesn't seem likely? But "can be no" is assumption without basis. That's tantamount to saying "there can be no god because my monkey brain can't conceive it." Huge difference between that and saying you just doubt it.
 
I don't understand this logic. back to radin... presentiment... six sigma result... there is more than the physical. and actually the term physical now loses its meaning in terms of our conscious experience. all bets are off. all lines are blurred. max planck now looks reasonable... perhaps consciousness is fundamental.

In the movie The Matrix, The young monk boy told Neo "There is no spoon.". He didn't say "Act as if there is no spoon.".
It's my personal assumption that our higher selves exist in a place that is so non-local, that it would be correct to say "There is no higher self" as it relates to physicality.
Even as a layman, this concept seems critical to me, when if we're honest about the possibility that some of what we call consciousness may be seriously non-local, and therefore need be named something else. I think most of what people call consciousness is just a combination of awareness and universal interconnectedness, and therefore shouldn't presume it applies to anything non-local.
I'm also somewhat convinced that NDE's are experienced non-locally, and aren't actually downloaded by the person until being brought back to life.
 
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You said: "there can be no level 3 that allows for the non-physical to communicate with the physical." That's a huge assumption. Perhaps you meant that it doesn't seem likely? But "can be no" is assumption without basis. That's tantamount to saying "there can be no god because my monkey brain can't conceive it." Huge difference between that and saying you just doubt it.

What you're calling an assumption is in fact a logical deduction. There is a distinct difference, especially if the type of assumption you're talking about is a common assumption ( something taken for granted ). If you were talking about an epistemological assumption, then we could have a deeper conversation.
 
In the movie The Matrix, The young monk boy told Neo "There is no spoon.". He didn't say "Act as if there is no spoon.".
It's my personal assumption that our higher selves exist in a place that is so non-local, that it would be correct to say "There is no higher self" as it relates to physicality.
Even as a layman, this concept seems critical to me, when if we're honest about the possibility that some of what we call consciousness may be seriously non-local, and therefore need be named something else. I think most of what people call consciousness is just a combination of awareness and universal interconnectedness, and therefore shouldn't presume it applies to anything non-local.
I'm also somewhat convinced that NDE's are experienced non-locally, and aren't actually downloaded by the person until being brought back to life.
The Matrix is possibly the best movie ever made, and I get the "There is no spoon." scene.

If we are to use the Matrix analogy, then we still need to realize that the experience is taking place inside the mind of the person jacked-in, giving the illusion that they are in some remote location, when they're actually either in an energy extraction pod or strapped into a chair onboard a hovercraft.

In philosophy, this is essentially the classic brain in a vat experiment. In the Matrix, humans are literally immersed in vats and their brains are connected to a sensory feed that makes them think they are in the world created by The Matrix.

There is no way for us to be sure that we're not in such a construct, so you could be right to the extent that our actual brains are not where we think they are, but wherever they are, if we use the Matrix as an analogy, it's still within the brain that the experience is taking place. We see this revealed in no uncertain terms in The Matrix.

When Neo is freed from The Matrix. He asks "Why do my eyes hurt?" and Morpheous says "You've never used them before." This is significant because at this point, Neo's physical ( real ) body is taking over the functions of the Matrix. He is becoming an autonomous human being aware of the real world he resides in — as well as his own physical self.

If we continue with this analogy as it relates to our discussion here, the only way for our actual selves to be in some remote location that is not where we think we are, is for what we think of as real to be some sort of elaborate virtual simulation. It then becomes the same argument I'm making, but from the other side of the looking glass.

Either way, the same variables still distill down to the same result. If some vastly powerful external system has taken over everything that made you what you originally were, to the extent that your original is gone, then what you're dealing with is no longer the original you — It's just a copy that thinks it's you — and there appears to be no way around this. There is only the philosophical loophole I mentioned earlier.
 
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Can you please elaborate on the above, or provide a link to the specific reference for "the clock"?

I think the term "outside of space and time" gets thrown around a lot without thinking deeply about what it means.

so we have dean radin's presentiment experiment where subjects experience have a "physical" reaction to an image that is about to be selected by a computer. "about to be" is the key phrase. they experienced it before the image is selected. this is outside of time as we normally understand it. it's also outside of space... i.e. we have no way of explaining where that information is coming from.

you mentioned a bunch of different philosophical flavors of physicalism... and I asked you to show me one that accounts for this experimental result. I don't think any of them do but I could be wrong.
 
The Matrix is possibly the best movie ever made, and I get the "There is no spoon." scene.

If we are to use the Matrix analogy, then we still need to realize that the experience is taking place inside the mind of the person jacked-in, giving the illusion that they are in some remote location, when they're actually either in an energy extraction pod or strapped into a chair onboard a hovercraft.

In philosophy, this is essentially the classic brain in a vat experiment. In the Matrix, humans are literally immersed in vats and their brains are connected to a sensory feed that makes them think they are in the world created by The Matrix.

There is no way for us to be sure that we're not in such a construct, so you could be right to the extent that our actual brains are not where we think they are, but wherever they are, if we use the Matrix as an analogy, it's still within the brain that the experience is taking place. We see this revealed in no uncertain terms in The Matrix.

When Neo is freed from The Matrix. He asks "Why do my eyes hurt?" and Morpheous says "You've never used them before." This is significant because at this point, Neo's physical ( real ) body is taking over the functions of the Matrix. He is becoming an autonomous human being aware of the real world he resides in — as well as his own physical self.

If we continue with this analogy as it relates to our discussion here, the only way for our actual selves to be in some remote location that is not where we think we are, is for what we think of as real to be some sort of elaborate virtual simulation. It then becomes the same argument I'm making, but from the other side of the looking glass.

Either way, the same variables still distill down to the same result. If some vastly powerful external system has taken over everything that made you what you originally were, to the extent that your original is gone, then what you're dealing with is no longer the original you — It's just a copy that thinks it's you — and there appears to be no way around this. There is only the philosophical loophole I mentioned earlier.
You're so close to what I'm explaining that you're practically touching it. Pun intended. And I plead you to give it the slight extra consideration due..

If you can conceptualize the Matrix, then surely you can conceptualize it on the inverse: wherein the Matrix experience being the genuine physical, and the higher plane being non-physical but real. I admit this does not follow a common path in regard to logical deduction, but I must insist it's equally conceptually viable to the simulation theory. And bitter sweet that it requires such a fight to get someone to conceptualize it, when they fully embrace something so similar(The Matrix) as not too far fetched..
If you can conceptualize this, then I would argue it follows that non-physical communication between the two realms is (can't help it with the puns) within the realm of possibility.
 
I think the term "outside of space and time" gets thrown around a lot without thinking deeply about what it means.

so we have dean radin's presentiment experiment where subjects experience have a "physical" reaction to an image that is about to be selected by a computer. "about to be" is the key phrase. they experienced it before the image is selected. this is outside of time as we normally understand it. it's also outside of space... i.e. we have no way of explaining where that information is coming from.

you mentioned a bunch of different philosophical flavors of physicalism... and I asked you to show me one that accounts for this experimental result. I don't think any of them do but I could be wrong.
Thanks Alex. Now I know what you're referring to, and have reviewed three NIH papers on it as a refresher. One includes Radin as the author, another is by D. Samuel Schwarzkopf, and the third by four other researchers.

Like I was getting at in a previous post someplace, statistical evidence might represent something, or it might not. Given the stats we're talking about, it certainly doesn't constitute "proof" to me. I agree with Schwarzkopf when he says, "To me this interpretation betrays a deep-seated misapprehension of the scientific method. Statistical inference, regardless of whatever form it takes, only assigns probabilities. It cannot ever prove or disprove a theory."- LINK

Perhaps more relevant is the assumption that the neurological sensor readings correlate to the stimulus in question. However they do not provide that data. At best they indicate that the subject is expecting something unspecified but vaguely related to the stimulus in question to happen, which is understandable given the nature of the experiment, and after enough times, we'd expect to see that reflected in the readings.

Regardless of the results, I like that Radin actually tries these experiments. For the sake of discussion, let's suppose that such experiments, along with others, like the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment, produce results sufficient to question our common view of time and space. What are the most reasonable conclusions we might be able to draw from them for the case of afterlives?

It is in this territory that we find one of the loopholes that almost allows us to infer that afterlives are possible. Notice I use the word "almost". I use it because continuity of personhood following the death of the body is still not possible. However it does imply that existence itself is quantized, and therefore, there is no continuity of anything.

In this model, reality is more like a filmstrip, where every moment is a completely new frame of existence, and what we perceive as the flow of time, is purely an illusion, and by extension so are any notions of continuity, which nullifies the premise of the hypothesis — and neither of us get our way. Is this the actual state of affairs? I don't know.

I suppose it's possible if the universe on the grandest scale is a multilayered construct of universes within universes where our reality is not the base layer. But for that, we have had others here invoke Occam's Razor ( not that I think we should always defer to Occam's Razor - we shouldn't ).

The point is that no matter how we look at it, even if we accept the assumptions Radin's experiments purport to provide evidence for, we still end-up with afterlives being something very different from the standard notion that they represent a continuity of personhood following the death of the body.
 
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You're so close to what I'm explaining that you're practically touching it. Pun intended. And I plead you to give it the slight extra consideration due..

If you can conceptualize the Matrix, then surely you can conceptualize it on the inverse: wherein the Matrix experience being the genuine physical, and the higher plane being non-physical but real. I admit this does not follow a common path in regard to logical deduction, but I must insist it's equally conceptually viable to the simulation theory. And bitter sweet that it requires such a fight to get someone to conceptualize it, when they fully embrace something so similar(The Matrix) as not too far fetched..
If you can conceptualize this, then I would argue it follows that non-physical communication between the two realms is (can't help it with the puns) within the realm of possibility.
Absolutely – What you're saying seems to be identical to what I meant by seeing it from the other side of the looking glass.

However, when applied to the question of afterlives, either way, we still end-up with any resulting afterlife ( or afterverse ) being something other than what it is commonly interpreted to be. The avatar is not our original self, and therefore it doesn't represent a continuity of personhood. It's still some sort of copy or facsimile, and whatever brain is linked to any related consciousness is still either the original, or another construct or facsimile — There's no getting around it ( it seems ).
 
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Absolutely – What you're saying seems to be identical to what I meant by seeing it from the other side of the looking glass.

However, either way, we still end-up with any resulting afterlife ( or afterverse ) being something other than what they are commonly interpreted to be. The avatar is not our original self, and therefore it doesn't represent a continuity of personhood. It's still some sort of copy or facsimile, and whatever brain is linked to any related consciousness is still either the original, or another construct or facsimile — There's no getting around it ( it seems ).
Fair enough.
So, yesterday while contemplating this exchange, I speculated on possible non-physical means of communication between the two realms (below). What I came up with is not original but I think you’ll get a kick out of it if you apply it from the other side of the looking glass:
  • Synchronicity - An alteration of code leading to coincidence associated with a particular meaning.
  • Glitch - An alteration of code which might not be measureable on the used end, but would be noticed as a felt lack of continuity.
  • Mathematical - An alteration of of code leading a person to associate correlation between a mathematical pattern and a particular meaning.
  • Good Law - Incentivized charity which feels benevolent even in the light of the possibility of existence being ultimately finite.
Thank you very much for indulging me and helping me verbalize this. I won’t impose one you any further for now.
 
wow... what a post!

In the movie The Matrix, The young monk boy told Neo "There is no spoon.". He didn't say "Act as if there is no spoon.".
It's my personal assumption that our higher selves exist in a place that is so non-local, that it would be correct to say "There is no higher self" as it relates to physicality.
Brilliant... I've never heard anyone point out that distinction.

Even as a layman, this concept seems critical to me, when if we're honest about the possibility that some of what we call consciousness may be seriously non-local, and therefore need be named something else. I think most of what people call consciousness is just a combination of awareness and universal interconnectedness, and therefore shouldn't presume it applies to anything non-local.
I'm also somewhat convinced that NDE's are experienced non-locally, and aren't actually downloaded by the person until being brought back to life.
another great insight and better way to express what we're talking about
 
Thanks Alex. Now I know what you're referring to, and have reviewed three NIH papers on it as a refresher. One includes Radin as the author, another is by D. Samuel Schwarzkopf, and the third by four other researchers.

Like I was getting at in a previous post someplace, statistical evidence might represent something, or it might not. Given the stats we're talking about, it certainly doesn't constitute "proof" to me. I agree with Schwarzkopf when he says, "To me this interpretation betrays a deep-seated misapprehension of the scientific method. Statistical inference, regardless of whatever form it takes, only assigns probabilities. It cannot ever prove or disprove a theory."- LINK

Perhaps more relevant is the assumption that the neurological sensor readings correlate to the stimulus in question. However they do not provide that data. At best they indicate that the subject is expecting something unspecified but vaguely related to the stimulus in question to happen, which is understandable given the nature of the experiment, and after enough times, we'd expect to see that reflected in the readings.

Regardless of the results, I like that Radin actually tries these experiments. For the sake of discussion, let's suppose that such experiments, along with others, like the Delayed Choice Quantum Eraser experiment, produce results sufficient to question our common view of time and space. What are the most reasonable conclusions we might be able to draw from them for the case of afterlives?

It is in this territory that we find one of the loopholes that almost allows us to infer that afterlives are possible. Notice I use the word "almost". I use it because continuity of personhood following the death of the body is still not possible. However it does imply that existence itself is quantized, and therefore, there is no continuity of anything.

In this model, reality is more like a filmstrip, where every moment is a completely new frame of existence, and what we perceive as the flow of time, is purely an illusion, and by extension so are any notions of continuity, which nullifies the premise of the hypothesis — and neither of us get our way. Is this the actual state of affairs? I don't know.

I suppose it's possible if the universe on the grandest scale is a multilayered construct of universes within universes where our reality is not the base layer. But for that, we have had others here invoke Occam's Razor ( not that I think we should always defer to Occam's Razor - we shouldn't ).

The point is that no matter how we look at it, even if we accept the assumptions Radin's experiments purport to provide evidence for, we still end-up with afterlives being something very different from the standard notion that they represent a continuity of personhood following the death of the body.
IDK it seems like we have to get back to talking about philosophy and the physicalism thing. philosophers can be really smart about logic and stuff like that but they can also sometimes be a little light on science. I think radin's experiments have falsified physicalism. what say you
 
you can conceptualize it on the inverse: wherein the Matrix experience being the genuine physical, and the higher plane being non-physical but real.

Speaking of "Inverse" and "Synchronicity", The Wachowski Sisters(formerly Brothers) transition could be seen as Revelation of The Method (occult-wise). That perhaps The Matrix was allowed to succeed so thoroughly BECAUSE it inverts the physical to non-physical correlation of the two realms.

If a mic drops in The Either and hits a ground which isn't physical, does it make a sound?
 
IDK it seems like we have to get back to talking about philosophy and the physicalism thing. philosophers can be really smart about logic and stuff like that but they can also sometimes be a little light on science. I think radin's experiments have falsified physicalism. what say you
Radin's experiments, if accurate, don't falsify my version of physicalism, but they probably falsify some other more classical version(s) that distinguish between materials and phenomena such as electromagnetism, time, and gravity.

BTW, I'm not entirely alone. My version of physicalism is very close to the way Philosopher Merleau Ponty looked at things. To keep it as simple as possible, I see physicalism as virtually synonymous with naturalism. For example, in physics we have the fundamental laws of nature. We don't understand them all, and we may never understand them all, but whatever the case, nature covers it all, therefore everything is composed of the physical, even when it manifests as the mental.

This might seem like moving the goalposts to some degree, but I think the overlap is important. It allows us to advance the discussion forward rather than always making it into a binary ( this way or that way perspective ). It says that we can have minds, and we can have bodies, and that when both are concurrent, we have a complete person, therefore one without the other is not a complete person, therefore continuity of personhood following the death of either is not possible.

To really get this, we might need to work through some of the neurological and biochemical details that establish beyond any reasonable doubt the causality between them and what we are as persons.

In the meantime, such things as copies and transference of memory are possible, and these things are what lead people to assume that such phenomena means there are afterlives, when the real questions should be: How ( by what means ) can such copies and memory transference occur?
 
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Radin's experiments, if accurate, don't falsify my version of physicalism, but they probably falsify some other more classical version(s) that distinguish between materials and phenomena such as electromagnetism, time, and gravity.

BTW, I'm not entirely alone. My version of physicalism is very close to the way Philosopher Merleau Ponty looked at things. To keep it as simple as possible, I see physicalism as virtually synonymous with naturalism. For example, in physics we have the fundamental laws of nature. We don't understand them all, and we may never understand them all, but whatever the case, nature covers it all, therefore everything is composed of the physical, even when it manifests as the mental.

This might seem like moving the goalposts to some degree, but I think the overlap is important. It allows us to advance the discussion forward rather than always making it into a binary ( this way or that way perspective ). It says that we can have minds, and we can have bodies, and that when both are concurrent, we have a complete person, therefore one without the other is not a complete person, therefore continuity of personhood following the death of either is not possible.

To really get this, we might need to work through some of the neurological and biochemical details that establish beyond any reasonable doubt the causality between them and what we are as persons.

In the meantime, such things as copies and transference of memory are possible, and these things are what lead people to assume that such phenomena means there are afterlives, when the real questions should be: How ( by what means ) can such copies and memory transference occur?

Tell me, would you consider yourself a physical monist, or a dualist? I'm not quite sure what to think. Minds and bodies are, in everyday language, different. Dualism is inherent in language, which isn't that surprising as we perceive what we take to be an external world, whilst experiencing at the same time internally something apparently different in quality ("mind"). We can to some extent reconcile the two by assuming reality is bipartite. But AFAICS, it's not a true reconcilation. We still have to explain how the mental could arise from the material. We still have the "hard problem".

OTOH, if we adopt perennial philosphy/Idealism, there is no longer a hard problem. We have no need to explain how material gives rise to mental. Instead, we can ask ourselves why externality is perceived in mind as material. There seems much less to reconcile. It seems so much simpler to me.

Could you give me, as concisely as possible, a description of what your position is? Physical monist, dualist, or something else entirely? I'd find that helpful.
 
Tell me, would you consider yourself a physical monist, or a dualist? I'm not quite sure what to think. Minds and bodies are, in everyday language, different. Dualism is inherent in language, which isn't that surprising as we perceive what we take to be an external world, whilst experiencing at the same time internally something apparently different in quality ("mind"). We can to some extent reconcile the two by assuming reality is bipartite. But AFAICS, it's not a true reconcilation. We still have to explain how the mental could arise from the material. We still have the "hard problem".
Excellent question. I don't constrain my perspective to those two choices because it seems to me that the real state of affairs is larger than that. There are not only materials and thoughts, but also time, space, and the fundamental forces of nature. When looking at the situation this way, the question of dualism versus monism becomes a tool to focus our attention on the difference between the mental and all the rest. But we might just as easily focus our attention of the difference between EM and all the rest, or gravitation and all the rest.

So rather than looking at reality as monistic or dualistic, I look at it more holistically. In other words, I accept that there can be more than one type of thing and more than one type of phenomena and that they can all exist concurrently within the larger construct — and there seems to be pretty good evidence that such is actually the case.
OTOH, if we adopt perennial philosphy/Idealism, there is no longer a hard problem. We have no need to explain how material gives rise to mental. Instead, we can ask ourselves why externality is perceived in mind as material. There seems much less to reconcile. It seems so much simpler to me.
I would agree — sort of. Instead of saying that idealism allows us to eliminate the hard problem, I'd say it eliminates the easy problem and leaves us only with the hard problem — why should there be any experience of anything?
Could you give me, as concisely as possible, a description of what your position is? Physical monist, dualist, or something else entirely? I'd find that helpful.
I'm pretty sure the above covers it reasonably well. Thanks for taking an interest. Very good conversation !
 
agreed... but I don't think naturalism can accommodate things outside of "space and time"

from the link you sent:
They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”

That depends on what "time" and what "space" we're talking about. Naturalism can certainly accommodate things outside our particular construct, including multiverses beyond our range of detection. In other words, being part of nature, doesn't require that it be within our range of detection.

Whether something can exist without possessing any spatio-temporal attributes is another question. I would contend that hypothetically, something can exist independent of temporal attributes ( frozen in time ) but not without any dimensional attributes. Even if it's only an idea, it must exist someplace. But maybe that's only because of the limitations of my logical brain — but that's all I've got, so I'm going with that for now.
 
That depends on what "time" and what "space" we're talking about. Naturalism can certainly accommodate things outside our particular construct, including multiverses beyond our range of detection. In other words, being part of nature, doesn't require that it be within our range of detection.

do you know of any notable philosophers who've taken that position?

If so, how would they define "supernatural"?

Whether something can exist without possessing any spatio-temporal attributes is another question. I would contend that hypothetically, something can exist independent of temporal attributes ( frozen in time ) but not without any dimensional attributes.

What are the dimensional attributes of the information the subject receives in radin's presentiment experiment?
 
do you know of any notable philosophers who've taken that position?
I haven't had that particular conversation with any "notable philosophers", but understanding the principle of it doesn't require any of them to agree – not that I imagine any would disagree. Besides that, one doesn't need to be "notable" to be a philosopher. One simply needs to philosophize, and then you either get it, or you don't. That could be a longer discussion, but let's not diverge.

As an example of how something non-detectable can fit into naturalism, we can consider the topic of cosmology. Max Tegmark describes universes in Level One, Two, and Three contexts, not all of which would be detectable, as some number of them, could in theory, be literally beyond our range of detection — so far away that no information about them ( including their light ), has reached us.
If so, how would they define "supernatural"?
Naturalism simply sees supernatural phenomena as unexplained rather than beyond the boundaries of nature.
What are the dimensional attributes of the information the subject receives in radin's presentiment experiment?
In Radin's experiments on presentiment, the impulses indicating the presentiment emanate from the subject and are measured by various devices. So the evidence isn't that the subject receives information, it's that the subject is the source of the information. Then the question becomes, how can we explain the statistical outcomes, and we've already covered that. The dimensional components can be thought of in terms of the spatial coordinates of the subject and the placement of the measuring devices.

Perhaps more relevant to spatial location is where Radin and other researchers are exploring particle-wave duality. Nobody really has that figured out. We can describe it in terms of mathematical probability, but that's not really the same as explaining what's going on. The pilot wave theory does a little better, but nobody has detected such a wave. Whatever the case, we can still be confident that light is a phenomenon of nature. We don't need to invoke the supernatural.

To me the word "supernatural" it's an oxymoron, useful only in describing a genre of fiction. I prefer calling real world experiences associated with that category as "The Unexplained". Even "The Paranormal" bothers me, but depending on one's interpretation, it might work. The difference hinges on whether or not one considers the paranormal to be beyond all scientific explanation, or simply beyond current scientific knowledge. For the record, I'm in the latter camp.
 
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