Blogger is scheduled for outage at 12:00 AM PDT on Monday (6/15).
Michael Brooks, "The Universe Machine," New Scientist, March 31, 2007, at p. 30.
Michael W. Deem, "Mathematical Adventures in Biology," in Physics Today, January, 2007, at p. 42. (Excellent article to be associated with new research in genetics and field thinking in physics.)
Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind: Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 225-296, 74-94. (A second and revised edition of this work has appeared.)
Philip J. Davis & Reuben Hersch, The Mathematical Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), pp. 406-411.
I continue to experience many difficulties in writing these essays, even as I put up with defacement of my texts by hackers, as well as viruses and/or other interference with my work. Please bear this in mind when reading these posts.
After another password change, I have spent about twenty minutes trying to get into my blog this morning. I am not sure whether I will be able to make corrections or write new essays for a while. I will keep trying. I have no idea how many people actually read my book or view this blog, not even "approximately." You can help by simply reading this work and telling your friends about it. The true number of visitors to my blog is not, I fear, being reported accurately. (See the section of my MSN group entitled: "Digs.")
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980).
Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999).
Lawrence M. Krauss, Hiding in the Mirror: The Quest for Alternative Realities, From Plato to String Theory (By Way of Alice in Wonderland and The Twilight Zone) (New York: Penguin, 2005).
F. David Peat, Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind (New York: Bantam, 1987).
Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York & London: Penguin, 2004).
John Gribbin, In Search of the Double Helix: Quantum Physics and Life (New York: Bantam, 1987).
"A paralyzed man with a small censor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday."
Andrew Pollack, "Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor," The New York Times, July 13, 2006, at p. A1.
These latest findings concerning the power of thoughts seem to drive a final nail into the coffin of any simplistic materialist reductivism on the mind/body question. Notice that this paralyzed man did not use his brain to control a computer. It was merely the thoughts made possible by that brain and other things (like language) that controlled a computer as well as other electrical devices at a considerable physical distance from his body. His brain remained within his skull at all times, fortunately, but "where" were his thoughts "located"?
The devices in question were located far away from the subject. Furthermore, each of them was controlled at about the same time. Where and how were his thoughts doing the controlling? Were his thoughts "inside" his head? Were they "inside" his television set and/or computer? Or in the wires used, if any? Both? Neither? All of the above?
"... the time of our perception does not really flow in quite the linear forward-looking way that we perceive it to flow (whatever that might mean!)." (Penrose, p. 444.)
Take another look at Kant's "transcedental idealistic" analysis of time.
"The temporal ordering that we 'appear' to perceive is, I am claiming, something that we impose upon our perceptions in order to make sense of them in relation to the uniform time-progression of an external physical reality." (Penrose, p. 444.)
Here is F.H. Bradley, arriving at nearly identical conclusions concerning time, through philosophical effort, in 1897:
"And, as with space, the qualitative content -- which is not merely temporal, and apart from which the terms related in time would have no character -- presents an insoluble problem. How to combine this in unity with the time which it fills, and again how to establish each aspect apart, are both beyond our resources. And time, so far, like space, has turned out to be appearance." (Bradley, A & R, p. 40.)
Philosopher and theologian as well "systems-theorist" Mark C. Taylor writes:
"In his systematic development of Kant's philosophy, Hegel explicates the mechanical logic that characterizes the Newtonian world and formulates a logic of organisms that is still indirectly influential in important areas of theoretical biology. Hegel's system, however, is of more than historical interest; if his [Hegel's] work is reread through certain aspects of information theory" -- and the new philosophy of networks and complexity, "connectionism" and "social connectionism"-- "new theoretical insights begin to emerge. To show how this might be possible, I compare Hegel's system to the autopoietic systems analyzed by theorists like Francisco Varela, [another of those Latinos who are not very smart!] Humberto Maturana, and Niklas Nuhman." (Taylor, p. 15.)
An obscure work by an astonishingly handsome theorist in New York should also be consulted. See Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom (North Carolina: Lulu, 2004), especially footnotes on Hegel. Unfortunately, due to obstructions, I cannot see my own books on-line, but they should be at: http://www.lulu.com/JuanG ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Soon these interactions between thoughts or minds and intelligent machines will be wireless (in fact, they are wireless now) and will not require implants, experts say. So how can something non-material (thoughts) affect directly -- even materially -- objects occupying space and existing in time (t.v. sets, computers, my toaster perhaps)? How does a thought "travel" a physical distance? Where does it go? Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), pp. 164-165 ("The Human Enegy Field").
If objects can be affected by thoughts "in" minds, then how much more likely is it that persons mutually affect one another's thoughts through cognitive activity? Very likely, I think. Dialectics. This capacity of thoughts to affect objects at a distance makes it clear that thoughts and minds cannot be captured in conventional or classical Newtonian understandings of locality. Many self-described "scientific psychologists" are working with a seventeenth century model of space and "matter" (matter is now understood as only particles in motion or energy), whose ideas of behaviorist "rigor" and method are rendered ludicrous by these developments. Consider analogies from the philosophy of mathematics which are really helpful when thinking about consciousness:
"Mathematics is an objective reality that is neither subjective nor physical. It is an ideal (i.e., nonphysical) reality that is objective (external to the consciousness of any one person). In fact, the example of mathematics is the strongest, most convincing proof of the existence of such an ideal reality."
The Mathematical Experience, at p. 409.
This is NOT to deny that the neurological activity that makes thoughts possible takes place in the brain. Donald Davidson's position, like mine, admits the materiality of the brain producing thoughts and minds as "anomalous" functions, creating a "dual aspect" to human reality, which conforms to the multiple aspects of our complex universe. Yes, this position can be traced to Spinoza, Kant, Hegel; also there is a lineage from Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg, Hawking, Bohm, Greene. ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness" and "Donald Davidson on Anomalous Monism.")
Like each of us, in other words, the universe has many layers and unsuspected connections. Super-strings? It is a great symphony. We also have multiple connections to one another. "Whatsoever you do to the least of these brothers [and sisters] of mine," a great thinker -- and "scientist"! -- once said, "that you do unto me."
Simply by your hatred and ill-will (Diana?), you alter the moral space for everyone, damaging others as well as yourself. In the same way, the destruction of happiness and love for others may diminish the quality of each person's life in a community. It may hurt all of us when such things happen. The best response to hatred is not more hatred; the answer to killing is not more killing, but justice. We must seek punishment for wrongdoers which is tempered by reason and compassion, also pity. A great moral thinker once suggested that we counter hate with love. Combative spirituality? Philosophical Ali shuffle? Good old fashioned religion? Call it science if you like.
Brains produce minds, which -- when they become sufficiently complex -- have the capacity to achieve "transcendence" of physicality or locality in accordance with any traditional understanding of those terms. Forget the words "mind" and "thought." We all like to sound technical and scientific. We want everyone to know that we have been to college. So let's use the word "energy."
"... the causal potency of the quantum system of the brain-mind arises from the nonlocal consciousness that collapses the mind's wave function and that experiences the outcome of this collapse. [Not the collapse itself which transcends experience.] In idealism, the experiencer -- the subject -- is nonlocal and unitive; there is only one subject of experience. [God?] Objects appear from a transcendent possibility domain into the domain of manifestation when nonlocal, unitive consciousness collapses their wave functions, but we have argued that the collapse must occur in the presence of the awareness of a brain-mind in order for measurement to be completed. When we try to understand the manifestation of the brain-mind and awareness, however, we get into a causal circularity: There is no completion of the measurement without awareness, but there is no awareness without the completion of measurement. [emphasis added] ... it is consciousnes that chooses [instantiations of reality] -- but a nonlocal unitive consciousness. The intervention of the nonlocal consciousness collapses the probability cloud of a quantum system. There is complementarity here. In the manifest world, the selection process involved in the collapse appears to be random, while in the transcendent realm the selection process is seen as a choice. [emphasis added] As the anthropologist Gregory Bateson once remarked: The opposite of choice is random."
Amit Goswami, Ph.D., "In Search of the Quantum Mind," in The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World (New York: Penguin, 1995), pp. 173-175. ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")
From a biological rather than physics direction, notice the astonishing "fit" between ideas which, to my knowledge, no scholar has associated. Please see: George Greenstein, "Space," in The Symbiotic Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1988), pp. 103-106. How does the universe become itself? Not without your participation. There is no performance of Hamlet without an audience. There is no self without others.
The communication between brain cells as well as brains and environments requires multi-dimensional "spaces" which may lead to a biology of strings, together with Sheldrake's "morphic fields." Please see my essay "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem" and then: Claudia Springer, Electronic Eros: Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age (Texas: University of Texas, 1996), pp. 50-80 ("The Pleasure of the Interface").
Brains have a kind of electrical-chemical energy that results in non-material and yet measurable capacities, which we call "minds" or "thoughts." This special energy affects other sentient beings and intelligent machines. See Juan Galis-Menendez, "Magic, Technology and the Self" at http://www.thephilosopher@geocities.com/ (2004) and my essay on "George Santayana and the Mysteries of Quantum Physics." (For purposes of comparison, see "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")
Thoughts now appear to be capable of "speaking" a mathematical language -- and maybe other languages -- accessible to computers as well as to the woman next door in the short skirt. She blushed when I looked at her. I did not say a word. Do you think she read my thoughts? (See "What is magic?") The implant now used on the man turning on his t.v. set only with his thoughts will be obsolete soon. Development of this technology and cognitive science are both only in their infancy.
Who knows what we will be able to do with our thoughts soon? My neighbor in the short skirt should be getting nervous. I am now directing my thoughts towards my Carmen Electra. Roger Penrose, mathematician and physicist, writes in The Emperor's New Mind:
"When one sees a mathematical truth, one's consciousness breaks through into the world of ideas [energy] and makes direct contact with it [the level of abstractions or realm of ideas] ('accessible via the intellect'). I have described this SEEING in relation to Godel's theorem, but it is the essence of mathematical understanding." (p. 428.)
A recent article discusses Cosmologist Mordechai Milgrom's modifications of Newton's second law so as to describe the faster than expected movement of stars in the outer reaches of galaxies as the "product" not of some invisible "dark matter," but of the increased force of ACCELERATED energy acting upon them. Thought? See Adam Frank, "Gravity's Gadfly: Mordechai Milgrom's New Physics Could Overthrow Newton and Einstein," Discovery, August, 2006, at p. 34.
The speed of thoughts may have an analogous power to affect differentially receptive objects and persons, again, based on speed alone. The impact of thoughts generated by active minds may have an enhanced power based only on this quality of acceleration, also substance or sharpness of definition -- that is, clarity and depth -- which is scary when considering the thoughts of, say, Hegel or Einstein. In fact, Hegel's thoughts are still "affecting" us. So are Einstein's thoughts. Perhaps this is even more true of that great thinker I quoted earlier.
What if we direct our thoughts to, say, "God"? What if it is vice versa? What if the essence of reality is mental or conceptual -- see Josiah Royce's writings -- and we discover ourselves to be the objects of thought? What if emotions are a kind of thinking? In how many ways does what I feel affect others? How much are we affected by the moods and feelings of others? How about great numbers of others? Think of the Holocaust. Darfur. Georgia. (See again: "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")
Much of this scholarly research may provide a scientific basis for the human experience of transcendence. We exist as animals, materially, also as energy -- as minds, in our shared thoughts and ideas in communities -- communities by which we are always mutually and collectively altered. Matter is only particles in motion, while our identities are dynamic and relational. Identities are also always in motion. We have dual or multiple aspects, some of which (happily!) are sexual; others are intellectual. Accordingly, consciousness or thoughts and minds become a kind of abstract algorithm relating to empirical reality, not identical with it. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")
"We live in the mind of God," say many scientists and theologians. Josiah Royce reminds us, in a passage echoing C.S. Peirce: "Isn't it plain, then, that if my [external] world is anything knowable at all, it must be in and for itself essentially a mental world?" Is the truth of any thought its agreement with reality? -- If so, then why have I not met Carmen Electra? I certainly think about her? And she is definitely real? -- Am I thus capable of "conforming my ideas to things?" See Royce's The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 380.
Would it not be better if things and people -- like Carmen Electra -- would "conform" to our ideas? See Bernard-Shaw's self-justification for the writer's life and also my essay: "Say Goodbye to Unwanted Memories." This scientific research is important and helpful for philosophers defending a priori knowledge, such as Colin McGinn, Christopher Peacock, Noam Chomsky. It seems to establish the dual- or multiple-aspect theory of mind on a secure foundation. Hollywood may be way ahead of scientists in developing these theories.
This essay is a good candidate for plagiarism. Remember, you saw these ideas here first. Noise has suddenly invaded the room where I write. Phone calls at fifteen minute intervals should be next, combined with more cybercrime. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Anybody seen my remote control? That's O.K., I'll just close my eyes and think of channel 2.
