If there is mind, and free will, and synchronicity, and any other counter-scientific phenomenon, they will somehow how to fit in with the physics that we know, there will be a 'seam' that in retrospect will perhaps seem 'obvious'. In the hindsight of quantum pysics and general relativity etc can we speculate on where those seams might be and create theories or models of these phenomena?
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We know everyhing via our awareness, and only our awareness is known for sure to exist, but we cannot even prove (to others) that our awareness exists - this is a great cosmic joke, and brilliant!
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Solipsism is the minimalistic model of reality, all other models add unprovable aspects, eg the reality of minds other than my own, the existence of a reality external to myself, the (continued) existence of reality if my awareness is not existent.
By adding other minds, the simple streamlined model provided by solipsism becomes extremely complicated. Our model of reality should take into account that this is so! ie, t should take into account that by definition we cannot know of others directly.
[Also, we assume that 'reality' is amenable to description, and by us, and that needs to be incorporated into the model!]
Progressive levels of metaphysically-sophisticated interaction between us, our actions, and the greater relaity
1. Mind exists: my contribution is my original proposition re 'mindless materialists': say I am addressing the book onl to those who agree with me :)
2. Mind is primary: my contribution is as a physicist who understands what is accepted and what is not, what is scientific fact and what is not, but who KNOWS awareness exists, is fundamental and is not included in physics. ie I am led to all this as a physicist, ie from the desire to understand the fundamentals of our existence but from the same introspection anyone alse does not just physicists, but as a p I know that what I am noting is a fact that belong at the foundaiton of physics.
So I state unabashedly that Mind is primary, but successful physicits were those who concentrated only on experimentallly-measured etc phenomena. So we don;t study Mind quite yet.
3. FW: Bridgman put the situaiotn vis a vis FW very well, no counterfactual etc, so I know that is is not worth investigating at this level of our ignorance. But FW is the way that the existence fo mind makes itself felt in the physical realm. Maybe it doesn;t exist, but in a Mind-primary universe I am not convinced that logic and cause-effect based arguments are good enough reasons to reject it outright.
One day soon perhaps we'll be able to experimentally-deterrnine whether any brain-events occur which are not implied in the purely-physical brain state.
This is a type of god of the gaps, but...
4. Cosmological implicaitons of the existence of true FW: (notion of acausiality etc): collapse of wavefunciotns etc, and emergence of universe into existence All this is my original stuff and should be first in the book.
5. The implicaitons of FW is moral responsibility etc: There are various ways that thinkers have grappled with what one ought to do if there really is FW. Eastern mystcism way, 'western' = Greek?, Jewish = Genesis (the outsider perspective). Understanding Gensis in this context is my original contribution, so place it first. [The relevance of Genesis to this discussion. I see it as a presentation of a compete worldview underlying an objective morality etc, and a theodicy etc (contained in a poem, not presented as a minimalistic philsophical or metaphysical axioms-set.).]
6. Meaning & Purpose: my contribution is the concept of stratification outlined here:
Let's assume there are statements provable to every raitonal person (ie physics depts at major universities exclude people they call crackpots, but tha tintroduces subjectuivity, but we ignore that :) , I'll call that physics.
To me anything beyond that may be in the categogory of 'religion'.
But 'mind' is in a grey area, so there is a stratificaiotn,
1. Physics;
2. mind
3. FW, Morality.
These are levels of what can be proven etc.
ie that which is accepted in physics depts is level 1.
Then there is level 2. awareness, which is accepted by some in those depts, they KNOW it exists, but also know they acannot prove it exists (especially not to those colleagues in their dept who claim it doesn't exist).
Then level 3. FW or etc, a direct intuition but which may be false so it is less than awareness, but may be a universal intuition which would make it not necessary to prove tha tthe intuition exists, but that is not necessarily a level-changer, since it is the referent we are interested in (ie whether FW actually exists or not) and not simply the intuition about its existence. And similarly regarding morality, 'ought', good/evil, meaning & purpose (noone disagrees that humans have these feelings or intuitions, what we are concerned wiht are the referents not the intuiotions about the referents).
If science, logic, rational analysis and philosophy reject a possibility (eg "true free will") is it reasonable for me to believe in it?
Re what is called "the conflict between religion & science"
Religion is based on free will, since true morality is based on it, but there are religions (Calvinism?) which perhaps avoid this, and in any case philosophers are not interested in "true morality" but rather in showing that a brain state can exist which correlates to the thought "I am morally responsible for my action" even in a completely deterministic universe without awareness and without free will.
As a young physicist I used to try to "reconcile" physics and religion, the spiritual etc, thinking that physics had all the answers and religion had to fit inside physics somehow. Some of my writings on consciousness within this mindset are here:
But eventually. When I realized that what is most fundamental, awareness and the passage of time, are totally not encompasses within physics, physics did not at all enfranchise awareness (contrary to the new age claims that it does),
and that very many physicist I spoke with were not interested and didn't understand and we're materialists etc to me
and that most theoretical physicists were entirely uninterested in the topic, and so I came to the opposite conclusion, that physics was inadequate to the task of describing reality, and one need not be overly concerned with "reconciling" it with religion.. meant eventually that I would not hold all my beliefs accountable to science. This liberated me to express views which could not be reconciled with science, but still to use scientific ideas to illustrate concepts, or to demonstrate possibilities etc ..
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Science and the Modern World by Alfred North Whitehead (1925):
“Western peoples exhibit on a colossal scale a peculiarity which is supposed to be more especially characteristic of the Chinese. Surprise is often expressed that a Chinaman can be of two religions, a Confucian for some occasions and a Buddhist for other occasions . . . . But there can be no doubt that an analogous thought is true of the West, and that the two attitudes involved are inconsistent. A scientific realism, based on mechanism, is conjoined with an unwavering belief in the world of men and of the higher animals as being composed of self-determining organisms.
This radical inconsistency at the basis of modern thought accounts for much that is half-hearted and wavering in our civilization…It enfeebles [thought], by reason of the inconsistency lurking in the backgroundIt enfeebles purpose itself, and consequently policy which necessarily presupposes purpose. …For instance, the enterprises produced by the individualistic energy of the European peoples presuppose physical actions directed to final causes. But the science which is employed in their development is based on a philosophy which asserts that physical causation is supreme, and which disjoins the physical cause from the final end. It is not popular to dwell on the absolute contradiction here involved.
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p.73 (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1925).
p.91: p180-190
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recently Nagel
Jul 16, 2013 - The widest implications of Thomas Nagel's new book involve art and ... waves that give rise to a person's momentary complex of awareness, ...
Oct 23, 2012 - The philosopher Thomas Nagel thinks the materialist scientific ... why the mind feels free, or why we feel we are self-aware and conscious.)
Awareness: Basically in this sense the world is divided into two, those who with Descartes enfranchise consciousness, and those who don't, the real "hard materialists". My essays about my belief that intelligent people who do not believe as we do are simply not conscious are inevitably removed - here is a cached web-entry listing my article but it is cached because it disappeared as do all references to my idea, probably because it is a potentially problematic assertion about the "humanity" of those who deny awareness, eg perhaps they don't "feel" pain as we do.. etc.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dlHkaNxOpmAJ:www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Consciousness+&cd=8&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us See the last sentence of the section "Phenomenal and access consciousness" , a ref to me:
"The possibility has indeed been proposed that those denying the existence of qualia, hence denying the existence of a "hard problem," do so since they do not possess this faculty[13]."
See ref 13, but that link is broken. There used to be various sites quoting me, but I don't see any more left.
Of course, perhaps there are other levels known to "Mindless materialists", but however it may be, there's no use to arguing with them on this topic.
The next level up (from 'awareness') is 'free will', which is what makes it possible for a conscious being to not just be a passive observer, a conscious robot vs the materialists who are non-conscious robots. A free willed being can affect the chain of cause and effect in an 'independent' manner. But this idea is completely counter to logic and physics and is impossible to actually define, and so is generally rejected by philosophers and scientists. Also, as opposed to consciousness which someone who is conscious knows exists by definition, free will CAN be an illusion, we CANNOT say for free will (as we do for consciousness)"I know it exists without having to prove it exists".
Whitehead process philosophy
Bridgman, universe is as we measure, no preonceptions: free will is counterfactual, "I could have done otherwise" - this is impossible to ever prove.
Einstein’s “Religion” is far from Naive
People tend to dismiss Einstein’s religious beliefs as naןve, and perhaps logically inconsistent. However they do deserve greater scrutiny.
At first glance the Spinozic conception of God seems empty, as totally synonymous with the laws of nature. However Einstein stated clearly that he believed in the existence of a Mind ..... of the ultimate unknowability of the universe, .... of the need for morality (but separate from religion?) .......
He simply did not attribute human characteristics to this Mind, nor did he believe in divine communication with humanity in the form of speech etc, but he did feel that it was the ... inspiration ..... guided scientists to the great discoveries ....
What is inconsistent in this?
And if one would ask: well what relevance does this God have to our lives, Einstein could answer that God does not exist to be of relevance to us, nor should we expect to understand God’s motivations or actions etc.
Einstein simply tells us facts about the universe, facts he knows via contemplation, observation, deduction, experiment etc: that there is a Cosmic Mind, that the universe is expanding etc - what the relevance of all this is to humanity is not an issue, it may have no relevance, it is simply true. And, if we do not like that morality has no anchoring in Einstein’s religion, this is not a failure of that religion. It is sophisticated and minimalistic, far from naןve.
To him morality follows from logic and observation of human nature (or at least of his analysis of his own nature!) (we can check to see if this belief is consistent).
His religion is minimalistic in the extreme. It is religion because it involves unproven beliefs about the universe etc, it involves the belief in a God-like entity....
His religion does not involve morality, ritual, revelation (other than the basic revelation of the existence of the Cosmic Mind) etc, but is no less a religion for all that.
He had his goals and drive in life, and his convictions, without connection directly from his religion; for most people their religion gives them these; for us they are seemingly necessarily connected, whereas for him they seemed not to be, at least according to his claims. One suspects however that his feeling for the dignity of life etc was affected by his religious beliefs.
Perhaps we feel that he should have tied one to the other, and determined what religious beliefs are implied by these humanistic beliefs; if it is true that life is precious etc then what does this necessarily imply about the universe or the cosmic Mind or its connection to human minds ..... (i.e. his religion may be sophisticated but too minimalistic - it is perhaps missing something and therefore inconsistent.)
One needs to take into account the fact the E was able to feel/deduce the existence ofthis Mind, that implies some form of conneciton between tem.
One should not assume that E's level of conneciton is maximal, maybe others experienced greater conneciotn and therefore further insight in the nature of reality, or of the Mind..
Maybe it is only in a universe in which Mind is fundamental and which is underlayed by Mind, that brains can think that morality is self-evident.
ie the act thatE felt it was not necessary to have tehc sonic Mind be the bedrock o fmorality exist, is itself an indicaiotn of the pervasive influence of the MInd.