(2021-10-20, 11:04 PM)Kamarling Wrote: [ -> ] Penrose is an affirmed materialist but freely admits that the Hard Problem confounds him.
Penrose talks about the mystery of the "Orchestration" part of Orch Or in the attached video and that reminded me of other videos I have seen about the complex orchestration in the living body, from cells to hormones, as you allude to. Instinct is another of my hobby-horses and I still maintain that behaviour can't be "hard wired" in the sense that darwinists would have us believe. That's a whole other discussion though.
Instinct is a big topic. I wonder what you think when I call instincts - information objects?
Here is maybe the best Psi paper so far, full of evidence and careful with metaphysics of spirit. Careful - as well - to whack Materialism for its metaphysics.
Quote: Our proposal does not answer Chalmer’s hard problem of qualia. But we do suggest that a “burst of consciousness” happens upon a quantum actualization. In this we parallel Hameroff and Penrose’s proposal [36], but we note that their position links an event of consciousness with collapse of a superposition of multiple potential spacetimes into one actual spacetime. They may be correct, but there is no obvious reason to link their version of quantum gravity with an event of consciousness. We would also note that consciousness plays no role in Hameroff and Penrose’s spacetime collapse, so in their model consciousness is not an active agent; it is epiphenomenal. By contrast, our proposal that reality consists in Possibles and Actuals linked by measurement invites a natural place for Mind: it is the means by which quantum potentials are actualized. The empirical results of psychokinetic experiments support this suggestion. -
Stuart Kauffman and Dean Radin
bolding mine
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2101.01538
(2021-10-21, 01:08 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]Instinct is a big topic. I wonder what you think when I call instincts - information objects?
Here is maybe the best Psi paper so far, full of evidence and careful with metaphysics of spirit. Careful - as well - to whack Materialism for its metaphysics.
Taking the second point first: Penrose states in that video (towards the end) that his take on quantum collapse is the opposite to others who think that consciousness causes collapse. He thinks that collapse triggers a conscious experience (if I understand him correctly). As I said earlier, Penrose insists that he is a materialist although he is more open than most to admitting that he doesn't understand how to address certain problems that materialism poses - such as the Hard Problem.
As for instincts, I have had my rant about this at various times on this forum( and Skeptiko before that). I just don't see how genetic "hard wiring" can produce behaviours and actions in a new-born. As I have related before, I watched the birth of a lamb in a field (I am a lifelong urban dweller with little to no experience of farm or country life). As I continued to watch, the lamb got to its feet and walked around its mother to find the teat. How can that be "hard wired" when DNA is a protein factory and the genetic code is, from what I have read, a code for producing the different proteins needed to build the corpus of the beast? How do proteins program behaviour or teach a new-born lamb to walk? Any robotics engineer will tell us that the combination of actions required to coordinate walking is immensely complex. Yet a dumb lamb with no exposure to training from its elders will walk within minutes or, at most, hours of entering this world. It *knows* how to walk.
Whether that *knowing* can be termed an "information object" is something I don't really know how to answer. I am not hung up on terminology and would frankly rather see and use plain language to describe or explain. It often seems to me that scientists and other specialists can't consider their field respectable unless and until they have invented some arcane and exclusive jargon that only those "in the know" will be familiar with.
Quote:For a continuing study on religion and paranormal belief, for example, Mr. Mowen said he is finding that “atheists tend to report higher belief in the paranormal than religious folk.”
That makes some kind of sense, but reflects poorly in the way that religion is taught. When I was learning about Christian beliefs, the whole basis of the belief system is a collection of many paranormal happenings, of varied kinds. It reflected a deep fascination and interest in things which happened to people. Somewhere along the road, that kind of fascination seems to have faded from view. I don't have answers, just an observation.
might have posted another story about this group? ->
Meet the Paranormal Moms Society
Ivana Rihter
Quote:Each woman has a different story about how they got interested in the paranormal. Growing up in River Lake, Illinois, Carpenter-Chaidez knew at a young age that her house was haunted. Every night, after her mother tucked her in, Carpenter-Chaidez would grip her covers and wait. First, the sliding closet door would slowly creep open, inch by inch. She lay paralyzed in her bed with her blankets as her only protection. Then the lamp would begin its nightly dance. It was an old-school design: Cranked once, the bottom light would turn on; cranked twice, the top light came on; a third crank turned everything off.
She would hear the clicks of the lamp as the middle bulb flicked on, then both bulbs turned on, then both turned off, leaving her in darkness, staring directly into the shadow that appeared behind her closet door night after night. “I even remember my blankets being tugged off the bottom of the bed,” she says. If she called for her mother, she was always met with a scolding for getting out of bed or throwing off her blankets.
Eventually, she grew up and left that house, but the feeling of powerlessness and fear she experienced there stayed with her. Now, she wants to make sure that no one else ever has to feel that way.
One went to heaven, the other to hell | Two East Tennesseans share their near-death experiences
Robin Wilhoit, John North
Quote:Priscilla McGill knows it's possible. She says it happened to her in March 2017 after she was struck by a vehicle while walking across Woodland Avenue west of Central Street in North Knoxville.
"At first, I just remember like sitting on a cloud in light and peace and calm," she told 10News. "No fear, none."
The experience forever changed her.
A Blount County man told 10News when he collapsed years ago in a stabbing, he ended up going through literal hell.
IIRC this was pretty popular on Netflix and might still be...
edit: #10 in the US at least for today...
(2022-09-29, 03:34 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]One went to heaven, the other to hell | Two East Tennesseans share their near-death experiences
Robin Wilhoit, John North
typical sudden 'attractive' and 'repelling' experiences. The difference between ones pattern, and the other/s pattern/s, when one's network suddenly becomes unshielded. Allowing the alteration of ones pattern towards the others pattern, as their pattern/s are laid down on your network. The difference between the patterns being the experience itself. Life altering towards the average.
Some of them already knew this - in their own way - over 2000 years ago. Yet today, some still do everything they can to hide, to distract, the others away from such knowledge when they start groping their way towards it. Yet this knowledge cannot be hidden, because our experiences themselves are made of the very stuff they try to hide.