Psience Quest

(2023-07-08, 07:52 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]It just so happens that I am reading "Deep Weird" right now. That book is full of weird phenomena, particularly the discussion about synchronicity written by Sharon Rawlette.

However, I'm not sure they can't all be explained within Dualism - assuming that time in the other reality either doesn't exist, or is far more flexible than our time. Suppose that a mischievous entity paused Dan's timeline while it pushed (or caused Dan to push) the honey jar inside the tin, letting his time line run a bit from time to time so that he remembered the strange sense of the tin growing heavier - I think something of that sort would explain the end result.

Remember also that most phenomena can be explained (with caveats) inside materialism. Then there are another, much smaller, set of phenomena that require Dualism, and then there are a few phenomena that might or might not require anything more.

David

Materialism can't explain Consciousness nor Causation nor Logic/Maths, so hard for me to see what is explained inside that metaphysics.

I feel like an entity pausing time in itself is enough to challenge the idea that reality is two distinct substances. I get the idea of a functional Dualism, where for convenience we assume two substances...but then why not a functional Pluralism? Why not assume there are multiple substances at work?

I'm not necessarily saying Monism is the answer, nor do I know if it really makes a difference what paltry words we project onto the majesty of the Real...

"Belief in the existence of spirit-worlds parallel with the normal everyday world often form part of a particular culture’s wider cosmology. It is important to note that these spirit worlds are not conceived as necessarily distant, or abstract, places, rather they are understood as immanent and present, overlaying, and influencing, the lived landscape."

 -- Hunter, Jack. Spirits, Gods and Magic

(2023-07-08, 04:48 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Dualism doesn't fit the data IMO, unless you take an isolated set of cases.

Take a "Deep Weird" event - see this thread - and it becomes hard to see how there are two distinct substances.

Admittedly there is some mundane normal world of the "Visible" and the weird oddities of the seeming "Invisible"...

What about data quality and "checkability"? I would contend that the empirical data pointing to dualism is much more extensive and much more verified by investigators to have actually happened, than much of the "weird" stuff. The weird stuff usually can't be verified later by investigators (how about sightings of little green men or man-sized owls with pointed ears and red glowing eyes), whereas NDE OBEs, past life memories and birth defects, and mediumistic communications, can be and have been so verified.

(2023-07-08, 11:25 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]What about data quality and "checkability"? I would contend that the empirical data pointing to dualism is much more extensive and much more verified by investigators to have actually happened, than much of the "weird" stuff. The weird stuff usually can't be verified later by investigators (how about sightings of little green men or man-sized owls with pointed ears and red glowing eyes), whereas NDE OBEs, past life memories and birth defects, and mediumistic communications, can be and have been so verified.

With NDEs/OBEs you have to explain the causal continuity of sensory input where people see their own body or other events in the "material" world.

Past life memories and birth defects seem to point to a continuity between memory/experience and physical bodily incarnation.

Medium communication, if we include ectoplasm, leaves something to be explained that seems neither "physical" nor "spiritual". Even without ectoplasm we have the PK data of rapping on tables and voices heard that are not coming from the medium in particular.

There was at least one video game I recall where if you die you end up a ghost that can wander around, walk through walls, and eventually even get resurrected. You operate in the same game world under different rules, and substances are arguably nothing but rules attached to certain experienced entities/stuff...

(2023-07-08, 11:55 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]With NDEs/OBEs you have to explain the causal continuity of sensory input where people see their own body or other events in the "material" world.

Past life memories and birth defects seem to point to a continuity between memory/experience and physical bodily incarnation.

Medium communication, if we include ectoplasm, leaves something to be explained that seems neither "physical" nor "spiritual". Even without ectoplasm we have the PK data of rapping on tables and voices heard that are not coming from the medium in particular.

There was at least one video game I recall where if you die you end up a ghost that can wander around, walk through walls, and eventually even get resurrected. You operate in the same game world under different rules, and substances are arguably nothing but rules attached to certain experienced entities/stuff...

Certainly there must be at least one major allowed interaction between the two substances that otherwise are kept existentially separate. This of course is the necessity of the brain/mind interface to allow embodiment and manifestation of the spirit in the physical. 

As you point out, there is a sort of "causal continuity" exhibited in NDE OBE observations of the body and surroundings affairs going on. But at the same time, NDErs typically pass through solid material walls as if they were nothing, suggesting that the seeing the body type experiences are not photons being detected by the spirit, but occurrences of a higher form of sensing reality.

Mediumistic physical phenomena do exist but are rare. 

This all looks like mostly designed-in exceptions plus unintentional loopholes in the fabric of reality exploited by powerful psychics and other entities. It appears to me to be a system of a functional dualism where certain exceptions are made to meet overriding requirements imposed by the spiritual powers that be, with perhaps a few design errors thrown in.

This has probably been said before by other people in this thread and/or in others, but to me a strict dualism vs. monism debate doesn't make sense in the first place. I conceptualize as a possibility a "dualism" (matter/consciousness) within monism (consciousness), but where the matter is ultimately consciousness itself made to appear as a separate "substance", or "vibrating" at a certain "frequency" you could say (as the new agers, to use Brian's language, often say ). ("New agers" actually being actual experiencers relating their own experiences - whether mediums, NDErs or otherwise). 

So Consciousness creates physical beings (made of consciousness at a certain frequency), for example, within which higher or "purer" consciousness gets filtered and helps animate those physical beings.

(2023-07-08, 10:15 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I feel like an entity pausing time in itself is enough to challenge the idea that reality is two distinct substances. I get the idea of a functional Dualism, where for convenience we assume two substances...but then why not a functional Pluralism? Why not assume there are multiple substances at work?

The essence of science is to assume the minimum amount to explain the most. Galileo ignored birds, and insects, and pieces of fluff when he formulated his idea that everything fell at the same speed. That wasn't a mistake on his part, it was his genius.

If science accepted Dualism in the same way it happily embraces all kinds of theories that have exceptions a lot of progress would be made. The concept of Dualism is enormously valuable, for example to scientists studying phenomena around death. If you take away Dualism, you take away the significance of death.

At the same time those that want to deny all such phenomena rely on the argument that Dualism doesn't make sense because there has to be some interaction, while ignoring the fact that GR and QM are inconsistent - maybe some of them actually realise how invalid this argument is.

If Dualism was an accepted part of science, the phenomena reported in Deep Weird would attract a lot of attention. People would focus on the issue of whether or not an extension was or was not required. As it is they just sweep every and all reports of paranormal phenomena into the waste bin.

Science has been built on a series of theories that technically disprove the previous one.

For example, things only fall with the same acceleration if they start from the same height above the Earth. So in a technical sense Newton contradicted Galileo!

Science routinely uses theories that are known to be invalid in extreme cases.

(2023-07-09, 07:41 AM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]If science accepted Dualism in the same way it happily embraces all kinds of theories that have exceptions a lot of progress would be made. The concept of Dualism is enormously valuable, for example to scientists studying phenomena around death. If you take away Dualism, you take away the significance of death.

At the same time those that want to deny all such phenomena rely on the argument that Dualism doesn't make sense because there has to be some interaction, while ignoring the fact that GR and QM are inconsistent - maybe some of them actually realise how invalid this argument is.

If Dualism was an accepted part of science, the phenomena reported in Deep Weird would attract a lot of attention. People would focus on the issue of whether or not an extension was or was not required. As it is they just sweep every and all reports of paranormal phenomena into the waste bin.

I don't see much excitement around Dualism - we see Scientific American and other publications willing to at least debate Idealism or Panpsychism, maybe also some kind of Information Realism or Simulation Hypothesis...

It seems to me Dualism is see as a long closed dead end by Science Academia?

(2023-07-09, 06:18 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see much excitement around Dualism - we see Scientific American and other publications willing to at least debate Idealism or Panpsychism, maybe also some kind of Information Realism or Simulation Hypothesis...

It seems to me Dualism is see as a long closed dead end by Science Academia?

I think the science establishment has gradually encouraged a fake idea of how science works. I mean Panpsychism doesn't seem particularly plausible, particularly when you think that an electron with one set of ideas/experiences/emotions would no longer be identical to another electron with a different set of ideas/experiences/emotions. The fact that they never even mention that issue seems to be incredibly telling.

To be honest, I think they want to bury Dulaism because it is the most obvious practical extension to the physical world.

Panpsychism is a very remote idea, whereas Dualism is embodied in the simple transition from life to death.

Unfortunately, I think science has become politicised, like so much of life.

David

(2023-07-09, 07:11 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]I think the science establishment has gradually encouraged a fake idea of how science works. I mean Panpsychism doesn't seem particularly plausible, particularly when you think that an electron with one set of ideas/experiences/emotions would no longer be identical to another electron with a different set of ideas/experiences/emotions. The fact that they never even mention that issue seems to be incredibly telling.

To be honest, I think they want to bury Dulaism because it is the most obvious practical extension to the physical world.

Panpsychism is a very remote idea, whereas Dualism is embodied in the simple transition from life to death.

Unfortunately, I think science has become politicised, like so much of life.

David

I would agree that Panpsychism, at least when we talk about conscious particles building up our consciousness, seems deeply flawed and a kind of last gasp pseudo-Materialism.

I'd also agree that Dualism, because it strongly suggests a soul, is going to have a lot of bias against it.

However it's not clear how to change this strong bias or get around the question of the Interaction Problem. It's also unclear how one explains PK or psychometry under Dualism without some appeal to special exceptions made by mysterious Designer(s), let alone something like a honey jar disappearing into a container of flour.

Additionally if we're talking about Cartesian Dualism there is the issue of the soul/mind being extensionless which contradicts a large amount of Survival evidence.

All that said there does seem to be "normal" stuff following regularities that mysteriously arise from the indeterministic quantum level. That would be the mundane "physical" world.

And there is "abnormal" stuff that seems to follow regularities that are different from the "normal" regularities - Psi, Survival, UFOs, Deep Weirdness.

So if we go by rules/regularities demarcating "substance" you could make an argument for at least two substances, even if there is an underlying fundamental common substance that has the "normal"/"abnormal" rules applied to it.

This is why I like the Dualism of Visible and Invisible, because I think it focuses less on ontology and more on a kind of practicality that is utilized by indigenous cultures.

(2023-07-09, 11:38 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I would agree that Panpsychism, at least when we talk about conscious particles building up our consciousness, seems deeply flawed and a kind of last gasp pseudo-Materialism.

I like the expression "pseudo-Materialism"! It seems to express the fact that nobody ever elaborates what it means, or invents experiments to explore it further.

Quote:I'd also agree that Dualism, because it strongly suggests a soul, is going to have a lot of bias against it.

However it's not clear how to change this strong bias or get around the question of the Interaction Problem. It's also unclear how one explains PK or psychometry under Dualism without some appeal to special exceptions made by mysterious Designer(s), let alone something like a honey jar disappearing into a container of flour.

Additionally if we're talking about Cartesian Dualism there is the issue of the soul/mind being extensionless which contradicts a large amount of Survival evidence.

All that said there does seem to be "normal" stuff following regularities that mysteriously arise from the indeterministic quantum level. That would be the mundane "physical" world.

And there is "abnormal" stuff that seems to follow regularities that are different from the "normal" regularities - Psi, Survival, UFOs, Deep Weirdness.

So if we go by rules/regularities demarcating "substance" you could make an argument for at least two substances, even if there is an underlying fundamental common substance that has the "normal"/"abnormal" rules applied to it.

This is why I like the Dualism of Visible and Invisible, because I think it focuses less on ontology and more on a kind of practicality that is utilized by indigenous cultures.

I think what you are really expressing is the fact that science has been hugely distorted by Christianity in its most muscular period, when it solved philosophical problems by burning people at the stake.

I mean, an undistorted science would have expressed the simple fact that reality seems divided into the physical and the mental in a pretty clean separation, and as evidence grew that at least some people survive death, that would be understood as a natural consequence of Dualism.

Remember that back then, people didn't require that scientific concepts were absolutely clean - nobody worried about falling feathers for example, and I don't know whether they even tested whether the acceleration varies depending on where on the earth you measure it, and anyway those variations were probably too small for them to detect.

Physical theories and experimental methods have matured immeasurably over the centuries, but experiments and ideas in non-physical reality have developed at a slower pace, but potential principles like Dualism get argued over using the standards of today.

Science has to mature with a simple mental concept - such as Dualism - before it is possible to hang additional ideas, such as might be needed to account for 'deep weird' phenomena, onto it.

If science accepted Dualism, and maybe another concept, such as something to absorb the fact that time seems to behave differently in the other realm, it could begin to mature non-physically after 400-odd years of dithering induced by burnings at the stake and subsequent loathing for religion and all it represents.

I don't think there is a shortcut here, any more than a genius back in the time of Newton could have argued the case for GR and QM.

David