The Flicker Filter Model of Consciousness with Imants Barušs

Imants Barušs is Professor of Psychology at King's University College at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He is author of The Personal Nature of Notions of Consciousness: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of the Role of the Personal in the Understanding of Consciousness, Science as a Spiritual Practice, Alterations of Consciousness: An Empirical Analysis for Social Scientists, and Authentic Knowing: The Convergence of Science and Spiritual Aspiration.

He is coauthor, with Julia Mossbridge, of Transcendent Mind: Revisioning the Science of Consciousness. Here he describes the two main elements of the Flicker Filter model of consciousness. The "flicker" is related to Julian Barbour's notion that time itself consists of discrete "now" moments. He proposes that these moments are mysteriously held together by fields of meaning that exist within a larger consciousness, not embedded within time. This model allows for all of the phenomena reported in the parapsychological literature. It also eliminates many of the faulty notions that Barušs associates with materialist or physicalist ontologies.

One thing I found odd during a cursory examination of Transcendent Mind was the undo importance seemingly given to Libet's "falsification" of free will.

Perhaps surprisingly Dennet had a good, sharp criticism that random meaningless decisions are different from deliberative ones.

[Ninshub]

Thanks Sci - sounds interesting and looking forward to watching this!

Thanks Sci - sounds interesting and looking forward to watching this!

I do need to go back to Transcendent Mind, there are a lot of interesting things there.

Not least of which is that it was published by the American Psychological Association. A friend of mine, a proponent psychologist, at the time said this was evidence of a great sea-change occurring behind the scenes...we can only hope...

A review of Transcendent Mind from the Journal of Scientific Exploration

Larry Dossey

In a study supporting this array of attitudes, of the 212 attendees responding to a survey at the 1996 conference “Toward a Science of Consciousness” in Tucson, Arizona, one-third thought that anomalous phenomena do not
occur, another third thought they occur but could in principle be explained in physical terms, and another third thought not only that anomalous phenomena occur but also that consciousness is primary (p. 28).

In “Rethinking Time,” Chapter 3, Barušs and Mossbridge tackle the thorny, unresolved issue of the nature of time. They distinguish between an apparent time to which we feel we have access, and deep time “that structures the nature of consciousness and physical manifestation, and a possible relationship between the two” (p. 54). Their discussion of time in physics includes the second law of thermodynamics, the classic double-slit
experiment, the role of an observer in quantum mechanics, and the famous delayed-choice experiments of physicist John Wheeler and others in which retrocausation appears to come into play (pp. 55–59). They explore the role of the unconscious in the presentiment studies pioneered by researcher Dean Radin, in which autonomic physiological effects seem to occur prior to their cause. A discussion of experiments in precognitive remote viewing pioneered by researchers Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Stephan Schwartz, Ed May, Robert Jahn, Brenda Dunne, and others continues from Chapter 2.

The “implicit precognitive” studies of psychologist Daryl Bem and others also are examined, as well as the potential relevance of psi researcher James Carpenter’s intriguing “first sight” model of how psi operates in daily life. The sense of altered temporality in life reviews and the experience of timelessness in mystical experiences and drug-induced states are addressed as well. What comes out of this bravura survey is the suggestion that “the deep structures underlying our waking consciousness are fundamentally spatially and temporally nonlocal in nature.

[Ninshub]

I'm listening to the interview now. It's really making me want to read the book.

I'm listening to the interview now. It's really making me want to read the book.

Let me know if you do, we could make a discussion thread for it.

Page 8, Baruss goes further into his thinking on consciousness & reality:

Meaning Fields: Meaning Beyond the Human as a Resolution of Boundary Problems Introduced by Nonlocality

I propose the notion of meaning fields that carry the necessary knowledge and intelligently structure events  in physical manifestation. If their ontological existence is unpalatable for the reader, then they can be simply regarded as a reasoning heuristic whose mechanism of action remains to be discovered.

Meaning fields are fields in the technical sense that they are defined at each point in space and time and potentially apply to whatever is found in that space at that time. They are meaning fields in that  they are capable of denotative and connotative meaning, as well as, probably, inherent meaning and possibly existential meaning. “Denotative meaning” refers to the events that are signified by a representation of them, so that, for example, the meaning field for a hydrogen atom would apply to actual hydrogen atoms. “Connotative meaning” refers to associations of denotated events, so that a meaning field for hydrogen atoms could operate in the context of all atoms and subatomic processes. It is difficult to denote the meaning of “inherent meaning,” but I use that expression to refer to the essential nature that something has as itself that is not just its informational content. In the case of hydrogen atoms, there is an essence of what hydrogen atoms are. “Existential meaning” refers to the notion of existential purposiveness in the context of existential qualia. If a meaning field not only has essential nature but experiences that essential nature as itself, then it would have existential qualia. And if such qualia are experienced as being meaningful, then we would have the presence of existential meaning. In the case of hydrogen atoms, their meaning field could have a sense of its own existence and purpose. The first three types of meaning give meaning fields the capacity to create boundaries by parsing events, so that, for example, they “know” which mouse is in Bill’s healing experiment and which one is not. I intend this in a strong sense, in that meaning fields have the ability to make, possibly non-algorithmic, judgments about what falls under their influence and what does not.

Krippner's review of Transcendent Mind

The authors review several theoretical models of consciousness, focusing on those that have attempted to explainthe anomalies they present, including mediumship, out-of-body and near-death experiences, and mind-to-mind communication. They find none of them completely satisfactory and go on to elucidate their own proposal,  namely that we live in a four-dimensional “block universe,” one in which time has been “spatialized” and added to the three customary dimensions.

The implications of this block universe may seem to violate the second law of thermodynamics, but we are reminded that this law was written for a “closed system,” yet the universe may not be “closed” at all. Further, this law was not designed to explain time. Barušs and Mossbridge introduce the concept of “deep time,” in which there is a sequence of potential “nows.” When we make a decision to change an ongoing “now,” we move to a different “block universe,” one in which that event can occur. On the other hand, ordinary time, or “apparent time,” does not facilitate this movement from one “block universe” to another. However, an understanding of consciousness depends upon fathoming “deep time.” They conclude that “time and consciousness are so related that it can be difficult to disentangle them” (p. 59). Decades ago, the distinguished psychologist Gardner Murphy told me, “We will not understand parapsychology until we understand time”; in retrospect, his  comment was wiser than I had realized.

The search for meaning in ensuing reports is another worthwhile research objective. In a world beset by threats to the survival
of the biosphere, and to that of the human species as well, a shift from a materialistic paradigm to one based on transcendence and unity might provide a useful antidote. As the authors conclude, “. . . such a process could lead beyond itself to states of mind in which we can more adequately comprehend what is happening mentally and physically in time and space” (p. 195). Their book is an invaluable addition to the literature arguing that consciousness (however defined) plays a key role, and perhaps an essential
role, in the construction of reality (however defined). It is radical, even at times outrageous, but it makes its case elegantly and (for many readers) persuasively.

Reading the above material - am I right that flicker-filter theory suggests you are shifting toward an entirely new part of the block multiverse to perform even the smallest bit of, say, PK?

This seems incredibly un-parsimonious?