When you die...
- Thread starter DJ Bigga
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8ball
World is a fuck
A link would probably be a better idea than a cut'n'paste odyssey - interesting as the subject matter is.
Snouty warthog "I am not anti-science, indeed one of the guys I admire greatly is Einstein... however, I don't really agree with the Newtonian reductionist model that proposes that all the universe is knowable through science- we just need to collect enough data. I think that there are mystical elements to existence where the instruments of measurement become obsolete."
Our physics tells us a lot about the limits of our ability to measure things and the way that taking observations changes the results of those observations. Your term 'mystical elements' is a bit undefined so i'm not sure what you're talking about there.
"there is a particular brainwave pattern that is associated with healing. if science could find a way to duplicate or artificially stimulate these brainwaves in unwell people, that would be a really useful thing in hospitals, say."
This gets my tautology whiskers twitching a bit. I suspect that in some sense what you're looking at when you look at these brainwaves is a filtered view of the healing itself. Also, stimulating similar waves may well not cause the associated state since the process may well be more multifaceted and complex than that. If you stimulate someone's auditory nerves with copper wire they don't hear music - just noise.
"when the mess that has been made of the world by scientific advance (global warming/pollution/nuclear disasters) has made life on earth untenable for the majority of lifeforms, then science will indeed come under the rein of the spiritual... "
I think it may be too late by then
'spiritual' - there's another fuzzy undefined word that's great for causing misunderstanding. Not sure I agree with your ideas about the moral neutrality of science - but that's an agument that runs and runs.
Snouty warthog "I am not anti-science, indeed one of the guys I admire greatly is Einstein... however, I don't really agree with the Newtonian reductionist model that proposes that all the universe is knowable through science- we just need to collect enough data. I think that there are mystical elements to existence where the instruments of measurement become obsolete."
Our physics tells us a lot about the limits of our ability to measure things and the way that taking observations changes the results of those observations. Your term 'mystical elements' is a bit undefined so i'm not sure what you're talking about there.
"there is a particular brainwave pattern that is associated with healing. if science could find a way to duplicate or artificially stimulate these brainwaves in unwell people, that would be a really useful thing in hospitals, say."
This gets my tautology whiskers twitching a bit. I suspect that in some sense what you're looking at when you look at these brainwaves is a filtered view of the healing itself. Also, stimulating similar waves may well not cause the associated state since the process may well be more multifaceted and complex than that. If you stimulate someone's auditory nerves with copper wire they don't hear music - just noise.
"when the mess that has been made of the world by scientific advance (global warming/pollution/nuclear disasters) has made life on earth untenable for the majority of lifeforms, then science will indeed come under the rein of the spiritual... "
I think it may be too late by then
'spiritual' - there's another fuzzy undefined word that's great for causing misunderstanding. Not sure I agree with your ideas about the moral neutrality of science - but that's an agument that runs and runs.
Jonti
what the dormouse said
Bloody hell, Azrael, don't you think the mods have enough to do, without piling more on them?
I came across Pribram in my undergraduate "Philosophy of Psychology" courses. Back then he was known for his TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) ideas which he saw as an improvement on Skinner's SR (stimulus-response) theories. I'm sure they were, but psychology's come along way since those dark days of psychology's explicit denial of consciousness.
These days, the fact of consciousness is widely accepted (!). But Pribram appears still to find the fact hard to cope with ... look at this part of the interview ...
I can agree that mind is not a thing, not a substance. Perhaps it is a process; perhaps it is a relationship.
But, Pribram still hasn't got round to thinking about the fact that people report having minds?!
I'll read the rest and post again. Initial impressions are not favourable.
I came across Pribram in my undergraduate "Philosophy of Psychology" courses. Back then he was known for his TOTE (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) ideas which he saw as an improvement on Skinner's SR (stimulus-response) theories. I'm sure they were, but psychology's come along way since those dark days of psychology's explicit denial of consciousness.
These days, the fact of consciousness is widely accepted (!). But Pribram appears still to find the fact hard to cope with ... look at this part of the interview ...
I can agree that mind is not a thing, not a substance. Perhaps it is a process; perhaps it is a relationship.
But, Pribram still hasn't got round to thinking about the fact that people report having minds?!
I'll read the rest and post again. Initial impressions are not favourable.
8ball said:
thanks for your post 8ball, very interesting. I wanted to briefly make a correction- I am not saying that science is morally neutral, I am saying that science is amoral - it does not have an inbuilt moral structure of it's own, and can therefore be kind of 'fitted on' to the ideology of whoever is using the science. therefore one scientist with a positive ideology might use science to investigate healing from cancer- another scientist will use science to create a more efficient type of poison gas...
Jonti
what the dormouse said
OK, my take on Pribram's current state of mind is that he still denies that there is anything which we can call mind (whether substance, relationship, process or whatever) which can impact on the world. He is still a mechanist in that sense.
Do not be deceived by his talk of Quantum Mechanics. Although in QM, the future state of a system cannot in principle be calculated from its antecedent conditions, that is not how Pribram sees it. He ascribes to the minority Bohm interpretation which posits that there are underlying, unknowable, determinist processes to QM. Without going into details, most commentatators accept that Bohm's interpretation is not the natural choice (for one, it makes different, harder to justify, assumptions than standard QM). Physical experiments are in principle possible to rule out his ideas so they are scientific, but at the time of writing, these experiments are yet to be performed.
In other words, Pribram is speculatively pushing a mechanistic theory of mind, and obscuring that fact by the language he uses. According to Pribram's view, one may be conscious, but nevertheless lack any ability to choose or act. As he puts it ... By the time they (a mental creation) get to be mental images, it's already pretty well set into space-time form.
So he's dressed what he says in the language of QM, usually understood as a non-determinist theory. He uses "spiritual" language, the type of language which is used to address the dilemas of human freedom and responsibility. But actually, he's still pushing a determinist theory of human behaviour. His is not a theory of mind as such. His is more a theory that minds have no function. In other words, he is using the language of spirituality and QM to disguise the fact that he is (now) what is called an epiphenomenalist.
There is one very simple, very cogent, and for some, very difficult problem with the doctrine of epiphenomenalism. Daniel C Dennett gives the argument here, in the section of the talk on consciousness, seven minutes in.
It's amusing to see his poor interviewer trying (and failing!) to understand the fatal flaw of epiphenomenalism. But epiphenomenalism claims that consciousness cannot be detected or discovered by any physical process. Including, of course, brain processes. In other words, a person who is claiming to be conscious cannot be doing so as a result of epiphenomenalism. It does not, and cannot, explain why people claim to be conscious
Do not be deceived by his talk of Quantum Mechanics. Although in QM, the future state of a system cannot in principle be calculated from its antecedent conditions, that is not how Pribram sees it. He ascribes to the minority Bohm interpretation which posits that there are underlying, unknowable, determinist processes to QM. Without going into details, most commentatators accept that Bohm's interpretation is not the natural choice (for one, it makes different, harder to justify, assumptions than standard QM). Physical experiments are in principle possible to rule out his ideas so they are scientific, but at the time of writing, these experiments are yet to be performed.
In other words, Pribram is speculatively pushing a mechanistic theory of mind, and obscuring that fact by the language he uses. According to Pribram's view, one may be conscious, but nevertheless lack any ability to choose or act. As he puts it ... By the time they (a mental creation) get to be mental images, it's already pretty well set into space-time form.
So he's dressed what he says in the language of QM, usually understood as a non-determinist theory. He uses "spiritual" language, the type of language which is used to address the dilemas of human freedom and responsibility. But actually, he's still pushing a determinist theory of human behaviour. His is not a theory of mind as such. His is more a theory that minds have no function. In other words, he is using the language of spirituality and QM to disguise the fact that he is (now) what is called an epiphenomenalist.
There is one very simple, very cogent, and for some, very difficult problem with the doctrine of epiphenomenalism. Daniel C Dennett gives the argument here, in the section of the talk on consciousness, seven minutes in.
It's amusing to see his poor interviewer trying (and failing!) to understand the fatal flaw of epiphenomenalism. But epiphenomenalism claims that consciousness cannot be detected or discovered by any physical process. Including, of course, brain processes. In other words, a person who is claiming to be conscious cannot be doing so as a result of epiphenomenalism. It does not, and cannot, explain why people claim to be conscious
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