April 28, 2017

There is no science as such

Priyedarshi,

Realms of mind and consciousness are not explainable since their ontology does not fall within the physicality as known to the Science of the day. Physical signals of em energy and other physical energies are unable to piece thru the Astral and causal realm of nature where mind resides, Realm of consciousness is even transcendental to the Astral realm of the mind. If you are conversant with the basic Upnishadic/Sankhya philosophy, you get a fair idea of such transcendence.

 Transcendence of the Astral realm of mind and Consciousness are not speculative and theoretical ideas. In the state of Samadhi, the existence of mind and consciousness as distinct from the brain can be experienced in a quite vivid manner. In the area of spiritual research, subjective evidence as flowing from the experience in Sammadhi is akin to empirical evidence in objective scientific research. I am not repeating for the sake of repetition. Need is to seriously follow the description of such experiences in the state of Sammadhi.

You asked why mind and brain are distinct? Very simple since they belong to quite different realms of nature. Brain belong to Physical realm and mind comes from the Astral realm. Though both realms are physical but their physicality and laws governing thereupon are entirely different,  The key problem has been that current knowledge of the Science is limited up to the Physical realm only which represent only a slice of the entire spectrum of nature. If one would like to explain everything say mind-body problem within the known physical realm, then obviously problems are bound to arise. In the state of Sammadhi, Astral realm of nature including the ontological reality of mind can be vividly observed and understood. Now, what is the Astral realm of nature? Either it is a particle in nature with scale in the Planckian regime or it is not the particle  in nature but some quite different nature.

To assume that physicality is limited up to the ends as known to Science of the day and that everything should be explainable within the known physicality is a travesty of rationality. If scientists, particularly Physicists and neuroscientists could sincerely follow and understand the ontology of the transcendental Astral and Causal realm of nature, as given in the description of experiences of the state of Sammadhi and as given by spiritualists of past as well as present, there is the likelihood that their approach towards mind and consciousness may undergo a radical shift. Alternatively, if in future  Physicists and neuroscientists are able to know the expanded range of the physicality and fall on the astral plane of nature, then also they may have new insight on mind and consciousness.

You asked why not legs, arms, mouths, brain ...... and mind.? I have explained above since mind and brain belong to quite different ontology despite both being physical. Here word physical need to be expanded. Any ontological entity which lacks innate consciousness and power of propulsion is physical. Any ontological entity which has consciousness and propulsion power as innate is non-physical or conscious one.

Regards

Vinod sehgal
...

Bruno, 

In the absence of consciousness and mind, , where  and how Laws if nature  and numbers  will exist as psychological stable  and sharable. Illusions? All the psychological phenomena including  illusions are the products  of mind. In the absence  of the mind, how such products will be produced.

Vinod Sehgal 
...

We can derive the existence of computer, (in the original mathematical sense of Church, Post, Kleene, Turing) in elementary arithmetic.
Then, mind can be explained by the self-referential ability of those computers (universal numbers) with respect to each other and with respect to the (infinitely many) computations (realized in arithmetic). That is needed because the universal numbers cannot know which numbers they are, still less which computation or universal numbers supports them.

This does not need computationalism to be proved. But computationalism justifies that the law of physics must be retrieved from some statistics on the first person experiences supported by those infinities of infinite computations.

Contrary to what many materialists believe, materialism is not epistemologically compatible with mechanism. (I can argue for this).

Before suspecting a reductionism here, it is useful to understand that Arithmetic has been shown to be something highly not computable, and that all machines and apparently ourselves can only hope to scratch at the surface of It. Any of our theories are only tiny windows on something which is unnameable as seen from "inside", in the first person perspective.

Brains, computers, cells and physical universes are examples of universal numbers involved in deep computations. 

The universal numbers constitute in Arithmetic a sort of Indra Net, as each universal numbers reflects all the others including their behaviors. They do not produce consciousness or semantic, but filter the consciousness/semantic/sense inherent in the arithmetical truth (plausibly, and in a highly dissociative state). It differentiates and "lost itself" on all sufficiently consistent histories/dreams. Materiality is a relatively persistent pattern when the histories/sharable-dreams cohere enough to make universal numbers meeting themselves, ... and recognizing themselves, or not.

Bruno
...

In fact, IF we are machine, THEN we cannot which machine we are. Saying "yes" to a doctor needs an act of faith. And reality is made bigger.

I would say that computationalism is the most anti-reductionist position. It refutes, and show that all universal machines/numbers refute the reductionist conception of machine and numbers. It gives them a soul and explains that it is not a machine.

The real question is more like "do you agree that your daughter marry a man who has got a digital brain transplant". Somehow. For a christian, the question might be "should we baptize the computers", etc. 

Non-computationalism needs to add magic to distinguish human from machine, and that might only mean that human have not yet understood or listen to them.

Nobody claims that computationalism is explaining everything. It is just an hypothesis, and eventually it changes the perspective, entails afterlife, for example, and makes Reality *far* bigger than what we can infer by observation, which appears to be a temporary "illusion", somehow. 

There is no brain. I like to say that the brain is all in the brain. It is an appearance only, provably so when we assume computationalism. Physics will be reduced to machine theology, and so we can test it by comparing the physics "in the head of the machine" with the physics that we extrapolate from observation.

Bruno Marchal
...

Bruno,

Again, thanks for your detailed response. I agree with you on truth. I think the truth condition should actually be dropped and could be replaced by approximate truth in most cases. In mathematics as you suggest the situation is different. Truth is always defined under an interpretation I in logic. So, essentially this condition will have to be refined contextually in different domains of knowledge.

I need to look at the last part more closely and research it a bit.

Priyedarshi
...

Priyedarshi,

But how do you know in a deep coma that your body/matter has any existence in a deep coma? What is evidence that matter or body really did exist when you were in a deep coma?

Vinod Sehgal

priyedarshi jetli Apr 27, 2017
Vinod,

Your reasoning continues to be fallacious. You simply assume that there is a consciousness and its required for existence. I could make the much more plausible and common sense assumption that first there existence and then there is consciousness. After all you argue that consciousness has an existence. I claim, that what you mean by consciousness does not exist. Grammatically 'is' and 'exist' are prior to 'conscious'. When I say "I am conscious" this presupposes existence not consciousness. Existence to me is unquestionable, whereas the existence or reality of consciousness, as you use the term, is debatable at best. 

As for your example, it is misguided. Vision is not the only sense through which we access the physical world. When I am sitting in a dark room I am sitting on something that is a physical object. I am feeling sensations of smell, touch, even vision, as I see darkness, smells and taste. I have never experienced any moment when I am not experiencing something bodily and physical. Further, I do not understand how anything can be non physical.

Piyedarshi

Donald DeGracia Apr 27, 2017
Professor, Department of Physiology
LOL! There can be no existence without consciousness! They are, in fact, one and the same. In the West, Bishop Berkeley was the first to say this. Lesser minds went on to call it “idealism” but it is much deeper and the Hindu teachings are much better to study once one gets this, the most fundamental of all insights that consciousness = existence. Consciousness IS “is-ness”.

The arguments you raised below were addressed by Berkeley in the early 1700s. You simply cannot have existence without consciousness. And, in fact, it turns out they are the same thing when you think it through.
...

Dear Diego
Namaste. 

You refer to "identifying" as if that term did not refer to an identifier [the one doing the identifying].

Thus when you write

". . . upon identifying it at the most basic level with the manifestation of a singularity/inhomogeneity/difference on a context, the motivation IS THE SELF-MANIFESTATION of them . . ."

I may have misunderstood this, but I take this to mean that YOU are identifying motivation with the manifestation of a singularity.It is not intrinsic to a singularity. 

By using the term manifestation, you apparently mean it just happens by chance or some unknown means that a boundary or difference is established within what is otherwise a homogeneous continuity. It is difficult to reconcile such a contingent occurrence with an intentional motive.

However, if the boundary is determined by a thinking person, with an intention or motive, then the motive and the boundary are not identical, as I am sure you can agree.

You then write

". . for me the primeval distinction, its formal representation as the sign and the observer are identified . . "

But Pierce writes: "Nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign.' 

In other words, in the use of the word 'sign' you have an interpreter [observer] and the sign. If they are not different then the word 'sign' cannot be meaningful at all. When you say "formal representation' you are speaking about an abstract mathematical formalism. But an abstraction does not represent what is in reality a distinction. For instance, an ideal gas is an abstraction for which a certain law or equation applies, but real gases have components that interact with one another and therefore violate such equations.  

Saussure further specifies that a sign implies two things: signifier [image/object] and signified [concept]. In Hegelian philosophy a concept and its reality are inseparable as a dialectical identity in difference, never as a mere or abstract identity. 

The next question is: If a singularity is an indivisible identity, how does a singularity produce a path that closes upon itself? Please provide the essential details of how [by what agency/necessity] it divides itself and then produces a path back to itself.

As Hegel remarked, a oneness or non-dual logic can only produce a 'night in which all cows are black.' The difference implied in the word 'all' cannot be eliminated by the paradoxical saying 'all is one.' The 'all' does not fall into the one and disappear, otherwise there would be no meaning to 'all.'

Thank you for trying to explain your ideas to me, but even Maturana's autopoiesis applies to any machine/computer that is made of purely dead matter, which we might call processing but none of which we would identify as cognitive or living. 

Sincerely,
B Madhava Puri, Ph.D.
...

Whit Blauvelt Apr 27, 2017
Hi Priyedarshi,

To me, as a working engineer, not even scientist, the point of the label "reductionism" isn't whether someone embraces it for themselves. When you speak of "the domain of the explanations of science," well of course we have good workable explanations in some domains. I'd certainly go to science (or engineering) to get a good explanation of a steam engine. Yet we had Freud try to extend from our explanation of steam engines to explain the workings of the human mind. So we can have scientific explanations from one domain that work pretty well, then attempts to extend them to other domains which are downright silly. Just as with steam engines, so it is with more recent attempts to explain the mind based on the engineering of computers.

Such silly attempts at extension from a proper domain into domains where the concepts at best fit only poorly, and only by metaphor, is what the philosophers call reductionist. Also, the notion that the various often-disjoint domains where science-like methods work well can all be reduced to a single domain of "science" -- that's obviously reductionistic. If we look closely, there is no "science" as such, merely a bunch of different sciences with a family resemblence. They no more blend to form a single "science" than the spiritual practices of different cultures blend to form a single "religion."

Best regards,
Whit
...

Hi Whit:
Meaning of laws is a subjective judgment that has nothing to do with their eternal existence. Being and things came long after the Big Bang that was governed by the eternal laws. Meaning of the laws conjured by beings and minds will always evolve/change while the eternal laws remain unchanged.

Please do not mix up subjective meaning and fundamental existence (laws representing universal awareness).

Best Regards
Avtar Singh, Sc.D.
Alumni, MIT
Author of "The Hidden Factor - An Approach for Resolving Paradoxes of Science, Cosmology, and Universal Reality"
...

Bruno:
Universal laws are not - "...only as psychological stable and sharable "illusion", as you say but implicit, unmanifested, eternal, and omnipresent reality in the universe representing universal awareness or consciousness. They were there before the big bang, before humans evolved on earth, and will exist long after humans become extinct for any unpredictable cause. These laws govern everything including all beings, minds, and things in the universe. Human constructs that do not follow these laws are delusions.

Best Regards
Avtar Singh, Sc.D.

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