A Materialist Theory of Mind

thanks! Interesting article. I shall read it in depth. It is interesting how physics is now driving metaphysics again. Whereas at the beginning of the scientific revolution, physics appeared to support materialism, now it has crashed right through it, and out the other side. Armstrong was a diehard materialist. I don't think he could have coped with The Tao of Physics.

Have a look at www.scienceandnonduality.com. I went to the first one, last year; I think the next promises to be even more interesting.

Looks good !

Can't see a link to next conference ?

you're looking at it...October 2010. I wish I could be there, but I just don't think it is going to come off this year. David Loy is a favourite writer of mine, and I now notice A. H. Almaas will be there...I am really going to try and make it...

So I am !
I'd like to attend too but date and location could be problematic.

The question remains even if you accept the chain of biological events as predictable, the predictability begs the question who or what predicted the outcome. Why should life have a formula that existed before life became evident? Our minds were predicted, our questioning of our questioning was inevitable. A determined world, universe, and all its complexities does not make materialism a reason to question spirituality , it encourages the question.

I read it all the time jeepie. It's fascinating. I quoted a short passage the other day on one of the evolution threads.

It really is excellent fare for demonstrating that the "materialists" I have been disputing with are not real materialists but are only kidding themselves and that they are actually good little Christians underneath.

The passage I quoted is on p364 of the RKP 1976. It concerns psychic events.

Do you think the "higher activities" referred to on page 361 relate to DMA's own sexual arousal leverage fulcrum? The materialists are very careful to duck challenges (resort to Ignore function which the passage specifically dismisses as unscientific) which ask them to explain the role of lingerie which, as you no doubt know, is exclusive to the Christian culture and which is not mentioned in the Darwinian canon.

(Sorry about all the "whiches" in the last sentence.)

Jeepie? and, what do you read all the time?

Call me Randi but I'm skeptical about pointing the bone at "Men who Stare at Goats".

It was a colloquial expression. I read bits of it most days.

What's Armstrong like? You have met him I presume.

rather a driven individual, I felt. Never had much to do with him. At the time I was at Sydney Uni, they suffered the embarrassment of having two philosophy departments, one Traditional and Modern (of which Armstrong was Head) and General, which was a breakaway Marxist-oriented school. It was a huge conflict at the time.

I believe that there is a metaphysical aspect of mind, because of the existence of a subjective, first-person viewpoint which is not adequately explained by purely physical theories. The "hard problem of consciousness" is one of the most intractable problems in philosophy.

However, I think that any metaphysical theory needs to be guided by the known scientific facts about the brain, mind and consciousness, otherwise it would just be wild speculation. There are no doubt many possible metaphysical theories about the mind, and it seems likely that many of these will conflict with the biological/physical facts. If there is a single truth of the matter, and science is (to some extent!) reliable within its own realm, then metaphysics needs to pick up the story where biology/physics leaves off, without any conflicts or gaps.

For example, one reason (among others) that astrology lacks credibility is that it generally fails to take account of the latest astronomical facts (e.g. gradual changes in stellar/planetary positions) and discoveries (e.g. Uranus, Neptune, data about mass and velocity etc). Similarly, if a metaphysical theory of (say) collective consciousness did not link up with known facts about the structure of the brain and individual consciousness, it would be unsatisfactory. For one thing, a mechanism needs to be suggested whereby collective consciousness is converted into individual consciousness, in a way that is compatible with empirical data.

Although I am in favour of (properly informed) metaphysical speculation, I usually disbelieve claims of supernatural phenomena, because they are (a) unexplained and (b) anomalous. The likelihood of error or deception seems to me vastly greater than that of a genuine supernatural event. Lies and mistakes are common and comprehensible; paranormal phenomena are not. If the laws of physics "work" 999,999 times out of a million, it seems rational to be "biased" to the view that they work on the millionth occasion also. Ockham's Razor cautions that we should not multiply entities unnecessarily. Hence the wise saying: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

I think the point is that if there are non-material aspects in the brain all sorts of things are then in play. There either are or there aren't. The materialist is committed to there not being and that all brain states are physico-chemical manifestations and thus manipuable.

This would then allow that religious ceremonies can be used to manipulate those states along with other things irrespective of what the religious beliefs are. What state an unmanipulated brain would be in is a difficult question as is how one could be acheived.

A battle for power between manipulators, who have manipulated brains themselves, ensues.

Well I can't disagree with you, yours is a very sane approach. I am not trying to convince the skpetics that paranormal phenomena occur, all I am saying is that if they do occur, it undermines the materialist position (and, personally, I am sure they do, but I have other reasons to reject materialism.)

Er... I studied anthropology and never came across this line of thinking in any reputable ethnographies.

That is one thing I dispute in this context, though. Why? because telepathic communication is not extraordinary. It happens all the time, and has always happened. The quote I provided above says exactly the same thing: remote viewing has been proven by any ordinary scientific measures, but we are going to shift the goalposts a bit by saying it is an 'extraordinary claim'. This happens all the time in the skeptic industry. There is a mountain of data which they reject on the basis of such nebulous argumentation. The issue is that the arguments become very technical through the 'analysis of meta-data' and many people loose interest. Then it is easy to employ fear, uncertainty and doubt techniques to contest any claim. It is all very shabby. Now I am not interested in getting directly involved in the argument, there are some very good books on it, notably Parapsychology and the Skeptics by Chris Carter.

Finally, materialism is not a scientific theory. It is a philosophical outlook which is dictated by what we think a proper scientific explanation should look like. Ever since the Enlightenment, explanations for all kinds of phenomena have been sought in terms of what is objective, measurable and discrete. So it would stand to reason that the mind should be explained in terms of the brain. It is reductionism, pure and simple. Quite apart from the parapsychological arguments, it has been shown to be unworkable by decades of research on neuro-imaging. But it is too lengthy to summarize here.

The relevance of that would depend upon what "reputable" means. If it's a claim that what you studied exhausts the category "reputable" it is typical of American thinking which, it seems to me after studying these threads, doesn't recognise the existence of anything it doesn't already know about.

You're right, it might be more Carl Jung that I was thinking of. However the idea of collective consciousness is very much implicit within Durkheim (I don't know if he used the term though). And you could argue that Weber's 'Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' it is practically a dissertation on collective consciousness in that the logic of Luther's doctrine of salvation created a specific conception of the nature and meaning of work in Protestant society generally.

Where, when and how has this been documented? I want to see where this has been proven.



This is utter BS, but I would like to see where this is documented.

Science doesn't deny stuff just because or for some discriminatory aspect. Science rejects something that is baseless or an event can not be replicated.

James Randi has debunked so many remote viewers and has shown the tricks that they try to use to claim they have special abilities. He has shown the trick where they use three people to draw a picture each while the remote viewer is in another room and then he comes out and says what each picture is. He gets it right 100% of the time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9w7jHYriFo&feature=PlayList&p=BFFBC511994F470D&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=5

Work is what the workers do and consuming the product is what the fat cats do.

Did you see the Credit Crunch Royal Ascot?

Krumple, I don't believe that you will ever accept it. I could quote you a couple of books, you will say they are wrong, probably without looking at them. I am not interested in trying to prove this to skeptics.

Irreducible Mind: towards a Psychology for the 21 Century, Ed Kelly and Kelly
Parapsychology and the Skeptics, Chris Carter
The Conscious Universe, Dean Radin.