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Originally Posted by mszlazak  Tor, for the most part you're just repeating and elaborating what I've said about Stapp! Yes, the "Self" is removed and replaced with the "self" and before humans or even primitive life we get the "micro-self" of dust and dirt to get mind-dust, etc. I wonder how mind-dust understands about orthonormal basis and helps pick them out? Nothing from QT really deals with the problems of consciousness, it just makes things worse, and Stapp's book is really about updating Whiteheads process philosophy so it's compatible with QT! |
First off, I don't endorse everything Stapp says. As he introduces process 0,
one possibility to account for this process 0 is via the Whiteheadian philosophy.
I'm not a big fan of this myself, but everything until he tries to describe where process 0 comes from, is independent of Whiteheadian philosophy. And this first part is the
major part of his book! The chapter
Whiteheadian Quantum Ontology comes at the end of his book and is only 15 pages!
To say that his book really is about updating Whiteheads process philosophy to be compatible with QT is just plain wrong. It's a small part at the end and not the major point he makes.
Stapp also says this about the Whiteheadian approach:
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This putative understanding of the way nature works is only an outline, the details of which can be filled in when new more incisive data that need to be accommodated become available. The theory is not implied by the currently available empirical data....
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It is this later Whiteheadian part that you refer to when you talk about
mind-dust.
This statement is independent of Whitehead and is the one I feel more comfortable with:
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The proposal is not that every quantum event need be associated with a reality of exactly the kind that populate our human streams of consciousness. It is rather that every quantum event is associated with an element that cannot be adequately conceptualized in terms of the precepts of classical physics, but that resides in a realm of realities that are not describable in terms of the concepts of classical physics, but that include our conscious thoughts, ideas, and feelings.
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Originally Posted by mszlazak In addition, the section I quoted on the "Bafflement of Leibniz's Mill" should start making you question this consciousness/QT stuff. |
Well, I'm not embracing the emergence idea here, so no problem for me. I see process 0 as something that exists in a mental realm that is part of our natural universe. To me, the quantum description shows that the universe is more like "
a great thought" anyway.
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Originally Posted by mszlazak Two other issues.
Free-will, in the sense of having moral choice, is either complatible with determinism or it's not. If it's not then this leads you to the irrational position that your actions are independent of your desires, feeling or beliefs! It's only through determinism that you can have a free-will worth having. You'll have to resolve is if materialism, naturalism or mechanism is adequate to fully explain consciousness. I think they are! |
To me free-will is incompatible with determinism. Maybe there is something that gives us certain desires, but how and in what way we chose to act on this is our free choice.
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Originally Posted by mszlazak Second, if you believe that paranormal experiments and case studies show the effects they intend to show and then think these somehow solve the problems of consciousness/mind/brain then think again! Remember that these experiments and reports are all third person data (third person data includes verbal reports)! Now go back and ponder testablity and what is not testable when it comes to the issues of mind and consciousness!
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I do think there is sufficient data to question the materialistic view of mind/consciousness/brain. The science done by people like Dean Radin passes my criteria of good science. As to case-studies/field studies, they are not as "hard" as laboratory tests. But if the number of cases that are collected get very high, and the quality of these case reports is very high, then one should take these seriously also.
One analogy is the case reports of ball lightning. Because someone actually took the case reports seriously, this phenomena is now starting to get reproduced in the lab.
I think I'll jump out of this discussion now. I've made my point and I'm not trying to convince anyone to come to the same conclusion as I have, although I do think there are good reasons to go in that direction. I believe people have truly free choices to do and think whatever they like
