Quote:
Originally Posted by David Bailey  Topher, I think when thinking about Ψ, you should admit far more things as possibilities. Once you admit Ψ at all, you are into territory that has been very little explored theoretically.
David |
I think you may need to read what I have said more carefully.
I am quite open to very many possibilities. I am open to the possibility, for example, that consciousness has a special role in the universe, that may best be described as non-physical, and that psi is a manifestation of its extra-physical character.
Part of my responses are objecting to people limiting the possibilities about psi inappropriately. When someone says "psi is incompatible with physicalism" or "psi means that the mind is independent of the brain" then I will object to that narrowing of possibilities. Of course I have my preferences and judgments about relative probabilities, and when asked (or for purposes of illustration that other alternatives are possible) I will give those possibilities. Without firm evidence to the contrary (and psi gives little or no such evidence) I prefer physical explanations to extraphysical explanations (which are frequently, though not always, actually no explanation at all), and comparatively moderate changes to the structure of existing laws (moderate changes are less likely to be contradicted by existing evidence, after all) than sweeping ones that throw everything out.