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Post by Admin on Nov 10, 2020 16:47:28 GMT
The Electromagnetic BrainEM Field Theories on the Nature of Consciousness By (Author) Shelli Renée Joye, Ph.D. Foreword by Dean Radin, Ph.D. www.innertraditions.com/books/the-electromagnetic-brainAn exploration of cutting-edge theories on the electromagnetic basis of consciousness • Details, in nontechnical terms, 12 credible theories, each published by prominent professionals with extensive scientific credentials, that describe how electromagnetic fields may be the basis for consciousness • Examines practical applications of electromagnetic-consciousness theory, including the use of contemporary brain stimulation devices to modify and enhance consciousness • Explores the work of William Köhler, Susan Pockett, Johnjoe McFadden, Rupert Sheldrake, Ervin Laszlo, William Tiller, Harold Saxton Burr, Sir Roger Penrose, Stuart Hameroff, Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue, Karl Pribram, Alfred North Whitehead, and James Clerk Maxwell, as well as the author's own theories In this scientific exploration of the origin of consciousness, Shelli Renée Joye, Ph.D., explores 12 credible theories, each published by prominent professionals with extensive scientific credentials, that describe how electricity in the form of electromagnetic fields is the living consciousness that runs through the brain. Each of these theories supports the idea that the electromagnetic field itself is the basis of consciousness and that this source of consciousness peers out into the space-time universe through our human sensory systems, flowing with awareness throughout the bloodstream and nervous system. Following her exploration of electromagnetic-consciousness theories, Joye then examines practical applications, describing how electric fields might be manipulated and controlled to modify and enhance the operation of consciousness in the human brain. She explores the use of contemporary brain stimulation devices that offer benefits such as decreased addiction cravings and anxiety, reduced depression and chronic pain, enhanced mathematical abilities, accelerated learning, and greater insight during mindfulness meditation. Revealing the cutting edge of consciousness studies, Joye shows that consciousness is not an isolated function of the individual brain but is connected to the larger electromagnetic field that not only encompasses the entire physical universe but also is deeply involved in the creation of matter and the material world.
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Post by Admin on Nov 16, 2020 10:32:15 GMT
The Universal Mind Revealed as Instantiated in a Multi-Layered Quantum Neural Network9/10/20200 Comments by Antonin Tuynman, PhD | Foreword to The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution by Alex M. Vikoulov www.ecstadelic.net/top-stories/foreword-to-the-syntellect-hypothesis-five-paradigms-of-the-minds-evolution"At a deep level all things in our Universe are ineffably interdependent and interconnected, as we are part of the Matryoshka-like mathematical object of emergent levels of complexity where consciousness pervades all levels." -Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis If you picked up this book, it is not unlikely that you may have heard of the early 20th century philosophical movement of Cosmism. This movement, which originated in Russia, was striving for conquering the planets and stars, for radical life extension, immortality and resurrection of our loved ones by the means of technology. Perhaps one of its most important pioneers was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, whose aspirations did not only venture into the realm of the Macro, but also explored the Micro. He spoke of the atomic world as being animated and can thus be considered a kind of cosmist-panpsychist. The foundational work of the cosmic aspirations of man by the Russian Cosmists soon reverberated through the intellectual world of the early 20th century and found a resonance and fertile ground in the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard saw evolution as having a direction, namely the direction of concentrating consciousness in form, striving towards accumulation of knowledge, which gradually is attained by the formation of the Noosphere and which will culminate in the apotheosis of the Omega Point. Teilhard de Chardin considered that Omega Point is not necessarily merely a future construct, but in a sense is already here as the “Great Presence.” Thus, his pantheism is more panentheism in which God has both an immanent and transcendent aspect. In the sixties of the previous century, the science of Cybernetics emerged, which its founder Norbert Wiener defined as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Whereas the cyberneticists perhaps saw everything in the organic world too much as a machine type of regulatory network, the paradigm swapped to its mirror image, wherein everything in the natural world became seen as an organic neural network. Indeed, self-regulating networks appear to be ubiquitous: From the subatomic organization of atoms to the atomic organization of molecules, macromolecules, cells and organisms, everywhere the equivalent of neural networks appears to be present. Not strange that these developments have led to a present-day zeitgeist, which sees everything as a kind of computation. With computation came computers, which – when linked – lead to yet another meta-level of neural networking, a.k.a. the Internet. The technological and scientific developments have over time changed the way people try to explain the world around them: from the steam driven worldview of thermodynamics to an everything-is-electricity. From the everything-is-matter via the quantum-mechanical ubiquitous energy to the all-is-information paradigm. From a resonance paradigm to a cybernetics regulatory network worldview, from a survival-of-the-fittest conviction to pancomputationalism. Not that any of these paradigms is truer than another; they appear to be able to coexist as the different parts of the elephant in the Buddhist parable and mostly reflect the primary technological current of the moment. In the nineties Vernor Vinge wrote his seminal paper and introduced the term ‘Singularity’ as relating to a point in time, where technology and in particular superintelligent artificial intelligence will have progressed to such an extent, that it will be impossible to predict our future beyond that point. Kurzweil made clear that such a “technological singularity” may not be far away at all and perhaps can be attained within a few decades. This impossibility to predict the future has led to a broad range of science fiction speculations, not only as regards the last stages up to this point but also beyond that point. Where cyborg type man-machine mergers, transhuman eugenically improved humans and a wide range of robot helpers are on the conservative side of such futuristic predictions, mind uploading, simulated worlds and quantum-archaeology-based resurrection can be found on the more fancy optimistic side. From these notions it is then not a far-fetched idea that our present world we’re living in itself is a simulation. A concept, which virally spread as a meme thanks to the cult movie “The Matrix.” A burgeoning field of futurism seems to be our current paradigm. As we are stepping into the future, the ideas the media feed us are also strongly loaded with a futuristic technology and social development broth. Not in the least place by the presently popular Netflix series “Black Mirror,” which warns us for the dystopian consequences that our over-enthusiastic technological optimism might result in. It is here, where this overwhelming tsunami of ideas appears like an expressionist chaotic patchwork of weirdness, that digital philosopher Alex Vikoulov with his present book “The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution” brings order. The author boldly steps in the footsteps of his Russian forebears and shows us to be a postmodern cosmist.
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Post by Admin on Nov 19, 2020 0:04:13 GMT
A MATERIALIST GIVES UP ON DETERMINISMmindmatters.ai/2020/11/a-materialist-gives-up-on-determinism/Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne undercuts his own argument against free will by admitting that quantum phenomena are real MICHAEL EGNOR NOVEMBER 16, 2020 Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne has denied free will for years. But most recently, he has said something that puts the whole matter in doubt. A bit of background: Free will simply cannot be real if determinism is true, that is, if everything in nature falls like dominoes after the first one is pushed: If nature is truly like that, our acts, like those of the dominoes, are wholly determined by natural history and physical laws that we do not control. Nearly all arguments against free will depend critically on determinism. But there is a central problem with determinism: It is clear from physics that determinism in nature is not true. In 1964, theoretical physicist John Bell (1928–1990) proposed relatively simple and ingenious experiments to test whether nature determines each event beforehand. The physicists asked, are there “hidden variables”—hypothetical states of nature that exist before unpredictable quantum events that completely determine the outcomes? These experiments have been done—at least seventeen times—and have conclusively shown that there are no local hidden variables that determine outcomes. Rather, nature is full of quantum events that take place at the level of subatomic particles like electrons. They are not determined by the state of the system prior to the event. For example, if a quantum event (a collapse of a quantum waveform) yields an electron with a specific spin, there was nothing about the state of the system prior to the event that determined that specific spin. The experiments based on Bell’s theory have been conclusive: Nature is not deterministic. Whatever determined the spin, it was not anything in the system prior to the event. Coyne (pictured), a convinced materialist, now seems to be facing the central cognitive dissonance of materialism: He wants to be both a materialist (nature is all there is) and a determinist. But if nature is not determinist, he can’t be both. So he is now, apparently, a former determinist. Recently, he wrote: Yes, we have that feeling of freedom, and that feeling is certainly real, but the illusion is that, as even compatibilists admit, we could not have done other than what we did at any moment in time. And, except for the action of any quantum events, the future is completely determined by the past. [emphasis mine] “Except for action of any quantum events”? I challenge Coyne: What in nature isn’t the action of quantum events? Certainly, every event in the brain is quantum in nature—every brain state, every action potential, every secretion of a neurotransmitter, every bit of protein synthesis or ion flow—is the consequence of quantum events. Because all quantum events are non-deterministic, then all brain states are non-deterministic, and the free will deniers’ claim that nature is deterministic falls to pieces. Coyne will insist (materialists, unlike nature, are completely predictable) that, while quantum events are non-deterministic, quantum events are almost deterministic. That is, various outcomes can be predicted using statistical methods. Thus, we can assign probabilities to the outcomes of quantum processes even if we cannot predict those outcomes with certainty and even though the states are not determined by previous states. Of course, another word for “almost determined” is “undetermined.” And the ability to predict behavior with reasonable confidence in no way refutes free will. You can predict with certainty that Jerry Coyne will defend Darwinism in a blog post. That doesn’t mean that Coyne doesn’t freely choose to do so—he’s not a robot. If I offer my neighbor a million dollars with no strings attached, I can assure you he will take it. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t freely take it. In short, predictability is unrelated to freedom: We can be free and highly predictable (ask a teen if he wants to be liked) or unfree and quite unpredictable (I can’t predict whether or not I’ll get cancer next year but I’m not free to choose cancer). Unpredictability and freedom are different things. Predictability depends on prior knowledge of causes and outcomes whereas freedom depends on independence from absolute compulsion. Without determinism, free will deniers have no justification for their bizarre delusion. We are free to choose based on moral considerations, even though our material processes—our brain states—are often, to a substantial extent, involuntary and they influence us strongly. We are tempted but we can still choose right or wrong. Because nature has been shown by modern physics to be non-deterministic, Coyne is now consigned to deny free will on the basis of something other than determinism. He will need some other basis for his claim that we are meat robots. And, ironically, to the extent that he admits the fact of quantum processes, Coyne will have to choose a new rationale for his delusion that free will isn’t real.
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Post by Admin on Nov 22, 2020 18:23:40 GMT
Our “Reality” Isn’t “Physical.” It’s “Spiritual, Mental & Immaterial” Says Renowned Physicistwww.collective-evolution.com/2020/09/07/our-reality-isnt-physical-its-spiritual-mental-immaterial-says-renowned-physicist/Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter… The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual. The underlying idea he’s getting across with this statement is that in some way shape or form, consciousness is directly intertwined with what we perceive to be our physical material world, and that the nature of reality is made up of non-physical “stuff.” He goes on to emphasize how, in the modern day scientific world, “there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world – but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion.” This illusion he refers to again, is the idea that the make up of our reality is strictly and fundamental physical.” Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental Universe is to invoke ‘decoherence’ — the notion that ‘the physical environment’ is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind.
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Post by Admin on Nov 23, 2020 22:56:10 GMT
“All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena.”
– Nikola Tesla
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Post by Admin on Nov 25, 2020 14:42:44 GMT
Quantum Revolution: Einstein, Aether, And The Unified Field Theory 7 min read By Paul Wagner | July 9, 2020 | Seeking Truth, General Science, Space www.gaia.com/article/quantum-revolution-einstein-aether-and-the-unified-field-theoryIf you enjoy exploring the boundless aspects of quantum physics, you’ll love Nassim Haramein, founder of The Resonance Science Foundation and The Resonance Academy. Born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1962, and now a resident of Holualoa, Hawaii, Nassim has spent a lifetime exploring the unified theories involving space, matter, mass, vacuums, dark energy, electromagnetism, and gravity. Haramein has studied cosmology, quantum mechanics, biology, chemistry, anthropology, and ancient civilizations, which helped him construct his unique geometrical thesis known as The Unified Field Theory or The Haramein-Rauscher Metric, a new solution to Einstein’s Field Equations. Haramein’s postulation reveals and addresses some of the gaping holes in theoretical physics. (Hint: What happened to aether?) Nassim Haramein’s Mission As CEO & Executive Director of Research and Development for his company Torus Tech, Haramein leads various scientists and engineers in the exploration of different theories focused on spacetime, gravity, matter, ether, and quantum vacuum energy extraction. In “Quantum Revolution,” his show on Gaia, Haramein reveals that in ancient knowledge, in ancient civilizations, and in ancient wisdom, there was a unified view. Most of these civilizations gathered around one simple principle; a principle that said that at the base of all creation there is a fundamental energy. The Chinese called it Chi, the Indians called it Prana, and the Egyptians called it Ka, and it was the source of all creation. Haramein says, “Nothing could happen without that energy.” In today’s scientific circles, every revelation is isolated. Segregated research camps are obsessively focused on their premises and rarely exchange information or co-create hypotheses together. This model is antithetical to the nature of the Universe. At its core, it’s artificial. According to Haramein, instead of progressing toward a holistic understanding of how the universe’s aspects interrelate and interact, science has fallen into deaf factions. This “Silo Effect” has limited our perceptions about the causes and effects of cosmological events. As a result, we’ve lost touch with the threads that point to how quantum mechanisms affect consciousness and visa versa.
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Post by Admin on Nov 26, 2020 23:55:11 GMT
The Primacy of Consciousness – The Next Great Scientific RevolutionJoin some of the world’s leading consciousness researchers for a series of round table talks. Presented by the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences, the Galileo Commission, the Scientific and Medical Network, and the Institute of Noetic Sciences A virtual conference December 4 and 5, 2020 Registration required. noetic.org/event/primacy-of-consciousness/What if consciousness is fundamental and even primary? The Galileo Commission report argues for an expansion of the philosophical basis of a science of consciousness beyond the conventional physicalist worldview by widening the evidence base to examine the implications for our understanding of reality of research into significant human experiences such as veridical OBE perceptions in NDEs, children who remember previous lives, and extensive scientific studies of parapsychological phenomena. The Galileo Commission encourages scientists and academics to ‘look through the telescope’ at this evidence base that represents a fundamental challenge to the prevailing materialistic outlook. There is now growing support for the idea that consciousness as fundamental and even primary, as Max Planck noted – and these views have considerably greater explanatory power when it comes to accounting for this wider evidence base, which materialist positions tend to ignore or dismiss – as Jeff Kripal observes, our conclusions are a function of our exclusions and that to ‘dismiss is to miss’. This first Galileo Commission Summit will feature a series of roundtables with most of the prominent researchers in this first volume of the AAPS book series Advances in Postmaterialist Sciences, created with the intent of educating scientists, students, and science-minded readers about postmaterialist consciousness research and its applications. The intention is that each volume combines rigour and creativity, expresses first person (inner experiences) as well as third person (external observations), and facilitates the betterment of humanity and the planet. Brought to you through a partnership between: Galileo Commission Scientific and Medical Network Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences Institute of Noetic Sciences
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Post by Admin on Dec 3, 2020 20:40:18 GMT
"The total number of minds in the Universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings. This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense the whole.” ~Erwin Schrödinger, physicist "All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind. It is like a boundless void which can't be fathomed or measured. It is only necessary to awake to the One Mind, and there is nothing whatsoever to attain. This is the real Buddha. This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection. Above, below and around you, all is spontaneously existing, for there is nowhere which is outside the Buddha Mind." ~Huang Po, Zen patriarch "I like to experience the Universe as one harmonious whole. Every cell has life. Matter, too, has life; it is energy solidified." ~Albert Einstein "Billions of years ago, you were a big bang.. you're not something that's a result of the big bang. You're not something at the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. But we've learned to define ourselves as separate from it. And so a basic problem we've got to go through is to understand that there are no separate things, or separate events. If you can understand this you're gonna have no further problems." ~Alan Watts You Are the Big Bang - Alan Watts www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDmvev6JOP0
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Post by Admin on Dec 26, 2020 21:16:49 GMT
Consciousness is fundamental, pre-exists our Universe and manifests in everything that we think of as real. A brain, as important as it seems, is nothing more than the way that non-local consciousness operates at an "avatar" level during a lifetime. The evidence that all of this is true is consistent and overwhelming. But mainstream science is still bound by the centuries-old “materialist dogma” and stuck with the “hard problem” of consciousness. If we assume that consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain activity, as some neuroscientists still presume to be true, where does it come from? Consciousness: Redefining the Mind-Body Problemalexvikoulov.medium.com/consciousness-redefining-the-mind-body-problem-d44bd0c27526
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Post by Admin on Jan 9, 2021 20:56:42 GMT
SCIENCE-BASED REASONS WHY MATERIALISM IS A DEAD END Bernardo Kastrup points out that there is an “impassable explanatory gap between material quantities and experiential qualities.”mindmatters.ai/2021/01/science-based-reasons-why-materialism-is-a-dead-end/Bernardo Kastrup, a Dutch computer scientist and philosopher who has published fundamental theoretical reflections on the mind matter problem, offers some useful reflections on why materialism can;t really be true. First—and we sometimes forget this—science only exists as it is perceived by the human mind. We could do it well or badly or someway in between. We could succeed or fail. But it is a world of ideas, not things. He writes, Materialism—the view that nature is fundamentally constituted by matter outside and independent of mind—is a metaphysics, in that it makes statements about what nature essentially is. As such, it is also a theoretical inference: we cannot empirically observe matter outside and independent of mind, for we are forever locked in mind. All we can observe are the contents of perception, which are inherently mental. Even the output of measurement instruments is only accessible to us insofar as it is mentally perceived. BERNARDO KASTRUP, “WHY MATERIALISM IS A DEAD-END” AT IAI.TV (NOVEMBER 15, 2019) Perhaps one reason we sometimes forget this is that we imagine science to be the equipment scientists use or the journals in which they express their ideas. But is actually the ideas themselves, sometimes expressed as massive explanations of cell biology or sometimes as simply as E=MC2 And then we must ask, what about all the rest of life? Is an experience really just its material coordinates in the brain? There is no science reason to believe so. Kastrup writes: For starters, there is nothing about the parameters of material arrangements—say, the position and momentum of the atoms constituting our brain—in terms of which we could deduce, at least in principle, how it feels to fall in love, to taste wine, or to listen to a Vivaldi sonata. There is an impassable explanatory gap between material quantities and experiential qualities, which philosophers refer to as the ‘hard problem of consciousness.’ Many people don’t recognize this gap because they think of matter as already having intrinsic qualities—such as color, taste, etc.—which contradicts mainstream materialism: according to the latter, color, taste, etc., are all generated by our brain, inside our skull. They don’t exist in the world out there, which is supposedly purely abstract. BERNARDO KASTRUP, “WHY MATERIALISM IS A DEAD-END” AT IAI.TV (NOVEMBER 15, 2019) Materialism has the advantage of being simple: You are your body. Your mind is your brain. The universe is a collection of rocks floating around. But the fact that we can even think these things shows that that’s not really the universe we live in. You may also enjoy: Must science be materialist? Philosopher Peter Vickers says yes. Philosopher and computer scientist Bernardo Kastrup says no. To claim that science must oppose non-materialist ideas is to make it into an ideology. We know little about some aspects of our universe. and Bernardo Kastrup argues for a universal mind as a reasonable idea
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Post by Admin on Jan 30, 2021 17:08:50 GMT
Contrapuntal consciousnessThe music of Bach is full of suggestive structures of counterpoint and recursion (even if Hofstadter got it quite wrong) aeon.co/essays/what-the-music-of-bach-can-teach-us-about-consciousnessAchilles: Frankly, I’m a little confused by the title. After all, what do Copper, Silver, and Gold have to do with each other? … Now if the title were, say, Giraffes, Silver, Gold, or Copper, Elephants, Gold, why, I could see it… Tortoise: Perhaps you would prefer Copper, Silver, Baboons? Achilles: Oh, absolutely! But that original title is a loser. No one would understand it. Tortoise: I’ll tell my friend. He’ll be delighted to have a catchier title (as will his publisher). From Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979) by Douglas Hofstadter Twenty years ago, in the preface to the 20th-anniversary edition of his classic book, Douglas Hofstadter marvelled at how misunderstood its thesis has been. A treatise on the nature of consciousness, it is often wildly misconstrued as an exploration of how ‘math, art, and music are really all the same’. But one likely source of the confusion is in the name – which is, at the same time, a big reason for the book’s lasting popularity: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, or GEB for short, sounds like a promise of just such a dazzling, cosmic counterpoint. Another likely culprit is Hofstadter’s own musings about music. While M C Escher’s artwork elegantly (and literally) illustrates many of the book’s themes, Hofstadter’s attempts at justifying the inclusion of Bach are mostly banal and often badly off the mark. There are good reasons for GEB’s fame besides the sexy and marketable title, though. In its attempt to build a grand theory of minds and meanings, the book discusses an eclectic range of topics and, at its best, does it in a genuinely enlightening way. It is obviously an inspired work, even if the fundamental case it sets out to make falls flat. Like most attempts at ‘explaining’ consciousness, GEB is rooted in a category mistake: it treats our phenomenological core as just another phenomenon, making the book an 800-page exercise in begging the question. But it’s a stimulating 800 pages, riffing on fractals, Zen koans, computer languages, quantum physics and much more. To his credit, Hofstadter at least senses that the volume of a phonebook is required if you claim to be adding something to this perennial conversation. At the centre of GEB’s thesis is a concept that Hofstadter calls the ‘strange loop’, a system of tangled hierarchies, often self-referential and paradoxical – and one that, in his view, gives rise to our sense of selfhood. Like with any complex system of logically governed symbols, his argument goes, the symbol-manipulation of our brains leads (as the 20th-century mathematician Kurt Gödel showed) inevitably to self-reference. This is what self-awareness is, in Hofstadter’s final analysis: the ability of our internal, neurally processed formal system to reference itself, to ‘talk about itself’, as a property that is mathematically predetermined to emerge. An important strand in GEB’s exploration of such strange and loopy entities is recursion. A simple and intuitive illustration of the concept, and one that the book starts out with, is of a story inside a story: a self-similar structure, in which each new hierarchical level is nested within a lower one. This recursive nesting can either continue indefinitely (as in fractal geometry) or until the levels ‘bottom out’ (as with the leaves of a fern, or the 1,001 tales of Arabian Nights). Nature and human artifacts abound with examples of recursion and self-similarity, and Hofstadter exploits a great many to explain the concept. With his third titular character, however, he struggles. In an effort to keep Bach relevant to the discussion, Hofstadter takes an oddly specific example (‘the gigue from the French Suite No 5’) and goes on to give descriptions that are so general they could apply to any number of tonal pieces. His main point is that the way the music moves through different keys – a process known as modulation – is recursive. But key changes are not organised in anything resembling stacks in computer languages, as Hofstadter would have it, with each new level nested within the previous one; nor do they create the expectation of ‘returning back in a reverse order’. Modulation is a defining characteristic of tonal music: it is not unique to Bach, nor is it a recursive phenomenon.
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Post by Admin on Feb 25, 2021 20:29:47 GMT
Published: 06 July 2005 The mental Universe Richard Conn Henry Nature volume 436, page29(2005)The only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. www.nature.com/articles/436029aThe only reality is mind and observations, but observations are not of things. To see the Universe as it really is, we must abandon our tendency to conceptualize observations as things. Historically, we have looked to our religious leaders to understand the meaning of our lives; the nature of our world. With Galileo Galilei, this changed. In establishing that the Earth goes around the Sun, Galileo not only succeeded in believing the unbelievable himself, but also convinced almost everyone else to do the same. This was a stunning accomplishment in ‘physics outreach’ and, with the subsequent work of Isaac Newton, physics joined religion in seeking to explain our place in the Universe. The more recent physics revolution of the past 80 years has yet to transform general public understanding in a similar way. And yet a correct understanding of physics was accessible even to Pythagoras. According to Pythagoras, “number is all things”, and numbers are mental, not mechanical. Likewise, Newton called light “particles”, knowing the concept to be an ‘effective theory’ — useful, not true. As noted by Newton's biographer Richard Westfall: “The ultimate cause of atheism, Newton asserted, is ‘this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in themselves.’” Newton knew of Newton's rings and was untroubled by what is shallowly called ‘wave/particle duality’. The 1925 discovery of quantum mechanics solved the problem of the Universe's nature. Bright physicists were again led to believe the unbelievable — this time, that the Universe is mental. According to Sir James Jeans: “the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.” But physicists have not yet followed Galileo's example, and convinced everyone of the wonders of quantum mechanics. As Sir Arthur Eddington explained: “It is difficult for the matter-of-fact physicist to accept the view that the substratum of everything is of mental character.” In his play Copenhagen, which brings quantum mechanics to a wider audience, Michael Frayn gives these word to Niels Bohr: “we discover that... the Universe exists... only through the understanding lodged inside the human head.” Bohr's wife replies, “this man you've put at the centre of the Universe — is it you, or is it Heisenberg?” This is what sticks in the craw of Eddington's “matter-of-fact” physicists. Discussing the play, John H. Marburger III, President George W. Bush's science adviser, observes that “in the Copenhagen interpretation of microscopic nature, there are neither waves nor particles”, but then frames his remarks in terms of a non-existent “underlying stuff”. He points out that it is not true that matter “sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle... The wave is not in the underlying stuff; it is in the spatial pattern of detector clicks... We cannot help but think of the clicks as caused by little localized pieces of stuff that we might as well call particles. This is where the particle language comes from. It does not come from the underlying stuff, but from our psychological predisposition to associate localized phenomena with particles.” In place of “underlying stuff” there have been serious attempts to preserve a material world — but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion. Scientists have sadly left it to non-physicist Frayn to note the Emperor's lack of clothes: “it seems to me that the view which [Murray] Gell-Mann favours, and which involves what he calls alternative ‘histories’ or ‘narratives’, is precisely as anthropocentric as Bohr's, since histories and narratives are not freestanding elements of the Universe, but human constructs, as subjective and as restricted in their viewpoint as the act of observation.” Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics. A common way to evade the mental Universe is to invoke ‘decoherence’ — the notion that ‘the physical environment’ is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in ‘Renninger-type’ experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The Universe is entirely mental. In the tenth century, Ibn al-Haytham initiated the view that light proceeds from a source, enters the eye, and is perceived. This picture is incorrect but is still what most people think occurs, including, unless pressed, most physicists. To come to terms with the Universe, we must abandon such views. The world is quantum mechanical: we must learn to perceive it as such. One benefit of switching humanity to a correct perception of the world is the resulting joy of discovering the mental nature of the Universe. We have no idea what this mental nature implies, but — the great thing is — it is true. Beyond the acquisition of this perception, physics can no longer help. You may descend into solipsism, expand to deism, or something else if you can justify it — just don't ask physics for help. There is another benefit of seeing the world as quantum mechanical: someone who has learned to accept that nothing exists but observations is far ahead of peers who stumble through physics hoping to find out ‘what things are’. If we can ‘pull a Galileo,’ and get people believing the truth, they will find physics a breeze. The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy. FURTHER READING Marburger, J. On the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics www.ostp.gov/html/Copenhagentalk.pdf (2002). Henry, R. C. Am. J. Phys. 58, 1087–1100 (1990). Steiner, M. The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998). Author information Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 21218, Maryland, USA Richard Conn Henry About this article Cite this article Henry, R. The mental Universe. Nature 436, 29 (2005). doi.org/10.1038/436029a
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 17:23:22 GMT
Machine learning and artificial intelligence are increasingly taking the stage, with huge philosophical implications. We have been following this issue in our RSF science blog, first through the article Between the Holographic Approach and Data Science where we addressed the potential of trained artificial neural networks to replace our scientific models, and the possibility of reality being a numerical simulation was discussed. Somehow we had anticipated the work from Vitaly Vanchurin, from the University of Minnesota Duluth, proposing that we live in a neural network and affirming that only through neural networks we could find the theory of everything and grand unification theory. So, our second article entitled "Is the universe a Neural network?", addressed this later possibility. Article by Inés Urdaneta, Physicist, Resonance Science Foundation Research Scientist New Machine Learning Method Raises Questions on the Nature of Reality… AgainFaculty ArticleInes UrdanetaQuantum PhysicsScience News Feb 13, 2021 www.resonancescience.org/blog/New-Machine-Learning-Method-Raises-Questions-on-the-Nature-of-Reality-Again
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Post by Admin on Feb 27, 2021 17:43:05 GMT
“The materialistic consciousness of our culture … is the root cause of the global crisis; it is not our business ethics, our politics or even our personal lifestyles. These are symptoms of a deeper underlying problem. Our whole civilization is unsustainable. And the reason that it is unsustainable is that our value system, the consciousness with which we approach the world, is an unsustainable mode of consciousness.” — Peter Russell Transformation of consciousnessExcerpt from the Worldview Dimension of Gaia Education’s online course in Design for Sustainability blog.usejournal.com/transformation-of-consciousness-6a911712da62
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Post by Admin on Feb 28, 2021 7:51:34 GMT
Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind by Marjorie Hines Woollacott (Author), Pim van Lommel (Foreword)
Book Award of the Parapsychological Association, 2017 Winner of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 2017 (Spiritual) First Place, Nautilus Book Awards 2017 (Science, Cosmology and Expanding Consciousness) First Place, International Excellence Mind, Body Spirit Book Awards, 2017 (Human Consciousness) Bronze Medal, Feathered Quill Book Awards, 2017 (Best Religious/Spiritual) First Place, Great Northwest Book Festival, 2017 (Spiritual Books) First Place, New England Book Festival, 2016 (Spiritual Books) As a neuroscientist, Marjorie Woollacott had no doubts that the brain was a purely physical entity controlled by chemicals and electrical pulses. When she experimented with meditation for the first time, however, her entire world changed. Woollacott’s journey through years of meditation has made her question the reality she built her career upon and has forced her to ask what human consciousness really is. Infinite Awareness pairs Woollacott’s research as a neuroscientist with her self-revelations about the mind’s spiritual power. Between the scientific and spiritual worlds, she breaks open the definition of human consciousness to investigate the existence of a non-physical and infinitely powerful mind.
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