Hugh Johnson

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The author's argument is NOT panpsychism and he explains its limitations related to the bottom-up approach to consciousness. His proposition is cosmopsychism - i.e. all matter is conscious because the Universe as whole is conscious. He gives the analogy with the table as an illustration.
Good of you to point that out. It was my understanding that cosmopsychism was a subset of panpsychism, with micropsychism being the bottom-up approach to conciousness. At least that is how most articles describe it. I would suggest that this here is a rather subtle argument that has been had previously between Holism/Vedanta and Non-Duality/Advaita, and I lean towards the non-dual approach. I'll let Spira himself explain.

 
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Hugh Johnson

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So is your metaphysical viewpoint a non-dualist version of idealism? In other words, do you think that consciousness is the sole basis of reality?
Idealism? No. But conciousness is the ultimate basis of reality as far as I can tell. Show me a thing that is outside conciousness and I will abandon this view. I can not see how you would do that, though.

So, where is your proof? We're still eagerly waiting. You're the one with the indefensible worldview here throwing around with nonsense like the material basis of consciousness has been disproven. This whole forum would be a joke, if that were true.
Again with the emotional arguments and aggression. Sciences are no less valuable under my paradigm.

But I'll provide some empirical results which I argue disprove the materialist paradigm:

http://www.deanradin.com/papers/Physics Essays Radin final.pdf



Bernardo Kastrup, Mainstreaming Controversial Philosophy of Mind Theories |378| - Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf

PUBLICATIONS - Bengston Research



Unless you materialist paradigm can explain things like telepathy, remote viewing, physical effects of thoughts then it can not be correct. Preponderance of evidence also suggests that rebirth and past lives are real, considering we have people with accurate memories of them, statistical evidence, and even physical marks from past lives. Which suggests that conciousness exists independently of matter.
 

Kartoffel

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Idealism? No. But conciousness is the ultimate basis of reality as far as I can tell. Show me a thing that is outside conciousness and I will abandon this view. I can not see how you would do that, though.


Again with the emotional arguments and aggression. Sciences are no less valuable under my paradigm.

But I'll provide some empirical results which I argue disprove the materialist paradigm:

http://www.deanradin.com/papers/Physics Essays Radin final.pdf



Bernardo Kastrup, Mainstreaming Controversial Philosophy of Mind Theories |378| - Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf

PUBLICATIONS - Bengston Research



Unless you materialist paradigm can explain things like telepathy, remote viewing, physical effects of thoughts then it can not be correct. Preponderance of evidence also suggests that rebirth and past lives are real, considering we have people with accurate memories of them. Which requires that conciousness exists independently of matter.


How are these observations in any way incompatible with materialism? Ray Peat, Robert Becker, and many others have been explaining for decades how biological organisms create fields that can extend beyond the limits of the "solid" surface of the organism. Fields, thoughts, and the effects that are described by these people can't exist without a material basis. Like that person in the video you posted, you are just babbling without providing any substance or actual propositions. You are simply projecting your religious beliefs onto science to create some distorted version of it that suits your belief in a mystic, hidden supernatural realm that exists independently of everything else. You might think this quackery very original and sophisticated, but I have to disappoint you. It's nothing but rehashed Platonism and cartesian dualism of mind and matter. You are what Ray Peat would call the "theoretical type".

"According to Toulman and Goodfield ( The Architecture of Matter), it was de La Mettrie's uncompromising materialism that caused his (truthful) physiology of organization to be forgotten by the scientific tradition, while Rene Descartes' double reality-mind and matter as separate substances, interacting only in humans, and there only at one point, which he thought might be the pineal gland— allowed him to compromise with religious beliefs. . . There had in fact to be a compromise;and the terms of this compromise have deeply influenced the subsequent development of science. Even today, their mark is evident in the structure of scientific ideas and institutions."
For Descartes, science shouldn't mess with either God or the human mind. Theories about nature, including animals, could not refer to mentality. The traditional Christian sense of disgust for the body and matter had its influence on Descartes (and on the scientists who still follow his doctrines), but it was explicitly repudiated by de La Mettrie.

Above I have said that involvement in work orients a person toward the truth, that is, your "hypotheses" grow out of experience with the subject matter. Descartes explicitly claimed that it didn't matter how you choose your hypothesis: "Even supposing that I had assumed these principles at random, without having had reason to be convinced of their soundness, there would still be as good reason to suppose them the true causes of all that I have inferred, as in the case of a code deciphered by guesswork." A more perfect example of Morris's "theoretical" type would be hard to find. I don't know anything about de La Mettrie's childhood, but Descartes' father was a government official. I could give many contemporary examples, but these people were important in the history of philosophy and science, and they illustrate that both substance and method of science will vary systematically according to one's attitude toward the world.

If more scientists felt toward the world as La Mettrie and Ukhtomskii did, there would be not only a different "science," but a different world. "Nature is an artist of unlimited capacities," but such art is invisible to those who consider science to be a matter of decoding a message written once in dead matter
" (Ray Peat, GE)
Btw: If I write something one a piece of paper that is a compliment in one language and an insult in another, and then pin it on a glas of water, do you think the water will be delighted or get mad? This video about Dr Masura really made my day. Thank you! You can't make stuff like this up :D I wonder when his "results" will be replicated.

Idealism? No. But conciousness is the ultimate basis of reality as far as I can tell. Show me a thing that is outside conciousness and I will abandon this view. I can not see how you would do that, though.

Broken record?​
 
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Hugh Johnson

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How are these observations in any way incompatible with materialism? Ray Peat, Robert Becker, and many others have been explaining for decades how biological organisms create fields that can extend beyond the limits of the "solid" surface of the organism. Fields, thoughts, and the effects that are described by these people can't exist without a material basis. Like that person in the video you posted, you are just babbling without providing any substance or actual propositions. You are simply projecting your religious beliefs onto science to create some distorted version of it that suits your belief in a mystic, hidden supernatural realm that exists independently of everything else. You might think this quackery very original and sophisticated, but I have to disappoint you. It's nothing but rehashed Platonism and cartesian dualism of mind and matter. You are what Ray Peat would call the "theoretical type".

"According to Toulman and Goodfield ( The Architecture of Matter), it was de La Mettrie's uncompromising materialism that caused his (truthful) physiology of organization to be forgotten by the scientific tradition, while Rene Descartes' double reality-mind and matter as separate substances, interacting only in humans, and there only at one point, which he thought might be the pineal gland— allowed him to compromise with religious beliefs. . . There had in fact to be a compromise;and the terms of this compromise have deeply influenced the subsequent development of science. Even today, their mark is evident in the structure of scientific ideas and institutions."
For Descartes, science shouldn't mess with either God or the human mind. Theories about nature, including animals, could not refer to mentality. The traditional Christian sense of disgust for the body and matter had its influence on Descartes (and on the scientists who still follow his doctrines), but it was explicitly repudiated by de La Mettrie.

Above I have said that involvement in work orients a person toward the truth, that is, your "hypotheses" grow out of experience with the subject matter. Descartes explicitly claimed that it didn't matter how you choose your hypothesis: "Even supposing that I had assumed these principles at random, without having had reason to be convinced of their soundness, there would still be as good reason to suppose them the true causes of all that I have inferred, as in the case of a code deciphered by guesswork." A more perfect example of Morris's "theoretical" type would be hard to find. I don't know anything about de La Mettrie's childhood, but Descartes' father was a government official. I could give many contemporary examples, but these people were important in the history of philosophy and science, and they illustrate that both substance and method of science will vary systematically according to one's attitude toward the world.

If more scientists felt toward the world as La Mettrie and Ukhtomskii did, there would be not only a different "science," but a different world. "Nature is an artist of unlimited capacities," but such art is invisible to those who consider science to be a matter of decoding a message written once in dead matter
" (Ray Peat, GE)
Btw: If I write something one a piece of paper that is a compliment in one language and an insult in another, and then pin it on a glas of water, do you think the water will be delighted or get mad? This video about Dr Masura really made my day. Thank you! You can't make stuff like this up :D I wonder when his "results" will be replicated.



Broken record?​
What do you know, an actual attempt at an argument. Of course, you throw around a bunch of concepts you do not understand and have not established a physical basis for any of your fields you claim responsible for the effects. It is unlikely those physical fields can reach to other continents, but there are plenty of experiments showing conciousness reaching far away places and times. I have in this thread argued against dualistic views of the world (Descartes), but you desperately keep throwing everything but the kitchen sink at me.
 
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Kartoffel

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The author's argument is NOT panpsychism and he explains its limitations related to the bottom-up approach to consciousness. His proposition is cosmopsychism - i.e. all matter is conscious because the Universe as whole is conscious. He gives the analogy with the table as an illustration.

He says this: "According to holism, the table in front of you does not derive its existence from the sub-atomic particles that compose it; rather, those sub-atomic particles derive their existence from the table" I somehow can't see the logical connection between these two statements. Peat, for example, has talked about the fallacies of reductionism, and elaborated on how a whole is more than the sum of its' parts. But the whole is more than the sum of its' parts because of complex interactions betweens the parts that create higher functions and unforseen possibilities. That's fundamentally different than saying that the parts derive their existence from the whole. In fact, if you think this through to its' final conclusion, the latter statement is nothing else than saying "god created it". The subatomic particles only exist because they exist in me. I only exist because I am part of my galaxy, and this galaxy only exists because it is part of the universe, and the universe only exists because it's part of ???. In the end, you say everything ows its' existence to the universe, and this top down hierarchy is nothing but deism in my opinion. The table analogy doesn't make much sense, either, unless you assume that the table has existed forever. The only acurate thing he says is that holism (his interprettion of it) "has a somewhat mystical association"
Throughout the article, the author refers to, and builds his arguments on, theories that have never been proven like string theory, the big bang, etc. His reasoning is faulty beginning with the premises. How did the table form in the first place, if the molecules constituting it derive their existence from it? How and why did sydney Fox's amino acids form into proteins?
 
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Kartoffel

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What do you know, an actual attempt at an argument. Of course, you throw around a bunch of concepts you do not understand and have not established a physical basis for any of your fields you claim responsible for the effects.

Yes, I am the one doing that. Chuckle

It is unlikely those physical fields can reach to other continents, but there are plenty of experiments showing conciousness reaching far away places and times.

I would be delighted, if you showed me just one of those experiments of a consciousness reaching a far away time!
 

DavidGardner

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Yes, you are and with smug arrogance. (Chuckle.) You create straw men like “Cartesian solipsism,” assuming that no one here is educated enough to see through your fallacious references. Descartes was not a solipsist and Hugh Johnson is obviously not a Cartesian. What’s more you cherry pick empiricists like Hume and Locke, throwing their names around to lend credence to your arguments, while ignoring dozens of other respected philosophers with divergent viewpoints.

The really maddening thing is that this debate between Hugh Johnson’s “Advaita” consciousness monism and your materialist monism has hijacked the entire thread. If you wish to carry on this debate which is only tangentially related to the original topic, please start a new thread.
 

Kartoffel

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Yes, you are and with smug arrogance. (Chuckle.) You create straw men like “Cartesian solipsism,” assuming that no one here is educated enough to see through your fallacious references. Descartes was not a solipsist and Hugh Johnson is obviously not a Cartesian. What’s more you cherry pick empiricists like Hume and Locke, throwing their names around to lend credence to your arguments, while ignoring dozens of other respected philosophers with divergent viewpoints.

The really maddening thing is that this debate between Hugh Johnson’s “Advaita” consciousness monism and your materialist monism has hijacked the entire thread. If you wish to carry on this debate which is only tangentially related to the original topic, please start a new thread.

My intention is neither to be smug nor arrogant. If I appear so at the moment, this is simply a reaction to the arrogance and egotism expressed in Mr Johnsons philosophical ideas. I think a little bite has never done any harm to a philosophical debate.
I'm not sure whether Descartes was a solipsist, he certainly wasn't very smart. I chose the term cartesian solipsist because Descartes, like Mr Johnson, thought that consciousness is something very special, seperate from and above the material body - purely spiritual or divine in nature. I think this actually automatically makes you somewhat of a solipsist. Mr Johnson is obviously one since he believes that consciousness is everything that exists and can be experienced.

I'm not cherrypicking, I just selected the most noteworthy empircists that I could think of in the moment. Why should I feel obligated to list other "respected philosophers with divergent viewpoints"? If they didn't believe in materialism and empiricism, they obviously do not support my argument, and are not really worth talking about. No philosphical sceptic has ever said or done anything important for the world. Your attempt to label my view as material monism is cute - did you read the entire wikipedia page on materialism to come up with that or just the first sentence that equates the two?
 
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