The rift between mysticism and the modern sciences derives mainly from elements of scientism: certain branches of the natural sciences, broadly disavow subjective experience as meaningless, misunderstanding the limitations of the ancient languages. That said, several areas of study in biology (Mae Wan Ho and Lynn Margulis are two examples) and philosophy address the same issues that concern the mystic, and modern physicists now struggle to understand a multiple dimensional reality that mystics' have attempted to describe for millennia. Physicist David Bohm speaking of consciousness expressing itself as matter and/or energy would be completely understood by the mystic.
Philosophy tends to be concerned with issues closely related to mysticism, such as the subjective experience of existence in Existentialism. While existentialism suggests a nothingness rather than a oneness, the mystic's pursuit of emptiness points directly toward a potential unity between physics and psychology that does not at present exist. The mystic's attempt to describe cause and effect between one's internal state and the miraculous, hints at a close connection between psychological stability (ego transcendence) and the mysterious realm of causality quantum physicists are now deciphering - dimensional reality shifts that synchronize with states of consciousness and unconflicted choices.
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Anonymous2008-03-10 22:18
It may be noted that the whirlpools in the living system are, in fact, composed of chemical flow (rather than mechanical flow) from the repetitive catalytic cycles in cells that form the basis of all metabolic processes. Like the mechanical whirlpools, the catalytic cycles also possess self-regulation, as well as self-amplifying feedback loops, that push the system farther and further away from equilibrium until it reaches a threshold of stability, or “bifurcation point”. This “bifurcation point” is a point of instability at which new forms of order may emerge spontaneously resulting in natural development and evolution.
In fact this entire universe, according to the latest model in Quantum Mechanics, is a huge conglomerate of numerous whirlpools of matter, energy and information having various shapes, sizes, colors and smells, expressed as vortices within other vortices, in decreasing dimensions, and ultimately ending in a cocktail of quantum energy and information, where spontaneous creation and dissolution of matter are taking place continuously. Thus, the organism consists of numerous vortexes of thought (information) and metabolic energy in diminishing sizes working in concert with desire and will power.
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Anonymous2008-03-10 22:42
Whether a physical entity was a wave or a particle seemed to depend on what you measured. Measure its position, and you concluded that the entity is a material body. Measure its wavelength, and you concluded that the entity is some type of continuous field. Furthermore, you can imagine deciding which quantity to measure at the last instant, long after the entity had been emitted from its source, which might be a distant galaxy.
Some have inferred from this puzzle that the very nature of the universe is not objective, but depends on the consciousness of the observer. This implies that the universe only exists within some cosmic, quantum field of mind, with the human mind part of that field and existing throughout all space and time.
Eugene Wigner once said: "The laws of quantum mechanics itself cannot be formulated... without recourse to the concept of consciousness" (Wigner 1961).
A similar statement by John Archibald Wheeler's is also used in justifying a connection between the quantum and consciousness: "No elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon... In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe" (Wheeler 1982).
In their book The Conscious Universe, Astrophysicist Menas Kafatos and Philosopher Robert Nadeau interpret the wave function as ultimate reality itself: "Being, in its physical analogue at least, has been 'revealed' in the wave function any sense we have of profound unity with the cosmos could be presumed to correlate with the action of the deterministic wave function." (Kafatos 1990).
Physicist Amit Goswami sees a "self-aware universe," with quantum mechanics providing support for claims of paranormal phenomena. He says: "psychic phenomena, such as distant viewing and out-of-body experiences, are examples of the nonlocal operation of consciousness. Quantum mechanics undergirds such a theory by providing crucial support for the case of nonlocality of consciousness" (Goswami 1993).
>whirlpools of matter, energy and information having various shapes, sizes, colors and smells
a) only visible objects with measurable dimensions have shapes
b) only objects that reflect light have colors
c) only chemicals have smells (you cannot smell muons)
Recent understandings of neuroscience state the downward directions from the cortex are to be taken into account with the upward motions of the sensory nerve endings in the a-syncronic neuronal temporo-spatially distributed understandings of the corrolates of sensory percerption. This means that it is impossible to distinguish the momentarily external from the historically internal if you are, as anyone, an inhabitant of a brain. 'As if a magic lantern cast the nerves in pattern on a screen'.
It is common knowledge that we live in a subjective universe and the marvellous concoction of the imagination in classical art and of the rigorous investigation of replicable inference in Science is the Objective (God's or the Writer-in-the-Third-Person's viewpoint). This fails and must be replaced in Cosmological views by the integrated relative and in Quantum Physics by whatever can replace Local Realism.
We live in a psychological reality in which emotions and ideas (both twigged and not apprehended) have modified our perceptions.
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Anonymous2008-03-11 19:02
nb4 schrodinger's cat and "consciousness causes collapse" bullshit
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Anonymous2008-03-13 0:33
>>7
Chemicals don't have smells, smell is the way we (and all other animals) sense chemicals.
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Anonymous2008-03-13 0:57
A common argument underlying the quantum mind thesis is that classical mechanics cannot explain consciousness, if only because Galileo and Newton (together with their admirers, viz.: Locke, Hobbes and Descartes) excluded the secondary qualities from the physical world.
To make it possible for scientists to describe nature mathematically, Galileo postulated that they should restrict themselves to studying the essential properties of material bodies - shapes, numbers, and movement - which could be measured and quantified. Other properties, like color, sound, taste, or smell, were merely subjective mental projections which should be excluded from the domain of science.
Proponents of the Quantum mind state that perceived qualities such as sound, taste and smell are an essential part of the human experience and therefore cannot be discounted. They believe that classical mechanics fails to account for the experience of such phenomena. Similarly, they believe that the internal experiences of consciousness, such as dreaming and memory, all of which are 'part and parcel' of everyday human experience remain unaccounted for.
In Bohm's scheme there is a fundamental level where consciousness is not distinct from matter. Bohm's view of consciousness is connected to Karl Pribram's holographic conception of the brain. Pribram regards sight and the other senses as lenses without which the other senses would appear as a hologram. Pribram proposes that information is recorded all over the brain, and that it is enfolded into a whole, similar to a hologram. It is suggested that memories are connected by association and manipulated by logical thought. If the brain is also receiving sensory input all these are proposed to unite in overall experience or consciousness.
Bernroider bases his work on recent studies of the potassium (K+)ion channel in its closed state and draws particularly on the atomic-level spectroscopy work of the MacKinnon group. The ion channels have a filter region which allows in K+ ions and bars other ions. These studies show that the filter region has a framework of five sets of four oxygen atoms, which are part of the carboxyl group of amino-acid molecules in the surrounding protein. These are referred to as binding pockets. Two K+ ions are trapped in the selection filter of the closed ion channel. Each of these ions is electostatically bound to two sets of oxygen atoms or binding pockets, involving eight oxygen atoms in total. Both ions in the channel oscillate between two configurations.
Bernroider uses this recently revealed structure to speculate about the possibility of quantum coherence in the ion channels. Bernroider and co-author Sisir Roy's calculations suggested to them that the behaviour of the ions in the K channel could only be understood at the quantum level. Taking this as their starting point, they then ask whether the structure of the ion channel can be related to logic states. Further calculations lead them to suggest that the K+ ions and the oxygen atoms of the binding pockets are two quantum-entangled sub-systems, which they then equate to a quantum computational mapping. The ions that are destined to be expelled from the channel are proposed to encode information about the state of the oxygen atoms. It is further proposed the separate ion channels could be quantum entangled with one another
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Anonymous2008-03-13 0:58
Physically, Henry Stapp approach is aligned with objective collapse theory, in that the deterministic evolution of the wave function, and its indeterministic collapse are seen as two real and ontologically distinct phenomena. Collapse events occurring within the brain — the mind's observation or measurement of the brain — are particularly important. Since Stapp sees collapse as a mental process and the deterministic evolution of brain states as physical, his approach is philosophically aligned with interactionist dualism. The process by which collapse selects an actuality from a set of possibilities is seen by Stapp as literally a process of choice, and not merely a random dice-throw. His approach has implications with regard to time. Since the future depends on decisions in the present, it is not pre-existing, as in the block universe theory; rather there is an evolving universe in which subjects participate, as in Whitehead's metaphysics.
Frohlich is the source of the idea that quantum coherent waves could be generated in the neuronal network. Frohlich argued that it was not clear how order could be sustained in living systems given the disruptive influence of the fluctuations in biochemical processes. He viewed the electric potential across the neuron membrane as the observable feature of some form of underlying quantum order. His studies claimed to show that with an oscillating charge in a thermal bath, large numbers of quanta may condense into a single state known as a Bose condensate. This state allows long-range correlation amongst the dipoles involved. Further to this, biomolecules were proposed to line up along actin filaments (part of the cytoskeleton) and dipole oscillations propagate along the filaments as quantum coherent waves. This now has some experimental support in the form of confirmation that biomolecules with high electric dipole moment have been shown to have a periodic oscillation.
ITT newagefags try to pass of mysticism as philosophy
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Anonymous2008-03-19 14:51
It's not philosophy. It's FACT.
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Anonymous2008-03-19 14:56
Known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of human consciousness. New physics specifies the requirements for a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics. The present computer is unable to have intelligence because it is a deterministic system that simply executes algorithms, as a billiard table where billiard balls act as message carriers and their interactions act as logical decisions. The rational processes of the human mind are not completely algorithmic and can thus be duplicated by a sufficiently complex computer -- this is in contrast to Biological Naturalism, where human behavior but not consciousness might be simulated. The human consciousness transcends formal logic systems because things such as the insolubility of the halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem restrict an algorithmically based logic from traits such as mathematical insight.
>>19
Known laws of physics find nothing unknown in the formation of the Human brain. Therefore, algorithmic or not, when that meatware is duplicated in hardware, the same result should be achieved.
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Anonymous2008-03-19 16:13
Consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all existence. The universe is self-aware, and consciousness creates the physical world. Once people give up the assumption that there is an objective reality independent of consciousness, the paradoxes of quantum physics are explainable. The villain here is materialism--the teaching that everything is comprised of atoms--and its tag-along doctrines of locality (that interactions between objects occur in local space-time), strong objectivity (that objects exist independently of consciousness), and epiphenomenalism (that mind is an accidental by-product of brain function). Quantum physics has laid to rest this view of reality: Quantum objects jump from here to there without passing through intervening space, disproving locality; Heisenberg's uncertainty principle disproves strong objectivity.
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Anonymous2008-03-19 16:14
The new age folks have figured out using 'quantum' lets them say anything.
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Anonymous2008-03-19 16:19
"The exceptional man," Schopenhauer one remarked, "is like an archer who can strike a target others cannot, the genius is the one who can strike a target others cannot even see." Mysterious quantum properties - such as quantum indeterminacy - may be harnessed or amplified by the nervous system to allow for the exercise of free will. Quantum level "effects," such as quantum tunneling, are both ubiquitous and necessary to understand classical level phenomena, and the lowest scale quantum level "effects" influence the initial state of the next scale, while adaptive pressures of the next higher levels shape the boundary conditions of the lowest scale. This amounts to a mutually adaptive feedback loop. It's hardly a quantum leap to suggest that quantum level "events" - events which have no cause - bear at least a superficial relationship to the ancient Greek and Scholastic notion of the "uncaused cause" of matter-material. Or likewise, that quantum level events "function" as the source of a continual "creation" that sustains the universe at every instant. Philosophy may be blind without the aid of science, but science may not know what too look for without the help of philosophy. Science has hitherto assumed a methodological and metaphysical determinism. In a deterministic framework it is difficult - if not impossible - then, to have conceived of an experiment taking place on the wholly classical level that would disconfirm determinism (the double slit experiment, of course, is the exception). And given that the essence of a scientific theory is that it should be susceptible to disproof we are left to conclude that metaphysical determinism wasn't scientific at all - it was an article of faith (of a rather peculiar sort). More to the point, metaphysical determinism was similar to Newton's notion of an absolute frame of reference - part of the intellectual scaffolding that supported and constrained what questions made sense in a given paradigm, yet lay unexamined as the un-provable assumptions within that system. That such esteemed scientists - the Churchland's, Dennett, and Dawkins, to name a few - could manage to bully and harangue so much of the scientific community into accepting what are ultimately dogmatic assertions is a symptom of a gross philosophical illiteracy among the highest strata of empiricists.
Some quantum theorists have suggested that the collapse of a superposition to an actual state isn't just a case of matter going from a state of potentiality to actuality - to use Aristotle's terminology - but that the potential for "experience" is inherent quantum level, but it is only through collapse of the wave function from potentiality to actuality that "experience" of a sort occurs - that is, quantum measurement is experience. Though presumably the amplification of the quantum capacity for experience through a human (or artificial) nervous system would be necessary for the richly textured sense of experience we as humans experience. In this case, the fundamental energy behind the universe - the quantum realm - would be conscious only adventitiously - through us. And our consciousness - our "I" - would be but an attribute of the noumenal - the un-conceptualizable ground of existence.
... then suddenly I have all the merit their rants have.
There is no evidence that "quantum" effects are at work in the human brain in achieving our brand of consciousness. Consciousness on Earth seems to be achieved in several species, of which Humans are the most advanced. Period. There's no need to use mysticism to fill some missing hole in the data.
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4tran2008-03-20 18:05
>>24
I think there actually are quantum effects at work in the human brain, however, I agree that "there's no need to use mysticism to fill some [non existent] missing hole in the data".
It's a pity these people keep using science buzz words to legitimize what they're doing without really understanding what the buzz words mean.
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Anonymous2008-03-24 7:35
Waht a pile of new age bullshit.
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Anonymous2008-03-25 12:40
>>25 I think there actually are quantum effects at work in the human brain
Neurons work on much larger scales than quantum effects.
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Anonymous2008-03-25 13:28
How do you know there are no subatomic particles in the human brain?
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Anonymous2008-03-25 16:16
>>27
Agreed, but neurons do not comprise the fundamental irreducible elements of the brain. At some level, quantum effects are at work to cause neurons to have whatever properties they have.
>>29
Now it's time for you to cite some references that show that quantum effects are directly causative of mental processes.
Oh, shit, that's right: YOU CAN'T. There's no evidence that thoughts are influenced by quantum events. Thinking is a chemical act.
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Anonymous2008-03-25 17:59
Atoms are made of subatomic particles. Energy can exist at the subatomic level. Smaller parts make up a larger whole.
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Anonymous2008-03-25 18:00
>>30
I'm not suggesting direct causation, just that, at some level, there must exist a dependence on quantum laws.
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4tran2008-03-25 18:44
>>28
At any given moment, there are probably billions+ of neutrinos (from the sun), but they're weakly interacting, so they pass right through. There are probably several others, but most decay rather quickly into protons, electrons, and neutrinos.
>>30
We don't have evidence yet that thoughts are influenced by quantum events, but keep in mind that chemistry is inherently quantum mechanical. All those shells and subshells result from spherical harmonics. The bonding probably result from perturbations on those spherical harmonics. Fundamentally, the biggest problem we're having is that we can't solve the quantum N body problem :(