Also, do you suggest that synchronicity can be explained through quantum entanglement?
While we’re at it - if scientifically real is something that’s observable, measurable, and testable - then occultism is not real.
But if we decide to exclude empiricism - all sort of things that don’t exist are actually real because they don’t contradict science - for example non-existing animals or missing planets…
Can I point you in the direction of principles 5 & 6 of my NED?
5: The existence of praeternatural phenomena is consistent with science and reason, but apart from the unique case of psychegenesis, there is no scientific or rational justification for believing in it/them either. The only possible justification for belief is subjective lived experience.
6: We cannot expect people to believe things (any things) based solely on other people’s subjective lived experiences. There will always be skeptics about any alleged praeternatural phenomena (possibly psychegenesis excepted) and their right to skepticism must be respected.
In other words, there is no point in us arguing about whether or not it is objectively real, because it can only be known subjectively. There is an objective true/false answer, but there is no means of collectivising it in the way scientific knowledge can be collectivised. I can know it is true at the same time as other people have no way of knowing whether or not it is true. That’s just the epistemic situation in which we find ourselves. Making this clear is the purpose of the NED.
Do you understand now?
It might be all in your mind.
That is a reasonable position for you. What is not reasonable is that you demand that I accept that it is reasonable for me. It is possible for me to know it is not all in my mind at the same time that it is impossible for me to prove it to anybody else.
I don’t see any real value in this beyond entertainment.
It is deadly serious.
I’d say that some of your views are incoherent.
Perhaps we need to review this after this post. Until this point, you haven’t understood what my views actually are.
No. I didn’t mention quantum entanglement. Synchronicity is a praeternatural phenomena. It is a teleological process linked to the collapse of the wave function, not entanglement. (I don’t rule out entanglement having something to do with it, but that is not what I am proposing).
No. Scientific realism does not imply that anything which is necessarily outside of scientific knowledge isn’t real. That’s scientism, not scientific realism.
Science, scientific realism, scientific materialism and scientism are all different things. This book does a very good job at explaining the differences: The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness: Towards a New Science of Consciousness: Amazon.co.uk: Wallace, B. Alan: 9780195173109: Books
But if we decide to exclude empiricism - all sort of things that don’t exist are actually real because they don’t contradict science - for example non-existing animals or missing planets…
No. Non-scientific things don’t become real just because they are non-scientific. You really haven’t understood the point of the NED. It is very carefully designed to avoid pretty much all of the points you are raising. It anticipates every single one of them.
Thanks for this very appropriate reminder of the importance of nuance here, and I admit my last post was probably an overhasty simplification.
The position I am trying to sketch is a sort of middle ground between what @GeoffDann calls Scientism, and the view that “science has, in its own terms, nothing to say about personal meaning”.
Science can tell us not only about the ‘physical world’ of quantum mechanics, but also the ‘cognitive world’ of cognitive science - but when done right, cognitive science shows us precisely the limits of a scientistic approach that seeks to apply quantification and logic to everything. In general science can tell us the limits of science, and why we do sometimes need to have recourse to what we can call ‘direct experience’ or ‘personal meaning’ or ‘intuition’. An example of this is Kahneman’s distinction between System 1 and System 2, and Vervaeke’s distinction between propositional knowledge and participatory knowledge (arrived at through cognitive science).
So this is how I end up with a take on the importance of personal and spiritual experience very close to you and @GeoffDann, but my disagreement is just on the underlying epistemology. You and @GeoffDann may want to say you just ‘know’ certain things directly, and I can agree with you on those claims. I just add that science can show us how we know that you know those things, without resorting to a mysterious new type of epistemology.
(I would like to add for @GeoffDann’s benefit that I have a full time job and a young family, so please take my slowness in replying sometimes in that context - it’s not meant as a slight, or sign of disinterest!)
This whole discussion seems pointless without an agreement on what evidence for the praeternatural would actually look like. For those who don’t accept it, what would convince you otherwise? If you had a dream of a family member dying the very moment they were dying halfway across the world, would you call it a coincidence? Would peer-reviewed studies convince you (if yes, then why haven’t they yet)? I don’t think this is a matter of evidence and rationality - the telescope is available for any priests who would like to peer through it.
But what does this even mean?
You cannot agree with what? You can’t agree that it is possible that I know certain things directly? What on Earth could possibly justify such a claim? How can you have any idea what I know directly?
I just add that science can show us how we know that you know those things,
NO! You just stepped over a big red line. You have absolutely no justification whatsoever for invoking science as a means of determining whether or how I know about these things. Science has absolutely nothing to say about it. From a scientific point of view, all that can be said is some things are happening in my brain, and we don’t know what they mean.
Your epistemology is broken, because your metaphysics are broken. Your entire line of reasoning depends on an a-priori assumption that materialism is true, which you have not even attempted to defend even though you have a PhD in this exact subject. Now you are using that unsupportable assumption in an attempt to support entirely illegitimate, scientistic claim to knowledge of what is going on in my own subjective experience of reality.
You have no right to do this. One of the central purposes of my NED is to prevent people from doing exactly what you are doing. You don’t realise it, but you are stripping all meaning from reality, and you’re doing it based on a fundamental conceptual-logical mistake
One thing I think we have established beyond all doubt: this stuff matters.
And I obviously acknowledge that you aren’t blessed with the sort of free time I am. However, this is increasingly looking like an excuse to avoid looking carefully at what I have consistently pointed out to be the fundamental flaw in your own argument.
I said ‘can’ not ‘cannot’.
I apologise for misreading that. However, it only applies to the first section of the reply above. I didn’t misread your second sentence.
I have spent a lot of time talking to materialists on top of being one myself for 20 years, and the behaviour I am seeing now is typical. You have not engaged at all with my criticism of materialism. I’ve offered a 5000 word refutation of the founding assumption of your entire belief system, and it is a subject in which you have PhD. I’ve spent 20 years crafting that refutation, and it is designed to be absolutely watertight.
You’ve ignored it, and continued to argue based on the assumption materialism is true. I can see no willingness to examine that foundational assumption.
This is the whole problem with materialism. It is a mind-trap. You don’t even acknowledge that you aren’t engaging with the real argument – instead you’ve offered the excuse that you are too busy to respond. And tried to insist that materialism should get a free pass “because it is already on the ecosystem map”.
This is after you already chose to send me a message warning me to be more respectful to your belief system, in your capacity as an admin. A clear attempt to use power to influence what I felt able to say.
Exactly. As currently being conducted, the discussion is utterly futile. That is exactly why I am proposing the NED.
From the book:
The mind-trap: how assumptions shape the debate on consciousness
In the decades since Nagel’s famous article was published, a vast amount of literature has been produced regarding the mind-body problem and the status of materialism and physicalism. This might be taken as all the proof anyone needs that the situation is in fact extremely complex, and that you need to have a philosophy PhD to stand any chance of understanding it. An alternative explanation is that there are a lot of materialists, including plenty of influential people, and when they approach this debate they do so having already concluded that materialism must be true. I am intimately familiar with this way of thinking: I have been there, done it and bought the t-shirt (actually, as I explain in chapter 8, the t-shirt was free).
I approached the mind-body problem with my conclusion already decided in favour of materialism. I would not have framed it in those terms, but that is what was actually happening, and it is important to understand why. I felt my justification for believing materialism to be true was overwhelming. That consciousness is brain activity seemed to me the only reasonable option available. The only alternative I was aware of was to believe in souls, or that consciousness was something that had somehow been “hanging around” for over 12 billion years, waiting for the first conscious organisms to evolve. Having conclusively rejected this sort of nonsense when I was ten, there was no way I was going to let some philosophical argument suck me back towards that particular plughole.
For me, it wasn’t just the lack of a credible alternative that made materialism such a no-brainer. Part of the reason was that so many other people – including pretty much everybody I respected – believed the same thing (or so I assumed). Materialists are well aware of the perils of this sort of groupthink, because they see it all the time in their ideological opponents – believers in religion and other forms of woo: “How could all these people be wrong, especially about something so important?” Materialists assume that their own belief system is immune to this particular pitfall, precisely because it is directly opposed to woo. People don’t turn to scientific materialism because it offers any comforting God to look after them, or because it makes promises about an afterlife. They do it because they believe in the power of reason and in backing claims up with empirical evidence. Where is the evidence for souls, or some non-material consciousness? In fact, what is “non-material” even supposed to mean? On top of all that, sensible, intelligent, educated, enlightened people everywhere believe that materialism is true. If there really was some simple conceptual-logical problem with it, then we should reasonably expect that this particular group of people, committed as they are to cold, hard reason, would have spotted it aeons ago. Except, of course, any materialist who discovers a serious problem at the conceptual heart of materialism will swiftly cease to be a materialist, thus eliminating themselves from the group of people who materialists think qualify as sensible, intelligent, educated and enlightened. Ex-materialists are treated with suspicion: they may have recently become weak-minded for some reason, or they may be lying about having ever been materialists in the first place.
Materialism is a mind-trap. The problem, as alluded to in the previous chapter, lurks in the exact meaning of the word “material” itself. Materialists, and also many of their opponents, rarely even question what that word means, because it seems so obvious. Everybody knows what “the material world” means. In fact it is not so simple. The concept of a material world comes to us via consciousness – the only material world we have any direct knowledge of is the one we directly experience – the one that exists within consciousness. Materialism is the claim that only the material world exists, but in this case the concept of material is subtly but decisively different. The material world of materialism isn’t the one that exists within consciousness, and it isn’t a pre-philosophical and non-metaphysical concept of a material world either. It is specifically the material world that is presumed to exist beyond the veil of perception. No materialist believes that the Big Bang happened in any mind – human or divine. They believe it happened in a self-existing material realm that spent over 12 billion years unconsciously obeying the laws of physics before there was any such thing as a mind.
When discussing this topic, I like to keep C.S. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim in mind:
Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.
Now, consider this in relation to evidence for the ‘supernatural’ (apologies Geoff but I’ll continue using common terminology). Plenty of researchers have studied this topic and produced what would typically be viewed at such within other domains.
For example:
100% of these studies, and countless others produced by other researchers, have to be deceptive and/or misinterpreted in order for physicalists to have a leg to stand on. Imagine the level of deceptiveness and/or incompetence this would imply in all parties involved in this research.
I really don’t have time to discuss this right now, but feel I need to offer a clarification on this last point, which I feel is a misrepresentation of what happened. What I said in my message was “While your ideas seem very interesting and are very welcome here, I’ve seen a number of occasions where you might easily be interpreted as being disrespectful of other people’s views, which is not the kind of atmosphere we want to create here”.
I stand by that. I was acting out of what I saw as my responsibility as an admin on this forum, which is to create a place where everyone’s views (not just mine or yours) can be heard, and respectfully engaged with. And this is partly because I believe a forum promoting cultural evolution should hold itself to an unusually high standard with regard to interpersonal relationships of all kinds.
That was two weeks ago, and I haven’t followed up on that precisely because I’ve been mindful to allow you to express yourself freely. Since then I’ve seen others also express concern about for example the ‘combative’ way you’ve expressed yourself at times, and I’d appreciate it if you could be mindful of this in future.
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But it just happened to also involve using your moderator status to attempt to influence me into being more respectful explicitly towards your own belief system, which I was and still am claiming to be both (a) incoherent and (b) extremely damaging and incompatible with the project 2R being successful.
It was an abuse of power, Jonah. Only a small one, but that’s what it was.
And this is partly because I believe a forum promoting cultural evolution should hold itself to an unusually high standard with regard to interpersonal relationships of all kinds.
I agree with that, and I wish to emphasise that I hold no ill-will towards you. I am not angry, I don’t think anything less of you as a person, but I believe your belief system belongs to the old paradigm and I am committed to its eventual removal from Western ideological systems. I can’t compromise on that. I am not going to stop attacking materialism, with all the ferocity you can currently see. Put bluntly, I see materialism as akin to a cult – a very large cult, but in effect the same sort of thing. I am an ex-evangeliser of that cult, and you are asking me to be more respectful towards it. I refuse.
Since then I’ve seen others also express concern about for example the ‘combative’ way you’ve expressed yourself at times, and I’d appreciate it if you could be mindful of this in future.
I think the admins of this forum need to have a private discussion about whether or not you should be in a position to moderate my comments with respect to this issue. You are not a neutral, and I have no intention of backing down. I will abide by any rules or instructions I am made aware of by the rest of the admin team.
I’ve scanned through this thread with my mod hat on, and the primary advice I’d offer is specifically about the use of “you statements” and the impact those tend to have. Starting sentences with “You are,” “You think,” “You don’t,” “You aren’t,” “You have not,” “You’ve ignored,” “You have no right,” etc tends to not go over very well in my experience, and I believe this is because claims of “you blank” do something I call “reaching over the net” (into someone else’s territory, creating a sense of “foul play”) by framing a story/interpretation claim as if it were an objective truth.
We often get by just fine without this distinction when we have no reason to disagree about many observations and claims we make in daily life: Saying e.g. “Stocks are down today” generally has no need of an “I statement” qualifier like “I believe” or “I think” because we don’t expect any disagreement about easily observable fact-like things. And if I were mistaken in saying that, someone responding “actually, stocks are back up now” is not perceived as combative because we’re both observing something external to us and we share our truth-seeking.
Whenever we start making “you statements” about other people though, particularly when we are aware of any noticeable chance of disagreement about our claims, I’d say we run the risk not only of making a claim they disagree with but of creating a sense of aggression or disrespect when we don’t signal that we’re aware of the perspectival frame of our perspective.
So whenever we make a “you statement” and keep going (without making allowances for how our assumption might be contested), we need to be aware that if the recipient doesn’t feel seen/heard/understood and agree with it, nothing past that is going fruitful because they’ll need to stop and contest the objectivity of the frame before addressing the disagreement. Like the proverbial “when did you stop beating your wife?” question, defensiveness often accompanies the need to identify an assumption/claim that seems like it’s “baked in” to the language used, and I think gives rise to stories like “they’re not respecting me as a person” all the way to “gaslighting” or “frame control”.
I believe that making this specific “you- vs I-” language-based reframing, in order to signal friendliness and same-sidedness by demonstrating perspective-taking capacity, would probably dissolve a majority of the sense of conflict I see in this thread. (I’ll come back later to touch on moderation and power)
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Hi James
OK, I’m happy to take all that on board. However, I must point out that the conflict runs much deeper than that. There’s no way to resolve this through improved personal relationships, because there is an underlying ideological conflict that is completely unavoidable.
This thread from this morning nails exactly what is going – see my exchange with Terry: Connected Community Conversations - General - Second Renaissance Forum
It is absolutely essential, to avoid further conflict, that Jonah responds to my 5000 word refutation of materialism: The Hard Problem of Consciousness and 2R - General - Second Renaissance Forum. I posted that specifically to avoid what has actually happened, but it needed engagement from Jonah.
Geoff I’m going to push back on your “essential” claim, but first let me contextualize my usage of the word “conflict”:
I personally like to use the word “conflict” to mean the feeling of activation that one gets when a difference threatens something that we value and our sympathetic nervous system kicks into gear with some “fight or flight” or “activation” or “trigger” state shift physiologically. I recognize that this is my own idiosyncratic definition and usage, but I like having a word that contrasts with “difference” which I can use to define as a subset of conflict where difference can feel just fine and conflict adds the “and that’s not okay!” activation.
So now in my vocabulary, in the context of creating and holding a healthy forum space together here, I’m all for “difference without conflict” wherever and whenever it shows up. In contrast, conflict that shows up as interpersonal feelings of wrongness is not in itself “wrong” or to be avoided but, when it shows up, is a signal to pop up/out to the relational layer, notice and name what is going on, and attempt to re-connect our interpersonal security before we can productively engage back on the object/topical layer.
I’m not sure in which ways you’re attempting to characterize the nature of your conflict with either Jonah or Jonah’s views. You may be correct that there is an “underlying ideological conflict” (i.e. difference) that is unavoidable or even irreconcilable. And my position on that would be: fine, great, no problem. I think that difference can exist and we can still interact with each other to explore our differences to whatever degree we have the energy or interest to do so.
On the other hand, when I read “to avoid further conflict” I’m getting an idea that you mean interpersonal conflict (i.e. feelings of wrongness)? When I hear your claim that, in the name of avoiding conflict, “it is absolutely essential … that <someone else> responds to my 5000 word” my immediate embodied reaction is “no way dude, no one owes you anything, you’re still responsible for your own behavior no matter what other people do”. But I can also see a way you may be trying to point to something like “making progress on our ability to understand each other and process our differences productively” which if that’s the case sounds to me like a worthy and admiral goal. It’s just a goal that would IMHO need to be signaled as being the friendly context of your “absolutely essential” claim, because otherwise it sounds to me like you’re making some sort of threat to generate more future conflict!
I’ll close by noting and affirming your distinction (a couple posts up) between “you as a person” and someone’s beliefs, and additionally distinguish between someone’s beliefs/opinions/judgements and the abstraction of an “ideological system”. I have no problem with “attacking” systems, of course none of us want to attack people, and in the middle people tend to be somewhat-but-not-fully identified with their beliefs, so we need to exercise care that “ferocity” is held and expressed cleanly, if one wants to express ferociously without creating interpersonal conflict.
My opinion of this thread so far is that your “you statements” above are quite sloppy, at best, at maintaining a boundary line of expressing respect for people while disagreeing with their beliefs. I’m also of the opinion that Jonah’s choice of words “disrespectful of other people’s views” is not precisely pointing to the thing I care about (or Jonah either, whom I do not believe wants to censor your beliefs/views), which is:
Please communicate in ways that respect other people. Equivalently, please communicate in ways that others can usually experience feeling respected. Creating lots of conflict feelings (a.k.a. drama), or doing so purposefully, is a tax on the conflict-holding/processing energy of any community system, by which I mostly mean other forum participants (whose tolerance for feeling put-on-blast may be quite a bit lower than the average moderator-type person).
I like passion and even ferocity - when held cleanly in ways that avoid most friendly fire incidents, and are swiftly repaired relationally when applicable, so that people can engage with your ideas which I presume is why you Geoff and any of us are here in the first place. Thanks.
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Hi James
Thanks for that reply. However, it leaves me feeling uneasy. I believe that word “essential” was justified.
As things stand, I don’t think this has been resolved. Indeed, I believe that as long as there are people involved in running this group who are defending materialism that conflict is probably unavoidable – and that will remain true even if I leave this place and do not return, because it isn’t me who is the source of the problem here. The problem is that you’ve got elements of the old paradigm embedded in the admin team of a forum set up to act as midwife for the new one. That is likely to lead to a difficult birth.
I believe I have very good reasons for identifying metaphysical materialism as right at the core of the very ideological problems 2R was set up to find a solution to. I explained those reasons in a very long and detailed argument that I’ve spent the last 20 years getting right (irrefutable, and impossible to misunderstand). I feel like I have been preparing for 20 years for exactly the intellectual conflict that we’re talking about. And it really is a conflict, because it is the business end of a major paradigm shift – this always involves deep conflict as the old ways of thinking are brought down by the new. It never goes smoothly – that’s what The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was all about – there are always defenders of the old paradigm who refuse to accept the new one. Sometimes a generation has to die off. But we don’t have time for that to happen in this case – or at least not within the movement that is being birthed here.
Now I am faced with an admin of this site who says both:
“I am asking you to be more respectful of my belief system (which I am an academic expert in).”
and
“I am not willing to defend my belief system because I am too busy. [implication: I can defend it, but looking after my young family has to be my priority]”
I really don’t see how that can amount to anything other than unfinished business.