Every physical event has a physical cause but there are some events that are beyond the physical; they are phenomenal or unexplainable which science cannot tap into. Is reductionism an answer to everything?
Contzen, I 'm not sure dualism is merely about things unseen or the transcendental dimensions of life. I think it is more about a growing awareness in the world today that wholeness and holism are more reflective of life in the universe than dualism. See my article on consecrated life.
It is necessary to define what kind of dualism this question is poking about? - In any case dualism is not desirable, as with dualism, it becomes difficult to take decisions, difficult to act, and some times it is difficult to mange people with duality. As long as it does not harm or it does not becomes a bottleneck, dualism may be allowed to thrive.
Beautiful question.
I might add that the fact that physical phenomena can be "seen" does not make scientific "facts" any more real than whatever it is out there that our current senses and paradigms cannot fully grasp.
Dualism is everywhere from religion to our daily lives phenomena e.g. God & Devil, Black & White, North & South Poles, East & West, Fast & Slow, Male & Female, Tall & Short, Hot & Cold, Demand & Supply, Good & Bad etc. We can understand the word "difference" when we appreciate the word "dualism". Think dualism can provide check & balance, help us appreciate the differences & teach us how to harmonize the differences / bridging the gaps for improvement / reach equilibrium. Also think dualism can make our lives in this world more interesting as there can be different outcomes instead of monism.
Contzen,
I think that you are looking at this from a different light than me. I do not like the dualism of quantum mechanics because it can be explained just by looking at the issue in a different light without dualism.
This does not mean that there are not other things that can be explained only with dualistic approaches to the problem. It is not an attack at least in my mind on your soul or your spirit. It is only an attack on anti-realism.
Science has had more than one hundred years to explain quantum mechanics in reality and has failed every time. They keep failing because they refuse to let go of a physical phenomena in favor a dualism. This is not the case with QM and it should not be seen as the answer. Just because we have such a bad model of the atom that we can not tell what is real and what is not that we make things up to fix the problem does not mean that a dualism exists.
Example.... We can not explain why a Neutron stays in the atom being neutral so we make up a fictional particle called a Gluon or a Graviton.
If we were to take a new model of the atom and a better look at the workings of the photon then we could answer these questions without the dualism.
I am a spiritual person and I realize that I do not have all the answers and that the conservation of energy means all energy including the energy that seems to make up my being. This means that there are things out there that even using our modern science and understanding we can explain but are more than they appear.
If my energy exists regardless of my physical life being over, is there not a fundamental dualism in the conservation of energy law? This is the bases for the spiritual reality that I believe in. It does not have to be magic. It can be real.
George
what do you mean by "everyone against dualism" ? I am not against dualism ! that because i don't understand what that means !
If by dualism you mean, let's say, "body and soul," or "natural and supernatural," then I don't think everyone is against that. But there are reasons not to just buy into simplistic explanations, to explain away everything we don't yet know, right?
It's true that science does not explain everything. It is equally true that to saying "Because God willed it" is usually a cop-out. I mean, it's a lazy way out of a question that perhaps can be addressed more insightfully.
If God did not want use to know God would not have given us a brain capable of figuring it out. If the creator gave us the ability to learn then we will figure all of it out at some point.
Dear friend,
This is how I look at it.
It is just a matter of perspective. A dualist may think of duality in existence, like two opposing poles or parallel phenomenon. Some people may agree with it and some may not. They can be dualist or not. But that is not really important. There are universal objective truths like the law of gravity, but things like thoughts, ideas, perceptions, experiences, belief, understanding, etc. are subjective which means at some point, truth is subjective. These people are just expressing what they believe is true based on their cognitive/intellectual capacity, experiences, and learning. We cannot force to apply our own values to them because they have their own held values. What's important is that you are not harming others with your theory and they are not harming others with their belief. We cannot expect everyone to believe us. A dualist should be aware that there will always be people who are in favor and people who are not in favor. that's part of dualism. Don't stress yourself out just because there are oppositions. Be self assured instead that they only proved you are right and they merely proved the existence of dualism. that you are a dualist and they are not. =D opposition is a dualistic term. I am not a dualist. I am a an existentialist and a phenomenologist but I believe in dualism although not all things are divisible by 2. There are triadic phenomenon. there are monistic phenomenon, there are multifaceted phenomenon. It only depends on which theory you apply and which perspective you focus on. See, not everyone who are not dualist is against dualism, and not all non-dualist doesn't believe in dualism because I do.
Reductionism is not always the answer. Science may not be able to grasp the idea of a soul as of now, or may not be able to grasp it at all. But I believe that is what science is there for. to find answers to unanswerable questions. It exists in our consciousness, therefore, it is worth to be discovered. The endpoint of scientific study on the human soul could be there is a soul or there is no soul at all. That is still dualism. Just leave science to the scientists and leave faith to the faithful. They cannot meet halfway no matter what. That is also dualism. Faith and science are two sides of the same coin. The coin is the truth and both domains are simply looking at the truth in their own perspective, and again, perspectives are subjective. It's just like saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." You cannot reconcile 2 different subjective truths. It is just like two individuals looking at a woman. One says she is beautiful but the other one says she is not.
Quite long and flowery but I hope it made a point. =)
Sincerely,
Reynan
Well said Reynan!!!!
"What's important is that you are not harming others with your theory and they are not harming others with their belief" This is an amazing statement..... I am actually not here to prove anything, this question is directed more towards peoples opinions towards dualism. The more we learn, the more there is to learn....its definitely phenomenal.
Dear Contzen
I agreed Albert Manfredi he gave acurate answer that "It's true that science does not explain everything. It is equally true that to saying "Because God willed it" is usually a cop-out. I mean, it's a lazy way out of a question that perhaps can be addressed more insightfully."
Regard
Raid
Raid and George, but who is this God that you both ate talking about......everything phenomenal or supernatural cannot be God. The soul cannot be always connected to God....so in that sense I am not trying to run away from reductionisim.
Dualism is true on this Earth Planet. But when everything merges in its Source which ONE, dualism ends.
Contzen,
If you just give me two scientific facts I can prove through math and science that there is a higher order in the Universe. This higher order can be called what ever you want but its existence is not in question because it is proven with the science that we all know.
All one needs is the 2 facts in science that would have been present at what some may call the beginning.
1) Mass existes
2) Gravity works on that mass in the way we observe it to work.
With this to start and only this we can prove this order exists. If you take almost any starting configuration you want from this one can prove that this order will create what we see in the sky today and what we know to be the Universe as we see it today.
Lets start with matter in its smallest parts just randomly spread out in the Universe. It can be sub atomic parts or just Hydrogen atoms or even clumps of them put together.
In a random or chaotic Universe the distances could be vary vast but when we look at the affect of gravity on this start we see that at some point there are two pieces of matter that are closer to one another and by gravity they fall together. Also in a random universe as these two non perfect chunks of matter fall together what is the chance that as they fall together they are not rotating with respect to the path that they fall together along? The chance is one chance in an infinite number of chooses. So they are rotating.
It does not take rocket science to look into the night sky and say that most things are rotating. So my contention is that this is not a bad start to the model.
When these two bodies of what ever size you want have fallen together and are rotating the great thing is that their mass is now greater than the other areas of the Universe and so they will attract other parts faster.
This will have happened in an infinite Universe in an infinite number of locations spread out over the entire Universe. These masses would have some rotation and some with vary little rotation. The masses would some be moving this way or that way but not with great velocities in any one direction. As they grow and the gravity grows with them you notice some vary specific things happen.
As they get bigger and bigger you see that there is an axis of symmetry, they develop an equator, that will eventually have a bulge and then when enough of the right kinds of matter fall into the center you will see something remarkable happen, they develop electromagnetic fields around the center and the axis.
If I go not further than this it is good enough to show that from randomness total chaos comes total ordered systems......
Is this not prove that there is a higher order in the Universe? From chaos comes order.
If you want to take the model even further these masses that are getting bigger and bigger will eventually get so big that they will either not be able to support their own mass and collapse into a black hole in space or the gas that they are made up of will under pressure start burning into heavier elements like our sun.
All of this is stuff that any person in the Universe can look up into the sky and see everywhere they look.
This is common scenes and not rocket science but it proves there is a higher order in the Universe that exists regardless of what any one person thinks.
I am awed by the beauty of this and understand that we do not know it all but the fact that this world and the Universe we see comes from the science that we love makes me know that this order is how it was suppose to be and we are here to prove it.
George Van Hoesen
There is more top this model than just this but I hope you get the big ideas from this explanation.
George
Superb George....thank you for that wonderful explanation. True cosmic holisim :-)
Thank you. I think that some times we are looking for answers and they are right in front of us but we refuse to see them.
Once I started looking for answers that did not follow the given line in Physics the answers came to me. Dualism is not the answer but by looking at why we think it is allowed me to see beyond it to the truth.
Dualism is just a way to look at the issue that is just as valid as breaking something that is complex into smaller functions that can each be analyzed by themselves to make it easier to understand. It is still not the whole answer but it is easier to consider them.
I think that each has its place but that the real answer is that this thing called a photon has a richer physical existence that we are neglecting by the thought of dualism.
George Van Hoesen
Great question. Dualism is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. To my knowledge this question first arose in Physics with the observation that light could seemingly be both wave and particle. Niels Bohr explained that this was merely an artifact of the way in which the properties of light were measured, i.e. that light is not dualistic, it is due to the way we 'see' it through our subjective senses, a problem that David Bohm addressed in Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Bohm explained that there are two realms, the explicate, which is what we think of as reality, and the implicate, which is the actual reality, unfiltered by our subjective senses. Which presents the challenge of formulating a unifying hypothesis from this fundamental duality. There are many dualities in biology- gene/phenotype, Cell/organism, health/disease- that need to be reconciled by a unified theory for the nature of life. I have concluded that by appreciating the cell as the smallest unit of life, and the property being maintained and modified by evolution, that these dualities are reconcilable. The life cycle is not 'adult to adult' as Darwinian evolution would have us think, it's zygote to zygote!
Torday JS. What We Talk About When We Talk About Evolution. Cell Commun
Insights. 2015;7:1-15.
John,
Interesting approach to the question.
I am still of the opinion that the duality of light is not dual. It is the idea that something like light can be seen in at least two ways. One from a particle having all the things that a particle will have like momentum, trajectory, and more. The next was having the field that is moving like a wave all around the light.
My problem has always been that this has nothing to do with it being a wave. Just like moving a magnet next to a wire has nothing to do with the wire being a wave. The affects that we see are not waves but particles creating electromagnetic waves as they pass.
This is more of a cause and effect than a difference in how we look at the particle.
We are more than 115 years from Max Planck's light quanta hypothesis which should have told us we are looking at light wrong yet we still want to ignore the physical quanta.
I think that even Max Planck would have given up by now and said that the light particle is a quanta of light and not "just" a wave. We ignore what happens to the quanta after it is spent of energy.
George Van Hoesen
George, as I indicated in an email I sen to you a few minutes ago, I think that the duality of light question is another manifestation of our subjective view of reality. That subjectivity is imbedded in all we think about, as a 'signature' in the system like the one the physicists recognize in their technologies. And just like those signatures, we can and should factor it out of our science in order to objectively understand complex problems in physics and biology.
I have written elsewhere about the 'trick' that life plays on physics by circumventing the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That deception, like the human signature is innate, and is seen as 'cheating', whereas it is the natural consequence of the deception. Only when we realize the false premises we think of as givens will we be able to advance our knowledge of the basic laws of Nature.....your thoughts?
I would be happy to expand on these thoughts if you are interested. For me as a Biologist, the realization of the centrality of the unicellular state has led to transparency for many dogmatic concepts in biology, hopefully leading to an understanding of what consciousness actually means, for example. My bias is that obstacles to our understanding of physics and Cosmology are due in large part to our artifactual biases, but that they can (and must) be eliminated.
And if I may butt in to your correspondence with Contzen, Bill Miller and I have shown the analogy between the cell and the Big Bang as point sources (Torday JS, Miller WB. The Unicellular State as a Point Source in a Quantum Biological System. Biology (Basel). 2016 May 27;5(2). pii: E25. doi: 10.3390/biology5020025. PubMed PMID: 27240413; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4929539.) ..... perhaps we could discuss this perspective?
Best, John
John,
You hit so many of the points that I have been making over the last few decades that I wounder why we have not met before.... And yes I have a big interest in this.
I also think that the big bang is only a local event if it happened at all. I think that I could convince you that it did not happen. The history and events leading to it show a bias that is out of this world bad.
George, given your strength in Physics, I have a somewhat philosophical question to ask of you. If our perception of the real world is subjectively affected by our evolved senses, if the subjectivity could be factored out, would we still adhere to the same physical principles and laws?
John,
There are some Laws and principles that need to evolve as the understanding over the last one hundred years has evolved. Just as our understanding of essences and spirits controlling a person or think had evolved as we started using the scientific method to discover things in science several hundred years ago.
So, yes there are many things that need to be redefined and considered for change. This does not mean that the conservation of energy or mass is going to change but that how we look at this may. Here is an example. If energy and mass are equivalent but we still see energy as not having a physical existence as in the current picture, then giving energy a new definition of "Mass in motion" will blow the minds of the people that think that light is just a wave on some either. I thought we got over that one more than one hundred years ago but it is clear there is still debate over this. However it will shed light on other problems that have yet to be solved like why do we get electric current from Photons hitting solar panels with this mass-less think called a photon... Also why does a mass loose mass when it throws off a mass-less thing like a photon.. Our understanding is weak at best.
We in the sciences have to stop with the definitions that have differing outcomes given what we want to think instead of what we really know.
Math has lead us to a bad place in the sciences because there are things in math that do not exist in reality. Here is another example.
A mass has a gravitational potential associated with its size. This potential spreads out over a large distance. The problem is that in the math associated with this ever smaller force there is not limit to its reach. From a perspective of math there is no problem at all. One can continue to get smaller and smaller to an infinite distance. However from a realistic point of view this is not logical. The old way of looking at this would mean that the force of gravity is non zero at every point in space and every distance from that point has a potential. The sum of this force would mean that the force of gravity is "Infinite" in space and time. So even though the math seems to work great the implications of that math point to it being false.
There must be a limit to the force of gravity and that limit is associated with the limit that Max Planck discovered in the physical existence of the Quanta. This means that all energy and fields are limited by Planck's constant.
This is what I am working on in the new paper with my son Daniel.
You can however see that this has ramifications for many areas of science including Evolutionary Biology. There is more to be discovered by a better understanding of the atomic structure if we give up on the idea that Spirits and Essences (imaginary particles like Gluons and Gravitons) are the things controlling the structure. The Standard Model just makes up particles to make the atom work instead of looking at the real picture of the atom. We are so convinced that the standard model is correct that we have stopped letting people propose new models.
The system may be in need of repair or even replacement. A model of the atom that puts the photon, electron, and positron in the atom as part of the structure as well as Neutrino's would make the real atom much easier to understand and work with in all fields of science.
This is another area I have been working on for some time. The problem is how to get this information out with out being labeled as stupid or just crazy.
So I guess the simple answer is Not all of them....
George Van Hoesen
George, if it's any consolation, I grapple with the same problems. The 'system' is so hardwired to Darwinian Evolution that it cannot countenance any other paradigm, for fear that the Intelligent designers/Creationists will 'eat their lunch'. As I see it, the problem is that there is no experimental evidence for evolutionary biology (not sarcasm, there really is no empiric evidence for how fish evolved into amphibians evolved into reptiles evolved into birds and mammals). Give that both Creationism and Evolution Theory are 'beliefs', no wonder ID has any credence. I have been arguing for a change in the perspective on vertebrate evolution as vertically integrated cell-cell interactions responding to stresses in the environment as a way of providing hypothesis testing empiric evidence for evolution. I have published extensively on this idea, but not in the traditional evolution literature because they think I am a nut (sound familiar?). Another way of stating what I had asked about factoring human bias out of Physics is that logic is based on our perception of reality.....if our perception causes anthropocentrisms that distort reality, then our logic is affected too. Without the human bias, perhaps we would formulate hypotheses differently? Your thoughts? John
Your right. The problem I see is that to get rid of the human bias you need to take the humans out of the picture.
Logic is subjective in almost the same way. However I would argue that if you can prove something you do not have to hit people over the heads with it as a matter of fact it is better if you just show them and let them decide as 50% with come up with the correct conclusion 25% with the exact opposite conclusion and 25% will not make a conclusion at all. I think that we beat ourselves up over the 25% that is just off the wall wrong and forget that 50% came to the same conclusion that we did. One of the biggest problems is that out of the 25% that are just wrong 5% of them will not let it go and will drive the point into the ground to make you seem like a fool.
The answer is always follow your heart on the science. I consider myself a spiritual person not a religious one and I truly think that we should be able to know all there is to know about everything. This does not mean that we like or even want to believe it but the ability to know is part of what makes us different from the other animals on this planet.
My thoughts on the order of the Universe is that there is a higher order and it is shown in the science to exist. If it were not, there could be no complex life forms anywhere. Given this there must be something that we are missing in the way we look at the Universe, Time, Space, and Life as we know it. I have personally had to many things happen in my life that were wonderful to not question the existence of more than what we see and hear. George.
George, well said. I admire your pragmatism. I am not as forgiving as you are about humankind. We are our own worst enemies. Science is the way in which we can know what we do not know, yet it is rejected in favor of greed and narcisism. The recognition of Heliocentrism was a huge leap forward in human thought about the reality of the physical realm, but it took 500 years from its inception to its acceptance. I think that the biologic analog of Heliocentism, taking ourselves out of the center of biology, is attainable, but we cannot afford to wait another 500 years.....we don't have the resources that we did at the time of the Enlightenment. John
John,
We have to have a more optimistic outlook as the other alternative can have no helpful affects. There is still time to turn around the loosing battle that we seem to be fighting. I do not have all the answers but as my priest told me when I was in College "I don't have all the answers, but we can discuss the options". This was what turned me in to an Episcopal rather than agnostic.
I agree that we are our own worst enemy. We still have to battle past this as well. In the realm of live, action is where we need to be. Larger and larger groups of smart people need to ban together to stop the hypocrisy and correct the course of science. For too long the standard line has been followed to the end and been shown to be false.
My book should be called.....
"The Religion of Science"
"The Fallacy in the Logic of Science That Has all but Stopped Progress"
Anyone that wants to help me put this book together is welcomed to email me [email protected]
More than one hundred years ago the scientists of the time stopped using the Philosophical approach to science in favor of a mathematical approach. This was a fatal flaw in that math has no ethic or moral. Math only has numbers. The problem is that math knows no limits but reality does....
We turned a corner into a realm that is numbers and symbols to represent dynamical reality. This reality has limits, special cases, and a bit of random chance involved in its reality. It also has an end in sight. Although it may seem like our world is secure for the most part everything in the Universe has a life cycle some like bugs or single cell organisms it may only be hours but it exists.
As we get more and more complex the life cycles extend to years. Yet even in the solar system like ours to insure this race of animals called humans will exist beyond the several hundred million years that our sun still has to give us energy to live we must find a way to reach into space and move our species beyond the limits of the solar system. For all we know the end could be tomorrow.
The problem is that as we move forward in time we are not moving forward in science. We still live in a world that our model of the atom which was developed before we know there was this particle called a Neutron in it is still the model we use to advance. The model was made decades before we even knew there was something called a Neutrino that seemed to pass through even the entire earth with out deflecting at all. This particle comes from radioactive decay but our model of the atom has no Neutrinos in it???
There are so many other things in science that need to be fixed that it is hard to understand how we have gotten so far but the real answer to this is that as long as someone with money can make more money from anything that is discovered then it will continue to follow the path it is on. Other paths will be destroyed or discredited to insure profit.
That last thing may be a little too political for some but money does corrupt the educational side of things and I have no real good answer for how to fix that.
George
George, the problem as I see it that it has attracted those interested in the methodology, not what it can reveal to us. Even when given enabling data, such techies don't know how to interpret the data within context. I witnessed this for years serving as a Reviewer of NIH and NSF grants, determining who would be funded to do research. The legitimacy of the hypothesis was rarely if ever questioned as long as the proposer was using cutting-edge methods, especially if they were flashy. Now we are paying for this short-sighted perspective, failing to effectively utilize the Genomic data we are being flooded with because scientists are not trained to think, but to do mindlessly. The mere fact that Information is equated with knowledge speaks volumes about the state of science.
As for your comment about the almighty buck driving science, it is a symptom of what I am referring to. Technology has always led, ethics and morality trailing and trying to play 'catchup'. The approach I have taken to evolutionary biology, described in "Evolutionary Biology, Cell-Cell Communication and Complex Disease" would change that for the first time if it were applied.
John
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism :
''Mind-body dualism claims that neither the mind nor matter can be reduced to each other in any way. ... Western dualist philosophical traditions (as exemplified by Descartes) equate mind with the conscious self and theorize on consciousness on the basis of mind/body dualism.''
We do not separate our body from our mind. If I extend my arm towards an object and touch it with my fingers. Can you have such experience without a body. All our experience are bodily experiences. What does this mind-body separation come from? Even the content of our dreams is similar to our bodily experiences although the muscles of the body are not moving except those moving the eyes. Maybe this separation comes from our ability to conceive narratives of action, dream-like narrative, not actually taking place with our body. But against these are bodily narratives although in a dream-like mode not moving our muscles. Even the basic concept of geometries, points and lines are similar to our visual experience of points and lines.
We experience a physical object like a car from our bodily sensory experiences through our vision, tactile, etc. But we experience our physical body in two different ways: we can see it and touch it like we can with the car but we also experience controling it, directing my gaze towards an objects, feeling the need for foods. So our physical experience of our own body is dualistic: we experience it as outside and we experience from inside through being it.
The epistemological thought experiement that Descartes performed in his first meditation leads it to eliminate all ideas that cannot be certainly be true. Anyone doing this will necessarily end by eliminating everything except the experience of doubting itself , thinking itself. Descartes recognizes that the certainty of thinking was higher than any the certainty of geometrical ideas about the world. It is why he categorize the experiential and the res extensa in two different categories of existence. These two categories also correspond to the two reality of our bodily experience: the outside object bodily experience and the inside bodily experience. The former when abstracted through a mathematical language become the res extensa of science, objective knowledge while the second always refer to what an experiencer experience and cannot exclude such reference and is deemed intrinsically subjective.
When science tries to theorize the human experience, it tries to do what its very existence denies: an observer. Science cannot by its methodology and language include an agent,an experience, any reference to such reality. Science is about objectifying. Objectifying Subectivity is a contracdiction. Since a scientist is committed to objectifying, it cannot be otherwise, then what is an acceptable scientific position relative to the study of lliving experience which would not deny both science and the core of living experience? What is the proper relationship between phenomenology and the scientific studies of the body? Where is the proper relationship betweent he self and the automaton. Science can only produce automatons while phenomenology describe experience unrelated to these automatons. In one side, the self is a ghost, on the other side the automaton is a ghost. This is a methodological induced duality, there is no automaton, there is no self but peoples.
John,
I totally understand. I still need to read the book. Some of my work may be enhanced by your work. Thanks for sending it to me.
George
George, I hope that you can get through the book.....even my own peers have a hard time with the concepts I have provided, but then again, they are not physicists, so they are siloed as biologists, limiting their scope of understanding.....if you have questions, feel free to ask....Best, John
Louis, I appreciate your analysis of the mind-body duality. However, as a developmental physiologist with an interest in evolution I have concluded that contemporary biology is descriptive. Mechanistically, life is actually founded on principles of unicellularity, from which it evolves and to which it returns iteratively. In the unicellular state there is no mind-body dualism.....the organism is totally integrated. It is only once the complexity of multicellularity occurs that the mind-body dualism becomes paradoxical. However, that is merely an artifact of the way in which the organism copes with a changing environment, introducing new traits to survive. But the organism goes back to its unicellular state during its life cycle.....actually it returns to its multicellular state. As Samuel Butler has said, "A hen is just an egg's way of making another hen". From that perspective, the dualism becomes moot. I hope that helps? John
The Jury is still out for me. I need to see more unbiased voices on the subject.
John,
'' In the unicellular state there is no mind-body dualism...''
Why assuming that a unicellar organism experience nothing? Difficult question as well as the opposite question: Why assuming that an unicellular organism experience something?
Higher animals being similar physiologically and behaviorally to us, it is obvious to us that they have a lot of common experience to us. But there is not much of similarity between the physiology and behavior of unicellular organisms and us. They eat, can dye , reproduced this is similar. They have a much lower range of behaviors. I take consciousness (experience) to correspond to what cannot be automated and to the creative/learning part involve in behavior. Do unicellular organism have such creative part? I do lack knowledge here but I suspect that any living system is structure to surf an intrinsically unstable interaction that cannot in principle be conceptualized because it is not fixed and stable and thus able to cope with changes.
Regards
Louis, the consensus is that multicellular organisms evolved from unicellular organisms. If you look at Helmut Plattner's work on paramecia, he shows that when they are stimulated the calcium flow through the cell is stimulated in the same way that a neuron in the brain is.....it's the same process, but at a smaller scale. When the egg is fetilized by the sperm there is a calcium burst that persists until the organism dies. However, I think the organism is immortalized by the passage of its microbiome (the bacterial component of the animal) into the soil and water, being passed on to the next generation.
Dualism is an artifact of our failure to resolve complex questions. Once we understand the mechanism, there is no longer a duality. In biology, the dualities we perceive, like gene/phenotype, animate/inanimate, zygote/adult, are resolved by realizing that the primary level of selection is the zygote, not the adult.....the adultcentric perspective is an anthropocentric artifact.....hope that made sense. John
Hi John....nice answer but the question is, then why cant we initiate life when we have put all the components and processes that have been studied in a living cell? This is the reason that dualism should exist, it cannot be a mere artefact that has been used to solve the questions on life. Contzen
John,
From a scientific perspective, you are entirely right. Science = mecanism . But the what is like to be human cannot be objectified or expressed into an third person perspective. Even though you would know everything there is to know scientifically about your body, you would know nothing about what it is like for you to experience. This you experience.
Contzen, are you referring to a specific attempt to experimentally recapitulate life. Craig Venter has done so, and patented a totally de novo unicellular organism. My point is that the unicellular state is non-dualistic, and it has given rise to multicellular organisms, including ourselves. Therefore, dualism is an artifact of our inability to merge mind and body, for example, yet they are 'one'. John
Louis, I would speculate/hypothesize that once you know how human physiology has evolved, step-by-step, and mathematically express it,, you could run the data through a virtual reality platform and 'experience' it. John
Hi John, this is interesting news and thank you for sharing this.The design and synthesis of genomes from base materials still needs to be found and therefore initiating life when we have put all the basic components still remains a mystery, so I would still support dualism and the existence of a force that drives a cell. Contzen
In fact after reading the article, this whole experiment seems like another cloning experiment where ultimately a living cell is used to replicate the artificial DNA. So in this case life was used to create life, not non living to living......the truth about life is when the components come to life. In all this game, I sometimes think and wonder why do we need to know the origin of life? How would it help us?
http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_unveils_synthetic_life?language=en
Contzen, to do as you suggest, make the inanimate animate, we first need to know how life has evolved mechanistically. There are clues to that in genes that duplicated during the transition from water to land, but to actually know how those events transpired would require experimentation. Such studies are on-going in my laboratory at UCLA, so stay tuned. John
I will be eager to know the results of the same. All the best John :-)
I think that who does not believe in Dualism just define the limits of consciousness to what can be explained by physical laws. If perception and culture is limited to the part of the physical universe that can be explained by the known physical laws, all the remaining part of universe is ignored and dualism become useless. Who believe in dualism does it essentially for two reasons. One is spiritual and concern to the believe in a superior God, in some way connected with us but mostly connected with our soul (which represent the second part of ourself and cannot be defined by physical laws). The second reason is that not all can be explained by our physical laws. In this sense I am dualist too. Our brain is limited in the perception of the universe according to the sensors it can use (eyes, ears...ecc) and to their sensibility. The physical laws we can imagine are produced by our brain and can only explain what the sensors (or maybe some instrumental amplification of them) give as input . So, for these limitations, there is a large part of the universe which is ignored by our brain and consequently cannot be explained in terms of understandable physical laws. If this is connected with God, or just with an undefined "unknown entity", is a matter only of personal believe.
Being limited to our senses, as Vito indicated, precludes complete access to reality as it is. We perceive an external world and gather data, and we perceive/experience an interior world. The interior world however has received far less attention in the sciences. For example, it was long believed that people who do not have REM sleep also cannot dream, until someone in the late 90s actually asked these people and they reported dreaming.
So there is a strong case against being reductive. But the acknowledgement of the subjective experience does not necessitate dualism. That would be to suppose, to begin with, that the perceived external world already has some ontological standing, which the then mental experiences must also be comparable to. However, proceeding from our limited perception of reality (poor external senses and mostly unconscious internal milieu), all one can say is that one has two imperfect standpoints of observation. I.e. Not two different things observed, but two modes of observation. I stand therefore as a dual-aspect monist. I guess, I do assume that the totality of existence must be unified, and therefore one thing (monological), but I am claiming no perfect knowledge of what's really going on.
Perhaps a reason to believe in monism is that the observations of the physical sciences and subjective reports always correlate. I.e. There is never any mental activity that doesn't correlate with brain activity. Of course, not everything has been measured and not everything measured has been consciously experienced. But evidence accumulates and hypothesis becomes theory. There has yet to be a contradicting case (hence why I found my paper on near-death experiences so interesting as it was one of these contested areas).
Hi Paul, I am a 'monist' too. It is quite clear to me that dualism is a construct used to bridge the gaps between those things we do not understand, such as consciousness. Yet we are conscious. As a research biologist with an interest in evolution, I now realize that the life cycle does not culminate in the adult form, it is a mechanism for the unicellular zygote (egg+sperm) to generate the offspring, which then goes through the life cycle obtaining epigenetic information ("marks") from its environment to figure out if it has to change=evolve or stay the same. I say that because we now know that those epigenetic 'marks' that have been recognized for decades, are not eliminated during reproduction (meiosis), some of them are retained and passed on for generations via the egg and sperm. My laboratory studies the effect of nicotine (=smoking) on the epigenetic inheritance of asthma. We see the epigenetic marks due to nicotine in the egg and sperm of the parents, passed on to the offspring as asthma due to the marks affecting the upper airway muscle. Positive selection for this mechanism probably comes from the fact that nicotine affects the brain too, increasing memory. At any rate, this perspective of the life cycle being dominated by the unicellular zygote indicates that there is unity, but we misconstrue it as duality by seeing it through our subjective senses. David Bohm, the physicist, addressed this in his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order, pointing out the difference between the subjective explicate and non-subjective implicate realms. I think that if we eliminate that subjectivity of human perception, that our logic and reasoning will change accordingly, like the realization that the Sun is the center of the Solar System, which brought about the Age of Reason. We need such a paradigm shift if we are going to avoid the destruction of the planet due to our narcissistic ways as humans. I have attached some of my publications fyi. Your thoughts? John
We may know everything about the cell but we know little about the life that manages the working of the cell. There are experiments that claim to create synthetic life but fall back because a living cell was used in the experiment, which leaves us with the question, "'Which came first, the chicken or the egg?". Currently, the only thing reducing is reductionism, because the more we reduce the more closer we get to the phenomenal. The reason I am a dualist is because it helps me understand life from all perspectives. Science helps me understand the "How", Philosophy helps me understand the "Why", while Religion for me is the understanding of the manifestation of life. There is no harm in seeking, for through seeking we understanding and appreciate the workings of the phenomenal.
Hi Contzen, I agree with the problem of forming a cell from a cell as a tautology. But even more challenging is knowing how to assemble the cell from scratch. Craig Venter has patented a synthetic cell, but then how do you go from there to function? The whole is not equal to the sum of its parts......work in my laboratory on the evolution of physiology may provide the answer. As for reductionism, I think we have over done it in going down to the level of DNA/RNA since those molecules cannot exist without the machinery of the cell. Elsewhere I have made the case for the cell as the smallest unit of life. And as for dualism, I understand that it is comfortable to remain in that mode, but it merely promotes circular reasoning. One of the biggest reasons, in my opinion, for the dualist perspective is that we do not acknowledge the pact we have made with Nature by circumventing the Second Law of Thermodynamics. That 'deception' is imbedded in our logic and reasoning in such a fundamental way as to foster dualistic thinking- good/bad, gene/phenotype, healt/disease, etc, etc. Once we realize this fault in our thinking perhaps we can resolve the dualisms and move on to a higher plane of thought and seeking? John
If we consider the supernatural to be an energy form different from what we currently know then there is a possibility of it following the laws of thermodynamics. What we currently know is what exists here on earth, that which is within the domains of space and time, and finally within the limits of our three dimensional perception. I sometime imagine what it would be to be a being with more that three dimension or dimensionless perception, maybe that being is looking down on us and we don't even realise. To imagine this you would need to imagine your self as a 2D amoeba which does not realise that we are looking at it from our 3D world. These laws are made by us to govern and control our type which may not be applicable for the other type.
Contzen, with all due respect, I am still working within the existing laws of nature. Even though life is a deception, ultimately it must comply with the laws of nature, hence we die. You, on the other hand, choose to transcend those laws and fantasize about the supernatural, which is scientifically untestable and unrefutable. I don't see the value added in doing so myself.
In that case I do not see reducing life to a mere bacteria I would rather go with Miller experiment done in 1953, as hid work found the true building blocks generated with the help of energy. The self assembly process is definitely driven by some energy, which has a fractal pattern linked to it and without this energy the assembly would never progress. The reason we cannot imagine it is because we are stuck within the domains of time; time that we ourselves cannot keep up with. Experiencing is a better word than fantasizing because only the one who experiences knows what lies beyond the world of reductionism. Everything cannot be answered by science, but it can be answered by all disciplines, all we need to do is learn to respect those disciplines and the answer will be there right in front of us. Even at the depths of the atom you would find energy, that which creates the sub atomic particles and brings order within the atom. Proteins and molecules are way to big to understand what goes on at the quantum level.
As long as the conservation of energy exists in the natural laws there is maybe a little wiggle room for spirituality. I am a spiritual person not a religious one. I understand that there is something different about an animal that has the ability to dream and advance science, but I am a realist as well. We all will pass from this world and die. I just hope that what I am doing and will do until that time has a meaningful impression on the future world.
Hi George, perhaps 'spiritualism' is what resides between the position and momentum that Heisenberg described as 'uncertainty'? Though as you know, I question the subjectivity of anthropocentrism. Alternatively, perhaps the spiritual is what exists between David Bohm's explicate and implicate orders (Wholeness and the Implicate Order).....John
Dear Dr. Uchem, regarding your comment about holism superseding dualism, I would like to think that you are right, but the problem as I see it is that there is no mechanism for holism. You mention the Systems approach in your paper on a consecrated life, but those efforts are based on Informatics, the theory that everything can be determined given enough information. As a corollary, information and knowledge are equated, which is incorrect. Informatics emerged from the NASA space program wherein the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. But in biology, the opposite is true, and to resolve that dualism using faith is regressive, with all due respect. We are all survivors, bearing witness to the power of faith and positive thinking, but you realize that we could not be communicating in this medium without science. And only science can teach us what we do not know.
I suppose that light as a wave or particle are unproven concepts
If mass is made of energy, what is energy made of, what exactly is electricity?
Mass and Energy are the same thing. One is in motion or with a potential the other is just moving faster.
Energy is just mass in motion....
There is life and there is matter; life animates matter to assemble matter in a manner that it can reside within these assemblages. Scientific knowledge if applied is good but if imposed becomes a ruling. Respect for other disciplines can bring a good correlation, but a narrow-minded approach will result boredom. Classical physics has reached its limits, while quantum physics is just beginning and holds the answer to the dualistic approach of energy and mass.....energy apprehends quantum entanglement; a unique and not yet understood form of energy interaction that occurs beyond space and time.
Consciousness and Quantum mechanics
"Who am I? I am the consciousness" Adrian Ferent
The most important question: Who am I?
"I am a Wave and the wave function is:
|ψ> = c1 |Φ1> + c2|Φ2> + c3|Φ3> + c4|Φ4> + c5|Φ5> + c6|Φ6>
+ c7|Φ7>
are 7 states |Φi > because are 7 major chakras or energy centers." Adrian Ferent
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-szIc4ED4RI&feature=youtu.be
I am a consciousness that manifests through the construct of my brain and body. I am not a brain-body that creates and manifests consciousness.
My main Quotations 5
“There is more information in my wave functions, than in the Ten Commandments of Moses”
Adrian Ferent
"Wisdom creates wisdom"
Adrian Ferent
“I am a wave and the wave function is:
because there are 7 main chakras or energy centers”
Adrian Ferent
“The Holy books are excellent, but incomplete”
Adrian Ferent
“If I will follow my equations I will go to Heaven, if I will follow the Holy books I am not sure”
Adrian Ferent
"The consciousness equation:
where N is the final number of quantum consciousness states”
Adrian Ferent
"My transdisciplinarity theory is a proof for reincarnation, for Evolution!”
Adrian Ferent
"The probability x1 when is activated only the first energy center, the event is X1 :
and X1 = E1 ∩ CE2 ∩ CE3 ∩ CE4 ∩ CE5 ∩ CE6 ∩ CE7”
Adrian Ferent
I don't think anyone is against dualism, but against the postulation of unjustified assumptions as an explanation for natural phenomena, including the experience of humanity. If humanity, mind, qualia can be explained without a mind-soul dichotomy, then good academic practice leads us towards a position that does not support dualism. That does not prevent us from continuing to challenge any positions (including those that oppose dualism) by looking for evidence both ways.
Hello dear Contain,
You seems to have enfolded many different propositions in your question and your "semi answers". At the level of manifestation, we live in a dualistic Universe- light and dark, male and female, hard and soft, etc. However at this level, I prefer to talk of "polarities" as one part of the polarity cannot exist independently of the other half. That for me, is how "life" manifests itself in this dimension.
Body and soul - well that is another proposition, however here I prefer to see "soul" as also including the metaphysical level, and I see that level as primary. In this sense we are talking of another dimension of reality. I am not sure that scientists cannot tap into this level, in my dissertation I use Goethe science to help reveal the invisible force/forces behind "polarities".
I hope this helps - Tina
Hi Contzen,
The distinction between physical and more phenomenological events is difficult for 'many, but not everyone' to process. In the end it boils down to 'intent' or the perception thereof. A duality can arise from a singular cause? We have discussed for example the nature of gravity and how at a primary level its role is in fact 'self replication', that gravity creates in its own image without bias or judgment to the outcome. It is a singular phenomena that create a multiplicity of physical and non physical manifestations? The outcome of those being perturbed by spin off process that can be classified as phenomenological in many respects because either their attributes cannot be measured or the their creative process explained easily (consciousness for example). Although the outcome of creation by gravity has many countless variations, a single truth emerges from any expansion of its formula :- "More gravity producing 'objects'? are always produced". This is the nature of quantum probability, that although there is theoretically many states possible, the truth of a measurement always makes it through to an empirically stable observation.
There IS a case for reductionism I believe. Sorry I have kept this generalised .. i am on limited time. Be well
Working Paper Universal Translation -Detection of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydr...
Dualism is only perception. If I can not come up with the link between one thing that has two or more looks to it then I say there is a dualism. It does not make it dual... It only means that I have not figured out how something can look both ways but be one thing.
My favorite is light. There is said to be a dualism in light because it looks and acts like a particle at times and other times it looks and acts like a wave. This should have never been a problem but we made it a problem by not understanding what light really is......
We have given it this issue as we say in science that light is a mass less particle. This in and of itself is a contradiction. So we start with a fussy definition of what light is. We then add the fact that it has energy without having the mass therefore we have even more complexity in the issue as we knew from our child hood days that all energy has to carry mass with it.
So we end up with a dualism where if we would redefine the properties of the definitions we would not have the problem.
Light appears to not have much mass and it looks like a wave as it propagates through space. This is not a dualism but a pore definition.
George
We know too little about the soul to take it seriously. If you can not see or touch the soul, it is strange to us, alien or unnecessary.
I think that the soul is one place where dualism has a profound place. This is where science has not got a clue. We understand life but the soul is the part of life that makes us human not just animal. Descartes said "I think therefore I am". In the sciences this is all the deeper we have moved towards an understanding of the soul.
The day we will understand what light really is, we will understand many other issues.
The sould is a religious concept. We can talk about consciousness as something of which we are certain every moment. For those biology minded it emerges from the brain. For some physicists and/or metaphysicists, consciousness is fundamental. For others consciousness is information and matter is virtual, etc....
Perhaps we could consider the possibility that dualism is a consequence of our subjective way of perceiving our surroundings. David Bohm said that there are two 'realities' in his book "wholeness and the Implicate Order". Bohm was a student of Einstein's, and he started with the premise that we observe our surroundings with our evolved senses, which obscure the true nature of the environment. He referred to the subjective way we see the world as the 'explicate realm', whereas the actual way in which reality exists is the 'implicate realm'. If that is correct, of course there will be dualities like light, which Niels Bohr explained as Complementarity, which is due to the different ways in which light is measured. Once the human subjectivity is factored out of our perception, we can better understand reality.
Unfortunately human subjectivity will never be factored out of our perception since we are the observers or the creators of what observes.
John,
''Once the human subjectivity is factored out of our perception, we can better understand reality.''
Once the human subjectivity is factored out of our perception, we get a very little residual such as number that are objective but most of reality has been factor out at that point.
''Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with this gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself – withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator.''
Mind and Matter, Erwin Schrodinger, p 121
‘’The material word has only been constructued at eh price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it; obviously, therefore, it can neither act on it nor be acted on by any of its part.’’ P 119
‘’The reason why our sentient, percipeient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as a part of it.’’ p. 128
http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/religionandscience/mindandmatter.pdf
Louis, I think you have missed my point. I am referring to the kind of human subjectivity that affected our ability to understand celestial events because we thought that the Earth was the center of the Solar System. Similarly, by thinking that we are the highest form of life, we miss the opportunity to understand what life actually constitutes. For example, do you know what 'Anthropic Principle' is. It is the idea that we hominins are in this environment that is well-suited to our physiology- often referred to as the 'Goldilocks Effect'. That is our subjective, narcissistic human mind seeing reality from our selfish perspective. We and all of the biota evolved from the physical environment, we weren't put in it. That's what I am talking about with regard to the human signature which must be factored out to truly understand Nature. Hope that was helpful. John
Peirce's pragmatism avoid dualism by grounding the precise scientific worlds into the vague common sense world of our experience.
Charles Peirce's Pragmatic Pluralism
By Sandra B. Rosenthal
‘’The world of science, far from being the ontologically privileged world, is dependent on the everyday world of common sense within which experience opens onto the indefinite richness of the ontologically real. The world of science is a second-level abstraction rooted in the world of common sense and opening onto the arcritically indubitable but invariably vague beleifs of common sense. … For ‘’All science, without being aware of it, virtually supposes the truth of the vague results of uncontrolled thought upon such (commonsense) experience, cannot help doing so, wouldwould have to shut up shop if she should manage to escape accepting them. As such, they are more dubitable than the beliefs of common sense, for ‘’the acritically indubitable is invariably vague’’. As he emphasizes, it is ‘’easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.’’
‘’Peirce’s claim that all humans have ‘’some notion, however crude of concrete, of force, matter, space, and time,’’ as well as some notion of ‘’what sort of objects their fellow beings are,’’ while ‘’Modern science … has put us into quite another world; almost as much so as if it had transported our race to another planet.’’ Any scientific world opens onto the commonsense world that provides our concrete access to the indeterminate richness of the reality within which we are embedded, and thus ‘’The instinctive result of human experience ought to have so vastly more weight than any scientific result.’’ Everyday experience, because it provides our concrete interaction with the indefinite richness of reality, founds the possibility of science and also provides the vague criterion of the shared meaningfulness and sense of workability of incommensurable scientific theories.
Shrodinger hold also a similar position:
''Mind has erected the objective outside world of the natural philosopher out of its own stuff. Mind could not cope with this gigantic task otherwise than by the simplifying device of excluding itself – withdrawing from its conceptual creation. Hence the latter does not contain its creator.''
Mind and Matter, Erwin Schrodinger, p 121
‘’The material word has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it; obviously, therefore, it can neither act on it nor be acted on by any of its part.’’ P 119
‘’The reason why our sentient, percipient and thinking ego is met nowhere within our scientific world picture can easily be indicated in seven words: because it is itself that world picture. It is identical with the whole and therefore cannot be contained in it as a part of it.’’ p. 128
Michael Polanyi hold also a similar position.
Louis, thank you for sharing this. But as you might expect, I disagree with this position. If common sense is more important than scientific evidence we'd still be sitting in caves, throwing offal at one another. Common sense was what gave us geocentrism and eugenics. Common sense would never equate energy and mass or provide a Periodic Table. Science is the ability to know what we don't know. I have attached a paper that capitalizes on science instead of common sense. Perhaps you could comment? John
Dear Contzen,
in your "From 'egosystem' to 'Ecosystem' " you claim that "Music similarly teaches us that there is harmony in the Universe, likes Holst’s ‘Music of the Spheres’. Again, we find refuge here, but fail to find resolution outside of the musical construct. "
In chapter 1 of my book 'The neural code of pitch and harmony' I show in the first chapter that this is NOT the case. For example, there is harmonic organization of our solar system (much like suggested already by Pythagoras) demonstrable as a helical organization of planetary periods more or less convincing from the innermost to the outermost planet. ( see Fig. 1.5) In the same book I point out that musical harmony is related to a helical structure (ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus) that seems to organize harmonic processing in octaves - one octave/ helical turn.
In short, there is not only harmony in physics- astrophysics just an example, but harmonic processing- not only in our auditory system- is based on physical laws or we perceive harmony because physics obeys harmonic laws.
Gerald
Langner
Dear Langner,
I totally agree with you. There is a fractal pattern in everything that exists both living and non living, right from the sub atomic level to the galaxies and stars. They all seem to driven byan energy pattern and this is where physics and maths play an important role. Fractals are part of our life, from the growing fetus to the arrangement of the DNA everything has a similar pattern and follows it from birth to death. Physics is therefore important in determining these laws which usually goes unnoticed.
Regards
Contzen
John,
I read ''From ‘Egosystem’ to ‘Ecosystem’''. I disagree that our nature is intrinsically deceptive. I think that our Nature is pointing us in the right direction, is calling us to look in the right direction and that we are simply too individualistic/unicellular , reluctant to go to the next stage of the fully integrated colony, too egocentric to listen to this powerfull creative voice, that some may call God. I enjoyed and shared many of your reflections. I lost you a little bit when you are getting more technically detailed in the biological but found it interesting anyway. I also share you focused on the evolutionary path and also agree with you, although I do not have your deep background in physiology, that we really need to get more serious about uncovering scientifically the whole story about biological evolution. If we would probe more deeply our respective thoughts, I am not sure that we would disagree on my last post. Really disagreeing is more difficult that falsely disagreeing which is based on false understanding of each other position.
Regards
Our physical existence is carried out with the help of our body but as human beings we are fortunate that we are all gifted with body ,mind ,& divinity within us . With the grace all human beings are the same but due to the present action & the resulting fruits of the action of the previous lives play an very important part in the life & due to this human beings different in approach behavior ,intelligence,nature & such other traits .
Soul is very important as it remains all the time with us including final journey as our SOUL never dies just as body .
With this i take liberty to submit my publication under the captioned '' Eternal Soul'' which i submit here with for your perusal & also for our valued readers .
From Religious leaders to scientists they talk about soul, God, life and death like 2000 years ago.
Here is my new theory on these topics.
I defined the Soul force or the Fifth force mediated by soultons.
“Because the soul does not have electromagnetic properties and gravitation we can not see, detect, measure…souls, angels, saints. “ Adrian Ferent
Now you can understand why the soul will not go in the grave with your physical body and will not be incinerated with your physical body. Anyway your souls can not be burned because do not have electromagnetic properties.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308990897_The_Fifth_Force
Article The Fifth Force
Dualism is a kind of conceptual modeling approach that we can use to understand the reality around us. Reality is not dualistic. Other models look at four forces, six quarks, or whatever number best suits the model. The simplest modeling divides a domain into two parts and explores the relationship between those to parts.
Looking at the domain of a single human as a body-soul dualism is useful. This usefulness does not lead to the conclusion that a human's reality is dualistic.
Until we start to explore and explain the nature of the connection between these two parts of this model we are not really increasing our understanding of the human as a whole. Questions such "how the soul influences the body?" and "how the soul is aware of the body?" largely go unanswered.
Have you proposed answers to these quetions based on your understanding of the model?
So far, I have seen no predictive value in this model. What does it say we will discover next?
Frank, I appreciate your view on dualism as body-soul. Earlier in this thread I expressed the idea that this and many other dualisms emanate from a lack of appreciation of our origins as living beings. We came about due to the ability of prototypical cells to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Schrodinger, "What is Life"). The deception is inherent in all life forms, and in us it is expressed as dualistic because as David Bohm expresses it in his book "Wholeness and the Implicate Order", our subjective senses distort our perception of reality. For many years I have pondered the significance of Henry David Throreau's Walden, sensing that I was missing something. Then I read Alfred Tauber's "Henry David Thoreau and the Moral Agency of Knowing" in which he states that the reason Thoreau went to Walden Pond was to reintegrate Decarte's mind-body dichothomy. I think that much of what we see as dualism could be resolved by internalizing this idea.
In my opinion, religion, art and science are all attempts to address the innate sense we have of a deception. Robert Trivers' book "The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life" enumerates many deceipts, human, plant and animal. That notion caught my attention as a developmental biologist because the overwhelming evidence is that cellular cooperativity is the origin of multicellular life. If both deception and cooperation are true, why is there this basic paradox? Again, I think it is because we have not recognized and acknowledged how and why we originated from the physical world.
Resolution of this basic misunderstanding would go a long way to eliminating many problems in society, ranging from 'original sin' to our relationships with our environment and other organisms. I would be interested in your reaction. John
John,
I agree with what you are saying. Once we realize that the differences we see are just not important and that we all came from the same starting point no matter how much some what to say it is different, it is not. We are all the same base.
Once we started learning from the first cell forward there is no turning back. The over whelming numbers meant that we were going to happen and nothing but our own stupidity could stop it from happening until the end of this planet at least.
George
George, thank you for your affirmation. Mine is not the popular way of thinking about life, but I find it illuminating to start from what we do know and reassemble it in a more cohesive, vectorial way that offers novel insights. As you probably know, I have published a series of peer-reviewed papers redefining dogmatic concepts in biology- homeostasis, heterochrony, pleiotropy, the life cycle, the cell- in mechanistic terms that allow for testable/refutable hypotheses. The other aspect is providing an 'origin' for all of this that is consistent with and complementary to the cuausal mechanisms of life. That is to say that understanding that we the living only exist because we have deceived Nature, circumventing the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This was necessary in order to exist 'far from thermodynamic equilibrium' during our life cycle. But that deception underlies many of the destabilizing aspects of society- original sin, cheating, abuse of alcohol and drugs, neuroses, psychoses, art and literature as 'escape', fear of death- we need to acknowledge this paradoxical way of thinking if we are to evolve as a species among species.
John,
The struggle to understand is sometimes blocked by our respect for the science of the past. As Albert said "blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." This is in my opinion one of the biggest stumbling blocks of our advancement.
As I am sure you can appreciate because you have gone through this struggle for change, the only way forward is to look back and correct the problems of the past and not just build on a foundation that is flawed. Our understanding of the sub-atomic for instance is weak at best and almost dangerous at worst. If we can not build a better understanding of the atom we can not understand some of the work that you have done and its vital importance to the sciences. I think your work points to a need for revisiting the science of the past.
I do not have all the answers but I know that some of the current answers are not complete and may just be flat wrong. When we build on flawed logic as my computer science professor used to say "garbage in", "garbage out", there is no way to tell if it is true or not. This also does not mean it is wrong but still has a chance of giving us close to correct answers but will never get us to the end of true understanding.
George
Because rational thinking almost eliminates the existence of the soul - it is difficult to reconcile these two states of being in one.
Dualism means hypocrisy. It also means to cheat a friend by being a friend.
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