Posted by maxx44 on November 25, 2003, at 19:35:48
In reply to Re: Redirected: What is consciousness?, posted by Jonny Trigonometry on November 25, 2003, at 17:17:26
hi jonny---although it's a work of 'life-science', your mention of platonic ideals makes me think of sheldrake's opus 'the presense of the past'. i was led to it via paul davies' book 'the cosmic blueprint',(sky publishing) which pointed out that unlike previous work, it was subject to experimental method. published in '83 it was termed everything from brilliant to bunk. the important thing is that it has exhibited robust positive global resilience in controlled experiment. sheldrake may be a bit eccentric, but his concept of all forms arising from 'information-fields' extends beyond 'living things'. for instance, his point that these 'morphogenetic fields' exist throughout space-time and are not subject to astronomical distance is, as he admits, remarkably like platonic thinking. his example of information fields that produce form being as a 'seemingly inactive' blueprint which leads to a house sort of gets the idea across. his further assertion that these fields resonate explains a bit of many clearly observed life events, remote-viewing, an epileptic's dog sensing its owner's oncoming seizure, the efficacy of 'talk-therapy', etc. from a physics/math view i wouldn't know if quantum fields leading to a 'strange' quark vs. an 'up' are the same thing. in our writings back and forth we tend to disagree on several issues, mainly his assertion 'form-fields' relate to only 'living, self-organizing' systems, and he seems to contradict himself by using crystallization as an example. i don't see any difference from that, and say, quantum simultaneity. both may be seen as resulting from his morphic-resonance concept. perhaps that's where a 'generalist' comes in handy. is the universe awash in an undiscovered sea of 'conscious-ons', as photons? quanta of perception only seen in 'living systems'? that would merge life-science with physics. interestig? best wishes
poster:maxx44
thread:282271
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20031124/msgs/283779.html