--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Remember that old bone we were chewing on?
Indeed I do. I just got back home, and almost the first thing I did was haul out "Quantum Questions" to reread the entire "The 'I' That Is God" essay from which I took the quote. Wilber includes three other Schroedinger essays as well, which I also reread. The upshot is that I find myself hugely embarrassed by how much grander his thinking is than I had been able to express--or even recall--when I was posting about the quote. Even now with the essays in front of me, I'm just barely able to follow his train of thought. At this point I don't think it makes any sense for me to try to encapsulate it all here; I surely wouldn't succeed in doing it justice. I'm pretty confident, though, that you would find the essays--and the rest of the book, particularly including Wilber's introductory essay--absorbing. Not necessarily *convincing*, but I suspect dealing with the concepts in relation to your own thinking would significantly expand the reach and precision of your philosophy, even if you ultimately came to entirely different conclusions. Here's Amazon's page for the book: http://tinyurl.com/kycgg Note that in the "Editorial Reviews" section, the "Book Description"--which is part of the flap copy-- states the point of the book incorrectly: "Brings together for the 1st time the mystical writings of the world's great physicists - all of whom express a deep belief that physics and mysticism are somehow fraternal twins." In fact, this is precisely the *opposite* of the point of the book, which is that physics and mysticism are most emphatically NOT "fraternal twins." Wilber must have had a fit. I'd guess he'd have insisted it be revised for subsequent editions of the book, so if you get hold of a more recent edition, it may say something different, and hopefully more accurate. Anyway...I'll just respond to a few of your points here, and if you're able to read the book, perhaps we can continue later. > Judy: > The contradiction is that according to science, > your constraints, your sense of exercising an > act of will to overcome them, and your enjoyment > of all that are all *determined*, because the > behavior of the elementary particles that make > your mind, as well as your body, function operates > via mathematically predictable statistical > probabilities; there are no "surprises." > > Me: > Maybe this is the heart of our different ways of seeing it. I don't > understand how elementary particles make up my mind? > Most neuo-scientists view a separate mind body making the > distinction like Descarte, don't they? Yes and no. In their work they certainly have to deal with the mind *as if* it were separate, simply because we don't understand the nature of the relationship between body and mind. That is an unsettled issue, so as far as the science is concerned, they have to study what the mind *does*, the manifestations of mind, rather than what mind *is*, if you see the distinction I'm making. Or to put it another way, what they study would be the same no matter which were the case. I think Wilber makes this point that these > sub atomic particles have nothing to do with conscioudness, they are > physical. But is does clarify my own assumptions about the mind body > connections. I follow the primacy of matter point of view. > Consciousness emerges from the functioning of the parts. I don't > think that matter acting strangely at sub-atomic leves changes this > split. Well, we don't know. Which side you take is a matter of philosophy, not of science. There's no more proof that consciousness is emergent from matter than that matter is emergent from consciousness. Either way, "here magic happens." Schroedinger isn't claiming per se that science demonstrates that there is no free will; he's simply highlighting the fact that science cannot tell us whether free will exists, nor where our sense of free will comes from, and then suggesting a possible metaphysical solution that has the advantage of not contradicting either science or our sense of free will. <snip> > Judy: It's experiencing the *free will* of the "group 'I'" > and interpreting it as its own free will. > > Me: > This point of view seems to reduce what I love most about being > alive and turns it into an illusion. The irony is that if what you're calling the "group 'I'" is in fact the case, it means you are infinitely more than just the currently living bodymind called "Curtis." >From that perspective, what you "love most about being alive" is absurdly limited. This notion doesn't *reduce* what you love most about being alive; it *expands* it beyond any limitation. All you have to give up is the limitations! I did remember correctly, by the way, that Schroedinger had been delving into the Vedic literature, specifically the Upanishads; and I was correct in equating the essay's title, "The 'I' That Is God," with the Upanishadic dictum "Atman is Brahman." If it is true, the evidence will have > to rub my nose in it. I certainly would not jump to this conclusion > anymore than I would adopt the Matrix movie series POV by choice. > They are both depressing to me. I don't really understand how the > group free will can want to express itself through me getting a > drink of water. It seems far fetched. That's a little like saying you don't understand how a complicated computer program can achieve anything by changing this particular "0" to a "1." Since neuro science > describes the link between our mind an nervous system, it seems > like we are missing a nervous system here to support the > group "I". Is it a mind without a body? "Group 'I'" is probably not the best phrase to describe it; I think it's leading you off into unproductive culs-de-sac. I've found a radio analogy somewhat useful, at least in a limited context: music comes out of a radio, but the performers and their instruments making the sounds don't live inside the radio. The radio is simply the physical instrument that can translate electromagnetic waves in the air into audible sounds. The radio is analogous to the individual nervous system; the physical vehicle that originally made the music is of a completely different order. The radio's "nervous system" is so limited it wouldn't even recognize the music's "nervous system" as such. > I was going to skip exercise today but now I will be damned if I > will! Oh wait, that was predictable as a counter to this post, so > I am going to watch the World Cup...no ..., I will put my Nordic > Track in front of the tube and do both! That is what I usually do, > what a slave I am! I'm genuinely puzzled as to why the notion of one's actions being determined is so repugnant to many people. As long as your inner sense of free will is intact, what difference does it make? > I'm pretty sure that I need to read his whole essay at this point. > There is too much not clear in his quote. Yeah, I really hope you can get ahold of the book and read the whole thing. There's material from seven other physicists besides Schroedinger, plus, again, Wilber's introductory essay, which I think is one of the tightest, clearest, and most rigorous pieces of writing he's ever done. It pretty definitively supports the perspective that quantum mechanics has nothing whatever to say about mysticism. On the other hand, it does take as a given that "mysticism" is more than just a "poetic" concept. But you can use the first without necessarily accepting the second. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. 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