Introducing Rupert Sheldrake (Introduction)
by David Turell 
, Wednesday, July 16, 2014, 22:14 (3783 days ago)
I've mentioned him before. Here is a good taste of his ideas. I've read many of his experiments. He is real. I'm convinced his findings are at a quantum level:-http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/07/14/scientific-heretic-rupert-sheldrake-on-morphic-fields-psychic-dogs-and-other-mysteries/
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
DAVID: I've mentioned him before. Here is a good taste of his ideas. I've read many of his experiments. He is real. I'm convinced his findings are at a quantum level: -http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/07/14/scientific-heretic-rupert-sheldrake-on-morphic-fields-psychic-dogs-and-other-mysteries/- This article contains a link to an interesting one on panpsychism, contained in the paragraph below, which is on page 1:-Horgan: Why do you think your ideas are so vehemently rejected by the scientific mainstream, while multiverses, string theory, panpsychism (as defined by neuroscientist Christof Koch) and other highly speculative ideas are taken seriously?-QUOTE: "When I talk and write about panpsychism, I often encounter blank stares of incomprehension. Such a belief violates people's strongly held intuition that sentience is something only humans and a few closely related species possess. Yet our intuition also fails when we are first told as kids that a whale is not a fish but a mammal or that people on the other side of the planet do not fall off because they are upside down. Panpsychism is an elegant explanation for the most basic of all brute facts I encounter every morning on awakening: there is subjective experience. Tononi's theory offers a scientific, constructive, predictive and mathematically precise form of panpsychism for the 21st century. It is a gigantic step in the final resolution of the ancient mind-body problem."
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by David Turell , Wednesday, July 23, 2014, 16:42 (3776 days ago) @ dhw
Sheldrake has all sorts of interesting proposals: morphogenic fields to explain body forms which is not explained by our current knowledge of DNA; species consciousness, which he has proven to my mind, and a general consciousness which he refers to as panpsychism. I agree with all of this, but disagree with you as to how it works at the individual cell level.
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by David Turell , Saturday, March 21, 2015, 14:12 (3535 days ago) @ David Turell
A wide-ranging interview with Sheldrake who is quite the free-thinker. His ideas deserve thought. He is fiercely anti-reductionist:-http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/-"As I argue in my book Science Set Free, I am convinced that the sciences are being imprisoned by the outmoded ideology of materialism. I show how each of the 10 dogmas of materialism can be turned into a question, treated as a scientific hypothesis, and evaluated scientifically. None of these dogmas turns out to be valid or persuasive. In every case, new questions open up, along with new possibilities for scientific research.-"I would like to see these possibilities explored. There are already many open-minded scientists working within universities and other scientific institutions, but most of them are unable to follow unconventional lines of research because they're afraid these would not be funded. I would like to see a plurality of sources for funding in science that enable different approaches to be explored. This is unlikely to happen through government funding agencies, which are dominated by the science establishment, but there are many private foundations that could fund alternative scientific and medical research and I hope that some of them will do so.-"I also hope that non-materialist scientists will feel able to meet up with other like-minded professionals and work together to change the sciences from within. And I hope that these open questions will become more widely known to students at schools through the educational system."
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by BBella , Saturday, March 21, 2015, 19:42 (3535 days ago) @ David Turell
A wide-ranging interview with Sheldrake who is quite the free-thinker. His ideas deserve thought. He is fiercely anti-reductionist: > > http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/ > >I would like to see a plurality of sources for funding in science that enable different approaches to be explored. This is unlikely to happen through government funding agencies, which are dominated by the science establishment, but there are many private foundations that could fund alternative scientific and medical research and I hope that some of them will do so. > > "I also hope that non-materialist scientists will feel able to meet up with other like-minded professionals and work together to change the sciences from within. And I hope that these open questions will become more widely known to students at schools through the educational system."-The more the above happens the more (for the good) changes will happen and happen quickly.
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
DAVID: A wide-ranging interview with Sheldrake who is quite the free-thinker. His ideas deserve thought. He is fiercely anti-reductionist:-http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/-“I would like to see a plurality of sources for funding in science that enable different approaches to be explored. This is unlikely to happen through government funding agencies, which are dominated by the science establishment, but there are many private foundations that could fund alternative scientific and medical research and I hope that some of them will do so. "I also hope that non-materialist scientists will feel able to meet up with other like-minded professionals and work together to change the sciences from within. And I hope that these open questions will become more widely known to students at schools through the educational system."-BBELLA: The more the above happens the more (for the good) changes will happen and happen quickly.-A very long but very interesting and refreshing interview. I'm afraid I skipped a lot of the specialist stuff, but here are just a couple of other snippets that attracted my attention:-For Tony especially:-“The software/hardware duality is indeed a very popular modern metaphor for the relation of mind and body. But it is of course inherently dualistic. The hardware is thought of as like the machinery of the body and the software as like the purposive intelligence of minds.” “One of the attractions of old-style dualism was that the soul could survive the death of the body. And, interestingly, the founding father of modern computing theory, Alan Turing, was obsessed with this duality precisely because he wanted to have a model for understanding how the soul could survive bodily death. If the software could be taken from one computer and put into another, he had a good analogy for survival and reincarnation.” -Re psychic phenomena: “In my various encounters with skeptics like Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer, I have found that they have no interest in looking at the evidence because they know in advance it must be false. In other words, their position is one of prejudice rather than open-minded scientific enquiry. In that sense, I think they are deeply anti-scientific.”-An interesting observation, which I have no doubt applies to other spheres of study too!
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by David Turell , Sunday, March 22, 2015, 14:25 (3534 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: A very long but very interesting and refreshing interview. I'm afraid I skipped a lot of the specialist stuff, but here are just a couple of other snippets that attracted my attention: > > Re psychic phenomena: > “In my various encounters with skeptics like Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer, I have found that they have no interest in looking at the evidence because they know in advance it must be false. In other words, their position is one of prejudice rather than open-minded scientific enquiry. In that sense, I think they are deeply anti-scientific.” > > An interesting observation, which I have no doubt applies to other spheres of study too!-I should have included this snippet above (which I had enjoyed while reading the essay) when I introduced the article. Those mentioned are indeed anti-scientific.
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
dhw: A very long but very interesting and refreshing interview. I'm afraid I skipped a lot of the specialist stuff, but here are just a couple of other snippets that attracted my attention: Re psychic phenomena: “In my various encounters with skeptics like Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Shermer, I have found that they have no interest in looking at the evidence because they know in advance it must be false. In other words, their position is one of prejudice rather than open-minded scientific enquiry. In that sense, I think they are deeply anti-scientific.” -An interesting observation, which I have no doubt applies to other spheres of study too!-DAVID: I should have included this snippet above (which I had enjoyed while reading the essay) when I introduced the article. Those mentioned are indeed anti-scientific.-Like you, I left out some other significant snippets that I meant to include:-"Many materialists believe that they know the truth, while other people, particularly those who belong to religious traditions, are simply motivated by religious dogma."-"The idea that animals and plants are machines is really Dogma Number One." Good to see him joining Margulis, McClintock, Shapiro and the rest. He also dislikes the current use of the term "information", which I have moaned about so often:-"To talk of these forms as "patterns of information" adds nothing, but causes a fog of confusion and ambiguity." Ah, ain't it the truth!
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by David Turell , Monday, March 23, 2015, 22:46 (3533 days ago) @ dhw
dhw: "The idea that animals and plants are machines is really Dogma Number One." > Good to see him joining Margulis, McClintock, Shapiro and the rest. He also dislikes the current use of the term "information", which I have moaned about so often: > > "To talk of these forms as "patterns of information" adds nothing, but causes a fog of confusion and ambiguity." > Ah, ain't it the truth!-The organisms are not patterns of information. they use information coded into DNA, which, if you've noticed, is an amazingly versatile code!
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by David Turell , Sunday, July 12, 2015, 15:45 (3422 days ago) @ David Turell
We really don't know how the brain works to produce vision or anything else:-https://youtu.be/U7HwjYrbwEM-An interesting 10 minute video illustrating his thinking and approach to the mind
Introducing Rupert Sheldrake
by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Monday, March 23, 2015, 03:13 (3534 days ago) @ dhw
DAVID: A wide-ranging interview with Sheldrake who is quite the free-thinker. His ideas deserve thought. He is fiercely anti-reductionist: > > http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/ > > “I would like to see a plurality of sources for funding in science that enable different approaches to be explored. This is unlikely to happen through government funding agencies, which are dominated by the science establishment, but there are many private foundations that could fund alternative scientific and medical research and I hope that some of them will do so. > "I also hope that non-materialist scientists will feel able to meet up with other like-minded professionals and work together to change the sciences from within. And I hope that these open questions will become more widely known to students at schools through the educational system."-> For Tony especially: > > “The software/hardware duality is indeed a very popular modern metaphor for the relation of mind and body. But it is of course inherently dualistic. The hardware is thought of as like the machinery of the body and the software as like the purposive intelligence of minds.” > “One of the attractions of old-style dualism was that the soul could survive the death of the body. And, interestingly, the founding father of modern computing theory, Alan Turing, was obsessed with this duality precisely because he wanted to have a model for understanding how the soul could survive bodily death. If the software could be taken from one computer and put into another, he had a good analogy for survival and reincarnation.” > - I agree, though I am not looking for a way for the "soul to survive bodily death". I think it is more of a case as it is the only analogy that really makes sense because a 'computer' is the only technology we have in which information, processing, and mechanics are intertwined in a manner similar to what happens in the human body.
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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.