Sheldrake's Morphogenic Field - Innovation (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, October 20, 2016, 07:52 (2955 days ago) @ BBella

BBELLA: I am confused with your comments before this one, so will start with this one:
Dhw: When you say matter and energy keep changing but the morphic fields stay the same, I’m not sure which fields you are referring to.
BBELLA: All the morphic fields stay the same in the sense they are the memory of what's gone before - so they provide guidelines for matter and energy to continue to be what they ARE creating. Even matter and energy may have their own morphic fields. I am assuming everything has a morphic field. Morphic field being the memory of all that IS.

But memory is an ongoing accumulation. I have a morphic field, but I am not what I was fifty years ago, and so my morphic field must keep changing. But if you mean that my morphic field is confined to the information that makes me a human being, then we must differentiate between types of morphic field.

BBELLA: What is generic information?

I’m using the term to mean the basically unchanging information that makes me a human being and not an orang-utan, as opposed to the ever changing information that makes me dhw and not BBella.

BBELLA: So sorry to be completely lost here with your above comment and other comments I left out.

I’ll try again. The above distinguishes between individual (ever changing) and generic (unchanging), which I hope is now clear. But even the generic fields change, because humans were not always humans. The generic morphic field that kept pre-humans pre-human eventually changed into the generic morphic field that keeps humans humans.

Dhw: And so there are different forces that bring into being all that IS in every moment.
BBELLA: Or, just as possible, one force that brings into being all that IS in every moment.
Dhw: It depends what level we are talking on: […] you can say that whatever drives the universe brings into being all that IS in every moment. Or you can say that each individual force interacts with other individual forces to bring everything into being. Top down, or bottom up?
BBELLA: Again, I am lost. Can you give an example of the level you are talking about that has different forces? I am only thinking of one force that holds all things together, processing all matter and energy to create what IS, including the memory of the morphic field/s.

I would regard evolution as an example. If life began with single cells, and if each of those cells had the intelligence to cooperate with other cells, you ultimately have billions of individual intelligences (each with its own morphic field and memories) combining to produce every single organism (each with its own morphic field and memories) that ever existed. There would then be no single force creating all that IS in the organic world, but only billions of individual forces (intelligences) building more and more individual forces in an endless process of creation.

BBELLA: I don't know where consciousness begins and ends either, but I do believe it's possible that consciousness too has its own morphic field.
Dhw: If consciousness has a morphic field which is independent of all matter (including organisms),...
BBELLA: I dont know if consciousness is independent of all matter…

Nor do I, but consciousness on its own (= having its own morphic field, as you suggest), separated from a material being, would have to be part of what we might call the spirit world. If it’s not separated from a material being, then it’s not on its own!

Dhw:...it could only be the sort of immaterial power people call God.
BBELLA: I cannot (at this time) agree with that statement. If consciousness has it's own morphic field and is itself a part of, connected to, resonates with the other many morphic fields, does not mean to me that it is God. It is one part of a whole.

Yes, all morphic fields are part of the one great morphic field which is the universe, and morphic fields can connect up with each other, but I can’t see disembodied “consciousness” as a morphic field that exists independently of individual beings. Even David’s world of the afterlife, in which we retain our identity, would consist of individual consciousnesses, not consciousness as a whole with a morphic field of its own. Only a universal consciousness (= some sort of God) of which all consciousnesses are a part would have a morphic field of its own.

BBELLA: I am feeling my way through this (as I know you are as well) - so hope you will be patient with me.

We are in the same boat! But we agree that there must be connections between different fields, though we don’t know the degree. I shan’t repeat the rest of your post, but your experiences are a very important factor in all these discussions, and I am the one who has to ask for your patience!