Sheldrake's Morphogenic Field - Innovation (Evolution)

by BBella , Tuesday, November 08, 2016, 00:20 (2936 days ago) @ dhw

BBELLA: I will give you the individual forces constantly acting, etc., But as for "bottom up as opposed to top down"? I dont know, it would seem to me to be both: Individual and holistic, which is what morphic field theory is all about. My main point was, for me, the word force/s embodies it all.

Top down control for me involves some sort of God, whereas bottom up = interacting individual forces (organic and inorganic) which may influence one another but are not influenced by every other individual force in the universe or by a single force that encompasses everything.

Ok, I see where you are going with that. I was thinking more like how trees have individual morphic fields but also are a part of a whole morphic field. The same with everything. All things have individual fields as well as whole fields. I'm not seeing how a whole consciousness field would be any different than a whole tree, human, spider, bird, planet, etc., field. It has individual fields and a whole field. Seems that is how it should be.

Dhw: I agree completely that there are different levels of consciousness, but in all these cases, it is part of individual beings: aliens, animals, insects and in my opinion probably microorganisms as well. It doesn’t exist “on its own”.
BBELLA: I also agree that consciousness may not exist on it's own, because no-thing does. But that doesn't nullify the possibility that it, too, has a morphic field that keeps it/makes it what it is. Unless - everything is consciousness or consciousness is not a real thing - just a figment of the brain's imagination. If NDE's are real and gives insight into the possibilities of what happens after the death of the body, then that which is me or you, what we call the consciousness, stays intact. Something allows for that. How would the "I" that is me be able to stay "I", intact after death, unless the conscious that makes up "I" also has a morphic field?

I certainly kick hard against the view that consciousness is not real. I would say that if NDEs are real, “my” surviving consciousness, with all its components (memories, ideas, emotions etc.) is “my” morphic field, i.e. it is still individualized. It’s the idea of non-individualized consciousness that I can’t get my head round, as you seem to be describing below. Even David’s God (“universal consciousness”) would have his own character.

But every thing that IS seems to have individual fields as well as a whole morphic field. So why not consciousness? Why does the pattern of all that IS stop with consciousness? If consciousness does not have a whole field, what makes it different than every thing that IS?

I don’t see the individual’s morphic field as the body anyway.

I agree. But, the body itself has a morphic field. I've said before, I think of the morphic field as an imprinted memory field. It is not the thing itself made of matter and energy, it is an imprint of the thing. Similar to what we might think of as a ghost - an imprint of what makes a thing a thing but not the thing itself.

I think it’s all the information and the energy that constitute the nature of whatever is.

I possibly disagree. I'm thinking that all information is matter and energy is energy. Energy may possibly be the force that guides the matter to be what it is. But the morphic field, I see as an imprint (memory) that energy is guided by to continuously create what IS.

For me, the fuzziness and blurred lines are integral to the whole concept, because all material things seem to have a morphic field, from the individual cells in the body to the body itself and to the world around the body, both organic and inorganic.

Yes, I agree.

David won’t agree, because he thinks microorganisms are non-conscious automatons, but I am far more inclined to accept the view that all living things are conscious. However, I don’t know if consciousness gives a living thing life, or consciousness depends on life.

If we think of life, not as consciousness, but as that which leaves a living thing when it dies, that is what I am labeling consciousness. We could call it something else - but what would that be?

I don’t know if consciousness gives a living thing life, or consciousness depends on life. NDEs suggest the former, since the “I” appears to survive the death of the body, but the materialist view of course suggests that consciousness depends on life (though I’ll come back to that if and when I ever get round to formulating my reconciliation between dualism and materialism!).

I look forward to your formulation!