Brain and mysticism; report from a symposium (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, December 19, 2019, 15:32 (1800 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: At Esalen from a participant:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-mysticism-help-us-solve-the-mind-b...

QUOTES: "The mind-body problem--which encompasses consciousness, free will and the meaning of life--concerns who we really are. Are we matter, which just happens to give rise to mind? Or could mind be the basis of reality, as many sages have insisted?"

“….some scientific materialists are insufferably arrogant. They claim they can explain everything, and yet they cannot account for consciousness, the origin of the universe or the origin of life.”

“Beauty, love and friendship--and our hard-won, halting moral progress--make it hard for me to believe that life is just an accident." (David’s bold)

DAVID: The bolds fit my thoughts exactly: there seems to be no reason for us to be here, and life is not just an accident. He sounds a bit like NDE folks without mentioning them.

dhw: This is a direct refutation of the claim in the Pigliucci article that "nobody takes substance dualism seriously anymore". I’m also reminded of the following (edited quote from “The limitations of science”): "Science can only concern itself with the physical world as we know it […] and so by definition any belief in a non-physical world must be unscientific. But unscientific does not mean unreal or non-existent There are many things in our lives that transcend the physical world as we know it – love, art, music, beauty, premonitions and so on […] This is not to denigrate science. It is simply a denial of the right of science to exclude the possibility of phenomena outside its range.” (From An Agnostic’s Brief Guide to the Universe) Ah, the admirable impartiality of agnosticism!

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