Posted inReality Science

“Heterophenomenology.” Not a sex act. Way of studying consciousness.

I've learned a new word: heterophenomenology. Was immediately attracted to it, even before I knew what it meant. Had an exotic sensuous ring.  "Hey, hot thing, I'd really like to do some heterophenomenology with you. Are you up for it?" Turns out, though, that what Daniel Dennet is talking about in his new book, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking, isn't a sex act, but a means of investigating subjective consciousness.  Or at least, what people usually think of as subjective consciousness. Dennett has an interesting take on how it is possible to investigate experiences that are usually regarded…
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Posted inReality Science

Religion: believing we know more than we really do

My wife and I are enjoying "Brain Games," a National Geographic channel program about how the brain works.  Every episode features exercises that viewers can take part in. An episode we watched a few nights ago was called What You Don't Know. Short answer: a lot.  But most of us mistakenly believe that we know more than we really do. So says a summary of that episode: Bet you could explain something as basic as how a zipper works? Or correctly draw something as simple as a bicycle? If you said yes, you likely bet wrong... but don’t worry it’s…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

I reveal Mystery of the Cosmos: its strange!

Yesterday I achieved one of my lifelong goals: I became a newspaper columnist. Sure, the paper is Salem Weekly -- which actually is published every two weeks, but since this is Salem's alternative newspaper, likely most of the readers are too stoned to notice. And Salem Weekly is free. So I'm a columnist in a paper which gets grabbed out of boxes, sometimes by people who need a foundation layer for their kitty litter. But like I said in a post on my other blog: Still, hey, I'm a columnist! Along with Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman. I'm just one…
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Posted inGod Reality

Praying to a personal God requires us to be a “person”

I'm not big on praying. A few days ago I called it absurd, even in the face of tragedy. Prayers alone have zero effect on anything or anyone. Prayers plus action to change things... that can work. Philosophically, though, praying raises some interesting questions.  Is the entity being prayed to a personal being, or not? Usually we assume that it is, for good reason. Impersonal entities, like a stone, gravity, or a computer, aren't considered to be capable of responding to prayers.  (Nonetheless, I've engaged in quite of bit of dialoguing with computers over the years; particularly Windows machines where…
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Posted inReality Science

“The hard problem” of consciousness may not exist

This week's issue of New Scientist has a special section on consciousness. Conscious being that I am, I enjoyed reading about whatever the heck my consciousness consists of. The articles contained a lot of interesting information. Much progress is being made on understanding how the brain works, including what causes something to be conscious rather unconscious. For example: One of the most prominent attempts to turn this experimental data into a theory of consciousness is known as the "global neuronal workspace" model. This suggests that input from our eyes, ears and so on, is first processed unconsciously, primarily in sensory…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be a real actual body, not an imagined abstract soul

What are we? Ah, there's an ageless question. Matter? Energy? Mind? Spirit? Soul? A combination? As noted in a post from a few years back, "Feeling the spirit... via body or soul?," I used to believe that our true nature was non-material soul-consciousness. After I died, or maybe before if my meditation bore fruit, I'd soar into a spiritual realm of existence and enjoy a soulful (literally) existence. Yet where is the evidence for this? Nowhere. Except in the minds of people who believe this sort of stuff -- which seemingly includes the majority of the world's population, given how…
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Posted inReality Religions

Hume ridicules religious imagination

David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher (1711-1776), is a favorite of modern day scientists and scientifically-minded philosophers. Somehow I'd reached the age of 64 without reading all of his "Concerning Human Understanding," even though my mother bought the Great Books of the Western World series when I was about nine -- and I inherited the collection when she died. I'm getting to know Hume now. And am liking him a lot. Sure, he writes in a style that seems stilted. But his ideas about experience, cause and effect, religious belief, and such are wonderfully up to date. I'm most…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Embrace awe that existence exists, not religion

It happened again today. That sudden "bottom falling out from under me" feeling, sort of the mental equivalent of being startled by an elevator going into free fall. I like the feeling. It's the most genuine sensation of spirituality, not really an apt word, but best I can come up with, that comes over me in my churchless way of looking at the world. What it is -- and I'm also struggling to find the right words here -- is awe that existence exists.  (Other attempts I've made to describe that marvelous mystery can be found scattered through this search, by…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

In this moment, be the mystery of existence

Thirty-five minutes until the Beanery coffeehouse closes. One sixteen ounce of coffee to consume while composing a caffeinated blog post. I accept the mission.  Now. In this moment.  To say something about one of my favorite chapters in one of my favorite books: "God in the Moment," in Luther Askeland's marvelous Ways in Mystery. I've highlighted this chapter so many times, there's fewer non-colored lines than colored. Blogged about this chapter before in my very early blogging days, when I wrote "Still trying to set my hair on fire." Re-reading it, I was pleased to find that when I was…
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Posted inReality Science

There’s more, and less, to reality than we believe

We humans are mavelously anthropocentric creatures. Of course, our two dogs are marvelously caninecentric creatures. All they know about the world is what their dog brains are able to perceive.  I don't get the feeling, though, that Serena and Zu Zu feel that their way of looking upon reality is the only way, or the best way. Whereas lots of people do. One exception: when they're engaged in an intense sniffing project while we're on a walk and I tell them, "Come on, let's go!"; their bemused look at me speaks What an idiot -- why isn't he as interested…
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Posted inReality Science

The secret truth gurus don’t know (but scientists do)

In my life I've flown in both directions: toward mysticism as taught by gurus, and toward scientific understanding as taught by scientists. For a long time I felt like it was possible to meld the best of both worlds in an even-better combination. Now, though, I feel like whatever mysticism claims to offer needs to be assessed from within the world of reality known to science. Understand: I'm not saying that scientists are anywhere close to knowing what life, the universe, consciousness, and All That is all about. Mysteries abound. Maybe they always will, since it seems that most of…
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Posted inReality Science

In living, focus on “differences that make a difference”

I've come across this phrase quite frequently in philosphical and scientific writings: a difference that makes a difference. It's appealing.  What good is a difference that doesn't make a difference? In fact, is it even really a difference, if nothing about it makes a difference? These are deep epistemological waters. I'm not competent to dive into them. I just enjoy pondering Gregory Bateson's definition of information, which seems to apply more generally to other areas (of course, it could be reasonably argued that information is the essence of everything). Consider the mind-body problem. Or in some religious circles, the mind/soul-body…
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Posted inReality

Scott Adams: “We’re living in a computer simulation”

Makes sense to me. Of course, that's what I've been programmed to think. By whoever is running the simulation we call "life." Scott Adams, the simulated human which believes it created the comic strip "Dilbert," also believes that it is highly likely we're living in a computer simulation.  I like his reasoning. One feature of our so-called reality that makes me scratch my head is the consistency of the rules of physics. One might expect a "natural" universe - one that came from an explosion - to be nothing but randomness on every dimension, including the rules of physics themselves.…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Beyond humanism and absolutism… mystery

What is real? Great question. Just the sort of question to tackle in a blog post. Such is the hubris of bloggers.  Hubris is a word that's used a lot in David E. Cooper's "The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery." Wikipedia clues us in to the meaning of hubris. Not a good quality to have if you seek to know the nature of reality. Hubris (pron.: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of…
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Posted inReality Science

Cosmos could be beyond human knowing

Listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast on "Has Science Replaced Philosophy?" while exercising today, I heard a discussion of how science seeks empirical knowledge while philosophy is after logical knowledge. Or something like that. I've got the basic notion correct, if not the precise philosophy talk language.  Anyway, it's an interesting idea. Often religious people disparage science, and scientists, arguing that the mysteries of the universe can't be fully understood by reason and logic. True enough. However, science isn't always reasonable or logical. Quantum theory, for example. At the quantum level of reality (which some say is all of reality),…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Reality is more than the human mind

Roger asked some good questions in his comment on a recent blog post. He started off by agreeing with my oh-so-agreeable statement about the ineffable can't-know'ness of someone else's subjective experiences. Correct, "Everybody has their own subjective experiences. It isn't possible to know what those subjective experiences are like, unless you're the person having the experiences." ---However, what is a RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas] meditation experience? Why is there a need for RSSB initation into a meditation process? Is the RSSB meditations nothing more than one's subjective personal experiences? ---So, these RSSB meditation experiences of the various astral planes or regions are…
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Posted inMorality Reality

Meaning of life is whatever you find meaningful

What is the meaning of life? I used to think this was an important question. Heck, maybe the only question worth seriously pursuing an answer to. Why? Because once the question was answered, I'd know what were the most important things to do in life. (Which, though I didn't ponder this at the time, had damn well better include "search for the meaning of life," or I was seriously screwed.) Now I'm not nearly as interested in thinking about the meaning of life. I'm actually living a meaningful life -- much preferable to wondering what one might consist of. A few…
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Posted inReality Religions

How atheists comfort children about death

Interesting story in the Washington Post: "Atheist parents comfort children about death without talk of God or heaven." As so many millions of Americans turn to clergy and prayers to help their children sort out the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, parents like Drizin do not. They don’t agonize over interpreting God’s will or message in the event. They don’t seek to explain what kind of God allows suffering, and they don’t fudge it when children ask what happens to people who die, be they Grandma or the young victims of Newtown. It's kind of weird, of course, that non-religious…
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Posted inMiracles Reality Science

Spiritual hallucinations provide illusory certainty

Synchronicity. I don't believe in it as something supernatural or miraculous. Just as an interesting phenomenon which has a natural explanation. Still... I enjoyed the connection between a book I started reading this morning, and a new video from David Lane, a.k.a. neuralsurfer, I came across a few minutes later via a Lane Facebook post. Common theme: brain-produced hallucinations which can seem absolutely real to the person hallucinating. The book is Oliver Sacks' "Hallucinations." Sacks is a professor of neurology who writes books about ways the brain produces unusual experiences.  Here's some of what I learned in the first few…
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Posted inReality

Words are irrelevant to the cosmos

I'm walking along on a path to the lake, talking to one of our dogs. A habit of mine. Maybe inherited from my mother, since she also liked to talk to herself. Except when I talk to our dogs, I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. After all, there's a sentient being with large ears right next to me. Tonight, though, a marvelous intuition suddenly flashed into my consciousness. Virtually everything in the universe doesn't relate to words; apart from other people the cosmos doesn't give a crap about what we say. I'd never thought of speech in this…
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