Posted inBooks Science

“I Am a Strange Loop” — a book that beautifully explains consciousness, soul, and I-ness

When I decluttered some bookshelves recently, and gave a bunch of books away, one of the titles in the Absolutely Must Keep pile was Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop."  This is one of my favorite books. It does a marvelous job of explaining the nature of mind, soul, consciousness, I-ness, and such. Hofstadter's approach is based on modern neuroscience, but he doesn't focus on brain minutia. Rather, he takes a broad perspective that ties together science, philosophy, and everyday experience in a highly convincing fashion. I've blogged about "I Am a Strange Loop" before: If I'm not an…
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Posted inBooks Science Taoism/Tai Chi

“Incomplete Nature” shows how life is based on absence

Demonstrating some spousal exaggeration, my wife has been saying that she fears being crushed by a pile of books I've read that are awaiting my blogging attention. (I made sure to include a chair in this photo for scale; unless Laurel shrinks to two feet tall, I think she has nothing to worry about. However, I will admit that there's another pile behind this one, so combined they could possibly be a risk to wifely health.) The top light green book, 600 pages thick, seemed like a good place to start on reducing the pile. It is Terrence W. Deacon's…
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Posted inFree will Science

Free will is a meaningless expression

Here's another episode in my so-far never-ending quest to convince readers of this blog that free will, as normally understood, is an illusion. (For previous attempts, type "free will" in the Google search box in the right sidebar.) Below is a letter to the editor in the July 30 issue of New Scientist, a British publication. Which explains the weird spelling of "randomize" and "recognize." Damn, can't those Britons speak English correctly, like us Americans do? Anyway, I digress. I thought Carpenter's last paragraph was right-on. Along with reflexes, intuitions seem to be another example of unconsicous brain processes that we…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Free will is an illusion: convincing Sam Harris video

Below is a 9-minute video that encapsulates Sam Harris' views about free will. Which, in short, is that it is an illusion. And that the world would be better off if people recognized this, rather than wrongly believing that humans are able to freely choose what to do at any given moment. The background music in the video is a bit distracting. But Harris' message is so convincing, and the video is so well done (aside, perhaps, from the music selection), I urge you to watch it.Now, I realize that some people don't look upon free will in the way…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Science

“#Pray for Turkey” — a demonstrably useless gesture

Prayer has no effect on anybody or anything. Except, perhaps, the person praying. There is no scientific or other sort of demonstrable evidence that praying helps make the world better.  In fact, the largest research study on the efficacy of prayer found that not only was it useless in helping heart bypass patients recover, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slighter higher rate of complications.  Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two…
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Posted inFree will Science

Free will exists. Freedom of the will doesn’t.

I've written a lot about free will on this blog. To me it seems obvious that free will doesn't exist. At least not in the way most people believe that it does.  (You can find my numerous posts on this subject by typing "free will" into the Google search box in the right sidebar.) But after finishing Paul Singh's book, "The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self," I realize that when commenters on my posts object to free will being an illusion, they're usually thinking of free will of being something different than how I…
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Posted inReality Science

Science warns: don’t get sucked into a black hole of belief

When I was in college forty-six years ago, back in the ancient year of 1970, I was attracted to a Eastern form of mysticism that went by various names, including Science of the Soul.  I really liked the idea of being able to do a spiritual "experiment."  Become a vegetarian. Live a moral life. Meditate for several hours a day as instructed by the guru. Observe what happens in meditation. Explore the hypothesis that there are higher non-physical domains of reality. Attempt to enter these via an altered form of consciousness. For about thirty-five years I diligently conducted that experiment.…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Stephen Hawking’s “Genius” series looks at free will confusingly

Wow! As a big Stephen Hawking fan, I never thought that I'd write a blog post where I took him to task for getting a scientific subject wrong.  But after watching Episode 3 of Hawking's new "Genius" series, I've got to point out how confusing this Why Are We Here? episode was when it came to free will.  I've read a lot about free will. I've thought a lot about free will. I've written a lot about free will. (For example, see here, here, and here.) So I was all eyes and ears as Hawking led three ordinary people --…
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Posted inBooks Science

Sean Carroll’s “Planets of Belief” — ideally constantly changing

I've loving a new book by theoretical physicist Sean Carroll,  "The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself." After reading just a few chapters, I felt compelled to leave a laudatory Amazon reader review. Here's part of what I said. I'm an inveterate consumer of both science and philosophy books. Almost always, the scientists lack the ability to talk about philosophy cogently, and almost always the philosophers are clueless about basic scientific understandings. So each frustrate my desire to simultaneously (1) learn about how the world is, and (2) find meaning in the world, given…
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Posted inBooks Science

My (only) big problem with Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” book

I'm re-reading Sam Harris' Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Having read it first in 2014, I wanted to see if I looked upon the book any differently now -- having altered my views about meditation, consciousness, and such during the past few years. Well, I'm still having a problem with how Harris looks upon consciousness. It's pretty much the same problem I talked about in "Questions I had in Sam Harris' 'Waking Up' meditation chapter." It sure seems in the "In fact..." passage that Harris is touting the good that comes from feeling that he is a…
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Posted inScience Universe

The “self” is like a web without a spider

Self... who am I? Will... who controls what I do? Being... do I continue on after death? These are big questions. Humans have struggled to find answers to them from the beginning of recorded history, and surely long before that.  Most people accept a view that is common to most religions: I am something other than my physical body; call it soul or spirit. I have free will; so I am responsible for my actions. I possess, or am, a non-material essence that is unaffected by physical death. Well, maybe.  But these answers go against the grain of modern science.…
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Posted inReality Science

“Free will isn’t. Existence is.” My hoped-for TEDx talk.

Well, it's time for my third annual TEDxSalem speaker application. I was rejected in 2014 and 2015, having pitched Grand Talks About The Cosmos that, obviously, didn't strike the speaker selection committee as being such marvelously interesting topics as I considered them to be. Noting that the deadline for prospective speakers to apply for the 2016-17 event was coming up on April 18, I decided to pitch another talk idea. This time, Free will isn't. Existence is. If nothing else, another TEDxSalem rejection will add to my Tortured Artist (or Misunderstood Genius) resume. In my old age, well, more accurately,…
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Posted inReligions Science

If words sound like spiritual drivel, they probably are

We've all heard lofty sounding spiritual phrases that initially seem like they mean something, but on further reflection are recognized as empty words. In one of his Scientific American Skeptic pieces,  "The True Meaning of BS," Michael Shermer uses Deepak Chopra as an example. Example: “Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.” This is an actual tweet composed by Deepak Chopra, as quoted by University of Waterloo psychologist Gordon Pennycook and his colleagues in a paper published in the November 2015 issue ofJudgment and Decision Making. The scientists set out to determine “the factors that predispose one to become or to…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science’s “faith” is very different from religious faith

Great timing, Steve. Your comment today on my "Why 'man of faith' is an insult" post came soon after I'd come across a perfect reply. But first, the comment: Brian, thank you for taking a moment to respond to my post. I understand and agree with both of your references (although I have a special affinity for chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream). Still, I'd like to understand your perspective on faith just a bit more. You indicate that neither of your examples require religious faith, and I agree with that premise. My question is this (and expanding upon your…
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Posted inReality Science

Understanding reality (including religion) is a matter of “likely”

After almost a dozen years of writing Church of the Churchless posts, and reading comments on them, I'm familiar with the arguments religious people use to justify their beliefs.  When I point out that there is no demonstrable evidence supporting a belief in God, heaven, soul, spirit, angels, the afterlife, or any other form of supernaturalism, frequently I'll hear something like this: Hey, Brian, you can't prove God doesn't exist, so there's no proof for your skeptical view either.  Thus, it's a tie! There's no proof God exists, and there's no proof God doesn't exist, so it's up to each…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

“Higher” states of consciousness actually are lower

I was turned on to an intriguing TEDx talk by neuroscientist Arne Dietrich about Surfing the Stream of Consciousness by a reader of this blog. His description of the core theme of the 17 minute video starts at about the 13 minute mark, if you want to get the gist in only four minutes.   A blog post on The Peaceful Self site, "Flying With the Pixies," includes a transcript of part of Dietrich's talk.  "Your mind, your soul, your hopes, your dreams, your emotions is about a cantaloupe size of meat crackling with electricity inside your skull. There's nothing sacrosanct…
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Posted inReality Science

“The Atheist’s Guide to Reality” — a mind blowing book

I like books that take some of my cherished assumptions about how the world works and chew them up into tiny pieces before putting them in a Truth Blender where they're dissolved into unrecognizable thought-mush. "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" by Alex Rosenberg is such a book. After reading it four years ago (I blogged about it here, here, and here) I've finished re-reading the second half of the book.  And, yes, once again it has blown my mind. But in a different way from the first time, because I'm a different person now.  Being a habitual highlighter and back-of-book…
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Posted inReality Science

Neuroscientist David Eagleman: the brain creates our reality

Somehow my wife and I missed most of the original showing of the 6-part PBS series, "The Brain - With David Eagleman." We saw the final episode, and wanted to catch up on the rest. So last night we streamed What is Reality?, the first episode. It's available on iTunes and Amazon Prime, with clips on the PBS web site. Here's one of the clips: Really interesting. The basic neuroscientific message of this episode is that reality doesn't directly stream into consciousness through our senses, or by any other means. Instead, the brain does all sorts of processing of raw…
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Posted inScience

Max Tegmark: “Consciousness is the way information feels”

I felt unsatisfied after reading Margaret Wertheim's "I feel therefore I am: How exactly did consciousness become a problem?"  Wertheim, a talented science writer, ably reviewed philosophical and scientific conceptions of consciousness. But she ended up favoring a mysterian view where subjectivity supposedly is just too different from physical matter to have consciousness explained by particles. This is all thrilling science, yet a question remains: will any of it explain subjective experience?  Chalmers, the philosopher, claims that the problem of experience is not mechanistically reducible and he argues that it will ‘persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained’.…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

Physicist Sean Carroll debunks unscientific religious myth-making

My wife is a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, so we get the organization's excellent newsletter. On paper, even! I just got around to reading the August 2015 issue. It had an excellent piece by physicist Sean Carroll -- the address he gave after winning FFRF's "Emperor Has No Clothes Award."  You can read "Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible" on the FFRF web site. Or via this PDF file: Download Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible - Freedom From Religion Foundation Only the paper version had two interesting graphics. So I took photos of them to share…
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