The elephant in the room is the human soul...

[felis_ultharus]

Gradually getting caught up in all my courses. Editing about 10 pages a day -- an excrutiatingly slow rate. I'm also writing a short story on the side, just to burn off some of the creative energy.

Fulke Greville (1554-1628) was a living warning to parents that if you name your child "Fulke," they shall turn to poetry.

Someone was questioning the dominant postmodern viewpoint in class, and for once it wasn't me. His name is Chris.

I've heard people talking about this guy -- mocking comments behind his back -- but he's one of the most intelligent students in the program (well-thought-out and well-read). He was unwilling, today, to automatically rule out the existence of a true self or of free will -- a cardinal sin these days.

Everyone started looking at each other, as if someone had broken wind. Even the professor looked uncomfortable. She accidentally described him as "stuck" in his beliefs, before quickly changing it to "focused on."

Comments

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

Extremely interesting. And not surprising. I'm still not willing to rule out that the possible brain states may be infinite, and that even with the remarkable potentials of such an organ, that there may be a ghost in this machine that is not wholly emergeant from matter.

20th Century science played a real joke on the old Newtonian materialist order. Not merely in transforming that hard, solid, clockwork universe into a series of tensions and relativities, but because some of the greatest defenders of free will and human possibility are physicists, biologists, and chemists.

The last vanguard of the Newtonian world are, comically, in the humanities, where 19th century scientific thought has finally trickled down with comic effect.

It is ironic that as literary theorists attack the human spirit behind the shield of science, scientists like David Suzuki are urging us back to that path.

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[em-fish.livejournal.com]

I'm still not willing to rule out that the possible brain states may be infinite, and that even with the remarkable potentials of such an organ, that there may be a ghost in this machine that is not wholly emergeant from matter.

I didn't expect you to rule it out; in fact, to me, what Ramachandran has to say implies a "ghost in the machine". Rather than coming to understand the human mind as a simple meat machine, reading those passages fills me with wonder.

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

It's funny how science, which once was seen as the destroyer of wonder, is now trying to lead us back to it ^_^

Sometimes I'll read something in a science magazine that astonishes me -- like the possibility that it rains diamonds on Neptune. Or the fact that all our atoms were made in the crucibles we call stars :)

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

If you understand theoretical physics (which I do, for some bizarre reason), you might enjoy the theories of Dr. Michio Kaku. The "theory of everything" that Einsein postulated, and Dr. Kaku is among many searching for, would effectively unite the scientific with the spiritual.

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised. I think physics is beginning to lean that way in general.

John Ralston Saul said that the reason the big churches often have so much trouble with science is not only because it denies their revealed knowledge, but because it suggests a much more animist/pantheist view of an integrated creation, where everything is interconnected.

In such an environment, spirituality has a place but not one that could be controlled by an organization, nor one that came down to a series of strict rules.

Einstein was definitely religious -- to the point where he refused quantum theory on the grounds that "God does not play dice" with the universe. Both he and early psychiatrist Carl Jung refused to rule out the possibility that astrology actually worked.

Re: Em goes apoplectic

[scottevil.livejournal.com]

The Theory of Everything is also referred to as the God Theory.

It's in fact rational thinking and logic that brings me to an understanding of the spiritual as something that can and will be explained by science. How arrogant are those who use our primitive science as an argument against the spiritual.

A Q Continuum-like plane is something I like to think about.