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Searching For Spirit
Searching for Truth about Mind and Morality
Where IS your mind? Is your mind located somewhere in your brain? Does your brain create your mind? If the answer to these questions is yes, the belief held by many religions that there is life after death is false. If the answer to these questions is yes, then morality is a product of the functioning of a brain, and the belief that there is an absolute morality is false.
The idea that mind is created by brain pervades our entire culture. I have heard people from all walks of life casually comment that a person of high intelligence has “good brains” or that a particularly challenging problem “makes their brain hurt” or is a “brain teaser”.
The idea that somehow mind is created by brain is part of a much broader belief system called materialism. At its core, materialism is the belief that matter and the mathematical rules of physics and chemistry are sufficient to explain EVERYTHING that exists, including your mind.
Generally speaking, there are two competing alternatives to materialism; dualism and idealism (also known as mentalism or mental realism). Dualism is the belief that in addition to matter and the mathematical rules of physics and chemistry, mind exists as a separate and distinct entity. Most Christians and Muslims can be categorized as dualists. Idealism is the belief that fundamentally the only thing that exists is mind.
Searching for Spirit is a quest to discover the true nature of both mind and morality.
The overall purpose of Searching for Spirit is to challenge the belief system of materialism. Specifically, it challenges the belief that a brain or any other physical process can create mind. In its’ place, both dualism and idealism are explored as possible explanations of both mind and existence.
Chapter 1 of this book, “What is Life?” preps the reader for the journey ahead by challenging the biologist’s definition of life as a system capable of reproduction. In its’ place self awareness is offered as the defining characteristic of life. Examples of life being fundamentally mind or self awareness are presented that (I hope) the reader will find both intuitive and familiar.
Chapter 2 of this book, “Journey into Computer and Brain in Search of Mind”, begins the search for spirit by taking the reader on a journey into the inner workings of both computers and brains. By getting the reader’s “hands dirty” and becoming intimately familiar with how the building blocks of computers and brains actually function, and how they function when connected together in networks to form both computers and brains, it becomes intuitively obvious that mind is nowhere to be found in the inner workings of a brain or any other sort of physical process. After traveling the materialist landscape of the brain in search of spirit, the possibility that mind is in fact a separate and distinct entity from brain is explored.
Chapter 3 of this book, “Quantum Physics, the New Frontier of Dualism”, explores the possibility that mind is in fact a separate and distinct entity from brain. This is the land of dualism, and the interpretation of quantum physics is its’ new frontier. Most materialist philosophers claim that dualism is incapable of providing a satisfactory explanation for how a non material mind can interact with a material world. This claim is unfounded. In quantum physics, modern versions of the double slit experiment suggest that it is possible. Discover how the ability of the mind to interact with brain is a special case of the ability for mind to interact with the physical universe in general.
Chapter 4 of this book, “Idealism and the Metaphysics of Information”, explores the possibility that fundamentally, the only thing that exists is mind. The truth is, not a single one of us has ever directly experienced “matter” or even the material world. What we experience is…experience, our thoughts…the content of our minds, and we label these thoughts as matter and the material world. The fact that the world which we experience seems to operate under the mathematical equations of physics and chemistry does not necessarily imply the existence of a material universe, but it certainly implies the existence of both an orderly and objective one. This view is consistent with the direction that physics in the 21st century is heading. Many physicists are beginning to suspect that fundamentally, the universe may be made up of information, not matter. The catch phrase for this new way of thinking, originally coined by the physicist John Archibald Wheeler, is “It from bit”. In other words, things, “it”, from information,”bit”. Fundamentally, what we are aware of, the very content of our minds, is information. From the point of view of idealism, if the “It from bit” conception of the universe turns out to be true, then the universe itself is literally made of the same stuff as the content of mind, information.
When idealism is taken to be a possible explanation of existence, some very interesting and satisfying alternative notions of time emerge. Chapter 5, “The Meaning in Time”, gives an idealist account of time and draws parallels between our experience of time and our experience of meaning.
Chapter 7, the natural moral law that is written on our hearts, looks into the true nature of morality. All human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong, a sense of the way they ought to behave. This sense is woven into the very fabric of who we are. The real law that ensures liberty and justice for all is not found in a single law book or written constitution. The real law is written on our hearts. Governments and written laws are but expressions of this law.
Much as God writes His law of right vs. wrong on our hearts, He also gives every human being an innate sense of beauty. Chapter 8, Aesthetics: The innate sense of beauty that every human being has, explores this innate sense of beauty. Just as our innate sense of right vs. wrong drives us to create governments and written laws, the innate sense of beauty we all experience inspires us to create works of art.
The search begins…
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
- Max Planck, winner of the 1918 Nobel Prize in physics and discoverer of quantum physics
“If we were magically shrunk and put into someone’s brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away, and we would be able to describe their workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would nowhere contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, and levers!”
- Gottfried Leibniz, Co-discoverer of the Calculus.
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Resources - People
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Non-materialist scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers with deep insights into the nature of mind...
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Physicists |
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Laurance R. Doyle (b. 1953) is a scientist who received his PhD from the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. He has worked at SETI since 1987 where he is a principal investigator and astrophysicist. His main area of study has been the formation and detection of extrasolar planets[1], but he has also worked on communications theory. In particular he has written on how patterns in animal communication relate to humans with an emphasis on cetaceans.
Doyle is currently seeking to compare dolphin whistles and baby babble in an attempt to make predictions about extraterrestrial communications. He believes that by measuring the complexity of communications for different species on earth, we could get a good indication of how advanced an extraterrestrial signal is. His study determined that babies babble over 800 different sounds with the same amount of frequency as dolphins. As they grow older, those sounds decrease to around 50 and become more repetitious. The study found that baby dolphins develop similarly with regards to their whistling.
His SETI profile is at http://www.seti.org/about-us/people/staff/doyle-lawrence.php
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Donald D. Hoffman, Professor Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California.
I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Spacetime, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being.
If this is right, if consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience.
His website is http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/
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Mathematicians |
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William Dembski
I see evolutionary informatics as the scientific core of ID and expect I’ll be working in this field for the next several years. In addition to this work with the engineering and mathematical communities, I retain my interests in philosophy and theology and have various books in the works in this area. My first doctorate was in mathematics, and what mathematics has given me is a desire to solve interesting problems, whatever they might be and wherever I might find them. One of the things that convinces me that ID is on to something is that I find one interesting research problem leading to another, and that I have more interesting problems to resolve than I have years to spend working on them. Despite all the opposition I face, especially ostracism from the scientific mainstream, which can be painful, I would not change places with anyone.
His website is http://www.designinference.com
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Philosophers |
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David Chalmers
I am a philosopher at the Australian National University. Officially I am Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Centre for Consciousness, and an ARC Federation Fellow. I work in the philosophy of mind and in related areas of philosophy and cognitive science. I am especially interested in consciousness, but am also interested in philosophical issues about meaning and possibility, in the foundations of cognitive science and of physics, and a bunch of other things.
His website is: http://consc.net/
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Neuroscientists and Neurosurgeons |
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Mario Beauregard
Mario Beauregard earned his Ph.D. at the Université de Montréal in 1991. His first postdoc was at the University of Texas Medical School (Houston) and his second was in neuroimaging at the Neurological Institute in Montreal (1994-1996). He is currently a researcher (chercheur agrégé) in the Departments of Psychology and Radiology at the Université de Montréal.
“Evidence supports the view that individuals who have religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences do in fact contact an objectively real ‘force’ that exists outside themselves”
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Benjamin S. Carson
A pediatric neurosurgeon of world-renown, and a mentor to countless individuals of all ages, Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., carries with him his message of hope for and faith in the human spirit and the remarkable ability of the human brain. To all who say that circumstances in their lives have made personal success impossible, Dr. Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, is living proof that perseverance, prayer, and self-respect, combined with a devotion to acquiring knowledge, can overcome any obstacles in one's way.
His website is http://www.drbencarson.com/
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Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz
is a research psychiatrist at the School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles and one of the world’s leading experts in neuroplasticity. Decades ago, he began to study the philosophy of conscious awareness, the idea that the actions of the mind have an effect on the workings of the brain. Jeff's breakthrough work in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) provided the hard evidence that the mind can control the brain's chemistry. He has lectured extensively to both professional and lay audiences in the US, Europe, and Asia. Jeff’s books include The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force and the bestseller Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, the seminal book on OCD. He was the co-organizer of the 2007 international conference on neuroleadership, and is co-organizer of the 2008 Neuroleadership Summits. Jeff is based in Santa Monica, CA.
His website is http://westallen.typepad.com/brains_on_purpose/about_jeffrey_m_schwartz_.html |
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