[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

[Nick Thompson]

Right.  Beware the over-stretched metaphor.  However, I get the impression that human beings do resonate when they interact in a quite literal sense.  There was a time when I could always figure out who my wife was talking to on the phone because she would instinctively mimic the cadences and pitches of the voice she was hearing on the phone.  Also, isn't there evidence that moms and babies "beat" together when they interact?  

I am not sure I want to extend the metaphor to two people coming to share the same idea by talking.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2019 7:33 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Dave -

Sympathetic Resonance is a well accepted, even fairly easy to observe phenomenon in the overt physical world (e.g. stringed musical instruments).  

Sheldrake seems to *start* from there and then go *all over the place* with it.   I don't have a problem of positing that there are higher-level strata in which this phenomena can operate (e.g. "memes") but Sheldrake (or maybe just his most zealous groupies?) seem to stretch it arbitrarily to fit *anything* they want to believe might be "in resonance" (e.g. the law of similars where a plant remedy "heals" the heart because it has a "heart shape" (a valentine is not really that heart-shaped BTW)).

Brin's "Practice Effect" seemed to be a parody of such things.

I think I heard (but can't seem to find?) you say that Sheldrake has a significant store of supporting data.   I've always assumed what I've seen that was relatively compelling to simply be "cherry picked" and "post hoc".   Do you believe otherwise?

- Steve

> Assemble and organize a bunch of these monads to create a more interesting ensemble, something resembling a computer. We still have a "signal," its frequency limited to a sequence of square waves (a program expressed ordered 1s and 0s); and a "crystal" with the the attribute of structure (more complicated than an arrangement of atoms, but still nothing more than a structure). Assume the same feedback mechanism, something like a binary string in, the same string, with a bit or two flipped, out.
>
> Because this is a closed system, there is a hidden assumption, that 
> signal "loops" in some fashion: Turing's infinite tape with its ends 
> spliced together. [For reasons not important here, it can be assumed 
> that the length of the tape is infinite only because it is circular, 
> but the diameter of the circle expands in parallel with the age of the 
> Universe.]
>
> Still no Perceiver / Experiencer.
>
> Now, using these descriptions to address questions of Nick and Steve Smith, Steve first.
>
> If you have a lot of ensembles each of which has a crystal with the same structure, they will respond to the same signal (frequency).
>
> Both Sheldrake and Hoffman assert that the "crystal's" structure is determined by morphology. All entities with similar morphology will have a similarly structured "crystal" and therefore respond/react to the same signal.  Both assume a single signal. — as if there was but one global (universal) radio station broadcasting on frequency Y and all crystals with structure X vibrate in the presence of that sole signal.
>
> For Hoffman it pretty much ends there - and only accounts for the commonality of the interface among those with the same morphology.
>
> Sheldrake goes further, and asserts the existence of the feedback mechanism describe earlier. Since there is one signal, all of the crystals responding that signal, modify the signal with their individual outputs; such that the looping signal, with its modifications, is common input to all crystals to behave in the same, signal determined, alternate manner.
>
> Sheldrake's model is nothing other than a model of culture, where shared culture predisposes individual behavior, but variations in individual behavior can feedback and alter the probabilities of behavior X and X' given the same context. This allows culture to evolve - most of the time slowly, but occasionally quite dramatically.
>
> Sheldrake simply wants his mechanism to be grounded in physics or metaphysics.

The part of Sheldrake (and Hoffman) that I get implicitly is the "coupled oscillator" which can operate in as many dimensions as the elements can oscillate and couple in.   Sheldrake (or maybe it is his
followers) merely seems to take it too far... to postulate (out of wishful thinking?) that there are more dimensions of oscillation and coupling than seem reasonable (or more importantly detectable/verifiable)?

You credit him with

>
> Now Nick,
>
> When the ensemble described reaches some degree of scale (perhaps complexity) an epiphenomena, "self awareness" emerges. You now have a named thing - an Experiencer and the ensemble, the Experienced.
>
> This is the dualism of which you stand accused: two things, Experience and Experiencer. This may very well be a dualism that is imposed, by language, and not intrinsic to belief/philosophy. 
>
> Many times your words, and those of Peirce, suggest that it is merely 
> language causing the dualism problem, but then the "program" the 
> reason for thinking and talking about experience and truth and 
> convergence of experience, etc. suggests that the dualism is integral 
> to the ideas.  Still trying to figure that out and love to have it 
> explained to me so that I can see IT>
>
> But the question of unmediated experience — the mediator is the Experiencer.
>
> There is not some kind of Hoffmann-ish Interface that is mediating perception — it is the epiphenomonological [Ego | Observer | Perceiver | Self | Aware Entity] that is absent.
>
> Of course there is no way to describe or speak of or talk about this "state of existence" except when "It" is not extant. They mystic's eternal dilemma.
>
> davew
>
>
>
>
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