[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Mon Sep 16 13:13:21 EDT 2019

Hi, Steve, 

This is one of those moments when I have to be grateful you-guys let me participate here because it is so obvious to me that I am out of my depth in this conversation.  But …

You have my shroedinger (what is life?) crystal humming AND my Peirce (it’s signs all the way down) crystal humming.  The proposition, “It’s signs all the way down” has to be understood as the proposition that a sign is a certain kind of relation in which something stands in for something for something else.  Full stop.  So all basic biological processes (think enzymes) are sign systems.  Another way to think of a sign system is as a relation ==>to a relation<==.  So is the sorting of the pebbles on a beach a sign relation?  What about the tendency of slush to maintain a 32 degree temperature?  Fill in your favorite example, here.  

Nick 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2019 10:41 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Dave -

It felt a strange coincidence, but in the early days of SFx, we were holding a "blender" on the topic of morphometrics at the same time that Sheldrake was visiting SFe to speak at a "Science of Consciousness" conference.  This was the meeting at which he was stabbed by a 'fan' who was apparently disturbed going in but more disturbed by Sheldrake's ideas?

https://boingboing.net/2008/04/09/biologist-rupert-she.html

Our "morphometrics" was an acutely more mundane conversation about the practicalities of starting with laser scans of paleontological  and archaelogical artifacts and doing statistical analysis to try to reveal "hidden" correlations.  For example, we were hoping to be able to recognize the "hand" in objects such as flaked lithic tools or hand-formed ceramics.    

It is interesting to me that you bring up homeopathic "dilution to nothing" based on the assumption that the water's quasi-crystalline structure somehow holds something meaningful from the original inoculant which had been titered into oblivion.

Are you familiar with Mae-Wan Ho's work in quasi-crystals in water and water emulsions?   I understand that where she (and others more acutely) have taken her research to fundamentally vitalistic places in a way that is hard to not dismiss as pseudo-science, but the underlying science seems pretty sound?   My daughter who is a molecular biologist has been unable to provide either confirmation nor refutation of the application of this work in her own domain (flavivirii).

I naively discarded a personal/professional correspondence (typed letter on letterhead ca 1984) from Roger Penrose in response to a tiny bit of work I did in pre-quantum consciousness (:Cellular automata in cytoskeletal lattices" : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0167278984902598).  Penrose was postulating that it was aperiodic tilings (surprise!) that were at the root of consciousness (in human brains).   This was some years before his "Emperor's New Mind" and pursuit of "Quantum Consciousness" (with my co-author Stuart Hameroff).   I am unable to get sufficient traction on contemporary QC work including Penrose's nor Stu Kauffman's to know what I believe on the topic.  I am most sympathetic with the Pibram/Bohm perspective, but that is more intuitive than anything.

I understand that Marcus' has moved from LANL to a day-job in full-up Quantum Computing.   I don't know that Q computing has any implications for Q consciousness, but it would seem that it can't help but lead to more experience with quantum effects translated into human scales of time and space.   

- Steve

On 9/16/19 12:20 AM, Prof David West wrote:

Yes, Sheldrake,yearns for a kind of metaphysical reality and scientific validity that still eludes him. I think that have have reached, and are at risk of blending with, homeopathy and the like cure like, the dilution of "stuff" til there is no stuff left, but the "water has memory." 

All based, of course on shared resonance.

Not sure about the data set. Most of it is from him or true believers and suffers from finding what you are looking for. But, because no one is really taking him seriously, no one is presenting data sets that might prove him wrong. Also, not a statistician so can't comment on methodology or significance.

Another of those connection things — a few years back, in a Quantum Consciousness type book, there was a discussion of resonance starting from the vibrating strings of physics fame to aggregates of strings creating blended vibrations to larger aggregates creating "harmonies" and feedback from "observers" blending everything — and when I was reading that it seemed to "resonate with Sheldrake." Being quite vague here, because the book is back home, but when I return I will pick it up and look at it again.

davew

On Sun, Sep 15, 2019, at 11:56 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:

Geez, Steve,

I didn’t know that morphs COULD resonate.

What on earth are you talking about?

What Dave just said in description of Sheldrake's theory of "morphic resonance"...   a resonant coupling amongst things which have the same morphology  (shape).  In your case, you and Dave apparently have similar "intellectual resonant chambers" which, in this treatment "begin to resonate" as you spend enough time "coupling" (in conversation).   

Following the analogy (stronger/more-formal than a metaphor I propose), when you "couple" with others who you end up disagreeing with, I suspect it starts out  a bit like a barbershop quartet... one member hitting a tone and another following by hitting the same tone, but as the progression gets more  complex, the *differences* in your tonality starts to expose itself as dissonances.   I credit you "harmonizing" with Dave in this (and perhaps other) instance to Dave for *trying* to help you find the same note (as I am here).   

The Nick and Frank show (e.g. recent analogy to train conductors) seems to be a deliberate study/applicatoin in dissonance... one of you hits a note  and the other intuitively (or with great intellectual effort) factors the composing frequencies of that note and responds with a new note that has *none* or *few* of the same composing frequencies, generating a complex set of beat frequencies anew.   I don't know how much this type of deliberate dissonance is used in echolocating creatures (bats, cetaceans, ???) but finding *dissonance* seems potentially *more useful* than resonance in some cases?

- Steve

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2019 5:32 PM
To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Interesting, David.  With most people I find that if we talk long enough, we disagree; with you it mostly works the other way.  Thank you.

Nick

Looks like a case of morphic resonance to me!

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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