[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Wed Sep 18 08:38:17 EDT 2019

For some reason I am seeing Nick's comments only when he is quoted by
others.

Dave, your description of Buddhist breathing reminded me of when my
father-in-law tried to teach me transcendental meditation. He was a retired
attorney whose volunteer work was to teach TM to prisoners at the Indiana
State Prison. I decided to try what he taught me the other day to see if I
could get any benefit from it. The way he taught it to me was you try to
remove all thoughts from your mind while silently repeating a word which,
he said, didn't matter what it was. Anyway when I tried it recently I
discovered that it was very difficult to keep thoughts out of my mind. The
way I experienced it, I would think I was keeping thoughts out of my mind
but then I would remember that I had had thoughts a few moments ago. This
reminds me of my discussions with Nick about whether people think. If you
try transcendental meditation you will realize that people can't not think.

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 3:51 AM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Nick,
>
> There I was conversing along without an experiential care in the world,
> when WHAM, a speed bump — Signs all the way down" slams my head into the
> roof — massive headache.
>
> Two aspirins you might provide:
>
> 1) a concise explanation of how Peircian semiotics differs from the
> semiotics I came to know and love;
>
> and 2) an essence preservation transformation of the simple narrative to
> follow into "experience all the way down" and then into "signs all the way
> down."
>
> Hatha Yoga 101
>
> - breathing.
> - attempt to precisely regulate breathing, i.e. five seconds in, five
> seconds hold, five seconds exhale.
> - intense resistance (lizard brain / aka autonomous nervous system)
> "objects" "tries to wrest control"
> - repeated practice —> success as "conscious habit" —> success as
> "non-conscious" habit —> success as, apparently, retrained lizard brain
> - increased energy
> - REM brain waves, but no "awareness" of dreaming, nor residual "memory"
> of same
>
> davew
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 16, 2019, at 7:13 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> 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 è*to a relation**ç**.  *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/
>
>
>
> *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/
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com
> <friam-bounces at redfish.com>] *On Behalf Of *Steven A Smith
> *Sent:* Sunday, September 15, 2019 5:32 PM
> *To:* 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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