[FRIAM] Unmediated perception - sheldrake

Sun Oct 20 21:40:13 EDT 2019

Thanks, Steve.  There exist people who received it.

-----------------------------------
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 Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:32 PM Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> Frank...
>
> This is the "hit" I got in my own archives of messages on FriAM
> referencing TM
>
> 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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>
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