Henri Bergson - Teleology, Free Will, Souls, Time, Consciousness...

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Started reading G. William Bernard's Living Consciousness - really good stuff. I have Bergson's Creative Evolution (I think this won him the Nobel for Literature?) and of course Time & Free Will but it's hard to wrap my head around Bergson's ideas. Similar to Whitehead in that regard. I feel like both Bergson and Whitehead are incredibly important philosophers from the Western side in opposing the materialist evangelism and scientism that's infected so much of academia.

Will fill this thread with more Bergson related goodness, as well as post the relevant portions in the Free Will thread. Bernard also plans to get into some of the stuff those of us from Skeptiko like to ponder - Psi, post-mortem survival, ID, teleology and all that goodness.

I just finished the intro, so in the meantime I'll start off with some quotes:


"Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods."


“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.”

[Charles Leiden]

The second quote is an articulate way of writing about the process of search for the "truth."   I just read a biography of Coleridge.  His writing is valuable as an articulation of the Imagination.  " The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM"   

[RHC]

nice quotes. looking forward to more.

On Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 8:40:28 PM UTC-5, Sciborg2 Sciborg2 wrote:

[Don Salmon]

sciborg, I strongly recommend Stephen Robbins' "Time and Memory'. Stephen's spent decades studying Bergson. he had an experience of the Self when he was in Vietnam, and this informs all his writing.  Very good stuff. 

[Peter Jones]

Coleridge seems to have the support of the Jesus of A Course in Miracles.

 

[RHC]

Peter I have been meaning to email you about your reaction to A Course in Miracles.  It seems to evoke very strong responses from people, either positive or negative. I have to go on your blog and see if you have written anything on it. 

Bob

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Good stuff Don, will have to check him out. The following section made me think of you and your musician ways (incidentally have you see Treme?). I feel like setting some of this to music on those Youtube Vids you mentioned would draw many nods from anyone who is musically inclined or comes from a spirituality that utilizes musical metaphors:

"If it no longer makes sense to conceive of the universe as consisting of various tiny lego-like building blocks arranged in different rigidly determined configurations, is there, nonetheless, some sort of workable metaphor that can help us to begin to make sense of the subatomic underpinnings of our sense experience? We have already seen how various contemporary physicists have drawn upon the metaphors of webs and weaving and dance in an attempt to correct our tendency to imagine the cosmos as consisting of a collection of disconnected chunks of matter. Bergson, however, offers us another, less visual, analog drawn from our daily experience: a musical melody. As we have already seen in section 1, Bergson frequently uses the metaphor of melody to help illustrate some of the qualities that can be found in the temporal onrush of our consciousness. So it is not surprising to find that Bergson would also be drawn to “hearing” the physical world as a complex interwoven symphony of sound in his post–Time and Free Will writings, especially in light of his decision to extend durée from the confines of our inner world into the external world as well.1

There are several reasons why the metaphors of music and melody are a natural way for Bergson to express his understanding of the nature of reality (besides the interesting fact, as we saw in the bio-historical preamble, that his father was himself a musician and composer). To begin with, by shifting the focus of our attention from sight to sound, Bergson attempts to catalyze a radical, if difficult to attain, alteration in how we orient ourselves to the world around us. As a species whose sense experience is primarily visual in nature, we are predisposed to make sense of the world through the medium and metaphors of sight. Our dependence upon sight means that we intrinsically focus our attention on, and tend to “see,” a world made up of an assortment of various permanent objects that stay basically the same, whether they are moving or at rest. For instance (drawing upon a helpful illustration by A. R. Lacey), let's say that we pick up a football and throw it. During the time that the ball flies through the air, our sense of sight tells us that it stays the same shape as it is thrown through the air. What we see is a solid, unchanging object that just happens to be moving. Our sense of sight convinces us, therefore, that the movement of the football is something that is incidental, something that has been added to it.2 However, as lacey goes on to point out, our sense of hearing reveals a very different world to us. For instance, if we listen intently to a young woman singing a song, what will we hear? if we listen attentively enough, we will hear a constant flux of sound manifesting as various changes in pitch, volume, and rhythm. We may, especially if we are musically trained, preconsciously chop up the music into a set of musical notes and hear those specific notes overlaid with our previous experience with musical scores. But if we resolutely return to the “raw material” of what our ears reveal to us and put to one side our visual prejudices and training, what we will hear is not a set of stable, utterly separate notes. Instead, we will hear a variety of constantly changing vibratory qualities that mingle and co-sound. In a way that is very different from our experience with sight, there are no constant, stable “things” that change in all of this sonic dynamism. Rather than hearing notes change, “noting” is happening, “toning” is happening. Substantive nouns do not work all that well in a sonic world of ceaseless flux.3

Understanding the world through the metaphor of music underscores the fact that reality is intrinsically temporal. A melody (like an energy wave) cannot, by its very nature, exist without time. A melody cannot just manifest itself in an instant, utterly complete and whole. Instead, it unfolds and appears over time, note by note, phrase by phrase. We might like to think that a melody can in fact exist, timelessly, in the form of a static collection of notes written on the paper of a score (in much the same way that we might prefer to believe that the physical universe is reducible, in theory, to a predetermined, highly complex series of mathematical formula). But as Bergson points out, notes on a sheet of music are not the melody itself, any more than scribbled mathematical equations on a page are the thickness and density of real experience. Both are simply highly abstract symbolic attempts to freeze a dynamic temporal reality into a static collection of manageable, replicable formulations; both are simply expressions of our inherent human tendency to see reality as a collection of separate and unchanging objects. The similarities between music/melody and the nature of physical reality (atleast as revealed by quantum physics) are striking. For instance, melody and physical reality (at least in its pulsational, vibratory, subatomic dimension) are both ever-changing, complexly organized, and inherently temporal. Both manifest themselves as an onrush of overlapping, interpenetrating, and resonant vibratory fields. In neither melody nor physical reality (at least, physical reality as it is understood from the perspective of both quantum physics and Bergson) do we find stable, unchanging objects (whether particles or notes) that have a specific, concrete location in space. (asking “where” the notes of a melody actually are can be an illuminating exercise in futility; unlike visually perceived objects in space, sonic realities seem to be nowhere and everywhere. During their time of sounding, are the tones that we hear “in” the body of the instruments or the singer's voice? are they “in” the air? are they “in” our ears? are they all of the aforementioned?) Imagining the universe as a vast, ongoing musical creation can also help to free us from the tyranny of an aristotelian “either/or” logic that, either implicitly or explicitly, pressures us to think that oneness cannot coexist with manyness, that change cannot coexist with continuity.

“Hearing” the world through the metaphor of music and melody, it becomes easier to grasp how the world might well be such that individuality (whether in persons, things, or events) can and does coexist with some sort of underlying, even if hidden, connection and continuity. For instance, while it is tempting to think of a melody as an aggregate of separate, clearly delineated tones, if we look (or rather, listen) more carefully, what we discover is that each individual tone, while it maintains its uniqueness and distinctness, is not abruptly cut off from the other tones. Instead, each tone, during the time while it physically sounds, infuses and overlaps with the other tones that are concurrently sounding. What is more, even after each tone has physically faded, it continues to linger in memory, it continues to persist in the mind—in fact, it is this very persistence in the memory that creates a melodic phrase.4 Melody, in order to be melody, needs both—the individuality and distinctiveness of particular notes and the ongoing continuity and connectedness of many notes brought together in the memory. In much the same way as the quantum reality is understood to be both particulate and field-like in nature, and in much the same way as our consciousness is a dynamic continuity of utter diversity, melody is an inseparable fusion of individual tones and the organic, ongoing gestalt created by memory...."

Barnard, G. William (2012-01-04). Living Consciousness

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Thanks for this Charles, will have to check out Coleridge as well. Apologies for not mentioning you in that last post with the quote about music - I didn't see your post initially!

-Sci

[Peter Jones]

On Thursday, 19 February 2015 20:37:01 UTC, RHC wrote:

Peter I have been meaning to email you about your reaction to A Course in Miracles.  It seems to evoke very strong responses from people, either positive or negative. I have to go on your blog and see if you have written anything on it.

I did write a few posts, Bob, but then I went back and deleted them.  I felt they were superficial and that I should wait until I finished the book before commenting properly. It felt a little like commenting on the New Testament.   

But I can say that it is the best explanation of the psychology and metaphysics of nondualism that I have ever read. If I were allowed one book on a desert island I'd struggle to decide between this and the yoga sutras of Patanjali, and I think I'd take this. 

I cannot recommend it highly enough. First the Nag Hammadi Library and now this - both published in my lifetime. I feel lucky to be alive at just this moment and predict that Christianity is on the up.

For a exploration of what transcendental idealism would finally mean to us as individuals this book would be the best explanation I know of. A problem for some will be the theistic terminology, but it is not very difficult to translate what is being said into Buddhist language,  

And really quite easy, given that at one point 'Jesus' tells us that the entire course can be summarised as 'Know Thyself'.     

 

 

[Roslyn Ross]

I found a lot of value in CIM but also quite a bit I found irritating.

[Peter Jones]

On Friday, 20 February 2015 13:39:09 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

I found a lot of value in CIM but also quite a bit I found irritating.

Hi Roslyn. I may know what you mean. It' is insistent and uncompromising. But it also appears to be authentic, correct and beautifully explained, and presented in a loving and unthreatening way. 

It may be that a knowledge of metaphysics (or an obsession with it) helps with reading it since it sheds light on the what lies behind much of the detailed discussion and allows one to translate it into the language of other traditions without much trouble. Or maybe I'm just on my hobby-horse again.      

    

 

[Roslyn Ross]

Yes, insistent is a good word. Dogmatic, preachy and I felt irrationally intolerant of ego. It is a long time since I read it and you might be right since I have read much since, but I found it vastly inferior to the Seth material and just too, uncompromising as you say.

[Don Salmon]

I’m pretty much with Roslyn here.  There’s a now over 2-decade long tradition of using out-of-date psychoanalytic and developmental concepts to supplement the ACIM teaching (see Ken Wapner). Seems to me if there’s anything of value in terms of understanding psychology in ACIM, they wouldn’t need these out-of-date often quite distorted supplemental concepts.  I was initially excited by your enthusiasm, Peter, as I thought it might be a way to provide a bridge to more concrete “examples” – that is, applications of all this abstract metaphysical conceptualizing (and experientializing, George:>)) to everyday concerns, like relationships, making money, governmental and political concerns, health, science, etc.  But it seems like you just keep asserting how great ACIM is without giving any (non-philosophic) details. 

 

Just giving you a hard time today, Peter – I figure you’re always in the mood for a good argument/debate:>)

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[RHC]

Peter Id love to read your commentary on or annotations to ACIM and the New Testament for that matter.  There's a potentially interesting project An annotated ACIM. 

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[Peter Jones]

On Friday, 20 February 2015 16:57:44 UTC, RHC wrote:

Peter Id love to read your commentary on or annotations to ACIM and the New Testament for that matter.  There's a potentially interesting project An annotated ACIM. 

Funnily enough, this was my thought also at the start, to add a commentary giving a less psychological and more metaphysical reading, and making the correlations with the rest of mysticism. But no, I thought, it would be arrogance and hubris.    

But reading the posts above now makes me wonder. I've never read a better book on psychology, and the idea that it is vastly inferior to the 'Seth material' is incomprehensible to me. 

Is it possible that I know a lot more than I believe I do? Or is it a lot less? This is not something I can know. Whichever it is, for me ACIM would be an authoritative, patient, clear and rigorously correct explanation of everything, or everything that can be explained. It would be a book that might as well be by Jesus. It would represent the Christian expression of the metaphysical position that I endorse. If this were not so I'd be arguing that it is faulty. But Nagarjuna would be happy with its rigour, it think, and it is not obvious to me that it would contradict anything said by the Buddha as opposed to simply explaining it in a more modern language.  .  

Frankly, I do not have the eloquence to describe my reaction to it. To me it would be a book that could save the world. 

As for the psychology, perhaps I'm at an advantage over Don since I have little knowledge of the professional sphere. This means that I'm not distracted by the terminology, which might be dated now or suggest ideas that are additional to their intended meaning due to changes in use.  As a student of my own psychology, however, I find no reason to doubt a word of it.

It is a tricky business sometimes dealing with the theistic language, however, and this is why I considered a commentary couched in a non-theistic metaphysical language and aimed at non-Christians. As far as Christians are concerned, who are used to the language but who may not be used to using it like this, I would suggest to them reading some of it every day as if it were a scripture, or a miracle cure for suffering.

There is no doubt that it may be difficult reading even for someone who knows that they should not be protecting their ego as if it is a real thing. It takes no prisoners. But the overall message is almost magically unthreatening. We are what we are. How can we be anything else?  How can our creator not love us unconditionally? How can our Jesus-nature not always be with us ready to help?  

I may be misinterpreting Bernardo but to me ACIM is just an explanation of his idealism, or of what it will become when fully developed. 

One problem with a commentary is choosing the quotations. I started to mark quotes, then found I was marking almost every paragraph. I think just reading it will be enough work. I'm a fast reader but am only managing about forty pages a week. .   

  .

  

[Roslyn Ross]

I guess, in essence, having read many books on spirituality, religion, psychology, mythology etc., ACIM did not convey to me anything particularly thought-provoking. I found it interesting when it was not annoying, but more simply repeating what had and has been said by others, more than once and better.

The Seth material on the other hand was often incredibly insightful and thought-provoking in how it explained so many things. ACIM reads more like a religious manual a lot of the time and I found the obsession and paranoia with defeating the ego to be misguided and tedious.

The 'voice' of Seth, if you like, was fresh, intelligent, witty, reasoned and balanced.

[Stewart Lynch]

I second this, Seth is really good. From what you’ve said Roslyn I suspect that I’d have a hard time with ACIM as well, but I may try it one day.

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[Roslyn Ross]

If you can find an excerpt online, Stewart, it will give you a 'taste for it.' You can decide before you buy.

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[Roslyn Ross]

I would just add, it is more religious than spiritual and given its source, reflects that. While Seth is not the least bit religious. Therein lies no doubt the difference. And the fact that ACIM has become something akin to a religion, admittedly mainly in the land of religion, the US, is indicative of its material. At least, I think it is.

On Saturday, 21 February 2015 12:02:13 UTC+2, Stewart wrote:

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[Stewart Lynch]

Ok, I’ll have a look – thanks.

 

From: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com [mailto:metaphysical...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Roslyn Ross
Sent: 21 February 2015 10:50
To: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Metaphysical Speculations] Re: Henri Bergson - Teleology, Free Will, Souls, Time, Consciousness...

 

If you can find an excerpt online, Stewart, it will give you a 'taste for it.' You can decide before you buy.

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[Stewart Lynch]

Yes, that is what’s put me off in the past, I’m not familiar or comfortable with religious terminology. But truth is truth I guess, doesn’t really matter what tradition it is wrapped up in.

 

From: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com [mailto:metaphysical...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Roslyn Ross
Sent: 21 February 2015 11:07
To: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Metaphysical Speculations] Re: Henri Bergson - Teleology, Free Will, Souls, Time, Consciousness...

 

I would just add, it is more religious than spiritual and given its source, reflects that. While Seth is not the least bit religious. Therein lies no doubt the difference. And the fact that ACIM has become something akin to a religion, admittedly mainly in the land of religion, the US, is indicative of its material. At least, I think it is.

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[Peter Jones]

I can completely understand the dislike for the language. It  is, after all, a Christian text. This is one reason why it is taking a long time to read, that the translation into a different terminology takes time. But as Stewart says, it hardly matters which tradition it is wrapped up in. 

I cannot agree that it is more religious than spiritual, and am not quite sure what that would mean. It uses traditional religious terms but other than that is just another explanation of the relationship between reality and appearance, or between sentient beings and their origin. 

It's principle virtue for me would be the clarity it brings to the terminology, and the re-definition of a lot of Biblical terminology that has never before made sense to me. It does away with a lot of clutter that confuses the church's teachings, systematises the doctrine and the terminology and gives meaning and plausibility to a lot of ideas that are muddled and incomprehensible within everyday Christianity.  But I can see that a non-Christian might well prefer to read something else.

Whitehead characterized Christianity as a 'religion in search of a metaphysic'. I've always agreed with this diagnosis and it has been my biggest criticism of the church. Until now. This book puts a metaphysic in place.    

 

[Don Salmon]

Peter, the thing about me and "professional terminology"  - I had the great fortune of discovering yogic "terminology" in my teens, so forever after, the language of the therapy world as well as academic psychology (including the whole of cognitive neuroscience) always seemed to me - to quote Ulrich Mohrhoff, in explaining to me why I was having so much difficulty making any sense out of the whole field of developmental psychology - "trivial or incoherent."

To the extent most of the contemporary commentators on ACIM are using modern psychotherapeutic language, I find it to be similarly limited.  You can keep asserting how great it is but  you haven't come up with a single example!    I discovered ACIM in the 70s when a friend did the whole year long course.  I never found it to be anything close to the yogic understanding of mind and consciousness, and I also agree, I have always found much more in Seth (see Don DeGracia's comments on Seth and yoga).  

But I am waiting to be proven wrong. If you ever feel like getting past mere assertions as to how great ACIM and actually want to give examples, I'm all ears:>)

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[Roslyn Ross]

I have studied many religions, including Christianity, and have no problem cherry-picking any of them for their wisdom. But there are different forms of Christianity and different phraseologies which either draw me in or 'push me out.' I adored, for instance, Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain,  took much from C.S. Lewis, and have taken much of value from Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and others, so it is not religion per se: but the nature of it, as expressed. To read Teilhard de Chardin, or any of the great Christian writers is a different matter.

Too much 'Jesus' talk turns me off, unless it is using the Christ definition, which is a part of all of us, and too much orthodox, conventional, fundamental religion with lots of God as He, Him, Father etc., also turns me off.

[Stewart Lynch]

> see Don DeGracia's comments on Seth and yoga

 

do you have a link for that?

 

 

From: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com [mailto:metaphysical...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Don Salmon
Sent: 21 February 2015 12:15
To: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Metaphysical Speculations] Re: Henri Bergson - Teleology, Free Will, Souls, Time, Consciousness...

 

Peter, the thing about me and "professional terminology"  - I had the great fortune of discovering yogic "terminology" in my teens, so forever after, the language of the therapy world as well as academic psychology (including the whole of cognitive neuroscience) always seemed to me - to quote Ulrich Mohrhoff, in explaining to me why I was having so much difficulty making any sense out of the whole field of developmental psychology - "trivial or incoherent."

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[Don Salmon]

sorry, no it's just mixed in with his comments throughout much of his writing. I think in the online text "Beyond the Physical" he talks about Seth quite a bit but i don't recall where.

Curious what you think about the Sri Aurobindo quote.  That seems to directly contradict Bernardo.  I find Bernardo's theorizing about consciousness in the physical universe to be quite strange and contradictory. 

[Roslyn Ross]

The important thing is really that we all relate to different sources of inspiration. And there is no need for us all to relate in the same way to the same sources. I relate to the best of Christian spiritual writings, and to some degree to Hindu/Buddhist. Gnostic teachings probably speak most powerfully to me but then Gnosticism is the source of Christianity and Judaism and had profound impact on the Greeks and who knows, perhaps even more widely. And Gnosticism probably emerged from the Egyptians and so it goes....

The interesting thing is how often information was disseminated in the ancient world, although perhaps one could also mount an argument along Sheldrake's lines as well, of 'morphic resonance.'

My sense of it, and I am a serial and serious amateur with a bit of knowledge about many things and no expert in anything, is that all spiritual/religious teachings contain, at core, the same sorts of beliefs. Out of that foundation comes such variety of expression, that it is just another example of the fertile and prolific nature of this world, where 'seeds' are cast in myriad and mighty form to many winds.

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[Don Salmon]

Yeah, I guess I'll step in a partly disagree with Roslyn.  The degree of insight in yogic writings just has no comparison to that found anywhere else - just compare almost any Christian mystic with say, Vedic astrology.  St John of the Cross comes across as stumbling in the dark (pun intended) by comparison.  

I know it's kind of politically correct to say "oh, it's all the same ultimately in the end, just different forms", but as someone who has intensely studied yogic writings for a long time, and at least has some passing familiarity with texts from various world religions (as well as talked extensively with people who actually, unlike me, have really rigorous knowledge of these things), I think it would be good not to just lump everything together.

But here, as often happens on this forum, we're talking in vague generalities.  I just posted this on another thread.  If you can find anything in western religious (or philosophic) writings that even begins to compare to this kind of yogic knowledge, I'd love to see it. This is true "science" compared to which the science of today, is as Sri Aurobindo puts it, "a mere bagatelle" (or  a "mere bag of shells", as my brother puts it)

Boy am I in an ornery mood this morning - I better stop and apologize. I just wanted to add one more thing to my rant - I get the feeling, in Bernardo's attempts to modernize, that there is a very subtle European chauvinism in his attitude.  Ok, better go before I get in any more trouble

****

(this is from "The Synthesis of Yoga', pg 370)

 Chit, the divine Consciousness, is not our mental self-awareness; that we shall find to be only a form, a lower and limited mode or movement. As we progress and awaken to the soul in us and things, we shall realise that there is a consciousness also in the plant, in the metal, in the atom, in electricity, in everything that belongs to physical nature; we shall find even that it is not really in all respects a lower or more limited mode than the mental, on the contrary it is in many "inanimate" forms more intense, rapid, poignant, though less evolved towards the surface. But this also, this consciousness of vital and physical Nature is, compared with Chit, a lower and therefore a limited form, mode and movement. These lower modes of consciousness are the conscious-stuff of inferior planes in one indivisible existence. In ourselves also there is in our subconscious being an action which is precisely that of the "inanimate" physical Nature whence has been constituted the basis of our physical being, another which is that of plant-life, and another which is that of the lower animal creation around us. All these are so much dominated and conditioned by the thinking and reasoning conscious-being in us that we have no real awareness of these lower planes; we are unable to perceive in their own terms what these parts of us are doing, and receive it very imperfectly in the terms and values of the thinking and reasoning mind. Still we know well enough that there is an animal in us as well as that which is characteristically human, -something which is a creature of conscious instinct and impulse, not reflective or rational, as well as that which turns back in thought and will on its experience, meets it from above with the light and force of a higher plane and to some degree controls, uses and modifies it. But the animal in man is only the head of our subhuman being; below it there is much that is also sub-animal and merely vital, much that acts by an instinct and impulse of which the constituting consciousness is withdrawn behind the surface. Below this sub-animal being, there is at a further depth the subvital. When we advance in that ultra-normal self-knowledge and experience which Yoga brings with it, we become aware that the body too has a consciousness of its own; it has habits, impulses, instincts, an inert yet effective will which differs from that of the rest of our being and can resist it and condition its effectiveness. Much of the struggle in our being is due to this composite existence and the interaction of these varied and heterogeneous planes on each other. For man here is the result of all evolution and contains in himself the whole of that evolution up from the merely physical and subvital conscious being to the mental creature which at the top he is.

     But this evolution is really a manifestation and just as we have in us these subnormal selves and subhuman planes, so are there in us above our mental being supernormal and superhuman planes. There Chit as the universal conscious-stuff of existence takes other poises, moves out in other modes, on other principles and by other faculties of action. There is above the mind, as the old Vedic sages discovered, a Truth-plane, a plane of self-luminous, self-effective Idea, which can be turned in light and force upon our mind, reason, sentiments, impulses, sensations and use and control them in the sense of the real Truth of things just as we turn our mental reason and will upon our sense-experience and animal nature to use and control them in the sense of our rational and moral perceptions. There is no seeking, but rather natural possession; no conflict or separation between will and reason, instinct and impulse, desire and experience, idea and reality, but all are in harmony, concomitant, mutually effective, unified in their origin; in their development and in their effectuation. But beyond this plane and attainable through it are others in which the very Chit itself becomes revealed. Chit the elemental origin and primal completeness of all this varied consciousness which is here used for various formation and experience. There will and knowledge and sensation and all the rest of our faculties, powers, modes of experience are not merely harmonious, concomitant, unified, but are one being of consciousness and power of consciousness. It is this Chit which modifies itself so as to become on the Truth-plane the supermind, on the mental plane the mental reason, will, emotion, sensation, on the lower planes the vital or physical instincts, impulses, habits of an obscure force not in superficially conscious possession of itself. All is Chit because all is Sat; all is various movement of the original Consciousness because all is various movement of the original Being.

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[Roslyn Ross]

I was really trying to say we all 'hear', 'read' and 'perceive' in our own ways. I have also read a lot of yogic writings, spent a lot of time studying Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism in varying forms, but it does not 'speak' to me as 'loudly' as some others.

The difficulty of course is that none of us know the 'source' even of the yogic writings. And yes, I know there is a belief in Jainism and Hinduism that their religions are the oldest on earth, but that is more belief than any established 'truth.'

I was not saying, 'it is all the same in the end.' I was saying, there is a common source and they all share many beliefs. Whether it is Hinduism or Buddhism, Christianity or Mayan, ancient Egyptian or Zoroastrian, etc. etc. etc., there are commonalities. Some may have greater strengths in certain areas than others, but there is still similarities I abundance for all 'truths.'

And surely, neither is it about saying, well, I got this bit more right than you did, as one can with some of the interesting yogic teachings which can now be understood from the perspective of quantum physics, because, in different forms of expression, many other religions touch on similar things. And the source cannot be known.

Just as writings and teachings in Judaism and Christianity have been transcribed from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, thus identifying the source and perhaps origins of some, perhaps much, of their religious writings, so too, I am suggesting - and it is purely suggestion - that they have more in common than they do apart and one, in essence, is not better than the others - just different. It's a bit like cuisines where there are many brilliant ways of cooking but people tend to prefer one above others. It's all great food, it just suits some better.

I can' relate to the Bernardo comment since I clearly missed the origin of this discussion but he seems a fairly open-minded sort and while we may well misunderstand each other because of cultural differences, like religions, we are all on similar paths, of similar thoughts much of the time, and merely expressing in our own particular and unique ways.

Divided by a common language is par for the course with online discussions. :)

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[Roslyn Ross]

I also don't agree with all of Bernardo's conclusions but the operative word is theory.... I suspect it is a discussion with him as much as we discuss things here. He seems pretty open and is clearly searching for answers. As are we all.

On Saturday, 21 February 2015 14:36:14 UTC+2, Don Salmon wrote:

sorry, no it's just mixed in with his comments throughout much of his writing. I think in the online text "Beyond the Physical" he talks about Seth quite a bit but i don't recall where.

Curious what you think about the Sri Aurobindo quote.  That seems to directly contradict Bernardo.  I find Bernardo's theorizing about consciousness in the physical universe to be quite strange and contradictory. 

On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 7:32 AM, Stewart Lynch <stewar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> see Don DeGracia's comments on Seth and yoga

 

do you have a link for that?

 

 

From: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com [mailto:metaphysical-specul...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Don Salmon
Sent: 21 February 2015 12:15
To: metaphysical...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [Metaphysical Speculations] Re: Henri Bergson - Teleology, Free Will, Souls, Time, Consciousness...

 

Peter, the thing about me and "professional terminology"  - I had the great fortune of discovering yogic "terminology" in my teens, so forever after, the language of the therapy world as well as academic psychology (including the whole of cognitive neuroscience) always seemed to me - to quote Ulrich Mohrhoff, in explaining to me why I was having so much difficulty making any sense out of the whole field of developmental psychology - "trivial or incoherent."

 

To the extent most of the contemporary commentators on ACIM are using modern psychotherapeutic language, I find it to be similarly limited.  You can keep asserting how great it is but  you haven't come up with a single example!    I discovered ACIM in the 70s when a friend did the whole year long course.  I never found it to be anything close to the yogic understanding of mind and consciousness, and I also agree, I have always found much more in Seth (see Don DeGracia's comments on Seth and yoga).  

 

But I am waiting to be proven wrong. If you ever feel like getting past mere assertions as to how great ACIM and actually want to give examples, I'm all ears:>)

On Sat, Feb 21, 2015 at 6:49 AM, Peter Jones <peterjo...@btinternet.com> wrote:

I can completely understand the dislike for the language. It  is, after all, a Christian text. This is one reason why it is taking a long time to read, that the translation into a different terminology takes time. But as Stewart says, it hardly matters which tradition it is wrapped up in. 

 

I cannot agree that it is more religious than spiritual, and am not quite sure what that would mean. It uses traditional religious terms but other than that is just another explanation of the relationship between reality and appearance, or between sentient beings and their origin. 

 

It's principle virtue for me would be the clarity it brings to the terminology, and the re-definition of a lot of Biblical terminology that has never before made sense to me. It does away with a lot of clutter that confuses the church's teachings, systematises the doctrine and the terminology and gives meaning and plausibility to a lot of ideas that are muddled and incomprehensible within everyday Christianity.  But I can see that a non-Christian might well prefer to read something else.

 

Whitehead characterized Christianity as a 'religion in search of a metaphysic'. I've always agreed with this diagnosis and it has been my biggest criticism of the church. Until now. This book puts a metaphysic in place.    

 

 

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[Peter Jones]

Don - You confirm my guess. I'm lucky not be carrying any baggage and so have no problem with the language. When I read a word like 'projection' my head does not immediately think of how it is usually defined or what so and so thought about it and so on. I have to take the meaning directly from the context. I imagine this makes a huge difference to how it reads. Perhaps it is an unsuitable book for psychologists, and more suited to lay folk who just want to examine their own mind.     

I have little idea what commentators say about ACIM. I've read nothing beyond the first 200 pages of the book besides a few comments on the main website. I also have little interest in the professional language of psychology. It seems that a lot of psychologists have been commenting and maybe this has led to a distorted impression of the book. It is about MY psychology, and I can grasp what it is saying and would agree with it. I also find it completely consistent with the teachings of advaita Vedanta, Philosophical Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism, Transcendental Idealism the 'perennial' philosophy and 'primordial cosmology'. I'm reading it with a magnifying glass, looking for lapses of rigour or inconsistencies, and can report none so far. You know how tediously pedantic I can be with philosophical statements, so it's not for want of trying. .  

You asked for an example of how great it is, but I don't see how I can provide one if you've already read it. From memory a few remarks that stood out would be -

The Holy Spirit is an idea; Unconsciousness is impossible; The entire curriculum can be summed up as 'Know Thyself'; There is no order of difficulty in miracles; Knowledge is Being; Space-time is nonsense; The world of opposites is our creation and our dream; I am God; So are you; Consciousness is there to enable responsiveness to our environment; Healing is Union, Separation is suffering; Union is inevitable, but some people are 'in a rush'; We are God's will, and this is why we can create; The body is for the mind, and it is not the other way around; Love is key to salvation; Living is teaching;  

Don't imagine that I find the language easy. My toes have been curling at Christian language for thirty years. But here the traditional terms are explained plausibly and made systematic, so my toes are unfurling slowly. ,  

I haven't actually seen an objection to it yet other than distaste for the language.  Patanjali would be an authoritative source as far as I'm concerned and I see no inconsistency with this book. I would say that ACIM is a wonderful explanation of the psychological scheme that follows ineluctably from a neutral metaphysical position and the unity of creation, translated masterfully into Christian concepts and terms. 

I'm happy to argue back and forth but perhaps we should look at a specific objectionable passage. (Or perhaps we shouldn't hijack the thread.)     

[Peter Jones]

On Saturday, 21 February 2015 12:23:10 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

Too much 'Jesus' talk turns me off, unless it is using the Christ definition, which is a part of all of us, and too much orthodox, conventional, fundamental religion with lots of God as He, Him, Father etc., also turns me off.

Me also, Roslyn, but I've been gritting my teeth and finding that once these words are given sensible definitions the problem starts to go away.  

 

[Peter Jones]

On Saturday, 21 February 2015 13:22:00 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

The difficulty of course is that none of us know the 'source' even of the yogic writings. And yes, I know there is a belief in Jainism and Hinduism that their religions are the oldest on earth, but that is more belief than any established 'truth.'

Roslyn - If you are a mystic you believe that lots of people know the source or religion, and that you will sooner or later. There is a deep similarity between all these religions since they all come from the same source. It would be weird if they all disagreed with each other, and would undermine the claim that many people know the truth about reality. 

I get the impression that you think all these people are theorising and conjecturing. Is this right? .     

[RHC]

>But no, I thought, it would be arrogance and hubris.

just showing up is arrogance and hubris. :)

the great thing about annotations is that no one expects them to be authoritative, simply interesting anecdotes or commentary.  Just based on this thread you are obviously getting something out of ACIM that other people have not. For that reason alone your framing would have value. You should do it.  I will see if I can find some annottation software if you are interested.  Is it copyrighted?

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Heh, seems like the party took a swerve. Now I feel like added some Bergson links is rudely interrupting this dialogue....but what can I do? My arrogance and hubris compels me. ;-)

Matter & Memory

"THIS book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held, in small honour among philosophers.

These difficulties are due, for the most part, to the conception, now realistic, now idealistic, which philosophers have of matter. The aim of our first chapter is to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that it is a mistake to reduce matter to the perception which we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able to produce in us perceptions, but in itself of another nature than they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of `images.' And by 'image' we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation , but less than that which the realist calls a thing; - an (pg xii) existence placed half-way between the `thing' and the ‘representation.' This conception of matter is simply that of common sense...."

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Henri Bergson and the Perception of Time

Bergson’s name is not usually included on shortlists of the philosophical greats, so it’s quite easy to miss him. I first came across him many years ago, when I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. Russell clearly disliked Bergson’s philosophy and provided unconvincing reasons to justify his prejudice. This made me want to read Bergson and judge for myself, which I duly did and soon saw how wrong Russell was. I eventually wrote an introductory booklet on Bergson entitled A Living Philosophy (Now out of print, although most of the text is still available in another publication.)

Henri Who?

When I started reading Bergson’s works, I immediately took to his philosophy and writing style, although there are places where his argument is not easy to follow and some of the subtler nuances of his thought get lost in translation. Despite this, it was like reaching an oasis of wisdom after fruitless wanderings in arid deserts claiming the noble name of ‘philosophy’, which are in some cases branches of grammar, linguistics or casuistry – modern secular versions of counting angels on pin-heads.

Henri Bergson was born in Paris in 1859 and died there in 1941. His mother was Anglo-Irish and his father Polish and an accomplished musician. Bergson uses musical analogies and writes with gallic panache and imagination, drawing freely from the metaphysician and artist in himself. One can see why his style, imagery and free usage of terms such as ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ did not appeal to the logical positivists.

In 1891 he married Louise Neuburger, a cousin of Marcel Proust, who was greatly influenced by Bergson’s theories on time and memory. Quite early in his professional teaching career, Bergson had one of those life-changing eureka moments. Until then he had been “Wholly imbued with mechanistic theories”, as he himself put it some years later in a letter to his friend, the American philosopher, William James. Bergson’s main critique of the mechanistic view centred on the perception of time: “It was the analysis of the notion of time, as that enters into mechanics and physics, which overturned all my ideas. I saw, to my great astonishment, that scientific time does not endure. This led me to change my point of view completely” (Encyc. Brit. article on Bergson)

His doctoral thesis was on Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889). Here Bergson distinguished between time as we actually experience it, lived time – which he called ‘real duration’ (durée réelle) – and the mechanistic time of science. This, he argued, is based on a misperception: it consists of superimposing spatial concepts onto time, which then becomes a distorted version of the real thing. So time is perceived via a succession of separate, discrete, spatial constructs – just like seeing a film. We think we’re seeing a continuous flow of movement, but in reality what we’re seeing is a succession of fixed frames or stills. To claim that one can measure real duration by counting separate spatial constructs is an illusion: “We give a mechanical explanation of a fact and then substitute the explanation for the fact itself”, he wrote.

His next major work, Matter and Memory (1896), was an essay on the relation between mind and body. In his preface, Bergson affirms the reality of mind and the reality of matter and tries to determine the relation of the one to the other by the study of memory, which he saw as the intersection or convergence of mind and matter. He regarded the brain as an organ of choice, with a practical role. Its main function is to filter mental images, allowing through to consciousness those impressions, thoughts or ideas that are of practical biological value. (Time and Free Will, p.181)

He spent five years researching all the psychological, medical and other literature then available on memory. He focussed in particular on the condition known as aphasia – loss of the ability to use language. The aphasiac understands what people are saying, knows what he or she wants to say, suffers no paralysis of the speech organs, and yet is unable to speak. This, Bergson argued, shows that it is not memory as such that is lost, but the bodily mechanism that is needed to express it. From this observation he concluded that memory, and so mind, makes use of the physical brain to carry out its own purposes.

Clearly there is vastly more in a given occasion of consciousness than in the corresponding brain state. This is surely a perfectly natural, normal, everyday part of human experience – a common-sense, empirical fact of life. We don’t really experience life as a succession of separate conscious states, progressing along an imaginary line. Instead, we feel time as a continuous flow, with no clearly demarcated beginnings and ends. We should not therefore confuse an abstract, arbitrary notion of practical convenience with the underlying truth that is continuously confirmed by our own experience.

Bergson uses one of his musical analogies to make the point: “As the symphony overflows the movements which scan it, so the mental/spiritual life overflows the cerebral/intellectual life. The brain keeps consciousness, feeling and thought tensely strained on life, and consequently makes them capable of efficacious action. The brain is the organ of attention to life.” (l’Energie Spirituelle 1910, p.47)

In his best known work, Creative Evolution (1907), Bergson made it clear that he accepted evolution as a scientifically established fact. He was born the year The Origin of Species was published and Creative Evolution adds a vital missing dimension to Darwinian theory. He believed that the failure to take into account the real time underlying the whole process results in the failure to appreciate the uniqueness of life. Bergson proposed that the evolutionary process should be seen as the expression of an enduring life force (élan vital), that is continually developing. Evolution has at its very heart this life force or vital impulse.

In An Introduction to Metaphysics (1912), Bergson expands on the central role of intuition. The true purpose of knowledge is to know things deeply, to touch the inner essence of things via a form of empathy: “A true empiricism”, he wrote, “is that which proposes to get as near to the original itself as possible, to search deeply into its life, and so, by a kind of intellectual auscultation, to feel the throbbings of its soul.”

Auscultation is listening to the internal organs through a stethoscope. Just as the physician does this to find out what is happening within the patient’s body, so the metaphysician practises a mental equivalent of auscultation to apprehend the inner essence of things.

Bergson also served on French diplomatic missions and from 1921-26 acted as president of the committee on international cooperation of the League of Nations. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1927 and in 1932 published his last major work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. On the one hand, there’s the closed society based on conformity to rules and moral codes, interpreted in a strict, legalistic, literal way. On the other hand, there’s the open society, which expresses creativity, imagination and spirituality via the arts, music, poetry, philosophy and mystical experience. The source of the former is the intellect and the source of the latter is intuition.

In The Two Sources Bergson seemed to subscribe to a more traditional Christian theological notion of God. He acknowledged that his reflections had in fact brought him closer to the Roman Catholic position, which he saw as the fulfillment of his Judaic faith. But he never actually became a Catholic: “I would have become a convert”, he wrote, “had I not foreseen for years a formidable wave of anti-semitism about to break upon the world. I wanted to remain among those who tomorrow were to be persecuted”. Only weeks before his death in 1941 and despite being seriously ill, Bergson insisted on registering as a Jew, even though he had been offered exemption by the Vichy government.

Why Vitalism is Vital

With the ascendancy of the mechanistic outlook throughout most of the twentieth century, ‘vitalism’ became a dirty word in scientific circles. For a biologist to be accused of vitalist tendencies was equivalent to a charge of heresy. When Rupert Sheldrake’s book A New Science of Life came out in 1981, the editor of a leading scientific journal used language more appropriate to the time of the Inquisition, in calling for it to be burnt.

The mechanistic view alone is singularly ill-equipped to understand the immense variety and depth of human experience, to say nothing of the more subtle aspects of the phenomenon of consciousness. Whenever any given outlook – scientific, philosophical, political, economic or religious – becomes closed and dogmatic, it sooner or later has to undergo its own creative evolution and become more open to new ideas and insights. The fact that a mechanistic approach is essential for many aspects of scientific research does not mean that everything in life can be accounted for in reductionist, nothing-but mechanistic terms.

From the 1960’s onwards, some scientists became increasingly aware that something vital was missing from the prevailing worldview. In his book The Living Stream, for example, the eminent marine biologist, Professor Sir Alister Hardy FRS, stressed the importance of non-material aspects of evolution. The subtitle reads: A Restatement of Evolution Theory and its Relation to the Spirit of Man. In order to investigate methodically this aspect of human experience, Hardy set up a research unit, originally at Oxford. It is now at the University of Wales at Lampeter and is named after its founder (The Alister Hardy Research Centre).

It was William James who had originally pioneered this work over a century ago and not much was done in this field until the Hardy unit was set up in 1969.

Bergson believed that mental and spiritual aspects of human experience were greatly neglected as a result of focussing so single-mindedly on the physical and material. He once speculated on how things might have developed had modern science devoted more attention to exploring the non-material realm. He believed that we would by now have had a psychology of which today we can form no idea, any more than before Galileo people could have imagined what our physics would be like. A biology quite different to ours would also have emerged: “A vitalist biology which would have sought, behind the sensible forms of living beings, the inward invisible force of which the sensible forms are the manifestations. On this force we have today taken no hold precisely because our science of mind is in its infancy ...” He went on to say: “Together with this vitalist biology there would have arisen a medical practice which would have sought to remedy directly the insufficiencies of the vital force: it would have aimed at the cause and not the effects, at the centre instead of at the periphery ...”

Over the past twenty or thirty years, there has been an ever-increasing growth in demand for many varieties of alternative healing, some of which are becoming part of medical practice, the development of psychosomatic medicine and many different therapies. Quite apart from the efficacy of any given remedy or therapeutic technique, this growth represents a widespread revolt against reductionist, materialist, mechanistic fundamentalism.

Terms such as ‘life force’ and ‘vital energy’ are now back in general usage. Recent advances in the new physics and cosmology have also led to a radical reappraisal of old ways of thinking about time and causality, subject/object, observer/observed.

Bergson is sometimes claimed to have anticipated features of relativity theory. He wrote a paper on ‘Duration and Simultaneity with regard to Einstein’s Theory’ (1921). In the public debate between the two, it was generally held that Einstein ‘won’. But there aren’t really winners or losers in any debate about time.

The way we perceive time is surely a core perception, which affects all other perceptions. It determines our philosophy of life, matters of war and peace, how we perceive work and the amount of quality time we devote to the people and things that really matter.

Despite the recovery of a more vitalistic outlook in attitudes towards physical and mental wellbeing, the main underlying perception of our modern, urban-industrial society remains mechanistic and soulless. Over the years, the dominant western worldview has become de-vitalised and devalued, especially in politics and economics. Let’s suppose things had developed in a more balanced, Bergsonian way over the sixty years or more since his death: reason and intuition, intellect and imagination, matter and mind, the physical and the spiritual. Perhaps we would have learned from this a greater respect for all expressions of the life force, including our own species.

To extend Bergson’s speculations, let’s imagine that the present green awakening and concern over the environment had started to get under way sixty years ago – I mean really take off, not just lone voices in the wilderness, such as Rachel Carson. By now we would have had an environmentally-friendly form of global politics that we can barely imagine. Had such a re-valuation of our natural habitat and its human, plant and animal inhabitants taken place half a century ago, our planet would probably be in much better shape today, allowing us to pass it on in a healthy state to our descendants. Political and economic priorities would by now have changed radically and war would be seen as an absolute last resort. There can be no place in a genuinely ethical foreign policy for the doctrine that might is right. There could therefore be no question of any nation, however powerful, embarking on pre-emptive wars against any other nation.

With a more vitalistic perception, the intrinsic value of others and of humanity as a whole would by now have become something so written into our lives that it would be that much harder to demonise those we disliked. In order to exploit and abuse others and make war against them, you first have to devalue them. Seeing them as of no greater value than devitalized machines is one way of doing this.

Writing in The Independent (14 May 04), Terence Blacker observed that the fascination of cruelty is now so pervasive that we hardly notice it’s there. He believes there is a direct line from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to millions of home computers across the western world. Pictures not at all dissimilar to the shocking images from Abu Ghraib are available as a form of home entertainment. “If you tap the words ‘torture’, ‘rape’ or ‘slave’ into a search engine,” wrote Blacker, “You will not be led to human rights organizations or academic reports, but to thousand upon thousand of websites specialising in recreational sadism. All this is mind-bogglingly profitable, because it taps into the age’s most compelling vices and weaknesses: cruelty, voyeurism, boredom. The problem is consumers are never satisfied by what they’re offered.”

The production line mindset defines the consumer as a buying machine with an insatiable appetite, whose tastes, fads and fashions can be manipulated, via advertising, with artificially contrived, largely unnecessary and usually environmentally destructive, wants. When one buying machine finally breaks down (when a customer dies), it is replaced by a new one, already well groomed in the dark arts of consumption. Underlying the consumerist juggernaut is the mechanistic view of time, the great fear of boredom that goes with it and the compulsion to fill up every waking moment with more and more graphic images, leaving less and less time for the things that really matter.

Our deeper needs are vitally real – not at all the same thing as contrived wants. One of our deepest needs is to find and express that vital creative spark that lies somewhere in all of us. If we saw ourselves as potentially creative artists of one kind or another, if this was the main view of ourselves and each other, we would spend more time creating our own images, writing our own stories, rediscovering our own myths. The artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist.

In a society that put greater emphasis on creation than production, boredom would not even be an issue. Instead of fearing time and thinking of it as an endless space that has to be filled in, we would value it more and make sure we had time to express our own particular form of creativity, time to dream, time to do nothing in particular, to have a fallow period, time to sit silently, or walk mindfully.

In The Rebel (l’Homme Révolté, first published in 1951), Albert Camus observed that the society based on production is only productive, not creative. We’ve grown so used to living in a society ruled by production that we can barely even imagine one ruled by creation. Bergson enables us to envisage a society based more on creativity than the soulless, mechanistic, produce consume model. His philosophy offers a more integrated view of life, where science, technology, art, economics, politics and spirituality can all work together.

You do not need to subscribe to any kind of religious faith, or belief in the supernatural, to stand in awe at the creative beauty of the evolutionary life force in all its incredibly varied and wonderful manifestations. This sense of wonder comes as naturally to a person of scientific inclination as it does to an artistic or spiritually-minded person. Bergson’s philosophy has the effect of opening doors in the mind, enabling us to think more deeply about the nature of time and how we, in our western culture, perceive it – or rather, misperceive it. Above all, his philosophy provides a basis for a more creative, revalued and revitalized general outlook.

© John-Francis Phipps 2004

[Roslyn Ross]

I am not sure how you get the idea that I think it is all theory and conjecture, although patently some is and must be. I think there are core truths with which human beings instinctively and spiritually connect. And that is why they appear everywhere and are then 'fleshed out' with theory and conjecture which sometimes works and sometimes does not.

[Peter Jones]

On Saturday, 21 February 2015 23:48:01 UTC, RHC wrote:

the great thing about annotations is that no one expects them to be authoritative, simply interesting anecdotes or commentary.  Just based on this thread you are obviously getting something out of ACIM that other people have not. For that reason alone your framing would have value. You should do it.  I will see if I can find some annottation software if you are interested.  Is it copyrighted?

Annotation software? That sounds interesting. I've never seen that. 

[Peter Jones]

Sorry Roslyn. My mistake. It was just an impression.  

I find it telling that it was an analysis of time that undermined Bergson's ideas at the start. A close look at time would be a quick way of confirming that there is something wrong with the way physics deals with time, and thus also space. It just doesn't make sense. This should have a huge impact in philosophy but in the western tradition the problem is simply ignored.

Sciborg - I laughed when you said Russell's disapproval led you to read Bergson. I've also sometimes been led to a new writer by Russell's disapproval. There's no better recommendation. .)

 

 

[Don Salmon]

Interestingly, Sciborg, Stephen Robbins (he wrote "Time and Memory" on Bergson), who has studied Bergson for several decades, and has worked a great deal to integrate Bergson's work with cognitive science (George and Peter - that's part of what I mean by making this stuff practical - Robbins shows how Bergson's philosophy sheds light on an astonishing array of issues related to perception, personality, development, cognition, etc)  - is a non dualist (that's pretty much Bernardo's version of idealism).  

So it's possible to derive non dualist views from Bergson - just to throw a wrench in things:>)))

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[Roslyn Ross]

All good. Divided by a common language and never more so on discussion threads were we have no knowledge of the individual and no access to the senses, or limited access, for interpreting.

[RHC]

Great quotes Sci keep them coming if you are so inclined. 

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Ah weird, J. Phillips wrote that thing about Russell's criticism making him want to read Bergson. I swear the author name was clearly visible when I pasted instead of just at the bottom...

[Peter Jones]

On Sunday, 22 February 2015 13:07:57 UTC, Don Salmon wrote:

Interestingly, Sciborg, Stephen Robbins (he wrote "Time and Memory" on Bergson), who has studied Bergson for several decades, and has worked a great deal to integrate Bergson's work with cognitive science (George and Peter - that's part of what I mean by making this stuff practical - Robbins shows how Bergson's philosophy sheds light on an astonishing array of issues related to perception, personality, development, cognition, etc)  - is a non dualist (that's pretty much Bernardo's version of idealism).  

So it's possible to derive non dualist views from Bergson - just to throw a wrench in things:>)))

I find that most intelligent thinkers arrive at or very close to nondualism. It'd the final step across the line that is difficult. David Chalmers would be a classic case of someone who has almost concluded that Buddhist doctrine must be true but hasn't realised it yet. This is because he is honest, and an honest enquiry will arrive at the right place. So I would be surprised if Bergson did not arrive at much the same place, especially starting with the problem of time. I believe that a study of time may almost be enough in itself to prove Buddhist doctrine. It would certainly establish its plausibility. 

As for the idea that integrating Bergson's work with cognitive science would be making it practical, I will reserve judgement if you don't mind. ;)

  

 

 

[RHC]

>I find that most intelligent thinkers arrive at or very close to nondualism.

this has probably come up for discussion here at some point, but I have thought this about panpsychism. If you are going to postulate consciousness as a basic property, how big of a leap is it to take the next step, for reasons of parsimony if nothing else. 

[Don Salmon]

Peter, I get (at least I think that i get) that you're being a bit tongue in cheek in your frequent digs in science.  I know this question is extreme, but do you think that there is nothing good in science?  Do you think that the attempt to establish science on a more adequate philosophic foundation is pointless?  (please leave aside digs at the very easy target of bad scientists - I'm not talking about bad scientists, just good science, that is, if you think such a thing exists)

--

[Peter Jones]

Hi Don. I'm all for science.. After all, science is just finding out about stuff in an organised way. I would see Buddhism as a science. I'm not a fan of the academic natural science community, however, since it seems to be dishonest and unrigorous in its approach and to deliberately mislead the public for the sake of protecting its historical prejudices and ingrained dogmas. But I must admit it is sometimes difficult to see the point of spending all that money.  I never asked Santa for a large Hadron collider, a spaceship to Mars or genetic engineering and would have sent them back if I'd  found them in my stocking. That's before all the fancy weaponry.

What annoys is the shallow reverence. I really don't see the natural sciences as being very important or even very advanced as yet, other than for the damage it does. Almost every time I see a new discovery announced I find myself asking 'so what?', and every time I see a new invention I fear the consequences.

But no, not against science, just science as currently paid for by the tax payer and the typical industrial conglomerate.

[George]

Says Peter Jones, typing out words on a computer (long story) and submitting them via a network developed as part of a project financed by the US Department of Defense - words that can then be used via a set of technologies developed at a facility for nuclear research which focuses on developing particle accelerators. ;-)

[Don Salmon]

Yes, I figured as much, Peter.  Just curious.  Good one George.

We all get in moods where we direct our ire at this or that target.  Mine is more toward American conservatives these days. My temperament is such that I always start out by assuming the best in people ( a bit different than yours, perhaps, Peter??). I somehow managed to live in Greenville SC and continue living down here in the American South while maintaining my belief that there have to be honest, intelligent conservatives who are not misled and simply think differently from me

No more.  i'm more and more inclined to think they're misled, nuts or just plain evil.  Must be I'm getting old and jaded.

So, now, back to metaphysics and science (well, no, I just drove 25 miles an hour for over an hour on what is usually a 20 drive, through the very snow and ice that everyone around here is convinced is just normal, since of course climate change is a hoax perpetrated by that Kenyan, Muslim, Socialist in the white house who was not born in the US and never went to college (having only faked his transcript) - oh and who is officially the Antichrist - people really believe this stuff around here…. ok, i better prepare for the first psych eval (for someone else, but maybe for me too?)

--

[Roslyn Ross]

I don't think anyone who is critical of science is not appreciative of the mechanical skills in the system. The problem with science is that it is good at nuts and bolts and should stick to nuts and bolts or change its thinking.

[Peter Jones]

If it were up to me I'd destroy every computer in the world tomorrow. Unfortunately it's not up to me so I might as well make the best of it.  I would also curb science funding and focus the remaining grants in a very different way. I'd then fire most scientists for being uneducated in philosophy, psychology and ethics and thus utterly irresponsible in the way they interfere with the world. I'd book most of them passage on Douglas Adam's spaceship to the sun or find them some useful community service.   

Tongue in cheek up to a point but not entirely unserious.  

[Roslyn Ross]

The US does seem to be a land of extremes and extremism and extremists - weather as well. The divide between Republicans and Democrats is not unusual compared to other developed nations, just more extreme and some of those Republicans belong in the 16th century and not this one. I think religion - the sort of fundamentalist crazy Christianity which is peculiarly American - is a lot of the problem. That and too many States with too much power and too much corruption in politics. It must be hard living in the US as a relatively sane, balanced and reasoning person. No doubt it is your karma, Don. :)

I am not convinced on climate change but I take the view, extremists, paranoia and propaganda aside, if it makes people more ecologically aware then it serves a good purpose, whether true or not.

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[Roslyn Ross]

Oh computers are useful. And I say that as someone sitting in Africa with less options and appreciating this connection to the world and still being able to work as an editor and pay bills online. Most things can now be done online in Australia which makes it very convenient and no doubt it is the same elsewhere. If I want to claim from my top-up health insurance I just fill in a form online and the money lands in the bank.

But I agree with you on the rest. I think science, beyond the clever and useful bits has been hideously destructive in ways far greater than the carnage caused by religion - they just killed people, not the planet!

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 15:48:52 UTC+2, Peter Jones wrote:

[Peter Jones]

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 13:28:10 UTC, Don Salmon wrote:

We all get in moods where we direct our ire at this or that target.  Mine is more toward American conservatives these days. My temperament is such that I always start out by assuming the best in people ( a bit different than yours, perhaps, Peter??).

Well, I try to do this. My complaints are not usually personal judgements aimed at people as if they are terrible people, but at poor ideas and the way people think, or all too often don't bother. No doubt all my opponents will reach Heaven before me and may all be wonderful people, and I would concede that I am a hypocrite,  but this doesn't change anything. 

What is it that explains the term 'Conservative' by the people you mention. Conservative in what way?  

 

 

[Peter Jones]

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 13:48:27 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

I don't think anyone who is critical of science is not appreciative of the mechanical skills in the system. The problem with science is that it is good at nuts and bolts and should stick to nuts and bolts or change its thinking

That sums it for me, Roslyn, although I would curb its activities precisely because it is so good at nuts and bolts, as well as because it's no good at anything else. It's possible to be dead impressed by large hadron colliders while nevertheless questioning what use they are to man or beast.    

[Roslyn Ross]

the American definition of conservative and liberal are very different to that which one would understand in the UK or Australia, or probably, anywhere else in the English speaking world.

[Roslyn Ross]

I could not agree more, Peter. :) And Hadron colliders, like many things in science, fall for me anyway, into the Big W category - big wanker where the modus operandi is 'we do because we can' and the P factor speaks - prestige, power, profit, peer approval and no doubt a few more.

[George]

That sums it for me, Roslyn, although I would curb its activities precisely because it is so good at nuts and bolts, as well as because it's no good at anything else. It's possible to be dead impressed by large hadron colliders while nevertheless questioning what use they are to man or beast.    

Now, I love a bit of technology and I think it's made our lives generally better. Everything gets used for everything - meaning the development of flight gets used for war as well as peaceful travel. Just like horses were.

However, I don't believe - and the big physicists often didn't either - that we're really finding out The Secrets of the Universe by doing physics. That is a fairly recent notion. What we are doing is discovering (or perhaps creating-by-seeking depending on your viewpoint) additional regular patterns of increased granularity.

I find it hard to get excited by colliders and the like. Eventually endeavours along those lines might lead to a commitment to their being "no underlying pattern", but it's an expensive way to get there. On the other hand, things like electron microscopes and so on were borne from the same intention, and they have turned out to be very useful indeed.

Last thought: There is a potential for investigations into "external" patterns to teach us to be powerless. If it's all out there, then we must rely on technology to help us solve ourselves. In fact, it's all us anyway, and "problems solve themselves" when appropriately intended. Metaphysics is the link between The Fundamental Property and the Observed Regularities of science that can help us have that realisation.

Or you could just lie down and believe it instead.

[Peter Jones]

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 13:55:58 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

Oh computers are useful. And I say that as someone sitting in Africa with less options and appreciating this connection to the world and still being able to work as an editor and pay bills online. Most things can now be done online in Australia which makes it very convenient and no doubt it is the same elsewhere. If I want to claim from my top-up health insurance I just fill in a form online and the money lands in the bank.

Very useful yes. But this is exactly the problem. We are seduced by temporary and personal gains and ignore the wider and long term consequences. Of course we do. Computer companies make money and mucking around with them is fun. I imagine we now dump around five million a week into various holes in the ground so much do we like them. 

[Roslyn Ross]

Yes, I agree on the waste, but, as a writer and editor, they are far superior to a typewriter which is what I started on. The mucking around irritates me because I really just want a sophisticated typewriter and use it as such.

I think the throw-away mentality is very destructive but that can be blamed on greed.

[Peter Jones]

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 14:05:07 UTC, Roslyn Ross wrote:

I could not agree more, Peter. :) And Hadron colliders, like many things in science, fall for me anyway, into the Big W category - big wanker where the modus operandi is 'we do because we can' and the P factor speaks - prestige, power, profit, peer approval and no doubt a few more.

Yay. I suppose, in deference to Don's even-handedness, we should say that many scientists are well-meaning, hard-working responsible people who think they are doing the right thing. The trouble is this doesn't make any difference to anything.       

[Roslyn Ross]

I am sure many are but they are also part of a system and systems drive behaviour. Science is driven, like all systems by profit, power, prestige, peer approval and personal needs. Sadly, the much famed 'rigour' of science is as much a fantasy as was the much famed 'compassion' of Christianity.

[Peter Jones]

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015 14:09:20 UTC, George wrote:

Now, I love a bit of technology and I think it's made our lives generally better. Everything gets used for everything - meaning the development of flight gets used for war as well as peaceful travel. Just like horses were.

Sometimes flight is use for war. Other times it's used for polluting the atmosphere, destroying the landscape with tourist hotels and airports, burning oil, making noise, dumping aviation fuel onto fields and streams, carrying virus' around the world, centralising wealth and so forth. I'd ban non-essential flights along with computers.  Next would come the internal combustion engine.   

 

[Roslyn Ross]

Well, I think the art to life is making the best of the bit one is in and recognising that just as we cannot go back to the pre-industrial age, neither can we do away with air travel or computers. Moderation is the key and high stands of ecological responsibility, although how one manages that in the non-developed world is the trick.

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

Nice summation of Bergson's ideas.

"Bergson’s philosophy, in which he shows that the findings of the mathematical-physical sciences are inadequate in relation to the wealth of reality, was an attempt to rehabilitate  metaphysical cognition. According to Bergson, there are two types of cognition: rational, the purest expression of which is mathematical natural science, and intuition, which is shows specific character most fully in the metaphysics. Although in its investigations metaphysics considers the data of science, these data are not for metaphysics the final instance, since by intuition it reaches to the deepest levels of reality."

"The world, according to him, is not a great mechanism, but rather a living organism permeated by the drive of life (elan vital); the world is constantly evolving and creative duration; this creativity is analogous to the process of artistic creation. The creative process begins with an enormous eruption, the first product of which product of which settle in the heaviest forms as powerless matter. The further course of creative evolution is the constant struggle of the elan vital with the powerlessness of matter. The course of evolution cannot be foreseen, since the spontaneous and rapid current of life flows in unforeseeable directions. It is not hindered by determinism, by any foreseeable teleology. Reality has a psychic nature. Thus it cannot be confined in any rigid schemata or reduced to uniform and qualitatively undifferentiated elements. The central point from which the elan vital radiates is God, who created the world, who is the energy of life and becomes the source of life."

[Charles Leiden]

Wow...  great conversation.  I apologize for not elaborating on ideas and whatever perspectives.  I am much better in a talking conversation.  I am constantly amazed at how everything is connected but also incredibly disconnected.  There are so many diverse cultures, religions, countries, worldviews, etc and so many different frameworks of seeing the world.  Each of us live in a different universe.  We talked about mind parasites.  I always keep this in mind (Godwin's book)   The author calls these effects "mind parasites" -- complexes, fixations, repetition compulsions that operate independently of our conscious will and tend to subjugate it."   Our ability to think clearly is severely limited and we end up with the symptoms are plain to perceive.  As Godwin writes,  "there is no longer a means to actually learn from experience, to reliably discriminate between truth and falsehood, reality and fantasy..the mind in this scenario is not interested in truth, but in ridding itself of anxiety; truth is of no concern whatsoever."    I live in central Pennsylvania.  This phenomenon is plain to see. 

All this is happening below a certain level of awareness.  

It is important ( at least in my view) to understand that today the economic imperative (materialism, the profit motive, and economic growth)) is the goal of societies, the way to heaven.  Science is given its incredible prestige and power because it plays a huge part in this system.  

Robert Inchausti writes " under a global market economy, the practical reason of ordinary people is largely subsumes within an amalgam of money-making projects and development scheme.  There is no direct commercial pay-off to thinking philosophically and so no reason to be intellectually engaged beyond the demands of technological innovation."  

Today we have Big Science and science as a way to undestand.  I suggest to anyone that science is good tool to learn about phenomena, but it should stay out of metaphysics.  

Eventually humans will revise their primary purpose.  It won't be economic growth.    enjoy the moment.

 

[Don Salmon]

Interesting comment Charles:  " science is good tool to learn about phenomena, but it should stay out of metaphysics."

I can be even more anti-science than Charles. I would say that science is a terrible tool to learn about phenomena; in fact, phenomena (appearings) are invisible to scientific enquiry to the extent that dogmatic scientists adhere  to a purely quantitative methodology (take that! Peter.  your little quibbles about airplanes and cars notwithstanding, this goes to the heart of why science is so deadly as it stands today). This was my point when I playfully said that (in response to people asking for scientific evidence of God) strictly speaking, there is no scientific evidence for he existence of the universe.

As usual, Sri Aurobindo says it better than I could: ("irrational magic more baffling than any the most mystic imagination could conceive" - I love it!!)   And his comment, "there is no fundamental significance if you miss the Divine Reality," is for me, a key in integrating spiritual and science.  When you go "inward" and "upward" THE VIEW OF THINGS CHANGES."  That, George, is why I keep insisting that when you bring a truly spiritual view to any aspect of science - even physics - EVERYTHING about it will change. Not ONE thing will remain the same. Even equations and measurements that appear to be the same won't be.  The meaning of the number "1" is COMPLETELY different when seen from a deeper or higher view.  Complete. One could hardly say that the rock the physicist studies is the same rock as the yogic scientist.  Barely the same.

The more you go inward or upward, the more the view of things changes and the outer knowledge Science organises takes its real and very limited place. Science, like most mental and external knowledge, gives you only truth of process. I would add that it cannot give you even the whole truth of process; for you seize some of the ponderables, but miss the all-important imponderables; you get, hardly even the how, but the conditions under which things happen in Nature. After all the triumphs and marvels of Science the explaining principle, the rationale, the significance of the whole is left as dark, as mysterious and even more mysterious than ever. The scheme it has built up of the evolution not only of this rich and vast and variegated material world, but of life and consciousness and mind and their workings out of a brute mass of electrons, identical and varied only in arrangement and number, is an irrational magic more baffling than any the most mystic imagination could conceive. Science in the end lands us in a paradox effectuated, an organised and rigidly determined accident, an impossibility that has somehow happened, – it has shown us a new, a material Maya, aghaṭana-ghaṭana-paṭīyasī, very clever at bringing about the impossible, a miracle that cannot logically be and yet somehow is there actual, irresistibly organised, but still irrational and inexplicable. And this is evidently because Science has missed something essential; it has seen and scrutinised what has happened and in a way how it has happened, but it has shut its eyes to something that made this impossible possible, something it is there to express. There is no fundamental significance in things if you miss the Divine Reality; for you remain embedded in a huge surface crust of manageable and utilisable appearance. It is the magic of the Magician you are trying to analyse, but only when you enter into the consciousness of the Magician himself can you begin to experience the true origination, significance and circles of the Lila. I say “begin” because the Divine Reality is not so simple that at the first touch you can know all of it or put it into a single formula; it is the Infinite and opens before you an infinite knowledge to which all Science put together is a bagatelle. But still you do touch the essential, the eternal behind things and in the light of That all begins to be profoundly luminous, intimately intelligible.

[George]

That, George, is why I keep insisting that when you bring a truly spiritual view to any aspect of science - even physics - EVERYTHING about it will change. Not ONE thing will remain the same. Even equations and measurements that appear to be the same won't be.  The meaning of the number "1" is COMPLETELY different when seen from a deeper or higher view.  Complete. One could hardly say that the rock the physicist studies is the same rock as the yogic scientist.  Barely the same.

What science misses is that phenomena have meaning and are in fact aspects of the observer. That kind of thing?

[Don Salmon]

George - but science doesn't even know the phenomena.  I have said this partly tongue in cheek, but no less than Arthur Eddington made it clear that technically speaking, after you submit whatever phenomenon you're interested in to study, you have to quantify it and then you leave the phenomenon behind.  

The "laws" and "equations" and various "findings" of science are purely quantitative, empty (not in the Buddhist sense) of content. Eddington has a wonderful passage in which he imagines a physics student being told a 2 ton elephant is sliding down the hill. "The competent student" Eddington tells us, knows the "elephant" is only thrown in for color.  Once you know the number "2 tons" the elephant is irrelevant.  

Same with the brain.  There is no phenomenal brain in neuroscience.  Look at an actual research paper and see what happens.  Don't read the discussion section where they sneak back the phenomenon .

Look closely at the methods section. There's no brain there (no snarky comments, Peter:>)   There's just numbers.  You've lost the phenomenon.  

This is why Owen Barfield called his last work "Saving the Appearances."  Barfield felt the greatest task of the 20th century was to spiritualize science.  The "appearances" that need to be saved as the phenomena we actually experience. Barfield went into great detail describing the kind of thinking that emerged at the time of Bacon, Descartes and Galileo, that abstracted from and then ignored the phenomena altogether.  Such a method INEVITABLY leads to materialism and all the horrors Peter so rightly enumerates.  

What is a rock?   What could it possibly be but a form of the Divine?   What does a physicist know of this?  Nothing.  

COULD there be a physics which sees this as its starting point?  Absolutely.  But it would require an utterly different method from what we have now.  The quantitative method may linger on for several decades during the transition, but ultimately, mathematics as we know it will go by the way side, as it will simply be obsolete, no longer necessary because the yogic scientists will "see" the structural relationships, and they will "see" them ONLY in relation to the flow of cosmic (conscious - Chit, not chitta) forces emanating from the Source (of course, there is no emanating "from" - but keeping in mind your point about words being nearly useless at this level, that's the best I can do). 

 The shading of the rock, the form, the "substance" so to speak, the energy, internal movements, of the rock, all will be understood in this yogic physics as shad in,g form, substance, energy, movement of the Divine (what else could it be).  

Technology that pollutes, that is used for war, will simply be impossible as a product of this yogic science.  it would be unthinkable to use a pill to change (poison) the brain when one can simply see the movements of energy and consciousness that an individual may have manifested in some kind of distorted way. 

On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 12:44 PM, George <account...@noseeyes.com> wrote:

That, George, is why I keep insisting that when you bring a truly spiritual view to any aspect of science - even physics - EVERYTHING about it will change. Not ONE thing will remain the same. Even equations and measurements that appear to be the same won't be.  The meaning of the number "1" is COMPLETELY different when seen from a deeper or higher view.  Complete. One could hardly say that the rock the physicist studies is the same rock as the yogic scientist.  Barely the same.

What science misses is that phenomena have meaning and are in fact aspects of the observer. That kind of thing?

--

[George]

George - but science doesn't even know the phenomena.  I have said this partly tongue in cheek, but no less than Arthur Eddington made it clear that technically speaking, after you submit whatever phenomenon you're interested in to study, you have to quantify it and then you leave the phenomenon behind.  

Well, yes. To be pickier, physics is about relationships between things rather than the nature of things. The "nouns" are actually about "amounts of relationship" in a sense. Sometimes one relationship is "noun-ified" while other relationships are explored.

I like your elephant story! Here's the standard cow story:

Ever lower milk prices were driving a dairy farmer to desperate measures. Two years ago, he tried "Beethoven for Bovines" in his barn and milk production dropped 2%. Last year he signed up for "hex the herd" where Genuine Santa Barbara Witches^TM remotely hexed your herd for health and higher production. (The ad had said its hexes were the cause of California's improved milk production, but it didn't seem to work in Wisconsin.) So this year he drove to town to consult the ultimate power source: a theoretical physicist. The physicist listened to his problem, asked a few questions, and then said he'd take the assignment, and that it would take only a few hours to solve the problem. A few weeks later, the physicist phoned the farmer, "I've got the answer. The solution turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought and I'm presenting it at this afternoon's Theory Seminar". At the seminar the farmer finds a handful of people drinking tea and munching on cookies---none of whom looks like a farmer. As the talk begins the physicist approaches the blackboard and draws a big circle. "First, we assume a spherical cow..." (Yes that is the punch line)

There is nothing at all wrong with quantitative sciences - - - except that they don't examine the noun. We could perhaps keep everything the same, except introduce the meaning aspect where the empty content is. Psyphysicology to the rescue?

I conceive that the chief aim of the physicist in discussing a theoretical problem is to obtain 'insight' --- to see which of the numerous factors are particularly concerned in any effect and how they work together to give it. For this purpose a legitimate approximation is not just an unavoidable evil; it is a discernment that certain factors --- certain complications of the problem --- do not contribute appreciably to the result. We satisfy ourselves that they may be left aside; and the mechanism stands out more clearly freed from these irrelevancies. This discernment is only a continuation of a task begun by the physicist before the mathematical premises of the problem could even be stated; for in any natural problem the actual conditions are of extreme complexity and the first step is to select those which have an essential influence on the result --- in short, to get hold of the right end of the stick.

 

A. S. Eddington

...so, reintroducing what has been left out in error.

[Charles Leiden]

I didn't mean to give the impression that I am anti-science.  There are so many views of science.  Can we separate whatever science may be from its cultural context?   One could say scientism is a historical phenomenon that emerged in Europe from a confluence of factors and cultures.  It seemed to take on the same energy of an exoteric mental realm that was involved in the Church.  The problem is it literalness and dogmatic adherence to certain values.  

Phenomena is a loaded word.   Science deals with the means and not the ends.  The ends are about metaphysical and spirituals ideas.  What is the purpose and meaning of life.  

[Roslyn Ross]

Science in its current form is only a tool. It is as ludicrous to apply the 'tools' of science to anything beyond its skills area, as it would be to assume you can use the tools of a car mechanic to make a cake. Even more delusional to think that the tools of science or a car mechanic can be used to find philosophical or metaphysical answers.

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[Roslyn Ross]

What science misses is MEANING fullstop. Science, as it stands today, is incapable of addressing or exploring meaning and in fact does not want to, but likes to pretend that it can.

[George]

Science in its current form is only a tool. It is as ludicrous to apply the 'tools' of science to anything beyond its skills area, as it would be to assume you can use the tools of a car mechanic to make a cake. Even more delusional to think that the tools of science or a car mechanic can be used to find philosophical or metaphysical answers.

Right. There's no point in criticising it for what it isn't. The problem is when people try to make it what it isn't, out of ignorance of its nature. This is even becoming tedious to some in the business (click title for full article):

Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will

By John Horgan | July 22, 2014

Biologist Rupert Sheldrake, whom I interviewed in my last post, wasn’t the only fascinating scientist I hung out with recently at Howthelightgetsin, a festival hosted by the Institute of Arts & Ideas. I also befriended George F. R. Ellis, the physicist-mathematician-cosmologist, an authority on the Big Bang and other cosmic mysteries. Ellis and I hit it off initially because we share some—how shall I put it?—concerns about the direction of physics, but I soon discovered that his interests range far beyond physics. He has published papers and books not only on physics and cosmology (including the 1973 classic The Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time, co-authored with Stephen Hawking) but also on philosophy, complexity theory, neuroscience, education and even low-income housing. (See his website, and his terrific 2011 critique of multiverse theories in Scientific American.) A native of South Africa, Ellis is professor emeritus at the University of Cape Town, where he taught for decades, and has also held positions at Cambridge, the University of Texas, the Fermi Institute and other institutions around the globe. I admire Ellis’s social activism as well as his scientific work. He was an early critic of apartheid, and in 1999 Nelson Mandela awarded him the Order of the Star of South Africa. Ellis has a big brain and a big heart...

[Roslyn Ross]

The ignorance is within the world of science. Hubris breeds ignorance. If you believe long enough that your system is the only one which can provide answers, despite the fact that an objective application of reason would indicate the limitations within the system and the impossibility of answers emerging on many fronts, then you will no longer remember how to be objective, nor, how to use reason to acknowledge realities.

[George]

The ignorance is within the world of science. Hubris breeds ignorance.

In case I wasn't clear - it is people in the scientific community itself that I was referring to (and that's what our friend in the article refers to). If the community was full of people setting the record straight, or it was just laymen misunderstanding, it wouldn't be a problem.

[Roslyn Ross]

Yes, I got that. I was really just clarifying that the problem is within the world of science and not outside. Or labouring your point. :)

[Sciborg2 Sciborg2]

 Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment that Failed:Intellectual Cooperation at the League of Nations

"On April 6, 1922, Henri Bergson and Albert Einstein met at the Société française de philosophie in Paris to discuss the meaning of relativity. In the years that followed, the philosopher and the physicist became engaged in a bitter dispute.2It is commonly asserted that during their confrontation Bergson lost to the young physicist; as subsequent commentators have insisted, Bergson made an essential mistake because he did not understand the physics of relativity.

 
Their debate exemplified the victory of “rationality” against “intuition.” It was a key moment which demonstrated that intellectuals (like Bergson) were unable to keep up with revolutions in science. For the physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, the “historical origins” of the “Science Wars” lay in Einstein’s and Bergson’s fateful meeting. Since then, they have seen the malaise of le bergsonisme continuing to spread—recently reaching“Deleuze, after passing through Jankélévitch and Merleau-Ponty.”
 
Bergson, however, never acknowledged any such defeat. In his view, it was Einstein and his interlocutors who did not understand him...
 
...The political views of Bergson and Einstein and the history of scientific internationalism have been amply studied before. Yet the scientific Bergson-Einstein debate and the political Bergson-Einstein debate, taking place simultaneously, have been considered to be independent from each other. It is evident, however, that both Bergson and Einstein (as well as those around them) often drew connections between the two. This article explores these connections symmetrically to expose the ways in which boundaries between nature,science, and politics shifted during this period. It is pertinent to study these shifts first to understand the ancillary debates in science and politics that have thus far dominated historiography.
 
This episode marks an important change in the place of science and philosophy in history. Einstein and Bergson’s debate covered much more than the nature of time and simultaneity. At stake in their debate was the status of philosophy vis à vis physics. It was, in essence,a controversy about who could speak for nature and about which of these two disciplines would have the last word.."