(U N) R E A L I T Y-B L O G
Science
Sources: Zizek’s Ontology by Johnston
Transgressing the Boundary by Sokal
What the Sokal Affair Does and Does Not Prove by Sokal
The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel
Lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit by Kojeve
2001: A Space Odyssey
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream by Ellison
Lectures on The Philosophy of History by Hegel
The Sublime Object of Ideology by Zizek
The Other Side of Psychoanalysis by Lacan
The Desire of Psychoanalysis by Tupinambá
In this episode I am looking forward to exploring more about alternate interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. In previous episodes exploring consciousness, I’ve encountered several people who believe that Quantum Mechanics is at the root of consciousness. My current thinking is that it replaces one mystery with another one without really providing an explanation for consciousness. We are still stuck with the options of consciousness being a pre-existing property of the universe or some aspect of it, vs. it being an emergent feature of a processing network. Either way, quantum mechanics is an often misunderstood brilliant theory at the root of physics. It tells us that basic particles don’t exist at a specific position and momentum—they are, however, represented very accurately as a smooth wavefunction that can be used to calculate the distribution of a set of measurements on identical particles. The process of observation seems to cause the wavefunction to randomly collapse to a localized spot. Nobody knows for certain what causes this collapse. This is known as the measurement problem. The many worlds theorem says the wavefunction doesn’t collapse. It claims that the wavefunction describes all the possible universes that exist and the process of measurement just tells us which universe we are living in.
My guest is a leading proponent of transactional quantum mechanics.
TDr. Ruth E. Kastner earned her M.S. in Physics and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Maryland. Since that time, she has taught widely and conducted research in Foundations of Physics, particularly in interpretations of quantum theory. She was one of three winners of the 2021 Alumni Research Award at the University of Maryland, College Park (https://tinyurl.com/2t56yrp2). She is the author of 3 books: The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Theory: The Reality of Possibility (Cambridge University Press, 2012; 2nd edition just published, 2022), Understanding Our Unseen Reality: Solving Quantum Riddles (Imperial College Press, 2015); and Adventures In Quantumland: Exploring Our Unseen Reality (World Scientific, 2019). She has presented talks and interviews throughout the world and in video recordings on the interpretational challenges of quantum theory, and has a blog at transactionalinterpretation.org. She is also a dedicated yoga practitioner and received her 200-Hour Yoga Alliance Instructor Certification in February, 2020.
In this wide-ranging interview, one of our favorite scholars, Patrick Harpur, discusses the fundamental role of the imagination in human history, the human mind, and reality at large. He also discusses the daimons, those elusive, contradictory figures who inhabit minds and the world, but who appear only to those with the eyes to see. Harpur’s extensive, extraordinary, life-transforming body of work is one of the most criminally underrated in modern scholarship.
This video has human-created English subtitles, so don’t forget to click on the ‘CC’ button below the video to enable them.
Books by Patrick Harpur:
Ralston College presents a lecture by Dr Iain McGilchrist followed by a discussion with Dr Stephen Blackwood and questions from the audience. In his lecture Dr McGilchrist deals with certain themes that are treated at greater length in his recent book The Matter With Things. He focuses especially upon the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum), which he explores (providing an extraordinary range of illustrative examples) in such a way as to make manifest both its universality and its particular relevance to our present historical moment.
Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — shut down one by one. An astonishing story.
Anecdotal reports of “experiential entanglements” – spontaneous mind-to-mind and mind-to-matter interactions – can be found throughout history, in all cultures, and at all educational levels. For over a century, such experiences have stimulated controlled scientific experiments to explore whether the anecdotes were best explainable as coincidence, confabulation, or genuine anomalies. Based on analysis of thousands of experiments published in peer-reviewed journals, the cumulative evidence is now clear: mind-to-mind and some forms of mind-matter interactions have been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt.
For the most part, this evidence is ignored or denied within the academic mainstream, probably because it implies that certain long-held assumptions about the nature of brain, mind and matter – assumptions that are inculcated in universities and repeated as fact in textbooks – are in some cases wrong and in others in need of radical revision. I will review the evidence for these entanglements, the resistance to the evidence, and the implications for a more mature science of the future
Dean Radin, PhD (Psychology, University of Illinois), has been Senior Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences since 2001. He previously held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, Bell Labs, and SRI International. Author and co-author of over 200 technical and popular articles, he has also written several books including the bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997), Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006), and Supernormal (Random House, 2013).
Betty J. Kovács, PhD, taught symbolic/mythic language for twenty-five years. She has served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Jung Society of Claremont, California, and sits on the Academic Advisory Board of Forever Family Foundation. Dr. Kovacs is author of Merchants of Light: The Consciousness That Is Changing the World, winner of The Scientific and Medical Network 2019 Book Prize and a Nautilus Silver Award. She has also written The Miracle of Death: There Is Nothing But Life. Her website is www.kamlak.com.
Here she explains that consciousness is infinite and that, ultimately, there is no real separation between our waking consciousness, our subconscious mind, and the afterlife. It is all one. However, that realization is difficult to maintain in the face of daily life’s necessities. She describes several powerful examples of both archetypal, visionary experiences and after-death communications. They blend into each other. She closes with a riveting prophetic vision.
It is utterly realistic for mankind to plunge into one of the many apocalypse movie scenarios, such as environmental, viral, nuclear, famine, water resource apocalypses. Of 195 nations, most are grounded in the philosophy of materialism, which is just as much a philosophical and non-scientific guess about reality as other philosophies such as the simulation hypothesis. We propose that a philosophy as important as materialism (the belief that the core of reality is made of matter) is ultimately causal and guides a global society. A different philosophy of reality would guide the vector or timeline in a different way. Are we living in a simulation? This multi-part series is about the nature of reality. One philosophy to consider is materialism, which is the guess that reality is not made of information at its core but is made of material or matter. The digital physics revolution is the increasingly popular belief among physicists that materialism is a false philosophy and that reality is literally made of information vs being conveniently described by it. If reality is made of information, two candidates for what its substrate would be include: (1) An emergent universal computer. Or (2) an emergent universal mind. Either one could serve as the substrate to hold and process information. The series starts with an emphasis on the instability of human civilization in the 21st century and how quickly old scientific and cultural belief systems are changing. It ends with the provocative suggestion that a clearer scientific picture of what reality is could shift humanity off course from its current high potential for apocalypse. Specifically, if the truer picture turns out to be a status quo rejection of the ancient philosophy of materialism, the implication is that it would change how humanity evolves and interacts on this planet going forward. Look for Part Two!
Find out more about Quantum Gravity Research at quantumgravityresearch.org
Find out more about Klee Irwin at kleeirwin.com
If you were able to create an immortal version of yourself, would you? Until this decade, that question was the stuff of science fiction, but now experts in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics suggest it will indeed be possible.
This cinematic documentary explores the latest technological advancements in AI, robotics, and biotech, and poses the question: what is the essence of the human mind, and can this be replicated? Or even more unsettling, could we one day meet cloned versions of ourselves – clones that are better, smarter, and immortal?
This film explores these questions with visionaries including Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence, Hiroshi Ishiguro, developer of his own uncannily realistic clone Geminoid; Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human; Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity.net who coined the term Artificial General Intelligence; and Deepak Chopra, who is creating his own A.I. mind twin. These visionaries see humanity advancing toward a new age of post-biological life, a world of intelligence without bodies, immortal identity without the limitations of disease, death, and unfulfilled desire. As scientists at the forefront of technology show that a world where humans and machines merge isn’t so far away, we have to ask ourselves will AI be the best or the last thing we ever do?