Almost noon local time. Kim,
Paul and the boys just left to have lunch and visit with one of her old
roommates at Miami who lives in Lebanon. Two or three of her other roommates
will be there for lunch and the afternoon also.
1202
hours. It is quiet already. Paul did so much work yesterday, we are so happy
they all came. I don't know how to express our appreciation.
Buy Paul his favorite beverage and a couple
bags of his favorite snacks. That will do. - Amorella
1206 hours That's very good, Amorella. I'll find out what his favorites are
and do just that. We'll take them up at Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks. Very
cool. This morning I saw this item below on AOL. A modern 'ghost story' with
images (I included one).
** **
AOL NEWS
Eerie photos surface online of Dear David, the dead child allegedly
haunting this man's apartment
ARIS FOLLEY, AOL
dot COM
The viral story about the ghost of
a dead little boy named Dear David haunting a man's apartment has just
gotten more terrifying.
You might recall reading a story we
posted several months ago about Adam Ellis and his apartment he claims is
haunted.
When we last covered Ellis' bizarre account
of his haunted home in a viral Twitter thread, he posted images of a salt
barrier he created around the perimeter of his apartment to keep the
"evil" at bay.
Since then, the New York-based illustrator
claims his nanny camera has captured some strange-behavior from his cats and has even been having
nightmares about severed heads and shadowy figures appearing before his
second-floor window.
Now, Ellis says he's obtained photographic
proof of David in an unbelievable series of tweets about his most recent dream
starring the "ghost."
Though the nightmare was terrifying, Ellis
said the fear melted away (somewhat) when he woke up. That is until Ellis said
he went into his phone and discovered he had actually been taking photos during
his nightmare.
Shortly after, Ellis shared photos of
what he claims is David online and the Internet has been grasping for an
explanation ever since.
Many
online have been quick to offer advice to Ellis, while others suspect his
strange story is nothing more than a viral marketing plot for his upcoming
book.
Selected
and edited from --https://www DOT aol DOT com/article/news/2017/11/07/eerie-photos-emerge-of-dear-david-the-dead-child-allegedly-haunting-this-mans-apartment/23269874/
** **
1222
hours. A marketing plot for his upcoming book . . . this the author drops in
last. I am more interesting in the photo. Why would a ghost wear any clothes at
all? Why can't you just control your head being seen (or not)? The clothes
don't make any sense. What is there to be modest about when only the spirit is
there? It seems silly to have all the kinds of clothes he shows, all nice and
neat like he was going to Grandma's or something.
What would you wear, boy? - Amorella
1228 hours. I don't know. If I knew I was going to see someone and I
knew they were going to see me, I guess I would think about it. I would not want to
frighten anyone I knew, that I cared about. I guess I would wear (if I could
conjure them up) familiar clothes to reinforce who I was attempting to be, my
everyday clothes. I guess Jesus wore something familiar though his wounds
showed to give the sense to others as to who he had been in life. Okay, I
didn't think through my criticism. Still, the photo doesn't seem so realistic
to me.
The photo is ghostly. What more do you want?
- Amorella
1235 hours. Why are you siding with the author?
The article/definition below
is edited from Wikipedia and I have bold marked some material of personal
interest to you along the way, along the reading and editing. This is mostly
for your personal interest but those interested in the spiritual, in the
heartansoulanmind of the human spirit might find it of interest also. -
Amorella
** **
Panpsychism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that
consciousness, mind or soul (psyche) is a universal and primordial feature of
all things. Panpsychists see themselves as minds in a world of mind.
Panpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has
been ascribed to philosophers like Thales, Parmenides, Plato, Averroes,
Spinoza, Leibniz and William James. Panpsychism can also be seen in ancient
philosophies such as Stoicism, Taoism, Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism. During
the 19th century, panpsychism was the default theory in philosophy of mind, but
it saw a decline during the middle years of the 20th century with the rise of
logical positivism.The recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness has
revived interest in panpsychism.
Etymology
The term "panpsychism" has its origins with the Greek
term pan (πᾶν : "all,
everything, whole") and psyche (ψυχή:
"soul, mind") as the unifying center of the mental life of us humans
and other living creatures. Psyche comes from the Greek word ψύχω (psukhō,
"I blow") and can mean life, soul, mind, spirit, heart and
'life-breath'. The use of psyche is
controversial due to it being synonymous with soul, a term usually taken
to have some sort of supernatural quality; more common terms now found in the
literature include mind, mental properties, mental aspect, and experience.
History
Ancient philosophy
Early forms of panpsychism can be found in pre-modern animistic
beliefs in religions such as Shinto, Taoism, Paganism and shamanism.
Panpsychist views are also a staple theme in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy.
According to Aristotle, Thales (c. 624 – 545 BCE) the first Greek philosopher,
posited a theory which held "that everything is full of gods." Thales
believed that this was demonstrated by magnets. This has been interpreted as a
panpsychist doctrine. Other Greek thinkers that have been associated with
Panpsychism include Anaxogoras (who saw the underlying principle or arche as
nous or mind), Anaximenes (who saw the arche as pneuma or spirit) and
Heraclitus (who said "The thinking faculty is common to all").
Plato argues for Panpsychism in his Sophist, in which he writes that all things participate in the form of Being and that it must have a psychic aspect of mind and
soul (psyche). In the Philebus and Timaeus, Plato argues for the idea of a
world soul or anima mundi. According to Plato.
This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and
intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living
entities, which by their nature are all related.
Stoicism developed a cosmology which held that the natural world
was infused with a divine fiery essence called Pneuma, which was directed by a
universal intelligence called Logos. The relationship of the individual Logos of
beings with the universal Logos was a central concern of the Roman Stoic Marcus
Aurelius. Stoic The Metaphysics of Stoicism was based on Hellenistic
philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism also made use of the Platonic
idea of the Anima mundi.
Renaissance
After the closing of Plato's Academy by the Emperor Justinian in
529 CE, Neoplatonism declined. Though there were mediaeval Christian thinkers
who ventured what might be called panpsychist ideas (such as John Scotus
Eriugena), it was not a dominant strain in Christian thought. In the Italian
Renaissance, however, Panpsychism enjoyed something of an intellectual revival,
in the thought of figures such as Gerolamo Cardano, Bernardino Telesio,
Francesco Patrizi, Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella. Cardano argued for
the view that soul or anima was a fundamental part of the world and Patrizi
introduced the actual term "panpsychism" into the philosophical
vocabulary. According to Giordano Bruno: "There is nothing that does not
possess a soul and that has no vital principle." Platonist ideas like the
anima mundi also resurfaced in the work of esoteric thinkers like Paracelsus,
Robert Fludd and Cornelius Agrippa.
Modern philosophy
In the 17th century, two rationalists can be said to be
panpsychists, Baruch Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz. In Spinoza's monism, the
one single infinite and eternal substance was "God, or Nature" (Deus
sive Natura) which has the aspects of mind (thought) and matter (extension).
Leibniz' view is that there are an infinite number of absolutely simple mental
substances called monads which make up the fundamental structure of the
universe. The Idealist philosophy of George Berkeley is also a form of pure
panpsychism and technically all idealists can be said to be panpsychists by
default.
In the 19th century, Panpsychism was at its zenith. Philosophers
like Arthur Schopenhauer, C.S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, William James, Eduard von
Hartmann, F.C.S. Schiller, Ernist Haeckel, and William Kingdon Clifford as well
as psychologists like Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt and Rudolf Hermann Lotze all
promoted Panpsychist ideas.
Arthur Schopenhauer argued for a two-sided view of reality which
was both Will and Representation (Vorstellung). According to Schopenhauer: "All ostensible mind can be attributed
to matter, but all matter can likewise be attributed to mind".
Josiah Royce, the leading American absolute idealist held that
reality was a "world self", a conscious being that comprised
everything, though he didn't necessarily attribute mental properties to the
smallest constituents of mentalistic "systems". The American
Pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce espoused a sort of
Psycho-physical Monism which the universe as suffused with mind which he
associated with spontaneity and freedom. Following Pierce, William James also
espoused a form of panpsychism. In his lecture notes, James wrote:
Our only
intelligible notion of an object in itself is that it should be an
object for itself, and this lands us in panpsychism and a belief that
our physical perceptions are effects on us of 'psychical' realities.
A diagram with neutral monism
compared to Cartesian dualism, physicalism and idealism.
In the 20th century, the most significant proponent of the
Panpsychist view is arguably Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947). Whitehead's
ontology saw the basic nature of the world as made up of events and the process
of their creation and extinction. These elementary events (which he called
occasions) are in part mental. According to Whitehead: "we should conceive
mental operations as among the factors which make up the constitution of
nature." Bertrand Russell's neutral monist views also tended towards
panpsychism.
The psychologist Carl Jung, who is known for his idea of the
collective unconscious, wrote that "psyche and matter are contained in one
and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one
another", and that it was probable that "psyche and matter are two
different aspects of one and the same thing". The psychologists James Ward
and Charles Augustus Strong also endorsed variants of panpsychism. Sewall Wright endorsed a version of
panpsychism. He believed that the birth
of consciousness was not due to a mysterious property of increasing complexity,
but rather an inherent property, therefore implying these properties were in
the most elementary particles.
Contemporary
The panpsychist doctrine has recently been making a comeback in
the American philosophy of mind. Prominent defenders include Christian de
Quincey, Leopold Studbenberg, David Ray Griffin, and David Skrbina. In 1990,
the physicist David Bohm published a paper named "A New theory of the
relationship of mind and matter" promoting a panpsychist theory of
consciousness based on Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics. Bohm has a
number of followers among philosophers of mind both in United States (e.g.
Quentin Smith) and internationally (e.g. Paavo Pylkkanen). In the United
Kingdom the case for panpsychism has been made in recent decades by Galen
Strawson, Gregg Rosenberg and Timothy Sprigge.
In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism is one possible solution
to the so-called hard problem of consciousness. The doctrine has also been
applied in the field of environmental philosophy through the work of Australian
philosopher Freya Mathews. David Chalmers has provided a sympathetic account of
it in The Conscious Mind (1996). In
addition, neuroscientist Christof Koch has proposed a "scientifically
refined version" of panpsychism.
Arguments
for
Non-emergentism
The problems found with emergentism are often cited by
panpsychists as grounds to reject physicalism. This argument can be traced back
to the Ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, who argued that ex nihilo nihil fit— nothing comes from
nothing and thus the mental cannot arise from the non-mental.
In his 1979 article Panpsychism, Thomas Nagel tied
panpsychism to the failure of emergentism to deal with metaphysical relation:
"There are no truly emergent properties of complex systems. All properties
of complex systems that are not relations between it and something else derive
from the properties of its constituents and their effects on each other when so
combined."[1] Thus he denies that mental properties can arise out of complex
relationships between physical matter. Opposing Nagel, emergentist philosophers
Roberto Mangabeira Unger in The Religion of The Future and Alexander
Bard & Jan Soderqvist in Syntheism - Creating God in The Internet Age
have argued that the reality of time enables complex systems to have truly
emergent (as in irreversible and irreproducible) properties, thereby replacing
any need for panpsychism with a chronocentric, strong emergentism.
Evolutionary
The most popular empirically based argument for panpsychism
stems from Darwinism and is a form of the non-emergence argument. This argument begins with the assumption
that evolution is a process that creates complex systems out of pre-existing
properties but yet cannot make "entirely novel" properties. William
Kingdon Clifford argued that:
[...] we
cannot suppose that so enormous a jump from one creature to another should have
occurred at any point in the process of evolution as the introduction of a fact
entirely different and absolutely separate from the physical fact. It is
impossible for anybody to point out the particular place in the line of descent
where that event can be supposed to have taken place. The only thing that we
can come to, if we accept the doctrine of evolution at all, is that even in the
very lowest organism, even in the Amoeba which swims about in our own blood,
there is something or other, inconceivably simple to us, which is of the same
nature with our own consciousness [...]
Thomas Nagel
In his book titled Mortal Questions, Thomas Nagel defines
panpsychism as, "the view that the basic physical constituents of the
universe have mental properties," effectively claiming the panpsychist
thesis to be a type of property dualism. Nagel
argues that panpsychism follows from four premises:
(1)
"Material composition", or commitment to materialism.
(2)
"Non-reductionism", or the view that mental properties cannot be
reduced to physical properties.
(3)
"Realism" about mental properties.
(4)
"Non-emergence", or the view that "there are no truly emergent
properties of complex systems".
Nagel
notes that new physical properties are discovered through explanatory inference
from known physical properties; following a similar process, mental properties
would seem to derive from properties of matter not included under the label of
"physical properties", and so they must be additional properties of
matter. Also, he argues that, "the demand for an account of how
mental states necessarily appear in physical organisms cannot be satisfied by
the discovery of uniform correlations between mental states and physical brain
states." Furthermore, Nagel argues mental states are real by appealing to
the inexplicability of subjective experience, or qualia, by physical means.
Quantum physics
Philosophers such as Alfred North Whitehead have drawn on the
indeterminacy observed by quantum physics to defend panpsychism. A similar line
of argument has been repeated subsequently by a number of thinkers including
the physicist David Bohm, anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff and philosophers
such as Quentin Smith, Paavo Pylkkanen, Shan Gao, and David Chalmers who, in
his more recent work, has revisited his formerly negative views concerning
quantum-theories of consciousness, and expressed sympathy towards the idea that
consciousness be identified with the collapse of the wave-function. The
advocates of panpsychist quantum consciousness theories see quantum indeterminacy
and informational but non-causal relations between quantum elements as the key
to explaining consciousness. Recent work on this approach has been also
undertaken by William Lycan (1996) and Michael Lockwood (1991).
Intrinsic nature
These arguments are based on the idea that everything must have
an intrinsic nature. They argue that
while the objects studied by physics are described in a dispositional way,
these dispositions must be based on some non-dispositional intrinsic
attributes, which Whitehead called the "mysterious reality in the
background, intrinsically unknowable". While we have no way of knowing
what these intrinsic attributes are like, we can know the intrinsic nature of
conscious experience which possesses irreducible and intrinsic characteristics.
Arthur Schopenhauer argued that while the world appears to us as
representation, there must be 'an object that grounds' representation, which he
called the 'inner essence' (das innere Wesen) and 'natural force' (Naturkraft),
which lies outside of what our understanding perceives as natural law.
Philosophers such as Galen Strawson, Roger Penrose (1989),Searle
John (1991), Thomas Nagel (1979, 1986, 1999) and Noam Chomsky (1999) have said
that a revolutionary change in physics may be needed to solve the problem of
consciousness. Galen Strawson has also called for a revised "realistic
physicalism" arguing that "the experiential considered specifically
as such — the portion of reality we have to do with when we consider
experiences specifically and solely in respect of the experiential character
they have for those who have them as they have them — that ‘just is’
physical".
Arguments
against
One criticism of panpsychism is the simple lack of evidence that
the physical entities have any mental attributes. John Searle states that
panpsychism is an "absurd view" and that thermostats lack
"enough structure even to be a remote candidate for consciousness"
(Searle, 1997, p. 48).
Physicalists
also could argue against panpsychism by denying proposition (2) of
Nagel's argument. If mental properties are reduced to physical properties of a
physical system, then it does not follow that all matter has mental properties:
it is in virtue of the structural or functional organization of the physical
system that the system can be said to have a mind, not simply that it is made
of matter. This is the common Functionalist position. This view allows for certain man-made systems that are properly
organized, such as some computers, to be said to have minds. This may cause
problems when (4) is taken into account. Also, qualia seem to undermine the
reduction of mental properties to brain properties.
Some have argued that the only properties shared by all qualia
are that they are not precisely describable, and thus are of indeterminate
meaning within any philosophy which relies upon precise definition according to
these critics (that is, it tends to presuppose a definition for mentality
without describing it in any real detail). The need to define better the terms
used within the thesis of panpsychism is recognized by panpsychist David
Skrbina, and he resorts to asserting some sort of hierarchy of mental terms to
be used. This is motivation to argue for panexperientialism rather than
panpsychism, since only the most fundamental meaning of mind is what is present
in all matter, namely, subjective experience.
The
panpsychist answers both these challenges in the same way: we already know what
qualia are through direct, introspective apprehension; and we likewise know
what conscious mentality is by virtue of being conscious. For someone like
Alfred North Whitehead, third-person description takes second place to the
intimate connection between every entity and every other which is, he says, the
very fabric of reality. To take a mere description as having primary
reality is to commit the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness". .
. .
Panpsychism can be understood as related to a number of other
metaphysical positions.
Idealism
Panpsychism agrees with idealism that in a sense everything is
mental, but whereas idealism treats most things as mental content or ideas, panpsychism treats them as mind-like,
in some sense, and as having their own reality. Also, in contrast to many forms
of idealism, it holds that there is for all minds, there is a single, external,
spatio-temporal world.
In
contrast to "idealism", as this term is often used, panpsychism is
not a doctrine of the unreality of the spatio-temporal world perceived through
the senses, or its reduction to mere "ideas" in the human or divine
mind. The constituents of this world are, for panpsychists, just as real as
human minds or as any mind. Indeed, they are minds, though, in large part, of
an extremely low, subhuman order. Thus panpsychism is panpsychical realism;
realistic both in the sense of admitting the reality of nature, and in the
sense of avoiding an exaggerated view of the qualities of its ordinary
constituents. "Souls" may be very humble sorts of entities––for
example, the soul of a frog––and panpsychists usually suppose that multitudes
of units of nature are on a much lower level of psychic life even than that.
Dualism
Panpsychists and dualists agree that mental properties cannot be
reduced to physical properties. The
difference is that dualists consider mental and physical properties to be qualitatively
different, to belong to different categories with virtually nothing in common
(for instance, Descartes' characterisation of matter and mind as
"extension" and "thought"), whereas panpsychists view
physical properties as lesser quantities of mental properties. For
instance, a panpsychist would interpret the ability of a stone to move under an
impact to be a highly diminished form of sensitivity, with no element of
volition. This distinction also separates dual aspect theory from panpsychism:
although dual aspect theorists can agree with panpsychists that everything has
some mental properties, they also hold that everything has some physical
properties, whereas panpsychists hold that physical properties are
(lessened) mental properties.
.
Neutral monism
There are
also varieties of monism that don't presuppose (like materialism and idealism
do) that mind and matter are fundamentally separable. An example is neutral
monism first introduced by Spinoza and later propounded by William James.
Neutral monism is often coupled with dual aspect theory which maintains that
mental and physical are two perspectives on a reality that is neither mental
nor physical. Panpsychism, on the other hand, holds that the physical is the
(attenuated) mental.
Physicalism and materialism
Reductive physicalism, a form of monism, is normally assumed to
be incompatible with panpsychism. Materialism, if held to be distinct from
physicalism, is compatible with panpsychism insofar as mental properties are
attributed to physical matter, which is the only basic substance.
Holism
Panpsychism is related to the more holistic view that the whole
Universe is an organism that possesses a mind (cosmic consciousness). It is
claimed to be distinct from animism or hylozoism, which hold that all things
have a soul or are alive, respectively. Gustav Theodor Fechner claimed in
"Nanna" and "Zend-Avesta" that the Earth is a living
organism whose parts are the people, the animals and the plants.
Panpsychism,
as a view that the universe has "universal consciousness", " is
shared by some forms of religious thought such as theosophy, pantheism,
cosmotheism, non-dualism, new age thought and panentheism. The hundredth monkey
effect exemplifies the threshold for this applied cosmic consciousness. The
Tiantai Buddhist view is that "when one attains it, all attain it".
Hylopathism . . .
Emergentism . . .
Panexperientialism
. . .
In
eastern philosophy
East Asian Buddhism . . .
Dzogchen
According to a common misunderstanding, in the Buddhist Dzogchen
tradition, particularly Dzogchen Semde or "mind series" the principal
text of which is the Kulayaraja Tentra, there is nothing which is non-sentient,
i.e. everything is sentient. Moreover, two of the English scholars that opened
the discourse of the Bardo literature of the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition,
Evans-Wentz & Jung (1954, 2000: p. 10) specifically with their partial
translation and commentary of the Bardo
Thodol into the English language write of the "One Mind"
(Tibetan: sems nyid gcig; Sanskrit: *ekacittatva; *ekacittata; where * denotes
a possible Sanskrit back-formation) thus:
The One Mind, as Reality, is the Heart which pulsates forever,
sending forth purified the blood-streams of existence, and taking them back
again; the Great Breath, the Inscrutable Brahman, the Eternally Unveiled
Mystery of the Mysteries of Antiquity, the Goal of all Pilgrimages, the End of
all Existence.
It should be borne in mind, that Evans-Wentz never studied the
Tibetan language and that the lama who did the main translation work for him
was of the Gelukpa Sect and is not known to have actually studied or practiced
Dzogchen.
According
to the translation with commentary, "Self-Liberation Through Seeing with
Naked Awareness", by John Myrdhin Reynolds, the phrase, "It is the
single nature of mind which encompasses all of Samsara and Nirvana,"
occurs only once in the text and it refers not to "some sort of
Neo-Platonic hypostasis, a universal Nous, of which all individual minds
are but fragments or appendages", but to the teaching that, "whether
one finds oneself in the state of Samsara or in the state of Nirvana, it is the
nature of the mind which reflects with awareness all experiences, no matter
what may be their nature." This can be found in Appendix I,
on pages 80–81. Reynolds elucidates
further with the analogy of a mirror. To say that a single mirror can reflect
ugliness or beauty, does not constitute an allegation that all ugliness and
beauty is one single mirror.
Selected and somewhat edited from Wikipedia
** **
2130
hours. The above is interesting because it brings ideas/concepts that I have studied
in my lifetime under a different roof, so to speak. I have consciously
forgotten much of what I have read in my life but articles/definitions such as
this bring those consciously forgotten concepts back in a renewed older life than
when read and discussed earlier. Back in graduate school philosophy class for instance I set up a
classroom discussion model focusing on the concepts of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes.
It is always a joy to discover their names in print as two are in the above
article. I really have no personal theory on how consciousness is after reading
the above. People have already done much of the work to show me such
philosophical thought exists in the line of logic and reason even if it is not
provable science. I am satisfied with this conclusion -- such things are
plausible in philosophy. (2140)
Nothing to be ashamed of in your thinking,
orndorff. If nothing else this has shown you others, much more knowledgeable
have had similar thoughts. Post. - Amorella
2143 hours. Whatever would I do without Wikipedia, Amorella?
For a somewhat misplaced monk-like individual, you are living
in the right time for Wikipedia as a major source of backup and background. -
Amorella
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