Author: davemacq

My concluding post on panpsychism, essentially my attempt to understand my own experiences in philosophic and theologic language, in preparation for a two-year study program in contemplative practice.

During my careers as anesthetist and therapist, I have consistently been attracted to understanding the nature of consciousness. As anesthetist, I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with neurobiology (and the scientific view on consciousness), and was impressed with the depth of understanding of how the brain functions. But I was also always aware that studies of consciousness rely on a small amount of evidence from neurobiology, and a large amount of assumption. Most important of all, neurologic defects of the brain (strokes, tumours, et cetera) frequently interrupt our ability to assess consciousnesss, but do not prove that the mind exists in the brain — only that the brain is a major modality whereby we access the mind (and whereby the mind communicates with the body). Given the precept of panpsychism that sentience exists all the way down, the brain may be simply one of the means by which consciousness is accesssed. My preferred metaphor is that the brain is like a computer, but the mind is the equivalent of the internet.

As therapist I did not want (or seek) academic knowledge only; I wanted something that worked in transforming human dynamics. Thus I trained in Gestalt Therapy (and later Family Systems and Neurolinguistic Programming — all very powerful for change work). Throughout, my basic stance has remained that of a Gestaltist — focussed on awareness, contact (experience of the moment), and personal responsibility. In retrospect, I now recognize that these are fundamental to choice and intersubjectivity, the basic modalities that underlie panpsychism.

The profound mystical experiences I have had are also incompatible with scientific materialism (SM), and entirely feasible within panpsychism (and idealism). Two mystical experiences, in particular, have deeply affected me.

First, when I was about nineteen or twenty, I was alone one evening, studying the physics of the Bohr atom while babysitting my nieces and nephew. Without any warning or precipitating event, I suddenly lost consciousness (for an uncertain time, perhaps 10 – 20 minutes), and experienced myself as an electron swirling around a Bohr nucleus, an experience I still clearly remember as peaceful, joyous choice. I “awoke” from this state at total peace, unable to explain it in any way, but knowing (from my current perspective) that somehow choice and sentience exists “all the way down.” This is in keeping with synchronicity and panpsychism.

The second mystical experience, when I was 31, was a sudden shift in consciousness to that of a feeling of deep peacefulness and blessedness; it recurred over the next month, and became a continuous state for almost three years, six months at its peak, then fading over two and a half years. In this state, I knew, without question, that the foundational basis of the universe was love, that the universe was friendly. At approximately five months, I encountered the book Cosmic Consciousness, a study of mystical states published in 1899; the book exactly described my own experience, and thus I now called my experience “Cosmic Consciousness.”

Both these experiences were transformational, totally unexplainable within SM, and although (in my current reflections) consistent with panpsychism, also consistent with emanationist idealism (the God of panpsychism is friendly, but impersonal).

[Incidentally, when I was in my 50s, again seeking to understand my life, I was talking with a well respected, very competent psychiatrist about these mystical experiences and other aspects of my life. She labelled me as schizophrenic, until I was able to convince her that I simply had a very different worldview than that offered by scientific materialism and the DSM-4 (the bible of psychiatric diagnosis). There is a price tag to having unusual experiences!]

Synchronicities have also guided me in amazing ways during my life, in ways that continue to astound me. Synchronicity is a coincidence in time of two or more causally unrelated events [acausal] which have the same or similar meaning, The events could have been chance, but in their occurrence, they had a profound “wow” factor that said “go in this direction.”

Two also stand out. At one point in my life, I shifted from anesthetist to therapist, and six years later, decided to retrain as an anesthetist. At the end of the training, I was looking for a job all over North America where I could do part-time anesthesia and part-time therapy — with no success whatsoever. Months went by. Then, suddenly a possibility arose to work at the local hospital (where I was almost totally unknown), and in a space of three hours (from the start of exploring to completion), I had hospital privileges (essentially unheard of, if you know anything of hospital organization). An hour later, as my then-partner and I discussed the situation, we decided we needed a new house to accommodate both our careers. At that same moment, we saw the builder of our current house drive down the street; we walked down to talk to him, and he agreed to build us a new house, and exchange our old house as partial payment. New job, new home, hassle free, all in the space of hours. Talk about feeling “right.”

At another time, now separated and somewhat despondent, I was moving to an apartment, and drove past a country house I had always liked — which now had a “For Sale” sign outside; I said to myself “Likely can’t afford it. But I’m curioius.” Days before, I had had a new client, a local realtor (in my ten years of practice, I had never previously had a realtor as a client). So I phoned the realtor, and six hours later, I had a new house; that house became the center that I (and my current wife) ran for about 15 years. Again, it felt “right.”

Scientific materialism cannot account for synchronicity, but panpsychism can, as can idealism. Both also offer understanding of how we are creating global warming in our hubris, and that we as a species are in profound need of becoming more mature. That as a culture we need to be on a spiritual path, not an egoic path. (Incidentally, I do not like the term “spiritual” — it has too many connotations that get caught in religious argument. But I do not have a better term.)

Being on a spiritual path implies something is amiss with where you are right now. Utterly true for me of our modern world. Enlightenment is waking up and simply accepting what is, working with it as a starting point.

So, now my conclusions — as starting points for further exploration.

For me, the fundamental basis of the universe is Creativity (choice). I am also in favor of the moral imperatives as suggested by the theologian Thomas Berry (community, diversity, and subjectivity, to which I have added change) as discussed in The Great Work: Our Way Into The Future (1999).

What else?

Panpsychism provides an comprehensive process by which reality is created, one that makes eminent sense to me. It is weird, but self-consistent, and covers the ground much more than does scientific materialism.

God is transcendent (as well as immanent) — I still trust the Starmaker myth, and Starmaker exists outside the system. I thus ascribe to panentheism, and lean towards emantionist idealism.

God is love (my learnings from Cosmic Consciousness), and in that sense, intersubjectively personal — the synchronicities of my life have all felt deeply personal, as if the Creative Ultimate is specifically attending to me at that moment.

I am not sure that I want to pigeon-hole the process more than this. I am somewhat unclear if what I have indicated above makes me an emanationist idealist or a panpsychist, and it may not matter. I am willing to live the inconsistencies of mixing paradigms.

A major distinction for me between panpsychism and idealism is that miracles are possible within idealism, but not within panpsychism. (Miracles are events that are totally unexplainable, ever; in contrast, mysteries are unexplainable at present.) Partly I am undecided as to the nature of miracles (idealism requires a miracle for Spirit to initiate matter). The big miracle within Christianity is that of Jesus — however, for me, that Jesus experienced Cosmic Consciousness is a simpler explanation (Ockham’s Razor) than that Jesus is transformed God (although it can be argued that we are all transformed God).

Likely I need to sit with others to explore further (of which I likely will have ample opportunity to do so over the next two years). Thus, my journey continues.

This is my third post on panpsychism, essentially my attempt to understand my own experiences in philosophic and theologic language. As indicated previously, I am enrolled in a two-year program of Christian contemplative practice (the Center for Action and Contemplation), wherein I intend to examine and compare my own spiritual stance with the models offered within that course.

In order to do so, I need also to be clear as to what my stance actually is. In my therapy workshops, a maxim I commonly presented was: “If you don’t know where you are , you cannot get to where you say you want to be.” A very important maxim! I am not interested in arguing my stance; it is simply a starting point for further exploration, hopefully one that deepens my spiritual journey in major ways.

What I am seeking is a felt experience, rather than an intellectual concept — a felt experience that encompasses:

• my understanding of human dynamics and consciousness (my medical background, especially my 25 years of being a therapist), including my own family of origin pain,
• my knowledge of modern physics (quantum mechanics and relativity),
• the profound mystical experiences I have had,
• the synchronicities that have guided me,
• the mechanisms and hubris underlying global warming, and
• all the other experiences that make up a human life.

A statement that is very meaningful to me is:

A science that does not incorporate spirituality is dehumanizing;

a spirituality that does not incorporate science is delusional.

In this post (and the next, the final one), I’m going to be reflecting on those aspects that have impacted me personally, but with some sidebars of how they all relate now. Thus, I will be skipping back and forth over my life.

In the first post, I indicated that there are four principal ontologies in philosophy (materialism, dualism, idealism, and panpsychism), and that I (as well as many other people) have major problems in accepting materialism, or more specific, scientific materialism (SM). Reflecting on these ontologies in the previous posts has been very helpful to me as I now relate them to my present life.

As a result of my reflections, I now have even less trust of scientific materialism (SM) than I had before I started these posts. SM has been incredibly powerful as the basis of our modern world (both its benefits and its flaws), but it currently stands in a position similar to the Ptolemic world prior to Copernicus — deeply flawed.

• it treats consciousness as an epiphenomenon, a useless fantasy, yet without consciousness, science could not exist (who or what would conceive of it?).
  • it operates from the assumption that with enough information, consciousness will be explainable as part of the material world. Yet consciousness is not material, and you cannot get something from nothing.
• it utilizes but cannot explain quantum physics (let alone consciousness), expecially the nature of nonlocality, or even causality. These are fundamental to how science is not utilized.
  • As long ago as the 18^th century, David Hume (1711 – 1776) devasted the then current scientific community by demonstrating the fallacy of causation. This was modified by Emmanual Kant (1724 – 1804), but has not withstood the “craziness” of quantum physics (which fundamentally is acausal). (It is the nature of paradigm shifts that “flaws” show up, are tweaked, but more and more, the current paradigm breaks down, with huge paradigm wars, usually until the old guard dies off.)

Enough on that. SM is thus breaking down; and we are in for major changes, not yet clarified. If you the reader want more details, I suggest the writings of Christian deQuincey, especially his Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness Through Relationship (2005), listed in Media Within This Blog. All of his books are worth reading.

One of the earliest influences for me personally occurred in reading the science fiction novel Starmaker (Olaf Stapledon, 1934, also in Media above). I first read this in 1959 (age 16), having given up on the “Church” at age 14 because of the many painful aspects of my childhood (family alcoholism, suicide, sexual abuse within a church setting, amongst other issues). Through it, I came to envision God (Starmaker) as all-knowledgeable, yet lacking wisdom; Starmaker creates universes as a means of learning and acquiring wisdom. Thus I was God’s teacher — God learns from my earthly struggles, and regardless of whether my life is “successful” or a “failure,” I am still God’s teacher.

This gave meaning and purpose to my life, something I badly needed at age 16. In retrospect, this is a form of emanationist idealism, not panpsychism. God is both immanent (in this world) and transcendent (beyond this world), a form of panentheism (the theologic term for God being both).

At this point, I had the sense of God as a personal entity who was at least interested in the outcome of my life. Then I went to university for my first degree, a BSc with a major in physics and a minor in mathematics — a great grounding for understanding scientific materialism (yet, in limited ways, I was exposed to Spirit, and deeply impressed by those who manifest it). Overall, I was exposed to a mathematical understanding of both classical mechanics and quantum physics as well as relativity theory. I’m very out-of-date now, but the grounding was solid.

What I did not obtain was a good introduction to the underlying philosophical issues, such as the quandry of acausality. My recent PhD has given me much deeper insights here, but my being out-of-date with the mathematics now means that I have to rely on the interpretations of others more than I like.

What I can say now is that:

• I deeply question the foundations of scientific materialism, and
• panpsychism is far more solid in its integration of philosophy and physics.

Thus, I trust panpsychism much more. And as a therapist of 25 years, I am also aware of a deep knowing that panpsychism is more solidly grounded in the nature of reality than is SM.

In the next and final post, I go back to my 20s to note that during and after my first degree (age 16 – 21), I began to have mystical experiences, and later a number of major experiences of synchronicity. These as well are not compatible with scientific materialism.

To be continued.

This is my second post on panpsychism, essentially my attempt to understand my own experiences. By understanding I mean my willingness to comprehend as best I can the mystery and awe of the universe; I do not mean its usual connotation of analysis — that is what I call overstanding, usually a place of hubris.

I also do not mean “what do I believe.” Beliefs for me are useful fictions or likely stories; beliefs link two or more pieces of information by some kind of story, usually what we call meaning, meaning being knowledge that fits.

What I am seeking is a consistent worldview, especially one in which I am able to frame my experience so that I (and in sharing with others) can assess its usefulness to me, and modify it as future experience updates. I always walk around with a large “imaginary” box of not-knowing, willing to experience what life offers, updating my worldview accordingly.

When I was a practicing therapist, one of the questions I would ask people (when the time was appropriate) was: Is the universe friendly? For me, there are only three possible answers: unfriendly, neutral (possibly meaningless), and friendly. (Incidentally, scientific materialism (SM) would suggest that the universe is meaningless — in SM, only matter-energy exists, and is objective and insentient.)

• If the universe is unfriendly (perhaps we are simply fodder for some greater being or beings who thrive on the ingestion of consciousness), it really does not matter what we do. However, we do have choice! We can live as if the universe is meaningful, and that our contributions make a difference — definitely something I would opt for if I believed this possibility.
• If the universe is neutral, especially if it is meaningless (see scientific materialism), the same argument applies. I have choice, and especially I would choose to live in harmony with “all my relatives.”
• Finally, if the universe is friendly, then it is likely that my existence is somehow important, and I make a difference. Perhaps not, but still I would choose to act as if this is the case.

In my various readings of mystics and spirituality (of which I have read a lot) and in my own mystical experiences, the answer (bar one) has always presented this third possibility as the only one experienced. (The one exception was that of 1970’s stories by Carlos Castanada, the stories of Don Juan, a Yaqui sorcerer, advocating the Eagle as the greater being who somehow feasted on consciousness. Even there, choice was advocated.)

Thus, for me, my choice is obvious. I strive to be the best human being I can be — by no means perfect! To do this, I also strive to clarify my own worldview so that it is consistent with my life experiences (as listed in the previous post). And as part of this (as mentioned), I walk around with a large box of not knowing, awaiting further assessment.

Back to panpsychism.

As noted in the previous post, panpsychism is one of the four major ontologies, yet the least academically respectable one since it contrasts so sharply with scientific materialism (SM). I said previously that human beings are not rational — there is a pricetag to being academically disrespected.

Yet for me, panpsychism is much more consistent with what I understand of the nature of the universe. In panpsychism, all unitary substances (photons to atoms to cells to organisms, and everything in-between) are sentient (able to know, feel, and make purposeful choices) — although the consciousness of electrons is surely different than that of human beings (more on this in the next post).

Panpsychism made a major advance in the 20^th century through the work of Alfred North Whitehead, whose goal was to develop an ontology consistent with modern science. In contrast to SM which is strongly orientated to spacial description, Whitehead proposed that all reality consists of temporal events, known as actual entities. These events draw upon possibility (called eternal objects) to allow creative development of on-going reality. All events are mutually co-creating, such that all reality is a whole (thus to speak in isolation of any one event is a useful, but fallacious, abstraction). The total of all events of the universe come together, through the interaction of all matter-energy (the totality of the universe) with all consciousness (the totality of sentience), to create a seamless whole. (Considered in this sense, it makes the human domain seem rather small!)

Any one event has three phases (here I quote from my book Acedia the Darkness Within, p. 72):

1. The subject ([as] consciousness), in the present, feels the pressure of the inflowing past (which is the origin of both our knowledge of “energy” and “causality”)—the memory of what has happened. (Whitehead called this “causal efficacy.”)
2. The subject also intersubjectively apprehends other present-moment actual occasions—the experience of what is happening. (Whitehead called this “presentational immediacy.”)
3. The subject is aware of possibilities for future states and action, and, guided by its aims and values, chooses specific possibilities to (literally) incorporate into its next moment of being—the anticipation of what is to come [the immediate future].

Whitehead called this entire process concrescence, the process of prehending the past through causal efficacy; attending to the present through presentational immediacy; and satisfying aims/values through “ingression” of possibilities (which he called eternal objects).

The residue of this concrescence then falls back into matter-energy as the experience of the immediate past, the inflowing past of step #1 above.

Fundamentally (if accurate of reality), this means that free will and choice are fundamental characteristics of the universe. But it does not mean unrestricted liberty to simply choose reality — the process is universal. Each sentient unitary gets to vote on how the next moment occurs, but the result is the response of the collective Consciousness.

Further with Whitehead, since everything had to exist as actual entities, he considered the totality of all possibilities to be the functional God of his understanding. He also considered that God had a preference for which possibilities were chosen, but allowed sentient matter to have freedom of choice. Thus the universe for Whitehead was immensely creative, and far from deterministic. But impersonal (at least by my interpretation of his work).

The advantages of panpsychism, for me, are that it treats the universe as sacred, and as I will discuss in the next post, is very consistent with my life experiences. In addition, it clarifies all of the major problems with the philosophy of mind as we now understand them:

• the mind-body problem,
• the problem of other minds (all part of the totality of consciousness),
• the nature of causality (creative choice),
• the problem of free will (creative choice), and
• the problem of perspective, especially the nature of intersubjectivity (the flow of unitive consciousness).

A brief description of intersubjectivity, and then I will close this post (to be continued with my own life experiences as the basis of choice amongst the ontologies).

Intersubjectivity refers to the ways in which we are able to share our subjective experiences with other minds. DeQuincey, in Radical Knowing (pp. 280-281), indicates three levels of intersubjectivity:

• linguistic (consensual agreement), through the exchange of words and other physical tokens (and hence deeply embedded in SM);
• [weak intersubjectivity] mutual conditioning (participation), wherein individual subjects influence each other by their shared presence; and
• [strong intersubjectivity] mutual co-creation, where the relationship is ontologically primary, where in some as yet mysterious fashion, “consciousness-es” merge in the co-evolution of experience. [Strong intersubjectivity, when I have experienced it, is the richest form of communication I know.]

One of the major limitations of the understanding of meaning and intersubjectivity was identified by the German philosopher Kant (in the 18^th century) to be that nothing can be known for certain since all knowledge is already preconditioned by neurologic processes that filter incoming sensory information. This was a logical (and very sound) outcome within the ontotogy of materialism; however, it is not a restriction within the ontology of panpsychism (more in the next post).

To be continued.

In previous posts, I’ve alluded to panpsychism on a number of occasions, and I also indicated that I would do a post (or three) on the concept. So here goes.

Because it is so unfamiliar to most people, I need to go into detail, and apologies if it gets too conceptual; as usual, I am attempting to be very precise in my language in presenting very complex ideas. Yet I am not a philosopher by training, so my statements may still be somewhat inaccurate.

As much as anything, I am attempting to clarify these ideas for myself, as well as for you the reader. As I have indicated previously, I am enrolled in a two-year program of comtemplative practice; within this problem, the core of knowledge and wisdom is considered to be experience, not concept. Thus I want to be very clear and able to explain my own worldview so as to be open to discussion, and perhaps a shift of perspective, during the program.

What I seek is a felt experience, rather than an intellectual concept, a felt experience that for me represents a consistent worldview, a view that encompasses:

• my knowledge of modern physics (quantum mechanics and relativity),
• the profound mystical experiences I have had,
• the synchronicities that have guided me,
• my understanding of human dynamics and consciousness (my medical background, especially my 25 years of being a therapist),
• the mechanisms and hubris underlying global warming, and
• all the other experiences that make up a human life.

For me, this exploration is not an intellectual one; I seek to understand what I have experienced over my lifetime, only part of which is intellectual.

First of all, a couple of terms from philosophy.

• philosophy is the attempt to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth, reason, reality, mind, and value; the investigation of human reason itself, and the nature of truth and knowledge.
• ontology is the philosophic study of the nature of being, the attempt to grasp the nature of reality.
  • an ontology is the paradigm I bring to life, the lens by which I make sense of life. It is essentially the beliefs I have about what I believe.
  • epistemology is the study of how we know what we know, the many approached by which we choose to understand reality.
• sentience is the ability to know, feel, and purposefully respond to experience.
  • consciousness (or mind), in the way I am using it here, is a sophisticated form of sentience, with the ability to reason.
  • the term consciousness is used in two distinct meanings, which are often confused:
    • philosophic consciousness is either present or absent, whereas
    • psychologic consciousness has various states (e.g, awake, asleep, dreaming, et cetera).
  • In these posts, I am using the term in the philosophic sense, unless specified otherwise.

One of the major problems in philosophy is to account for the nature and existence of sentience or consciousness, the so-called mind/body question. Much of our experience of the world is derived from the sensory experiences of vision, touch, and hearing — experiences that related to spacial location. Yet consciousness (or sentience) is not spacial — it has no location, and it exists now, a temporal experience as opposed to a spacial one. The basic issue comes down to the distinct difference between matter-energy (spacial experience, measurable) and consciousness (non-spacial, and not measurable) — ontologically, they are entirely different.

There are currently four major world views (ontologies) on this mind-body problem

• Dualism, wherein matter and mind (consciousness) are radically different, and completely separated. The basic difficulty is then to explain how they interact. How?
• Idealism, wherein matter is either illusionary (the Hindu concept of maya), or is created by pure spirit (emanationism).
  • if matter is illusionary, then how does one account for what happens, for example, when a speeding car hits a brick wall?
  • or if matter-energy is created by pure spirit, how does this occur?
• Materialism, or more accurately scientific materialsim (SM), which posits that only insentient objective matter-energy exists; here, mind is fictional (imaginary), or somehow wholly physical and objective. Materialism becomes scientific materialism (SM) with the additional assumption that the only way to gain knowledge is through science.
  • SM is the dominant ontology in the Western technological world, especially the sciences. It is an ontology of meaninglessness.
  • But SM is unable to account for the nature of mind, other than by assuming that with enough knowledge (i.e., enough neurobiological study of the complexity of brain matter), it will be explainable. The difficulty though is that, despite modern technology, no one has been able to identify or measure consciousness, or even to conceive of how to measure it.
    • In addition, given that choice is dependent on consciousness, SM is entirely unable to account for choice. SM is based on the identification of “laws of nature,” which by definition are invarient. And thus the universe of SM is deterministic, and meaningless.
  • SM thus rests on the assumption that something that is not measurable nor localizable (sentience) will somehow become so with further technological investigation, that something that is not physical will somehow become physical.
  • Correct me if I am wrong, but this is not logical, or even practical as an assumption — you can not get something from nothing.
• panpsychism is based on the premise that consciousness and matter are two sides of the same coin, different but inseparablely intertwined. Fundamental to panpsychism is that sentience exists throughout nature, and at the very least, is characteristic of all unitary structures, from photon to atom to molecule to cell to organism, both living and non-living. (The major exception is that heaps — e.g., rocks, mountains, tables — are not regarded as sentient; they are not unitary structures.) Consciousness is thus the intrinsic ability of matter-energy to know, feel, and purposely direct itself.
  • To quote my preferred source of understanding of panpsychism, the writings of Christian deQuincey (see Media Within This Blog > Blindspots, Kindle location 5710):

In panpsychism, unlike in materialism and dualism, energy is intrinscially sentient. While sentient energy forms an inseparable unity (sentience and energy always go together), sentience and energy are conceptually distinct. Energy is the capacity to do work, the capacity for action; it is what makes things happen. Consciousness, or sentience, is the capacity for knowing, feeling, and choosing. . . . [In brief,] consciousness knows; energy flows.

• panpsychism actually has a very long and distinguished history of development, going back to the pre-socratic era of Greek development. It underwent a major advance in the 20^th century with the brilliant philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead was initially a mathmatician, the co-author (with Bertrand Russell) of the Principia Mathematica, the bible of mathematics in its time. He was knowledgable of quantum mechanics and relativity theory, and wanted to develop an ontology that was consistent with modern science, without the assumptions that underlay SM.
• The major difficulty with panpsychism is that it initially is so different from SM, that it is the most contraversial and least academically respectable of the ontologies. Like quantum mechanics itself, it initially seems strange.

In the next post, I will go into more detail as to the nature of panpsychism. But, to conclude this particular post, I want to look at why scientific materialism is the dominant paradigm. I believe there are a number of reasons.

First, it works well, or at least, has worked well until the introduction of quantum mechanics and relativity. Since approximately the 13^th century, there has been general agreement to keep science and religion separate — they were said to operate in different domains (such nonsense). Since then, science has provided brilliant explanations and technological advances in the natural world; in particular, technology up to the 20^th century did not depend on quantum effects. Thus it became the dominant ontology well before science advanced in its understanding. Especially, SM also been the basis of the human domination of the world (with the current dilemma of global warming, amongst other issues).

But with quantum mechanics, the need to understand consciousness arose — quantum events require an observer (a sentient entity) to collapse the quantum wave to create actuality. Thus the domains of matter and spirit began to collapse, in ways that could not be ignored.

And there are deeper issues at play. Human beings, despite claims to the contrary, are not rational; they are emotional, and at times deeply locked into hubris and defence of territory — only now the territory has become intellectual property: what to believe. Although many are not aware of it (including many reputable scientists), the underpinings of science are currently a place of paradigm wars, as illustrated by:

• ‘TED’ Sparks Paradigm War (20130413)
• Dear TED, Is It ‘Bad Science’ or a ‘Game of Thrones’? (20130618)

Although we generally think of fundamentalism as being characteristic of some religious groups, it is also a very human characteristic, applicable to any field. I have encountered it in every field I have studied (medicine, therapy, philosophy, culinary arts, to name a few).

The paradigm of panpsychism is a place of such war!

To be continued.