Today I'd like to discuss a lecture given by B. Alan Wallace called 'Toward the first revolution in the mind sciences'. It was a talk delivered at Google headquarters. (So you know it has to be both important and good.)
Quotes and comments;
A. B. Alan Wallace (lecture at Google) [1.] mocks the clerics for not looking through Galileo's telescope. (If you can believe the story.) I think he's overly harsh here. Let's remember that the telescope had just been invented (let's ignore speculation the ancients had the telescope)... so it shouldn't strike us as that bizarre. People were utterly unfamiliar with such an instrument. If G. was the first true scientist (in a modern sense) it's not shocking that most people didn't think as he did.
- I'm just giving rough notes I made during the lecture. (Be kind.)
He chastises them for not thinking they needed to look (i.e. investigate it for themselves) Fine; but how many people in our day think they need to investigate Darwinism for themselves? Not many... they just accept the dogma of the day and move on. ie. why look at it? you might find some 'shadows' and imperfections in what is claimed to be a perfect theory...
- how many people in our day have looked at the stars through a telescope? not very many I would think :=)
B. W. critiques academics and scientists for materialist ideas that deny the mind. "How could such intelligent people believe such idiotic ideas?" he says. (i.e. denying the mind or consciousness exists; refusing to talk of mind, emotions, etc.) I agree with him here; but not in his defense of Darwinism. I think academics are as wrong about Darwin as the behaviorists (e.g. Watson, Skinner) were about the mind. He celebrates empirical observation... but where is the observation of macroevolution? There isn't any. ie. we don't ever see any... that's our observation. When people claim this is a fact, they're letting dogma triumph over observation.
- when our professors (the clerics of our day) refuse to look at the fossil rocks in the way offered by young earth creationists they are in effect saying we don't want to look at the data thru your lens.... and why? because they don't feel they need to. The theory of e. is founded on a particular understanding of the fossil rocks... but despite what people claim, there is more than one way of viewing this data. (As an aside, it's amusing to me that this popular foundation for materialism depends upon a non-material theory :=)
C. He points out that there's nothing in physics that predicts life. ["Physical theories alone do not predict, define or explain the emergence of life in the universe."] Everything is supposed to 'boil down' to physics; but physics doesn't account for life. Therefore everything cannot be boiled down to physics. i.e. physics cannot explain the universe we live in. (As I've said many times in these pages; there needs to be an explanation of where intelligent information comes from... and materialism can't offer one.)
D. biology doesn't predict consciousness he says...
- consciousness is the basis (foundation) of what our magazine writers are pleased to call science, but yet materialist science denies c. even exists. (ie. not being material it can't exist) Materialist science (scientism) would be a great theory if only human consciousness didn't exist :=) If only information (genetic) didn't exist. How terrible... a perfectly wonderful theory gone down the drain for the sake of such trivial data :=)
E. He says there is no scientific definition of consciousness.
F. There is no objective way of detecting c. he says...
G. We don't know the causes of c. he says. (The e. tells us e. is a fact... but we have no idea what the cause of such an ability to affirm theory is... so what kind of a fact can it be :=) what we're dealing with here is a claim made by a mind... by people who claim there is no mind :=) I don't know about you... but I find this amusing.
H. Science doesn't know how chemicals generate consciousness... these are just ordinary substances as it were. (It's obvious to me that chemicals could only create (facilitate) c. with the help of information. ie. that it's only code that makes this work.
Notes;
1. Toward the first revolution in the mind sciences - B. Alan Wallace/Google talk
Google TechTalks August 8, 2006
- I've recently read 'Embracing Mind' by Wallace, and thought it was a rewarding read.
2. I like a lot of things affirmed by certain Buddhist writers... but the big blind spot (failing) is creation. People like W. just affirm the big bang theory and evolution. I'd point out to W. that this isn't observational.
- Buddhism as 'defined' by intellectuals like W. isn't the b. of the people. (Which seems akin to popular Hinduism) It's like the Christianity of Spong vs the C. of Falwell.
3. at certain moments of doubt I've wondered if a belief in c. or e. effects the mind so radically that it changes the brain... in such a way that we see the evidence differently... ie. that we're looking at the world with a different mind from each other.
4. he refers to a Cristof Koch (a physicalist I guess) speaking of the relation of the brain to consciousness he says 'for now it is best to keep an open mind on this matter...'' Too bad we don't have people saying this about macro evolution.
5. he keeps mocking people for believing the bible is the word of god. (This is an aspect of buddhism I don't like.) I agree with van til that special revelation is the only foundation for sure knowledge that there is; that there could be. He speaks of the necessity of revelation.
6. Wallace tells us we shouldn't think our 'western' ideas trump all ideas; that our thinkers trump all thinkers. There's ancient India to consider... What people like this rarely admit is that India was a basket case before the Europeans 'discovered' it; people living in utter poverty, darkness and depravity... (e.g. the caste system; etc.) If the philosophy was so good why did they set living widows on fire? I guess we shouldn't ask. (I have no flag to wave for the Greeks or for western philosophy, believe me.... and I accept the idea great thinking was done in the East... but let's be realistic.) I've read accounts of people supposedly so blissed out that their families must look after even their bodily needs... even put them in diapers. Let's be honest here.
7. As I understand him; he defines western thinking as one that postulates a radical separation between subject and object. He calls this the god's eye view of things... that objective reality exists outside of and apart from the human being, the human mind. (Didn't Kant put an end to that?)
- the Indians were trying to understand experience... not objective reality.
8. he talks of a telescope of the mind... developed by the ancient Indians who studied the mind. (I kind of like that.)
9. I should not here that I made an extensive (for me at least) study of Buddhism and Zen many years ago... so I'm not ignorant or hostile to the tradition. I meditated for several years... I read more than a hundred books. etc.
10. For Wallace C. is religion and this makes it boring. (i.e. it's based on truths that can't be tested or rejected) B. however is based on experimental testing... and so is exciting. (His view of c. is only true of b.c. not of liberal c.) It's a view that is only true for intellectuals like himself, not for the the b. masses. This assumes that truth doesn't exist I guess... but isn't his quest one for truth? but why bother if it doesn't exist? is truth boring Alan?
11. I"m not sure why but he tells us creationism in the schools makes most of us gag. Gee; I guess most of us engineers at Google :=) Well; I consider Darwinism a creationism of it's own; ie. it's a 'religious' view of origins; a wview assumption... not reality. (I utterly refute the idea of government schools, but apparently wallace doesn't. I see them as instruments of wview tyranny. I fail to see how a critic of materialism can be an advocate of the statist school system... but perhaps I need to meditate on it :=)
12. "what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning." - Werner Heisenberg
- if you want to meditate on something I would recommend this claim... it's potentially revolutionary.
13. I apologize for the sloppy writing in this post... these are just notes made watching a lecture.
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