Paul Mawdsley

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About Paul Mawdsley

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    Philosophy, Psychology, Theoretical Physics
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    Whitby, Ontario
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    Paul Mawdsley
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    Synthesizing Two Epistemological OrientationsObjectivist Ethics, the Empathic Perspective and MannersAuthentic and Civil Objectivist Living in a Social WorldGod, Euclidian Geometry, and the Church of Ayn Rand

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  1. Hey Michael. Ha, still a causality freak but learning other languages. Interesting and pertinent that you bring up Peterson so quickly. I've been studying his perspective for about a year now. I came across him while listening to Sam Harris' first podcast between the two of them, the one where they got stuck on the nature of truth. I found it fascinating precisely because each was stuck inside his own specific single story or paradigm or epistemic lens and unable to include the other's perspective. It so reminded me of the Einstein/Bohr debates about the nature of reality at the quantum level. As with Einstein and Bohr, Peterson and Harris embody two distinct epistemic lenses: Peterson seeing through the lens of metaphorical thinking, distilling, through a process of unconscious cultural selection over the ages, archetypal stories and meta-stories that are "true enough" to enable survival and Harris seeing through a lens of pragmatic empiricism, attempting to find the single story of truth by connecting the dots of accumulated scientific observation and measurement in a mechanistic causal framework. I find it interesting that people have tended to take sides between the two. Peterson was just saying how his recent conversations with Harris, in Vancouver, Dublin and London, had audiences with a definitive divide into team Harris and team Peterson. My response to hearing the two archetypal epistemic perspectives was to attempt to take them both inside and see through each lens. (This is an act of, what I would call, masculine empathy.) My desire was to take them inside me and allow them to play out in a dialectical process so that I might find a truth that is deeper than and integrates both. One thing I have noticed is that the world can be very much divided into those who are metaphorically and spiritually intuitive in their thinking and those who are empirically and objectively intuitive in their thinking. I see them occupying two distinct spaces in a Venn diagram. But there is a third circle that is being missed. There is metaphorical thinking that gives us art and spirituality by exploring the inner nature of consciousness, there is empirical thinking that gives us science and engineering by exploring the outer nature of the objective world and there is causal thinking that gives us metaphysics and ethics by exploring the deepest, most fundamental nature of what is and why it behaves as it does on the level of principles. It also explores the point of connection between the metaphorical and the empirical. Peterson is giving new credence to metaphorical thinking and people are so hungry for this that he is rocketing to stardom. The psychological tendency for people to cling to a single core story, defining themselves by the parts they own vs the parts they disown, makes them exclude not only other stories but other ways of thinking. The increasing dominance of empirical thinking, especially in the last 100 years, has caused an exclusion of metaphorical thinking in serious conversations. In Jungian terms, metaphorical thinking has been shifted into the shadow self within our culture and Peterson is reintroducing the shadow for integration. The answer is not now to adopt metaphorical thinking at the exclusion of empirical thinking. Pushing empirical thinking into the shadows is how we create the Dark Ages. The answer is to hold onto the seeming dichotomy and allow a dialectical process to evolve, as it currently is with the Intellectual Dark Web. I would suggest the power of synthesis resides within causal thinking. It also resides within the individual psyche and the principle of creating a single story through integration rather than through disintegration-- patterns of owning and disowning. Metaphorical thinking and empirical thinking have mutually exclusive operating systems and mutually exclusive languages. Causal thinking creates a language common to both. It is the only thinking that will build a bridge between mind and matter. Paul
  2. Hi Michael. Perhaps the bigger problem is living within a single core story or ideology. Perhaps this was the root of the dogmatism that has always been a part of the Objectivist movement and is the root of the general polemical dogmatism that seems to have become so prevalent everywhere today. Maybe baring witness to and weighing a multiplicity of perspectives in a combined internal and external dialectic is a more balanced and integrating stance. We’ve figured out that physical things can behave at once as particles and waves. What if people behave at once as particles and waves? What if people behave as separate AND connected beings, with individualism emerging from a focus on our separateness and collectivism emerging from a focus on our connectedness? Then no ideological perspective that has emerged from one or the other of these basic principles can ever be complete while being propounded at the exclusion of the other. The question then becomes how to integrate such paradoxical perspectives into a unified meta-perspective. This can’t be done at the level of political thinking. It can’t even be done at the level of philosophical thinking. It requires a deep existential dive into an exploration of the psyche. How can I exist as both a separate and a connected being in a way that is integrated and healthy? New answers here will fundamentally reshape the existence of the individual, of intimate relationships and of societal systems and interactions.
  3. Hey Michael, Thanks for the cheerleading. The process of breaking down existing frameworks inside me, many of which have been absorbed from the frameworks embedded in our culture over a lifetime (or have been built as a resistance to them), to open to the possibility of new ones is not easy. Cheers are welcome...especially with glass in hand. There were parts of my life that were not working the way I wanted so it was time to make some changes. Earning a living within the framework of trading time and energy for money is one of those things. Instead I'm going to try packaging my perspective and my tool kit in marketable products to see what the market is willing to pay. To answer your questions: - I am studying my market and studying a great deal about creating an online marketing platform. I have learned from some truly gifted people in marketing along the way. It doesn't hurt that I am entering this arena with the help of the woman I share my life with now. She is a marketing exec who has been interested in this area for some time and has been receiving constant training on Internet marketing from her employer. We met on a dating site. Both of us were having a ball studying the profiles and learning. We both could see huge biz potential. A dating site is like a a 24/7 banquet for anyone interested in studying the human psyche. -I like Koenig's idea of half and half that you mentioned. A little bit of sugar with the medicine. - I am studying copy writing. I find I can create a head space where I enjoy playing with marketing copy. A lot of it has to do with being able to take an empathic perspective and feeling what you want to convey as much from outside yourself as from inside yourself. I've learned a lot from the marketing women in my life. I also have connections, through my girlfriend, to a lot of contacts in copy writing, PR, graphic design, social media, video tech, etc. I need to earn a few dollars to be able to afford some of these though. I have been marketing and selling my other biz for 6 years, and spent 12 years in sales before that. Funny, I went into sales specifically because it felt uncomfortable to me and I knew it would open new avenues for me. I've always gone against what they taught me though. I don't believe in hype and pressure. I approach it from the learning I did when I wanted to be a therapist: job one is to earn trust through listening, validating and understanding your client's feelings, vision and thoughts. Job two is to help them see the realities they exist within. Job three is to help them frame what they see so they reach their best possible conclusions on their own... which, of course is to by your product. This only works if you believe in what you are selling. Job four is to create a space where they have to own it and make a move. At the end of the process people have made their own choice with their eyes wide open. They don't feel pushed or pulled or pressured into anything. They own it. Most importantly, a bond of trust is created which translates into further business from them and their enthusiastic referrals. This is the most powerful and least expensive marketing. Video testimonials from clients who feel this bond of trust, satisfaction and enthusiasm is what I am seeing all the top earners using. There are 3 major markets where my perspective and tool kit has a good fit and where I see a void in the existing content. These all happen to be relationship markets. The first is the self-help market, which is all about our relationship with ourself, or to use N. Branden's terms: it's the relationship between the "I" and the "me." The second is man/woman relationships, of which the dating market is one aspect. The third is parent/child relationships. Our parenting culture is messed up. A forth category of relationships keep banging at my door: business relationships. I've been amazed at how many problems other business owners I know have with their client relationships when I don't. I've come to realize that there are things that I do to establish the rules of engagement during the formation of the bond of trust with my clients that sets a framework where they treat me very well and are enthusiastic about paying me. By listening to, validating and understanding my clients, while being very sure of how I see things, they like to see themselves through my eyes. They are highly motivated to maintain my positive regard. This personal connection stops a lot of the negative shit that happens in business. I have spent a lot of time studying the nature and dynamics of the psyche and the causal dynamics of relationships. I have studied the nature and importance of our relationship to our empathic-self in shaping who we are and how we relate to others. I have studied the nature of what everyone calls "the unconscious" and believe I have come to understand how it works. Surprise, surprise! Understanding the flow of the unconscious requires a new causal framework. I have found that letting the flow of the unconscious-self (or id) free within healthy frameworks created by the ego-self, while dismantling the unhealthy, energy sucking and spirit destroying controls, manipulations and structures that come from the superego, is the path to whole and healthy. I also spent a lot of time witnessing, sometimes from within and sometimes from the outside, unhealthy relationships. While I have always had a sense of what healthy relationships look like, taken from the moments in my life where I stumbled into healthy, I have not really witnessed a lot of what I believe to be healthy. I have seen a fair bit of codependently balanced. But not healthy. I have also spent a lot of time witnessing how healthy and unhealthy play out inside me. Healthy is when we flow from a place that is connected and whole. We live in a culture that frames the development of our psyche as a conflict between competing parts. In Freud's terms: the unbridled energy of the id needs to be controlled by the superego and conflicts between the two are to be resolved by the ego. This framework is what Freud saw as existing in his day and it is even more deeply embedded in our culture today. We also experience conflict between our core-self and that of our empathic-self. Ultimately, our conflict resolution comes down to one thing: we need to decide which part of us is right and which is wrong. Over time we take sides and own one while disowning the other. You end up with a very large disowned self that has a life of its own. Dialectics takes us down a different path. Have you ever taken the True Colors test? Strong in gold means you strongly own your superego processes. Strong in orange means you strongly own your id processes. Strong in green means you strongly own your core-self (ego in separate space) processes. Strong in blue means you are strong in your empathic-self (ego in connected space) process. This test is designed in a framework that assumes we can be categorized by the parts we more or less own and disown. What if we don't accept this framework? I score equally high on green, blue and orange with an almost nonexistent gold. My parts are not in conflict, I'm not filled with the controlling "shoulds" that most people seem to have, nor am I out of control as our culture's framework would predict. (Gold, or superego, is not really part of the self. It is an implant. It is formed as a result of manipulation and control from our caregivers whereby we must choose to accept their programming if we do not want them to hurt us. Withdrawal, intimidation, shame, guilt and stories that twist the truth are the weapons of choice.) Framing the psyche as a space of conflict between forces, where the unconscious-self is something to be feared and controlled, is a mechanism for breaking us open and filling us with controlling shoulds. It is an amazing tool for anyone seeking dominance in a power game. Our whole society is built on this, our characters are shaped by this and our relationships are defined within this space. And it is wrong. (This shows up on the judging/perceiving scale on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.) It is equally wrong to frame the psyche as a space of conflict between our core-self and our empathic-self. This splits us in two. It forces us to either own our connection with self or our connection with others. Either way, it's devastating to our relationships: both the relationships between the parts of the self and the relationships of which we are apart. (One of the ways this shows itself is in our tendency to introversion or extroversion in Jung's terms.) Healthy begins with breaking down the existing frameworks and opening to new possibilities for frameworks that nurture connection and flow. This is the framework I am taking into my new biz venture. Paul
  4. Trust you to press the right button, Michael. My forward momentum has stalled the last couple of days. The need to define my niche is precisely the block in the flow. Here's where I'm at. I'm focusing on the self-help niche, specifically the romantic-relationship-in-crisis niche. This can be broken into three broad market categories: those in crisis because they are not in a relationship and doubt their worthiness; those in crisis because they are in an unhealthy relationship and lack confidence in finding the path to healthy; and those in crisis because they are breaking out of an unhealthy relationship and need to heal their damaged soul. All three categories are highly motivated for change and growth. I tend to be drawn to the first of these, 30 to 65 year olds in the dating market, because this market is the easiest to target and is most open to personal growth. Haven't decided yet whether or not to narrow target to a specific gender. While this is the niche I'm looking at targeting my products for, my focus is set in a larger context. I know this comes as a surprise but I have a pretty unique spin on life and existence. I have written here on OL about how we can have different orientations of consciousness which create different ways of being in existence and we can have different lenses which create different ways of seeing the universe. To this I would add the concept of "frameworks," which give us different ways of flowing through time, through space, through life. In fact, I am not only changing my business model, I am changing my life model by changing the frameworks through which I flow in my life. Understanding these meta-perspective concepts brings our lives and our very identities within our control more than ever. They allow us to see our unconscious-selves and our conscious-selves as working together in dialectic balance rather than being contradictory and in conflict. This vision of a life in radical dialectic balance, a life that balances our separate-self and our connected-self, a life that balances our objective-self and our existential-self, is the foundation of the context in which I exist. It is the foundation of the context from which I write. It is the foundation of the context from which I am setting out to build this new business. In the larger context I have come to realize I have a way of being and seeing that I want to explore, develop and share with people. I see my online businesses as particular expressions of my inner self. They are avatars in The Matrix, there for me to experiment and play with, and hopefully make money with. At the centre of it all will be a site for me to write, and video blog, from all the different sides and voices in me. I just hope I can find a market that is interested in my spin of the universe. No guarantees but I trust my sense of my fit with the market.
  5. Carol and Tony, Thanks for your enthusiastic responses. A little explanation is in order. I have a passion for writing, for putting my way of being and seeing and thinking and doing into the world through words. OL has been my venue for exploring and developing this. (Thanks to Michael and Kat for this.) Unfortunately, I have built a life that consumes my time and my energy to the point where I have found little left for expressing this passion of mine. I came back to OL after a number of years, having gone through some self-transforming life experiences, because I have such a hunger to write, to intellectually connect and to be part of a community that shares similar passions. Because of the drain other parts of my life have on my time and energy, I found myself being taxed so much as I would sit down to write that I was left exchanging my need to sleep with my need to write. My health was suffering so I had to let go of participating here for awhile. I have decided to try an experiment. I am looking to completely change my business and my business model to create more time for pursuing my passion for writing, intellectually connecting and exchanging ideas. I also am looking to use the insights I have developed from my passion for understanding people and the skills and knowledge I accumulated, at one time, while pursuing my interests in psychotherapy. I am looking to start a blog and to create an information based business. My thinking is this: if I make psychology and writing an integral part of my biz, pursuing my passions will no longer be competing with pursuing my business objectives and I will no longer be tempted to give up my sleep for writing. That's my theory anyway. There are certain advantages with an information based biz over my current physical product and services biz. My current market is half a million people. This expands to hundreds of millions with an information based biz. Information products are created once, they can be processed and shipped automatically and can be digitally duplicated and mass produced. The sales and purchasing process can be automated. Geography is not relevant to creating and distributing information products so I can work from any place I like to play. Producing valuable content and marketing are the key skills to producing wealth. These are the places I'm looking to play with my next biz. Bottom line: I hope to be more active on OL as things start moving forward and intend to invite everyone to my site when ready for launch. Looking forward to creating and exploring the possibilities as this new adventure unfolds. Cheers to all, PaulM
  6. Thanks Michael. As with your previous post on stories, I am very interested. Today is Thanksgiving up here in The Great White North and I'll be shot if I go AWOL with a party for 16. I'll have to find time as the story of my day and my week unfolds. One thought: Our story of causality shapes how all our stories unfold. Our sense of causality shapes how we unconsciously process our experiences, shapes the options for action we project and shapes our available choices. This is why it is so important to explore and creatively shape our story of causality. Paul
  7. Michael, We are talking about the same thinking looked at from different directions. Looked at from the perspective of working from the whole to the parts you would conclude it is "story thinking." Looked at from the perspective of the parts to the whole you would conclude it is "causal thinking." Either way it is fluid, reciprocally causal, whole-to-part/part-to-whole thinking. It is why we both are drawn to discuss interconnected holistic systems. Paul
  8. Michael, I've always known we are on the same page using different language. Paul
  9. Is 'causal reasoning' the same thing (in your mind) as 'causal thinking'? William, It's funny, by asking me to put forward a definition you are asking me to translate causal thinking into logical thinking terms. Causal thinking is what we are born with. We see causal thinking processes as intuition or insights from our unconscious. It works along side metaphorical thinking beneath the layers of what we would consider conscious thought: logical thinking and mathematical thinking. In fact, it is metaphorical thinking restricted to realistic models of our experience, built from flowing images rapped around a causal framework. Picture clearly in your mind what would happen if you were driving along the highway and you swerved into oncoming traffic. Your ability to visualize this is causal thinking. Picture clearly inside you how you would react if, through you choices and actions, the person you care about most in the world was injured in some way and blamed you for it. Your ability to experience this is again causal thinking. Kant thought about causality but did not employ causal thinking. Hume got it all wrong and Kant was responding to Hume. Rand and N. Branden got it right. Causal thinking is the ability to imagine entities, observed or created, with specific identities that act in specific ways and in specific contexts, and setting them in motion in the mind's eye to see how they act and interact. Rand came to see this because she was a fiction writer. She created characters (imagined entities) with specific identities that acted in specific ways according to the nature she gave them, in specific contexts, and she set them in motion to see how they would act and interact while flowing within an idealized framework towards a climax that allowed her to illustrate her vision of existence and her values. She watched as the story unfolded inside and put words to the unfolding images. This is causal thinking. Paul
  10. Paul, It makes for a poor-ass story. I'm serious. Story is how we think. It's fundamental to our awareness. To show how fundamental it is, think of all the wars throughout history. Most have been over differences in totally implausible stories that have no way of being proven. We humans literally kill each other in mass for not believing in each other's story. If you want a cause for why people don't accept the claim that the underlying cause of everything does not, itself, have a cause, there it is. We need a story. No good guys or bad guys in the causeless universe formulation. It ain't sexy. That's not the only reason, but I think it's a major one, if not the main one. Michael That's it! God is sexy. Big bang is sexy. They make for exciting metaphors and dynamic plots. Earth as the centre of the universe is sexy. Mankind in general and men in particular, at the centre of the plan of the universe, is sexy (at least to men who envision themselves as special relative to other species and to women). Damn! Even tortoises all the way down is sexy. There is also a history of devaluing causal thinking and elevating metaphorical, logical and mathematical thinking. Causal thinking is what your old time mechanic uses (when the computer diagnostic doesn't work) to diagnose the problems with you car by having a vision and modeling that penetrates the car's inner workings and seeks the cause of problems by unconsciously reverse engineering the cause of the symptoms. Causal thinking is how the renovator sees inside the walls to know the underlying structure of the house and to realize the water you are finding in your basement is due to a leak around a window on the second floor when the wind blows a certain direction. Causal thinking is what the intuitive wood worker uses to build a structurally sound and functional cabinet that resists woods natural tendencies to twist and warp while allowing for its tendency to expand and contract with changes in humidity. The same cabinet maker uses more metaphorical, aesthetic thinking for designing the cabinets form around the functionality. He uses mathematical thinking to increase precision and consistency. He uses logic to stop making the designs that don't sell. Our universities are built on arts and sciences: metaphorical, logical and mathematical thinking. Causal thinkers are redirected to the trades. I work with a group of very intelligent renovators, electricians, landscapers, carpenters, etc, who have pursued careers through the university route only to find themselves drawn back to the trades in midlife because of a need to use their brains in ways that were discounted throughout their education and in their professional careers. Causal thinking has a very low status in our society. It is all but washed out in our education system. I had to fight my way upstream through school every step of the way because I refused to let go of my causal thinking. I was fortunate to find adjusting my thinking to the requirements of school work easy but, motivationally, it was hard. It required that I turn off my causal learning for higher education and I fought this every step. No surprise that I was attracted to AR and NB's causally innovative metaphysics, ethics and politics. As it turns out, also no surprise that I find myself in a world where the people who have attained a higher level of education tend not to get causal thinking or the value of AR and NB's contribution in this area. For the most part, I think causal thinking has been weaned out of the higher educated and advanced causal stories may have less metaphorical sex appeal to those who have simpler causal models. Our stories are based on our underlying sense of causality and on our metaphorical feel of what fits our experience. This operates on the level of vision and feeling: at the core of our unconscious processes. I see this as a combined cause of people not appreciating any vision of a universe without a first cause, whether without God or without big bang.
  11. Not what I'm saying. There is more than just mathematical thinking and modeling to take us beyond direct observation. There is causal thinking and modeling which can also take us beyond direct observation. At one time this type of thinking and modeling stood at the heart of physics. It's the baby that got thrown out with the bath water. Lowly tradesmen are the only ones who use causal thinking and modeling to any advanced level anymore. And we know they are lowly because they don't think in deep logic, abstract concepts and mathematical language. The irony is that Einstein was at once the defender of causality and the one who put some of the last nails in the coffin of causal thinking in modern physics, after the Michelson/Morley experiment, with his switching to metaphor and mathematics as his guide to modeling and producing relativity theory. The final nail was the Copenhagen interpretation of QM. All this washing our hands of causal thinking and modeling based on an inadequate concept of causation. And this has shaped our understanding, education, thinking and policies ever since. We made a mistake. Lets reevaluate.
  12. This is the essence of AR and NB's concept of causality. When understood it replaces the view of causality at the base of the current discussion and causes a paradigm shift that makes this discussion as interesting as a discussion on how many epicycles are needed to account for the apparent motion of Mars. I am trying to understand why people don't get this. Thanks Matt.
  13. Davy, As familiar as this article reads to me, I don't think I've actually read it before. Thank you. This article is clearly early in Branden's writing because it is written within Rand's language and worldview. However, there is no doubt that he has his own authentic vision and his clarity and insight are quite profound. Personally, I've always had a sense of resonance with NB's objective metaphysical foundations and the worldview that has emerged through his writing. My point of departure with him is on the level of his connectedness with the social element of his psyche and how this comes through in his work. There is a worldview that grows from our capacity for empathy and consideration for other people's perspectives. This worldview is left largely untapped in AR and NB's work. What I appreciate about your approach in what you have written above, Davy, is your openness, as an atheist, to seeing the world through other points of view without a sense of conflict or competition or defensiveness against other worldviews. It gives me a sense of you seeking truth without the need for exclusion of alternate perspectives to your own. Both AR and NB have tended to exclude other worldviews, with arguments to justify the exclusion. This stops the development of a worldview that grows from our capacity for empathy and consideration for other people's perspectives. The ultimate negative judgement from an Objectivist is the judgement of "social metaphysics." I see this as the explosive lock guarding the door to developing a worldview from the empathic, connected, social part of our psyche. I find this quote very interesting. I tend to see people's stories about the world as metaphors first and then assess the metaphysical value only after stepping inside and seeing the world from within the stories. This approach allows me to be more inclusive of perspectives that could be considered in conflict with my own. I tend to see "God stories" as metaphors attempting to capture some element of truth in reality. Very often this truth comes from the sense of connectedness and wholeness we can see in the universe. The striking thing about this quote is it is describing God as occupying the role of cause in a whole-to-part causal system. If we consider the idea that God created all things as an understandable error in logic, as discussed in NB's article, the rest is an interesting metaphor for a quantum system. For a king "to be in the whole kingdom by his power" suggests an image of subjects acting by their own motives and choices within the limits set by the king. This is the concept of freedom within limits. The limits, in a quantum system, are set by the system as a whole. The probability of a particle being measured in a particular place at a particular time can be seen as determined by how the whole system shapes the space in which the particle acts. Similarly, the action of a particular subject in the kingdom is determined by the identity of the subject-- his motives, inner stories, thoughts and choices-- AND the limits to the social space, in which the subject acts, created by the king (amongst other social relationships). As the previous quote was viewing the holistic system from the perspective of the king, this quote is seeing the same holistic system from the position of the subjects. The limits to the social space that influence their choices exist inside the subjects who are making those choices. In this way the power of the king exists inside the subjects. Applying this as a metaphor to the quantum case: the probabilities that exist in superposition for a particle can be seen as defining the space in a whole system and existing in the particle, limiting its actual position when measured. Here, Aquinas is presenting a worldview that opposes that of the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) of QM. The CI suggests that we cannot know anything about reality beyond the limits described by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, so our stories of reality must be confined to what can be observed, measured and mathematically modeled. This puts the physical substance of things as existentially secondary to our perception of them. Aquinas is saying that essence or substance or reality is in the thing that exists, rather than in our perception of it. I tend to agree with Aquinas, just without the God metaphors. If we look at AR and NB's concept of causality-- what a thing is determines what it does-- in light of Aquinas' perspective, quantum realities and whole-to-part causation, we find it needs to be expanded to be more inclusive: What a thing is determines what it does in the context of the whole systems of which it is a part. Written this way we have a foundational causal statement from which to build a more detailed causal framework which can include reciprocal whole-to-part causal systems. Such causal frameworks can lead to a causal interpretation of QM (once the CI is understood as a philosophical doctrine used to exclude philosophical insightfulness from explorations of the nature of reality) and can lead to a causal explanation of the universe without the need for a god to fill in the spaces of the causes we do not understand. Interesting... both the Copenhagen interpretation of QM and the god interpretation of causal events are built to neutralize our capacity to develop a causal foundation and creatively develop a causal story of the universe that fits all the evidence. I guess causality makes strange bedfellows. AR and NB took an important step towards a causal story of the universe. This is what attracted me to their work. I say, let's keep working on it. Paul
  14. Hi Davy, I think you will find that NB writes more to the point on causality than AR. I'm sorry I don't have my references handy but you will find a page or two on causality in Branden's The Psychology of Self-Esteem. NB also briefly discusses the idea of metaphysical dualism in one of his later books (might be The Art of Living Conciously...I think MSK referenced it recently) and mentions that AR was in agreement with his thoughts in this area. Here he suggests that consciousness and matter may both emerge from a common underlying substance. While still vague, this is a step pointing the direction of their metaphysical thinking. I have spent a lot of time thinking on the issues of causality myself from the starting point provided by AR and NB. From my view, if "what a thing is determines what it does" then there is no need to look for an outside cause. There is no need to look for a first cause or a Prime Mover. AR and NB were suggesting a fundamental shift in how we understand the nature of causation. When we move from seeing causation as a relationship between the action of one thing and the action of another thing to a relationship between what a thing is and what it does, everything changes. It is a fundamental paradigm shift. The need for a Prime Mover comes from a different view of causality from AR and NB's. The question doesn't even come up in the story line of their worldview. Paul
  15. You made me laugh. A more appropriate analogy might be: what if the stick protruding from the water isn't really bent? Maybe there is something in the nature of light to account for the appearance of a bent stick rather than just associating it with other bent sticks. All we have to do is pull the stick out of the water...oh, we can't do that on the scale of light years. Guess we just have to assume the stick is bent...and the red shift is due to a Doppler Effect. What exactly is the evidence connecting the red shift to the Doppler Effect across cosmic distances?