Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?

[caroljane]

Many scientists, including project leader Carl Sagan, debated with passion and intensity as to what aspects of human life should be portrayed on the golden record to be attached to the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes, now in interstellar space.

(These literally golden not-so-oldies were detailed, including their visuals and summaries of their music and text, in Sagan's gorgeous coffee-table book Murmurs of Earth, and figured into the plot of "Starman," starring Jeff Bridges.)

One Sagan associate suggested cutting short the discussion about what would best represent human beings to distant aliens. "We could just send them the collected works of Johann Sebastian Bach."

He added: "That, however, would be boasting."

Perfect.

[william.scherk]

The dead stay with us, that much is clear. They remain in our hearts and minds, of course, but for many people they also linger in our senses—as sights, sounds, smells, touches or presences. Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to bereavement but are rarely discussed, because people fear they might be considered insane or mentally destabilised by their loss. As a society we tend to associate hallucinations with things like drugs and mental illness, but we now know that hallucinations are common in sober healthy people and that they are more likely during times of stress.

The principle of parsimony is biased by the assumptions you start with. But if believing in hallucinations rather than ghosts seems least hypothesis to you, nothing I say can change your mind.

Well, surely we both 'believe' in hallucinations, right?

The note about grief hallucinations was written mostly for George. His experiences were distressing and he says he struggled with the notion he was losing his mind.

But nothing in the explanation above explicitly rules out a 'paranormal' alternative set of assumptions. Indeed, I think you can accept, if only provisionally, that hallucinations can account for at least some visitation experiences. Is that correct?

If so, then you could, if you wished, lay out details of an alternative that makes most sense to you, that offers a framework for understanding visitation experiences the rest of us can follow. Because you have explicitly set aside faith, have explicitly claimed reason as the best guide to coherent explanation, there is no doubt a coherent framework of explanation that undergirds the conclusion you have made.

So, let's accept that your father's spirit did really appear to you in full sensory form, as told. Let's set aside faith and explore the assumptions that support an alternative explanation.

What are the rough outlines of your explanation, then, Neil -- how do you sketch out how such a visitation is accomplished?

Edited January 9, 2011 by william.scherk

[Starbuckle]

WSS wrote: "So, let's accept that your father's spirit did really appear to you in full sensory form, as told. Let's set aside faith and explore the assumptions that support an alternative explanation. What are the rough outlines of your explanation, then, Neil -- how do you sketch out how such a visitation is accomplished?"

This is an example of how ridiculous all interlocutors but me are getting in this discourse. Neil has reported that his father had died by the time he and his mother heard the music. Death, I think we can all agree, is the end of life. That's by definition. The death of an organism involves expiration, an end to its biological processes, including the state of consciousness that is generated by those biological processes. Dead is dead.

Scherk's inquiry is beyond offensive. If Neil can't cite any evidence for his belief that the being that allegedly mind-melded with him is everlasting, how on earth does Scherk expect Neil to explain how any mere mortal organism's life can continue after the end of its life? Scherk should be more reasonable than this.

Neil has made clear that his stipulated continued acceptance of reason, causality and identity is irrelevant with respect to substantiating any conclusions he has imbibed from the entity he calls God. To the extent that Neil's new conclusions about the nature of reality flagrantly contradict the nature of the reality that we can all perceive and test and talk about, it's the mutually observable reality which must go out the window, and Neil's fantasy which must trump all evidence, reason and common sense. Why is Scherk being such a jerk here? Is it some kind of quirk? It's not going to work.

Edited January 9, 2011 by Starbuckle

[J Neil Schulman]

This post is now redundant.

Edited January 9, 2011 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

WSS wrote: "So, let's accept that your father's spirit did really appear to you in full sensory form, as told. Let's set aside faith and explore the assumptions that support an alternative explanation. What are the rough outlines of your explanation, then, Neil -- how do you sketch out how such a visitation is accomplished?"

This is an example of how ridiculous all interlocutors but me are getting in this discourse. Neil has reported that his father had died by the time he and his mother heard the music. Death, I think we can all agree, is the end of life. That's by definition. The death of an organism involves expiration, an end to its biological processes, including the state of consciousness that is generated by those biological processes. Dead is dead.

No, we can't all agree that "death" is the end of "life." For over 200 posts in this forum I've made it sparkling clear that I regard human consciousness as surviving the death of the brain, inasmuch as consciousness is not a product of human biology but both precedes and succeeds it.

That statement that "Nobody can disagree" is always a signifier of dogmatic and unscientific assumptions whether it's "We can all agree that C02 causes global warming" or "We can all agree that a human life begins at conception."

That's religion or politics, kid, not epistemology or science.

So disagree all you like, but you don't get to claim universal agreement.

Scherk's inquiry is beyond offensive. If Neil can't cite any evidence for his belief that the being that allegedly mind-melded with him is everlasting, how on earth does Scherk expect Neil to explain how any mere mortal organism's life can continue after the end of its life? Scherk should be more reasonable than this.

Neil has made clear that his stipulated continued acceptance of reason, causality and identity is irrelevant with respect to substantiating any conclusions he has imbibed from the entity he calls God.

Bullshit. I've never stipulated any such thing. All I've stipulated is that certain experiences are impossible to present to others as evidence, and to demand others accept them as real based on nothing more than faith is an abandonment of reason.

To the extent that Neil's new conclusions about the nature of reality flagrantly contradict the nature of the reality that we can all perceive and test and talk about, it's the mutually observable reality which must go out the window, and Neil's fantasy which must trump all evidence, reason and common sense. Why is Scherk being such a jerk here? Is it some kind of quirk? It's not going to work.

Once again your conclusion is nothing more than a restatement of your unsubstantiated assumption.

I have observed direct evidence of what I conclude is survival of human consciousness beyond corporeal death. Others presented with similar evidence dismiss it as hallucinations and torture themselves, wondering if they've gone off the deep end.

You are entitled to regard it as fantasy and hallucination. But when I'm present in the discussion, you don't get away with claiming victory in argument for what despite your claims of superior reason is nothing more than your opinion.

The difference between us is that I'm not the one claiming omniscience.

Edited January 9, 2011 by J. Neil Schulman

[George H. Smith]

I don't believe you at all, partly because I had many similar experiences after my father drowned in a boating accident in 1974, shortly after I had returned to Tucson to rest up while awaiting the publication of ATCAG. He and a friend were swept overboard in a freak storm on Lake Roosevelt while zipped-up in their sleeping bags.

I had nightmares for years (the notion of drowning while confined still terrifies me), but the weirdest experiences occurred while I was wide awake and completely sober. I would sometimes go for hours at a time without realizing that my father was dead, and I would frequently hear his voice coming from another room. It took at least a year before these voices stopped, and there were other disturbing incidents as well.

So don't tell me about your paranormal interpretations of such experiences, as if you are the only one who has ever had them. I had dozens and dozens of them, and I struggled like a son-of-bitch to retain my hold on reality.

Ghs

George, I believe you.

If I told you, in all seriousness, that I was actually hearing the voice of Izanami, the Japanese (Shinto) goddess of death, would you still believe me? I was born in Japan, after all.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

If I told you, in all seriousness, that I was actually hearing the voice of Izanami, the Japanese (Shinto) goddess of death, would you still believe me? I was born in Japan, after all.

No, George. You were born in Hawaii. I suggest you have a lawyer get you a Certificate of Live Birth ASAP.

--Brant

oh, wait--you aren't running for President

[william.scherk]

Scherk's inquiry is beyond offensive. If Neil can't cite any evidence for his belief that the being that allegedly mind-melded with him is everlasting, how on earth does Scherk expect Neil to explain how any mere mortal organism's life can continue after the end of its life?

Now you have wrecked everything, Starbuckle!

All I wanted to do was find out how the rest of the ghost story might go, but no . . . you just had to wreck everything again by making those dang dogmatic assumptions about consensual reality. You knock spirits off the table of discussion and close the door to honest explorations of alternate realities, sob sob.

Is that how you would treat the Cottingley Fairies, or Chupacabra, or The Angel Moroni, or Mohammed flying his horse to Heaven? Huh? What about pixies, sprites, brownies, ghosties, spectres, ESP, claivoyance, precognition, spoonbending, astral travel, psychic surgery and Capgras Syndrome? Huh? What about magic? Huh? Do you think science can explain Magic? Magic is just Magic, then? Is Dowsing MAGIC? What about angels and demons and goblins and djinn and stuff? You think people just made this stuff up? Would you just sweep your Wand of Science and refuse to consider that Special Perception and Different Ways Of Knowing can Mean A LOT To People? Huh? How on earth are we going to advance human knowledge of Other Realms if you can't just be nice and pretend? I am so hurt and disappointed and hurt and bristling like a porcupine with outrage and all that. I mean, what about LIFE AFTER DEATH? HUH? Is that MAGIC, Mr Smarty Uptight Bossy Science Pope?

You are just mean and hurtful and small and mean and biased and dogmatic and religious and everything opposite to Neil and Bach and Madame Blavatsky and Transcendent Levitation and UFOs and wormholes and Star Trek and everything! You are a PARTY POOPER!

And now Neil is going to ignore my invitation and no one will come to my party . . . and nobody will ever have any fun EVER AGAIN!!!

[J Neil Schulman]

The dead stay with us, that much is clear. They remain in our hearts and minds, of course, but for many people they also linger in our senses—as sights, sounds, smells, touches or presences. Grief hallucinations are a normal reaction to bereavement but are rarely discussed, because people fear they might be considered insane or mentally destabilised by their loss. As a society we tend to associate hallucinations with things like drugs and mental illness, but we now know that hallucinations are common in sober healthy people and that they are more likely during times of stress.

The principle of parsimony is biased by the assumptions you start with. But if believing in hallucinations rather than ghosts seems least hypothesis to you, nothing I say can change your mind.

Well, surely we both 'believe' in hallucinations, right?

Yes.

The note about grief hallucinations was written mostly for George. His experiences were distressing and he says he struggled with the notion he was losing his mind.

But nothing in the explanation above explicitly rules out a 'paranormal' alternative set of assumptions. Indeed, I think you can accept, if only provisionally, that hallucinations can account for at least some visitation experiences. Is that correct?

Yes.

If so, then you could, if you wished, lay out details of an alternative that makes most sense to you, that offers a framework for understanding visitation experiences the rest of us can follow. Because you have explicitly set aside faith, have explicitly claimed reason as the best guide to coherent explanation, there is no doubt a coherent framework of explanation that undergirds the conclusion you have made.

So, let's accept that your father's spirit did really appear to you in full sensory form, as told. Let's set aside faith and explore the assumptions that support an alternative explanation.

What are the rough outlines of your explanation, then, Neil -- how do you sketch out how such a visitation is accomplished?

My rough outline of explanation is that the human brain uses a set of algorithms, some of them hardwired, to present a simplified "desktop" of what we call reality, because the reality is far too complex to be directly perceived. I think the functioning of the brain is to narrow and focus consciousness to a common multi-user perception of what is regarded as everyday or conventional reality. Probably greater than 99% of the time that's all anyone needs to function.

I believe that human biological life was designed as a training regimen for conscious beings who need it as a live-fire exercise to learn complex lessons, with limitations on lasting consequences that survive the body's death.

Just as there's a bell curve varying among individuals other talents and perceptions, some individuals have a deeper or widened perception which isn't limited to the conventional "desktop" of common multi-user perception. I think what we tag dreams is the brain's television, with just as much variation in content as between a TV news report and a TV soap opera. This is an analogy; in other ways the Internet might be a better analogy.

I think our type of consciousness actually exists simultaneously in multiple continua or dimensions, and some people are better than others in accessing more than the "common" one you and I are sharing right now. I think consciousness is in some way holographic; I'm not enough of specialist in either physics or neurology to talk about it technically in any great depth.

That's a broad outline. I'm not prepared to defend it in any great detail. I regard it somewhere between a hypothesis and a theory -- your mileage may vary.

[J Neil Schulman]

I don't believe you at all, partly because I had many similar experiences after my father drowned in a boating accident in 1974, shortly after I had returned to Tucson to rest up while awaiting the publication of ATCAG. He and a friend were swept overboard in a freak storm on Lake Roosevelt while zipped-up in their sleeping bags.

I had nightmares for years (the notion of drowning while confined still terrifies me), but the weirdest experiences occurred while I was wide awake and completely sober. I would sometimes go for hours at a time without realizing that my father was dead, and I would frequently hear his voice coming from another room. It took at least a year before these voices stopped, and there were other disturbing incidents as well.

So don't tell me about your paranormal interpretations of such experiences, as if you are the only one who has ever had them. I had dozens and dozens of them, and I struggled like a son-of-bitch to retain my hold on reality.

Ghs

George, I believe you.

If I told you, in all seriousness, that I was actually hearing the voice of Izanami, the Japanese (Shinto) goddess of death, would you still believe me? I was born in Japan, after all.

Ghs

George, I will believe you had any experience you told me you had. And I'm more prepared, because of my own experiences, to explore alternate and unconventional explanations -- perhaps leading to revision of epistemological procedures, with consequences on one's ontological and cosmological conclusions -- than some others.

[Starbuckle]

JNS wrote: "That's a broad outline. I'm not prepared to defend it in any great detail."

I believe you. I believe! I'm a believer!

Neil's elaboration of his nonsensical views about perception are a further indication, if any were needed, that he rejects an Objectivist-style perspective on epistemology and knowledge. The book to read refuting representationalism and "diaphanous" notions of perception is David Kelley's Evidence of the Senses.

WSS alludes to "consensus reality." It is possible to have consensus about what exists in reality, but only because we're all in the same reality whether we agree about it or not. Of course, often we observe different aspects of the world and may be logical (me) or illogical (Neil) in our interpretations. I think we can all agree that we can observe reality using our senses only, not also magic and trauma-triggered imaginary peering through portals to other realities.

BTW, Neil complains that I give the impression of believing I'm omniscient or infallible or something like that. This is very far from the case. It's only because he's so consistently wrong that I seem so consistently right by contrast. Indeed, I have made many mistakes in my life and wish I knew a lot more than I do--about reality only, however. Sorry for any confusion.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Starbuckle

[J Neil Schulman]

JNS wrote: "That's a broad outline. I'm not prepared to defend it in any great detail."

I believe you. I believe! I'm a believer!

Neil's elaboration of his nonsensical views about perception are a further indication, if any were needed, that he rejects an Objectivist-style perspective on epistemology and knowledge. The book to read refuting representationalism and "diaphanous" notions of perception is David Kelley's Evidence of the Senses.

WSS alludes to "consensus reality." It is possible to have consensus about what exists in reality, but only because we're all in the same reality whether we agree about it or not. Of course, often we observe different aspects of the world and may be logical (me) or illogical (Neil) in our interpretations. I think we can all agree that we can observe reality using our senses only, not also magic and trauma-triggered imaginary peering through portals to other realities.

BTW, Neil complains that I give the impression of believing I'm omniscient or infallible or something like that. This is very far from the case. It's only because he's so consistently wrong that I seem so consistently right by contrast. Indeed, I have made many mistakes in my life and wish I knew a lot more than I do--about reality only, however. Sorry for any confusion.

Apparently you think all work on epistemology ended in the 1980's.

How quaint.

But it's worse than that. Apparently you'd also throw out a lot of science on how the brain is hard-wired to modulate perception of reality as well.

Look at the work of UC Irvine cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman, PhD: http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ and http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/HoffmanPubs.html

Edited January 10, 2011 by J. Neil Schulman

[J Neil Schulman]

Is J. Neil Schulman justified (logically) in believing in God?

Starbuckle, who for some mystical, intangible whoo-whoo purpose started this topic without actually having any interest in any answer of mine he didn't already accept, still says no.

I still say yes.

We're likely never to agree.

[George H. Smith]

George, I will believe you had any experience you told me you had. And I'm more prepared, because of my own experiences, to explore alternate and unconventional explanations -- perhaps leading to revision of epistemological procedures, with consequences on one's ontological and cosmological conclusions -- than some others.

I am also willing to explore different and even unconventional "explanations," provided they actually explain something. A major problem with your theories is that they typically don't explain anything at all. To posit God as an explantion is meaningless, unless we understand something about the causal mechanisms by which God gets things done.

The same is true of many paranormal "explanations," including your account of the mysterious music. For example, where do the "dead" get their violins and other instruments? Do they use material instruments or incorpeal instruments? Can someone learn to play the violin after he "dies"? And how did your father assemble the other musicians needed for his orchestra? Did they need to rehearse? Did they read from sheet music?

This reminds me of a one-man play, Voltaire, that I wrote during the 1980s

but never finished. (I never got around to Act Three/) Act One begins with an old and sickly Voltaire reflecting on his life. Most of the dialogue closely follows things that Voltaire wrote in his published works and letters. This was written on an old Wordstar program, so the formatting may leave something to be desired.

VOLTAIRE

A PLAY IN THREE ACTS

By George H. Smith

[Voltaire is seated at his desk, facing the audience. He squints as he tries to read a letter.]

VOLTAIRE

[Grumbling to himself]

I am as deaf, blind, and helpless as a badly preserved Egyptian mummy.

[VOLTAIRE puts the letter down in disgust and rises slowly, painfully, from his chair.]

VOLTAIRE

[still complaining to himself]

The legs of this glorious body are swollen and covered with red blotches. I was convulsed by a violent cough all night long. I vomited blood three times. Animals have a prodigious advantage over us: they forsee neither evils nor death.

[Voltaire walks from behind his desk.]

VOLTAIRE

[To audience]

All the misfortunes which can crush a man have fallen on me at once: lawsuits, losses of property, ills of the body, ills of what is called the soul.

To be oppressed by langour for whole years together, to see one's appetites fading, to have still enough life to wish to enjoy it and too little strength to do so, to become useless and intolerable to one's self, to die in detail....

[Voltaire notices that he is complaining too much, so he becomes more optimistic.]

VOLTAIRE

I ought not to complain of my fate. I have lived to be 84 years old, with a very feeble body, and have seen the most robust die in the flower of their age. If you had ever met Lord Tyrconnel and La Mettrie, you would be astounded that I should survive them. My work has saved me; I still write ten hours a day. This has done more for me than all the physicians on earth. An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.

I enjoy the solitude to which I have retired; far from the braying, nasty, miserable world, far from bad poets and bad critics.

Critics! My God, those scribblers compile volumes. I shall always hold, with men of good taste, that there is more to be gained from a dozen lines of a great writer than from all of his critics.

[Coughs and mutters to himself.] The waters of Breges or Padua might do me some good....

[Again, Voltaire becomes aware of audience and becomes more stoical].

VOLTAIRE

No, no. It is better to suffer in peace, by one's own fireside, than to go so far in search of a cure which is both uncertain and short-lived. Everyone has within him, from the first moment of his life, the cause of his death. We must live with the foe till he kills us.

I have come to the conclusion that each man must be his own doctor; that he must now and again assist nature without forcing her; above all, that he must know how to suffer, grow old, and die.

[Coughs again, this time more violently. Resumes feeling sorry for himself.]

VOLTAIRE

I do not know where I shall go to die. I am a little Job shrivelled up on my Swiss dunghill; and the difference between Job and me is that Job got well and ended up by being happy. The same thing happened to Tobias, lost like me in a Swiss canton; and the amusing part of the affair is that the Bible says his grandchildren buried him with rejoicing. [Wryly.] Apparently he left a good inheritance.

[Coughs.] Dr. Tronchin, I will send for Dr. Tronchin. But I must ask his pardon for giving him so much trouble over a corpse.

[Voltaire walks slowly to his desk to write a note to his doctor.]

VOLTAIRE

[Walking.] A friend asked me whether it is worse to be deaf or to have a weak digestion. I suspect a good digestion is well worth a pair of ears. But, for a long time, I have not dared to decide on trifles, much less on subjects so important.

[sitting down.] I confine myself to the belief that, if you have sunshine in your house, you will have bearable moments. That is all we can hope for at my age, or at any age.

[seated, Voltaire searches the top of his cluttered desk for a blank piece of paper.]

VOLTAIRE

In this great lottery prizes are rare. The greatest prize, continual happiness, has never been attained by anyone. [Pauses and looks up.] Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure they have one.

[He resumes searching.]

VOLTAIRE

God endowed his creation with a marvellous order, but he overlooked my desk.

[He continues to search through piles of papers]

VOLTAIRE

[slightly frustrated.]

Letters, letters! Everyone writes to me! [Glances up and smiles.] I am quite famous, you know. [Resumes looking for paper.] But don't compare a poor beggar like me with the messiah. I swear on my life that a virgin was not my mother.

[Voltaire accidentally finds an unopened letter.]

VOLTAIRE

[Holds up a letter.]

Here is a letter from a priest. Just what I need.

[He opens the letter, silently reads a few lines, and looks up.]

VOLTAIRE

[sarcastically.]

He prays for my salvation.

[He silently reads a few more lines and looks up.]

VOLTAIRE

Those black-robed vultures swarm around my decaying carcus. A priest who converts the great infidel would make quite a reputation for himself.

[He begins to read more of the letter silently, but stops as a question flashes in his mind.]

VOLTAIRE

Why would anyone take a vow of celibacy? Why not allow those wretched priests to marry? After a busy day of preaching, chanting, confessing, communicating, and baptizing, it would be pleasant to find a sweet, agreeable, and decent wife who would cheer them up in health, who would care for them in sickness, and who would bear them pretty children. I pity them, those who are deprived of a consolation so necessary to men. It is one of the superstitions of mankind to have imagined virginity to be a virtue.

[Reads aloud from letter.] "Monsieur Voltaire, beware! Do not imperil your eternal soul..." [Looks at audience.] Please, what do you understand by these words? What do you call your soul? What notion do you have of it?

Let's see first of all what you know and what you are sure of. You walk with your feet, you digest with your stomach, you feel with your whole body, and you think with your head. But we do not know what the soul is. No one has ever found it or ever will. If ever I find someone who can prove to me, by pure reason, the spirituality and immortality of the soul, I shall be eternally obliged to him.

[Voltaire silently reads a few more lines and looks up.]

VOLTAIRE

[Amused.]

The priest speaks of heaven. What do you imagine heaven is like? One of our greatest Italian teologians, Piazza, informs us that the elect will forever sing and play the guitar. St. Thomas Aquinas assures us that the smell of the glorified bodies will be perfect, and will not be tainted by perspiration. This question has been profoundly treated by many other doctors of divinity.

The resurrection of the dead, according to Saint Paul, will take place to the sound of the trumpet. There will have to be several trumpets, for thunder itself can hardly be heard more than seven or eight mile around. There is a quesion how many trumpets will be needed. The theologians haven't yet calculated the number, but they will

[Coughs.] Enough of this! I must write my note.

[Voltaire places the priest's letter to one side. He finds a piece of paper and begins to write. But he is still curious about the priest's letter. As he writes, he glances at it. Then he puts down his pen, picks up the priest's letter, leans back in his chair, and silently reads more of it.]

VOLTAIRE

[Agitated.]

This little man is so certain of everything!

[He continues to read silently, insulted at being lectured to by a nobody.]

VOLTAIRE

Charlatan! Only charlatans are so certain!

[He throws the letter on his desk and stands up, this time with more energy than before. He leans forward, placing both hands on his desk.]

VOLTAIRE

[intensely]

The mice living in a few little holes of an immense building do not know if the building is eternal, who is the architect, or why the architect built it. They try to preserve their lives, to people their holes, and to escape the destructive animals which pursue them. We are the mice; and the divine architect who built this universe has not yet, so far as I know, told his secret to any of us.

No one disputes over the essentials of religion, which is to do good. Men dispute over unintelligible dogmas. If religion were content to say: be just, there would not be an unbeliever on the face of the earth. But the priests say believe, and men do not believe at all.

In the midst of all the doubts which we have discussed for four thousand years in four thousand ways, the safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have nothing to fear from death. Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

ETC. ETC.

Ghs

[william.scherk]

Look at the work of UC Irvine cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman, PhD: http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ and http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/HoffmanPubs.html

Hoffman wrote a nice little brain-teaser at Edge.org titled 'A spoon is like a headache.'

A spoon is like a headache. This is a dangerous idea in sheep's clothing. It consumes decrepit ontology, preserves methodological naturalism, and inspires exploration for a new ontology, a vehicle sufficiently robust to sustain the next leg of our search for a theory of everything.

How could a spoon and a headache do all this? Suppose I have a headache, and I tell you about it. It is, say, a pounding headache that started at the back of the neck and migrated to encompass my forehead and eyes. You respond empathetically, recalling a similar headache you had, and suggest a couple remedies. We discuss our headaches and remedies a bit, then move on to other topics.

Of course no one but me can experience my headaches, and no one but you can experience yours. But this posed no obstacle to our meaningful conversation. You simply assumed that my headaches are relevantly similar to yours, and I assumed the same about your headaches. The fact that there is no "public headache," no single headache that we both experience, is simply no problem.

A spoon is like a headache. Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption is false. No one but me can experience my spoon, and no one but you can experience your spoon. But this is no problem. It is enough for me to assume that your spoon experience is relevantly similar to mine. For effective communication, no public spoon is necessary, just like no public headache is necessary. Is there a "real spoon," a mind-independent physical object that causes our spoon experiences and resembles our spoon experiences? This is not only unnecessary but unlikely. It is unlikely that the visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped to permit survival in a particular range of niches, should miraculously also happen to resemble the true nature of a mind-independent realm. Selective pressures for survival do not, except by accident, lead to truth.

One can have a kind of objectivity without requiring public objects. In special relativity, the measurements, and thus the experiences, of mass, length and time differ from observer to observer, depending on their relative velocities. But these differing experiences can be related by the Lorentz transformation. This is all the objectivity one can have, and all one needs to do science.

Once one abandons public physical objects, one must reformulate many current open problems in science. One example is the mind-brain relation. There are no public brains, only my brain experiences and your brain experiences. These brain experiences are just the simplified visual experiences of homo sapiens, shaped for survival in certain niches. The chances that our brain experiences resemble some mind-independent truth are remote at best, and those who would claim otherwise must surely explain the miracle. Failing a clever explanation of this miracle, there is no reason to believe brains cause anything, including minds. And here the wolf unzips the sheep skin, and darts out into the open. The danger becomes apparent the moment we switch from boons to sprains. Oh, pardon the spoonerism.

[Starbuckle]

Hoffman is quoted as saying: "Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption is false."

He's saying there are two spoons? I find babbling to be non-instructive.

[BaalChatzaf]

Hoffman is quoted as saying: "Suppose I hand you a spoon. It is common to assume that the spoon I experience during this transfer is numerically identical to the spoon you experience. But this assumption is false."

He's saying there are two spoons? I find babbling to be non-instructive.

Actually you rub some atoms off the spoon you received (because you handled it) so the spoon you pass off is not the spoon you received. It is very similar though.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Starbuckle]

JNS wrote: "Apparently you think all work on epistemology ended in the 1980's."

Huh?

[J Neil Schulman]

George, I will believe you had any experience you told me you had. And I'm more prepared, because of my own experiences, to explore alternate and unconventional explanations -- perhaps leading to revision of epistemological procedures, with consequences on one's ontological and cosmological conclusions -- than some others.

I am also willing to explore different and even unconventional "explanations," provided they actually explain something. A major problem with your theories is that they typically don't explain anything at all. To posit God as an explantion is meaningless, unless we understand something about the causal mechanisms by which God gets things done.

The same is true of many paranormal "explanations," including your account of the mysterious music. For example, where do the "dead" get their violins and other instruments? Do they use material instruments or incorpeal instruments? Can someone learn to play the violin after he "dies"? And how did your father assemble the other musicians needed for his orchestra? Did they need to rehearse? Did they read from sheet music?

Ghs

I have an answer for this last question, because I asked my dad when I visited him in the afterlife. He told me that musical staves printed on paper had been replaced by an electronic musical notation system. I also asked him where he was playing and he told me he was a violinist in the pit orchestra of a puppet show.

*sigh*

When my daughter was little I took her to acting auditions. Almost invariably, in the waiting room for these auditions, there was a TV set playing an animated movie to keep the kids occupied while waiting to be seen.

I bring this up because the transition, for me, found me in much the same situation. I "came to" sitting in what appeared to be a screening room only on the screen was something more like a TV program than a movie.

A young man looking under 20 came to get me. It took me a moment to recognize him because I'd never met him at this age. It was my father. He was 37 when I was born.

He took me out into a hallway and we started walking together. The first question I asked him was, "Is this heaven?" He said yes. It was at this moment that the "dream" became lucid for me. I realized I was asleep and dreaming because I knew my father was dead; and because I knew I was asleep and dreaming I also knew I was awake. All I'd seen so far was the screening room and a hallway, so I asked, "Can I see Heaven?" He said yes.

It was while we were walking I asked him about where he was working, and he told me about being a violinist in the orchestra for a puppet show. I don't precisely remember how the topic of musical notation came up, but he told me it was electronic, not on paper.

We came to a doorway, and when it opened I was hit by a wind of maybe 10 to 15 miles per hour, and maybe 90% F. It felt to me like it would have been too warm for me if it weren't for the breeze.

I looked out on a city that reminded me a little bit like New York at Central Park East, except that it was obviously not New York. There was some sort of park directly in front of me, but beyond that I could see high-rise towers. I started noticing that my sense of sight worked differently than I was used to; if I focused on something in the distance it was like I had a built-in zoom. Off in the distance I saw what looked like a San Francisco cable car, or a Boston trolley, except it was moving at the speed of a bullet train. I had the thought at that moment that design could be entirely esthetic or cosmetic because apparently engineering had progressed past the point of requiring streamlining. I panned to my right and I saw what looked like a superhighway with speeding cars on it, and I saw a collision, where one car smashed up another -- and the moment they separated each one morphed back into its original undamaged shape. I found that engineering impressive.

I started noticing that I was smelling a pleasant baking odor -- heavy in sugar and cinnamon. My dad walked me to what resembled a Cracker Barrel restaurant and store, with a bakery in it. We walked in and I saw a sixteen-year-old girl behind a wooden candy counter. She looked familiar but once again it took me a minute to recognize her. It was my grandmother, who had died in 1969 when I was sixteen and she was 70. I lifted up the wooden separator to get behind the counter, and when I felt her arms around me I was shocked into waking up, and I woke up sobbing, still feeling her hug.

When I told my mother about this later that morning, I started crying again. But my mother told me something that, if I'd known it, I'd completely forgotten: that when my grandmother was a little girl she'd worked in her father's candy store.

The rest of you may now make fun of me for regarding this as anything other than an ordinary dream. Fuck you.

Edited January 10, 2011 by J. Neil Schulman

[George H. Smith]

The rest of you may now make fun of me for regarding this as anything other than an ordinary dream. Fuck you.

I'm going to drop the critical stance for a while and give you my general perspective on all this.

I have lived an extraordinary life by most standards. Suffice it to say that I have long considered writing an autobiography titled Sex, Drugs, and Philosophy: In Pursuit of a Hedonistic Life. Although this would be my best book by far and would probably sell very well, it would almost certainly ruin my academic career. I suppose you might call it a blend of philosophy and (written) pornography. In any case it would be a brutally honest account of the pros and cons of "rational hedonism."

One thing I learned during decades of experimentation and intense introspection is how incredibly complex the human mind can be. I don't want to pontificate too much, but here would be my honest advice to you.

Forget about your "explanations" and focus on the experiences themselves. Assume that your subconscious, not God or dead people, is telling you something. I am not recommending some Freudian analysis of dreams and so forth, but something quite different (though I think Freud had some brilliant insights about the human condition.) Nor am I recommending some kind of self-administered therapy, though the procedures I hit upon nearly 30 years ago did revive many childhood memories. I went from recalling very little before age 5 or 6 to having several distinct memories before age 1 and many after that. I recall the evening in 1983 when I was able to remember the name of every teacher I had from kindergarten through high school, and was able to visualize what each of them looked like. This may not be unusual for some people, but it was extraordinary for me.

I know I have been vague, but I will go into more detail if anyone is interested.

Ghs

[J Neil Schulman]

The rest of you may now make fun of me for regarding this as anything other than an ordinary dream. Fuck you.

I'm going to drop the critical stance for a while and give you my general perspective on all this.

I have lived an extraordinary life by most standards. Suffice it to say that I have long considered writing an autobiography titled Sex, Drugs, and Philosophy: In Pursuit of a Hedonistic Life. Although this would be my best book by far and would probably sell very well, it would almost certainly ruin my academic career. I suppose you might call it a blend of philosophy and (written) pornography. In any case it would be a brutally honest account of the pros and cons of "rational hedonism."

One thing I learned during decades of experimentation and intense introspection is how incredibly complex the human mind can be. I don't want to pontificate too much, but here would be my honest advice to you.

Forget about your "explanations" and focus on the experiences themselves. Assume that your subconscious, not God or dead people, is telling you something. I am not recommending some Freudian analysis of dreams and so forth, but something quite different (though I think Freud had some brilliant insights about the human condition.) Nor am I recommending some kind of self-administered therapy, though the procedures I hit upon nearly 30 years ago did revive many childhood memories. I went from recalling very little before age 5 or 6 to having several distinct memories before age 1 and many after that. I recall the evening in 1983 when I was able to remember the name of every teacher I had from kindergarten through high school, and was able to visualize what each of them looked like. This may not be unusual for some people, but it was extraordinary for me.

I know I have been vague, but I will go into more detail if anyone is interested.

Ghs

George, since you've been candid with me, I'll be likewise candid.

I think you and I have extraordinary life experiences in common. You say not to interpret them but that strikes me as a form of blanking out reality.

I think you're as psychic as I am. I think you've had as many supernatural encounters as I've had. I think, given that we're both rationalists, experiences of things we considered impossible challenged us to the limits of our wits.

I think I dealt with the impossible by figuring out how it could be possible, then when the evidence piled up, accepted it.

I think you made a decision to rule psychic and supernatural explanations inadmissible in the court of your mind. Maybe being a science fiction writer helped me understand; writers like Heinlein and John Campbell specialized in weird alternative realities.

Maybe Clarke's Law helped: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I just considered a few corollaries to that law that anything that appears magical has a natural explanation we don't yet understand -- and that includes any phenomena we tag supernatural. If anything supernatural is real, it is subject to eventual discovery by reason -- and that includes "miraculous" or "divine" interventions, minds that continue thinking -- possibly in a body existing in another continua -- after we see the body die here, communications from "beyond" (hey, beyond used to be any farther than smoke signals), and so forth.

I regard the Sixth Sense as Imagination, and I'm serious when I say being able to image the unknown is a necessary tool of cognition.

I think the reason you've been taunting me is that I represent everything you decided was never going to be allowed into your philosophy.

So I think one of the world's most published atheists is a self-denying psychic.

Now feel free to go back to dumping on me. It won't bother me anymore.

Edited January 10, 2011 by J. Neil Schulman

[Starbuckle]

Suppose a socialist, Mr. Socialist X, were to visit OL and engage in debate in a thread entitled "Is Mr. Socialist X justified (logically) in believing that the state should control the means of production and that goods and services should be coercively extracted from each according to his supposed ability and distributed to each according to his supposed need as determined or ordained by central planners?"

Then suppose that this Mr. Socialist X could never come up with any actual evidence in favor of his own view or expose any major logical lacunae in the arguments of the pro-capitalist side. And suppose George H. Smith, after arguing reasonably for a while, got more and more annoyed with the perpetually displayed contempt for reason of the avowed proponent of "rational scientific socialism," and expressed that annoyance.

Would Mr. Socialist X have any grounds whatever for making such a statement as the following:

"I think the reason you've been taunting me is that I represent everything you decided was never going to be allowed into your [political] philosophy.

"So I think one of the world's most published [capitalist] is a self-denying [socialist]."

No. He would not have any grounds. It would just be a smear.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Starbuckle

[Starbuckle]

Interesting that Neil now adds John Campbell to the list of seers. Is this an implicit endorsement of the hogwash of dianetics?

[Starbuckle]

Neil writes: "I think you and I have extraordinary life experiences in common. You say not to interpret them but that strikes me as a form of blanking out reality."

George is suggesting that you don't interpret your experiences arbitrarily, with explanations that are non-explanations. George is suggesting that you investigate the experiences from the perspective of the nature of the subconscious.

George's exact words are: "Forget about your 'explanations' and focus on the experiences themselves. Assume that your subconscious, not God or dead people, is telling you something." He is obviously proposing that a different kind of explanation or intepretation is possible, one that actually comports with the nature of things, rather than "explaining" things with constructs that are far less credible, and for which there is far less evidence, than that which they supposedly explain. He put the word "explanations" in quotation marks because he doesn't regard them as genuine explanations. Quotation marks can have that kind of self-distancing and ironizing function.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Starbuckle

[Jerry Biggers]

Emphases added.

Now, I know Bach's work intimately, and the violin concerto my mom and I were hearing was not Bach. You can't mistake baroque era violin for the romantic-era violin concerto my mom and I were hearing

[ . . . ]

I said something like, "Look, we know what we heard and it couldn't be Bach.

[ . . . ]

My mom and I know what we heard, and we both heard the same thing: an unknown violin concerto in the style of a 19th century composer

[ . . . ]

Everyone else aside from my mom and me said they heard Bach.

Well, I am willing to add you to the body of thought that finds meaning in Bach, who finds Bach to contain all music, who finds Bach to be divine.

So, perhaps we should put a third explanation on the table for consideration.

Bach was both messager and message on that uncanny night. In other words, using the music of the spheres, Bach reached out from Heaven to announce a connection between the divine and the Schulmans. Using a violin concerto, for a few brief moments, Bach parted the membranes between universes, sent a bolt of pure awareness from the Universal Consciousness to you and your mother, and so showed the whole world that not only are musical miracles possible, but that the Schulmans are antenna to receive the Universal Bach Consciousness.

Isn't it possible, Neil, that Bach is god? that if only we tune our intenna, we can absorb the mystery that glorifies the multiple membranes?

I think that is is most plausible that the voices you heard and the supercognition you experienced is actually the eternal genius of Bach moving in the world of J Neil Schulman! In some ineffable way 'GodBach' is 'RiggenBach' and 'Bach' is Music and Music is Knowledge and Quantum Superposition is Bach and violin concertos are proof of Superstring Theory and John Edward and Uri Geller and all the mysteries of the world.

I get a chill down the spine just thinking of this . . .

In support of this most plausible explanation, I list a few testimonies of the Power of Superstring Bach:

Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.

- Friederick Chopin

To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervor, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

- Pablo Casals

And if we look at the works of JS Bach - a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity - on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered. And in his works we will search in vain for anything the least lacking in good taste.

- Claude Debussy

...the greatest Christian music in the world...if life had taken hope and faith from me, this single chorus would restore all.

- Felix Mendelssohn

Bach is the beginning and end of all music.

- Max Reger

I had no idea of the historical evolution of the civilized world's music and had not realized that all modern music owes everything to Bach.

- Niccolai Rimsky-Korsakov

Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder.

- Robert Schumann

...the most stupendous miracle in all music!.

- Richard Wagner

Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the most beautiful, Rossini the most brilliant, but Bach is the most comprehensive: he has said all there is to say. If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid.

- Charles Gounod

Study Bach. There you will find everything.

- Johannes Brahms

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach...

- Aaron Copland

If Bach is not in Heaven.....I am not going!

- William F. Buckley

Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure.

- Karl Barth

I do not honestly think there is the slightest possibility that [J Neil Schulman or I] could hear a Bach violin concerto and think it was written in the late 19th Century.

- Jeff Riggenbach

Arthur C. Clarke, in his novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, has the sole remaining astronaut, David Bowman, relieve the boredom of the long trip to Saturn (not Jupiter, as in the movie) by listening to music. He goes through a selection of tapes until he finally settles on the "abstract architecture of Bach occasionally ornamented with Mozart." (Clarke, 1968, p. 203). An interesting choice, given that Clarke has Bowman ultimately meet and become transformed by an unidentified extraterrestrial intelligence that possesses god-like powers.