Paul Mawdsley

It's funny, Michael. The exact same excerpt, along with a couple of others of NB's, jumped to mind when I was writing my responses to you about Sheldrake. I remember discussing this briefly with Roger a few years ago but was not yet clear in my thinking about it. In the current thread I have been taking the stand that there is one common "stuff" underlying all that exists and that all complex energy patterns, including matter and consciousness, are emergent from this stuff. This is in the spirit of what NB wrote about. Michael, you and I disagree on what is the nature of this basic "stuff." I say this stuff is the very well known and measurable EM field. You are saying it is this hard to pin down morphic field. I am saying complex patterns, including matter, life and consciousness, emerge from simpler patterns in the EM field evolving through reciprocal whole-to-part causation. You seem to be saying there is a field where complex patterns, such as consciousness or morphogenetic fields, can exist independent of matter and guide the formation of matter. Our disagreement is fundamentally in the field of causality and this is where I challenge your view in the spirit of shared exploration, not as an attack on your way of seeing things. The morphic field, in my mind, becomes a pseudo-explanation for consciousness existing separate to matter when we assume it having an existence separate to known and measured fields. When we see it as forming and maintaining complex energy patterns without an underlying causal dynamic, we are stepping into the world of gods and ghosts. This strikes me as metaphysics built from consciousness first, with morphic fields being the hidden variable used to account for it. Paul

So funny! I have made some big changes in my life the last few years. I've moved people who suck my energy out to the periphery and those who feed my energy to the centre. One thread that connects all the important women in my life is a love for Corrie Street. And they seem to instantly like each other when they discover this in common. Don't understand it but I have a definite fondness for Corrie girls.

Paul, You mean something like I Love Lucy? Now that would be some causality for ya'. Michael Naah... came to Canada a little after that. More like Gilligan's Island. Although, as an 8 year old in the early 70s in England, life stopped for Match of the Day on Saturdays and Star Trek on Wednesdays.

One assumes you are a neutral with conflicting loyalties, as Mawdsley is the most English sounding name ever. Nailed me...lol. Born in England and raised in Canada with the influence of American media and determined to be the primary force shaping my own insides.

Careful Michael. You might just find yourself a Brazilian cultured American defending an Englishman fending off a bunch of Canucks. ;-)

I tend to give respect to the person...this can be kept and grown or lost. Respect for authority has to be earned...starting with being a decent person.

If you just take out "evolutionary" you are left with your naked bromide. All complicated life has this "need." --Brant A question occurs: is it evolution that gives rise to the need for connection or the need for connection that gives shape to evolution? Does your question have any seeming gravitas? --Brant Brant, Yesterday was a busy day for me. My girlfriend and I hosted a get together that included both my parents and her's, my brother and sister, 5 kids and 2 dogs. I was busy on a number of levels. Doing the stereotypical guy thing, I was in charge of the barbecue and the music. I was monitoring the kids to make sure things were good. I dealt with some tears when my daughter's friend smashed her iPhone screen. I mingled and chatted and played. I checked with my girlfriend intermittently to make sure her stress levels were doing good (I have noticed juggling mothers, mothers-in-law and food prep can be stressful). And I got to be with the people I care about most in the world, participating in the interactions and witnessing the social dynamics. I was seeing a whole lot of connecting going on. It was a good day. I also took time to keep up on the posts that were coming in on the two threads I am participating in here on OL. When I asked the above question, it came from a state of flow in me. It didn't come from a great deal of focused thought...at least not in that moment. But it flowed from a place of a lot of previous thought about evolution theory and was meant as an attempt to pull back the covers a little on something that bugs me about standard neo-Darwinian theory. Standard theory grew in a context of local, linear, mechanistic causal modeling. This modeling produces theories where the action of the parts are conceived as shaping the whole but the whole cannot be seen as reciprocating causally and affecting the action of the parts. Epigenetics seems to be opening a door to the need for different causal thinking and modeling in evolution theory just as quantum theory should be opening the same door if causal discrimination wasn't playing such a stifling political role. Our thinking and modeling in evolution theory has been so myopic that we tend to see existing traits through the lens of a random mutation/natural selection engine only. So "the need for connection" must be the result of random mutation and natural selection, right? My sense of causality says there is more. First of all, the need for connection can be seen as an emergent property built into the fabric of life itself, in the same way that I see matter, gravitational fields and quantum fields as an emergent property of EM fields or the forming of new order can be an emergent property of a chaotic system. It can be seen as a type of "self-actualization process" applied to life itself, as a driving force in evolution. Secondly, if we start with a view of reciprocal causation between whole systems and the parts of systems, we have a reason to look for ways the "need for connection" (seen as an emergent property of life itself) could have shaped evolution. I guess I'm saying that, despite the fact that my question didn't come from a place of serious deliberation in the moment, and despite the fact that my focus was mostly engaged elsewhere, my question certainly had gravitas, Brant. I don't play shallow with ideas. ;-) Paul

If you just take out "evolutionary" you are left with your naked bromide. All complicated life has this "need." --Brant A question occurs: is it evolution that gives rise to the need for connection or the need for connection that gives shape to evolution?

Paul, Just to play the devil's advocate here, I have a question. To start with, if you sectioned off a chunk of space, then removed all matter and energy from it, would the "space field" still exist? Or would it go out of existence? Michael, I have no problem playing with the devil. Think I dated her once...lol. In an ideal lab you would be able to remove all the matter from a "chunk of space." However, my understanding tells me you would not be able to remove the energy and leave the field. You can remove a farmers crops and you still have a field of soil. Remove the soil and you won't be calling it a farmer's field anymore. Energy does not exist separate to the EM field and the EM field does not exist separate to the energy it contains. They are different aspects of the same thing. Not following 100% but yes, they would behave as they did before. Yes, there would be an energy field from which matter can emerge and which matter can shape into more complex forms of field/currents. This does not follow. Firstly, I never said any field depends on matter to exist. I said, "Complex patterns in the field exist and are maintained only in the presence of the matter maintaining their form." It's the "complex patterns" that don't exist and are not maintained outside of the presence of matter. The energy field is more primary than matter. Matter is an emergent property of the EM field in my view. I am saying that there is no evidence that the kind of complex patterns Sheldrake is talking about can exist in the absence of the matter that maintains them in the EM field, in the same way that magnets, of some material form, are needed to maintain magnetic fields at all scales. Show me a magnetic field in the absence of a magnet and I will consider thinking about morphic fields existing in the absence of the matter that maintains them, as Sheldrake is suggesting with his concept of morphic resonance. Space is not a field. It is the conceptual nothingness that frames what we put into it. We can measure an EM field. One day I believe it will be shown that both gravitational and quantum fields are emergent properties of the EM field that come into being from the interplay between matter and the EM field as matter emerges. I see gravitational and quantum fields as the result of a causally reciprocal interplay between the parts (matter) and the whole (field). These complex fields emerge as matter emerges. No matter, no complex fields. E=mc2 Didn't say matter fundamentally forms the field. I'm not describing a dichotomy, false or otherwise. If you would rather start with dualism, that's up to you. I don't like where dualism takes us. Em field is everpresent. Matter is not. Combine this with Einstein's equation and you have EM field is more fundamental than matter. It's not and assumption. It's not faith. It is a theory born from following the evidence and making sense of things. From human beings to bacteria, from superclusters to stars, from complex molecules to subatomic particles, there is a sense of the universe being shaped by evolutionary forces from the simple to the more complex. Sheldrake himself talks about nested hierarchies (a concept I am interested in pursuing further) that also suggests an evolution from the simple to the complex as a pattern of the universe. Reverse engineer this and we get back to a few or one. It makes more sense to see matter as a knot in the EM field than to postulate dualism, in my mind. I actually see both as being grounded in something more fundamental and simpler, whose simple individual actions contribute en mass to all we observe. I still have trouble seeing a farmers field without the soil to give it the properties of a farmers field. The field needs to be seen from the inside-out as well as the outside-in.

Michael, My own theories on causality are a lot further along than I write about. I can visualize non-linear, non-local causation in physical systems using the theory of causality I have developed to shape my modelling. I can see how to make intuitive sense of special and general relativity. I can see, to a large extent, inside how a gravitational field and a quantum field can be understood as emerging from an electromagnetic field. I can see how a morphic field can emerge from the EM field and can be produced and maintained in the presence of matter. Shaldrake is claiming that a complex morphic field can be maintained in the absence of any matter sustaining the pattern, and then shape matter in the future. I don't buy this. I am seeing through my causal lens and sensing that Sheldrake's concept of morphic resonance breaks what I see as a fundamental law of the universe: complex patterns in the field exist and are maintained only in the presence of matter maintaining their form. Rand/N. Branden's formulation of causality: entity-to-action causation-- what a thing is determines what it does. "Disembodied action": I have borrowed from N.Branden (I believe). I've been using it for so long in my own thinking I'm not sure. It is the idea of an action without a thing that acts. It makes no sense. I agree. That's my point. That's the problem with action at a distance without something acting. Causality requires that we connect the dots so there are no actions (like morphic resonance) without a thing that acts. If I don't accept a separate morphic field, then I must be able to see how the EM field can account for morphic resonance. If morphic resonance breaks the laws of fields (no complex fields/currents without the presence of matter) and breaks the law of causality (no actions without some thing that acts), then I need big evidence to keep my interest. "Unextended entity": Monty Python referred to Henri Bergson's quote saying, "There is no point of contact between the extended and the unextended," In reference to the dualist view of mind and body. I drew from this that some people believe in unextended entities (entities without extension in time and/or space) like ghosts and gods. I decided this did not fit my experience of the world so my principle is: there are no such things as unextended entities. This is built into my metaphysical morphic field and excludes non-physical entities from my models of existence. If morphic resonance can't find existence in physical fields, I have no place for it in non-physical fields. Otherwise, Michael, I agree with you. Let Sheldrake continue his experiments and stir up some pressure to step outside of the established box. He is still pointing to some interesting ideas and observations in other parts of his work. I feel the same about Bohm's work. His attempts to produce a causal theory of QM and his views of generating positive dialogue through a more dialectical approach have had a huge influence on me despite the fact that I can't follow him down the implicate/explicate order rabbit hole. Paul

Selective empathy is a primary tool of narcissists and is what distinguishes them from sociopaths. The narcissist is driven by a lack of separateness and lives in a space of selective empathy, allowing in only the vision of others who he judges as seeing himself positively. He develops elaborate tools for manipulating other people's perspectives to see him positively and cuts them out, moves on, or expels them, when these tools stop working. The narcissist lives in a space of empathy with a void where a sense of separate self should be, finding a twisted sense of self-value through other people's positive view of him and a twisted sense of competency through being able to manipulate others to feed his needs. The narcissist has empathy without seeing intrinsic value in others. The sociopath has no empathy, period. His vision comes purely from his separateness. Others have value only insomuch as they feed his needs and his amusement. The sociopath can value people without having empathy but has no sense of their intrinsic value. I believe we need empathy to truly have a sense of people's intrinsic self and intrisic value. I don't know enough about Rand's private life to talk about her capacity for empathy there. Personally, I don't doubt her capacity for it. From my readings of Nathaniel's and Barbara's books, and from things I have learned on OL, I do think she had a powerful lens inside how others saw things, even if not how others felt things. I would say she had an incredibly evolved vision and an under-evolved emotional self. This comes through in her own writings. Her empathy too was evolved in the area of seeing inside other people's vision but was under-evolved seeing inside their feelings. Basically, you can't see in others what you can't see in yourself and vice versa. These things grow together or not at all. Rand showed empathy of vision before judgement but put judgement before empathy of feeling. This made her healthy in the world shaped by objective vision and unhealthy and narcissistically oriented in the realm of emotional/social vision. This is why she was able to create an incredibly heroic philosophical vision while having a devastating emotional/social world filled with pain. Emotional empathy before judgement operates through layers of openness and vulnerability. As Shrek said, we are like an onion. We take others in and share something of ourselves one layer at a time. Some don't get past the outer layers. For others, each person opens and shares a little more as the trust grows and the relationship deepens. If one stops sharing or one shares too much, balance is broken and it's a sign of something broken in the flow. The deepening of trust, openness and vulnerability stop at this point. Our deepest friendships continue to explore ever deeper areas of trust, openness and vulnerability creating a space of mutual safety, understanding and authenticity. I think this is what Aristotle talked about but Rand never knew. There is no power imbalance in this space between two people. Power imbalance is what someone with deep emotional hurt needs to feel safe. I think this is what Rand needed to feel safe. She needed to feel in power and in control to feel safe socially. The idea of coming from a place of mutual trust, openness and vulnerability is just too anxiety provoking for a lot of people. But it is the path to connection and social happiness. And, the truth is, connection and social happiness give us the foundation we need to make the most of our individual pursuits in a complete life. It's not either-or.

Like your social angle here. We keep ourselves real by maintaining our connection to peers and testing our theories by peer review. It's an important means of maintaining objectivity. It doesn't mean you have to agree with the group. God knows I frequently don't. But objectivity on the social plane requires that we include, rather than exclude, contrary views. And we must be prepared to openly question our own motives, processes and conclusions in the face of contrary perspectives. I wonder, though, just how conducive his larger community's attitude is to staying included with contrary views. It's like writing on OL. There are some threads where a sense of safety to be more open and vulnerable is created, where someone might openly question their own motives, processes and conclusions. Other threads create a need for a sense of defensiveness where no such vulnerability or openness is prudent. Or compare OL to other Objectivist sites that are full of crisis, conflict and "Objectivist Rage" waiting to boil over. I assume they haven't changed much since I last checked them out.

Spent a lot of time in and out of hospital today (family member in for day surgery) and watched the video whenever I could get signal on my phone. I say keep on looking Michael. Life is an adventure to be explored, played with and experimented with. We each have our own unique path, being pulled by our own morphic field, all looking for the truth. Along the way we share our stories and experiences and learn to see things from different angles. I enjoy your angle and find it illuminating, so keep it coming. I will gladly look at the things you point to, and will be interested in seeing how you see it, but will not forget my vision. I see the value in Sheldrake's vision and see limitations. My metaphysical morphic field does not allow for unextended entities or disembodied actions...no gods nor ghosts. Exploring the universe has taught me there is no evidence of gods and ghosts except in people's projections of a sense of duality and separateness of our consciousness to the physical world. Sheldrake gives me the sense of going into a place of gods and ghosts with his morphic resonance. That's where I draw the line. I talked about my limits but would also like to talk more about the doors his work opens while staying this side of the physical/non-physical causality line. His view of morphic resonance breaks my view of causality, which I am otherwise confident can account for all kinds of unexplained phenomena. Show me, in the physical universe, just one example of complex fields existing without being tied to matter in order to maintain their complexity. This is where his and Bohm's theories lose me. This is where a pre-existing belief in the separateness of consciousness and the desire for supernatural connectedness twists their pursuit of the truth. Show me an example of consciousness existing separate to a physical body or of communication between beings separate to physical processes. IMO, there is no valid precedence for believing in this type of reality. Vision that goes beyond the dots we discover in, connect from and test with experience leads us to fantasy, at best or delusion, at worst. My issues with Sheldrake and Bohm come from my sense of reality and my view of causality. I have the same issues with more orthodox modern physics. There are many gods and ghosts in our stories that explain the universe. Ask yourself: what is the nature of energy? Conveniently, it's a question that science can't answer and philosophy is too crippled to even realize is a valid question. In the meantime, we intuitively think of energy as the ghostly stuff that is transferred between things when they collide, thus causing equal and opposite reactions. We know the math works but has anyone asked: Just how does this process really work? Going beyond measurements and mathematics, try to picture what happens within and between two billiard balls to cause them to act the way they do when they collide? What you picture is the transfer of ghostly stuff we call "energy." This is the basis of our physical understanding of how the universe works. The big question: Is there another way to visualize this that does not resort to gods or ghosts? This is where we will find one step to a more evolved view of causality.

Roark didn't think. Roark was not an architect--in fact he never even existed. --Brant if you mix up your fiction and non-fiction categories you pretty much crash and burn Must say I was having issues here too. Causally, fictional characters give insights into the real person who created them through reverse psychological engineering but they have no existence outside of the existence given to them by their creator. I find it very strange to talk about them as though they had existence separate to their author and to reverse engineer the thoughts, feelings and motives of fictional characters. Didn't Rand also have the tendency to speak of her fictional characters as though they were alive?

What is the story behind Old Nokomis?

William, Our posts crossed but it seems we are saying very similar things from very distinct angles. We must be right...lol. Paul PS: Or maybe our morphic fields were resonating.

Michael, I read that Sheldrake's work was supported by David Bohm. Not surprising. They both seem to operate from the same metaphysical morphic field...intuitive sense of reality that unconsciously shapes their theoretical pursuits and constructs. Despite finding resonance with elements of each of their theories, I find myself also drawing a line at the more mystical parts: Sheldrake's morphic resonance and Bohm's implicate/explicate order. My own metaphysical morphic field won't allow it without some serious evidence. Regardless, truly valuable food for thought. I don't have a problem with the suggestion of morphic or morphogenetic fields. The principle fits with my own thinking. I do have an issue with the idea of a complexly patterned field being maintained in the absence of matter, which is what is suggested by Sheldrake with his idea of morphic resonance and a kind of collective unconscious. Actually, despite my great respect for Jung's work, I have this same nagging issue. My sense of reality (or "my little finger") says we will eventually find one unifying field that encompasses all others. The concept of force free plasma filaments from plasma physics, that can attract ions to electromagnetic fields of force, could point the direction towards a causally reciprocal relationship between electromagnetic fields/currents, on the one hand, and complex molecules, like amino acids, on the other. As such, the emergence of life can be seen as the result of the development of a stable synergy between plasma fields/currents and matter. Morphogenetic fields could then be seen as a natural development from electromagnetic fields/currents shaped and maintained by stable molecules. This maintains a unity of fields which definitely works for me. Makes sense to my metaphysical vision. But again, take away the matter that maintains the fields and I don't see a way for the electromagnetic patterns to be maintained and passed along. I need big evidence for that big leap. Paul

Thanks Michael. I remember reading about Sheldrake before. I think you put me onto his work about four years ago. I had forgotten all about it. I like looking at those that step outside of the regular box. Interesting food for thought. Thanks for reminding me. Paul

This is one way to define event. Try turning your mind from running like a linear, classical computer to running like a quantum computer. What other possible definitions can you allow to open up inside you, and hold in superposition with the first, before deciding which definition works best? Try to let go of the words that lock your thinking and think from a place of experience, images and feelings. This frees you from the confinement of rigid definitions to think outside of the box that your culture has handed to you. Personally, I use words for understanding what others see and for organizing, expressing and communicating what I come to see. I find words too confining for my own internal processing. Learning in and thinking in words forces linear thinking.

Aaah...working towards understanding and truth from the inside-out and from the outside-in. :-)

The most influential interpretation of quantum mechanics denies this. At the foundations of reality, actions are determined by superpositions and probabilities, not one thing leading to another, according to the Copenhagen interpretation. In fact, the theories that maintain one thing leads to another, hidden variable theories, have probably been the least influential, precisely because they rest on a view of causality that cannot accommodate the reciprocal whole-to-part dynamics that can account for non-local effects and intrinsically generated action that can account for the collapse of the wave function. They are also seen as a throwback to classical ether-type theories that were more philosophically based and which completely lost validity with the Michelson-Morley experiment and special relativity. Schrodinger's thought experiment, which holds his dead/alive cat in superposition with equal probability, illustrates the difficulties with interpreting quantum events and the mathematics that describe them. All interpretations assume an outside-in perspective. To suggest the wave function collapses on observation or measurement is to see the system as being acted upon from the outside by an observer...a version of "To be is to be perceived." Many worlds view tries to bypass this issue by positing multiple universes corresponding to each superposition of each quantum event...an ugly theory that sneaks a supernatural reality into physics. Hidden variable theories need to hold onto a causality that cannot accommodate important elements of quantum events. None hold much philosophical water. That's okay, all we need to do is invalidate philosophy and we can choose whichever theory who's deficits we find easiest to ignore. What if we looked, in the spirit of philosophy instead of physics, from the inside-out for a moment? What if there was energy for action intrinsic to an entity? Now we can say the wave function collapses deterministically based on energy in the wave/particle itself. Reality independent of the observer is restored. It is only by fixating on the outside-in approach, intrinsic to our scientific lens itself, that the problem of reality being dependent on observation arises. There is no need to posit theories about observers collapsing wave functions and certainly no need to open up supernatural dimensions for multiple universes. Now we need to look at hidden variable possibilities to explain underlying realities, but first, we need to further develop our theory of causality to account for reciprocal whole-to-part causation (this can provide a causal mechanism for non-locality) and intrinsic energy (which can account for the collapse of the wave function independent of an observer). Causality is not necessarily dead. It just needs to evolve. A full theory of causality will do much more than make sense of quantum mechanics. It will make possible a physical description of the inside dynamics of special and general relativity. It will show how special relativity, general relativity and quantum theory are related. It will account for the emergence of life and consciousness and will from inanimate matter. It will make sense of unconscious processing and bring ourselves and our lives so much more within our conscious control, leading to more fulfilling lives. Well, that's my vision anyway.

A dialectical perspective would call for a synthesis now, where science and philosophy fruitfully complement each other. There is no need for an 'either-or' dichtomoy. Either-or oppositions often hinder a process of creative integration. I couldn't agree more. We get to choose our lens. The lens that sees oppositions as paradoxes in a creative dialectical process is very different from the lens that sees oppositions as dichotomy in a competitive either-or process. And it produces very different relationships between camps and results in the worldviews created. The lens we choose can shape our reality. Why has the idea of "causality" become a philosophical concept turning out to be of such 'resilience', of such 'hardiness', that we find it so difficult to free our minds from it, despite being confronted with certain phenomena of reality where causal thinking doesn't seem to work? I think it is rooted in our condition as biological beings living in a 'mesoscopic' world, where cause-effect thinking is necessary for our survival. It was, for example, important to develop the ability to make causal connections between natural events. Seeking the 'cause' of a phenomenon can also be biologically hardwired in us, like for example our instant alertness on hearing a strange noise that we cannot attach to a source. A strange noise can mean "danger", hence our alertness. For the same reason we will instantly get alert at smelling smoke coming from an unidentified smoke. Without causal thinking, we would not be able to survive. Imo it is this human psychobiological condition which makes it so hard for us to think of the cosmos as (possibly) having ('deep down', so to speak), "no cause" and "no purpose". This explains the religious longing for a "deeper sense", and "higher purpose" transcending our short-lived existence. The philosophical question I'm grappling with: how to deal with our propensity for causal thinking (a thinking that no doubt can act as a life-saver in so many concrete situations) when learning about phenomena (like e. g. quantum entanglement) where our causal thinking seems to be more a mental barrier than a tool of cognition? I get where you are coming from with this question but see it differently. We have a philosophical concept of causality, an intuitive vision of causality, learned programming built around causality and even genetic programming built around causality. This presents a very strong case for causality, as a concept, representing something real in existence, something that has shaped our very beings across our lifetimes and across evolutionary timelines. On the other hand, we have a very specific concept of causality, which has shaped philosophical and scientific thought for centuries, which doesn't work for a specific class of phenomena. Some might suggest it is only quantum phenomena that causality falls short in explaining. I would suggest the class of phenomena that our most established concept of causality, action-to-action/outside-in causation, cannot account for is phenomena that appear to have actions initiated from the reciprocal relationship between the whole and the part of a system and those that appear to have actions initiated from the inside of an entity moving outward, which includes quantum phenomena, and the emergence of life, consciousness and will from inanimate matter. Causality is a principle for building models of the world and a general theory about underlying relationships that shape events. It emerges when we abstract patterns from across specific events into a general theory. As a principle for building models of reality, our action-to-action/outside-in concept of causality has carried us a long way, guiding science and philosophy well in almost all areas. It guided the early models of the atom, even Bohr's, and led to important refinements in order to accommodate Planck's quanta. Now we find our model of causality, acting as a principle guiding our models of reality, can't make sense of quanta and the phenomena that arise from them. My question is: why do we say causality is an illusion instead of simply revising our theory of causality? Why do we see our concept of causality as a never to be questioned given? It's a theory. Every other theory we have gets revised when it meets with phenomena it cannot accommodate. Why is it not the same for causality? Following Rand and N. Branden's lead, I've played with pulling the concept of causality apart and redesigning it for over 20 years now. Why doesn't anyone else seem to do this? What makes us hold so rigidly onto such an inadequate theory that has been shown to not be able to make sense of quantum events and the emergence of life, consciousness and will? I think the answer is that causality is not just a theory. Our concept of causality defines a paradigm. It defines the lens through which we view existence. Redefining causality means redefining our unconscious processing of our world. There's the catch. Redefining our unconscious processing of the world requires making sense of our unconscious processes so we can take control of them and shape them, and this requires a concept of causality that can make sense of and model our unconscious processes. It's a catch 22. How do we define a new model of causality if we can't make sense of and shape our unconscious processes and how do we make sense of and shape our unconscious processes if we don't yet have an adequate model of causality? The answer is to stay open to the flow of information, allow the dots to find their own alignment, explore, experiment and play with ideas, and learn to invent many wheels anew. The information is all their. We just need to be open to seeing it.

For me, empathy comes first, before judgement. It acts as a lens that brings in information and feeds understanding before judgments are made. In fact, I would say putting judgement before empathy is the cause of a lot of disconnection and problems in our culture, and is a major factor in what Barbara once called "Objectivist Rage." In my life, when there is a sense of a safe space and connection, I experience an opening and deepening of mutual empathy, creating a shared space. When I experience a sense of danger and coldness, or when I experience perception manipulation, power games or attempts at codependent ploys, I experience a closing and withdrawing of empathy. This is a protective, though not defensive, mechanism that has taken shape over my lifetime at the level of conditioning rather than thinking. While it works at the level of conditioning rather than thinking, I do see it and understand it conceptually so I have the power to shape my own conditioning, to shape my own unconscious flow around empathy. It works for me. . What a fine insight. For some reason it makes me think of Aristotle's description of friendship as a high value. Thanks for making the connection to Aristotle. I hadn't thought about it. It does seem to come from the same place. A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend was texting me questions, one after another, about plans we were making. At the end of the questions, as a joke, she texted, "What is the meaning of life?" I guess she figured I had answers for everything else flying off my my cuff, why not try a biggie? My answer was simple: "connection." This would not have been my answer a few years ago. I would have said something about integrity, self-actualization and productiveness. What I realize today, living in a world where people are so disconnected from self and others, is that connection to self and to others is what gives everything else value, meaning and direction. So "connection" is the meaning of life, to me. I have found we cannot fully know self without a deep connection to others or know others without a deep connection to self. Insights into each feed our insights into the other in another dynamic of reciprocal causation. Healthy empathy plays a huge role in this process of ever growing insight into self and others. It is also a powerful motivator for integrity, self-actualization and productivity. This seems to fit very well with Aristotle's view.

For me, empathy comes first, before judgement. It acts as a lens that brings in information and feeds understanding before judgments are made. In fact, I would say putting judgement before empathy is the cause of a lot of disconnection and problems in our culture, and is a major factor in what Barbara once called "Objectivist Rage." In my life, when there is a sense of a safe space and connection, I experience an opening and deepening of mutual empathy, creating a shared space. When I experience a sense of danger and coldness, or when I experience perception manipulation, power games or attempts at codependent ploys, I experience a closing and withdrawing of empathy. This is a protective, though not defensive, mechanism that has taken shape over my lifetime at the level of conditioning rather than thinking. While it works at the level of conditioning rather than thinking, I do see it and understand it conceptually so I have the power to shape my own conditioning, to shape my own unconscious flow around empathy. It works for me. Another point I feel the need to make, it seems many people think you need to choose between, say, empathic processing or more objective processing. I don't find this. There is more to our capacities than our ability to focus. We have the ability to do both at once if we turn the process over to our more holistic, unconscious flow. It doesn't have the same limitations as conscious processing. Unconscious processing can be trained to process both empathically and objectively at the same time, alerting consciousness to certain patterns that need more focused attention. Objectivism does a great job of encouraging focused objective processing but completely devalues our more holistic, unconscious flow processes, I assume, because they are seen as out of our conscious control. They are only out of our conscious control insomuch as we don't understand them and know how to shape their flow. I tend to see conscious and unconscious processes as operating very differently, each with their own strengths. Our biggest problem understanding unconscious processing is that we can't observe it directly and it operates on different causal principles from those we have established with things we can observe directly. Anything we cannot observe directly is like a black box. We can only see inside it by observing its outward effects and reverse engineering its underlying structure and causation. My own explorations of unconscious processes suggest they operate by the same causal principles as quantum events. Since the current level of causal understanding in our culture is not able to model reciprocal whole-to-part causation, we are at a loss seeing inside the black box of quantum events or unconscious processes, and we are not able to reverse engineer our vision inside these processes. The first step to seeing inside these things is to re-engineer our model of causation. Aristotle, Rand and N. Branden point the direction of another model but their entity-to-action causation isn't complete, is set to compete with the standard action-to-action causation that is well established in our culture and still doesn't account for reciprocal whole-to-part causation. Synthesis and development is needed. Only then can we start reverse engineering our vision inside quantum events and unconscious processing.

This points to the importance of developing another part of the self...one I am definitely still working on personally. We need a well developed executive-self that sees and manages all our parts, all our ways of seeing and being and feeling and doing, from a place of self-understanding, wholeness and broad vision, for the betterment of the whole self and all our needs. The job of the executive-self is to find dialectical synthesis of all our parts into one self without creating a state of self-judging, owning and disowning within. The added benefit of this approach is to maintain the flow of information about our universe through all our lenses without blinding ourselves to important parts of self and our world.