From: Ron (rjon@vzavenue.net)
Date: July 19, 2005 3:49:11 PM EDT
To: postaum2005@sriaurobindocenter>la.com
Subject: Re: Question about challenging the materialist view of the evolution of consciousness

Hi Michael (& Don),

Re your suggestion that we identify the metaphysical positions of our postings, here's my attempt with the researchers I mentioned in my previous posting: Jefferey Satinover, and Stuart Hameroff & Sir Roger Penrose.

1) Jefferey Satinover. He doesn't specically name his metaphysics, but I'd guess that it's close to a genuine scientic agnosticism, tinged by his personal belief in human responsibility. Here are some quotes from his book, "The Quantum Brain," pp. 222-223:

> "It has become widely believed that 'man is a machine,' especially among intellectuals. The consequences lie all about us. That doesn't mean it's not so. But because the consequences seem to me so bad, I indeed hope it isn't so. Quantum theory may once again make reasonable an insistence that we are free; it offers no guidance whatsoever as how to use that freedom."

> "What the quantum foundation of life tells me is this: The future has not yet been written. In very large part, with dramatically opposite possibilities lying as yet untapped, we will make it what it will be. In a strange and eerily perfect way, we are condensers of destiny, distilling the maximum possible amount of the universe's intrinsic freedom into an incredibly tiny package [the human brain]."

> I don't know whose freedom it really is, if anyone's, but I am convinced it is there and is woven into every ber  every tubule I suppose I should say  of my being, even if one calls it 'chance.' (So it behooves me to do the best I can to learn whatever rules of conduct are most likely to yield the results I long for."

> "I don't know for sure whether there are such things as 'prophets' in the biblical sense. But if there are, it seems to me that they, too, don't know the future so much as the possibilities that lie before us. 'The Messiah will come in an age that is either entirely good or entirely evil,' says an ancient Jewish legend from long before the days of chaos theory and bifurcation. Perhaps he hasn't yet made up his mind either. "

2) Stuart Hameroff (SH) describes his metaphysical position as "pan-protopsychist":

> "I'm a panprotopsychist  whatever gives rise to consciousness is implicit and inherent and exists everywhere in the universe. It's an irreducible, fundamental feature of the universe like spin or charge."

> "I'm not an idealist, like Bishop Berkeley or Hindu approaches, in which consciousness is all there is. Nor am I a Copenhagenist in which consciousness causes [quantum] collapse (and chooses reality from a number of possibilities). But somewhere in between. Consciousness exists on the edge between the quantum and classical worlds."

> "I think more like a quantum Buddhist, in that there is a universal proto-conscious mind which we access, and can influence us. But it actually exists at the funda-mental level of the universe, at the Planck scale."

www.dailygrail.com/node/842 - For a more detailed treatment of pan-protopsychism, see David Chalmers' paper "Materialism and the Metaphysics of Modality,"  [ http://consc.net/papers/modality.html ]

3) I haven't found anyplace where Roger Penrose specically names his metaphysics, but I would guess that's it's also "pan-protopsychist," judging by the following comments; e.g.:

> "That's the beauty of Roger's objective reduction. It's a bridge between the Planck scale and our everyday world, described by one simple equation?" the uncertainty principle." [and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem] [SH]

> [Roger says that] "Our brains, and our microtubules, make the connection. If our conscious experience is a compilation of fundamental qualia, then we're like a painter with a palette. All the individual colors are on the palette, and the artist takes a little of this, a little of that, and gets a Mona Lisa. So the colors are like the patterns of fundamental spacetime geometry from which our brain processes select particular sets for each conscious moment. And if qualia are fundamental and exist at the Planck scale, then why not Platonic values like truth and beauty, good and evil." [SH]

> "According to Penrose, Godel's theorem implies that not only mathematical understanding but also human musical, artistic, and aesthetic creativity and appreciation come from contact with the Platonic world of reality.

Penrose claims that this level is responsible for noncomputational, nondeterministic effects in human understanding, a claim that elicits strong criticism from many computer scientists."
[Kunio Yasue, http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Yasue.html]

4) Given my amateur understanding of all this, I would guess that my metaphysical position is similar to theirs. "Panprotopsychism" implies a belief in a "protoconscious" set of "Platonic" qualities that exist everywhere and everywhen, at the fundamental, non-reducible level of spacetime itself, the Planck scale. These qualities include basic mathematical truths and human-type values like goodness, truth, beauty, and delight. [Sound familiar?]

This position is distinct from Democritus's claim that empty space is an absolute void, and is consistent with Aristotle's perspective that empty space consists of some kind of background pattern or plenum. It seems to be similar to (but surely not the same as) the 4-dimensional spacetime curvature posited by Einstein in his general theory of relativity. The difference from Einstein's work is the inclusion of the basic values (philosophers call them "qualia") mentioned above, which in turn imply the possibility that the universe is somehow "alive." This is reminiscent of Alfred North Whitehead's approach which saw the universe as a process of events, some of which have a mental quality ("throbs, or occasions of experience"). There are an increasing number of modern quantum physicists who share this perspective; e.g. Shimon Malin, Abner Shimony, Mari Jibu, Gordon Globus, Kudio Yasue and of course Roger Penrose.

5) This sounds somewhat theistic, but I think it differs by leaving open the question whether the posited fundamental plenum implies theistic views of the existence of a self-conscious Deity or God. Until I have the kinds of personal experiences that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother describe, I also would prefer to leave this question open. But I don't think my position is agnostic either, perhaps it's more in the direction of a "wannabe" theist, hoping it's true but not yet being evolved enough in my practice of the Yoga to know for sure.

In a later posting, I'll address the topic of how all this relates to the evolution of life and the possibilities of new levels of human evolution.

(Note: I'm not a professional philosopher, so for sure take my above comments with, as Richard suggests, "a grain of salt.")

Namaste,

~ ron