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Another (huge) resource is a book, available online, that includes sections not only by Kelly but also by Pinker, Turing, Dennett, Searle, Chalmers, and even C. S. Lewis. The title of the book is The Mind’s Eye (I), Readings on Consciousness: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious.
You can download the whole book here. I am looking forward to reading the section by C. S. Lewis entitled “The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism”.

Thanks, Mark, for that reference. I do follow the work of Utts, Radin, Mossbridge and all, but hadn’t seen this paper. Almost all Psi effects can be explained (reduced) to the “predictive anticipatory activity” analyzed in this paper; my guess is that this “activity” is fundamental to Psi in general.

Thanks, Matt, Mark and Bill for a spirited and interesting discussion. The big issue here seems to be–When we’re philosophizing (e.g. “actual occasion”), how can we bring into the same sentence the occasions of science (e.g.) a quantum-mechanical event observation.

[John Dick]

Hi Mark,
What is your definition of strong emergence? My understanding is that it refers to emergent phenomena that cannot be derived or simulated. That would mean that if it comes from a computer, it’s not strongly emergent.
Hence my attempt to define an effectively strong emergent process, not really strong since it could be reverse engineered, but effectively strong because the emergent reality cannot be found in advance among all the chaos.
John

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by John Dick.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by John Dick.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by John Dick.

Hi Mark,
I know this is a late response, but I needed to attend properly to your thoughts.
First, the easy one — the WMD fabrication is not about the military, it’s about George W., who was determined to revenge 9/11, an awful man, a terrible business.
I’m from a Mennonite background, so my journey to being ok with the military has been pretty long; it was a book “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” that did it. Subsequently i threw over my pacifism as being absolutely irresponsible, keeping my conscience lily white while benefiting from actions of others who are willing to look at the hard problems in the world.
As American citizens, we have vested huge responsibility with the military (e.g.) not to blow up Russia when there are odd radar returns from the North. They do this every hour of every day. They don’t do this because they’ve decided to, they do it on account of global politics implemented by people we vote for.
Presently, Theoretical Physics refuses to take UAP seriously because:
a) It can’t be! As physicist Sean Carroll explains it, even though uncertainties in the Standard Model are very real, no matter which way they are resolved will have zero impact on our lives.
and b) Theoretical Physics today is as self-satisfied as it was prior to 1900 and the advent of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Society needs to demand that they do better.
I see the situation this way: Theoretical Physics depends on Experimental Physics to motivate its attentions; Experimental Physics has no expertise to study things that happen randomly and not often, but which may be very important. Theoretical Physics thinks it is off the hook on this, which they need to be because they have no idea how to explain UAP.
BTW, in case you missed it, I’m pretty sure UAP are real.
John

Got it. John

[John Dick]

Also relating to chapter 5 — “Whitehead(‘s) ,,, account of process …. could be described as affirming the life-death-rebirth cycle itself as the central cosmic mystery.” p.73
While life came into existence about 4 billion years ago, sex and death did not appear on the scene until about 1 billion years ago. It may be that intelligent life would not appear without sex and death, but still, it’s an anthropocentric call.
Interestingly, Eva Jablonka makes the case that first consciousness (conscious of the world, not of ourselves) came on the scene several times between 350 million and 220 million years ago, possibly initiating the Cambrian explosion.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by John Dick.

Hi Matt,
Many Worlds might be proven true but can’t be proven false. . .
I agree that MW can’t be disproven on its face, but people are working on Copenhagen-like alternatives that they believe might be proven right, thus settling the matter.
John

Hi Matt,
I believe that you’re wrong about “many worlds” quantum theory, and not just because I’m presently hard at work trying to explain UAP in terms of interactions between those many worlds (although that is surely why I’m writing this). You’ve crossed a line here that it seems you shouldn’t — Everettian quantum mechanics is legitimate physics that has stood the test of many decades of challenges, even though we all know it’s crazy. But, a new mathematical formalism has been created which is (like the Copenhagen or Bohmian interpretations) consistent with experiment. How is that not “Physics doing its job”? Maybe there are different “words about the formalism” that could be consistent with Whitehead?
My own belief is that Everettian theory is mostly correct, and that it will be demonstrated to be so when interactions between ours and other “worlds” can be verified.
John

As a dyed-in-the-wool Everettian, I hold that what’s real (what exists) is the wave function of the universe. Consequent classical worlds are derivable from that wave function; the existence of one or another of these worlds being contingent, not ontological.
Has anyone analyzed the Everettian view of quantum mechanics from a Whiteheadian point of view? Maybe it’s ruled out!
See contemporary exposition of the Everettian Interpretation at a video conference: On the shoulders of Everett
Most of the big names are there–I recommend Vaidman, Zurek, Wallace, Byrne

Kevin, did you know a Don Hofer at IBM? I believe he was doing similar work. A college classmate of mine, he retired early to plant a vineyard
in Paso Robles.