Kevin Pettit
As a former Physics Professor (from Carleton College), I certainly agree with you about
how misinformed most academics are about physics!
I believe that this even true of a good faction of physicists!
What I always try to recall is a quote from Richard Feynman that says something like this:
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.
(I forget the source on this one. ;( )
In case my story of rather incredible recovery interests you, I recommend that you purchase my book “Still Rambling Down Life’s Road… with a brain injury” which I, Kevin Pettit, wrote and self-published. This book is available from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble online.
I understand why many people have a negative reaction to “Die and Become!” It seems that most people who fear dying in order to become more haven’t considered fully what it means to become. Becoming implies changing which can be understood, not at a gigantic death of ALL patterns but, as a series of small partial deaths of patterns or habits leading to a more desirable state of being. Furthermore, such change can be understood as a repetition or fulfillment of a grander, more fundamental pattern of action. Surely, in the spring buds appear on fruit trees and flowers alike; but it is only through the death of the promise-filled and expectant buds that delicious fruits and beautiful flowers are grown!
Beautiful, and so optimistic! I’m not sure that I still have such optimism in me. 🙁
This poem is so beautiful, Christie!!! I wish I had this talent. Beautiful and deep!
There seems to be some trouble with inserting hyperlinks. Here they are:
BBC Science Focus: https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/what-cells-in-the-human-body-live-the-longest
Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-bodies-replace-billions-of-cells-every-day/
Zhenbao,
I’ll have to contemplate some of your questions and I hope to get a chance to read the paper you referenced. I don’t know enough about Taoism, Confucianism, or the concept of Qi that I can really reply to you with any intelligence. Instead, I explain to you how my VERY NEAR death experience and 25 years of working on my recovery from a very severe Traumatic Brain Injury (or TBI) have informed my understanding of our immortality.In the fall of 1998, I was injured in an automobile accident that put me into the most severe coma in which one can be. The doctors wanted to take me off life support! During the eleven days I was in a coma and for several months following that I really could no almost nothing. I was little more than a collection of cells with VERY little mental activity. But following my TBI, I’ve had one of the most amazing recoveries ever; but this experience changed my character somewhat (which is the reason my wife at the time told me that she wanted a divorce 2 years after our accident).
During that time I asked myself “What make me the person that I am?” Of course, the vast collection of physical cells, and the pattern of their arrangement in our body, is much of what makes me me. However, I also decided that a very important individuating aspects of your existence are your efforts, or the motivated motions of your cells. I believe that we, our family, and interactions growing up help us form our characters and formulate intentions and efforts. So, we really are not
-
solely
responsible for who we become or what we are motivated to try and accomplish. Part of who we are is influenced by our families, friends, and experiences.
While I was trying so hard at recovery, I didn’t make the greatest accomplishment. It took me several months to learn how to walk again! Also, I thought, there are people who will never walk for various reasons over which they have no control. However, I thought, we have control over our attitudes and attempted action. I chose to spend a few hours each day for a few months before learning how to walk again.
“What does this have to do with immortality?”, you might ask. Well, when I was still an inpatient recovering in two different hospitals for a total of 6 months, a former professor of mine, Paul Wellstone, who later become an important Senator from Minnesota, he was killed in a rather suspicious airplane accident. However, his work in Minnesota was so impactful, he changed the course of the state and the attitudes of many people across the country. I believe that because of his efforts and struggles in Minnesota, the spirit of Paul Wellstone lives on in the character of many of the people of Minnesota.
In summary, my belief is that part of what makes us ourselves in our intentions and efforts, which we share with others with whom we have contact, and which lives on after we die! Our intentions and efforts, I believe, are even more a part of the individual we are than many of our cells, all of which require replacement periodically. I’m not sure if my ideas have any relation to Qi, however, I think that some of them might! Thanks for your interesting forum entries!
Dennis,
I guess that I haven’t carefully thought about the precise distinction between “awareness” and “consciousness”. When I wrote my post, I guess I was thinking of “self-consciousness”, though I only wrote “consciousness”. Perhaps, “awareness” and “consciousness” are the same thing. I’ll have to consider any possible difference further… It seems that “awareness” and “consciousness” are qualities (or actions) that draw more on Whitehead’s “mental pole” than lower occasions of experience. I haven’t thought about it enough that I’m unsure if “awareness” and “consciousness” are required as being part of every actual occasion in the same way that I believe a “mental pole” is. I think that I’d would feel comfortable if “awareness” and “consciousness” were limited to higher order, organic societies of experience.I believe that it is clear that both “self-awareness” and “self-consciousness” are qualities limited to living entities (probably only higher order mammals)! Having been a wrestler in high school and college, I am confident that there were many times while I was wrestling that I wasn’t self-conscious or self-aware. All my actions weren’t really decisions as much as they were the response of my “muscle memory”, which I had developed after LOTS and LOTS of practice. It was my experience when wrestling, particularly when on the mat and not standing, my choices of what move to make were governed not so much by my sight, or my coach and teammates yelling, rather it was the “feel” and position of my opponents body next to mine and the balance and pressures that I “felt” that governed my moves that make in response to the moves of my opponent. While humans might always be conscious and aware (at least when awake); however, everyone does not always maintain self-awareness! (Also, there are times that I question if certain politician have ever been self-aware!)
Dennis,
I am unsure of how to reply to you directly, but maybe this will work. When you set up the famous double-slit experiment, you start with a cathode gun which creates (“boils off” or releases electrons) which can gain a specific amount of energy by accelerating them through electrical potential difference set up between the cathode and a metal film with a hole in the center. Thus, you can create a cathode ray gun which shoots electrons at a particular rate and a particular energy, and the experimenter can control both the rate with which electrons are created in the cathode gun and their energy by limiting the electric current used to create the free electrons (which measures the rate at which electrons are released by the gun) and the voltage between the gun and the metal plate at which the electrons are accelerated. By adjusting the current used to free the electrons from the cathode gun and by adjusting the potential energy through with they are accelerated, one can make a weak enough beam of electrons which are shot out of the gun at a particular energy or speed that one can determine that it is very, very unlikely for any two electrons to traverse the distance to the double-slits and then to the detecting film such that electron-electron interactions are essentially impossible.Concerning the uniqueness or individuality of electrons I can say this. Currently, the Standard Model of Physics classifies electrons as subatomic particles of the genus lepton which are believed to be fundamental, truly elementary particles. While there are zillions of electrons in our environment, we’ve never found any electrons which didn’t have a very particular mass and also a very particular electric charge. The electron, like all truly elementary particles, has no substructure. They’re as simple as you can get in nature! We know this because we can determine their mass and electric charge by sending a beam of electrons of a particular energy through a magnetic field and the path of all the electrons (the entire beam) is bent by a particular and exact amount. By looking at how these beams of electrons are bent by a magnetic field, one can determine their charge-to-mass ratio which is exactly the same for every electron ever seen. A good presentation of the electron is available on this Wikipedia webpage.
Your feelings resonate with me, Dennis, as a former physics professor I have a very hard time attributing any mentality to electrons!!!
However, when physicists aim a WEAK beam of electrons and a thin metal foil which has two thin lines (stripes) cut or etched into it allowing the electrons to pass through to a detecting film on the other side, the resulting film when developed displays an pattern typical of the interference of waves emanating from BOTH slits simultaneously. However, the experiment can be done with a beam of electrons that is SO weak that each electron MUST pass through the slit BY ITSELF, which means that no two electrons pass through the slits simultaneously causing the interference observed. Each electron (or electron wave packet) must “select” or “decide” where it is, not when passing through the slits, but when it interacts with the detecting film. Thus, for electrons which pass from emitter to detecting film, the electron wave packet is collapsed upon detection, not when they pass through the two narrow slits in the metal foil. After accumulating a large number of these electrons on the film, the pattern of detected electrons suggest that they pass through BOTH of the slits in the metal foil!
Clearly, electrons have not “consciousness” (which is an emergent quality of societies of societies of societies of actual occasions evidenced by living persons); however, I think that ANW’s contention is this: ANY TIME POSSIBILITY IS AFFORDED A CONCREASING OBJECT, THE MENTAL POLE OF THE CONCRESING OBJECT MUST BE INVOKED TO ACCESS THE POTENTIALITIES WHICH ARE MADE AVAILABLE TO IT. Thus, though electron wave packet makes no conscious choice onto which area of the detecting film they should collapse, when afforded the variety of potential regions to be detected, the mental pole (however slight and even random) must be invoked upon detection. (At least this is, I think, how ANW would assess the situation!)
For me, I can see how a rudimentary form of mentality must be invoked by non-conscious occasion of experience while this accessing this “mental pole” is done without consciousness.
Oh, I read a clarification of the distinction (for ANW) between “consciousness” which is an emergent quality of complex nexūs of occasions of experience and “mentality” which extends all the way down to the simplest, most elemental occasions of experience which always have physical AND mental poles. See Hosinski, p. 93, “Whitehead is affirming that in order to understand the development of such mentality as we can observe in the higher organisms, we must hypothesize that the primitive roots from which such mentality develops are present in inorganic occasions.”
I believe that the conflicting stances on how far down consciousness extends relates to the definition of the word “consciousness”. ANW ‘bent’, or had different understandings of, the meanings of several important words. (Indeed, in P&R the index listing for the various references to “consciousness” extends the length of a standard pen!)
I think that the quotation of ANW concerning consciousness (a “late emergent phase in the evolution of very complex ‘living’ organisms involving incredibly layered synchronizations of experience”) strongly demonstrates his feeling that consciousness is an emergent quality or experience. However, it seems to me that one could consider “consciousness” as extending all the way down if one allows for an increasing limitation on the meaning of the word. Because actual occasions feel the force of objective fact by prehending these various inputs, while also facing the various possibilities that is afforded the occasion, this seems to me similar or related to the more common understanding of “consciousness”. So, I can see how one could extend “consciousness” all the way down; however, this seems to me reasonable only if one stays aware of the reduction of the meaning of the word “consciousness”!
Might this translation avoid the confusion of “experience” with “consciousness”?
Dennis,
I think that it is possible that people (including myself) confuse “consciousness” with “self-consciousness”. I think that will all living entities have consciousness (ants decide whether to move to the left or right when marching, though they often follow their companions); however, I believe that self-consciousness might be limited to hominids (orangutans, gorillas, and humans). Yet, stories of troops of elephants routinely marking the location of their dead comrades prompts me to consider the sweep of self-conscious animals even wider! (Of course, then we have whales singing to each other in ways which aren’t mimicry and are shown to evolve as the songs travel between pods.)I’ve also heard (though I can’t recall the source) that the vast majority of even only your brain’s many activities are not conscious! Something like only a few, or perhaps some several percent, of the activation of your neuron result in thoughts of which you are aware. I know that functional MRI studies of sleeping and awakened brains show a largely similar amount of activity!
OOPS!!!! I’m sorry that I posted the above queries or comments without reading further on page 33 and on… Sorry!!!