Michael Larkin
Member
Given that after death communication, in every way we've tried to measure it, is reality, how might we expect psychotherapy to change and adapt to incorporate in this new understanding (of family therapy)?
Is Dan's and Emily's work a step in the right direction, or might there be better and more effective ways of exploiting this territory?
First, I'm not sure I'd accept that after death communication is necessarily involved here. I mean, the idea that after death, we'll hang around and be available to get involved in things like family therapy seems questionable. If we go by NDE reports, then after death we make a transition to a spiritual mode of being--something ineffable and far removed from everyday existence.
I'm more in favour of the idea that there are "fields" associated with people who were once living that hang around and are still in some sense accessible. In a way, the perceptions by us of these fields could be allied to the perception of the processes of thought that appear to us as brains--hence no surprise in the correlation between brain processes (2nd person view, as in brain scans) and consciousness (1st person view, as in internal experience). Likewise, no surprise in the possible correlation of epigenetic markers with acquired behaviours. The markers aren't causing the acquired behaviours, but rather are how those behaviours appear to us at a certain level of detail, viz. what we are pleased to call the "molecular" level.
It's the question of causation. People tend to think in terms of physical objects (e.g. atoms) causing something else rather than being simply how correlations are perceived by us; they always go looking for some kind of mechanism based on the idea of physicalism. But an alternative view is that there's no such thing as causation; that's just an idea projected onto correlations. If there is causation, it lies beyond our view/understanding: it is simply the isness of cosmic consciousness, which is axiomatic, primal, and intrinsically inexplicable.
I'm not saying that the idea of causation isn't useful; but at some point, it always breaks down and leads to inconsistencies in our view of the universe. I think that family therapy may be thinking in terms of causation, and whilst that probably leads to useful results, at some point it may well reach its explanatory limits.
Is Dan's and Emily's work a step in the right direction, or might there be better and more effective ways of exploiting this territory?
First, I'm not sure I'd accept that after death communication is necessarily involved here. I mean, the idea that after death, we'll hang around and be available to get involved in things like family therapy seems questionable. If we go by NDE reports, then after death we make a transition to a spiritual mode of being--something ineffable and far removed from everyday existence.
I'm more in favour of the idea that there are "fields" associated with people who were once living that hang around and are still in some sense accessible. In a way, the perceptions by us of these fields could be allied to the perception of the processes of thought that appear to us as brains--hence no surprise in the correlation between brain processes (2nd person view, as in brain scans) and consciousness (1st person view, as in internal experience). Likewise, no surprise in the possible correlation of epigenetic markers with acquired behaviours. The markers aren't causing the acquired behaviours, but rather are how those behaviours appear to us at a certain level of detail, viz. what we are pleased to call the "molecular" level.
It's the question of causation. People tend to think in terms of physical objects (e.g. atoms) causing something else rather than being simply how correlations are perceived by us; they always go looking for some kind of mechanism based on the idea of physicalism. But an alternative view is that there's no such thing as causation; that's just an idea projected onto correlations. If there is causation, it lies beyond our view/understanding: it is simply the isness of cosmic consciousness, which is axiomatic, primal, and intrinsically inexplicable.
I'm not saying that the idea of causation isn't useful; but at some point, it always breaks down and leads to inconsistencies in our view of the universe. I think that family therapy may be thinking in terms of causation, and whilst that probably leads to useful results, at some point it may well reach its explanatory limits.
Last edited: