Upcoming Live stream: Jean-François Gariépy The Open Space

I hope you will create a thread where we can discuss this interview before it happens. I have wondered for a long time if his viewpoint can be usefully slotted in to everything we discuss.

Maybe my first question would be to ask whether he considers his approach is close to admitting Idealism. Also, I wonder if he has tried meditation.

David
This would be a great discussion, so I throw my vote in as well - I am assuming that in this context, we are forfeiting space-time for a proposed alternative with superior explanatory potential? I am trying to define Idealism for myself now, because I really fail to understand it - and my working two thought experiments to try and maintain clarity around what it is... ;;/?
 
This would be a great discussion, so I throw my vote in as well - I am assuming that in this context, we are forfeiting space-time for a proposed alternative with superior explanatory potential?
He has a theory called "Observer Mechanics", that is based entirely on interactions between conscious entities. It is said he can derive the phenomena of Special Relativity from this theory.

This is the informal account of his ideas. The formal book, which I tried to read as a free PDF some years back, became impenetrably mathematically part way through.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Again...swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1570744781&sr=8-1

David
 
Last edited:
it would probably be more accurate to say that bruce fenton believes he has found evidence of one of many ET visitations that impacted our genetic path.
Yeah that's my bias. But it's just a story anyway. A fun one!
I hope you will create a thread where we can discuss this interview before it happens. I have wondered for a long time if his viewpoint can be usefully slotted in to everything we discuss.

Maybe my first question would be to ask whether he considers his approach is close to admitting Idealism. Also, I wonder if he has tried meditation.

David
My only question right now is can it do anything different -- new predictions. Or when will it be testable.
 
Yeah that's my bias. But it's just a story anyway. A fun one!

My only question right now is can it do anything different -- new predictions. Or when will it be testable.
Well he starts from an argument that Natural Selection (NS) can't give us a perceptual system that can faithfully report reality, because NS only tunes something to live long enough to produce plenty of offspring.

I think that argument would be very powerful, if only I still believed in evolution by natural selection!

As it is, I think it is extremely interesting that RM+NS seems to be falling apart in several different ways right now. We have the traditional argument about irreducible complexity, then Behe's argument, which seems to work regardless of how many organisms have contributed to life on earth, and now this (actually Hoffman has plugged his idea for some time).

David
 
I hope you will create a thread where we can discuss this interview before it happens. I have wondered for a long time if his viewpoint can be usefully slotted in to everything we discuss.

Maybe my first question would be to ask whether he considers his approach is close to admitting Idealism. Also, I wonder if he has tried meditation.

David
Hi David... Yes I have created the thread
 
Well he starts from an argument that Natural Selection (NS) can't give us a perceptual system that can faithfully report reality, because NS only tunes something to live long enough to produce plenty of offspring.

I think that argument would be very powerful, if only I still believed in evolution by natural selection!

As it is, I think it is extremely interesting that RM+NS seems to be falling apart in several different ways right now. We have the traditional argument about irreducible complexity, then Behe's argument, which seems to work regardless of how many organisms have contributed to life on earth, and now this (actually Hoffman has plugged his idea for some time).

David
He seems to be forcing us to choose between physicalism and evolution. He has stated he chooses physicalism, which my 'spidey sense' tells me is actually naturalism. So no deity, but deism.

How do you distinguish between evolution (with a direction, like supposedly what occurred with humanity emerging from an unknown ancestor) and intention? If consciousness is primary or properly basic (in behe culture god-speak) all we still have is the attribution of intent.

(i actually remember writing a paper in college for my evo. psych. class on this! lol -- the answer is we know so very little). I couldn't believe how ignorant we are -- and remain when it comes to the question of human origins.

It's still a dead database. Until you know. Upon death perhaps? The soul phone, if it works, ought to provide clarity on life after death, but why expect "they" know the back story? My guess is that we die and remain confused as to the purpose. Isn't world religion a testament to their confusion?
 
He seems to be forcing us to choose between physicalism and evolution. He has stated he chooses physicalism, which my 'spidey sense' tells me is actually naturalism. So no deity, but deism.

How do you distinguish between evolution (with a direction, like supposedly what occurred with humanity emerging from an unknown ancestor) and intention? If consciousness is primary or properly basic (in behe culture god-speak) all we still have is the attribution of intent.

(i actually remember writing a paper in college for my evo. psych. class on this! lol -- the answer is we know so very little). I couldn't believe how ignorant we are -- and remain when it comes to the question of human origins.

It's still a dead database. Until you know. Upon death perhaps? The soul phone, if it works, ought to provide clarity on life after death, but why expect "they" know the back story? My guess is that we die and remain confused as to the purpose. Isn't world religion a testament to their confusion?

I am not sure I understand what you mean about a choice between physicalism and evolution. Evolution seems to be a innate impulse that works on all levels - so is it an either or option? I don't see it that way.

I agree, post mortem existence offers nothing about our origin backstory. There are claims, but they are vague in any case. And even sensible sources seem to have no interest in enlightening us. What we can know, I think, is that what we have been told and what is accepted as the standard story isn't right at all. Its good story if what you want is a comforting fairy tale.

There is no reason why death should confer enlightenment. I think we remain as 'confused' as we are now.

As to world religion being a testimony to confusion, let's be careful that there are multiple discourses which do not agree. The Abrahamic tradition seems to be more disposed to confusion via beliefs and traditions when you compare it to the alternatives. And even that tradition has a division between mysticism and theology/dogma.
 
I'd like to point out something I spent a great deal of time talking about here some years ago regarding the concept of a "meat robot"

So lets play Devils advocate and say OK we are meat robots. Or perhaps more accurately (only from this perspective) a cybernetic machine. So what does this robot consist of, machine parts, matter, energy and what else? logic gates, decision nodes or switches arranged in such a way as to produce a desired result. We would have software, for the bio robot it is the genome.

Do you see the non physical, non material component here? It is software. Software is a language, a semiotic system of signs and symbols.

The only way to transfer information in physical systems is by use of signs, signs are physical tokens that are representation of something other than themselves. We have a physical token, We have the thing the token represents and we have the rules or meaning that combines these two things. This is a semiotic triad. All pieces must exist simultaneously.

Language, codes, rules, laws are not physical things they are formal, concepts if you like. So here in this system of information transfer is something quite profound. There are no physical laws what so ever connecting a symbol to the thing it represents, this is established by a mind and always by a mind. It must be there in the very conception of the system. So the most crucial aspect of this cybernetic machine is the software, the information that is guiding to functionality. And yet it is not a property of any fundamental force of physics, it is not governed by natural laws, it is in fact non physical, abstract and conceptual. Meaning is assigned, syntax and formalism also not physical. These things are mental.

So how does a materialist explain the fact that being a meat robot requires something non physical and not defined by the laws of physics?
Well you can't.

If a system is bound by physical law it is constrained to the limits of those laws. It is precisely this gap between the physical tokens and the assigned meaning that allows for information to be input into the system. It is precisely this gap that allows evolution to happen. However it happens.

Materialists cannot even explain the ordinary let alone the extraordinary, these are human conceptions, there is nothing ordinary in this realm, in the eyes of a child everything is extraordinary. It is, we are taught mediocrity and what is normal and ordinary. Learn to look as a child, this is the truth.
 
I am not sure I understand what you mean about a choice between physicalism and evolution. Evolution seems to be a innate impulse that works on all levels - so is it an either or option? I don't see it that way.

I agree, post mortem existence offers nothing about our origin backstory. There are claims, but they are vague in any case. And even sensible sources seem to have no interest in enlightening us. What we can know, I think, is that what we have been told and what is accepted as the standard story isn't right at all. Its good story if what you want is a comforting fairy tale.

There is no reason why death should confer enlightenment. I think we remain as 'confused' as we are now.

As to world religion being a testimony to confusion, let's be careful that there are multiple discourses which do not agree. The Abrahamic tradition seems to be more disposed to confusion via beliefs and traditions when you compare it to the alternatives. And even that tradition has a division between mysticism and theology/dogma.

It has to do with how he tests our perception. Clearly many physical theories work but natural selection doesn't promote true perceptions is the gist of it. Ok, in fact he believes our perceptions are always false. And he wrote a mathematical proof on this hypothesis with a coauthor.

It's easy to see the differences and disagreements in religion. Perhaps I should look for ideas that mutually support each other instead.

My guess is that the real events of our origin and history are too complicated to be conveyed in our language. But, despite that belief, many an NDE experiencer states the purpose rather succinctly (clearly culturally bound) or that the knowledge was given to him or her but is now missing. The light asked one NDE'r "did you get what you wanted" or another will be offered "another life as a babe to serve <it / the one>".

Phrases like "we are all one" imply to me the singularity (the technological kind) may have already occurred. My current guess is if their is an afterlife than its an ancestor simulation /emulation. It's a copy, or if i knew it was, then that fact would make it more likely we are in one.

Right now we cannot simulate a cell.
 
It has to do with how he tests our perception. Clearly many physical theories work but natural selection doesn't promote true perceptions is the gist of it. Ok, in fact he believes our perceptions are always false. And he wrote a mathematical proof on this hypothesis with a coauthor.

Yeah, natural selection is a difficult theory to test. What is the 'Nature' that does the 'selecting'? Using the language of agency is never good when you hypothesise the absence of all agency. I am not sure I am with the idea that 'our perceptions are always false'. I think we can say they are 'not true', but that is not the same thing.
 
Back
Top