recovering-some-spiritual-concepts
Table of Contents
- Recovering Spirits
- Recovering The Soul
- Recovering Reincarnation
- Recovering Ghosts (spirits of the dead)
- Recovering God
- Recovering Manifestion
- Recovering The Law of Attraction
- Recovering The Wisdom of Nature
- Recovering Karma
- Recovering The Holy?
- Recovering Heaven?
- Recovering Magic?
- Recovering Transcendence?
* WORK IN PROGRESS *
Dragons did not turn out to be real.
Dragons are not real, but dinosaurs were. And whoever looked at a fossil and said 'giant lizard-like thing' was actually talking about a real thing in nature and deserves credit.
…
I want to say we have the same situation with concepts like 'spirits', 'the soul'.
- Memetics and information are the red-strand of this 'real view' on spiritual concepts.
- Information is the doorway to emergent phenomena.
- Form: Arrangement – Information is about the interplay of things.
- Information is
substrate independent| copyable [Marletto, Deutsch] - Braitenberg:
- A book is not the letters, a book is the story.
- An organism is not the atoms but the principle of organisation.
- Lebensprinzip is the knowledge stored in the genes, the spirit of a species [Braitenberg].
- Knowledge: Information with causal power. software entities.
- genes [biology], memes [Dawkins], tremes [Blackmore] are software entities, capabable of recruiting matter (top down causation) to further their interests.
Recovering Spirits
- Joscha Bach: Cyberanimism
Joscha Bach says says the brain is being populated by spirits. He re-claims the term spirit. It is an animating principle, a piece of software capable of recruiting matter to establish it's existence in reality.
A replicator is a piece of information with the power to replicate itself, information with causal power [Marletto, Deutsch].
Recovering The Soul
- Anil Seth [Being You]: The soul is the 'breath', the fundamental aliveness we share with the rest of the tree of life
- D. Hofstadter [Strange Loop]: soul, personhood, memetics
Recovering Reincarnation
Ideas:
#1:
- brain circuits are either designed labeled lines, or high dimensional and learned - Baldwin effect.
- to the extend that a brian circuit is genetically designed, it actually is a kind of software module coming directly from our ancestors.
#2:
Why are 2 clocks in sync? Reasons:
- Purely random.
- They are build the same, and react to the environment in the same way.
- Somebody consciously put them in sync.
Why do 2 brains across time and space think similar thoughts or have similar personality? The nature of the explanation is of the kinds 1 and 2.
Telephathy
Less restricted version of reincarnation. How hard is it to think the same thoughts?
Soft problem: With some kind of signal structure intact (body language, eye contact etc.).
Hard problem: With zero signal structure intact. Is the same as reincarnation – E.g. think the thoughts of Julius Cesar.
The degree to which my situation is your situation matters.
Alice looks up at the sky and observes a cloud. "It looks like an X…" In another place, or another time, Bob looks up at the sky and observes the same cloud.
Level 1 Bob: "It looks like an X…".
Level 2 Bob: "It could look like X,Y or Z. I assume most people see an X.".
Bob can decide to say X, for example because the culture in which he lives prefers X. Culture is an example of a large scaled shared situation.
On a larger scale, Bob can decide to say X, because it is more aesthetically pleasing. Bob might be using an internal sense of aesthetics coming from the genes – and the shared situation is on the scale of being homo sapiens.
Telephathy 2
"I just thought about you and now you call me".
"I just thought about X and now you mention X."
Ideas:
- 1. We have genetically designed circuits, including ones about having models of the psyche/ behaviour of other persons.
- 2. Life moves on in rhythms: 90 minute hormone cycles, daily, monthly.
- 3. Spending time with another person: You are exposed to similiar concepts, situations, impressions etc.
- Putting those 3 things together
Recovering Ghosts (spirits of the dead)
- Dan Dennett
- 'Cached predictions': The brain's model of a person continues generating predictions after death.
- You have a mental submodule that says: "Bob would say X", "Bob would do Y".
- Hofstadter: A person is smeared out on multiple brains. After death, only the core of the person dies. The 'halo', that is present in the brains surrounding the dead person lives on.
Recovering God
- Joscha Bach: 'Gods are memes'.
- I am not 100% about what the actual claim is
Recovering Manifestion
- Manifestion is not how physics works.
- But 'manifestion' is maybe how mentality works.
- The prediction people: Lisa Feldman Barrett, Andy Clark
- free energy principle people.
Recovering The Law of Attraction
- top-down processes
Recovering The Wisdom of Nature
Recovering Karma
- Leibniz: "Everything already carries it's punishement / reward with itself."