[Royce]

Have you read any of his books Sci?  I have read one, but have not indulged more since.

[sciborg2]

Have you read any of his books Sci?  I have read one, but have not indulged more since.

They've been recommended to me but I've not gotten to them. I'll probably go through the evidence on his site and some point though it might be awhile.

[sciborg2]

More on Sheldrake's work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpudgs9ZTfg

The idea is interesting, and I'd be curious if he could carry out more experiments. Dismissing the idea out of hand seems to be nothing more than Mean Girls style antics. As Kaku said of Penrose's Orch-OR, "science isn't a popularity contest."

The only argument I could see is that some other, supposedly more important science, might not be done if money is given to Sheldrake. If this argument is coming from definitive materialists I can only laugh. Everything is meaningless, the world and our very selves are disenchanted, but nevertheless we must be true to the paradigm! 

As an aside, seemed to relate to two other things I read:

The Mathematical Forms being in this reality, as argued in "The Mathematical World".

Aristotelian realism stands in a difficult relationship with naturalism, the project of showing that all of the world and human knowledge can be explained in terms of physics, biology and neuroscience. If mathematical properties are realised in the physical world and capable of being perceived, then mathematics can seem no more inexplicable than colour perception, which surely can be explained in naturalist terms. On the other hand, Aristotelians agree with Platonists that the mathematical grasp of necessities is mysterious. What is necessary is true in all possible worlds, but how can perception see into other possible worlds? The scholastics, the Aristotelian Catholic philosophers of the Middle Ages, were so impressed with the mind’s grasp of necessary truths as to conclude that the intellect was immaterial and immortal.

Feser's conception of the soul as Form of the body, as described in his discussion about the problem of intentionality.

Now, for the Thomistic or hylemorphic dualist, the soul is to be understood, not as pure thought, but rather as the substantial form of the living human body. And qua form, it is not a complete substance in the first place, much less a material or quasi-material one. (Talk of the soul as an “immaterial substance” is thus for the Thomist at least misleading, though he does hold that the soul subsists beyond the death of the body as an incomplete substance.) Here too, though, talk of interrelated quasi-material parts, “causal pathways,” and the like is completely out of place. But for the Thomist, the Cartesian’s talk of inner “representations” is out of place too; as I have discussed elsewhere (e.g. here and here) the “representationalist” conception of the mind is an essentially modern one that the ancients and medievals generally would have rejected. As a consequence, the ancients and medievals would reject too the essentially modern way of framing the issue of intentionality that I have, for the sake of argument, been following up to now in this post.

[sciborg2]

Morphic Fields and the Implicate Order - A dialogue with David Bohm

"David Bohm was an eminent quantum physicist. As a young man he worked closely with Albert Einstein at Princeton University. With Yakir Aharonov he discovered the Aharonov-Bohm effect. He was later Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, London University, and was the author of several books, including Causality and Chance in Modern Physics 1 and Wholeness and the Implicate Order.2 He died in 1992. This dialogue was first published in ReVision Journal, and the editorial notes are by Renée Weber, the journal’s editor. "

[sciborg2]

Sheldrake interviewed by "The End of Science" author

At one point Sheldrake, alluding to my 1996 book The End of Science, said that his science begins where mine ends. When I asked him to elaborate he said, “We both agree that science is at present limited by assumptions that restrict enquiry, and we agree that there are major unsolved problems about consciousness, cosmology and other areas of science… I am proposing testable hypotheses that could take us forward and open up new frontiers of scientific enquiry.”

I remain a psi doubter; my doubt was reinforced by psychologist Susan Blackmore, a psi believer-turned-skeptic whom I interviewed for my 2003 book Rational Mysticism. But now and then I still doubt my doubt. In a post here two years ago, I point out that many brilliant scientists—from William James and Alan Turing to Freeman Dyson—have been open-minded about psi.

I conclude, “I’m a psi skeptic, because I think if psi was real, someone would surely have provided irrefutable proof of it by now. But how I wish that someone would find such proof!… The discovery of telepathy or telekinesis would blow centuries of accumulated scientific dogma sky high. What could be more thrilling!”

Sheldrake—I think even his most adamant critics will agree–is a fascinating scientific figure. I was thus delighted when he agreed to the following email interview.

I'm not sure why Blackmore is seen as such an authority - I recall her claiming the only choices were dualism and materialism at a conference where people were presenting on idealism & panpsychism. Made me think she had too much skin in the game when it came to holding up the establishment.