1) I missed my bus for work this morning. I walked out of the door just in time to see that 6:35 bus go by. Then I walked over to the university campus to catch the next bus that was going to the middle school at which I work. It took me exactly 16 minutes to walk there, and that bus leaves at 7:08. So, here's the question: Is it worth it to get to sleep in an extra 17 minutes if that means that I have to walk 16 minutes to catch my bus? Or should I wake up early in order to avoid taking that walk?
2) I voted for my union for the first time today! I'm excited about getting involved with my union; I am decidedly pro-union. Of course, that's kind of a moot point here because I am not actually knowledgeable about any of the pertinent issues that we're faced with right now. So I just voted for the guy who came up to me and said, "Hey Joel, vote for me!" And I did. After all, isn't that just the essence of politics?
3) I had the craziest dream last week. I was taking all of my middle school students on a field trip, but our bus got lost in the forest and crashed. We then got picked up by this guy, who then took us to his lodge in the woods and tried to poison us all. We managed to get away, and then ended up wandering the woods until we met another guy who had a campfire and let us sleep there. All of the students fell asleep, and just he and I were awake. He then turned into an eagle and, um, went "into" me, let's say he possessed me, and said that, "They dwell within us." I'm usually not very big on the meaning of dreams ... one of my favorite Wittgenstein anecdotes is about how queer he thought it was that Freud identified sexual desires as such a primal cause for our dreams, and yet Freud never actually discusses sex dreams, which are incredibly common... but this one seemed kind of important. I'm chalking it up to the copious amounts of Plato that I've been reading lately, but, nonetheless, I would feel amiss - and I would feel like I were risking the wrath of the gods - if I didn't pass on that "They dwell within us."
4) I just finished reading Revolutionary Road, the book that the movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio is based on. It's really good, and I think that it ought to replace The Catcher in the Rye in our public school curriculum.
5) Saw Built to Spill last week during the Pygmalion Festival. They were old and it was awesome.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 13, 2010
All Good Things
From the desk of Robyn:
Remember when I used to write things here? Well, I don't! And I've had just about enough of Joel making me look lazy with all his treatises on sporting events.*
So, I've started another venue: http://even-artichokes.blogspot.com/
If you like hearing about media archives, dance parties and apartment ghosts, stop on by.
*Just kidding, dear. When you're writing football posts it means you aren't shouting at me about Ducks, Beavers, and Oklahoma. Keep it up!
Remember when I used to write things here? Well, I don't! And I've had just about enough of Joel making me look lazy with all his treatises on sporting events.*
So, I've started another venue: http://even-artichokes.blogspot.com/
If you like hearing about media archives, dance parties and apartment ghosts, stop on by.
*Just kidding, dear. When you're writing football posts it means you aren't shouting at me about Ducks, Beavers, and Oklahoma. Keep it up!
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Leaves are Beginning to Change
I am very content right now, sitting and watching baseball at the end of a very pleasant and warm autumn day. Our friends K and D drove us to the Meijer grocery store at the outskirts of Urbana this morning, and we were able to buy all those heavy things - like cat litter and potatoes and five-pound bags of basmati rice - that are a trouble to purchase and then tote home either by bus or by bicycle. We also got the fixings for sausage and spinach lasagna, which is now baking in the oven, while we wait for the new episode of Mad Men to come on.
After we were finished grocery shopping, we returned to our apartment on Green Street for a lunch of turkey sandwiches and a siesta. Then the four of us drove over to the University of Illinois Arboretum, which K described a little bit like, "a golf course without any of the holes or anything." Which is quite accurate, although that doesn't mean that it's not also incredibly lovely. We saw what looked like an impromptu wedding, complete with a groom in a black t-shirt and blue jeans; a swarm of dragonflies and swallows were feasting on the gnats and mosquitos, looking a little like the battle of Midway; visited the Japan house* and its tea gardens; and saw not only the mating habits of undergrads, but also those of dragonflies**, yellow jackets, and a couple of turtles swimming around in a pond. All in all, it was a very enjoyable and a thoroughly entertaining afternoon.
There are lots of other things to share, although now only very briefly. Work is challenging yet rewarding; last week I taught a student how the universe works, and he called me a symbol. I didn't breathe during the Ducks game on Saturday until the second quarter; I still have some serious concerns about their defense, and now because they throttled a really mediocre Tennessee team, everyone suddenly has them at the top of their ballots. Also, I'm re-reading Plato's "Phaedo" right now. Philosophy is the study of death, and a philosopher is someone who is constantly rehearsing dying. Huh. Of course, this seems to me to perfectly coincide with the article in this week's New Yorker by Roland Barthes, "Notes on mourning." "Never again, never again! And yet there's a contradiction; 'never again' isn't eternal, since you yourself will die one day. 'Never again' is the expression of an immortal."
* Huh, I wonder if that explains the bizarre Midway reference.
** I feel like every time I see two or more dragonflies, they're always having sex.
After we were finished grocery shopping, we returned to our apartment on Green Street for a lunch of turkey sandwiches and a siesta. Then the four of us drove over to the University of Illinois Arboretum, which K described a little bit like, "a golf course without any of the holes or anything." Which is quite accurate, although that doesn't mean that it's not also incredibly lovely. We saw what looked like an impromptu wedding, complete with a groom in a black t-shirt and blue jeans; a swarm of dragonflies and swallows were feasting on the gnats and mosquitos, looking a little like the battle of Midway; visited the Japan house* and its tea gardens; and saw not only the mating habits of undergrads, but also those of dragonflies**, yellow jackets, and a couple of turtles swimming around in a pond. All in all, it was a very enjoyable and a thoroughly entertaining afternoon.
There are lots of other things to share, although now only very briefly. Work is challenging yet rewarding; last week I taught a student how the universe works, and he called me a symbol. I didn't breathe during the Ducks game on Saturday until the second quarter; I still have some serious concerns about their defense, and now because they throttled a really mediocre Tennessee team, everyone suddenly has them at the top of their ballots. Also, I'm re-reading Plato's "Phaedo" right now. Philosophy is the study of death, and a philosopher is someone who is constantly rehearsing dying. Huh. Of course, this seems to me to perfectly coincide with the article in this week's New Yorker by Roland Barthes, "Notes on mourning." "Never again, never again! And yet there's a contradiction; 'never again' isn't eternal, since you yourself will die one day. 'Never again' is the expression of an immortal."
* Huh, I wonder if that explains the bizarre Midway reference.
** I feel like every time I see two or more dragonflies, they're always having sex.
Monday, September 6, 2010
Pardon me, but Are You Ready for Some Football?
It's a lovely, blustery Fall day, and Robyn and I have been taking it easy; sleeping in, eating breakfast burritos, watching Mad Men on iTunes because Comcast is "a bunch of stupid jerks from the jerk-a-tron," sayeth Robyn. We've been having a lovely Labor Day weekend. We went dancing at the fancy* discotheque on Friday. On Saturday we had our math friends over to our new apartment for the first time ever for playing the train game and eating jello cake. And last night we had library friends over for an epic Mad Men Fail (see above quote) and the viewing of Kicking and Screaming, which I had never seen before.**
Oh! And the raccoon! There was an adolescent raccoon in a tree in our backyard last night. Everyone got all excited, and tried to get closer to it. I told them to give it space, and maybe pick up a large stick or rock with which to hit it in case it decided to come at us like a spider monkey. They don't know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night to find two raccoons rummaging through your laundry room.
But now it is Monday afternoon, and I am waiting for the Boise State - Virginia Tech game to start. Go Broncos. I watched the Oregon St.-TCU game, and, while I was disappointed in the loss, I was glad to see that the Beavers were competitive against a top-10 team on the road. Robyn has suggested that the game would have been more interesting if there had been actual beavers and horned frogs playing football. And, I guess, that you can't really say anything bad about Oregon's 72-0 drubbing of New Mexico, but the Lobos have been and continue to be just an epically bad team. I'll be on the UofO band wagon if the Ducks can dominate like that next week at Tennessee.
In the meantime, former Duck and all-around stud Dennis Dixon has been named the starter for the Pittsburgh Steelers in their season opener against the Atlanta Falcons. Dixon will be in for Ben Roethlisberger, who, you may have heard, was "involved in an incident that led to allegations of sexual assault." Ha! How's that for journalistic legalese, eh? In other words, earlier this year, Roethlisberger went to a couple of bars in Georgia, where he met a 20-year old sophomore girl, who, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, followed Roethlisberger into the back room of the bar, and then came quickly came back:
But wait, there's more! In April, the NFL suspended Roethlisberger for six whole games for "violating the league's personal conduct policy." But on Saturday, the league reduced that suspension from six games to four for "good conduct."
So here is where we get to the meat of the subject. Remember Jeremiah Masoli, and how he got suspended for a year for theft, and then kicked off the team entirely after he got pulled over with pot in his car? I still believe that Chip Kelly and the University of Oregon did the right thing in reprimanding Masoli as they did, but we should still recognize that this chain of events has a high probability of ruining whatever (probably slim) chances that Masoli had of playing in the NFL and making a career of being a football player. Now consider Roethlisberger. Yes, he has been suspended for the league for four weeks, without pay. Yes, his popularity with fans has taken a hit, yet not one of any catastrophic or potentially reversible magnitude. And yes, he has lost his captainship of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And yet, barring some unlikely sequence of unforeseen events***, odds are that after a month Roethlisberger will be able to return to the starting QB job at the most prestigious franchise in the NFL.
"But wait a minute!" you say; I'm overlooking one important fact. "This is America," you say, "and in America, you're innocent until proven guilty! The EPD had a case against Masoli, and he had to enter into a plea bargain in order to avoid jail time. But no one was able to build a case against Roethlisberger. All charges were dropped!"
And I would think that you would have a valid point, if it were not for this stubborn fact: In the United States, an estimated 61% of all rapes and sexual assaults are never reported to the police.
* Sorta fancy. It's not that fancy. It's fancy by Central Illinois standards.
** Remind me to share with you my thoughts on Noah Baumbach some day, when we both have the time. A lot of people whose opinions I hold in high esteem really like him, but he gets under my skin in a real visceral way.
*** Unforeseen events such as, Dixon going 4-0?
Oh! And the raccoon! There was an adolescent raccoon in a tree in our backyard last night. Everyone got all excited, and tried to get closer to it. I told them to give it space, and maybe pick up a large stick or rock with which to hit it in case it decided to come at us like a spider monkey. They don't know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night to find two raccoons rummaging through your laundry room.
But now it is Monday afternoon, and I am waiting for the Boise State - Virginia Tech game to start. Go Broncos. I watched the Oregon St.-TCU game, and, while I was disappointed in the loss, I was glad to see that the Beavers were competitive against a top-10 team on the road. Robyn has suggested that the game would have been more interesting if there had been actual beavers and horned frogs playing football. And, I guess, that you can't really say anything bad about Oregon's 72-0 drubbing of New Mexico, but the Lobos have been and continue to be just an epically bad team. I'll be on the UofO band wagon if the Ducks can dominate like that next week at Tennessee.
In the meantime, former Duck and all-around stud Dennis Dixon has been named the starter for the Pittsburgh Steelers in their season opener against the Atlanta Falcons. Dixon will be in for Ben Roethlisberger, who, you may have heard, was "involved in an incident that led to allegations of sexual assault." Ha! How's that for journalistic legalese, eh? In other words, earlier this year, Roethlisberger went to a couple of bars in Georgia, where he met a 20-year old sophomore girl, who, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, followed Roethlisberger into the back room of the bar, and then came quickly came back:
That's rape. But when the girl's friends called the police to report it, Sgt. Jerry Blash arrived on the scene, promptly took a picture with Roethlisberger, advised the girl's friends that, “You can file a statement but this man has a lot of money and good attorneys," and said, "We have a problem, this drunken [expletive], drunk off her ass, is accusing Ben of rape." So, long story short, Blash's gross misconduct prevented anyone from being able to put together case against Roethlisberger, and all subsequent charges of sexual assault have been dropped.The young woman, who by all accounts was extremely drunk, told her friends, “We need to go. We need to go.” She told them she had just had sex with Roethlisberger. They asked if it was consensual. “No,” she said.
Lubatti said her friend said she was sitting on a bar stool in the hall when Roethlisberger exposed himself to her. She said she told him, “No, we can’t do this. No, this isn’t right.” She said she tried to leave but walked into the bathroom, where Roethlisberger followed.
But wait, there's more! In April, the NFL suspended Roethlisberger for six whole games for "violating the league's personal conduct policy." But on Saturday, the league reduced that suspension from six games to four for "good conduct."
So here is where we get to the meat of the subject. Remember Jeremiah Masoli, and how he got suspended for a year for theft, and then kicked off the team entirely after he got pulled over with pot in his car? I still believe that Chip Kelly and the University of Oregon did the right thing in reprimanding Masoli as they did, but we should still recognize that this chain of events has a high probability of ruining whatever (probably slim) chances that Masoli had of playing in the NFL and making a career of being a football player. Now consider Roethlisberger. Yes, he has been suspended for the league for four weeks, without pay. Yes, his popularity with fans has taken a hit, yet not one of any catastrophic or potentially reversible magnitude. And yes, he has lost his captainship of the Pittsburgh Steelers. And yet, barring some unlikely sequence of unforeseen events***, odds are that after a month Roethlisberger will be able to return to the starting QB job at the most prestigious franchise in the NFL.
"But wait a minute!" you say; I'm overlooking one important fact. "This is America," you say, "and in America, you're innocent until proven guilty! The EPD had a case against Masoli, and he had to enter into a plea bargain in order to avoid jail time. But no one was able to build a case against Roethlisberger. All charges were dropped!"
And I would think that you would have a valid point, if it were not for this stubborn fact: In the United States, an estimated 61% of all rapes and sexual assaults are never reported to the police.
* Sorta fancy. It's not that fancy. It's fancy by Central Illinois standards.
** Remind me to share with you my thoughts on Noah Baumbach some day, when we both have the time. A lot of people whose opinions I hold in high esteem really like him, but he gets under my skin in a real visceral way.
*** Unforeseen events such as, Dixon going 4-0?
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Not Dead Yet
I exist!
I went back to work, and now spend my days chasing children all over a badly underfunded public middle school.
Robyn is back at library school, and is telling me all about the excellence of annotated bibliographies and targeted database searches.
I went to the dentist.
We moved to a new, big apartment in Urbana. Coraline is extremely happy to have nice big hallways to race up and down at one in the morning.
Jane Austen won our Literary "March" Madness! Next up: Philosophy Bowl?
It's raining outside, but I don't believe it.
I went back to work, and now spend my days chasing children all over a badly underfunded public middle school.
Robyn is back at library school, and is telling me all about the excellence of annotated bibliographies and targeted database searches.
I went to the dentist.
We moved to a new, big apartment in Urbana. Coraline is extremely happy to have nice big hallways to race up and down at one in the morning.
Jane Austen won our Literary "March" Madness! Next up: Philosophy Bowl?
It's raining outside, but I don't believe it.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
1 Philosophy Major (Who Is Not A Philosophy Professor)
What with all these football players seemingly going about our country raping and pillaging the countryside, I thought it might be a good idea to highlight a player or two who seem to be upright citizens. Last week, Austin Murphy wrote about why "College Football Blows Away the NFL." In this article, Murphy mentions former Ohio State tight end Anthony Gonzales. Murphy writes:
Look at that bald, shiny head, all covered in brains.
He's also really cute with kids:
And can fly:
Gonzalez was a three year letterman with Ohio State, and he played for the team that beat Notre Dame in the 2006 Fiesta Bowl, and for the team that lost to Florida in the BCS game the next year. More importantly, he was an Academic All-American and a Rhodes Scholar candidate.Gonzalez, now an Indianapolis Colt, was a philosophy major with a 4.0 GPA nearly every academic quarter. I remember his admonition when I confessed that I'd never read Plato: "You've got to read The Republic."
I saw Gonzo a few months later at the NFL's annual scouting combine, so named, I suspect, because it combines elements of a beauty pageant, a cattle auction and hard-core interrogation sessions. Like all other prospective draftees, he was dressed in an NFL-issued gray sweatshirt, on which was stamped his league-assigned four-character code. We chatted while he was shuttling between physical and psychological tests. He was bemused, I recall, by some of the Bizarro World questions posed to him by the grim-faced NFL personnel "experts." "Whatever you do," I advised him, "don't mention Plato."
Look at that bald, shiny head, all covered in brains.
Unfortunately, Gonzalez suffered a knee injury in 2009, and is beginning the 2010 season with the Colts on the injured list. Also unfortunate is that he left Ohio State after his junior year. Maybe now he'll have the time to go back to school and graduate, maybe write that thesis paper, Meno at the Combine: Can Virtue be Practiced?
Or he could write about what a dick Peyton Manning is.
Or he could write about what a dick Peyton Manning is.
Another football playing philosopher is former Oregon State quarterback Sean Canfield. Canfield was drafted this year in the seventh round by the New Orleans Saints. I don't want to praise Canfield too much - less I be accused of a pro-Beaver bias - but I'll be rooting for him to succeed in the NFL. Of course, Canfield won't have the privilege of playing with real life superhero and linebacker Scott Fujita, who was traded to the Browns over the offseason. Fujita may not have been a philosophy major, but he was a poli-sci major at Cal, where he was a walk on safety, an Academic All-Pac 10, and got his Master's in Education. He's also the winner of the Teamster's Human Rights Award.
He's also really cute with kids:
And can fly:
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Fire Deepak Chopra!
Today on the Huffingpost, noted crazy person and charlatan Deepak Chopra has an essay pronouncing the Good News that he, finally, has found the soul. In eight pages of questionable science, bad logic, and pseudo-philosophy, Chopra and his co-author Stuart Hameroff re-package the rather worn belief that questions of metaphysics and spirituality can be solved through a rather gross misapplication of quantum physics. The whole article is really a waste of time - five of my hours, to be precise - but is interesting in its masquerading of religious beliefs as scientific theories. It actually wouldn't be worth anyone's time if it were not for the fact that ascription to this kind of tripe is widespread, and, in my opinion, a symptom of our country's greater dissatisfaction with our medical industry. As more and more Americans are let down by "conventional" medicine, more and more of them will turn to this form of New Age-ism as providing easy answers to difficult questions.
Here are a few of the most egregious claims Chopra makes, with commentary. The complete essay is here.
All Apologies.
Can Science Explain the Soul?
(Joel: Stop right there. No. The answer is no, right? Because science, by definition, must have nothing to do with matters of the soul, right?)
Redefined by the new field of quantum biology, the soul could be the link that connects individuals to the universe, a dynamic connection that could explain how consciousness came about, and why the cosmos itself seems to mirror our own intelligence and creativity.
(Wait, I need to hypothesize the existence of the soul in order to explain my connection to the universe? Damn! That's why I haven't been able to move or touch things or communicate with other people! And maybe the cosmos mirrors your intelligence and creativity. If it mirrored mine, there would be way more Dino-Riders.)
Unable to fathom a rational explanation for out-of-body and/or after-death consciousness, modern science ignores such reports. (Boo! Modern Science! Boo!) Short-sighted skeptics reinforce the assumption that they are either subjective folly, hallucinations, or outside the scope of scientific proof.
(They are hallucinations. If by "hallucination" you mean "the perception of objects with no physical reality usually caused by a disorder of the nervous system." Also: Boo! Skeptical scientists and their need for "proof"! Boo!)
The central weakness here is that modern science can't explain normal, in-the-brain consciousness. (Really? It can't? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience) Despite detailed understanding of neuronal firings and synaptic transmissions mediating non-conscious, 'auto-pilot' perception and behaviors, there is no accounting for conscious awareness, free will or 'qualia' (QUALIA!) -- the essence of experienced perceptions, like the redness, texture and fragrance of a rose. Philosopher David Chalmers refers to this as the 'hard problem' -- explaining qualia and the subjective nature of feelings, awareness, and phenomenal experience, -- our 'inner life'.
(Yes, this is the Cartesian challenge, the foundation of Modern Western Philosophy. And here is a list of great thinkers who have provided non-magic based solutions to this problem: Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, William James, J.L. Austin, G.E. Moore, Richard Rorty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)
It seems there's an edge, or boundary between two phases of reality -- the quantum and classical worlds, and that consciousness may have something to do with that edge, also known as 'quantum state reduction', or 'collapse of the quantum wave function.'
(A red flag immediately goes up at "two phases of reality... quantum and classical." This is playing with language, not putting forward scientific statements. Everyone knows that physics operates differently when dealing with very small objects (atoms) or very large objects (stars). But this does not lead to the claim of there existing "two phases of reality." It is an entirely unnecessary jump that violates scientific method and, if we make it, it makes us believe that there must be a soul, or something to solve this problem of the duality of mind and body. It's probably in the pineal gland.)
What is the universe composed of? (Facts, not things.) If we were to shrink in size, smaller and smaller, we would see that atoms are mostly empty, as is the space between them. If we shrink smaller and smaller, (Heelllllpppp meeeeeee.....) 25 orders of magnitude smaller than atoms, we would eventually come to Planck scale geometry, laden with information and patterns around the Planck length of 10 to the minus 33rd power centimeters. Descriptions of Planck scale geometry include quantum gravity, spin networks, twistor theory and string theory. Which of these is correct remains unknown.
(Oh, really? Because they're all impossible to test? And therefore not scientifically valid?)
But we do know that Planck scale information is down there. And despite the vast difference in scale, it can influence our world, as spacetime is organized like a hologram, or fractal, with information repeating nonlocally and at different scales. (We can't describe it, we don't know anything about it, but we know it must exist, and it can influence our "world." Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the monad.)
Penrose and Hameroff (This essay's co-author.) published several papers on Orch OR in the mid 1990s, prompting near-immediate skeptical rebuke from many directions, having offended computer/artificial intelligence proponents, neuroscientists, philosophers and physicists alike.
(From which we must "conclude" that there is a massive conspiracy to keep the truth hidden from the masses, right Mulder?)
Clinical studies of patients who survive cardiac arrest have revealed consistent reports of so-called near death experiences (NDEs), white light, being in a tunnel, serene calm, life review and in some cases out-of-body experiences (BOOBs). Many people report similar phenomena unrelated to cardiac arrest, e.g. associated with meditation, psychological trauma, drugs, or straightforward life events.
(All of these are interesting events that can be explained through non-"quantum" science. In fact, if you want to explain psychological trauma, it is much, much more useful to the patient to deal with this on a real, social, human level. Telling him that his trauma is due to his personal connection to quantum reality through infinitely small particles in his brain not only violates Occam's Razor, but is also unethical and dangerous.)
Conventional science rejects the possibility of an afterlife.
(AAAAAGH!!! NO! 100% MISLEADING, FALSE, NOT TRUE!)
Could consciousness exist outside the body after death?
(I don't know. Do green ideas sleep furiously?)
When the blood stops flowing and metabolic energy can no longer drive microtubule quantum coherence, (It's like I'm in an episode of Star-Trek...) quantum information relating to the subject's conscious experience and memory isn't necessarily lost or destroyed, but may dissipate to the universe at large, remaining entangled as a unified soul-like entity grounded in Planck scale geometry. (Woah slow down there, chief... is it "The Soul" or merely "a soul-like entity"? Get your pseudo-terminology straight, man.) If the body is resuscitated, the quantum information can return, and the subject may report an NDE or BOOB experience. If the body is not resuscitated and the patient dies, the entangled quantum information constituting the subject's consciousness and memory may persist in spacetime geometry, perhaps entering an embryo in the context of reincarnation. (Perhaps. Or maybe it just goes to that never-ending party in the sky.)
Science attempts to explore the ocean of consciousness from the outside. That is, the universe is taken to be 'out there', divorced from subjective experience and therefore measurable without personal bias. But if the brain is connected to the universe at the quantum level, the distinction between subjective and objective experience, between 'in here' and 'out there' no longer holds. The spacetime geometry configuration of the observed world is reproduced in the brain. Again, the Beatles said it well: 'Your inside is out, and your outside is in. Your outside is in, and your inside is out.'
(Yup, that's right. The only cited source in this entire spiel is The White Album. He even fails to mention that that Beatles quote is from "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey." Oh, the irony. )
We two authors (SH and DC) differ slightly with regard to the ocean of consciousness, and the subject/object split.
(LOL. "No, you can balance an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin!" "You fool! Everyone knows that the divine mathematics dictates that the number must be equal to infinity plus one!" )
These proposals are testable, and falsifiable. (No they're not.) We welcome critical analysis. (Here ya go.)
- FIN
Here are a few of the most egregious claims Chopra makes, with commentary. The complete essay is here.
All Apologies.
Can Science Explain the Soul?
(Joel: Stop right there. No. The answer is no, right? Because science, by definition, must have nothing to do with matters of the soul, right?)
Redefined by the new field of quantum biology, the soul could be the link that connects individuals to the universe, a dynamic connection that could explain how consciousness came about, and why the cosmos itself seems to mirror our own intelligence and creativity.
(Wait, I need to hypothesize the existence of the soul in order to explain my connection to the universe? Damn! That's why I haven't been able to move or touch things or communicate with other people! And maybe the cosmos mirrors your intelligence and creativity. If it mirrored mine, there would be way more Dino-Riders.)
Unable to fathom a rational explanation for out-of-body and/or after-death consciousness, modern science ignores such reports. (Boo! Modern Science! Boo!) Short-sighted skeptics reinforce the assumption that they are either subjective folly, hallucinations, or outside the scope of scientific proof.
(They are hallucinations. If by "hallucination" you mean "the perception of objects with no physical reality usually caused by a disorder of the nervous system." Also: Boo! Skeptical scientists and their need for "proof"! Boo!)
The central weakness here is that modern science can't explain normal, in-the-brain consciousness. (Really? It can't? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience) Despite detailed understanding of neuronal firings and synaptic transmissions mediating non-conscious, 'auto-pilot' perception and behaviors, there is no accounting for conscious awareness, free will or 'qualia' (QUALIA!) -- the essence of experienced perceptions, like the redness, texture and fragrance of a rose. Philosopher David Chalmers refers to this as the 'hard problem' -- explaining qualia and the subjective nature of feelings, awareness, and phenomenal experience, -- our 'inner life'.
(Yes, this is the Cartesian challenge, the foundation of Modern Western Philosophy. And here is a list of great thinkers who have provided non-magic based solutions to this problem: Kant, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, William James, J.L. Austin, G.E. Moore, Richard Rorty, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)
It seems there's an edge, or boundary between two phases of reality -- the quantum and classical worlds, and that consciousness may have something to do with that edge, also known as 'quantum state reduction', or 'collapse of the quantum wave function.'
(A red flag immediately goes up at "two phases of reality... quantum and classical." This is playing with language, not putting forward scientific statements. Everyone knows that physics operates differently when dealing with very small objects (atoms) or very large objects (stars). But this does not lead to the claim of there existing "two phases of reality." It is an entirely unnecessary jump that violates scientific method and, if we make it, it makes us believe that there must be a soul, or something to solve this problem of the duality of mind and body. It's probably in the pineal gland.)
What is the universe composed of? (Facts, not things.) If we were to shrink in size, smaller and smaller, we would see that atoms are mostly empty, as is the space between them. If we shrink smaller and smaller, (Heelllllpppp meeeeeee.....) 25 orders of magnitude smaller than atoms, we would eventually come to Planck scale geometry, laden with information and patterns around the Planck length of 10 to the minus 33rd power centimeters. Descriptions of Planck scale geometry include quantum gravity, spin networks, twistor theory and string theory. Which of these is correct remains unknown.
(Oh, really? Because they're all impossible to test? And therefore not scientifically valid?)
But we do know that Planck scale information is down there. And despite the vast difference in scale, it can influence our world, as spacetime is organized like a hologram, or fractal, with information repeating nonlocally and at different scales. (We can't describe it, we don't know anything about it, but we know it must exist, and it can influence our "world." Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the monad.)
Penrose and Hameroff (This essay's co-author.) published several papers on Orch OR in the mid 1990s, prompting near-immediate skeptical rebuke from many directions, having offended computer/artificial intelligence proponents, neuroscientists, philosophers and physicists alike.
(From which we must "conclude" that there is a massive conspiracy to keep the truth hidden from the masses, right Mulder?)
Clinical studies of patients who survive cardiac arrest have revealed consistent reports of so-called near death experiences (NDEs), white light, being in a tunnel, serene calm, life review and in some cases out-of-body experiences (BOOBs). Many people report similar phenomena unrelated to cardiac arrest, e.g. associated with meditation, psychological trauma, drugs, or straightforward life events.
(All of these are interesting events that can be explained through non-"quantum" science. In fact, if you want to explain psychological trauma, it is much, much more useful to the patient to deal with this on a real, social, human level. Telling him that his trauma is due to his personal connection to quantum reality through infinitely small particles in his brain not only violates Occam's Razor, but is also unethical and dangerous.)
Conventional science rejects the possibility of an afterlife.
(AAAAAGH!!! NO! 100% MISLEADING, FALSE, NOT TRUE!)
Could consciousness exist outside the body after death?
(I don't know. Do green ideas sleep furiously?)
When the blood stops flowing and metabolic energy can no longer drive microtubule quantum coherence, (It's like I'm in an episode of Star-Trek...) quantum information relating to the subject's conscious experience and memory isn't necessarily lost or destroyed, but may dissipate to the universe at large, remaining entangled as a unified soul-like entity grounded in Planck scale geometry. (Woah slow down there, chief... is it "The Soul" or merely "a soul-like entity"? Get your pseudo-terminology straight, man.) If the body is resuscitated, the quantum information can return, and the subject may report an NDE or BOOB experience. If the body is not resuscitated and the patient dies, the entangled quantum information constituting the subject's consciousness and memory may persist in spacetime geometry, perhaps entering an embryo in the context of reincarnation. (Perhaps. Or maybe it just goes to that never-ending party in the sky.)
Science attempts to explore the ocean of consciousness from the outside. That is, the universe is taken to be 'out there', divorced from subjective experience and therefore measurable without personal bias. But if the brain is connected to the universe at the quantum level, the distinction between subjective and objective experience, between 'in here' and 'out there' no longer holds. The spacetime geometry configuration of the observed world is reproduced in the brain. Again, the Beatles said it well: 'Your inside is out, and your outside is in. Your outside is in, and your inside is out.'
(Yup, that's right. The only cited source in this entire spiel is The White Album. He even fails to mention that that Beatles quote is from "Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey." Oh, the irony. )
We two authors (SH and DC) differ slightly with regard to the ocean of consciousness, and the subject/object split.
(LOL. "No, you can balance an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin!" "You fool! Everyone knows that the divine mathematics dictates that the number must be equal to infinity plus one!" )
These proposals are testable, and falsifiable. (No they're not.) We welcome critical analysis. (Here ya go.)
- FIN
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