I was very discouraged this week by a debate between two friends, one of whom criticized the other for advancing a theory of life and mind which "is not complete," which does not explain everything. That is a very high standard, which no one of earth is close to meeting.
Can ANY theory "explain everything?" MAYBE an Einsteinian theory, like general relativity plus a Lagrangian which MIGHT happen to match the reality of our cosmos, as a "law of everything." I still view this as a serious approach, but
it would NOT explain or help us understand higher order phenomena like ordinary vision, feelings of hope and fear, psychic phenomena or the rick kinds of authentic spiritual experience described in Jung's Red Book. e humans have a lot we could learn which is not a "theory of everything."
In fact, we can often feel more confidence (legitimate subjective probability) in MIDDLE level theories than in proposed "laws of everything"!!
I have generally been giving about 30% probability to each of three FAMILIES of "law of everything", from Fock space realism (like Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch quantum theory, or something smoother of the same general type). Einsteinian realism or "Cosmic Mind Idealism. But at a MIDDLE level -- I strongly believe that the paper by werbos and davis (easy to find at scholar.google.com, open access journal) gives us the basics of how intelligence (aka "consciousness") works in the mundane brain. It is not COMPLETE (lots of details to fill in), but more complete in its way than special relativity is.
BUT WHAT OF EXPLAINING OR UNDERSTANDING HOW PSI WORKS?
From the lab to the vast database of human spiritual experience?
A week ago, I would say: "Of course, it's not dumb ideas like the idea that Copenhagen collapse is how we do remote viewing! It's more mental phenomenon than a physics thing, even thoughn eurons and PK do build on
a physical foundation. 90% probability that PSI as humans have experienced it is mainly an emergent property of the noosphere, of a kind of superorganism which we are part of. NOT the exact verdansky or de Chardin theories, which have a huge logical gap, but the noosphere species theory as pointed to in the papersI link to at werbos/com/religoins.htm. real reconciliation of science and PSI." An explanation to engage what Nancy wanted to engage with, and more.
Crucial to the logic of that theory is the assumption we are surrounde dby a ruly vast ocean of life in our cosmos, powerd most of all by dark matter and dark energy. (Most of the cosmos, after all, and OBSERVED to form a very impressive network.) I have often seriously asked myself: is there ANY other equally complete/coherent explanation of this span of experience? I really have tried, but this one seems to be a logical path.
Even if we do not know what lies beyond and underneath our "tiny village" (our solar system), basic situational awareness of what's going on in our village would be EXTREMELY important for us, in so many ways. Lack of that awareness is putting us into bigger and bigger risks, and also pitting us in a kind of war against nature --not only the nature we see in mundane biology (a serous enough issue!) but also in our deepest human souls, going through increidble distress right now. (Though Jung's Red Book recalls some of the same.)
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But: Ward's new book says "Sorry folks, it'sj ust us mundane apes on earth in this entire cosmos."
I've heard claims like that for decades, most biased by silly ancient dogmas (like "of course earth is the center of the universe; we have known that for a long time, under the authority of all the ancient books".)
But THIS WEEK, three things came together for me at exactly the same time.
(same day.) Ironically, one was a more serious discussion of what we could do to communicate what our noosphere and noosphere species rae about, all the way to real life, and human connectedness and morale. The other was my realization that the grand canonical "Boltzmann" ensemble ( a density operator)
gives rise to much more interesting properties than even I had realized, the kind which could provide a DIFFERENT explanation for PSI much richer and more complete than I had realized, not requiring separate intermediate brains.
And then, Peter ward himself is a uniquely important (though human and imperfect , like the rest of us) source of :VERY empirical hands-on work; I am very glad I bought gtwo of his books, Under a Green Sky" and "Life as we do not know it." (I Bought the latter to meet Amazon's minimum order for free shipping; am so glad I did.)
In the end, could the noosphere species model be as valid as Newton's laws of gravity were? A great and practical apprximation for us at a local level, but inferior to a bigger trickier model?
Nancy and Ram did talk about God or gods. humans have had so MUCH important experience in that realm,not to be disc arded, not to be trivialized or politicized. Even in the basic noosphere species model (which MIGHT be true, because ward's arguments do not account for what some of us know dark matter and energy can do), Jung's ARCHETYPES make sense as part of our noosphere. The extended grand canonical model basically extends the same principle, STILL resulting in entities emerging which are big enough and important enough for us tiny creatures, just relabeling some as another level of archetype in a larger system.
But reality does not make life simple, either at this level or at today's mundane politics. So much we need to try to discern every day.
Best of luck,
Paul
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