[MD] The Word is Not the Thing

[skutvik at online.no]

Ham
 
Sep. 16 you wrote: 

> While catching up with past posts on this topic, I spotted John's
> reference to Robert Lanza, who is associated with Biocentrism.  I wonder
> if that association is valid.  Although I haven't read Lanza's book, I did
> run a synopsis of his thesis on my website a couple of years ago.  While
> the author defines Biocentrism as "a world view with the perspective that
> life creates the universe instead of the other way around," he doesn't
> state that LIFE creates the universe.  Read his summary statements
> carefully:

I don't know what your position is, hope it emerges by and by.

> "The questions physicists long to ask about nature are bound up with the
> problem of consciousness. Physics can furnish no answers for them.  'Let
> man,' declared Emerson, 'then learn the revelation of all nature and all
> thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that
> the sources of nature are in his own mind.'

I regard Biocentrism a new SOMish convulsion, now from the idealist 
camp? Emerson however sees the futility of SOM: The objective world 
that it postulates that the subject will find the workings (laws) of is 
contained in the subject's mind". But I suspect you Ham to cite this in 
support of your system, i.e. that (Emerson's) "The Highest" is 
something akin to the your  ...whatever you call it.     

> "Space and time, not proteins and neurons, hold the answer to the problem
> of consciousness.  When we consider the nerve impulses entering the brain,
> we realize that they are not woven together automatically, any more than
> the information is inside a computer.  

"Space and time" ... why not "causation" and we have Kan'ts about the 
subjective filters that orders the objective "impulses entering the brain" 
(the thing in itself)  and "weaves them together" into patterns that 
constitutes "the thing for us". This is regarded as the the final word on 
the mind/matter conundrum that began with the empiricists,  and 
everything since has been footnotes to Kant. Lanza obviously thinks 
he has said something profound, but it looks like old tea in new cups.        

> Our thoughts have an order, not of themselves, but because the mind
> generates the spatio-temporal relationships involved in every
> experience.  We can never have any experience that does not conform to
> these relationships, for they are the modes of animal logic that mold
> sensations into objects.  It would be erroneous, therefore, to conceive
> of the mind as existing in space and time before this process, as
> existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits
> in it a spatio-temporal order.  The situation, as we have seen, is like
> playing a CD-the information leaps into three-dimensional sound, and in
> that way, and in that way only, does the music indeed exist." -- R,
> Lanza: A New Theory of the Universe 

New theory, hardly.

> Note that the terms he uses to identify the "creator" are "consciousness"
> and "mind", neither of which is Life.  This may be a minor matter to the
> biologist, but I think it's a significant point for the philosopher.
> Biology is the study of organic life forms, and biocentricity clearly
> designates the community of living creatures as the central agent or focus
> of the universe.  Consciousness, on the other hand, is "pre-cerebral".  As
> Lanza says: "It would be erroneous to conceive of the mind ...existing in
> the brain before understanding posits in it a spatio-temporal order."

I agree that the S/O metaphysics distinguishes between the material-
yet-biological apparatus (brain) and mind itself (consciousness) S/O-
based science (materialism) however will forever search for the 
biological site of consciousness while S/O-based thinkers (a la Ham 
Priday) will forever come up with idealist theories. And never shall any 
of them succeed because the SOM is faulty from the outset. 
Existence's fundament is not subject/object but dynamic/static     

> I agree with everything Lanza says as a biologist; but the theory he has
> articulated is not grounded in Biology.  Wikipedia defines Biocentrism as
> "a scientific theory that posits that life creates the universe rather
> than the other way around."  Since Consciousness is not life but, rather,
> an undefined attribute of cognitive creatures, wouldn't Anthropocentrism
> be a more definitive label than Biocentrism for Lanza's philosophy?

Who launched Lanza and Biocentrism as having any relevance for the 
MOQ?       
 
> What are your final thoughts on Biocentrism as another Word (that) is Not
> the Thing?

MY final Words are that SOM will continue its "see-saw" between 
mind-creating-matter and matter-creating-mind until some more 
people discovers the MOQ.



Bodvar