Sam Harris, and humanity's moral future

part one of three. Harris's TED talk at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww My books: "the Way of the Fool" http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/twotf.html &
"New Wine" http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/nwine.html Read the essay "Sam Harris..." at http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/samh23x.html intro-material at:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/vsdcp.html

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Nonprofits & Activism

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[joel232001]

@Valelacerte thanks, good luck on your journey as well ...

[Valelacerte]

@joel232001 Yes, I've probably quizzed you enough. Thanks for the chat; I appreciate your responses. Good health and prolific writing to you.

[joel232001]

@Valelacerte Your questions are apt, but the reply is too big for this medium.  Nor I am the only one with thinking and experience in this realm. There are many, including many practicing scientists. Matter and energy are thought to be the same thing - one changeable into the other. Spirit is something quite different and distinct.

[Valelacerte]

@joel232001 When you say "scientific materialism (all is matter, there is no spirit) ", I would say that science recognises both matter and energy. Is "spirit" electrical signals within the brain? Do you think that our ability to observe our own thoughts is evidence for, for want of a better word, stuff that represents our essence, is unknown by the scientific community, and is not contained by our physical brain?

[joel232001]

@Valelacerte I wouldn't define it at all. I'd say look at this experience that you have, and that you pretty much know everyone else has. Then I say do this looking carefully, because we have lot of experiences, and the experience of our spirit needs to be differentiated from other experiences. The same with soul. Oversimplification Soul is the content of consciousness including the unconsciousness. Spirit is that which experiences this content and can act within it. Oversimplification

[Valelacerte]

More specifically, do you believe that part of our consciousness/mind/essence resides outside of our physical body?

[Valelacerte]

@joel232001 How do you define "spirit"?

[joel232001]

@Valelacerte In these situations the mind doesn't just "overlay its own bias", it uses different faculties that are a better means. Each subject of knowledge has (as it were) its own aspect of the mind to which its meaning is most apparent. Where the paradigm of scientific materialism (all is matter, there is no spirit) does not dominate human thinking, reason alone no longer is central. See my essay at: ipwebdev.com/hermit/tidom.html

[Valelacerte]

@joel232001 Well, that makes sense: the more one moves towards subject matter that is harder to measure empirically, the more the mind interprets and overlays its own bias. Einstein's brilliance was surely as much to do with his imagination and intuition while shaving, as it was his disciplined and had work defining his ideas mathematically, but I doubt he would have been scientifically foundational had he not provided a model and data for others to replicate and verify.

[joel232001]

@Valelacerte The international community of scientists has the appearance of a shared paradigm, but at the edges, where what is studied is (shall we say) soft sciences instead of hard (psychology and history instead of physics and chemistry), the paradigms are no longer shared. Move further away from science, and into Art and Religion, and the differences are enormous. People the world over are not the same inwardly, and the evidence for this is there for anyone who wants to look for it.