02.08.09
Science, consciousness, ‘credit crunch for materialism’
Sheldrake and the credit crunch for materialism
Sheldrake’s critique of materialism is refreshing after the standard version from religionists, and the ID group. However, as noted here several terms, becoming disillusioned with materialism and becoming converted to non-materialism won’t solve the problem. There is a danger of trading one confusion for another. Belief in materialism is ‘long gone’ amongst most New Agers, but they haven’t resolved the mystery of consciousness either. Many do, however, change their mindset to something that is more practical and breaks the deadlock of crude ‘materialistic’ belief.
As pointed out here several times, the classic sutras on Samkhya embrace ‘materialism’, and find no contradiction in this (however, the gesture is mostly formal and merely makes a statement about the unity of nature).
It is not necessarily helpful to pose the antithesis of consciousness and materialism, although the reductionist materialism of neuroscience tends to induce this reaction. Are religious believers any closer to an understanding of consciousness? The problem requires a different set of concepts.
One of those is a kind of Schopenhaurian perspective on materialism, as is given by his, and Kant’s transcendental idealism. This won’t solve the problem either, and yet it can help to place the issue of mind in a more intelligible context.
Another, at this link: http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2008/09/25/the-will-and-the-will/, takes a look at a modern version of Samkhya proposed by J.G. Bennett, which constructs a triple category system of ‘being, function, will’.
In general we may or may not be able to penetrate the mystery of consciousness scientifically, but what we can do is to ‘use the software of consciousness’ to try and penetrate that enigma, through a transformation of consciousness. The issue of ‘consciousness’ is too simplistic, the problem is really one of the relationship of consciousness to self-consciousness, thence to the issue of consciousness, attention, and their interaction. And this returns full circle to the issues of the ‘will’ in relation to consciousness that are intimated in Kant and Schopenhauer.
In a way, there seems to be a principle of justice in the ‘hardness’ of the ‘hard problem’. The creation of a science of consciousness by the cadre of greedy and ambitious scientists in ethical indifference on the make for a manipulative technology would be a disaster for mankind. So we can feel a sense of relief that scientists are thrown back at the entry to the arcanum.
A technology of consciousness among those who ‘grove on Darwinism’ is like the trailer to a horror movie, so let them flounder in their ‘end of science’, as predicted by Spengler.
Unfortunately the mysteries have been penetrated as well by the villains of the yogic world and the exploitations of that knowledge are the burden of the shadow worlds of the religions of Buddhism, sufism and the New Age movement.
In any case, scientists have shown themselves incapable of getting past the simple mistakes of Darwinism. It is hard to see how they can manage the issue of consciousness.