[HN Gopher] Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter...
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Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter (2017)
Author : pseudolus
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-12-12 11:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.themarginalian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.themarginalian.org)
| nathias wrote:
| Jung is astrology for men.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Eschew flamebait._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Why isn't _astrology_ "astrology for men?"
| EL_Loco wrote:
| I think what parent means is that /astrology/, per se, is
| mostly consumed by women, whereas Jung's work, which can be
| viewed as similarly unscientific, is quite widely read by
| males, when compared with astrology texts.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| I never understood how Jung is more unscientific than
| Freud.
|
| At least: I don't see this choir of "but it's
| antiscientific!!!" cries when Freud is discussed, but still
| there's no evidence whatsoever for the tripartition of self
| which is at the very base of Freud'a theories.
|
| The super-ego is no more scientific than synchronicities!
| EL_Loco wrote:
| I think Freud's theories have all been pretty much
| considered 'surpassed' in academic psychology. I don't
| think they're considered valid anymore, outside of
| popular culture.
| isitdopamine wrote:
| Then let me rephrase it this way: I don't see how Jung is
| more antiscientific than any other psychological theory.
| akimball wrote:
| For the same reason sawdust is called "man glitter"
| tgv wrote:
| I agree, although somewhat curiously it isn't based on external
| influences. But while possibly interesting from a historical
| point of view, what the article describes is what e.g. Penrose
| still pursues: here's some psychological effect we don't
| understand, and here's a physical one that can be described
| with similar metaphors, hence they must be related!
| akimball wrote:
| Unfair to Penrose. His view is more like: Hence testing the
| range and depth of possible relationships to the limits of
| their coherence with evidence is a worthwhile enterprise.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Atom and Archytype was an absolute delight to read, highly
| recommended.
|
| Also fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_effect
| impostervt wrote:
| I've been reading Bernardo Kastrup's "Decoding Jung's
| Metaphysics". In the book, Kastrup quotes from letters between
| Pauli & Jung several times in order to try and show how Jung
| though privately about metaphysics were more mystical than what
| he said publicly.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Jungs-Metaphysics-Archetypal...
| throwaway47292 wrote:
| If you are interested in Jung's metaphysics I strongly
| recommend ordering a copy of The Red Book
| (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393065677) even though it costs
| 200$, it is worth every penny. It is amazing to read Jung's
| unfiltered mind.
| richardjdare wrote:
| There is a cheaper "Readers Edition" of the Red Book
| available. Also, Jung's student Marie-Louise Von Franz wrote
| a bit about Jung's later ideas in her books, "Number and
| Time", and "Psyche and Matter".
| nabla9 wrote:
| If you read Jung's autobiography, it should be clear.
|
| There is a place for interesting left-field ideas in science
| and philosophy, and Jung had the most interesting ideas. But if
| ideas are the only thing, it leads to nothing.
|
| Jung is a David Lynch of psychiatry. Jung's work is art and
| self-expression from a very creative and unique mind.
|
| It's best to read him as an artist, unique person. Jung was
| able to interact with his unconscious. He was discussing with
| imaginary people while he was completely awake. He wandered in
| dream-like states and remembered what happened.
| zwkrt wrote:
| I've heard that jungian analysis works better for creative
| people who are more frequently living in a world of deep
| metaphors and inferred meanings.
| 50 wrote:
| A bit reminiscent of the discussions between J. Krishnamurti and
| David Bohm.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| I have to admit that I don't get it, although I want to. What is
| an example of synchronicity/meaning-correspondence that Pauli
| might have suggested?
| plutonorm wrote:
| These kinds of links are becoming more frequent. The Zeitgeist
| appears to be thinking more deeply on these topics. Perhaps we as
| a collective are beginning to move beyond brute materialism. I
| know I have been for a number of years now.
| jarpschop wrote:
| Throughout history, people have always avoided naturalism,
| almost at any cost. I think that this in part has to do with
| the crude reality it implies, it a very hard pill to swallow to
| anyone who understands it well. However, time and again, what
| has been attributed to non-natural, magical entities, has turn
| out false. If I wanted to avoid becoming the next sun-
| worshipping, cow-worshipping idolatrous, I would be very wary
| of any supernatural claim.
| plutonorm wrote:
| Examine your own experience. Pinch yourself. Attempt to deny
| the salience of that experience. Now attempt to explain that
| subjective experience arising from pure matter.
| simiones wrote:
| This has largely been solved by computation, for me and
| many others.
|
| In this interpretation, the brain is a computing machine
| that decodes signals from the outside world into various
| internal forms, akin to, say, the in-memory representation
| of a data structure representing an image being observed by
| an image sensor. Subjective feelings are then the result of
| a certain part of the brain analyzing other parts of the
| brain.
|
| All of the various quibbles about "qualia" and "p-zombies"
| and such seem to just be conceptions that beg the question.
| Sure, we can imagine or conceive of a being which reacts to
| stimuli and reasons without having internal feelings, but
| there is no reason to actually assert that such a being is
| actually possible. It is very possible that
| feelings/"qualia" are a necessary component/by-product of a
| computing system capable of general intelligence and self-
| reflection.
|
| In the Mary's Room thought experiment, it's quite possible
| that if Mary knows everything that there is to know about
| the physics of light and the neuroscience of color
| perception, she can literally cause herself to imagine the
| color red, or ultra-violet, so that she will not be at all
| surprised when she encounters actual red for the first
| time.
|
| In the Chinese Room thought experiment, the Room
| (homunculus + books) quite possibly _understands_ Chinese
| in the same sense as a Chinese-speaking human does, even if
| the homunculus inside doesn 't.
| huetius wrote:
| I've always found it amusing that in the Chinese Room, we
| are expected to uphold as reality the perspective of the
| guy being duped.
| simiones wrote:
| Are you referring to the person sending its question to
| the Chinese Room as "the guy being duped"?
|
| If so, if they pose a question in Chinese and obtain a
| meaningful answer in Chinese, in what way are they "being
| duped"? You would only call them "being duped" if you
| believe that the answer is somehow meaningfully different
| from what a real Chinese-speaking human would have given,
| which I and many others do not accept.
| huetius wrote:
| He is duped because the system has no understanding, yet
| he believes it does[0]. A counterfeiter who evades
| detection is not a mint.
|
| [0] I believe that the original thought experiment was
| intended to lead to this conclusion, but in popular
| culture and in the above post, is marshaled towards the
| opposite end.
| carapace wrote:
| I have this thing: the world looks bluer out of one eye
| and redder out of the other. Which eye is correct?
| simiones wrote:
| Well, what does "correct" mean here? Colors are a
| construct of the human mind, whichever way you put it.
|
| Now, you could devise some tests where you look at a
| "white" piece of paper (you conduct a survey of 100
| people to establish whether it is pure white or tinted)
| and you look at it through each eye, and now if one eye
| sees it as pure white and the other as reddish or
| blueish, you know that the eye that sees it as pure white
| is "correct"; possibly one eye sees it as reddish and the
| other as blueish, and then neither eye is "correct". Of
| course, this defines "correct" as "in agreement with the
| eye sight of most other people".
|
| You could also chose to dig deeper, and have many complex
| tests done to determine if there are differences in the
| structure of the retinas of the two eyes that could
| explain the difference (e.g. perhaps one retina has some
| malformations that probably explain the difference), and
| then you can decide that the eye that doesn't have the
| malformation, if any, is "correct". That eye could still
| be more skewed in your perception according to the first
| test though, since the brain may have already adjusted.
|
| Alternatively, you could study the neural architecture
| that is responsible for color perception and suss out the
| differences between the two images, find out what is the
| difference between them, and decide which is correct
| based on that (are they different output images for the
| same input, and is one receiving any other input that
| should not be related? are they receiving different
| inputs? how does your neural architecture differ from
| that of 100 other people? etc.)
|
| Of course, we entirely lack the ability to do the third
| test, and mostly lack this ability for the second test as
| well, so from a purely practical point of view, you would
| be stuck with the first test to determine this.
|
| The exact same question could be posed of a color-
| reporting computer system, by the way. Say you have two
| cameras and an image analyzer that can print out the
| color of the central pixel in the images from both
| cameras (in RGB). Pointing the two cameras at the same
| object, you get a print out that says `LEFT
| (R250,G255,B255); RIGHT (R255,G255,B250)`. Which of the
| two is correct?
| plutonorm wrote:
| You assume that conscious experience arises "ex nihilo".
| You are saying that something of a different ontological
| category "emerges" from the mechanism. I'm afraid the
| onus is on you to describe the process of formation,
| vaguely waving your hands in the direction of strong
| emergence is nothing more than saying "and then there is
| magic".
|
| You raise the Chinese room thought experiment, but it is
| orthogonal to the point at hand. I believe the machine in
| the Chinese room thought experiment is conscious and that
| says little about where I might imagine consciousness
| comes from.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is nothing in need of explanation. Consciousness is
| what consciousness does.
|
| Just like a computer can sort numbers, a human brain can
| produce thoughts and speech, and describe itself to
| itself, which we call consciousness.
|
| A machine that would both (a) have enought information
| about the working of the world, and (b) have the right
| algorithms for predicting how to influence human beings
| and other conscious animals would, I believe, be able to
| turn this same predictive ability on itself and come up
| with what we call "conscious experiences".
|
| While I can't claim it's impossible that there is more to
| it than that (perhaps only beings imbued with
| transcendent souls by a god can actually have conscious
| experience - that is not ultimately disprovable, after
| all), I also don't see any reason to imagine that there
| MUST be something like "consciousness" that is apart from
| complex computation.
| bobthechef wrote:
| This is a terrible argument. The bit about the supernatural
| is also non sequitur in this context.
|
| The OP was talking about materialism specifically, and
| naturalists are materialists, but the emphasis where
| materialism is concerned is metaphysical, namely, the thesis
| that that all that exists is matter and that matter is
| essentially extension in space, devoid of all those things
| any sane person acknowledges (qualia like color and
| intentional states like desires). Materialism, as have been
| shown time and again, is incoherent. It cannot explain
| something like color _even as an illusion_ , because it
| cannot account for color _even in principle in any way_. At
| least the Cartesian, crippled by his own set of problems,
| could relegate things like that to the res cogitans. Trying
| to explain these things using only the res extensa is like
| trying to build the color blue out of triangles.
|
| It also does not follow that any non-materialist position
| automatically accepts "magical" things (though you weren't
| specific about what you meant by "magical" or even "non-
| natural"). No one thinks of qualia or intentionality as "non-
| natural" or "magical". It is the _nature_ of human beings to
| have desires and beliefs. It is the _nature_ of matter to
| have color. But more to the point, I 'm not sure how you
| leapt naturalism-qua-materialism to what is essentially God-
| of-the-gaps. (Mind you, the traditional understanding of God,
| in Catholicism and reaching all the way back to Moses, is
| that God is self-subsisting being whose nature it is to exist
| and that by which all things exist. Things cannot account for
| their own existence because existence is prior to things; if
| it were a property, it would be posterior which is absurd,
| and if it were identical with things, then plurality would be
| impossible, though this, too, is absurd).
|
| Materialism is insinuated by the scientistic strains in our
| culture which creates a kind of bad mental habit of rejecting
| anything that cannot be pigeonholed into the straightjacket
| of materialist presuppositions and a compulsion to rephrase
| reality in terms of those presuppositions. But these aren't
| explanations. These are redefinitions.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| (since you are juxtaposing naturalism and magic, I'm assuming
| by naturalism you mean materialism. If that is incorrect,
| ignore me.)
|
| Yes, but also no. Materialism is a way of looking at the
| world that itself encompasses the scientific method. Saying
| that the scientific method always proves materialism correct
| is a tautology.
|
| I think what's different this time around is that we are
| saying materialism is likely incomplete, as opposed to
| 'wrong', which seems like a safe bet given our advancing
| understanding of the universe. Give the materialists that
| which is theirs.
| Layke1123 wrote:
| What? If anything, over time, science has increasingly
| shown that a material view of the world is far more
| accurate. Just because we don't have a complete theory of
| the universe yet, that does not mean it is likely
| incomplete. We've only been seriously at this for about 200
| years. It took us 50 from the first flight to land on the
| moon. Why would you think it's more likely to reverse trend
| suddenly?
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| >Saying that the scientific method always proves
| materialism correct is a tautology
|
| If, on a hypothetical example, we could come up with an
| experiment where you removed half of 100 people's nervous
| system and most of them kept acting like normal then the
| scientific method would "prove" that materialism isn't
| correct (unless, of course, someone came and found out that
| what actually makes people behave like they do isn't their
| nervous system).
|
| There is nothing making the scientific method unable
| ascertain whether there is more to the universe than the
| physical things in it. The scientific method just fails
| again and again at reaching the opposite stance.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > If, on a hypothetical example, we could come up with an
| experiment where you removed half of 100 people's nervous
| system and most of them kept acting like normal then the
| scientific method would "prove" that materialism isn't
| correct
|
| Ah, you yourself are falling into the old failings of
| combating materialism: Using materialist methods and
| materialist measures. Trying to prove materialism wrong
| with materialist frameworks is a fools errand. Like
| mentioned above: it has failed time and time again, and
| I'm fairly confident it would fail in your example.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| > Trying to prove materialism wrong with materialist
| frameworks is a fools errand ... it has failed time and
| time again
|
| Howso? What alternative is there that still uses logical,
| if albeit not materialist methods?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| There are none. Non-materialist sciences are horribly
| underdeveloped. We have two options for exploring
| solutions to problems we may suspect non-materialist
| answers to:
|
| 1) Try materialism over and over again anyway hoping it
| will eventually solve the problem.
|
| 2) Develop a new discipline starting with the axioms of
| the problem at hand.
|
| Number 1 has been so successful and provided so much work
| for scientists that any problem it doesn't work for
| mostly gets ignored.
|
| I'm not saying materialism is necessarily wrong or bad
| BTW, just that it has a limit. It starts and ends at the
| perimeter of _shared_ *human* experience.
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Perhaps the greatest trick that materialism has pulled off is
| conflating "natural" with "material." To the idealist, _mind_
| -- this experiential fabric that is directly and unmistakably
| apprehensible -- is perfectly natural, and so _idealism_ is
| "naturalism." The in-principle-unobservable abstraction
| called "matter" is what's spooky and unnecessary.
|
| Struggling hard to avoid a particular outcome
| ("*-worshipping") makes it harder to be completely unbiased
| and look where the raw data is pointing. That's why the
| Enlightenment, in setting itself in direct opposition to the
| Church, ended up with materialism (though it first made a
| foray into Cartesian dualism).
| throwaway321678 wrote:
| I would recommend to anyone to read Jung's - Modern Man in Search
| of a Soul. It explains a lot of the social phenomena of today.
|
| The insight of that man was amazing!
|
| And it's more like an essay of 100 pages long.
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