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Don Salmon's avatar

HI Marco:

As always, a clear and accurate statement of current affairs in our no-progress quest to understand consciousness.

Now - can I ask you your strategy? For example, though I fully agree intelligence in plants which have no nervous system is a radical challenge to materialism, many don't see this.

Arthur Reber (the infamous psychologist who announced, "I don't need to look at ANY research on parapsychology to know it's in error - psi violates the laws of nature so it must be wrong) was adamantly against speaking of plant cognition for decades. he just published a book on stunning findings of cognition/intelligence in plants yet he does not think it even remotely challenges the physicalist view.

I'm not sure what to do with that - maybe you can just dismiss him but so many think the same way.

I'm just arriving here from what I think is the most bizarre conversation i've ever had in Bernardo Kastrup's facebook forum. A "tantric yogini" who considers herself a philosopher and practitioner tried to argue that the idea of "Divine Intelligence" (that is, intelligence beyond the human, like the supramental, for example) is a mere concept with no usefulness. She suggested Stephen Wolfram's writings (Wolfram is an avowed physicalist) to help me understand how order to NOT arise in a mindless universe (!!!??), she asserted that Bernardo's philosophy is in harmony with her own "tantric" philosophy and experience and any attempt to suggest his Mind At Large, with an intelligence like that of a beetle, may not be sufficient to account for the universe, was met with the assertion that I was being "intellectual' and her experience told her his philosophy made sense.

Now this is someone who calls herself an idealist and philosopher in general, yet her philosophic capacity seems even less than that of Richard Dawkins.

I am not sure where I'm going with this, except maybe to say we need some kind of syllabus of philosophy and science accessible to a 10 year old??

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