Just another of my quick notes!
Yes yes yes, Alegro (pardon me if I can't be bothered to quote the last few posts - i'll just reply to them generally). I'm very pleased you're here adding credibility to the sceptical position. However, to all the pro-IMers I just want to say that I understand, it's my stuff as a sceptic that I want more serious studies and hard evidence (I can't speak for Alegro or others of course). I mean, I'm sorry if sometimes it seems that I am being arrogant, like I expect other people to prove what they believe. It's partly just because it would be time consuming and repetitive if I kept pointing it out. I own my requirements in the way of evidence, and if other people are happy with a 'feeling' or some personal experience, I'm not saying they have to stop it until they prove it's true to me.
I don't know whether you'd agree with that Alegro. We happen to be sticklers for rational explanations and evidence for things, especially if they're making supernatural claims about the way the universe works. I did find it slightly irritating at the James Randi Educational Foundation forums that as soon as anyone said anything that didn't fit perfectly with hard physical science, even questioningly, tentatively, a bunch of guys started shouting "PROVE IT!" or "SO WHAT ARE YOU SAYING YOU BELIEVE IN?". Like hey, I'm just chewing things over, man...
When you suggested experiments, Alegro, I knew someone would post something about mind-body connections. I almost jumped in, but I see Wax Frog has given some explanation of it (keep it up, WF, you'll be a sceptic yet!
) This kind of research is pretty amazing and has begun to make a quiet revolution in medical science. It's still very much contested, but I don't think it is going to be long before it's proven pretty substantially. But it is very different from non-local influence of mind. I don't know much about the research, but I guess there are two levels of influence. It's interesting if thinking about exercising increases your muscle tone (which is the research I was expecting someone to post), or thinking about doing a task makes you better at it. Actually - no - there's another level I didn't think about
:
1. Netball example. Mental visualisation could help the relevant parts of the brain to prepare, make subtle bio-physical calculations, etc., before starting, or even just be primed for better performance through increased blood flow and synaptic activity there. The muscles - the physical part of the body other than the synapses - might not be involved at all.
2. This example perhaps, and also the working out mentally one, in which imagining you are exercising actually has some of the effect of exercising. Here it could be that there is some subtle muscular activity taking place, so that, even though you can't see someone's biceps bulging, the cells are being massaged and activated and so are getting stronger and fitter. This kind of possible occurence makes demonstrating the LoA (without action) by mind-over-body examples virtually pointless.
3. There may be some much more subtle level of mind-to-body communication (for which evidence is also increasing, I believe). I think one pathway suggested is through the mitochondria if I remember right. Anyway, it doesn't seem difficult to accept that there may be a way, as yet poorly understood, for my thoughts, even subtle ones such as being healthier generally or mentally curing an illness, etc., to affect my body. Even in materialist biology, the brain is the seat of consciousness and is made of matter. Matter is supposed to be able to think and feel, so it's not a particuarly clear distinction to start with between mind and body. Nevertheless, it is understood that it would be via energy-matter actions, generally. It could be via some undiscovered mind-waves, but few scientists consider such a thing likely.
4. There may be an even more subtle level that transcends the limits of the body, so that mind-to-mind communication or mind-over-innert-matter connections could be possible. However, as Alegro has pointed out, while there is a lot of unbelievably pathetic evidence, there seems to be none that is convincing.
To address your point about history, Alegro, firstly, there are a lot of different ideas being put forward, and people have different ideas about how they fit together. Subjective Reality fits with LoA for some, by referring to a kind of field of infinite potential or possibility (I think that may be the term Chopra coined), and the act of thinking something causes it to be manifest, created, out of that infinite field. So anything is possible. Personally, I tend to think I smell a rat already when someone says that, but you never know. Then, when I think about it, it does seem to pose quite some serious philosophical problems, but it could make sense if there is just me, now, typing this, imagining the whole of reality myself. You, Steve Pavlina, his frickin forum, GWBush, history, the world (whether flat or round), everything is just there in this moment of my mental creation, I, God, the One. Etc. From that point of view, I don't think history is a problem. The past is just an idea. It's all happening in one great eternal NOW. I used to believe this stuff, BTW. (Maybe we passed each other on the way, cylon.
)
We hate the limitations of reality, so we keep making up much more interesting (supposedly) and appealing (at first) myths. Some of them have been around for thousands of years, not least the idea that everything is just some kind of dream God is having.
It just seems improbable to me now, though it hangs together philosophically, it has it's own internal logic, like many other religious beliefs. :duck: Nowadays it kind of reminds me of the way fundamental christians explain the vast fossil record, scientific dating methods for rocks that show it goes back to just slightly more
than the 4 thousand years or whatever it's supposed to be, etc. He put the bones there to test our faith. LOL.
Others seem to prefer some kind of limited SR, where we have some ability to influence what is manifested, and our communication perhaps helps to create the world we agree is real. There's still no use asking why people didn't fall off the edge of a flat earth if they ever believed in one: the answer would be that, as far as they were concerned, they did fall off it.
Again, like LoA, there is some usefulness in the idea within its proper limits, imho. I mean, of course, that to us the act of mass murder and human sacrifice is anathema, whereas to the ancient Aztecs (I think
) it was all a natural part of being civilised! And in the fact that everything in our human civilisation started as a thought and was moulded by our thinking. That's a wonderful and inspiring truth, imho, but it doesn't mean that we can turn water into wine, astral plane, levitate, etc. Our thoughts manifested certain things that were possible, and the field of possibility is not, despite Chopra's best hopes, infinite.