Reality Of Consciousness Research Articles

Is religion refuted by physics or astronomy?

Can physics, in particular biophysics, refute religion? The answer to this question would be yes if physics were almighty. Actually the answer is no, since parapsychology comes to the aid of religion by showing that physical laws, though extremely important, are not all-powerful. Stronger still, while in Galileo's time religion was hostile to astronomy because it felt it as a menace, modern astronomy and general relativity present a strong argument in favour of religion, and even a convincing argument for the existence of an unseen world. This is the main subject of the paper. The chief religions in their original form have the following elements in common: a Supreme Being the Creator, a world of spirits or souls (the occult or hidden world), a hereafter and communication between man and this invisible world. The concept of parallelism of body and soul, assuming the body entirely governed by physical laws, denies all these elements; the concept of dualism with interaction makes them possible. The well-established paranormal phenomenon of telepathy disproves parallelism and its atheistic argument and favours dualism by proving that the soul can exert non-physical forces on the material of the body. Communication between man and occult souls may either be assumed direct from soul to soul or indirect by “ brain writing” and “ brain reading”. In the expanding Universe there finally can be no organisms and, if conscious reality (which philosophically is the only certain reality) is to go on, one must have souls that can exist independently of any organism, in other words an occult world. In the pulsating Universe, as the other possibility, nuclear energy that provides radiation of the stars is gradually used up. From this it follows that, prior to a certain instant, there is either the physical impossibility, “more than 100% hydrogen”, or (if there is regeneration of helium into hydrogen at the compression to high density at the end of every pulsation) there is the physical impossibility, “less than no radiation”. Both call for a drastic non-physical intervention: the physical laws are inadequate and so the action from an occult world is called for. The most radical way out on the basis of Berkeley's philosophy is briefly outlined: it is postulated that all of reality consists of souls that consciously experience and act; and our world of space and time is due to the Supreme Soul giving us the required “outer world” experiences by direct communication from soul to soul. Thus our own world or any other might be “created” simply by such communication. Father Teilhard's book The Phenomenon of Man and Bishop Robinson's Honest to God are briefly considered in this connection. It is pointed out that Teilhard has not been consistent and that, in our view, a supernatural or occult world as well as “God as a Person” is acceptable, both of which Robinson has denied. Our use of the second law of thermodynamics (for the using up of nuclear energy) is to be considered from a more refined and more satisfactory standpoint in a subsequent paper “Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics and the Universe”.

Some Problems in Applying Mathematical Methods to Economics, and the Political Economy of Socialism

Apart from the essential difference in socioeconomic relations, the socialist mode of production is distinguished from capitalism in still one other important aspect. This distinction is that under socialism the objective laws are realized consciously within the framework of society as a whole. Productive forces and productive relations are under the control of men and are consciously developed and improved by them. The transition from capitalism to communism was visualized by Engels as a leap from the realm of blind necessity to the realm of freedom, with freedom conceived of as comprehended necessity, as man's domination over social production and his economic relations. The degree of men's freedom under socialism depends entirely on the depth of understanding and conscious realization of objective economic laws. Even under socialism, necessity that is not understood remains blind necessity and does not provide a normal course of growth of social production, exchange, and distribution.

Sense Consciousness According to St. Thomas

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDIToRs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE OF ST. JoSEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington 17, D. C. VoL. XXI OCTOBER, 1958 SENSE CONSCIOUSNESS ACCORDING TO ST. THOl\fAS No.4 A concept of consciousness would seem to be an Integral part of a theory of knowledge as well as a crucial element in any theory of human nature. Our capacity to know ourselves is necessarily bound up inextricably with the question of our capacity to know in general, and in turn underlies many such problems as those of self-realization and the validity of self-criticism, the nature of psychological personality, the foundation of ethics and morality, and other related points. Traditionally accepted as an evident object of psychological study, both by philosophers and early empirical psychologists, the notion of consciousness began to suffer a certain diminution in the latter half of the nineteenth century, until in some schools of thought its reality came to be wholly denied. At the same time, through the influence of psychoanalysis, the 415 416 MICHAEL STOCK important role of the unconscious mind was made strikingly manifest, and the question of the respective influence of conscious and unconscious motivation became a central issue in psychology and ethics. At the present time, with the reality of consciousness generally accepted again, and some of the early over-statements of the force of the unconscious somewhat modified, the time seems ripe for an extensive investigation of the relationships obtaining between the conscious and unconscious spheres of men's minds. In this context, it seems useful to state more fully the ideas on consciousness held by St. Thomas, not only because his insights are hound to be of value in discussing current problems, but also because such doctrine should be explicitly understood if many of the implications of Thomistic psychology and moral theology are to be fully appreciated. Certainly many aspects of the doctrine of consciousness have been treated in one form or another, but, so far as I know, there is no complete and exhaustive statement. In working towards such a statement, it seems useful to sketch first, as in general outline, a broader conspectus of the points which will have to be raised and solved before an integral statement can be offered. For the sake of analysis, the matter may be divided under three main headings; the questions of strictly sense consciousness, the questions of purely intellectual consciousness, and the questions of intellectual reflection on the senses. Our immediate purpose here is to raise and discuss some of the problems involved in sense consciousness. By way of preliminary notes, some of the ambiguity which attaches itself to the notion of consciousness should be removed. In common usage, consciousness often means nothing more than knowledge, for instance, when we ask someone whether or not he was conscious of some noise or sight. For St. Thomas, however, consciousness always had a note of cognitive complexity about it; it was knowJedge as applied to something.1 1 " Nomen enim conscientiae significat applicationem scientiae ad aliquid; unde conscire dicitur quasi simul scire." De Ve:rit., q. 17, a. l; cf. Summa Theol., I, q. 79, a. 18; ll Sent., d. ~4, q. ~. a. 4. SENSE CONSCIOUSNESS ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS 417 In the moral order, it was knowledge applied to deliberate actions as they measured up to or failed to measure up to rules of reason and Faith; what is today called conscience. This moral consciousness was necessarily founded on psychological consciousness, which, in its strictest sense, was knowledge of knowledge, or the awareness of an act of knowledge. It thus involved two elements-an apprehension of some knowable object and a separate cognitive realization that that object was apprehended. By extension, however, the word " consciousness " could be used to signify the things of which one has consciousness, that is, the things known which are known to be known.2 By extension, again, in another direction, consciou~ ness may signify the·act of being aware of other psychological states or operations besides those which are cognitive, that is, the actual awareness of emotions, feelings, performances and the like. Under this...

Psychosomatic correlations in migraine

A case of migraine is presented which illustrates the need for a thorough dissection of the character structure in psychosomatic problems, in order to determine why hostility is being generated and why it cannot be overtly expressed. It is possible that where migraine “burns itself out” with advancing years or where a spontaneous cure develops that the character structure has altered itself so that hostility is either diminished or its outward expression enhanced. The diversion of hostility from autonomic channels can occur without a conscious realization on the part of the patient of many of his deeper problems and conflicts.

Letter to Editors

DR. WADDINGTON'S interesting essay which was published in NATURE of September 6, p. 270, suggests that he is still wavering between the theory that when you have explained a thing you have explained it away, and the fundamental but usually unspoken postulate of science that everything has an explanation, even though this implies an infinite series of causation. In Dr. Waddington's opinion, Marxists say that ethical systems are epiphenomena which may be left out of account when we are considering the mechanism of social development. T. H. Huxley invented the word ‘epiphenomenon’ to mean a mental event caused by physical events, but not in its turn causing physical events. I believe that in the long run science has no room for such loose ends. Certainly Marxism has not. “It would be totally absurd”, wrote Lenin in “Materialism and Empirio–criticism”, “that materialism should maintain the ‘lesser’ reality of consciousness.” Marxists hold that mind is real, but secondary to matter because matter existed before mind. Similarly, they think that economic and social structure largely determines the ethical system. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” is meaningless in a society with no marriage. “Thou shalt not steal” is replaced by “Thou shalt not waste” as property becomes socialized.

Fact and the Comprehensive Examination

SINCE the rise of interest in examinations in this country -the discussion question, the new-type objective forms, and more recently the comprehensive terminal examination-many have argued the importance of facts. According to one group of examiners, definite factual items-those items which are accepted as true-must be the solid basis of examining. These examiners usually advocate a wide sampling of definite short-answer items. Another group, influenced more or less by the experiences of the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, have vaguely sought something less tangible than facts in their examining, an ability which they feel is more important. It is partly the selection and expression of relevant ideas, partly the original organization of ideas, and partly a keen appreciation of the historic-philosophical reference of any important problem. To the second group of examiners facts make up the skeleton, perhaps, but not the meat of scholarship. They do not motivate the thinker. They do not require consecutive reasoning on a broad problem. To be sure, such thinking cannot fail to use and yield but these are often by-products, supplementary to broad principles. What is a fact? Derived from the Latin factum, a fact stands for a deed or past event. It is true that there are facts which are ultimately final events bound up with definitions or identities (such as two and two equals four), but there are also facts, those items which are commonly accepted as fixed because they establish well-agreed-upon relationships within a system of postulates which is accepted. Medieval scholasticism had many identities and facts regarding the soul and God which could be derived provided one accepted the basic postulates and definitions. Some philosophers refer to orders of fact-ness, differentiating facts according to their verity or complexity or both. The idealists will allow absolute certainty for no as one's theory of knowledge or use of terms modifies the nature of the simplest perceptions; for example, some behaviorists do not grant the reality of consciousness. It may be that the most significant characteristic of a fact, or item