Ongoing Lucidity

Specifically things like the holographic paradigm (Pribam) Non locality at the subatomic level (the theories of David Bohm) Maybe some proponents of Jungian synchronicity


These theories could possibly explain the non locality of data storage in the brain, and why we can store vast amounts of information (I think 10 collections of the Encyclopedia Brittanica) as well as the ability to ingeniusly archive information with the ability to cross correlate and reference an uncountable number of things in seconds.


Pribram refers to this as the implicate and explicate order. Ultimately all things originate from the implicate order. While both orders are not mutually exclusive to one another, there are a great many difficulties when one indoctrinated to the explicate order (which is basically law to us) encounters this vast resource which is all that is (the collective whole). This would explain things like scitzophernia, manic depression and a plethora of other mental illnessess.

Show your support (or any critism) for the collective postulate here.

tronvillain

The "non-locality" of data storage in the brain would seem to be a direct result of how the brain works, so resorting to bizarre theories to explain it is unwarranted.

John Page

I beleive there is a collective conscious (and unconscious) but that its not necessarily achieved through some mysterious force. (Can't deny anything I don't know about).

I think one of the reasons poeple watch soap operas is to exercise their individual consciousness and compare the resulting feelings, opinions etc.

Maybe you could consider the most execellent discussion form we are using right now as a form of collective conscious.

I believe the a collective conscious and unconscious were very significant in the development and adoption of moral behavioral standards pre-history. How would a collective otherwise make a conscious decision that burning witches was good or bad. (No challenges please, this is a hypothetical example from pre-history).

Ongoing Lucidity

tronvillan:

uhm, would like to qualify on that?

If you agree that data is not distrobuted regionally throughout the brain then how do you describe its existence and order? The holograhic theory is just as "bizarre" as saying information is contained in wave forms or some other non tangible frequency. What most people would see as bizarre is not the theory itself but the rammifications that would follow. If fact a revision of the greatest kind would be in order if enough empirical truths amass to challenge reality as it is.

Ongoing Lucidity

Truly the phenomona becomes less mysterious every day. Physicists have broken down matter enough that at the sub-atomic level einstiens law of relativity fails to exist. Either these particles have some kind of communication or movement that is faster than light, or they are non local altogether. And if non-locality exists at the point of inception which is our brain, then it is fallacious to believe it does not in so the called objective reality, which is ultimately a part of of the whole as much as we are. By this I dont reality is false, it is very much true, but it is only one side of something which is much more vast.

jpbrooks

I can't rule out the possibility of a "collective consciousness" of the kind proposed above. But the idea of a "collective unconscious" (as proposed by Jung) does not necessitate dragging in concepts from Quantum Mechanics. Though I have heard that Jung eventually did develop an interest in QM and how it might relate to his theories.

Malaclypse the Younger

Non-locality is different than nonlocalization. The first refers to anything that travels faster than light (e.g. quantum correlations), the second merely means that something is not in one specific location.

There are approximately 100 billion neurons* in the brain each with about 1,000 to 10,000 synapses. That gives us about 1e14-1e15 synaptic connections (about 100-1000 terabits) in the physical connectivity. That's quite a lot of processing power.

So far as I can tell, there's no evidence to support the idea of a collective anything, other than culture and society emerging from ordinary forms of communication.

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*<a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html" target="_blank">Brain Facts and Figures</a>

Ongoing Lucidity

jp:

True. Some of the protege's of Jung have drafted interpretations of quantum physics into the idea of conciousness, but that was only to provide some framework/pragmatic understanding of the brain as it were. (as well as the fact that no plausible or conclusive answers could be found in the realm of physcology) Hence Pribram's importation of the holographic process into thought and mental processes.

For example an image recorded on a holographic interference pattern is broken into fragments, each fragment will still contain the original image of the whole. (as the brain does) The holograph also has the ability to contain a staggering amount of information, as well as the ability to archive it ingeniously with inumerous points of cross-reference. As pointed out, this may also be possible with neural and synaptic connections but it does not explain why memories seem to exist not at a localized level but somehow spread or distributed through the brain as a whole.

[ March 22, 2002: Message edited by: Ongoing Lucidity ]</p>

Ierrellus

In SOCIETY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Freud says that there are "archaic remnants" in the human psyche, but argues that they are of no value to psychotherapy. In this work he also dismissed "cosmic consciousness" as a realization of the totality of being as an effect of postnatal orientation by family.

Jung, of course, disagreed as he states in MODERN MAN IN SEARCH OF A SOUL. But both Freud and Jung suggest data in the human psyche that is passed down through an evolutionary/genetic continuum.

What is inherited data?

Ierrellus