THAT mind isn't THIS Mind...

A good debunking of the idea of "Biocentrism" is here... with a "but" or two...

In their recent article in The Huffington Post, biologist Robert Lanza and mystic Deepak Chopra put forward their idea that the universe is a product of our consciousness, and not the other way around as scientists have been telling us. In essence, these authors are re-inventing idealism, an ancient philosophical concept that fell out of favour with the advent of the scientific revolution. According to the idealists, the mind creates all of reality. Many ancient Eastern and Western philosophical schools subscribe to this idealistic notion of the nature of reality. In the modern context, idealism has been supplemented with a brand of quantum mysticism and relabeled as biocentrism. According to Chopra and Lanza, this idea makes Darwin’s theory of the biological evolution and diversification of life insignificant. Both these men, although they come from different backgrounds, have independently expressed these ideas before with some popular success. In the article under discussion their different styles converge to present a uniquely mystical and bizarre worldview, which we wish to debunk here...

Note that "Mind Only" Buddhism doesn't say that your mind - that thing in your head - creates reality, but rather that Mind, universal mind, is everywhere...

The nut of what is the problem with Robert Lanza's Biocentrism is this:

Lanza questions the conventional idea that space and time exist as objective properties of the universe. In doing this, he argues that space and time are products of human consciousness and do not exist outside of the observer. Indeed, Lanza concludes that everything we perceive is created by the act of perception.

The intent behind this argument is to help consolidate the view that subjective experience is all there is.

We don't say the subjective is all there is, that there is only the subjective, but rather that the objective and subjective are interdependent.

Read the rest of the article though; from a scientific perspective it's spot on.

Perhaps it's my déformation professionnelle, but I have long believed that metaphysics should stay in the metaphysical realm, but that what we have do to in this world of phenomena must be phenomena. And of course, as a guy with some knowledge of probability and random processes, it is absurd on its face that to go around and equate "uncertainty" with complete subjectivism, when what we observe is a predictable uncertainty.



(HT: Myers)