Science and society

 What are vague monster concepts? They might be described as having a huge comprehension which hinders them being grasped as an intelligible whole so that one is inevitably lead to form a subconcept of which important aspects are missing (we could call such concepts 'quantum' or even 'fractal' in the Baudrillardian sense). This allows a rhetoric of the concept which can pragmatically justify opposing statements according to circumstance (in the theory of Thom, it is almost if it were alive and had developed a sort of self-defense mechanism).  It also invites the questioning of whether the concept as a whole represents anything consistent and intelligible  beyond being merely a cloud, a manipulate veil for power and control.  Western culture abounds in monster concepts. We mentioned 'religion'. Another concept is 'intelligence' though this is also a the same time a pseudo-concept (as is the concept 'socio-economic class').  We do not of course mean here the sense of 'intelligence' which pertains to the essence, structure and dynamics of human reason, of the human mind, of consciousness...the subject of the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, nor the problems with learning difficulties in children and adolescents (and how tests can be use to diagnose specific difficulties).   No, what we address here is the pseudo-concept of 'intelligence' in which  in certain cultures individual A is said to be 'smarter', 'more intelligent', 'brighter', etc. than individual B. 'Intelligence' not as a common essence of a (biologically) normal human being, but as some kind  of alleged extra virtue or special attribute. There are universal valid concepts of being  'intelligent'  : i) knowledge of the moral law, or, knowledge of what should or should not be done,  knowledge of how one should treat other human beings and animals.  The organ of intelligence is empathy and compassion (durch Mitleid wissend...). Without empathy and compassion, without a firm knowledge of the absolute universality and inviolability of human and animal rights there is no way a human being could ever be considered 'intelligent', but rather  in this instance should be considered some kind of aberration and monster, a case of stunted development. ii) insight-wisdom in the practice of self-reflection into the nature of consciousness (and this includes suitably philosophically illumined formal and theoretical disciplines). iii) possession of skills which contribute to the common good and alleviation of suffering of human beings, animals and the environment. iv) artistic genius. What we call 'anti-intelligence' is the loathsome  set of  (predominantly verbal) 'skills'  concerned with deceiving, manipulating, controlling, exploiting and harming other people (generally for the aim of wealth, prestige and power). 

That mathematics and science progress is automatic and in itself not meaningful. It is in the nature of things that playing around with logical consequence or performing experiments (specially with government and or military funding) new 'knowledge' will be produced (and tragically it is also frequently about performing faulty experiments and using faulty statistical methods to produce ad hoc justification for previously endorsed  theories).  There is nothing special or praiseworthy here. There are no grounds to boast of 'superiority' or 'genius'.   It is only in light of higher philosophical, metamathematical, metalogical,  interdisciplinary, pedagogical, humanistic and artistic knowledge and principles that math and science production can be assessed.  A simple example: in mathematics what matters is the style, intuitive clarity and structure of the system of definitions and concepts, the elegance, simplicity and transparency of the proofs, and the relevance of the entire theory to philosophy and other branches of both math and science.  Mathematics needs to philosophically reflect upon itself and return to its essence in  Euclid, Descartes, Leibniz, Frege,  Peano, Brouwer,  Hilbert, Russell, Gentzen, Martin-Löf and  the recent contributions of Voevodsky. The state of physics is shameful. Quantum mechanics is an 'intellectual scandal'  of our times, in the words of René Thom.   Where are the physicists working on rectifying and extending and lending logical coherence to this hodgepodge  mess of a theory? It is really time for physics to make progress and to stop the nonsense about 'brilliant' physicists and 'geniuses' taking about 'theories of everything' and the 'end of physics'. And also it would be nice to have a direct answer to the following question: for the majority of commonly used modern technology what part of contemporary physics is actually necessary? 

There is a large amount of evidence that consciousness can subsist independently from the physical brain and that consciousness is not generated from the brain nor in particular are different psychological faculties determined by specialized functional regions of the brain. A philosophy which ignores this evidence is not philosophy but propaganda. Consciousness does not supervene on the brain or physical matter.  Even the determination of the structure of a protein from the corresponding gene is an open problem.  If there is a 'genetic determinism' for some 'traits' above the simple constitution of biomolecules then this is evidently the delicate outcome of a non-linear complex feedback system of multiple  interacting genes and environmental factors. And since consciousness does not supervene on the brain it is evident and conclusive that the vast majority of complex human traits (which is an open problem even to define) have no corresponding 'genetic' cause - although it is now known that the underlying biochemical factors in the process of inheritance greatly transcend mere nucleotide sequences. It is an urgent task to vigorously expose and debunk growing cults revolving around pseudoscientific concepts of 'intelligence' and 'race' , specially 'evolutionary psychology' and 'social darwinism'.   For a good introduction to the kind 'science'  and worldview involved see David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales: Errors of Heredity, Selfish Genes and other Fables of Evolution together with J.Fodor and M. Palmattelli, What Darwin Got Wrong. Brute force and vile cunning  do not 'explain' anything about human biology, psychology or culture, and are not a source of value or scientific understanding. See our previous text for some perspectives on anthropology.

Is human culture and human history there have been and still are 'super-powers'. Power-structures (whether military, economic or religious) which are so vast, so pervasive, so entrenched, whose tentacles are so embedded in the psychological and cultural being of humanity...that their very nature and history is already a monster concept, very difficult for the mind to grasp at once without a high degree of selectivity and filtering.  Super-powers expressing the essence of monster concepts (the monster myth) in history are highly resilient: no amount of factual evidence and investigation detailing present and  past centuries of fraud, deceit, forgery,  self-contradiction, incoherence, falsity,  absurdity,  betrayal, hypocrisy, immorality, oppression, abuse, murder, torture, genocide - can touch them. The ordinary person filters and selects and only sees what they want to see or have been programed to see.  The ordinary person cannot grasp this monster at once in their own mind and they are happy to swallow the bait and live in a fantasy bubble afforded by the pleasure and illusion the super-power offers.  Super-powers are stupor-powers, they are in a way 'the opium of the masses'.  So insidious is this monstrous power, this hideous strength, that one does not want to speak out against them less one offend one's friends.  And the human mind can only focus on the here and now, on the so-called 'news' and is immediately drawn to mythic constructions of good guys vs. bad guys and historical forgetfulness.

What we call 'social media' or the 'news'  is a kind of poison that is constantly pumped into the mind in order to maintain  negative psychological states which hinder the the attainment of insight, peace and freedom.

Superpowers become familiar, socially accepted, long-standing, ingrained in our social fabric - and thereby shielded from inquiry and criticism under an aura of venerability and respectability. 

If we make it our daily exercise to constantly recall and expose the evil deeds and lies and kept secrets of super-powers, it is not out of some kind of personal bitterness. It it in the order of things, it is the required medicine for the human mind that 'cannot bear too much reality' and is so easily  lost in the filtering and wish-fulfillment offered by the thousand head hydra of monster concepts.

One of the numerous flaws which render the Large Language Models in vogue today of so little value and  of so much harm to the human mind and to human society is the precisely the quality and character of the initial data. The monster data sets generally used (internet junk, cyber-propaganda and fake anonymous encyclopedias) are imbued with the biases and ideology  of reigning superpowers which exert a distorting tyrannical influence over their respective 'semantic' territories (without LLMs having to worry about any conceptual or logical coherence).  Such a monster garbage heap is also subsequently filtered and processed (sanitized) according to further contingent ideological directives. Equally toxic aspects are the crude focus (employing a bag of tricks) on bare linguistic 'tokens' (betraying a questionable Anglo-linguistic supremacy - though it seems there are Chinese versions too) rather than conceptual semantic structure,  logical queries and authentic reasoning , the static nature of the resulting trained model,  etc. Paraphrasing Nietzsche: that people generally use this kind of AI will ruin not only writing but also thinking. This AI is the 'death of language' , or worse, a kind of animated corpse of human thought, a  kind of linguistic Frankenstein. See also Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI by Karen Hao.(2025). We can say that genuine philosophy starts not so much with 'amazement' in itself but with compassion and horror at the malice and suffering of mankind and the desire to redress this state of affairs, and this includes understanding its causes. And the most important aspect of the philosophy of language is precisely that in which it is inseparably integrated into the science of consciousness.\\

 What we discuss is the western monster concept of  'science'. 

In a nutshell: there are really only two species of authentic  'science': the science of consciousness, the philosophical psychology we have discussed previously,  and  the 'science'  (which we call welfare engineering, a primary example being medicine) whose primary goal is lessening the suffering and improving the lives not only of human beings but of all life (ethically guided medicine, engineering, history and other human sciences).   Human beings love to explore and travel and discover new worlds, and science can furnish the tools and vehicles for doing this but this tendency and activity in itself is not science, it is what science can serve.   Now purely theoretical and formal 'science' that abstracts from the conditions and needs of human beings and other living beings on this planet - and which is not concerned with the phenomenology of consciousness and psychotherapy -  has been vastly overrated, over-prized, overvalued as have the so-called abilities and achievements in it (the myth of the theoretical 'genius' who in reality is just an individual  payed and idolized by society to engage in games, hobbies and obsessions, often involving an amount of plagiarism,  with no true human, social or environmental value).  In ancient Greece beyond medicine and Thucydides welfare engineering was largely non-existent (before Archimedes and the Hellenistic era; however in an interesting passage Aristotle envisions the idea of tools which work by themselves).  And more importantly theoretical science,  the idea that man obtains fulfillment through an external knowledge which has no bearing on the welfare and life of living beings or any connection to the direct  phenomenological self-knowledge of consciousness aiming at personal liberation, clearly has its template in medieval scholasticism and the particular kind of historical, organized and revealed religion it served.  A whole new paradigm for the development of welfare engineering needs to be developed which emphasizes  collaboration and purges research from ulterior motives based on financial, social and personal gain as well as the poisonous ideology of competition and struggle or glorification of the  'entrepreneur'. There is also a vast new field of the archaeology of welfare engineering with regards to its presence in various historical cultures (even if not in a conscious conceptual form).

However we must make a very important exception for certain branches of pure mathematics which have not only intrinsic beauty but also an important role to play in the philosophy of Platonic dialectics we discussed in a previous post.  However this is explicitly acknowledging that certain branches of pure mathematics and mathematical logic are fundamental to the science of consciousness ! 

Perhaps welfare engineering is not the best term as we include under it also history and many of the human and social sciences. In fact historical analysis and research is the most important of all alongside medicine.  There are no 'sacred' or 'taboo' historical narratives, no narratives which cannot be questioned and concerning which documents, evidence and a rational reconstruction cannot and should not be demanded, no matter how much they are upheld and imposed by power and fear.  False narratives, myths in the service of power, domination, control and psychological oppression,  this is what Jung did not take into account.  Only through honest, objective and scientific historical research can human beings achieve psychological freedom and impartial justice be served.

Heidegger wrote much about truth and historicity yet according to Wolin's  'Heidegger in Ruins'  Heidegger engaged in deliberate falsification of his own manuscripts and uttered falsehoods regarding them. A liar and denialist of biographical history wrote about truth, human existence, historicity and forgetfulness !  We find the Heidegger-Husserl correspondence very depressing and the dreary pettiness of the corresponding academic milieu is striking ( itself a strong argument against academic philosophy), specially considering that these thinkers claimed to address huge transcendent questions about human history and existence.  Heidegger seems to have been rather duplicitous and ungrateful towards Husserl.  Heidegger was never a man to speak truth to power and defend the oppressed, rather for him power was truth and truth was power.  Someone has to say it: i) there is a lot of Nietzsche, Darwin and  racist pseudoscience in Heidegger, ii)  his philosophy is a secularized atheist variant of medieval scholasticism cloaked in the language of phenomenology. iii) it seems doubtful that there is any Heideggerian 'category' or 'analytics' that is not already found in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Science of Logic.  

The categories and analytics Heidegger sets up in Sein und Zeit in order to allegedly deconstruct metaphysics are precisely themselves those one learns to deconstruct in Buddhist philosophy and meditation.  Ontological pluralism and morality (compassion, non-harm, restraint) on the other hand cannot be deconstructed.  The way Heidegger approaches 'the question of being' is designed to invoke cosmic and existential anguish. But his 'question of being' is itself a  naturalistic opaque veil which can be viewed as hiding something else,  something  marvelous and wonderful. Even T.S. Eliot had a higher glimpse of this with his 'man cannot take too much reality'.  And: 'why is there something rather than nothing?'  can be seen from a different perspective in light of the Mahâyâna doctrina of shûnyatâ. 

There is a structural analogy between philosophical psychology and welfare engineering; the Pali suttas abound with Indian medical terms and there is likewise a connection between ancient Greek medicine (where experimental and empirical methodology was present) and both Pyrrhonism and Stoicism.

Now there are two objections that easily present themselves:

i) cannot engineering and even medical research be used equally for immoral ends and for great harm? How about advances in medicine which involve experimentation of animals?  Or in general what about the misuse of engineering for the power and profit of a human group causing great harm to other human beings, animals and the environment? So  why use the term 'welfare engineering'?  

ii) does not progress in applied science, in engineering and medicine depend crucially on theoretical science and even on mathematics?

iii) are you not espousing a kind of pragmatism for natural science which contradicts what Aristotle wrote in the beginning of the Metaphysics: all men have by nature the desire to know? 

We will address i) in the future (the pragmatism of engineering makes manifest its essential link to ethics and human consciousness, contrary to the cold hypocrisy of purely theoretical science).  We can also observe that there is a connection to the theory of magic and sacrifice in antiquity where, according to some, the gods were originally conceived as impersonal forces (either of nature, of consciousness, of both) which are governed likewise by fixed impersonal laws.  The magician or shaman or medicine man would then apply a corresponding technique in order to harness and direct these powers to obtain a certain goal.  The huge problem is when such techniques (ceremonial magic) were believed (in the most degenerate and barbaric cultures) to have to involve causing suffering or death to living beings (sacrifice) - something which can drastically contrast to the 'path of power'  found in the Pali texts, wherein  'magic'  powers are a direct result of personal spiritual attainment and have nothing do so with causing suffering to other beings.  We can certainly draw a parallel between the heinous presence of experimentation on animals in modern science  (whose justification often verges on sacrificial rhetoric) and such sacrificial magic.

   ii) is easy to answer. The fact of the matter is that the extent and depth of the purely theoretical and mathematical underpinnings of much of medicine and engineering have been grossly and drastically exaggerated.  Rather the legitimate and modest theoretical and formal apparatuses emerge naturally through the context of experimental feedback. It is as if somehow nature needed to say something and she somehow manages to say it in the most succinct and practical form, contrary to the shadowy, artificial and sickly proliferations of the theoreticians. The legitimate theoretical should be a tool for a tool, or rather a tool that should be designed to best operate on the tools of engineering.  As for iii) this ideal of pure knowledge is found in philosophical psychology. And Aristotle can be considered (despite the presence in his work of material of a different nature such as the De Anima) the founder of the monster of a purely theoretical and formal science divorced from engineering and welfare and divorced from a science of consciousness and phenomenology.  His theoretical science held back progress in applied and experimental science for centuries and helped justify misogyny, racism and colonialism. 

We have seen how core logic, arithmetic, computability, games and combinatorics form a closed interdependent circle (thus there is no reason to postulate the primacy of the 'logic' component, i.e. the one based on language) and how authentic logics come in families, the members of which mirror each other.  We have also seen how philosophical psychology espouses ontological pluralism and thus, without sacrificing the deep truths of phenomenism, phenomenology and the self-reflection and self-introspection of consciousness,  freely postulates the existence of a physical universe as well as a multitude of poles of conscious experience. Thus we can speak of an implicit 'order of the world' which encompasses both domains of consciousness experience and domains of physical existence as well as their relationship.  Logic is about bringing to light  the implicit unconscious order (which is also the order of the world and thus linked to praxis) of aspects of conscious thought, and as thus its task is always incomplete, its achievements partial. Logic in an extended sense is revealed in the structure and dynamics of the living activity of authentic science, there is no a priori armchair logic (a comparison might be made with some aspects of Adorno. Also we can address the issues Habermas raised regarding the focus on consciousness and the subject.). 

Philosophy and Prehistory

It is a tendency for a structure which has found some partial practical use in a given context and situation to be extrapolated and applied to other situations and regions as well. In fact such a structure can become a preconceived category and part of a projected ontological system with claims of furnishing a more general  understanding of reality.  Contrary to what we have suggested previously it is extremely dubious that  common formal systems can have much direct relevance to our project of a philosophical psychology, that is, the project of recovering the first-person introspective science that had many remarkable developments in the 19th century (many of which appear in Husserl's Logical Investigations) and which later was tragically and wrongfully rejected or neglected. We have discussed some important aspect of the project in previous posts, for instance how it should not be confused with subjective idealism and also the view adopted on the subject, the body and the physical world. The method pertaining to formal abstract research is completely distinct from that of such a philosophical psychology. The method required actually has more similarity with that of experimental science (cf. Hume's 'experimental method of reasoning') though obviously should not be confused with it.  Abstract formal concepts and methods should only come in after substantial progress has been made in philosophical psychology.  After pure introspective insight and knowledge has been gained (as explained before, it involves the detached awareness of the stream of inner verbal discourse and imagination, divided into its sensual species and their web,  perceived in its conceptual dimension as well and as proceeding from a fundamental process of identification), then through reminiscence the philosopher may be able to return and attempt to articulate this knowledge in the language of abstract formal computable systems (maybe the systems of consciousness has some similarity to the design of operating systems, themselves based on human social structure). Until then, natural language remains an imperfect but still amazingly flexible and serviceable tool. An analogy might be used from software development: first we must have a global systems theoretic intuition and idea of how the program is to be structured and work and then can be begin its concrete coding in a given language and platform. Or rather: first we must explore and view and know the mind first-hand and only afterwards can we use  known concrete systems  as tools or language to present an approximative model of the mind.  All this of course is quite distinct from the perspective of the Logical Investigations -  or Platonic dialectics - in which the phenomenological reflection on formal and logic knowledge itself is a starting point.

It might be a very good thing to dissipate misunderstandings and distortions which would confuse this first-personal introspective methodology with that of psychoanalysis (i.e. Jung's analytic psychology), its theory of the unconscious and its proposed methods of exploration of the latter,  or with the method of the later of Husserl (we have in fact already discussed this in previous posts).  The problem with Jung revolves around the term 'religion'.  This is a large 'monster' vague concept which is incapable of definition and many partial, idealized and artificial aspects have been historically abstracted (or sanitized) to suit particular scientific, historical and philosophical theories. A question is: do we find in Jung the strange idea that religious beliefs, practices and narratives should be regarded as potentially psychological beneficial and therapeutic regardless of their objective historical, scientific, ethical and even social value and consequence? Can we say that Jung diagnosed the modern age with 'lack of religion' and that he proposed a suitably adapted 'religion' as a cure ? (the problem with Noll's famous book is that is mixes important factual material with more-or-less obvious intrusions of their author's own anthropological and historical views).  Or is the concept of 'religion' used by Jung a rather artificial idealized one that would lump together fundamentally heterogeneous things? If the lover, the poet and all art involving creative imagination are interpreted as 'religious'  then this is clearly a very different sense of the term than the usual 'theological' and 'ecclesiastic' one (even if we take into account Hegel's lucubrations about the  'religion of art' of the Greeks and the similar Hellenism in the writings of Heidegger).  And what about 'initiatic' societies like Freemasonry? And Jung's practice of analytic psychology itself? For now we will pull out from the huge vague term 'religion' a single negative aspect (which links it strongly to the term 'cult') : that of passivity, surrender and dependence on a leader or group - in which is involved passivity with regards to aspects and manifestations of one's own psyche which cause lack of cognitive clarity and calm.  Passivity is of course a very difficult and complex term when applied to consciousness and in Pali buddhism 'passive' (in the sense usually translated as 'letting go' or 'detachment')  and 'active' aspects are combined in subtle and powerful ways.  Jung is  wrong in making an analogy between an alleged western 'extrovert' tendency to dominate the world and an eastern 'introvert'  tendency to dominate the psyche.  There is very little analogy between western material domination and the goal of original Buddhism which is ultimately not any kind of  'control' and 'domination': rather its mottos are know thyself and cure thyself.  An obvious difference between our philosophical psychology and Jung is that imagination, dreams, symbols. images, myths etc. play a central role for Jung (and note the questionable importance allocated to 'gender' in  Jungian myths,  why cannot the sun be considered feminine as in ancient Japan, ancient Germanic and many other cultures? ).  And such things are indeed found both in the original Pali texts and in Platonism - but what is really important is their function and attitude that is displayed towards them therein - and such function and attitude is quite different in Tibetan Buddhism (Jung was a keen reader of the Bardö Thodöl, though his personal library also included the editions of the Pali text society). Jung's interesting remarks on the salvation of the gods in Buddhism applies to Tibetan Buddhism.

A questionable aspect of Jung (and Noll certainly identified this)  is that his ideas appear bound up with a kind of religious, cultural and even 'racial' traditionalism which Noll amply elaborates on in function of  'völkisch'  blood-and-soil ideologies.  We find this aspect of Jung  mistaken and  harmful, as is the theory of 'psychological types' applied to individuals and a fortiori to human groups such as the division between East and West or a theory races or cultures that could be 'aryan' and 'semitic',  terms only having meaning as linguistic classifications. Was Jung somehow ignorant that the ancestors of the most of the population of the Germany of his times consisted in a great portion of speakers of  Latin, Baltic, West Slavonic and Celtic alongside Germanic languages?

Contrary to Jung we claim that cultural material that is factually erroneous, immoral and which causes psychological harm to oneself and to others,  does not deserve the slightest reverence or respect just for being 'tradition'  or being associated with one's ancestors or country. And that this certainly cannot be a positive basis for psychological and spiritual progress or self-knowledge. At worst it can be represent a kind of generational trauma - the 'collective unconscious' should be viewed as containing very negative things as well, things that were imprinted through the ages by  reigning authorities .  Even on the historical plane so-called 'traditions' reveal themselves not to be continuous traditions at all, but materially triumphing aspects of a rugged process of  ideological conflict with other equally historically legitimate 'traditions' which happen to have lost through many disparate circumstances and factors.

 What is truly rooted in our essence and represents our spiritual continuity, is the spirit of questioning, criticism, evaluation and potential liberation from what is bad and wrong in 'tradition', both the social-cultural structure of  the waking world and from contingent  negative unconscious influence (which Jung would essentialize). Foucault, Guattari and Deleuze correctly hold that the true revolutionary spirit is as much about self-transformation as social transformation, but fall into error in not acknowledging that this spirit is itself a continuous and ancient tradition.

Maybe the 'collective unconscious'   of a given social group does not emerge according some dubious speculation about man's prehistory,  but is rather largely the product of the conscious creative power of special individuals.  Jung himself made a curious remark that India was not up to what the Buddha wanted to reveal and teach. 

Not only does Jung seem to have a mistaken and uncritical account of gender and  the gendering of imaginary, mythical and religious figures but we question if in Jung we find a good theory of the numinous object of consciousness at all, and in particular in the context of the whole process of the experience of eros and beauty.  Does Jung offer us a phenomenology of the modes of presentation and functions of an 'object-person' of imaginative consciousness which yet is perceived to 'be'  a known real being  or else a person of religious narratives - and the phenomenology of why particular object-image-persons are chosen, preferred, come to dominate consciousness in a numinous revelatory manner, and how these can become (including through certain spiritual practices) the initiatic vehicles for achieving higher states of consciousness and spiritual realization?

Contrary to Jung, we have argued extensively for the profound affinity - even almost identity - between the philosophy and spirit of original Pali Buddhism and that of ancient Greek philosophy, and this correspondence and affinity certainly extends to later Buddhist philosophy and later modern Western philosophy as well. Thus we can say that original Pali Buddhism represents to lost soul, essence and root of what is best in Western humanity, provided we pay special attention to its knowledge of the universality and unconditionality of the duty of compassion and non-harm with regards to all human beings and animals. The collective unconscious of Western humanity itself needs to be healed and regenerated in the pure life-giving waters of the critical and revolutionary spirit at once new and ancient.  A very important aspect involves the study and investigations of ancient Europe (and its links to Druidism, ancient Greece and the regions in which original Buddhism developed) and the dispelling once and for all of the harmful myths or partial truths regarding our ancestors which are patent in Jung . The furor Teutonicus, the cult of *Wôthanaz  are unoriginal foreign elements borrowed from the warlike tribal gods of the Eurasian steppe nomads as patent from Beckwith's extensive book on the Silk Road; on the other hand the seeresses and prophetesses of some Germanic tribes as recounted by Roman historians were actually Druidic. Without going into this subject, we remark that the Old Turkic script and the Futhark are strikingly similar.  We attach great importance to the proof of the historical, cultural and philosophical affinity and continuity between Greco-Roman antiquity and ancient Celtic speakers (and perhaps even the culture of the Megalithic monuments). Many of the Germanic speaking tribes seem to have been at the cross-roads between the Buddhist-Greco-Roman-Celtic light of humanity and civilization and the shamanic war-god and war-retinue culture of the Eurasian steppes (which is associated to Mongolian and Turkic speaking peoples and is not in any way a specifically  'Indo-European'  religion). In the territory of what is now Germany there is a powerful substrate of Western Slavs and Balts alongside the older Celtic component which may be associated to manifestations of higher philosophy and spirituality in Germany (and similar considerations can be made for Great Britain).   The Celtic genetic and cultural influence in Iceland is very large and we can speculate that likewise the genetic and cultural influence of the Sámi on historical Scandinavia has been extensive, though in what can be reconstructed of  'Viking culture' (the object of distortions and fantasies in popular media) we find a strong presence of the Nietzschean war-and-conquest values and culture of the Eurasian Mongolian and Turkic  steppe nomads (cf. the ancient interactions of the Goths and the Huns).
 (Author note:  the considerations above are not meant to imply that there is any essential genetic association between the historical Turkic speakers at the time and what we consider negative and lower forms of culture and values. On the contrary we hope to investigate the existence of higher forms of spirituality, culture and civilization among Turkic speakers in remote antiquity as well as in more recent history).

The reason we focused on original Buddhism is because of its philosophical nature (it is not a 'religion' in the common sense of this term)  and its close correspondence to much of what is best in ancient and modern western philosophy and philosophical psychology (thus refuting  again the idea of an essential distinction between east and west).  Nor do we wish to suggest that original Buddhism exhausts ancient wisdom and valid spiritual practices (one need but glance at the Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali, the works of Plato or Plotinus to see their variety and complementarity). Also note that the speculations above on ancient peoples (a topic which deserves many books) should be taken as based primarily on ethical, religious, cultural and linguistic divisions without implying any kind of genetic or 'racial'  reductionism or essentialism.  In the future we will address all the standard criticism concerning 'cultural appropriation' and allegedly taking the artificial restricted secular view of western scholarship regarding the Pali texts, ignoring the actual living traditions of the Theravada, etc.

We need not only a typology but a systematic pathology of spiritual traditions, religions and cultures.  Not simply a linear scale between the poles of purity, spirituality, interiority, morality, universality,  'philosophicality', humanism and all their opposites, but an understanding of how pathological religions and cultures branch into many different and apparently distinct forms while preserving the same underlying negative essence.  Thus we need to understand better what a tribalist, sacrifice-based, violent, colonialist, genocidal,  fear-based culture and religion is and not be mislead by classifications like patriarchal and matriarchal or confuse  corrupted forms of certain cultures and religions with traces of or naturalistic disfigurements of something more ancient and pure.  Pure religion pertains to the science of consciousness (either solitary or through the transfiguring/manifesting path of spiritual love and communion) and morality and not to the natural world other than as an object of love and compassion and aesthetic numinous transfiguration. It is inconceivable that concepts like 'caste' or 'race'  should have any validity or role therein. 

In other words,  any 'higher' or 'pure' religion (if we can even use this term)  is essentially and solely about i) the science of consciousness, about self-analysis and self-awareness of consciousness ultimately achieving  a liberated super-consciousness, and ii) the transcendental unfolding of the possibility of human love.  Its foundation is intelligence of the moral law and empathy and compassion.  It has absolutely nothing to do with 'gods' (beyond an imaginative-symbolic function or as representing possible states of human consciousness).   Although we can certainly conceive of other beings analogous to humans or even in some sense 'superior' beings existing in other worlds or planes of existence,  attaching a religious significance to a relationship (worship, faith, sacrifice, prayer, rites, etc) to such beings (the number being immaterial) is a serious aberration. 

We hope to prove that the history of cultures and religions does not exhibit anything like a linear progress from so-called 'primitive' (animistic, naturalistic, war and fertility based,  etc.) to so-called 'advanced' religions (as if any religion that can justify cruelty to human beings and animals, bloodshed and genocide could ever deserve the designation 'advanced'....) but rather a complex multi-cyclic decay from higher to lower followed by partial restorations of the higher. 

Evidence can be adduced from the history of India in which many traditions which exhibit certain key 'higher' non-theistic traits are very ancient - Yoga (to a certain extent), Nyâya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Pali Buddhism, Jainism,....  Note that in ancient Greece we have already have as far back as  the 5th century Leucippus and the ethics of  Democritus (said to have traveled extensively and learnt from various now lost traditions) and Plato's critique of religion in books 2 and 3 of the Republic and concept of the transcendent good, which surely is just a transmission of Pythagorean philosophy which, according to Ovid, completely rejected animal sacrifice. And of extraordinary interest is Confucionism and the literature of Ch'an and Zen as well as the earlier highly sophisticated Mahâyâna philosophical texts: all these appears to contain powerful and complex articulations of a pure science of consciousness and well as a more-or-less explicit rejection of 'religion' in the common sense (cf. Hui Hai: the sage seeks the Mind not the Buddha, etc.). Maybe some mysterious ancient people, with some connection to Manicheism and Zoroasterianism, is behind both Mahâyâna and ancient Chinese culture. 

There are also some special 'divinities' which express something higher, older and non-theistic, the union between the science of consciousness and the moral and cosmic order of the world: such are certain ancient luminous feminine figures incarnating divine wisdom, light, life, compassion and cosmic order (which also feature prominently in Mahâyâna and Vajrayâna): for instance the ancient figured of Aredvi Sura Anahita and Daena for the Persians,  Nut for the ancient Egyptians,  Athena for the ancient Greeks and  to a certain extent Sophia and Barbelo of the so-called 'gnostic literature (the origin of the Hag Nammadi library is completely obscure, but it very likely includes  transmissions of now lost later Egyptian, Phoenician, Syrian and Chaldean traditions alongside other type of material).

It can furthermore be speculated  that many ancient 'theogonies'  (as well as perhaps emanationist and gnostic-type cosmologies) were initially symbolic-mythic expressions of pure philosophical and scientific theories of consciousness (like the paticcasamupadda and the system of samkhya, specially as interpreted by the excellent book by Mikel Burley, 2007) which in themselves had no more 'religious' significance than the categories of Kant. It is tragic that so much of the science and philosophy of the ancient world has been lost (Thracians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Berbers, Druids,...or lost civilizations like Tartessos.).

All this again shows a most profound difference from Jung. It is laughable and displays a colonialist hubris to say that modern western man is on the average more 'rational' or 'logical' than other parts of humanity (historical and present). The machines modern man uses are products of controlled 'rational' thought, but modern western man per se ,  with all his capitalist fetishes and commodities,  is likely far less 'rational' and 'logical' (forgetting for a moment the problem of clarification of such monster concepts) than the average for this planet (historical and present). The smartphone is a product of the  'rational', the mental life of the personal buying and using it,  mostly not. Also there is not the slightest evidence that human beings at any period in time did not have naturally a form of consciousness containing what Jung calls the 'ego'. Another profound difference regards  Jung's theory of the 'libido' which is a grotesque distortion of the platonic and neoplatonic theory of the erôs, a primordial substance and power (prior and more vast than biological sexuality)  which allows spiritual realization through a mediating and transfiguring spiritual communion with another person - that erôs and its pure independent religion and creative imagination (the love story as the the pleroma and cycle of archetypes)  has  been degraded (naturalized, biologized and sexualized), concealed,  slandered, appropriated, inappropriately gendered,  imprisoned by historical power structures and their myths and narratives. 

Following Hegel we can see the development of art, literature and drama in ancient Greece as having (through the self-discovery of the freedom of the creative imagination dissolving religion and prefiguring the science of consciousness, which Jung did not seem to understand )  a parallel significance to that of the spiritual culture of philosophy.  This is what inspired Shelley to write Prometheus Unbound.  Indeed this development in ancient Greek literature manifests the spiritual interpretation and transfiguration of nature  which is irreconcilable with corrupt religious cults.

The modern and post-modern world seems heavily based on 'false forks', pairs of linked vague concepts which function like twin semantic whirlpools forcing the mind into two of equally false and harmful options. Forked concepts contain two components which appear opposed and even unconnected while in reality sharing the same life-blood, function and essence.  Forked concepts are 'false flag concepts' and correspond to 'every accusation is a confession',  one side accuses the other of the exact same thing that that side in reality is guilty of. Each side presents the other side as being the only possible alternative.  It is a strawmanning of the negation.  Forked concepts are standard parts of the apologetic arsenal of organized religions and cults.

The considerations set forth here do not claim to completely illuminated the multi-headed hydra of the monster concept 'religion'.   What we need is a pure a priori system of axioms, universal principles which demarcate 'pure religion' from a religion that is both false and harmful (historically, socially, culturally, scientifically, philosophically, psychologically, spiritually) and which perverts, appropriates and hijacks ethics and morality: ones steeped in bloodshed, cruelty, ignorance, racism and deceit, in making pacts for worldly ends through blood and sacrifice to one or more capricious immoral beings (whose activity is limited to war, sex,  quarreling, food and enjoying sacrifices).

In cultures dominated by a corrupt religion often a kind of semi-science of consciousness develops (which in some cultures and historical epochs is designated by the (universal) religion of love, the science of love, science of the heart)   -  although compromised by the enveloping religion and its  psychological conditioning.   Note that we have discussed the science of consciousness both in its pure solid form and in a more problematic  'relational' form based on a platonic theory of love. 

The fork: bad religion is a human cultural construction, the product of the worst instincts, impulses and ideas mankind has to offer (or in which one small social group has used to control, terrorize and exploit others).  But exactly the same instincts, impulses and ideas can be given apparently non-religious and equally bad materialistic and pseudo-scientific form. This is the key to understanding the history of the last three hundred years.

Addendum on the 'religion of love' in the West. The domination of a religious organization throughout the centuries is a complex affair. The substratum, the oppressed and hidden essence, will have its voice.  Under the tragic tyranny of a thousand years there were yet some manifestations of covert yet very powerful and significant revolution and rebellion, which we can inner spiritual  'transfigurations' and 'transformations' which while retaining the veil and semblance of submission to the reigning religious power and literalist dogma concealed something  of an entirely different philosophical and spiritual nature (though conveniently couched in a theological language in a way that would be interesting to compare to the treatment of revealed religion in Hegel's phenomenology of spirit).  The signs of such manifestations are everything which concerns the art, culture and poetry of 'spiritual', 'mystical', 'platonic' or 'neoplatonic' love (and is found in the Middle Ages, in the renaissance and specially in the baroque). Deification of the human, humanization of the divine, spiritual love as the supreme and principle sacrament and path described in the language and concepts of the reigning theology. Furthermore this religion of love involved a sophisticated and highly developed (based on concrete spiritual experience) philosophy of the soul and  of the self  and the overcoming of the self and of rebirth which is both complementary and compatible with the philosophy of Buddhism and which furthermore purifies, builds and improves upon the doctrines of the  'Christian mystics'. The symbol of a rose upon the cross is very apt, showing the unity between Buddhist anatta and the 'amor' of divine union.  See the article about Sor Violante do Céu in this collection.

Parapsychology and the Philosophy of Science

It is far from clear what exactly is the so-called 'scientific method'  but it is clear that is actually a complex and fluid combination of various different methodologies and attitudes all of which are inextricably genealogically and logically connected to theoretical assumptions and hermeneutic decisions.

The scientific method conceived as the 'experimental method'  pertains principally to a certain limited and partial domain of reality - that of 'matter'  or 'physicality' or the  strictly physical-chemical dimension and aspects of living beings - and as thus the kind of theory associated exclusively with it must be essentially an abstraction of reality (rather than a negation of other aspects of reality).

The experimental method is not logically or theoretically self-contained or self-justifying or self-sufficient (for instance it depends on previous theory, hermeneutics and mathematical theory).    It has no claim to supremacy and exclusivity as far as a source of knowledge in its particular associated domain nor a fortiori claims regarding other domains of reality which it may well be totally inadequate for. 

Also if the ultimate aim of physical science is the construction of machines that serve mankind and the good of the world or the development of treatments in medicine, then  the kind of deep intuition which guides the engineer or medical doctor is just as important as any experimental protocol: for there is no greater proof or validation than the machine actually working or the treatment being actually effective.

Experimental science is not the only not the best or most certain or even most important source of knowledge (for instance there are the more certain, more important and more fundamental epistemic domains of  logic, mathematics and ethics, all of which have nothing to do with physical experimentation). Nor does its particular limited domain of application exhaust the totality of reality. Nor can experimental science justify any kind of reduction or alleged correlation (supervenience) between its domain and other different domains.  In fact the actual experimental results and evidence contradict  such reductionist claims. Experimental science cannot a priori impose its epistemic methodology on other domains of reality - and much less claim that a physicalist philosophy is somehow justified by the experimental method itself or its results (which is factually false).

When natural science and the 'scientific method'  violate basic ethical principles such as  when causing harm, suffering and death to human beings or animals in the course of its  methodology and 'experiments' , it shows itself to be profoundly mistaken and driven by the same kind of blind superstition, dogmatism and fanaticism it often projects onto and decries in others.

Spirit, soul, mind, consciousness - this is an entirely distinct domain of reality which cannot be reduced to and does not necessarily supervene on physical matter (the physical brain and body).  There is no reason why the experimental method should be the best method  (as opposed for instance to an axiomatic-deductive or first-person phenomenological and instrospective method - both of which were developed to high degree in Ancient Greece and India)  for exploring and obtaining knowledge regarding this domain of reality. 

And yet since spirit, soul, mind, consciousness are in a way connected to or associated with the physical brain and body it leaves indirectly its footprint in the legitimate domain of physical science.  Thus it should be possible to additionally 'beat physicalism in its own domain', to exhibit tangible, measurable phenomena which even the most convinced physicalist could not deny.

This brings us to the subject called 'parapsychology'.  On the surface this subject consists in certain experimental protocols which as a rule tend to lead to plausible conclusions or bring to light evidence which is radically at variance with a physicalist worldview, or  to exhibit a class of phenomena that while involving the physical world suggests that there are forces at play which transcend it.  So parapsychology  while wearing the cloak  of experimental science does patently have  philosophical concerns.

There is the following major problem with parapsychological research.  A massive amount of scientific activity has been funded with the goal of proving or finding evidence for physicalism (neural reductionism) or for various other theories which assume neuro-reductionist premises.  A substantial and important part of parapsychological research should be devoted to a critical analysis of such experiments and their methodology and protocols showing how they completely fail to establish physicalist claims but rather strongly suggest opposite conclusions. Also parapsychology should point out that there is a massive amount of direct evidence (which was not obtained in a parapsychological context)  suggesting the untenability of neuro-reductionist physicalism.  There are also powerful theoretical deductions that can be made based on known neuroscientific facts (for instance regarding the impossibility of dendritic spines being involved in memory) which again refute physicalism.  None of this involves 'spooky' phenomena and is perhaps not as 'fun' and 'exciting' as the usual concerns of parapsychology, and yet its importance and value is immense and fundamental.

While we hold that much of the experimental protocols and results in parapsychology are both valuable and interesting (specially the work of Rupert Sheldrake) it is a mistake to make such experiments and results a sole foundation for the rejection of physicalism (for there are much more powerful, extensive and conclusive arguments and evidence to be found elsewhere as discussed briefly above).  Indeed it seems that as the rule the researchers in this field have still at least half-consciously profess a kind of confused semi-neuro-reductionism in which mind, consciousness and brain are too easily confused and conflated. This opens the door to a kind of theoretical  neuroscience in which these phenomena could be explained by speculations  pertaining to theoretical physics (for instance telepathy is compared to quantum entanglement).  It becomes not about refuting neuro-reductionism but about exploring the quantum superpowers of the brain (or the interconnectivity of brains rather than primarily of consciousnesses).

Some other flaws we find in parapsychology are arguments from authority which also suggests a kind of implicit western supremacy and exceptionalism.   For instance:  person A was a great scientist and he or she thought parapsychology was a legitimate field of study therefore this counts as evidence that it is so.  We have also seen it implied that a non-western person who undergoes a western academic education (or is involved in business) is somehow bound to be more intellectually honest (or less liable to deception) about paranormal phenomena than his counterpart who has not undergone such an education or training. 

It also should be mentioned that in the past both in the east and west there was already a systematic science (first-person or axiomatic-deductive) involving the kind of phenomena (or powers) studied in parapsychology but with the caveat that no great spiritual importance was attached to them and they were rather seen as dangerous distractions and potential obstacles.

Finally we find it quite disturbing that the interest and use of parapsychology by government, military and intelligence agencies is mentioned - the military was interested in it and funded research in it, therefore this consists of evidence that there must be something to its claims (regarding, for instance, remote viewing) - all the while completely omitting to mention the terrible crimes and violations of human rights documented among such projects.  This topic should first of all be mentioned as a cautionary tale that parapsychology can also be perverted  and misused and that the aspiring parapsychologist must be wary of government and military funding and involvement.

Studies regarding the ability of directed thought to influence other minds and living bodies can have dangerous implications. For instance if in a given community things are not going well or there seems to be consistent 'bad luck' then would not  the popularization of such studies encourage finding a culprit (somebody who allegedly is a source negative directed thought-energy) and even engaging in 'witch-burning'?  Also what about government and military applications of these facts? Or massive activity of social media generating automatically a kind of powerful psychic field influencing  public opinion, a kind of spontaneous 'brain-washing' at a distance?

Addendum to our note 'Differentiability, Computability and Beyond'.  We wish to add some considerations to this note which also have some connection to experiments with random number generators and microPK. Recall that we postulated that a truly free particle must have a completely random completely discontinuous trajectory in space.  This begets the problems: i) define this rigorously. ii) this trajectory is not unique but there are uncountably infinite many such trajectories and so there is no well-defined free state of a particle.  And for i) we can draw inspiration from random number generators and the mathematical definitions used (this corresponds to the discrete case).  Now in our note we considered that a field would act on this random particle in a certain way introducing a geometric form to its associated density or distribution. The similarity to the results in experiments involving random numbers generators is patent.

Just as physical bodies appear separated in space we can ask if the multiplicity of consciousnesses is 'situated' in some kind of analogous medium (which may have a very different 'metric' or concept of separation which need not coincide with the spatial aspect of their corporeal counterparts).  In neoplatonism this might be the 'soul of the universe'  and physical space would be its emanation.  So the 'geometry'  of the soul of the universe must be distinct from ordinary geometry and yet this last must be able to be derived from it (as a special case or projection). Also (certain levels) of soul might occupy a 'body' in such a space which is more extensive and complex than the physical body in ordinary space.

Addendum: there is the also the following very important point about NDEs.  It is important to distinguish the hypothesis of survival,  that is, the independence of conscious experience and personality from the physical brain,  from the interpretation of the content of such experiences which may in most cases be of no more objective significance (or intrinsic value)  than lucid dreaming or vivid imagination or recollection, their varied content being mostly drawn from memory and experience.  There is very little agreement or correspondence between such 'lucid dreams' beyond certain generic emotions and perceptions (light, warmth). The dubious hypothesis regarding mediums and channeling apply equally to NDEs. NDEs are of less value and do not generally do not have anything near the transcendental cognitive content of higher states of meditation (save in their emotional content).