[extropy-chat] Physchogenic Fields (was Role of MWI and Time Travel)

[The Avantguardian]

--- BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/30/06, The Avantguardian wrote:
> >
> > I get less than a dozen hits for the term
> 'psychogenic
> > field' on google but one of them is for a
> biofeedback
> > company called Eterna.
> >
> <snip>
> 
> > My reason
> > for introducing the concept of psychogenic fields
> is
> > that it may facilitate the use of mathematical
> tools
> > like tensor analysis to the problem of
> consciousness.
> >
> 
> I think you need to use a different term to describe
> what you want to
> talk about.
> 
> 'Psychogenic' is a recognised medical term for
> various types of mental
> problem, as opposed to a physical illness.

I don't see this as a problem. There are lots of words
that mean different things in different sciences. Take
for example the word "vector". To a physicist it means
a mathematical quantity having both magnitude and
direction but to a microbiologist it is an insect or
other organism that spreads pathogens from host to
host (as mosquitos do malaria).

> If you start talking about 'fields', then physicists
> will want to see
> the needle on a meter swinging when it encounters
> one of your
> 'fields'.

Well there are EEG's, fMRI, and magnetoencephalographs
all of which are picking up perturbations of the
electromagnetic field in the presence of brains.
Perhaps the psychogenic field is electromagnetic in
nature. The questions then should be, "Are there
characteristic differences between the EM fields
surrounding conscious brains and those surrounding
inanimate matter? If so what accounts for those
differences?"   

> If it is an undetectable field, then it probably
> only exists in your
> imagination.

Maybe so but radio waves were undetectable until Tesla
and Marconi detected them. Detectability is dependent
on 1. imagining something is there to detect and 2.
building a device to detect it.



Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does." - Richard Feynman on QM

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