Further Evidence for 'The Psychon Theory'

In this site I intend to present additional arguments against orthodox Darwinism and in favor of the alternative Psychon Theory in a not very systematic way. I'll continuously try to improve this site, also by replacing arguments by better ones. As a first step I present extracts of emails I have written [from Dec. 1998 to Feb. 1999] in this context.

Last relevant update: 16-Jan-2001 (last update: 27-Feb-2008); Being revised, 2016

General explanations

Instinctive behavior

Demography

Domestication

Epistemology

Entropy

Posts to talk.origins:

(The Psychon Theory)

Darwinism refuted by adverse selection experiments

Relevant extracts from my posts of March 1999

Relevant extracts from my posts of April 1999

Relevant extracts from my posts of May 1999

Relevant extracts from my posts of June 1999

Relevant extracts from my posts of July 1999

Relevant extracts from my posts of August 1999

My 'final' posting (1999/09/03)

Further postings


General explanations

The Psychon Theory has many effects on mankind. For example it will be necessary to educate persons instead of trying to improve their genetic code. And the death has a very different impact because it is not only an end but it also makes possible a new start.

If only a little part of the information necessary for a human being can be stored in the genetic code (that is in principle a provable or refutable fact) and panpsychism and reincarnation correspond better to reality than reductionism, then it would be absurd in the context of a continuous evolution to assume that the current chess world champion was an uneducated coal miner in his last life.

The genetic code of W. A. Mozart is quite similar to the one of a chimpanzee. If musical talent or a gift for chess is stored in the soul, also the capacity to coordinate the (psychons of the) neurons of the brain and many other information should be stored in the soul. Because the brain structure of a human is quite different from the one of a horse, the brain of a horse and the soul of a human cannot work together. (The coordination capacity of the soul is also the main reason why split-brain patients have no major defects.)

The soul is located where it is active. If you look consciously to a picture, certain regions of your brain are active. In at least some of these regions also your soul is active. If you move your arm, your soul has an effect on certain brain regions which can be made visible by modern techniques.

So there are connections between the soul and the brain. It is analogous to the simplest case which constitutes the photon: the photon needs mass-energy in order to come into being, but it has no mass-energy (as an organizing unit, psychon); so it is rather something analogous to information, because it is responsible for the way a quantum of mass-energy behaves.

Look around! The amount of information, you are aware of, is incredible. A human brain with a volume of more than 1 liter can have innumerable states we can be aware of. For instance our brain is influenced in a very complex way by photons entering our eyes.

Atoms and molecules in living cells are influenced by their surroundings. In the same way as humans can be connected by molecules (smell), photons and sound waves, atoms and molecules can be connected by their electromagnetic effects. The psychon of a molecule is influenced by e.g. electrostatic effects from outside on (a part of) the molecule in a much more direct and simple way than we are influenced by the effects of e.g. sound waves on our ears.

I cannot see why primitive consciousness should depend on 'electrical impulses', because I do not assume that our souls and consciousness are nothing more than side effects of complex electrical impulses or of similar things.

By purposeful behavior I don't mean that molecules consciously construct crystals. They know as much about the crystal as plant cells about the plant. But they are able to 'recognize' the electromagnetic effects of places where they have to go, so that crystals grow.

The concept 'psychon' is in many respects very similar to the philosophical concept 'soul' of Baruch Spinoza. The two aspects (inside and outside) of the psychons are straight from Spinoza. In order to understand better the concept 'psychon' maybe the philosophical space and time concepts of Immanuel Kant could be useful. According to Kant space is something 'created' by our consciousness to bring order in our experiences. So it is not necessary to assume apriori that souls behave in space in the same way as particles. If we can locate a soul only by its effects, it is clear that a soul which is not active cannot be located in space. Psychons have spatial extension insofar as they affect spatially extended matter (e.g. the whole brain). They can be active at the same time at different places.


Instinctive behavior

How much information can the brain store and in what form? Do you know it? In any case, the storage capacity of the soul should be bigger than the one of the brain. All subjective experiences and feelings have a basis in the soul. Absolutely nothing of instinctive behavior, intelligence and similar things is stored in the genetic code. Some human behavior patterns may be stored in the psychons of the brain. In the same way as orchestras can play without a conductor pieces they have played many times, maybe some instinctive behavior patterns such as the sucking instinct of babies can be performed by brain psychons without the help of the main psychon (soul).

You may think "that we are genetically programmed to want to help an injured child", and that the 'flight or fight' response "is programmed into the head genetically".

Have you an idea of how much information represents such a behavior pattern? Have you an idea of how many base pairs are needed in order store such a behavior pattern? Do you know one single example where an instinctive behavior can be explained by certain DNA sequences? There seem to be cases where a single mutation leads to a different behavior, but it would be absurd to claim that the different behavior is stored in one mutation.

Do you know any mechanism which could explain that information stored in the DNA can be transformed into information stored in the brain? There is a very long and complicated way from the genetic code to the final brain architecture. It seems to me completely absurd (especially within the reductionist framework) to assume that a higher or a lower concentration of certain enzymes or a change in the amino acid sequence of enzymes can lead to a brain architecture in which a different behavior pattern is stored.

One cannot doubt that an innate behavior pattern cannot be stored directly in the DNA. So all the (certainly complex) principles by which DNA sequences are transformed into (read only) memory of the brain must also be coded in the DNA (and are subject to negative mutations). And there cannot be a miraculous mechanism increasing the amount of information during the transformation from the original DNA information to the final read only information. There should rather be an information loss.

Some scientists assume that there is such an information gain in the case of protein folding. They are right insofar as the information corresponding to the protein behavior is much larger than the information corresponding to the amino acid sequence. I, however, would prefer as a last resort the hypothesis 'God' to such a mysterious information increase violating common sense and logical reasoning.

Four base pairs can store only 1 byte! Because at least several bytes would be necessary to code a behavior pattern in the DNA (think about the bytes which would be needed for simulating such a behavior in a robot), the probability that behavior patterns could evolve would be rather low. For macroevolution to work many enzyme types, many cell types and other structures must evolve at the same time together with behavior patterns. Because it is generally accepted that negative mutations are more likely than positive ones, macroevolution would be impossible.

Recent research has shown that intelligence of animals does not always correspond to their place in the evolutionary hierarchy. Invertebrates such as octopuses have been revealed to be much more intelligent and dolphins less than assumed. A lot of research is done in these fields. The use of the free hands was very important for the development of the human intelligence. Because octopuses have a lot of 'hands', it seems obvious that they have developed some intelligence. (Maybe somewhere in the universe exist self-conscious beings who resemble our octopuses.)

Intelligence is primarily stored in the soul. Patients who lost memories and capacities because of brain injuries learn much more quickly things they knew before than things they have never known. In the same way, we learn much more easily things we knew in former lives than things we have never known before.

If all instincts were genetically coded (in which way?) there should be mutations with e.g. the result of babies spit on the nipples instead of sucking.

Also the existence of homosexuality is rather strong evidence against Darwinism.


Demography

Birth control has no influence on the final world population at all. Compare the population pyramid (US Census) of China with the one of India for example. The strange form of the Chinese pyramid is also a result of birth control.

India was the first Third World government to endorse the principle of an active population policy. Countries with almost no birth control at all like for example North Korea have had a bigger decrease in birth rates! If the richer populations of a country which could give good conditions to children have birth control, more children are born by the populations having no birth control.

There are more and more countries where people would like to have (more) children but don't get them. Twenty years ago, population explosion seemed to be a problem. Nowadays the problem seems to be infertility and population aging! But I'm sure that it will not happen. Instead, fertility rates in countries with current below-replacement fertility will increase again to higher than replacement level. So even in the case that the current low variant projection of the UN 1998 Revision (7.3 billion in 2050) should become reality, there will be a totally different population and age distribution than projected.

In 'Fertility Decline in East Asia', Science, Vol. 266, 1994, page 1521 you can read: "... and there is no obvious reason why families should adjust their behavior to achieve long-term population replacement. It might be considered remarkable that total fertility in developed countries has remained as close to replacement level as it has."

During the last four years this effect has become even more puzzling. In Greece there have been 98,700 deaths and 98,200 births in 1997. You should look at the figures of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Poland (also Japan) during the last years. See for instance:

http://vki3.vki.hu/eurostat/eu1997/6305697a.html

As late as in 1992 UN projected a world population between 6.093 and 6.420 billion for the year 2000. In the meanwhile (only six years later!) it's almost sure that it will be less than 6.093 billion.

In its 1998 Revision the United Nations projects the world's population at between 7.3 billion and 10.7 billion in the year 2050. The so-called "medium variant projection" places the world's population at 8.9 billion in 2050, once more roughly half a billion lower than had been projected in 1996.

(http://www.populationaction.org/politics/newsviews1198.htm#three)

Demographers try to maintain the constant growth rate (80 billion per year) of world population by attributing a part of the missing growth to smaller populations in the past than estimated previously. By that means they can save their hypotheses for another few years, but then it will be obvious that modern demography is based on untenable premises (Malthusianism).

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The only way to verify a theory is to look at its verifiable consequences and predictions! And it is one of the predictions of the psychon theory that under normal conditions birth rates must be close to death rates, after a population has reached saturation.

If the year 2000 world population will be substantially less than the most 'optimistic' (or 'pessimistic'?) UN estimates of 1992 (no major unexpected catastrophic events have taken place), this is strong evidence against the concepts of Malthusian demography and in favor of my reincarnation theory!

Your example about Iran is very interesting. Normally demographers must be very silent on Iran, because I could find no information in the material I have. In the US Census data there is no data on past birth, death and fertility rates. But I'm very surprised that total fertility rate this year (1998) is only 2.6 and that more persons are in the age group 10-14 (8.9 million) than in the groups 5-9 (8.3 million) and 0-4 (6.7 million). That past education of women [under the Shah regime] should be the reason seems to me not very reasonable. Even in the case of contraception one single error can be enough for a child to be born! But the religious government did not care about birth control.

You suspect that in the case of North Korea I am "confusing birth rate with survival rate". If the explanation of evolution given by Darwin and modern demography were correct, your suspicion would be a logical consequence. But judge yourself:

Here the fertility rates in India from 1960-65 to 1990-95:
5.81, 5.69, 5.43, 4.83, 4.47, 4.07, 3.97

The figures for North Korea:
5.75, 7.00, 5,70, 3,46, 2.77, 2.50, 2.37

The government interventions are not the (main) reason of the decline in fertility rates in China. You can see it, if you look at the figures of China, Singapore and Hong Kong:
5.61, 5.94, 4.76, 3.26, 2.50, 2.41, 1.95 [China]
4.93, 3.46, 2.62, 1.87, 1.69, 1.71, 1.73 [Singapore]
5.31, 4.02, 2.89, 2.32, 1.80, 1.31, 1.21 [Hong Kong]

(Data from 'The Future Population of the Word', IIASA, 1996)

There always have been baby booms after wars and other catastrophic events with many deaths. A very convincing example is Japan.

All this is not only consistent with my reincarnation theory but it is even its prediction. Before 1988 I didn't take reincarnation seriously. But when in 1988 I got convinced of reincarnation by much concrete evidence, the demographic evolution of mankind seemed to me the strongest evidence against it. But in the meanwhile orthodox demography has reached an impasse and the demographic evidence is very much in favor of my theory.

Why should I search a hypothesis such as "some environmental factor" to explain "these curious variations in fertility rates", if I have a very simple and elegant explanation of all this? There are already too many demographic ad-hoc-hypotheses.

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Malthusian demography cannot explain why couples behave in such a way that total population remains constant (without migration). So it should be only by chance, that many European countries for many years have exactly the fertility rate which is necessary for a constant population! Calculate the odds!


Domestication

There must be a lot of evidence for animal reincarnation in the history of domesticating animals. The souls of the domesticated animals are the souls of the former wild populations and these populations must have declined. The populations of wild horses should have increased in recent times (if there is enough space and food for them), because domesticated horses have been replaced by machines.

The limitation of animal souls is the main reason why aquaculture did not work as well as it was expected. For example there have been many collapses of bred stocks and wild populations of salmon. The one-egg-one-fish-hypothesis does not work because fishes are animals with souls which evolved over billions of years.

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"The population of wild horses has, indeed, increased a great deal in the United States in recent decades. That is why the government began an adoption program some years ago, allowing qualified people to adopt wild horses and donkeys that were rounded up because they were over-populating grazing land in some of our western states."

(see http://www.adoptahorse.blm.gov : "Wild horses and burros ... reproduce at a rate of about 18 percent a year")

Imagine: Wild horses can be adopted and behave like domesticated animals. But there are also unadoptable animals. The adoptable animals must have been domesticated animals for many lives.

It cannot be denied that the populations of wild forms of almost all domesticated animals and plants have declined!


Epistemology

Nobody can decide by metaphysical claims (e.g. about the soul) whether something is scientific or not. The only method which has always been scientific is an unbiased analysis of facts and theories. This analysis can lead to verifiable hypotheses which can be in contradiction with well-established theories.

We must judge hypotheses and theories only by verifiable consequences and predictions and never by metaphysical claims such as for example 'actions at a distance are impossible'.

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A general law is nothing more than a common expression for many (infinite) concrete cases or relations (Occam). The only way to prove such a thing as reincarnation consists in giving (by induction) many examples or concrete facts which suggest reincarnation. Therefore the existence of reincarnation depends on concrete cases such as reincarnated horses.

There are two principles I really do believe in:

-          Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Occam's razor)

-          Veritas filia temporis (Truth is the daughter of time)

So in any case future will show what is right!

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Remember, the problem we now call gravity was the main obstacle for persons to accept that the earth is a sphere and (later) that the earth orbits the sun.

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You think that the main obstacle to accepting that the earth is a sphere was the established view. That seems wrong to me. At least in the beginning there was no established view at all. A flat earth would have entailed infinity. People could not accept a spherical earth because they were (unconsciously) accustomed to think that all bodies fall downwards. If the earth is a sphere, things fall upwards on the other side. This problem could be resolved 'relatively' easily by the assumption that the bodies fall to the center of the universe. Since the times of Pythagoras of Samos (ca. 570 - ca. 490 BC) a little minority has always known that the earth is sphere.

Already Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 310 - ca. 230 BC) had discovered the heliocentric explanation. But only in the 17th century it became generally accepted by scientists. Why? When Galilei started his famous conflict with the church, the heliocentric view was already spreading. The heliocentric theory had been proposed many times before Galilei. (The books of Copernicus were forbidden by the church only as a consequence of Galilei's behavior.) What made it so difficult to accept the heliocentric view was the following: the simple fact that objects fall downwards became a big problem.

You ask me whether I can devise an experiment that could disprove my theory. In a former email I mentioned a simple experiment by which we can test whether electrostatic effects propagate at speed of light (as assumed by orthodox physics) or instantaneously (as assumed by me). When I wrote that "I'm able to prove all my physical claims and I can propose some experiments which show that modern physics is completely wrong", it was perfectly natural for me that these experiments must have the power to decide between the orthodox theories and mine.

I'm convinced that the psychon theory is a real scientific theory, much more scientific indeed than well-known theories such as the big bang theory, Darwinism and many others.

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My physics is based on Kepler's physics at least insofar as Kepler assumed instantaneous effects. Kepler invoked physical laws in order to explain the planetary system and panpsychism in order to explain life. That "the panpsychic stuff was dropped" depended rather on scientific power politics than on science itself.

It is quite normal in discussions that everybody remains where he was at the beginning. But I would be glad if I had shown you that also the currently accepted view depends on premises that are not self-evident or apriori valid. You believe in the same way in Darwinism as I believe in my psychon theory. Maybe an important difference is that I believe in a theory I have not learned from others and in which I did not believe some years ago.

Your counter-arguments are all based on your basic premise that only matter or particles with mass can exist. You ignore or simply judge absurd the whole philosophical tradition which always has opposed the concept 'soul' to the concept 'matter'.

Your example of Galilei and Newton is so evident that future generations will wonder why it took so long to recognize that it must have been the same soul. Intellectual abilities, character and personality are so similar that it would be an extremely improbable coincidence in a Darwinian framework. Newton continued the work of Galilei in the same way as Kepler continued the work of Copernicus. Even the behavior (of Galilei and Newton) towards Kepler is the same. Here a quotation of 'Thematic origins of scientific thought' by Gerald Holton, Harvard U.Press, 1973, p.76:

"Galilei introduces Kepler's work into his discussion on the world systems only to scoff at Kepler's notion that the moon affects the tides, even though Tycho Brahe's data and Kepler's work based on them had shown that the Copernican scheme which Galileo was so ardently upholding did not correspond to the experimental facts of planetary motion. And Newton manages to remain strangely silent about Kepler throughout Book I and II of the PRINCIPIA, by introducing the Third Law anonymously as "the phenomenon of 3/2th power" and the First and Second Laws as "the Copernican hypothesis". Kepler' three laws have come to be treated as essentially empirical rules. How far removed this achievement was from his original ambition!"

This passage also shows that modern science believing in the primacy of empirical data and experiments is based either on ignorance or on lies.

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Maybe you are right that I'm avoiding your questions concerning the mass and the storage capacity of the soul (a possible answer: an average human soul weighs about x grams, contains y Gigabyte and normally resides in heaven between incarnations). But if yes, then the reasons are totally different from what you suggest. I never run away from problems which have to be resolved.

It is difficult for me to respond to your questions without giving you the impression of arrogance. I actually thought that your questions are answered by what I have written until now.
See also:
http://members.lol.li/twostone/E/psychon.html#a08

According to my epistemological view your questions do not make sense. Here a quotation of my talks.origin discussion:

"Almost all modern scientists lack an adequate understanding of epistemology. If you think that one cannot take seriously a theory which introduces the concepts 'soul' and even 'reincarnation', then you should study epistemology, especially the one of Occam or of Einstein: the only way to judge a theory is to look at its number of concepts (the less the better) and at its testable consequences and predictions. And one must never demand of the concepts of a new theory to be explainable by the concepts of the old theory!"

No paradigm change at all would be possible in human science, if every new theory had to be explainable by the old one. And that's exactly what you want me to do: to explain the concept 'psychon' by the concepts of the prevailing reductionist world view. It is much easier to explain 'psychon' by the concepts of Kepler's and Spinoza's science than by the current. You think that the modern concepts your reasoning is based on are self-evident, but that's a big error! You are not aware that your thinking and understanding depends on many questionable pre-assumptions you are not aware of. Here a 'translation' of your objection:

<< My arguments are based on the fact that matter falls downwards. If the earth is a sphere, something must push bodies upwards on the underside of the earth. A body cannot fall upwards without a material cause. My suspicion is that you have no scientifically plausible answer. If your theory is to stand you must address the questions of how and by what kind of material cause bodies can be pushed upwards. Without answers to these questions your sphere theory cannot possibly be taken seriously. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but that is the simple truth. >>

Not even relativity theory can be explained in such a way by classical physics!

>> This passage also shows that modern science believing in the primacy of
>> empirical data and experiments is based either on ignorance or on lies.

> What is the alternative? Gut feelings? Hunches? Or is it enough simply to
> make a suggestion to have it taken seriously?

The alternative is sound reasoning and trying to create better concepts than the existing ones in an unprejudiced way. The evolution of the heliocentric world view can be summed up in this way:

1)  The heliocentric view was created as a hypothesis (at least by Aristarchus, Occam, Cusanus and Copernicus)

2)  Scientists got more and more accustomed to the corresponding concepts (it took hundreds of years)

3)  Scientists declared the heliocentric view as a result of their recent experiments

Only after the new concepts had been created and assimilated, it was possible to interpret empirical data as a proof of the new theory!


Problems of Natural Selection from Humans to Bacteria (2000-11-20 – 2000-12-06)

Probabilities of Abiogenesis and Evolution Debated

Immanuel Kant and Evolution ("creation or rather development") (2007-09-14 – 2007-09-18)

00/12/09 The mutation theory of the HIV protease
00/12/11 Re: The mutation theory of the HIV protease
00/12/14 Re: The mutation theory of the HIV protease
00/12/18 Re: Darwinism refuted by adverse selection experiments
00/12/18
Re: Darwinism refuted by adverse selection experiments
00/12/19 Re: Darwinism refuted by adverse selection experiments
00/12/21
Informal application to "The Origin-of-Life Prize"
00/12/23
The Nature of Life (was: The Universe is Alive)
01/01/07
Medieval superstition in modern society ***
01/01/09
Re: Medieval superstition in modern society
01/01/11 Re: talk.origins probability-abiogenesis FAQ criticized
01/01/12 Pannaturalism (was: talk.origins probability-abiogenesis FAQ criticized) ***

01/01/14 Kant & counterrevolution & Einstein


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