The most fundamental division in perspectives in the entire thread, and all the others like it down the decade, is whether the entire spectrum of phenomena ranging from dense solids to organic development to emotion, attitudes and opinions to the highest tendrils of thought itself are a single continuous spectrum, or whether there is a qualitative division in it.

Fer goo'ness sake.

As to what is circular, if you assume that there is nothing but material elements in the phenomenological universe, then it is obvious and irrefutable that brains produce thought. If you do not accept that assumption, it is possible that brains merely reflect thought, amplify and channel it.

These are two entirely different world-views. One of them accounts for the range of variations in phenomena such as apparent past-life memory, instances of telepathic linking, precognition, remote-viewing, OOB experiences, NDE's, and other "fringe" phenomena.

The other model has no explanation for these things and tends to dismiss them as highly improbable events, anecdotal, and probably delusory. One paradigm includes the physical, the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual; the other includes the physical and considers emotion, thought, spirituality as by-products and minor disruptions.

Pay yer money, and take your choice.


A