Monty said:
Those two are not mutually exclusive. He posts links to his site because that is where he has collected the material that supports his position, which he collected because it fits his agenda.
Muffin said:
That was a solid guess. From lekatt’s bio:
Edit timed me out:
Oh, my other link on the brain structure was broken due to bad coding.
This stuff directly contradicts your assumptions on your site:
“The director controls the body through the brain. The director receives signals from the brain. These signals originate in the five senses of the body as well as the network of nerves…The director “programs” these areas for receiving and sending, so appropriate actions may be taken in response to the incoming signals. The director (conscious “I”) uses the tools of thought to do this programming.”
Well, no, the ‘director’ doesn’t. They are set up that way by nature (there’s also a lot more than 5 ‘senses’).
"In the rearmost portion of each frontal lobe is a motor area (4), which helps control voluntary movement. A nearby place on the left frontal lobe called Broca’s area (5) allows thoughts to be transformed into words.
When you enjoy a good meal—the taste, aroma, and texture of the food—two sections behind the frontal lobes called the parietal lobes (6) are at work. The forward parts of these lobes, just behind the motor areas, are the primary sensory areas (7). These areas receive information about temperature, taste, touch, and movement from the rest of the body. Reading and arithmetic are also functions in the repertoire of each parietal lobe.
As you look at the words and pictures on this page, two areas at the back of the brain are at work. These lobes, called the occipital lobes (8), process images from the eyes and link that information with images stored in memory. Damage to the occipital lobes can cause blindness."
Where’s the ‘director’ in all this? The brain does not need one. All internal. Occam’s razor shaves away this unfounded hypothesis about transmitting directors and such like. The brain is a fascinating and complex organ. You do it a disservice when you suggest it can’t maintain ‘us’ by itself.
In Lekattopia, scientific research consists of gathering anecdotes that support your belief system. He will never accept the standards you impose for scientific study.
The real question is does the brain produce consciousness and therefor consciousness would die with the brain, or is consciousness a separate entity that does not die with the death of the brain. This is the final question that takes priority over all other questions. So in the Magic Brain article are several links to research that show good evidence that the consciousness is separate from the brain and will live after the brain. This research came into being over more than thirty years and has been done by qualified researchers at qualified universities and published in scientific journals. I say the research is solid. So if you would be so kind as to read some of the research so we can discuss it.
Now there are many clues to a non-local consciousness. My brother had a stroke which left him unable to talk. All he can say is OK,OK, in answer to everything. But at night when he sleeps he can talk normal, his wife can even hold conversations with him. On the Dr. Grayson video he reports patients with severe mental illness in their dying moments become clear and lucid. These events would not happen if the consciousness was part of the brain. I will enclose a link to his video.
Wow, the thread continues apace in my abscence. Nonetheless I seek to reply:
Software doesn’t necessarily need an author - the fact that we create it without waiting for it to evolve doesn’t mean it couldn’t evolve, given the tons of time the human brain definitely had. (Though I don’t recall - do you believe in evolution?)
And how do you know software lacks emotions? The software I write wants things all the time. Really hard, in fact - it will sit there all day waiting for you to satisfy it’s desire for input.
Sure, that’s not a very sophisticated emotional model, but I already said that our minds and computer programs are similar in the broad concepts but differ vastly in the details and complexity.
Nope - you could be a bioorganic robot created by the government and remote-controlled by a large secret computer a hundred miles underground. Though you’re not - the existence of beer definitively proves that the human mind is located in the brain, and lubricatable by the lubrication thereof.
Also, what is “magic” or “spiritual”? If by that you mean “doesn’t need to have the minimum complexity or storage capacity to store and process my thoughts and memories”, then hell no, there aren’t “magic” or “spiritual” things running your mind. Putting aside whether you believe in beer, if you have a mind anywhere be it in your brain or in a server farm in heaven, your mind still has to work somehow - with sufficient processes and accessible storage mechansims with which to support your thought processes and memory.
And no, just saying ‘I’ve got a lot of CUs that meet in committee once a week and can never agree on anything and yet somehow I think. Maybe. I just don’t know much about what I’m talking about,’ isn’t going cut it. I require a functional model - or something with at least the possibility of being one.
So says the guy who’s been repeating the same line about NDEs for how many years?
On the other hand, if some God or spiritual guide were to start talking to me telepathically, I’d be happy to at least engage in conversation, assuming it wasn’t doing a perfect imitation of random gibber or my own imagination. But I have no intention of going and getting in a potentially fatal accident to try and get an actual NDE - the failure rate is too high, plus the medical costs would kill me.
Now, I have done as much as I can to replicate the steps you took to get the OBE you keep calling a NDE for some reason - in fact I’ve been taking naps more and more nowadays. However, there has still been no contact, despite increasingly frequent attempts. (I’m getting older and tireder.) Perhaps my spirit guide is dead?
In that case let us discuss this conciousness that is not part of the brain, and square it off with what we know.
Let’s just take a few aspects. Start off with memory. We knows, as far as we are able to, that short and long-term memory have physical components in the brain itself. For short term memory, we know that the prefrontal cortex is essential
“One thing is certain: the prefrontal cortex plays a fundamental role in working memory. It enables people to keep information available that they need for their current reasoning processes. For this purpose, the prefrontal cortex must cooperate with other parts of the cortex from which it extracts information for brief periods. For this information to eventually pass into longer-term memory, the limbic system probably has to be brought into play.”
Ditto long-term memory:
"Recent research has provided a complex, highly intricate picture of memory functions and their loci in the brain. The hippocampus, the temporal lobes, and the structures of the limbic system that are connected to them are essential for the consolidation of long-term memory.
The hippocampus facilitates associations among various parts of the cortex, for example, between a tune that you heard at a dinner party and the faces of the other guests who were at the table. However, all other things being equal, such associations would naturally fade over time, so that your mind did not become cluttered with useless memories. What might cause such associations to be strengthened and eventually etched into long-term memory very often depends on “limbic” factors, such as how interested you were in the occasion, or what emotional charge it may have had for you, or how gratifying you found its content."
This isn’t some ineffable mystic storage device. We can actually see the brain at work in regards to memory using MRIs - this is an MRI of an individual recalling a face. More details can be read here, including the conclusion that:
“These results support the notion that working memory and attention are organised in partly overlapping neural circuits. In contrast to previous reports in the visual or auditory domain, this study emphasises the involvement of the anterior insula in vibrotactile working memory and selective attention.”
Now let’s take another basic brain function - language. We understand language, written and spoken, through Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area. Again, this is not ineffable magic storage stuff, we can research it now:
“Research using Transcranial magnetic stimulation suggests that the area corresponding to the Wernicke’s area in the non-dominant cerebral hemisphere has a role in processing and resolution of subordinate meanings of ambiguous words—such as (‘‘river’’) when given the ambiguous word (‘‘bank’’). In contrast, the Wernicke’s area in the dominant hemisphere processes dominant word meanings (‘‘teller’’ given ‘‘bank’’).[7]”
(from the wiki on Wernicke’s area).
Furthermore, damaging these areas (in which we have found no ‘transceiver’ type function at all) results in aphasia.
“The difficulties experienced by Broca’s aphasics reveal that Broca’s area is central to correct processing and production of grammatical information.”
Next, let’s consider one more very basic thing, emotion. Again, the physical structure of the brain is crucial. In terms of blood flow, for instance:
"They have found that the left side of the brain alone appears to take responsibility for decoding the literal meaning of emotional messages.
But it seems that the brain’s right hemisphere plays a role in assessing the tone in which the message is delivered - a concept known technically as prosody.
The findings are based on measuring how fast blood flows to the tissues of the brain.
A greater velocity implies more activity in that area of the brain because brain cells, when active, require an increased supply of oxygen and glucose, both of which are carried in the blood.
A team from Ghent University in Belgium used a technique called transcranial doppler ultrasonography to measure blood flow velocity in the brain’s left and right middle cerebral arteries. "
Again, this isn’t coming from out in space. We can actually see this stuff going on in the appropriate regions of the brain using PET scans and EEGs.
So that’s three very basic things that, without a physical brain, we’d lose straight away. Without memory, language and emotion just how ‘concious’ is the ‘director’? Well, without memory - either long term or short term, or the ability to even form memories, kiss goodbye to your learned traits - memory and personality are definitely linked (which is why Alzhiemers is such a bitch). So to is language and personality - switching them can have changes. Completely wiping it out, who knows - you’d essentially be an infant unable to communicate anything with any effectiveness. Losing emotion, any semblance of it, would render you no longer ‘you’ in any meaningful sense. No happiness, sadness, nothing - the structures to form these emotions are gone. Can’t start a car if it has no engine.
And this isn’t even getting into sensory perception, which we know has definite links to the physical brain matter -
“As you look at the words and pictures on this page, two areas at the back of the brain are at work. These lobes, called the occipital lobes (8), process images from the eyes and link that information with images stored in memory. Damage to the occipital lobes can cause blindness.”
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/know_your_brain.htm
So, your ‘director’ is a blind, deaf, dumb, emotionless nonentity incapable of remembering anything whatsoever or forming new memories, and could not express itself even if it could. And this is just considering the obvious brain functions.
How is this better than just being dead, exactly?
One more point, then I think I’ll bow out. I’ve seen this pointed out before, but I think it was in the Pit thread, so I’ll bring it up here for perusal.
This one is particularly relevant, as the lass has a similar view to you:
Here’s a link to one of the studies:
Are you not concerned that you may be vastly over-exaggerating the importance of these events, attaching baseless conclusions to a phenomenon which, granted we don’t fully understand, but which may in the end turn out to be nothing more that the interaction of chemicals (as the human body is anyway)?
I have no claim that we can “learn nothing” from recording anecdotal evidence about NDEs. I think that collecting such reminiscences is a necessary prerequisite for attempting to discover just exactly what they are. Please do not project your opinions onto me.
However, lekatt has spent several years claiming that such inquiries are “evidence” for actual NDEs in exactly thr manner that HE perceives them. Not one study to which he has ever referred has done any such thing and he persistently refuses to examine the facts of the matter. Calling attention to that lapse is not condescending; it is merely keeping the thread focussed on the issue.
I have no intention of attempting to change lekatt’s views. They are cast in the concrete of his emotional needs and multiple threads over multiple years have demonstrated that fact conclusively. My comments are for the peanut gallery.
I don’t think there is anything I could say that Mr. Kobayashi hasn’t said much more eloquently and informatively. (Well done, sir.)
But I did want to clear up this bit of misinformation.
Actually, no. I never said I couldn’t find any studies. I said I couldn’t find any evidence. I didn’t ask for studies; I asked for evidence. Studies are not equivalent to evidence, and specifically not when they don’t draw the conclusions you claim they do.
It’s not that I don’t agree with them. It’s that they do not provide evidence of what you claim: that consciousness exists separate and independently of the brain.
I’ll tell you what the conclusion is. That people who suffer from brain trauma (i.e., lack of sufficient oxygen and nutrients) during a serious medical event (i.e., cardiac arrest) *sometimes *experience NDEs. There’s what your studies have found. Period. End of story.
As noted, Mr. Kobayashi just did a bang-up job doing just that.
I am aware of all the material you have presented, but it doesn’t apply to near death experiences which happen during the clinical death of the experiencer. The research is solid on this. I am sure it will take awhile to be assimulated into the field. The reason I am so sure is I have experienced it personally. Chemicals have nothing to do with the experience. Please read the experiences and the links I asked. All the researchers began as skeptics and became convinced by the research. I believe any one who is honest with the reseach will come to the same conclusion. We are spiritual. There is solid evidence.
I think all he showed my was some opinions of researchers that have not studied near death experiences.
Actually, what you had was an OBE. You see, to have an NDE, you first must be ND, o.k.?
Not sure what you are saying. Can you show physical memory in the brain? How much space does it take up? Questions that have never been answered before maybe you can answer them now. Brain mapping is not very accurate. Different brains have different locations. As for the “Director” that would be the real you. I think you are doing alright and have none of problems you mention.
Your blog seems to discuss NDE as experienced by the people in the study. From the second link:
This seems to be pretty similar in function, if not form, to your claims of conciousness continuing despite clinical death. This is very salient stuff as it deals precisely with your claim of a conciousness outside of the mind. If it turns out, as seems to be suggested by recent research, that this sensation is merely a product of CO2 interacting with the brain then your claim is moot.
Research has been done and it refutes your claim that ‘all’ researchers into this phenomenon began as skeptics then saw the light - unless you’re talking about whether the phenomenon actually exists or not. If you’re referring to being convinced that the reason is a conciousness outside the body, this is absolutely not the case, as shown by the work done by Slovakian researchers. We are chemical. There is solid evidence for that.
I think Brown Eyed Girl (thanks for the big-up, by the way, appreciated) was referring to my post regard different parts of the brain, the research that has been done which allows us to physically see their workings and understand the mechanisms behind such processes as memory, language, emotion and sensory perception. We have a good understanding of how our brain, on its own with no outside influence, creates and regulates these essential processes, and how if the mechanisms are damaged the process suffers. The process is directly linked to the mechanism - the former cannot physically exist without the latter.
In death (or other cases like TBI) these mechanisms are destroyed. How does the process carry on? Once you’re rotting in the ground or turned into ash these mechanisms are forever lost, meaning that any sort of linked-up conciousness would be without memory, language, emotion or sensory input. Like I said; trying to start a car without an engine, it’s just not possible.
I guess that’s that, then. As has already been noted by tomndebb, this ship has sailed. There’s nothing to learn here. For us, at least.
I’m doing alright because all these processes are functioning, due to mechanisms in my head. You can show physical memory in the brain - in my quoted text you can see how MRIs highlight a part of the brain being used when an individual remembers a face.
I’m just an uninformed layman in terms of neurology, but there’s lots of stuff out there which discusses what we know about how memory in the brain is formed, stored and retrieved (largely thanks to this little box of tricks.
Neurons and the limbic system are also vital for the process:
"Memory is the umbrella rubric under which each of these diverse phenomena can be classified. What unites them under the term ‘memory’ is that all involve the neural representation of information to which a person was previously exposed and which can be reactivated for use in the present "
After death (or even before, in some cases) all this wonderful machinery of the mind is destroyed utterly. How can this separate conciousness have access to these brain functions when the actual mechanism behind them is gone forever? Going back to the car analogy, it’s like saying that a car could still drive with no wheels, that it could still change gear with no gearbox.
I realise I failed to answer your question about memory. While this is more GQ territory and I am a rank amateur, there are resources out there explaining this stuff and how it is all linked into that amazing organ nestled in our cranium.
This book is an in depth look into ‘working memory’ and the capacity of the brain - it is a finite space, after all, and cannot hold infinite information.
In layman’s terms there are attempts to equivocate the brain’s capacity with that of a computer. It doesn’t really work as the two aren’t directly compatible, but here’s an attempt at it.
Here’s a news story discussing the direct link between memory capacity and our neurons, or more specifically the connections between them.
If nothing else, this thread has turned into a fascinating overview of the brain.
Thanks, tomndebb 
Sorry it took me so long to respond. Busy.
Ok. I’m a materialist too. But I think I am a different sort of materialist. For instance, sometimes I wonder if the phenomenon of mind or identity can be explained through a material theory that includes panpsychism:
Well… I am inclined to think that the state of ‘being’ is inextricably bound with the state of living. I doubt a computer can ever be conscious because it will never be alive. Think you can build a living computer? Go ahead, and post your results 
I don’t believe in magic per se. Super specialness? Well, you almost sound like you’re taking it for granted.
Anti-machine bigotry? Oh brother :rolleyes:
I described machines as contrived channels. Cameras cast light on film through lenses. Electronics pass electrons through wires. While these inventions truly are pretty neato in their own right, compared to a complex organism they seem really chintzy.
Think again about electronics. Nerds come up with a theory of electricity and apply it with unholy fervor to 2-dimensional circuit boards. Yes, it can do a lot of math, but binary math is all that it does. Even if it is simulating a peer-reviewed schematic of the mechanism of human self-awareness, it would yet be a simulation, no more alive than a reflection in a mirror.
But organisms have their channels too. For a pre-microscope analysis of this, (and keep in mind I am only broadcasting what was said, not vouching for its veracity) consider the concept of Nadis:
I’ll leave it to you to read the rest if you want. Compare a pre-modern examination of the human body to a modern circuit board. The circuit board really is advanced it its way, but it is also obviously massively redundant and an ‘exploitation’ of just a few principles. A somewhat ignorant examination of a complex organism displays much more subtlety and original detail.
Obviously I disagree. The computer reflects mind like a face in a (rilly rilly complex!) mirror, while a being IS a mind.
As I said, I don’t believe in magic either. That’s why I like you, begbert2. Awwww
I don’t think I can produce a truly comprehensive theory for you, but I would like you to 1. compare the quaternary nature of DNA to the binary nature of computing. 2. Compare the physical reality of a living being to the confines of a circuit. 3. Compare in-time subjective experience to any series of calculations, of any length.
And by ‘evidence’, you mean lots of anecdotes.
