I want to think you for being such a gentleman, they are rare in these debates. I would like for you to read some of the research being done on near death experiences when you have time. I believe the research is solid evidence of consciousness living after the brain is dead. We have hundreds of cases of individuals who die and are then brought back to life. They can describe accurately what happened around their body while they were clinically dead. Even individuals who were born blind can see while they are out of body in a near death experience. There is too much of this research to ignore. Since the beginning of recorded history people have believed in life after death. Not because of wishful thinking, but because of their near death experiences. Then while we have touched on the research of adult NDEs, we have not explored the NDEs of children. Dr Melvin Morse, a pediatrician has compiled a few studies of children’s near death experiences. Another area is those who have been born with brain deformatives, and in some ways are more intelligent by far than those with normal brains. Then there are children 4-7 years old with talents they never studied for. There is a 6 year old that will play the piano at Carnegia Hall. His mother says he knew the notes on the piano without any lessons and started to play at 4. These things can not be explained by the science model of the brain, but can be explained by the spiritual nature of man. It is just beginning, there is much work to do and much to learn. I wish you well.
Quick question - how do you know it’s accurate? What do you have to compare it with? Note that “everyone reports the same thing” doesn’t count, because there could be some underlying common mechanism that prevents the human brain from correctly processing the data. If someone reported something inaccurately, how would you know that?
In fact, we now have evidence that patients who appear brain dead may in fact be capable of conscious thought. In 2006, scientists in the UK and Belgium did an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) on a woman in a vegetative state and found that parts of her brain showed activity when she was spoken to and asked to think about things like playing tennis.
In the same manner we know it’s accurate, the doctors and staff in attendence verify the accuracy or inaccuracy of the information given to them by the revived patient. The patient says I saw you kick that chair while I was out of body (floating around the ceiling). Easy to verify, just ask if the doctor kicked the chair while the patient was without heart and brain activity. If the doctor says yes, I kicked the chair trying to resusitate the patient, then you have a verified near death experience or veridical NDE. There are hundreds and hundreds of them on record.
Well, I’ve been called a gentleman but never a gentle man. To address your points in sequence;
As part of this discourse I have been reading up on NDE and the phenomenon associated with them, of which I was fairly ignorant I must admit. The scientific research done seems to point to a chemical explanation for these light shows, which is entirely without our realm of understanding - as the human body is chemical and interacts with them on a daily basis. For example, research has shown that these light shows you interpret to be evidence of a disconnected conciousness can in fact be induced using ketamine;
http://www.lycaeum.org/leda/Documents/Using_Ketamine_to_Induce_the_Near-Death_Experience.9260.shtml
As well as the CO2 factor I linked to earlier. If this mystic experience can be replicated and monitored entirely within the brain using chemicals, it rather speaks against the ineffable conciousness, whose presence can be replicated using horse tranquillisers. I’d furthermore reiterate what I said about the beauty of the scientific method earlier - if this phenomenon did have repeatable, empirical evidence to support your conclusion of an afterlife and conciousness outside of the brain not only would it be in every neuroscience journal but on the front page of every paper, it would be the biggest scientific discovery since…ever. If it is part of reality it is by definition scientific, we don’t pick and choose because we don’t like the theory. For example, I don’t particularly like the findings of scientists who say that our current understanding predicts that in ~5 billion years Earth will end up as a blob of molten iron on the surface of an expanding sun. This falls into the realm of ‘TS’. Likewise, I’m sure you don’t like the idea that once we’re dead that’s it, but so far that’s what all scientific understanding points to. Personally I’m rather glad about it, it gives infinite value to my existence now.
Research suggests that this is a logical non sequitur. Because people experience NDEs, therefore there is life after death. That’s one mighty big jump. I’d be more inclined to say that because people experience NDEs, therefore some chemicals are interacting unusually with the brain. Or I’d even be willing to meet you halfway and say because people experience NDEs, we can’t draw any concrete conclusions due to lack of understanding.
There are all sorts of bizarre phenomenon involving the brain which we can’t yet fully explain. Take this amusing case of a woman who woke up thinking she was French. What does that tell us? That our separated concious sometimes likes to play practical jokes on us? I rather think it tells us that the brain is an extraordinarily complex organ and any changes in it necessarily change us. It is us. This does not mean we should commit intellectual suicide and accept a ‘magic did it’ explanation and be satisfied.
I’d like to return to the character of your ‘director’ and what we carry on with us after death. I’ll stick with just one aspect of ‘us’ this time, memory, since we’ve been discussing it. Let’s not even talk about the entire physical brain in regards to it, but just one component, the hippocampus.
I think we can both agree that this component is of vital importance in making us, well, us, and furthermore has been shown to do this in a physical, repeatedly demonstrable way. For example, research reported in the New Scientist came up with this conclusion;
As well as disorders like amnesia we know diseases like Alzheimers attack the hippocampus, leading to the awful symptoms of that disease.
So, there are two after death possibilities for your director, both of which present problems for your hypothesis. We shall take as read that after death the brain, and consequently the hippocampus are non-functioning - they are destroyed, by rot, fire, however you want to send off. It doesn’t exist as a functioning component any more.
So, possibility one - the possibility I’m assuming you’re envisioning.
After death we still retain the function of the hippocampus and all the processes associated with it, with no ‘break’ in function due to its destruction. Our memory works just fine for the director without it.
The problem:
This isn’t some disembodied ‘conciousness’ or ‘director’ floating around linked to the body, it is a disembodied brain. This renders the brain itself redundant and leads to all sorts of questions. Why, in cases of Alzheimers, can’t this invisible hippocampus take up the slack if physical matter is of no importance for the formation of memory? How could we possible form or store memory with no physical medium? It also raises unfortunately implications, in this view someone with a neural disorder would be advised to terminate their flawed physical hardware in favour of an undamaged invisible process that somehow gives us all the same functions back.
Possibility two, the one I discussed earlier. This is even conceding, for the sake of argument, your central premise that the conciousness is not a result of the brain.
After death, the hardware is destroyed and so is its function. As the hippocampus ceases to function we lose what it does for us, its roles in long-term memory and spacial navigation cease.
The problem: Your ‘director’ is not you, but some clueless, vague ‘awareness’ that lacks the hardware necessary to form or keep memory. You require your hippocampus to function as the individual you know yourself to be currently. Lose it, and you’re no longer that person, you’ve lose an essential component of your person. And this is just *one *component in the brain. Imagine losing the whole thing. It would be a nightmarish existence, truly more of a hell. I don’t know why anyone would want this vague existence for all eternity (do you believe it is eternal?) which would render of ~75 years, if that, on this planet a meaningless drop in the ocean compared to trillions of years as a disembodied floating ‘conciousness’ that lacks anything that makes us, us.
So your work is all ahead of you, you need to not only prove some link with an afterlife or director but also demonstrate that the functions of the brain can work perfectly fine with no hardware whatsoever, which I think is an impossibility. Posters above me talk of the human mind as like a computer, which is simplistic but works an analogy - if you smash up your HDD you ain’t getting those files on it back. The hardware that supports the neural signals no longer exists, the neurons can no longer fire. Once the brain is costa del blowfly, how do memories exist? My position is clear; they don’t, you’re dead. Your position I think is decidedly opaque, barring a non-explanation of ‘it’s spiritual’, which for all intents and purposes amounts to ‘magic did it’. I reject this dead-end for reasons I’ve gone into, it stultifies progress.
I advise all to read the link that lekatt has provided here. As with most of the links he provides, it doesn’t say at all what he thinks it says-in fact, most of the article flies in the face of all that he claims. The fact that one woman thought to be in a vegetative reacted (via brain activity) to questions asked has nothing to do with the topic at hand and, until this phenomenon is repeated with other people, is best explained by a simple misdiagnosis.
Indeed. There’s a bunch of people who say they’ve had these experiences, which is good for discerning that…a bunch of people have said they’ve had these experiences. Hundreds of people claim they’ve been abducted by aliens, but this doesn’t necessitate the jump to ‘hundreds of people have been abducted by aliens’.
The evidence suggests that this phenomenon is in fact observable and testable, so but I don’t dispute that this phenomenon happens, rather why it happens. I’ll repeat this report because I think the significance has been missed:
These people are reporting NDEs, as valid as any other claim. Moreso, in fact, since they were being actively monitored and not relaying an anecdote. In these people CO2 was an important factor, no matter what they thought about the experience being some sort of ‘broadcast’.
Spirituality is not magic, it is who we are. All humans are spiritual. Now I can tell you have been reading about near death experiences, but not the research on near death experiences. The research shows evidence of consciousness continuing after the death of the brain and all parts of the brain. Tests have shown that when the heart stops the brain will quit functioning about 11 seconds afterwards. Near death experiences happen after the brain has stopped functioning and we already have solid evidence of this as shown in the link I provided. So unless you can prove the research to be wrong, or prove that the brain creates consciousness your claims are unfounded. As for the director, didn’t it ever occur to you that severe brain damage never changed the fact that self knowledge remains. No matter what the damage. How can this be if the brain produced consciousness.
I will leave the link again so you won’t lose it.
I think this is funny, you complain when I link to my site. Now you are complaining when I link to a skeptic site. There is just no pleasing you.
“Me thinks thou doth protest to much.”
I think people can figure it out for themselves.
Where in my post did I even come close to complaining about your link?!? I want people to read that link!
BTW, the correct quote is “Methinks thou doth protest too much.”-Hamlet, act III, scene II.
Your blog is not research. Please link directly to the research.
Czarcasm has not “complained” about that link, so why would you make that accusation?.
He actually urged other posters to read your skeptic link–specifically because it says something different than what you attributed to it. In other words, he agrees that people can figure it out for themselves and reading that link will help, since it notes that there has been no evidence, yet, of consciousness separate from the brain. The article notes that some people have claimed to find such a separation, but the article then points out the errors in each of those claims.
You’re missing the point entirely. I said I was willing to grant your conceit about a conciousness surviving death, I’ll grant it all for sake of argument.
What I want to know is how, putting conciousness aside, other functions of the brain - I used the hippocampus, a well understood component - can continue when the hardware required has been destroyed.
“Prove me wrong?”
I already said I’ll grant your conceit, and I’m not a neuroscientist - far from it. Folks far cleverer than I struggle with the issue of even defining what conciousness is before looking for it in the brain. But, since you asked. It’s been a difficult issue, probably because of this reason - there doesn’t appear to be one area of the brain we can pin down and say “this is the area responsible for conciousness”, like we can with other functions. This is suggested by recent research:
There’s also the theory that conciousness is rooted at the quantum level:
New neural understanding could also come into play:
This is all very complex stuff, and I don’t for a second pretend to understand it all. What is clear is that we’re still working on it, but there’s no reason that conciousness should not be a product of the brain.
I see nothing on your blog that explains how memory could function without the hippocampus. Severe brain damage does change the fact that self knowledge remains; it can change who people are. There are many recorded instances of this from aphasia, amnesia, Alzheimers (and other form of dementia), Korsakoff’s Sydrome, Stokes, TBIs, all can have changes on personality.
So, how can memory exist without the hippocampus?
How is consciousness manifested in pencils? Do they have thoughts and feelings? Do they suffer ennui from being kept in desk drawers for 99% of their existence?
[A note to the mods: I realize the questions may sound sarcastic, but I am actually interested in lekatt’s notion of consciousness in seemingly inanimate objects and what his explanations will be.]
Woody Boyd: “Shouldn’t that be ‘I thinks,’ Miss Chambers?”
When I read that and then ask about it, I was thinking similar thoughts. What I read was “a nail is aware that it is a nail.” Read that in the Seth books and asked my spiritual friends about it. The awareness level would be so low we humans could not detect it is one answer. But I think the real answer lies in the translation from spiritual knowledge to physical knowledge. It loses a lot in the process. Otherwise I don’t know. The thrust of the knowledge is to understand that self-awareness came first before anything else. Then the creation of the universe ensued.
This makes no sense. If self-awareness came first, then it had no need for physical objects to house it.
I read your link to consciousness and found it interesting. Consciousness is described as chemicals, but the author does it in a “suggesting” format. There is no evidence, just the opinion of the author. This is true about the functions of the brain also. Most authors do not state they have found consciousness, but merely writing about their model or opinion of how they think it would work.
All things are energy, you, the “I am” contains all memory, knowledge, emotions, and other components of consciousness or self-awareness within. When the body and brain dies, you, the “I am” exists in energy form and continues to live without a physical body or brain.
No prob.
Okay. Panpsychism. Huh.
I see two different (unrelated) aspects of this theory:
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the entire universe is one entity that possesses a mind, and all us little planets and mortals and pencils and whatnot are just cogs in that machine. I find this a hard sell for a materialist because of the information transmission problem; the only real methods of communication between the disparate parts of the universe are gravity and light - and gravity attenuates rapidly and both have the speed of light limit. So the left hand won’t know what the right hand is doing.
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all parts of matter “involve mind”. All parts of matter? Atoms? Electrons? These things are conscious? With thoughts? Memories? Where do they store these thoughts and memories? And how do these minds interact with the universe? Do these entities percieve things? How? As best I can tell, atoms don’t have eyeballs or ears. Are they all trapped forever in a sensory deprivation nightmare of madness and misery? And of course even if these little minds wanted to get together in committee meetings and via pure democratic voting form a larger aggregate mind in that pencil, they have no way of communicating with each other to do so, so objects as people think of them can’t have minds in any meaningful way, unless they build them entirely separately out of macro-level interactions among chemicals and brain cells.
Seriously, I don’t see how a materialist can even begin to entertain this theory. Even theorizing this is cruelty to atoms, and doesn’t get you anywhere you want to be.
Define “living”. Seriously! We’re materialists, so no souls. No metaphysical to fall back on. So what’s the difference between living-person-before-bludgeoning, and dead-person-after-bludgeoning?
Here’s your answer: it’s the processes that are running, or not. And processes can be simulated - or if we take into account that there’s lots of different kinds of processes that we consider to be living (compare your processes to a tree’s processes), why couldn’t a computer have entirely different processes and still be “alive”? Theoretically speaking?
I am. Minds are all over the place - from really complicated to really simple to ones that make Deep Blue look halfway clever, given that it’s basically blind and deaf.
I have no idea what your point is. Nadis? What the hey? Ancient mysticism and alchemy tell us what now?
Certanly technology is currently less complicated than the human mind. (Well, the software, anyway. Neurons aren’t that much awesomer than transistors in the abstract.) But I’ve been saying all along that they’re just similar in type, not that they’re on a par in complexity at the moment. When (if) they do approach our complexity level you’ll know, because they’ll be demanding the right to vote. Or’ll have killed us all. Whichever.
What’s a “being”?
How does the computer “reflect” consiousness, other than being the same kind of thing only less complex (at the moment)?
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DNA doesn’t participate in consciousness. it’s just a storage mechanism. And one can store exactly the same data with binary - you know, by storing larger numbers in binary. Here’s your quaternary: 00, 01, 10, 11. (Serously, much :dubious:
here.) -
The confines of a circuit suck. You basically have no senses! A plug from the keyboard that occasionally shoots a few electrons your way. Another from the mouse. A somewhat noiser one from the ethernet card.
You think you’re special as a squishy organic meat-puppet? You are, but not because you have a mind. It’s because you have all these really really information-dense and constantly-updated inputs that are hardwired into your grey matter. If humans hadn’t evolved to have those, you wouldn’t have a mind either.
- In-time subjective experience are a series of calculations. It’s your brain doing stuff to itself inside itself. That’s calculations. You’re a materialist, remember?
On this point you are correct. The physical world was created in order to learn about ourselves, who we are, and to learn to make good choices when we are presented with both good and evil. This is an accelerated path to spiritual growth, or emotional growth, whichever appeals to you. Our bodies shield us from the Oneness in which we were created so that this is possible. We come here by choice and then forget who we are so the physical is real to us. Near death experiences are wake-up calls. I know this physical world is an illusion. I know I will go home when my body dies.