They are not findings if they are only models, or suggestions, or opinions. Evidence and proof are also scientific language when the necessary research has provided them. This is what near death experience research is all about.
When I was young, long time ago, science did form theories, but never treated them as anything other than what they were, theories. Today’s science seems to think if they can build a model of something then it is fact, not so. There is real evidence showing consciousness lives after the death of the brain and body. Real solid evidence.
I disagree completely. No scientist worth his salt would talk about ‘proof’ or ‘fact’ for a hypothesis in the colloquial sense of the words you are thinking of. It is anathema to the scientific method. For example, ‘theory’ in the colloquial sense can mean
S: (n) theory (a belief that can guide behavior) “the architect has a theory that more is less”; “they killed him on the theory that dead men tell no tales”
This is how the scientific method is able to give us a more complete understanding of reality. If we were to say that something is 100% fact we are essentially assuming omnisciences, assuming that no new evidence will ever contradict what we understand today. This is clearly foolish; even things postulated by the great physicists Newton and Einstein have shown to be inaccurate.
You mention evidence, but readily dismiss evidence provided by research whose findings contradict your claim. For example, from the abstract for the Single-Neuron Theory of Consciousness;
Apologies for the large quote, but it was necessary to define what the author meant by “VR conciousness”. This is just one theory of conciousness, but as an academic paper it provides evidence and multiple references.
You are dismissing this, and all other studies which come up with the conclusion that conciousness resides in and is created by, the brain - based on your personal experience and the personal experience of others, and what ultimately amounts to preference. Again, science cannot work this way - you can’t dismiss empirical evidence because it disagrees with your hypothesis.
The scientific method dictates that the hypothesis must be altered to account for/explain evidence which relates to it, or if the evidence contradicts it, the hypothesis must be entirely rethought. If evidence is dismissed it is completely contrary to good science, it retards our ability to understand the world as it exists.
In anticipation of your objection - you will likely counter than my position is no more solid than your own, as I am hypocritically dismissing your evidence. On the contrary, I am comfortable admitting our knowledge is incomplete and repeat that, if your evidence is solid and testable, and supports your hypothesis, it would be the subject of every peer-reviewed neurobiology journal and be in the process of being formed into a theory, as science understands it. If this occurs I will of course concede your point for reasons I’ve specified; my opinion wouldn’t change the findings any more than my thoughts about electromagnetism affects how that operates in reality.
Does this mean that consciousness in seemingly inanimate objects occurs only in ones with utility? If so, does this mean that these objects are not only aware of their existence but their usefulness as well? And how does that work? For example, somewhere in a batch of personal papers that I’ve never unpacked, there’s a checkbook for an account at a bank that I no longer use. Did the checks become aware that they’re useless and have their consciousness particles recycle? Or should I find them and shred them to free their souls?
I have no choice but to reject your theories, and models, and suggestions. As for science embracing new concepts, that just don’t happen. We don’t live in a perfect world. People are very reluctant to give up old concepts and ideas. But the evidence is solid. NDEs don’t happen to the same person in the same way more than once. But the evidence shows that consciousness lives on after the death of the brain and body. In post #219 there is a veridical near death experience which illustrates what I am talking about. Would you please take the time to read it and comment on it.
Yeah…I’m going to go with “so problematic that it isn’t workable.” Especially since I don’t think whether we’re all cogs in a machine is really directly relevent to the question of where our consciousnesses come from. If there were such a consciousness it might draw from a similiar source as ours, but that’s not relevent to the current discussion either way.
Bits of brain-lego with no bumps on top or receptacles on the bottom to connect them together. I have legos. I know legos well. And without the connectivity, they’re completely non-functional.
And I maintain that without the storage and processing space for memory and thoughts, the notion of sentience is incoherent. These atoms have nothing to be aware of. No thoughts. No memory. No senses. No nothing. There’s nothing there. How could that be sentient? Sentient of what?
Yeah. That prana stuff is gibberish to me - irrelevent old theories on a par with the luminiferous ether, at best, and with gods smelting lightning bolts at worst. I see nothing there of value to salvage.
And seriously - we can kill people with no prana leaking out. Blood, yes. Prana, no. Not unless it is immaterial. Prana has no place in a materialist model.
I think that every human, every mammal, and every reptile have them, and possibly every insect, depending on how much complexity you let me throw out and still call it a mind. (If you allow me to throw out a lot of complexity, Furbys count too.) And these living things are all over the place.
And there is no chance that “mind” is a constituent part of matter, any more than “automobile” is a constituent part of matter. And for the same reason - too many interacting parts. Like anything else, a mind can only by housed in something that has as much or more complexity than the mind itself has - and to a materialist this comes down to physical complexity, or complexity in a pattern of energy. Brains have this complexity, computers may approach having this complexity, but fundamental particles? Heck no.
I am highly dubious about acupuncture. And if it does work, which I don’t grant, it had better be physical or you’ll lose your materialist cred - which already looks pretty wobbly to me.
This is seriously woo. And I can’t keep a straight face about it - I’m going :dubious: and :rolleyes:. And given that this so-called model utterly fails to explain living in the context of death and near-death and all that anyway, other than "you have a spirit’ (which is hardly new), it certainly doesn’t present me with an argument that credibly counters my position.
This was a throwaway comment, but what the hey:
The only thing stopping transistors from having massive connectivity is because they’re intentially made very basic - much less so than a neuron. Just a few of them can be put together to give you “massive connectivity”.
“neurons live their function”? What, you think that transistors only do their thing occasionally and then go drinking afterwards? Neurons and transistors both do their thing all the time, reacting to their inputs and environment - and both mainly work with electricity. Some other chemicals will effect the functionality of neurons - but you can say the same about transistors. The main difference being that transistors are effected by less things, and the things that do effect them do so in ways that the transistor doesn’t recover its original functionality afterwards from. Of course, subject to the same chemicals, neither would a neuron.
I think that this ‘depth’ you’re seeing there doesn’t really exist in reality; I think you’re inventing it to satisfy some preconcieved notion. Sure, neurons have a different and slightly more complicated functinality than transistors, but I still think they’re pretty highly analagous, even with the differences.
So you’re assuming your conclusion then? You said “The computer reflects mind like a face in a (rilly rilly complex!) mirror, while a being IS a mind.” With your definition of “being” here, the last half boils out to “a thing with a mind IS a mind”. And you haven’t shown why the computer can’t or even currently doesn’t qualify as a “being”, in that context, other than by assuming your conclusion that it doesn’t.
You’re just so much math, as am I. We’re active brain patterns, and when those patterns stop, so do we. You are pretty explicitly highlighting how if you simulated a mind by duplicating it’s functionality the only difference would be the medium, not the message. Despite your baseless and unsupported assertions to the contrary.
It’s utterly insignificant, as differences go. Like the difference between new paper and recycled paper when it comes to the grade you get for the essay you write on it.
That’s no difference at all.
It’s software - or more specifically, running software. It certainly ain’t magic, even when you call the magic “prana”.
Panprotoexperientialism is nonsense, and explicitly non-materialistic.
What makes it nonsense is that it asserts “precursors to phenomenal consciousness” without even defining the term. What do these precursors do? What distinguishes them from non-precursors to phenomenal consciousness?
I think that consciousness is a process. You could in theiry simulate the process on anything that can model the complexity - even gears (though you’d probably need a whole lot of them, arranged just so). And any explanation for minds that does not allow for the necessary complexity is simply wrong.
There is always a choice, you can either accept the findings of properly researched and scientific studies or not. Science has been accepting new concepts since the Enlightenment, when man came up with a reliable system of establishing fact from fiction and increasing our overall understanding of reality. If what you said was true everyone would simply accept Newton’s findings about gravity. Trouble is new evidence arose that punched a few holes in Newton’s theories - and that was an old concept, so Einstein patched it up and increased our understanding of the universe. But then new evidence arose that brought into question Einstein’s ideas about Black Holes. So a man named Penrose came up with a better idea. Then Hawking refined that. And so on, each time increasing our understanding by correcting according to the evidence. That’s how science works.
I’ve read your post on the example of the NDE. The first thing I notice is it isn’t cited or verifiable. I’m not accusing you of making it up, but the reason scientists do experiments over and over again is so that they are verifiable and we can draw reasonable conclusions based on the probability of something happening, as well as being able to compare the results for anomalies. Your story could have any number of embellishments, the nature of anecdotal evidence.
I think you’re falling prey to the Hasty Generalisation fallacy, which can be described as;
Your sample size is one, far, far too small to draw any overall conclusions and apply it to a population. Secondly you jump to a conclusion without evidence for that conclusion. Your story says that this chap after a heart attack and loss of conciousness was able to name the people in the ICU. You draw the conclusion that this is because the conciousness is separate from the body, with no evidence to support this jump. What you describe is the phenomenon itself, but not the explanation behind it, which comes as a bold assertion. You don’t consider other explanations which do have evidence to support. I’ve mention the recent findings regarding CO2 and the phenomenon before, but I’ll link to a story that has undeniable parallels with yours:
Again, I’ll imagine you’re going to point to the word ‘may’ in that. But that’s because we don’t know for certain - this doesn’t add credence to other explanations which have even less evidence. You have a personal experience to confirm this all for you, as did 11 patients in the study. But what it revealed was a possible explanation, despite first appearances or what you’d like to believe as a result of what you’ve ‘seen’. Without deriding the experience, LSD can have all sorts of effects on the user;
http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Drugs/LSD/LSD.psych.html
Does this mean that this was what was actually happening? Of course not, but the tripper will tell you this is exactly what happened to him, just as the NDE reports on exactly what has happened. First impressions, unfalsifiable conclusions. But there are explanations behind both phenomenon that lie in the brain.
You have provided no evidence of this and no link or reference to any such evidence.
In the most famous case, that of Pam Reynolds, people have taken Dr. Sabom’s published notes and worked out the timeline of events that demonstrates that everything that Ms. Reynolds “experienced” occurred either before or after her brain was supercooled for the surgery. That is based on Dr. Sabom’s testimony, not someone else’s.
In the story you posted earlier, the author makes a number of claims that cannot be verified.
Most? This means that at some time he was not “technically” dead, (whatever that means), even according to the pro NDE witness. (This makes more sense than believing he was truly dead for 40 minutes, during which time he would have sustained irreversible brain damage, regardless of his spiritual experience.) And, of course, there is the problem that a worker in the ER, unless she was standing around goldbricking, should have been too busy and involved in the procedure to accurately assess his state throughout the 25 minutes that the team worked on him.
Then:
So, we do not even have a unanimous opinion from the same staff who worked on the patient.
That is not a “proven” incident.
Note that I am not even claiming that it did not happen the way it was presented. I am not making any claim that he could not have had an NDE from which he returned to life.
I am pointing out the very simple fact that your story is not proof. It is an anecdote–an anecdote in which other participants do not even agree on the events as recorded.
Every NDE story to which you have ever linked has demonstrated the same lack of verifiable facts. They might be true; I do not deny that as a possibility. They are NOT, however, proof, or even evidence, that NDEs are occurring.
I still wanna know how to have an NDE, by the way. lekatt’s version of them, not any of the meaningless ones that science! can possibly impell though material means. So, let’s hear it, lekatt!
Seriously - you tout the things pretty hard. Surely there’s no point to that if you can’t tell us how to have one ourselves.
Actually, the only advice he can give you from personal experience is perhaps how to have an OBE. In my personal opinion, nobody should be giving advice on how to achieve an NDE, seeing as how it involves Near Death.
Yes, yes, I know it was just an OBE, but if I’m going to have any hope of coaxing an answer out of him, I figure I’m going to have to play by his terminology.
Haven’t contributed yet, but have been watching for a while…
It seems to me that everyone in this thread can agree that the hypothesis of consciousness being separate from our bodies is not accepted in the scientific community as supported, in spite of the continual assertions from lekatt that there is plenty of evidence. My question to lekatt then is, why is this the case? It seems to me like there are 2 realistic options (assuming the hypothesis in question actually is true and there is evidence to support it):
-Scientists are aware of the evidence, but because they don’t like the anti-materialistic implications, engage in a conspiracy to not publish supporting data.
-Scientists are not aware of the evidence because they are all too stupid to be effective at their jobs.
So which one of these wildly improbable explanations do you support? Notice that your preferred explanation of “They are aware and they publish about it” is not in there because you underestimate the significance of your hypothesis. If there was solid scientific evidence supporting an consciousness existing outside of a physical body, there would be absolutely no shortage of peer-reviewed publications in the area because it would be the greatest scientific discovery of all time (or close enough). It would not be hidden on blogs on the internet and derided by most of the community.
So what’s your explanation for the current state of affairs?
(As a side note, it is making me very sad to see Mr. Kobayashi’s intricate posts keep getting the exact same 3-5 sentence reply saying, “actually, you’re wrong.” )
I’m curious as to the answer to this to, although my position is clear, the hypothesis has insufficient evidence to support it - otherwise it would indeed have run through the scientific method and be on the front page of every paper. After all, a hypothesis can be anything at all, but without some empirical evidence to support it nobody will take it seriously.
Well, for me it’s just interesting to see how the ‘spiritual’ answers the scientific. And interesting to research this stuff in the first place and champion the scientific method. I mentioned earlier that I reject ‘spiritual’ explanations as ‘magic did it’ non-explanations, I’d like to expand on that a bit since I have been banging on about the scientific method for a while. I like to use the example of medicine, a area which has exploded since the enlightenment and development of the scientific method and which has clearly benefited humans as a species.
In medieval times illness was blamed on sin, maleficium and demons. Cure was repentance, pilgrimage or shamanistic ritual.
The Renaissance advanced things a bit due to translations of Arab and Greek texts, and by the Black Death disease was blamed on miasma, or bad air, although early influences still remained. You can already see a crude version of the scientific method at work, as poor sanitation does cause foul-smelling air.
This theory persisted until the 19th century when men like Koch and Lister developed the germ theory of disease, advancing treatment options in ways that could not have been conceived of before.
Flash forward to today with our understanding of genetics, viruses, toxins and such like, aiding millions of people on a daily basis. Here, like Newton, we have stood on the shoulders of giants - without the earlier legwork we would be equally as clueless.
Now imagine if we had stopped at the spiritual explanation. No point investigating and explaining, it’s already done for you - it’s spiritual, we can’t understand it, it just happens. Imagine how much poorer we would be as a species if we had stopped at that intellectual dead-end. That’s what spiritual thinking represents to me.
In terms of NDE, we’re already uncovering new data about the brain which could go on to have applications far beyond our current understanding. If we stopped and accepted Lekatt’s explanation, of ‘it’s just spiritual, that’s the explanation and all we can hope to know’, imagine the knowledge we could rob ourselves of.
Interesting aside; I mention Roger Penrose earlier, the man who refined Einstein’s ideas about Black Holes and singularities. He’s also published a number of books on conciousness. He probably shares something in common with Lekatt in that he doesn’t think that concious can be fully explained with our current set of physical laws, but instead delves into the quantum level where these laws go haywire (I mentioned the quantum mind idea earlier).
No. Energy has a particular meaning in the realm of Science. If you’re going to admit to using words with meanings only you are party to, perhaps you should not engage in discussions about Science.
Perhaps lekatt could just skip the bit where he considers Science to be a religion and explain to us what his understanding of the Scientific Method is?
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