Fringe science

The weight of a human soul.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_(doctor)
You can also look into "spirit science"

Nope. Won't happen. Psychology and neuroscience are observations of the function of, not the nature of, consciousness. You can study what a TV set does (psychology) and take it apart and understand how it works (neuroscience), but neither of those pursuits is going to tell you jack about where the signal comes from.

i think that analogy kind of suggests a false dualism.

>where the signal comes from
You're a dumbass. If a signal is coming from anywhere, then there has to be an antennae or dish to pick it up, or a cable, which is connected right to the TV. You can study that and figure out how signals are being picked up. Where's the receiver in the human brain? There isn't one. But there are a many structures within the brain that explain the sensations a human is able to feel.

no

>i think that analogy kind of suggests a false dualism.
How do you know?
>Where's the receiver in the human brain? There isn't one.
How do you know?
>But there are a many structures within the brain that explain the sensations a human is able to feel.
Of course. But what is the consciousness doing the feeling? Ever played the onion game? I'm not my body. I'm not my sensations. I'm not my emotions. I'm not my thoughts. Keep going, identify everything you can perceive and realise that it isn't you, and then tell us what's left. And if you can describe that, explain the neurological basis for it. You can't, because at present nobody can. You don't actually know what you're talking about yet you throw insults around like a kindergarten kid.

>en.m.

What makes you think there is a signal and it's not all generated by the brain?

>I'm not my body.
Prove it. if a thing has "consciousness" it's like milk having "whiteness" or food has "blandness", the milk i the milk, the food is the food, it simply can be defined as having a quality. A living, conscious human being has "consciousness". and every single one of those things is dependent on molecular structure.
>Keep going, identify everything you can perceive and realise that it isn't you, and then tell us what's left.
You've completely psyched yourself out into believing absurdities. It is you. That's the only reasonable internally consistent way of describing "you". And I can find no record of whatever your "onion game" is.
>explain the neurological basis for it.
Of what, being aware of your surroundings, and able to internally consider them? There are structures in the brain for all of those things.

Occam's razor alone is enough to dismiss your claims since they just complicate the mechanism of the brain without any additional explanative power or supporting evidence.

Property dualism is true.

There are physical sides of certain experiences, like wavelength of light, but the experience of the color orange is not physical. That exact visual representation of a color is non-physical.
This suggests some degree of dualism.

> Spirit Science

Literally the most unscientific trash i have ever seen. Most people are quick to say , but this stuff it literally x their.

>experience of the color orange is not physical
[citation needed]

ok, so you say the experience of orange is a wavelength engaging with the retina and so on.
That is not our conscious representation of orange, though.

youre suggesting some outside causal factor when theres no need. in that analogy. and youre suggesting there is a dualism to consciousness when there doesnt have to be. if there were, it would be redundant. Neuroscientists are beginning to study and hypothesise explanations about consciousness. i think your "im not this, im not that" thing might be like a red herring.

not him, but good answer

i kind of disagree with that (if youre saying a thing can have a mental and physical property/description) because somethings clearly dont. when does the mental start? why does it start? why/how if its clearly a product of the physical properties? doesnt explain/tidy up anything for me.

i personally orient more towards berkeley on these matters.

>somethings clearly don't
such as?

like atoms?

I was not claiming all things can be mentally represented in consciousness.

then what were you saying?

This is ridiculous, his "findings" have never been replicated and the complete lack of controls in his study makes his results meaningless.

the mental representation of objects cannot be identified with their physical counterparts.

>>Where's the receiver in the human brain? There isn't one.
>How do you know?

We've looked.

but they are a product of them. i just think it doesnt add anything for me.

Conscious representation of orange is purely physical reaction to the wavelength engaging with the the retina. Saying otherwise requires evidence or further explanatory power. Simply claiming "property dualism is true" is neither. All you are doing is claiming X is nonphysical because we don't completely understand it. It's an argument from ignorance.

YOU don't understand, nothing can be "orange" but in the mind, you can't look at a brain state, and go, oh it is exactly the conscious representation of orange. you need some more explicative power to capture fully capture the notion of "orange".

>but the experience of the color orange is not physical

Yes, it is. It exists as patterns in your brain, your brain is a physical system, ergo, "abstract" ideas and "qualia" exist physically. More than that, color is constructed in the brain and it is possible to suffer a brain injury that robs you of the ability to see colors. This should not be possible if "seeing color" is not a physical process.

yeha but he means it in the way that what colour physically is is different from our experience of it. theres some sort of information lost when you describe colour scientifically in that theres no way you can describe what orange looks like to someone. Some people have an extra colour cell. they can see a more detailed spectrum of colour. but theyll never be able to describe what that looks like to you even if we can study it scientifically.

>yeha but he means it in the way that what colour physically is is different from our experience of it.

Yes I understand that. What it "feels" like to see orange exists physically, as a pattern in your brain.

>theres some sort of information lost when you describe colour scientifically in that theres no way you can describe what orange looks like to someone.

So? This just proves that language is not a perfect match for our thoughts, which everyone already knew.

> but theyll never be able to describe what that looks like to you even if we can study it scientifically.

Again this is only a problem if you assume language can perfectly represent our thoughts.

Don't be stupid and difficult. Language has nothing to do with it.

The problem is this: looking at the brain as a purely physical structure, its kind of like a biological computer. So why do we have the "experience" of anything, like the actual, conscious experience of feeling pain, tasting something, or seeing orange, instead of just reacting to the input like a computer?

>its kind of like a biological computer.

No, it isn't.

>So why do we have the "experience" of anything, like the actual, conscious experience of feeling pain, tasting something, or seeing orange, instead of just reacting to the input like a computer?

Our experiences ARE our reaction to the input.

yeah, actually fuck property dualism. makes no sense at the end of the day.

The problem all dualist positions have is, how does a non-physical system interact with a physical one. Even if we assume Plato was right, and there is a notional realm of pure ideas, there's no obvious way it could interact with our physical brains. This wasn't a problem for Plato because he didn't know anything about how the brain works, but it's an unbridgeable chasm for any modern take on dualism.

Our brains are purely physical constructs, yes? And while if you want to be shitty, no, our brains are not like a digital computer, they still have built-in structures to analyze and process data in a certain way, and like a computer, rely purely on physical laws.

But that doesn't answer WHY we have that experience. At what point from a purely physical arrangement of things, does that thing start to have experiences? It doesn't explain the qualities we perceive from our senses. Computers and other lumps of matter don't appear to have any conscious experience. Why us?

I'm not arguing for dualism here. I just don't know how you explain this.

>But that doesn't answer WHY we have that experience.

Why do you fall when you jump? Because gravity, sure, but why does gravity make us fall? At a certain point, you just have to say "well, that's just the way it is."

>At what point from a purely physical arrangement of things, does that thing start to have experiences?

When it has the neurocomplexity to construct them, I guess. Plants probably don't have experiences, even tho they DO have "senses" (a plant will grow towards the sunlight). Does a slug have experiences? Its brain stores information much as ours does, so presumably.

>Computers and other lumps of matter don't appear to have any conscious experience. Why us?

Because our brains are VASTLY more complex than any computer. Even the brain of a slug is far beyond the ability of computers. There is no reason to assume that a sufficiently complex computer wouldn't be conscious.

What is the notion of 2? There is no Platonic ideal of two which exists in itself. There is only the physical representation of 2 and our brains' physical reactions to that representation. So there is nothing to explain. You are begging the question by assuming orange is more than the sum of its parts, but it isn't.

I just stopped because i kind of felt that technically our descriptions of physical things aren't that much different from the "qualia"; all mind dependent and so trying to argue for it in a way becomes meaningless.

Qualia is an odd concept, one of those things that seems so obvious but that actually does no work in explaining anything. Invoking "qualia" to explain our experiences of sensing things is easy and intuitive, but it actually answers nothing at all.

firstly you dont know if they have consciousness or not, theres no way of knowing. second they probably arent complex enough to have consciousness, who says they cant if they were.

it very clearly is.
you could sum the parts without an eye. You have a physical story, and what the mind makes of a physical story.

And?c Still waiting for the evidence or explanatory power. You're just going around in circles. You have no argument, just a claim.

Orange is a quality, it's not a "thing" in it's own right. Try and imagine "orange". You might think of a solid block of color, but what you're imagining is an orange-colored surface, not "orangeness" itself. "Orange" doesn't exist, orange THINGS exist and from this we abstract the notion of "orangeness". But this abstraction exists solely in our brains, it's not a real thing that has it's own non-physical existence.

your mind is the physical story.

You can explore this yourself through minimal reading of a handful of Philosophical ideas and contemplation.

Yes, they're hard at work over at You should go there (and stay)

I asked this question today in meditation and this is what I saw:
>mind-consciousness arises as a function of an animating force interacting with a complex physical system
>the 'animating force' is spirit, universal mind or intent, to employ some commonly-used terms
>There are a series of interfaces between discrete levels of function, acting like step-down transformers between spirit and matter
>The densest of these levels is the 'etheric' body
>The whole history of the philosophy of Dualism is flawed
>The origins of matter and 'spirit' are not ontologically distinct, both are expressions of quantum processes
>On this basis 'spirit' is natural, not supernatural
>Spirit mediated through the etheric body affects living structure through quantum interactions
>Here's where it got a bit hazy; something about the properties of water or solutions in a living body allowing a greater responsiveness to events at a quantum level; particularly relevant for some reason to the nervous system

I'm going to continue to look at this and see if I can get any more. I don't care about materialists or philosophers wanting to argue, I'm not interested, this was my experience. I've posted in case it's of use or interest to anyone.

One thing to add, our thought-minds are not on the same level of function as what is sometimes termed 'universal mind'. Universal mind is like pouring pure fuel into an engine, and our thought-minds are the exhaust which emerges. As our minds are an emergent effect, we don't function on the universal-mind level unless we can somehow find our way back 'upstream'.

why do you feel the need to bring spirit into this

>hope this isn't bait.

its a shame you dont want to argue.

your relation between mind and universal mind doesn't seem that much different from the relationship of the brain to consciousness. im not sure theres any need to posit a universal mind.

Immaterial ideas affect you through immaterial Language every day.

No not bait. Only using the word because that's the common term; I think the main point of what I saw is that 'spirit' and matter are not distinct i terms of their quantum origin.

Don't mind talking just trying to avoid fundamentalist meatheads and pointless rows.

>your relation between mind and universal mind doesn't seem that much different from the relationship of the brain to consciousness

I see what you mean, and I agree that one is emergent from the other. I posted the other day about the philosopher Roy Bhaskar and his assertion that our knowledge of reality is stratified; that is, one 'level' emerges from another yet can't be explained by it. So chemistry emerges from physics, biology from chemistry. I suggest that in studying consciousness we aren't going to find all the answers in biology because consciousness emerges from biology. Consciousness can only be understood on its own 'level'. That's why I meditate, and I'm not afraid to ascribe meaning to impressions and 'visions', if you like. I'm fully aware of the various philosophies of the nature of experience and the pitfalls of ignoring them but I think somewhere we have to push the boundaries a little if we're going to get a handle on consciousness.

Sorry didn't finish answering; the universal mind doctrine is fairly common in various cultures. It's something I feel I've touched on just a little in meditation and other experiences, so for me personally it seems to be part of the picture. What I saw in this meditation today was like a graphic representation of the relationship between universal mind and our physical matter. I can't really see it not being there, it features in a lot of different contexts. And I can't see our consciousness arising solely as a function of complexity without the 'input' of universal mind.

but they are material. language is completely physically mediated.

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andrewnewberg.com

Leading neurotheology researcher who conducted famous neuroimaging studies on monks; collaborator with Dr. Eugene d'Aquili; author of "Mystical Mind" and various mental states. He is a pioneer in the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences, a field known as “neurotheology.” His research includes taking brain scans of people in prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, in an attempt to better understand the nature of religious and spiritual practices and attitudes

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that film is absolute bollocks. get out of here.

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At UNM, Dr. Strassman performed clinical research investigating the function of the pineal hormone melatonin in which his research group documented the first known role of melatonin in humans. He also began the first new US government approved and funded clinical research with psychedelic drugs in over twenty years. Before leaving the University in 1995, he attained the rank of tenured Associate Professor of Psychiatry, and received the UNM General Clinical Research Center’s Research Scientist Award.

In 1984, he received lay ordination in a Western Buddhist order, and co-founded, and for several years administered, a lay Buddhist meditation group associated with the same order. Dr. Strassman underwent a four-year personal psychoanalysis in New Mexico between 1986 and 1990.

He has published nearly thirty peer-reviewed scientific papers, and has served as a reviewer for several psychiatric research journals. He has been a consultant to the US Food and Drug Administration, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Veteran’s Administration Hospitals, Social Security Administration, and other state and local agencies. In 2007 he founded, with Steve Barker and Andrew Stone, the Cottonwood Research Foundation.

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Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO) Staff

Peter Forshaw, B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (London)
Course Lecturer in Renaissance Kabbalah and Number Symbolism. My research interests include the typology of alchemical and magical practice, Paracelsian philosophy, and the interweaving of Hermetic, Neo-Platonic and kabbalistic strands in the works of influential figures like Ficino, Pico, Reuchlin, Agrippa and Dee. Currently working on Robert Boyle’s work-diaries, and teaching courses on ‘Renaissance Philosophies’ and ‘Magic, Science, and Religion’ at Birkbeck College , University of London . My forthcoming publications include: "Curious Knowledge and Wonder-working Wisdom in the Works of Heinrich Khunrath", in R. J. W. Evans & Alexander Marr (eds), Curiosity and Wonder in the Early Modern Period (2005); "Letter, Number and Symbol in Christian-Cabala", in Stephen Clucas & Peter J. Forshaw (eds), Silent Languages: Emblems, Notations and Symbols in the Early Modern Period (2005), a major monograph on the German doctor, theosopher and alchemist, Heinrich Khunrath (1560-1605) and a translation of his Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom, based on his PhD thesis ‘Ora et Labora: Alchemy, Magic and Cabala in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (1609) and I am also working on a translation of Johann Reuchlin’s kabbalistic De Verbo Mirifico - On the Wonder-Working Word (1494)

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>Spirit Science
that shit is like a Po parody of /x/. Literally "Ireland: Land of the Pharaohs" tier. Just a mish-mash of pseudo-history, pseudo-mysticism, pseudo versions of actual religious traditions, and pseudo-science.

He legitimately thinks Mary and Joseph had interdimensional tantric sex in the Astral realm (his words, hence the misuse of terms like "dimension") to allow a being of "higher consciousness" to come to Earth and help us ascend to higher "physical, energetic, and spiritual wavelengths".

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I completely agree with the notion that there's no obvious way this "thought reality" interacts with the physical system of the brain.

However, your conclusion seems to be that this is evidence against the existence of this thought reality, which I'd disagree with. You could make the case from a Positivist position, but with that you could've rejected the thought reality long ago because there was no empirical evidence for it. There's no concrete reason to reject the idea NOW, as there being no obvious way in which the tow realities could interact isn't direct evidence against the existence of the thought reality.

Plus, are you just looking for a physical structure that would allow this thought reality to interact with our brains? If we accept that things can exist in an immaterial state and that these things affect the human mind, does that not mean we can accept that the thing allowing this interaction may not also be material? A physical structure in the brain would be no more able logically to interact with the thought reality than would an immaterial "structure" to interact with the physical brain.

I realize that this isn't precisely falsifiable, and so I'm not presenting an argument that this reality definitely exists as fact. But you assert there's some sort of problem revealed by modern science with this thought reality existing, and that just doesn't seem to be true.

The "thought reality" does seem to interact with it though - our brain - theoretically in a 1 to 1 mapping. I dont think theres any reason to believe in immaterial states because everything we have encountered so far seems to be materially explainable.

>Plants probably don't have experiences
On what do you base this? How would you know if they didn't? I'm not saying I disagree with you necessarily, but asserting the notion that plants don't have "experiences" isn't scientific, considering you haven't defined what differentiates experiences from sensations/input.

>Even the brain of a slug is far beyond the ability of computers
Not by a lot. It's very easy to imagine a computer program mimicking the cognitive functions and abilities of something like a slug or an ant.

>There is no reason to assume that a sufficiently complex computer wouldn't be conscious
Considering it hasn't been meaningfully defined (beyond the notion that any sufficiently complex system is conscious, which can't be verified versus the only system generally accepted to have "advanced" consciousness, i.e humans), there's plenty of reason to tacitly reject the notion that they even COULD be conscious on principle. If you define consciousness as you have, sure, computers can be conscious, but that definition isn't based on anything more than the belief that consciousness MUST exist that way because no other way seems valid to the holder of the belief.

>There is no Platonic ideal of two which exists in itself. There is only the physical representation of 2 and our brains' physical reactions to that representation
Prove it.

>A physical structure in the brain would be no more able logically to interact with the thought reality than would an immaterial "structure" to interact with the physical brain.

Not the user you're replying to, but yes, that's why I asked this question in meditation this morning. I'd never actually looked at it before. This is what I saw , which answers user's dualism problem and presents a (somewhat shaky and ill-defined) mechanism for the 'immaterial' to affect the physical.

>everything we have encountered so far seems to be materially explainable
...Except consciousness. It can't even be verifiably explained what it is, much less how its caused.

And simply because it could in theory have a material explanation doesn't mean we can safely believe that to be the case.

I see what he's saying, but he left out some details which are important. If consciousness is this "spirit" projecting through the medium of the brain's physical structure, what is the role of physical input?

Abstract object theory, also known as abstract theory, is a branch of metaphysics regarding abstract objects, and studied in hyperdimensional physics. The theory was an expansion of mathematical Platonism

Multipass With Class

The Nu Know Brow School

Collectively Brilliant

I think to answer that you have to enter the realm of esoterics completely and leave Veeky Forums behind. The theory goes, god needs to experience itself but can't if it is one whole; nothing to compare itself to. So god disseminates itself, forgetting its true nature so that it might experience itself through existing as multiple lives. The function of the physical realm and the brain is to limit and provide input for this experience; to provide the 'illusion' of individuality and separateness. Or so the theory goes.

well depends what you mean by consciousness because neuroscience does study consciousness like your sense of awareness, sense of self but if you mean "qualia" then thats different and im not sure it even needs a cause.

>However, your conclusion seems to be that this is evidence against the existence of this thought reality, which I'd disagree with.

Well it IS evidence, not conclusive certainly, but that's not really my point. If you want to posit an immaterial "thing" existing, the onus is on you to suggest a mechanism for how it interacts with our physical brains.

>Plus, are you just looking for a physical structure that would allow this thought reality to interact with our brains?

What else could it possibly be? Our brains are physical, whatever it is that mediates between the immaterial and the physical must be able to exert a physical effect.

> does that not mean we can accept that the thing allowing this interaction may not also be material?

No, because our brains are physical. How does a non-physical system interact with a physical one, unless via a physical means?

>A physical structure in the brain would be no more able logically to interact with the thought reality than would an immaterial "structure" to interact with the physical brain.

Correct. This is the problem for dualists I originally highlighted. I don't know of any possible solution, and I've never heard on presented by any dualists.

>On what do you base this?

The complete lack of a nervous system or sense organs.

>How would you know if they didn't?

Obviously I can't, which is why I said "probably".

>asserting

Go find a dictionary and look up "probably".

>Not by a lot.

This just shows how ignorant you are of the facts.

>Considering it hasn't been meaningfully defined

Consciousness is what brains do.

>>A physical structure in the brain would be no more able logically to interact with the thought reality than would an immaterial "structure" to interact with the physical brain.
>Correct. This is the problem for dualists I originally highlighted. I don't know of any possible solution, and I've never heard on presented by any dualists.

Did you read this post which presents a possible solution? >Spirit mediated through the etheric body affects living structure through quantum interactions
>Here's where it got a bit hazy; something about the properties of water or solutions in a living body allowing a greater responsiveness to events at a quantum level; particularly relevant for some reason to the nervous system

It's not though. Just look up "Chomsky Linguistics" on youtube and watch the first lecture.

>the role of physical input

Physical input as well as Phenomena ostensibly generated by Material aggregates are analogous to echoes inside a canyon. If one were to start recording and mapping the sound bouncing off a canyon's walls after its true source finished uttering it and fell silent for a moment, one would reasonably conclude that it is the walls themselves that are uttering it.

Basically...Materialism denies the existence of the problem, Dualism makes it impossible to solve, Spiritualism solves it.

>This just shows how ignorant you are of the facts.
NTG, but it's already been done.

And ants are pretty easy at ~250K neurons. Hell, we've moved onto rats and cats.

nextbigfuture.com/2009/11/ibm-has-achieved-cat-scale-brain.html

Once we leave silicon chips and primitive binary stacks, a full human brain simulation is pretty much inevitable. Sadly, it won't necessarily answer any of our questions regarding qualia/consciousness/experience or what not.

NIce analogy and neat synopsis. But as much as I lke to consider myself a bit of a mystic, I don't believe Spiritualism solves it. (As an aside, I wouldn't call it spiritualism because here in the UK there is the Spiritualist Church who talk to dead people.) And pure esoterics won't solve it for most folk here, we're on Veeky Forums after all. I believe we're looking for some model which might reconcile Dualism. I think the possibility of immaterial spiritual reality and physical reality arising from the same quantum source might do that.

everything linguistic is mediated by brain processes. yes it can be intersubjective/objective because the brain can extract abstract concepts and play around but linguistic concepts only affect you through physics. when you speak, you create airwaves that are recieved by another persons brain and they are processed. same when you read with light. its all causal. your thoughts are all mediated by brain processes. yes we can make abstractions of linguistic concepts which aren't necessarily dependent on concrete concepts in the world but our ability to play with them is mediated by brain processes, communication is too and our ability to even be able to do things like math and language is only there because of brain processes.

thats why language isnt an argument for immaterialism and chomsky would agree with me.

i am going to watch that but its 2 hours long so if you wanted you could explain why it backs up your point here.

That would be true if you could reduce Language to anything Material which is all but impossible. What is the sonic reduction of Language? It cannot be found in pitch, volume, timbre, or even in the sonic quality of the individual vowels and consonants since bilingual people can hear the same sentence spoken in two different Languages and correctly identify it as such even though the two sound sequences may look totally different on a spectrogram. What is the visual reduction of Language? How are these the same letter?

Even without addressing the issue of Linguistic infinity, the ambiguity of that which we call Symbol alone - culminating in the startling realization that it's not even singular, let alone local - makes the generative perspective, and even the idea of Material mediating, kind of problematic.

thats why i said brain processes. language is a creation of the brain. an inference machine extracting regularities from the environment. these regularities can be both physical or cultural (e.g. you learn language based on how people speak around you).

symbols are represented in neural ensembles.

i mean determined by the objective physical environment or a subjective cultural one but obviously cultural exchange is physical.