How to determine the reality of mystical experiences?

[PIT2]

You two are having a very interesting discussion. Thank you for that. But I'm afraid you have inadvertently limited the space of possibilities that you are considering.
Your language here suggests that there are only these two possibilities. There may be others that you are not considering.

Yes ur right. I didnt feel like summarising all possible options so i simply kept the alternative explanation very general.

That is that consciousness occurs completely outside the brain and the brain merely serves as a communication device between that consciousness and the nervous system of the body.

When u talk of "outside" the brain, do u mean that it is outside our universe also?
Do u suggest there are two worlds and that the conscious world has 'tentacles' that are connected to the brains in the physical world?

 

[RVBuckeye]

...Otherwise one might as well claim that one came into existence 5 seconds ago with memories of a false past.

Yes, quantum consciousness for example. Or perhaps the Electromagnetic Field theory allows consciousness to exit the brain also, or the virtual photon carrier theory of consciousness, etc. So there, i mentioned them

Your a trip, man.

Nothing conclusive, but mighty fun to read

Definately a good read. Long...but good.

Of course it won't make u jump up and say case closed. But neither should it make u jump up and say "look! we have another (apparently) verified observation, this suggests it was a false memory!".

Again, we began talking in generalizations of NDE's, now we're talking about specific cases. False memories are one of the many psycophysiological factors that need to be ruled out, imo. (and I'm speaking for me personally) Just please don't put words in my mouth. Only when a case can stand up to even the most basic scrutiny are the ones that are the most compelling to me.

Hey look, a red car, it must be blue!

It's blue. Prove me wrong

 

[Royce]

The fact remains that there are numerous OBE and NDE events that are well documented and verified where the people including children experiencing these thing know and remember conversations and occurrences that they have no "normal" way of knowing. It does them and the witnesses a disservice to doubt the word, sanity, rationality or their grasp on reality just because it cannot be explained away easily and we don't know how or why it happens.

I am presently reading two books and both state that the only way a new theory, despite the evidence, can be accepted is for the old guard to die off and the younger ones who have been studying the new theory most of their lives to take their place.

The argument between materialist/physicalist and the mystics/meta-physicist has been going on for at least 3,000 years and will probably continue of another 3,000+ years.

Granted I am naive and gullible and willing to accept the metaphysical, but I would rather accept what people say in good faith when I have no evidence to prove them wrong than call them liars and/or deluded fools living in a dream world; then make up all kinds of absurd explanations just so I can go on believing my favorite paradigm despite the evidence and facts to the contrary.

This is the main reason why I choose my beliefs so carefully. I invariably choose the ones that can't be disproved.

 

[Dichter]

Yes, there isn't much difference between these two. But there is another possibility which would give a different picture with potentially greater explanatory power. That is that consciousness occurs completely outside the brain and the brain merely serves as a communication device between that consciousness and the nervous system of the body.

I'm not sure this perspective adds anything to our understanding. If consciousness, however it is defined, is a process that occurs outside the brain, it still has to occur somewhere. Whether you put it inside the brain or in some extra dimension doesn't seem to have much relevance.

I think consciousness is actually closer to the function of a radio than a CD player. To paraphrase you again, "the rational explanation claims that the radio produces the music, the other one claims that the radio only produces the content of the music." In reality, we know that while we may talk that way, both explanations are superficial, incomplete, and technically wrong.

I think that is a misrepresentation of the reductionist/materialist position. What is being argued is that the theoretical framework that explains how your radio works also explains what is happening in the broadcasting station.

Now if we shift the location of consciousness outside the brain, we only have two options: either we put it someplace else, or we put it nowhere at all. In the first case, are we prepared to state that the laws of physics in that someplace else are essentially different from the ones we know? On what basis? And in the second case, if consciousness does not exist in a place, can we really say it exists at all?

My personal opinion is that no substantial progress will be made in understanding consciousness until this possibility is fully considered and investigated.

May I suggest yet another alternative? Let's suppose that consciousness has a physical existence, and that it is currently located somewhere inside your head. This is not the materialist position, as it seems to me they don't believe consciousness has a physical existence (apart from being the result of a physical process).

That alternative is quite old, actually; it's what people refer to as "spirit". Now the interesting thing about spirits is that, if they really exist, we can scientifically study them; after all they are supposed to be visible in particular circumstances. Also, under particular circumstances we should be able to interact with them.

I don't know if the spirit hypothesis is better than yours, but at least it seems a lot easier to understand and to do something about. And as a bonus, we have an enormous amount of anecdotal knowledge about it.

 

[PIT2]

The argument between materialist/physicalist and the mystics/meta-physicist has been going on for at least 3,000 years and will probably continue of another 3,000+ years.

Im not so pessimistic, because it think the brain-does-it explanation will be falsified. That is just the picture i get from the nde tales that exist. I think there will come a time when people start considering the alternative options more seriously and set up more experiments to test verified OBE's. I am surprised no large studies have been done yet, because it would be quite a discovery. NDE tales should (and already do) incite scientists to put this to the test.

And in the second case, if consciousness does not exist in a place, can we really say it exists at all?

What about nonlocality? There is the 'spin mediated' theory of consciousness, which says that it could transcend spacetime:

The starting point is the fact that spin is basic quantum bit ("qubit") for encoding information and, on the other hand, neural membranes and proteins are saturated with nuclear spin carrying nuclei and form the matrice of brain electrical activities. Indeed, spin is embedded in the microscopic structure of spacetime as reflected by Dirac equation and is likely more fundamental than spacetime itself as implicated by Roger Penrose’s work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-Mediated_Consciousness_Theory

So it doesn't follow that something that has no place is also something that doesn't exist. Notice that when talking of consciousness, it is already hard to speak/think of it in spatial terms (how big is it? where is it? (we like to say that it is inside our head, but what we really mean is that it is inside itself) can it move up or down?)

That alternative is quite old, actually; it's what people refer to as "spirit". Now the interesting thing about spirits is that, if they really exist, we can scientifically study them; after all they are supposed to be visible in particular circumstances. Also, under particular circumstances we should be able to interact with them.

So with this u mean that the first person experiences(subjectivity) can also be 'seen' from third person perspective? That two people can share one experience?

If this is so then would this not result in the entire universe being an experience, instead of being physical?

 

[Dichter]

I think the brain-does-it explanation will be falsified. That is just the picture i get from the nde tales that exist.

I don't think it will be falsified because it has never been proposed. Subjectivity cannot be objectively studied, so it's off-bounds to science. As far as science goes, "consciousness" means that which causes observable behavior, and I'm sure scientists are right when they claim behavior is produced by brain function.

Apart from that, the notion that subjective experiences are caused by the brain is just a matter of belief. An easily falsifiable belief, I should add. Going through even a brief episode of an altered state of consciousness is often enough to force a skeptic to change his beliefs.

I think there will come a time when people start considering the alternative options more seriously and set up more experiments to test verified OBE's. I am surprised no large studies have been done yet, because it would be quite a discovery.

What you call "quite a discovery" has, ironically, been known by every civilization throughout human history. If you visit a savage tribe in the middle of the Amazon, you will find they have essentially the same beliefs about the nature of human consciousness as 18th-century Europeans had, even though one never heard of the other. That can't possibly be a coincidence.

Well, I guess discovering the obvious can sometimes be quite a discovery...

What about nonlocality? There is the 'spin mediated' theory of consciousness, which says that it could transcend spacetime

I believe all attempts to explain consciousness through physics are deemed to fail. I have seen some evidence that it actually works the other way: it's consciousness that can explain physics. For one thing, physicists are conscious so physics must be a product of conscious activity.

So it doesn't follow that something that has no place is also something that doesn't exist. Notice that when talking of consciousness, it is already hard to speak/think of it in spatial terms (how big is it? where is it?

That is only if you assume so. My consciousness seems to be as big as my body and share its position in space. If you stop thinking of consciousness as being some spot inside your skull, between your eyes, you can easily see that.

So with this u mean that the first person experiences(subjectivity) can also be 'seen' from third person perspective? That two people can share one experience?

Why not? If two people are listening to the same sound, aren't they sharing one experience?

OK, I think I know what you mean, but what you are probably thinking makes no sense at all. It's not something that can be done even in principle. Even if you had exactly the same experience I have, if the content of your mind were exactly the same as of mine, you still would think of it as "your" experience, and you would still wonder whether my experience were different.

Now the fact that there are aspects of subjective experience that cannot be known to an external observer, not even in principle, is not unique to consciousness. It's essentially the problem of measurement - you can't measure something without changing it. In this particular case, you can't observe your conscious activity without tampering with it.

If this is so then would this not result in the entire universe being an experience, instead of being physical?

Well, something physical must definitely exist. Even if you state that everything is an experience, you still must categorize some experiences as "physical". In the end nothing really gets changed, except for the meaning of a few non-important words. The facts of the world, as we know them, are very solid and cannot be proven wrong except by disfiguring language beyond recognition. (for instance, when you ingest hallucinogens)

 

[Les Sleeth]

Part of issue is what is accepted as "real." All those efforts to record and document OBE or NDE require some physical counterpart to be considered real. That's fine when such physical indicators exist, but what about the possibility that something might exist without physical indicators? That's why it is significant that "reality" for certain participants of this discussion has already been defined as, not what exists no matter what that might be, but rather only that which is physical. When all statements are evaluated in light of what they singularly accept as "real" we can hardly have an open-minded debate.

Neither OBE nor NDE are "mystical" experiences, but they do indicate something might be beyond physical existence. If you look at the uberskeptics, it is always toward anything that might remotely indicate non-physical existence. I remember the thread over in Skepticism and Debunking looking at the TV program "Psychic Detectives." Without properly studying the show (or even ever watched it), people weighed in with NO FREAKIN' WAY opinions (of course, there are those who mindlessly believe it too). Why? Because they already believe a certain way, any evidence that threatens (or confirms) that belief system is "dismissed" (or accepted) out of hand.

In my opinion, what is most lacking in humanity is the truly objective mind, a mind so dedicated to the truth it will openly consider anything that might be real. If that is so, then it also seems to me the highest goal of philosophy should be understanding how to achieve an objective mind and working towards that lofty goal.

 

[Paul Martin]

When u talk of "outside" the brain, do u mean that it is outside our universe also?

That depends on what you mean by "our universe". If you mean the physical 4D space-time continuum that our bodies and brains have access to, and in which those chemical structures exist, then, yes, I mean that consciousness is outside "our universe". If, on the other hand, by "our universe" you mean everything that exists, then no. Consciousness, since it exists, must be in that universe by definition.

Do u suggest there are two worlds...

Yes. At least two.

and that the conscious world has 'tentacles' that are connected to the brains in the physical world?

Yes, but 'tentacles' wouldn't be my first choice of metaphor. I think the connection is probably more like a radio communication link rather than a muscly appendage full of slimy suction cups.

I'm not sure this perspective adds anything to our understanding.

I think it is too early to expect anything to be added. What I am suggesting is that we open our minds to new possibilities. It is by investigating new possibilities that I think we may eventually stumble onto something that adds to our understanding.

If consciousness, however it is defined, is a process that occurs outside the brain, it still has to occur somewhere. Whether you put it inside the brain or in some extra dimension doesn't seem to have much relevance.

I think the relevance is that in the former case, consciousness should be accessible to experimental detection and measurement, whereas in the latter case consciousness would be inaccessible to physical instruments. So far, the latter case seems to obtain.

I think that is a misrepresentation of the reductionist/materialist position. What is being argued is that the theoretical framework that explains how your radio works also explains what is happening in the broadcasting station.

I'm not sure I understand your comment here, Dichter. What I meant to argue with my radio analogy is that if consciousness is located outside the brain, and indeed outside the physical universe, then reductionist/materialist efforts to study consciousness by studying the brain and its functions are tantamount to studying a radio in isolation having no knowledge of the existence or nature of the broadcasting station. In the radio case, if the theorist accepted the notion that the radio somehow received the information from an outside source, then progress might be made in studying the radio itself tracing the information backward from the audio circuits until ultimately the antenna circuits might be discovered. It would be a mystery to go further, but at least some progress could be made in understanding the radio. I'm suggesting that if we are to study brains, we should be looking for the equivalent of antenna circuits. The 40 hz signals which correlate with conscious experience seem to me to give a clue as to at least what frequency to start looking at.

Now if we shift the location of consciousness outside the brain, we only have two options: either we put it someplace else, or we put it nowhere at all.

I would say that the second option is not available. It is nonsense to say that nowhere is a location. I agree that consciousness must be somewhere, but not every location need be within our familiar 4D space-time continuum.

In the first case, are we prepared to state that the laws of physics in that someplace else are essentially different from the ones we know?

I would say so.

On what basis?

On the basis of different spatio-temporal geometry. We know that certain of the laws of physics, the inverse square laws for example, are a result of the geometry of three dimensional space. If there were extra dimensions, then either those types of laws would be different, or the action governed by them would be limited to 3D embedded manifolds (which is exactly what I suspect is going on). Either way, the laws of physics would be different.

May I suggest yet another alternative?

Certainly.

Let's suppose that consciousness has a physical existence, and that it is currently located somewhere inside your head. This is not the materialist position, as it seems to me they don't believe consciousness has a physical existence (apart from being the result of a physical process).

That alternative is quite old, actually; it's what people refer to as "spirit". Now the interesting thing about spirits is that, if they really exist, we can scientifically study them; after all they are supposed to be visible in particular circumstances. Also, under particular circumstances we should be able to interact with them.

Yes, that is quite an old idea. If it were true, then the spirit should be detectable. It seems to me that all the experiments attempting to detect the spirit have done for the physical spirit what the Michelson-Morley experiment did for the luminous ether. I think we need to look somewhere else.

I don't know if the spirit hypothesis is better than yours, but at least it seems a lot easier to understand and to do something about. And as a bonus, we have an enormous amount of anecdotal knowledge about it.

The value of mine, if any, has yet to be discovered. The anecdotal knowledge about spirits is still inconclusive and unconvincing. But I think that there is a possibility that if you consider that what we think of as spirits also reside outside the physical universe, then some plausible and maybe even testable explanations might be discovered.

Thank you both for your comments.

Paul

 

[Dichter]

I think it is too early to expect anything to be added.

I was actually talking about the impossibility of doing anything about it. More below:

I think the relevance is that in the former case, consciousness should be accessible to experimental detection and measurement, whereas in the latter case consciousness would be inaccessible to physical instruments.

Exactly, but let me add a little twist to your phrase; let's say "in the latter case it would not be possible for anything physical to interact with consciousness".

Now unless I misunderstood your position, that is sheer nonsense. I can easily interact with anyone's consciousness using physical processes. That is, in fact, the only way that works for sure (apart from telepathy, ESP, and other methods which we still have no basis to believe they work)

I do suspect I misunderstood your point. I'll wait for clarification.

I'm not sure I understand your comment here, Dichter. What I meant to argue with my radio analogy is that if consciousness is located outside the brain, and indeed outside the physical universe, then reductionist/materialist efforts to study consciousness by studying the brain and its functions are tantamount to studying a radio in isolation having no knowledge of the existence or nature of the broadcasting station.

My comment was that, in order to understand the radio, you don't need to appeal to parallel universes and things like that. You can easily assume that the broadcasting station and the EM waves carrying its signals are all inside this universe and work according to the same theoretical principles.

In the radio case, if the theorist accepted the notion that the radio somehow received the information from an outside source, then progress might be made in studying the radio itself tracing the information backward from the audio circuits until ultimately the antenna circuits might be discovered. It would be a mystery to go further, but at least some progress could be made in understanding the radio.

I don't think it would be a mystery to go further in the case of the radio. The nature of radio waves makes it easy to trace their source, so your analogy breaks at this point.

I'm suggesting that if we are to study brains, we should be looking for the equivalent of antenna circuits.

Anything is an antenna for the right wavelength.

The 40 hz signals which correlate with conscious experience seem to me to give a clue as to at least what frequency to start looking at.

You do realize that the wavelength for that frequency is something like 5 million miles, right? Given the size of most people, I think we can easily rule out reception of any signal within that range :)

I would say that the second option is not available. It is nonsense to say that nowhere is a location.

It is not nonsense. To say something is located nowhere is equivalent to saying it has no location, which is what I meant for the second option. If consciousness is an abstract entity, then it can exist but have no location.

Given that consciousness deals strictly with what is abstract, it seems plausible to me that it is abstract itself (in the sense that it doesn't have a physical existence)

I agree that consciousness must be somewhere, but not every location need be within our familiar 4D space-time continuum.

But isn't this simply an attempt to move the source of consciousness to a place where it cannot possibly be found?

We know that certain of the laws of physics, the inverse square laws for example, are a result of the geometry of three dimensional space. If there were extra dimensions, then either those types of laws would be different, or the action governed by them would be limited to 3D embedded manifolds (which is exactly what I suspect is going on). Either way, the laws of physics would be different.

Notice I didn't just say "different", I said "essentially different". To illustrate what I mean, think of the inverse square law that you mentioned: it is a law of physics because it is a fact of geometry. Now under a different number of dimensions the facts of geometry may be different, but I don't think we have a basis to believe the laws of physics would no longer follow from geometry.

Yes, that is quite an old idea. If it were true, then the spirit should be detectable. It seems to me that all the experiments attempting to detect the spirit have done for the physical spirit what the Michelson-Morley experiment did for the luminous ether. I think we need to look somewhere else.

I think people are prejudiced against this idea simply because it is old. But despite being old it has not yet been disproved. To start with, the fact that scientific experiments failed to detect the existence of spirits in no way is an indication that they don't exist.

The anecdotal knowledge about spirits is still inconclusive and unconvincing.

That really depends on whom you ask, but in any case I didn't say the anecdotes were conclusive, only that they may serve as a basis for further investigation.

I don't consider this a scientific issue. The scientific method is too strict and cannot be applied to most things we want to know about. If we were to adhere to science's strictness all the time, we would have no knowledge of history, politics, foreign countries, art, culture, culinary... the list is almost endless!

Fortunately for the layman, life is not restricted to what is going on in academia. A good chef knows more about food than any chemist can ever hope to learn; any good sports person knows more about the dynamics of bodies in movement than any physicist; and so on.

The nature of consciousness is a subject that concerns and is open to every human being (just look at this discussion!). It's not wise to be guided solely by what science has to say, which is very little, and ignore the breadth of human experience on the topic.

But I think that there is a possibility that if you consider that what we think of as spirits also reside outside the physical universe, then some plausible and maybe even testable explanations might be discovered.

I think the notion is that spirits have the ability to travel back and forth between this universe and whatever else also exists. But the important point is that they are supposed to be here, allowing us to interact with them. Something which only exists outside our universe is not subject to interaction, which is equivalent to not existing at all from our perspective.

Your openness is attractive and some of your opinions are very interesting, but I think you are closer to folk wisdom than you realize. If you do realize it, you may add novel perspectives to an old subject which may help us understand it better. As you present it though, your idea seems just like a complicated academic exercise which academics themselves would probably dismiss.

Sorry if I misunderstood some of your points. Hopefully you can clarify them for me.

 

[Paul Martin]

Dichter,

Thank you for your most thoughtful reply. Let me address it from the general to the specific.

I don't consider this a scientific issue. The scientific method is too strict and cannot be applied to most things we want to know about.

I agree. It is not a scientific issue -- at the moment. But I think we are on the cusp of a change with respect to the things we want to know about.

At the beginning of the Enlightenment, some of the most important things we wanted to know about were, how to produce enough food for everyone, how to control disease, and how to defend the innocent against the lawless, to name three that come to mind. The scientific method worked superbly in the years since that time to the point that we now know how to produce enough food for everyone, we understand and control disease to a remarkable degree, and we have developed such scary weapons for defense that it is now much more dangerous to allow them to fall into the hands of the lawless. The cusp that I mentioned marks what I think should be a change in the relationship between science and our most pressing problems. Having essentially solved the problems of providing the essentials of life, we need to move on to the problem of man's inhumanity to man. To begin with, we need to recognize that much, if not most, of that inhumanity was simply different strategies for struggling to succeed in a competition for those limited essentials of life. Now that those essentials can be provided generally, the need to struggle over them should diminish. But that only marks the starting point.

As I see it, the next substantial step should be for science to modify the scientific method in order to make it more amenable to tackling the new problems. Beyond tackling the problems of how the physical world works, which as I suggested is now largely solved, science should now take on the problems that result from man's interaction with man. These would include many of the items on your "almost endless" list. And, of course, the most interesting phenomenon to be included in the wider net is the phenomenon of conscious experience. After waiting so many years, through the frustrating Behaviorist period, I am delighted that consciousness has become a serious subject of scientific study. I think the next step is to enlarge the space of possibilities for how the phenomenon might be explained in order to come up with a workable theory. To make that suggestion is the major purpose of my posts here.

As you present it though, your idea seems just like a complicated academic exercise which academics themselves would probably dismiss.

Any time I present any of my ideas, I try to be mindful of the receptivity of my audience. Posting here in PF I am aware that the people have little interest in idle speculation. And, of course, most of my ideas are idle speculation. So I try to limit the speculation and focus on where my ideas first seem to depart from conventional science. Unfortunately, you are probably right that those attempts result in "a complicated academic exercise which academics themselves would probably dismiss".

Your openness is attractive and some of your opinions are very interesting, but I think you are closer to folk wisdom than you realize. If you do realize it, you may add novel perspectives to an old subject which may help us understand it better.

Thank you for the kind words, but I am aware that my ideas are close to folk wisdom. What I try to do in my speculation is to come up with a scheme which accepts most of the laws of science and also explains all currently unexplained phenomena. The scheme I have come up with so far can, in my opinion and without too much imagination, explain that virtually every religious doctrine, from animism to Mormonism, can be understood to make sense and be at least allegorically true. So can the seeming nonsense of QM, such as non-locality and entanglement. I hesitate to present my scheme here, because it is of course only half-baked. (But for anyone interested, a summary can be read at http://www.paulandellen.com/essays/essay140.htm .)

I think people are prejudiced against this idea simply because it is old. But despite being old it has not yet been disproved. To start with, the fact that scientific experiments failed to detect the existence of spirits in no way is an indication that they don't exist.

I agree. And I didn't mean to dismiss the importance of the approach of investigating physical spirituality that you suggest. I think all possibilities should be investigated. My response was to your comment making a comparison between our two alternative hypotheses and questioning which is better. That's a question we needn't bother about right now.

I don't think it would be a mystery to go further in the case of the radio. The nature of radio waves makes it easy to trace their source, so your analogy breaks at this point.

You are right; the analogy does break at this point. This gives us a choice. We can abandon the analogy beyond this point or we can contrive the analogy further in an attempt to more closely match the analog which we are trying to explain. Taking this second option, we would (somehow) disallow the investigator from investigating the EM waves themselves or having any access to the transmitting station. I think this would be analogous to an investigator of consciousness if, in reality, consciousness were seated outside the physical universe and the communication medium was not completely accessible to physical instruments.

My comment was that, in order to understand the radio, you don't need to appeal to parallel universes and things like that. You can easily assume that the broadcasting station and the EM waves carrying its signals are all inside this universe and work according to the same theoretical principles.

Of course. And that is exactly the case for radio. And, that is also the case in your hypothesis of physical spirituality. But, in my hypothesis, of consciousness residing outside the physical universe, you must necessarily appeal to a parallel universe because one comes along with the hypothesis itself; there must be somewhere for that consciousness to reside if it isn't here, as you pointed out.

Given this hypothesis, and the conclusion that the two worlds are separate, we can't assume that the communication medium is EM waves as we know them. What we know about EM radiation is that it is a strictly physical effect. If it extends into another world, in order to mediate communication between brain and consciousness, it must at least have some additional non-physical (or hyper-physical) effects, which are at present unknown to science. There is also the possibility that there is some medium, other than EM fields, which resides in the higher-dimensional space of the other world and which has effects in the physical world. Those effects might be masked by operating under the radar of the HU principle so that to the observations of scientists, they appear to be "random" quantum effects. (I think this is exactly what is going on in the dimers of the cytoskeletal microtubules in neurons, as Penrose and Hameroff have suggested.)

You do realize that the wavelength for that frequency is something like 5 million miles, right? Given the size of most people, I think we can easily rule out reception of any signal within that range :)

Yes, of course. But keep in mind that the 5 million miles and the size of most people are strictly physical measurements and have nothing to do with any outside world.

Back to the radio analogy, in the search for the path of information flow, IF (Intermediate Frequency) circuits and frequencies would be discovered. Even though these frequencies are not the same as the transmission carrier frequencies, they nonetheless have some role in the total path of information flow. Similarly the 40 hz. waves seem to be involved in the conscious experience, but they may not (I'd say highly probably not) be the ultimate carrier frequency between the two worlds. But who knows?

Quote: [Paul]
"I think the relevance is that in the former case, consciousness should be accessible to experimental detection and measurement, whereas in the latter case consciousness would be inaccessible to physical instruments."

Exactly, but let me add a little twist to your phrase; let's say "in the latter case it would not be possible for anything physical to interact with consciousness".

Now unless I misunderstood your position, that is sheer nonsense. I can easily interact with anyone's consciousness using physical processes. That is, in fact, the only way that works for sure (apart from telepathy, ESP, and other methods which we still have no basis to believe they work)

I do suspect I misunderstood your point. I'll wait for clarification.

The twist you added completely changes what I said. I agree completely that consciousness interacts with the physical world in both directions, so I completely disagree with your twist. Consciousness obviously interacts with the physical world in the direction of perception, as you point out. I believe it also does in the opposite direction, that of willful action, which is more controversial. But I stand by what I said that this interaction is inaccessible to physical instruments. That is because the interaction goes on below the level of the HUP and thus the instruments can detect nothing but randomness with no apparent cause. In reality, I think the "random" effects carry incoming information to the physical world from the other world and that those effects cascade down from the configuration of the dimers, to the changes in the neuron which determine its firing pattern, to the eventual muscle actions which cause macro level intentional changes in the physical world. Obviously staying under the HUP threshold would not be necessary for communication in the other direction. I hope that helps clear things up.

Thanks again for your comments.

Paul

 

[Rade]

... In reality, I think the "random" effects carry incoming information to the physical world from the other world ...I hope that helps clear things up. Paul

Paul, I admit only confusion to your comments above -- the "other world" that differs from the world of E = Mc^2 -- what "other world" ? Now it is clear to me that the human mind is so very creative that it can "imagine" just about anything -- but at the very least I think you need to provide the mechanism of how the "other world" carries information from it to the physical world, using non-physical means. Until such explanation is provided, I remain confused indeed of your philosophy of reality.

 

[Paul Martin]

I think you need to provide the mechanism of how the "other world" carries information from it to the physical world, using non-physical means. Until such explanation is provided, I remain confused indeed of your philosophy of reality.

I think it is fairly straightforward as to what the mechanism might be. It would be something like EM radiation.

We don't know exactly how EM radiation works, but we do know quite a bit about it. What we have is electric and magnetic vectors that are mutually perpendicular. As each vector changes, it induces a change in the other, which then induces a change in the first one, and so on. The alternation continues propagating in a direction mutually perpendicular to both vectors. This requires 3D spatial geometry: one for the electric vector, one for the magnetic vector, and one for the direction of propagation.

To imagine a propagation mechanism in higher dimensional space, we simply need a set of forces similar to the electric and magnetic forces. These might be in addition to the EM forces, which would mean that EM radiation has effects that go beyond our world into the "other world". Or the "other world" might contain a completely separate set of forces, which could propagate signals in exactly the same way EM forces do. In either case, the mechanism would be similar to the familiar EM radiation we use for signalling.

As for carrying information into the physical world, as I mentioned before, any such information must be within the limits of the HUP. Otherwise we would already have detected the signals and we would know about them. But if the information coming in via those signals caused certain behaviors in quantum particles that to us appear to be random, then that information could influence the behavior of the physical world and yet not violate the laws of physics. As an example, if you set up a Schroedinger's Cat experiment, it might be possible that some decision maker in the "other world" might be able to deliberately control the outcome and save the cat.

The fact that the "other world" is inaccessible to us makes it difficult to prove or disprove the existence of such a mechanism. However we may be able to prove or disprove some things about the hypothesis by inference. But we certainly won't unless somebody starts working on it.

Paul

 

[selfAdjoint]

Paul we "can imagine" all kinds of stuff. But if it doesn't hang together, it's just guff. If you have a real theory of "forces in higher dimensional space" (sounds like string theory to me!) then you should post it on our Independent Research forum. If not, it's really not fair to use our philosophy forums to speculate wildly.

Do we detect all this EM coming from us and being received by others? Do you know what power levels the human EM spectrum radiates at? Can you say "inverse square law"?

 

[Paul Martin]

selfAdjoint,

I'm sorry for taking up your time and space.

Paul

 

[Dichter]

Hi Paul. Sorry it took me long to reply to your post; you set a high standard with your posts, they deserve a thoughtful reply. Not sure I will succeed though.

Having essentially solved the problems of providing the essentials of life, we need to move on to the problem of man's inhumanity to man.

I see what you mean. You think because science has been successful at solving some problems, that we should apply it to as many problems as we can. Is that right?

To be fair, I don't know exactly what "science" means. The word is overused and seems to apply to anything that results from rational thought; things like "political science" or "computer science" have very little to do with the traditional scientific disciplines. I don't know what a "science of moral progress" could be, but I suspect it would not look scientific at all.

To begin with, we need to recognize that much, if not most, of that inhumanity was simply different strategies for struggling to succeed in a competition for those limited essentials of life. Now that those essentials can be provided generally, the need to struggle over them should diminish.

I don't know if we can be sure about that. I believe the most popular explanation for the source of inhumanity is human wickedness, also known as evil. There is certainly abundant evidence that not everyone is interested in a world where everyone is happy, especially if that implies some amount of personal sacrifice.

Now it doesn't seem to me that wickedness is a problem that can be solved. The best we can do is curtail it as much as we can, and even here we have the problem that the people who are in charge of curtailing wickedness are wicked themselves.

I am delighted that consciousness has become a serious subject of scientific study.

Has it? As far as I'm aware, science approaches consciousness by dismissing subjectivity. I have yet to see anything relevant to consciousness from any consciousness study (as opposed to "anything relevant to behavior")

Posting here in PF I am aware that the people have little interest in idle speculation.

Idle speculation is the essence of philosophy. I think people love speculation so long as they are the ones speculating. Anyway, I like your ideas, and I'm sure many others do.

I am aware that my ideas are close to folk wisdom. What I try to do in my speculation is to come up with a scheme which accepts most of the laws of science and also explains all currently unexplained phenomena.

I honestly don't think folk wisdom implies a rejection of any law of science. Even miracles, which are supposed to violate the laws of science, acknowledge them by being rare. Without laws of science there could be no miracles to violate them.

I hesitate to present my scheme here, because it is of course only half-baked. (But for anyone interested, a summary can be read at http://www.paulandellen.com/essays/essay140.htm .)

So while we're still on the topic of morality, let me pick a point at the beginning of your essay (I didn't finish reading it yet)

1. The notion that humans have individual and distinct souls. (In reality, there is only one soul and that is PC's), and 2. The notions that PC is perfect, complete, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite

You claim those two things are the mistakes of religion, while the rest is "allegorically true". But I think you are simply talking about the three most famous theistic religions: judaism, christianity, and islam. Your arguments are close to eastern mysticism, and that makes it sound like you think all religions are allegorically true, but some religions are more literally true than others.

I think this would be analogous to an investigator of consciousness if, in reality, consciousness were seated outside the physical universe and the communication medium was not completely accessible to physical instruments.

In that case, would one consciousness be accessible to others without a physical medium, ESP style? That seems a logical conclusion, but you know how difficult ESP research has been. Skeptics of course say ESP research never turned any conclusive results because it's a phony science to start with, but that is not necessarily the only explanation. It could be that ESP lacks a solid foundation, so so far research has been equivalent to shooting in the dark.

Do you have any ideas as to what could be used as a foundation for paranormal/ESP research? (below-HUP stuff is a no-no, as far as I understand)

Those effects might be masked by operating under the radar of the HU principle so that to the observations of scientists, they appear to be "random" quantum effects. (I think this is exactly what is going on in the dimers of the cytoskeletal microtubules in neurons, as Penrose and Hameroff have suggested.)

Oops! There you go! How exactly do you think science can tackle things happening below uncertainty levels, when by definition this is a domain beyond the reach of science?

The twist you added completely changes what I said. I agree completely that consciousness interacts with the physical world in both directions, so I completely disagree with your twist. Consciousness obviously interacts with the physical world in the direction of perception, as you point out. I believe it also does in the opposite direction, that of willful action, which is more controversial. But I stand by what I said that this interaction is inaccessible to physical instruments.

I don't understand this. How can consciousness be beyond the reach of scientific probes while still being within the reach of kicks in the butt, so to speak?

That is because the interaction goes on below the level of the HUP and thus the instruments can detect nothing but randomness with no apparent cause.

I'm lost here. If I kick someone, and they say "ouch", we seem to have a full causal chain with no randomnes whatsoever. And I believe it's possible, at least in principle, to trace the information pathways from the nerves that receive the kick to the nerves that move the mouth and tongue to say "ouch". The problem here has always been to find justification for some invisible entity existing alongside those physical processes, when the physical processes alone are already understood.

In reality, I think the "random" effects carry incoming information to the physical world from the other world and that those effects cascade down from the configuration of the dimers, to the changes in the neuron which determine its firing pattern, to the eventual muscle actions which cause macro level intentional changes in the physical world.

I hope I'm able to convey the tone of my criticisms. I'm trying to be constructive and don't really disagree much with your basic premises, only with your notions of what can be done with it. Essentially, as you seem to be putting it, the problem is convincing skeptics that consciousness cannot be accounted for by our currently knowledge of physics. At least I think we're still in the middle ages as far as the subject of consciousness goes due to this blind belief that we already have a framework for explaining consciousness - which, if it were true, should have produced results already.

So, back to the point, if skeptics are the problem, then "randomness" is the end of the story. In current skeptic thinking, if something appears random then it has no cause, period. No further investigation required. How exactly do you think people can be motivated to investigate something they think, almost by definition, does not exist?

 

[Paul Martin]

Sorry it took me long to reply to your post; you set a high standard with your posts, they deserve a thoughtful reply. Not sure I will succeed though.

No problem; I can't always reply promptly myself. Thank you for your kind comments. In my opinion you have greatly exceeded my expectations for an interlocutor on these subjects. You have definitely succeeded and I thank you for your thoughtful effort.

You think because science has been successful at solving some problems, that we should apply it to as many problems as we can. Is that right?

It's close. I don't think it can be applied successfully to problems involving humanity, however, until the scientific method has been extended somewhat in scope and methods along the lines I have discussed. That extension is what I am trying to advocate so that science can then be applied to those problems.

...things like "political science" or "computer science" have very little to do with the traditional scientific disciplines. I don't know what a "science of moral progress" could be, but I suspect it would not look scientific at all.

I agree. But the disciplines of science have been changing throughout history so that at any point comments like yours here would apply just as well. After the types of extensions I am advocating, it would not look like traditional science, but it would still be science according to a new definition. I see no problem with this except that it would be nice if we could accomplish some of Kuhn's paradigm shifts without having to wait until all the older scientists holding tightly to the previous paradigm are dead.

I believe the most popular explanation for the source of inhumanity is human wickedness, also known as evil.

I agree that it is the most popular explanation. But I think popularity usually follows the easy way out of a problem. When faced with such an enigmatic problem as man's inhumanity to man, the easy way out is to invent a convenient label, like 'evil', and then claim that you have an explanation for the inhumanity. In my view, if you try to analyze and understand evil behavior, in every case you are led to the motivation being strategies for acquiring and protecting a source of food. Most of these strategies become institutionalized in the tribe or region so that children accept these strategies as cultural norms without question. They don't consciously choose the strategies themselves, nor do they question why they consider it a good thing to hunt heads or work hard in the fields or whatever their cultural strategies might be. I think that when different strategies clash at cultural boundaries, the strategies of the "others" or the outsiders are considered to be evil and this provides a justification for hostility against them. This provides the definition for evil and wickedness. But in reality this second order cultural clash is nothing more than the same mechanism at a higher level. The xenophobia is simply a strategy that works in many situations to help provide or secure a source of food. So I would say that regardless of what popular definition of evil there might be, I think the motivation for the evil or wicked actions can always be traced back to strategies, albeit at different levels, for providing and securing food supplies.

There is certainly abundant evidence that not everyone is interested in a world where everyone is happy, especially if that implies some amount of personal sacrifice.

Yes, I agree. But virtually everyone alive grew up in a culture with a long tradition of cultural norms which have been more or less successful strategies for providing and securing food sources. Most of those strategies require that in order for one to be happy, it is unfortunately necessary for someone else to be unhappy. That was because prior to about 1948 we didn't have any successful way of consistently producing enough food to feed the Earth's population. We are now in a position to make some gradual changes to those cultural norms and I think we see it happening already. For example I really don't think we will ever again repeat the horror of the first half of the 20th century. What shocks us as atrocious behavior is on a trend that has been generally declining since then. The world now gets outraged at murders that take only tens of lives or even less. I think that is a sign of progress.

Now it doesn't seem to me that wickedness is a problem that can be solved. The best we can do is curtail it as much as we can, and even here we have the problem that the people who are in charge of curtailing wickedness are wicked themselves.

I am more optimistic than you seem to be. I have already explained why I think atrocities are on a long-term declining trend. I think that the definition of wickedness will change to include not only the increasingly infrequent murder but to place more emphasis on things like greed. But here again, greed can easily be understood in the same context of a strategy to assure a continuing food supply. As people begin to understand that they no longer have to worry about that, and they discover that having ten cars doesn't make you any happier than if you only have one or two, the compulsion to acquire will diminish over time as well. We already see the enormous effort that is required to keep people wanting to buy the latest gadget or fashion statement. I think that greed will eventually evolve into a way for those who are excessively egocentric to feed those egos, while the majority of people will be able to acquire the things they need and want without the need to go overboard.

I agree with you that we will probably always have behaviors that we will label wicked or evil, but I think they will become more and more benign. The older and worse evils will fade into history and take their place in the succession of things like lynchings, witch burnings, inquisitions, judicial torture, slavery etc.

Has it? As far as I'm aware, science approaches consciousness by dismissing subjectivity. I have yet to see anything relevant to consciousness from any consciousness study (as opposed to "anything relevant to behavior")

I think that major progress has been made as represented by the efforts of people like David Chalmers, Gregg Rosenberg, and the discussions that go on here in PF.

Idle speculation is the essence of philosophy. I think people love speculation so long as they are the ones speculating. Anyway, I like your ideas, and I'm sure many others do.

Thank you. I'm glad you do. But it has been made clear that not everyone here at PF feels the same way.

I honestly don't think folk wisdom implies a rejection of any law of science. Even miracles, which are supposed to violate the laws of science, acknowledge them by being rare. Without laws of science there could be no miracles to violate them.

I agree with you completely. I think the definition of 'miracle' is vague enough that there could very well be miracles happening all the time, particularly in biology. Miracles might in fact be the true explanation for anything from the way in which Monarch butterflies navigate to the phenomenally successful folding of protein molecules in living cells. I am encouraged that at least one scientist, Rupert Sheldrake, has the gumption to buck scientific inertia and to seriously investigate many of these phenomena. I am hopeful that he will eventually stumble onto something conclusive and/or that he will encourage other scientists to follow his path.

You claim those two things[, the notion that humans have individual and distinct souls, and the notions that PC is perfect, complete, immutable, omnipotent, omniscient, and infinite,] are the mistakes of religion, while the rest is "allegorically true". But I think you are simply talking about the three most famous theistic religions: judaism, christianity, and islam. Your arguments are close to eastern mysticism, and that makes it sound like you think all religions are allegorically true, but some religions are more literally true than others

Yes, that is what I think. I am talking about all religions, but I agree with you that some religious doctrines are closer to truth than others. For example the Buddhist denial of the self is consistent with the idea of only a single consciousness, or soul, whereas most other religions maintain what I think is the false belief that each individual has a separate and distinct soul.

In that case, would one consciousness be accessible to others without a physical medium, ESP style? That seems a logical conclusion, but you know how difficult ESP research has been.

Yes, I think that conclusion is inescapable. But in my view, things get a little complicated here. I think there is a hierarchical structure of "others" to whom consciousness is accessible. I am not alone here. There are many other doctrines which make a similar claim. To wit, Catholic doctrine, as well as the rest of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, has its hierarchy of angels, archangels, cherubs, demons, etc.; Buddhism has its bodhisattvas, the Urantia Book spells out the hierarchy in great detail and actually names names and provides job descriptions; ancient Greek , Roman, Norse, and other religions were rife with such hierarchies; Animism has its hierarchical structure of spirits; etc. etc.

My notion is that the initial hypothesis of a single consciousness requires at least a two-level hierarchy. The single consciousness is at the top level and all conscious biological organisms are at the bottom level. For reasons I won't go into here, I strongly suspect that there are in reality several more hierarchical levels between these two.

So to get at your question, we need to be clear what you mean by "others". If you mean humans only, then my guess is that ESP communication among them is very limited and unreliable which I think explains the difficulty of ESP research. If, on the other hand, you include conscious beings which might reside at other levels of the hierarchy outside the physical world, then you have two cases. The first is the communication between a human and one of the outside beings. This would include such things as guardian angels and prayer. I think the evidence shows that this type of communication is also very limited and unreliable. The second case would be communication between two beings both of which are outside the physical world. In this case I think we can say virtually nothing. Nothing, unless those who meditate or otherwise have some access to that (those) world(s) report something back to us. Some of these reports are convincing to some people. For example, the reports by Seth, the Urantia Book, and other "New Age" practitioners, or even Ouija board conversations. Who knows? There might be something to some of these reports.

Do you have any ideas as to what could be used as a foundation for paranormal/ESP research?

Well, a couple come to mind. One I have mentioned before. I think it might work to have trained observers in ICUs and other places where NDEs are likely to occur, and to have these observers record information reported by the NDE experiencer so that it could be checked out later. (Capture the data from the "tennis shoe on the ledge" type of incident in a scientific way for example.)

The other one would be to have scientists cooperate with mediums, and others who report access to another world, and see if some scientific questions might be asked of, and answered by, beings in another world. If anything useful at all were obtained in this way, I would think it would be a major breakthrough. In all the accounts of such communication I have read, only the most inane questions are ever asked, even though in some cases, like Seth, it seems like there is a pretty intelligent entity on the other side who might be able to tell us something profoundly important.

Oops! There you go! How exactly do you think science can tackle things happening below uncertainty levels, when by definition this is a domain beyond the reach of science?

I don't think this should be a problem. I think science should easily be able to deal with information coming in below the HUP threshold.

I probably won't be able to articulate how I see this happening very "exactly" or specifically, but I see it as a problem something like deciphering a message that is embedded in a great amount of noise. If the message has enough redundancy in it, the message might be recovered even though the transmission seems to be nothing but noise. Or, statistical methods might be applied to a great quantity of information and noise which could "filter" out the noise and get access to the message.

So, for example, if it were indeed true that some hidden variables coming in under the HUP radar are causally involved in protein folding, we might be able to take a large quantity of such foldings and correlate them with an even larger quantity of quantum actions within some intra-cellular structures and see if there is some evidence for a causal connection.

I don't understand this. How can consciousness be beyond the reach of scientific probes while still being within the reach of kicks in the butt, so to speak?...

If I kick someone, and they say "ouch", we seem to have a full causal chain with no randomnes whatsoever. And I believe it's possible, at least in principle, to trace the information pathways from the nerves that receive the kick to the nerves that move the mouth and tongue to say "ouch". The problem here has always been to find justification for some invisible entity existing alongside those physical processes, when the physical processes alone are already understood.

I see the weak point in the chain, i.e. the point in the causal chain where the causal influence happens beyond the reach of the probes, is in some quantum behavior of the dimers in the microtubules, as I alluded to before.

I don't know whether you have read about the microtubule structure in neurons, but for readers who aren't familiar with it, I'll try to explain it as best I can. The microtubules are tubular structures that extend roughly throughout the interior of the neuron. The walls of the tubes are made of dimers which, like magnetic dipoles, exist in one of two discrete states. Changes in this state are propagated circumferentially from one dimer to the next around the tube. Interestingly, the circumferential rows of dimers are offset around the tube much like threads on a bolt or screw. So, when a change of state is propagated all the way around the tube, it reappears in the next row above (or below) the original row. The influences on the changes of state are more complex, in that neighboring dimers, in the row above or below can have an effect. Dimers can also change state as a result of pure "random" quantum effects. The dimers are small enough and isolated enough that relatively many dimers may be in a coherent quantum state for considerable periods of time. So, it seems to me that in the collapse or decoherence events, there is an opportunity for hidden variables from an outside world to purposefully influence the outcome, and yet appear to be totally random to our observations. From that outcome, the patterns and progression of the flipping of the dimers along the microtubules could be sufficiently large effects to determine conditions that, in combination with others, will cause or inhibit neuron firing at that moment. From here on, all the way to the kick in the butt, the causes and effects are observable by our instruments.

In current skeptic thinking, if something appears random then it has no cause, period. No further investigation required.

You have summarized the problem exactly. In my opinion, further investigation is required, and I think it could be quite fruitful.

How exactly do you think people can be motivated to investigate something they think, almost by definition, does not exist?

You bring back an old, vivid, memory of mine. In 1959 I argued with an obstinate Geology student/friend that the American continents had drifted away from Europe and Africa. Most scientists were in lock-step at the time stubbornly insisting that for good, cogent, and unassailable reasons, such drifting was impossible. Moreover it was only the uneducated crackpots, like myself, who thought otherwise. Furthermore, it was beginning to annoy the true scientists that the amateurs were causing such a ruckus about it that they were interfering with the real work of science. Would we please shut up!

Thinking back about how those scientists could have been motivated to investigate the possibility of continental drift (Ooops! That is still a derided term. I should use the more proper 'plate tectonics'.), I see no way other than the way it happened. The crackpots were completely derided and ignored and their opinions had no influence. The breakthrough was made by a few dedicated scientists who bucked the prevailing scientific dogmas and went ahead and discovered the evidence.

In the case of consciousness and related mysteries, I think we have to look to the few credentialed scientists like Rupert Sheldrake and David Chalmers to persist in their work until they can uncover the evidence that will convince the others. I suppose we could help things along by contributing to their funding if we have the means. Otherwise, I think all we can do is sit back, watch, and wait. I think the breakthroughs are coming soon.

Thanks again for your thoughts, Dichter. I enjoy talking with you.

Paul

 

[DMuitW]

I have been following this thread for quite a time and want to share my ideas concerning it as a whole. So please forgive me for being a little out of context with the latest replies.

I have studied NDE’s thouroughly for the last few years and have been in contact with the dutch cardiologist (Pim Van Lommel) who carried out a study that was published in the Lancet back in 2001. He concluded that our present knowledge about physical and physiological processes is lacking in explaining many parts of the NDEthoroughly.

The result of the NDE research so far has been enormously rewarding, but is in the light of the present materialistic paradigm (or as Les Sleets indicated with the absence of a truly objective mind) still viewed as a taboo.
Indeed, it is a fact that due to the intrinsic nature of the NDE one can never prove its validity through the ‘scientific method’, but this remark is exploited by debunkers and non believers in such a way that even significant pointers that follow from these NDE’s are neglected.

Although many physicists (still) believe that NDE’s are a result of the release of endorphins by a dying brain, can be induced during the loss of consciousness when fighter pilots are exposed to high G-forces or could even be evoked by the administration of the dissociative drug Ketamine, it is remarkable that they stay chronically blind on more than one domain.

It is highly significant that people who suffer this kind of life threatening events can have such a lucid experience that is both coherent qua contents as with experiences other persons tell. (whereas you would expect a dying brain to produce random chaos as random synapses disconnect).

While NDE’s that are reported by administration of such drugs as LSD or Ketamine may cause similar effects (feelings of love, well-being, separation), they contain fundamental differences as well. Their contents lacks coherence (hallucinations) and the effect of the experience isn’t as persisting as NDE’ers tell us.

Being more of the rule than the exception, NDE’ers frequently report OBE’s. Many of these OBE’s have been described and documented in enough detail to refute the much claimed “sublimal perception”.
The advantage of Out of Body Experiences is that they provide us with verifiable data.
This OBE data concerns the peculiar stage of an NDE that is most linked to our known “worldly experience of reality” and should therefor be interpreted as a bridge between the worldly reality and any implicate reality that may be out there. This being mainly due to objective descriptions that are made, while the rest of the experience can be classified as highly subjective (and therefor out of the domain of hard boiled science as well).

Another significant fact is that NDE’s typically contain mutual parts (though the presence of a specific part is not obligatory and there is no fixed sequence of these parts). Parts that are often described are the OBEsubliminal, the specific life review and the meeting with deceased relatives.

While these parts lack the verifiability (and thus the objectivism) of the OBE, one can ask himself the question whether this meeting with deceased relatives and specific life review can be logically explained in the light of the NDE as a product of a dying brain theory.
The answer is no.

It isn’t so much the occurrence a single fact (such as the OBE), that leads us to acknowledge the significance of the experience, but the presence of its different constitutes that all point in the same direction. It should be clear that NDE’s, when properly studied, can learn us (and yet have learned us) things about Reality that go much further than the present ontological interpretations of physical theories.

 

[Dichter]

(Paul, I will not comment on the issue of evil and morality as I'm afraid it's way off the forum's main subject. Not that it is not an interesting discussion though)

my guess is that ESP communication among them is very limited and unreliable which I think explains the difficulty of ESP research.

Sure, but you have to explain why. If you and I exist in a separate dimension, why is it easier for me to communicate with my body/brain in another dimension than to communicate directly with your consciousness, which is supposed to be in the same dimension? To use your radio example, if we're both in the same room, why is it that we have to use walkie-talkies and cannot talk to each other directly?

See, this is an issue for which not even the folk concept of spirits addresses. Why is the spirit so glued to the physical body when it's supposed not to belong to the physical world? (to which materialists answer, with a grin in their face: "because spirits don't exist, stupid" )

If, on the other hand, you include conscious beings which might reside at other levels of the hierarchy outside the physical world, then you have two cases.

My feeling is that this is an unnecessary, complicated way to avoid directly answering a simple question. There must be a more satisfying answer to the question of why two people need to use walkie-talkies despite being in the same room.

I think it might work to have trained observers in ICUs and other places where NDEs are likely to occur, and to have these observers record information reported by the NDE experiencer so that it could be checked out later.

In a sense this doesn't work, and in another sense it has already been done and the results seem conclusive. On one hand, you can't expect people who are going through the most important event in their lives to worry about scientific experiments. So you can't set up some apparatus and wait for those who "came back from death" to tell you what number they way on some display hidden in the roof. That is laughable.

But on the other hand, people do report quite a lot of things upon recovering from NDEs. Those are well documented by independent sources and it does seem like people can perceive things from a perspective from outside their bodies. I am personally as convinced by those reports as I am convinced of reports that astronauts traveled to the moon. While I have not seen the actual thing and don't understand how it's possible, I have no reason to suspect there is a major deception going around.

Capture the data from the "tennis shoe on the ledge" type of incident in a scientific way for example.

I'm not sure how much more scientific you can get than "tennis shoe on the ledge", especially when you have thousands of similar reports by independent, unbiased sources. I think the only reason the facts about NDEs have not yet been accepted is because we lack a scientific framework which makes them possible. We are in the position of denying a real phenomenon simply because we declared it impossible.

As you said, this can only be changed with a paradigm shift. Until then, no amount of evidence will matter.

The other one would be to have scientists cooperate with mediums, and others who report access to another world, and see if some scientific questions might be asked of, and answered by, beings in another world. If anything useful at all were obtained in this way, I would think it would be a major breakthrough.

Again, here we also have a lot of evidence that there is something going on, although just like with NDEs, there isn't much that we can conclude. I never heard of scientific theories coming from spirits, but people do get all sorts of unexpected information from mediunic activity.

In all the accounts of such communication I have read, only the most inane questions are ever asked, even though in some cases, like Seth, it seems like there is a pretty intelligent entity on the other side who might be able to tell us something profoundly important.

I think you only hear about inane questions because sensible people seem to think there are more important things to do than to try and talk to spirits. It's usually only the weirdos who get into this kind of stuff. I seriously doubt you yourself have tried it.

So, for example, if it were indeed true that some hidden variables coming in under the HUP radar are causally involved in protein folding, we might be able to take a large quantity of such foldings and correlate them with an even larger quantity of quantum actions within some intra-cellular structures and see if there is some evidence for a causal connection.

If you look at the way cells develop in a fetus, I find it impossible to believe there is not a causal connection. Millions of cells taking the right form and traveling to the precise location without some form of intelligent organization behind it? You got to be kidding. We have the evidence for causal connection already. What we don't have is the ability to come out and say, "you know all that we said about life being the product of random mutations and natural selection? sorry, we were mistaken". For one thing, in the US that would give creationists just what they need to bring about a new dark age.

In the case of consciousness and related mysteries, I think we have to look to the few credentialed scientists like Rupert Sheldrake and David Chalmers to persist in their work until they can uncover the evidence that will convince the others. I suppose we could help things along by contributing to their funding if we have the means. Otherwise, I think all we can do is sit back, watch, and wait. I think the breakthroughs are coming soon.

My impression is that before scientists can admit that they don't know what they claim to be impossible, the more radical segments of society must admit that some scientific facts cannot be questioned. In the end this is more a political battle than anything else. Shut up the fundamentalists and you will see scientists becoming more comfortable to take unorthodox views.

 

[RVBuckeye]

DMuitW,
Since you have been following this thread for a long time, I'm sure you've noticed that I've been arguing the physicalists position. While all your points are interesting, no doubt, it seems the only part of the NDE that could provide the most answers to the existence of the bridge between the different realities is the OBE.

However, all this leaves room for other posibilities. Can OBE's be studied independently of the NDE? In other words, it would be unethical to induce brain death for the purpose of providing data on OBE's that occur during an NDE. So the other option is inducing OBE's without brain death such as by external means. But would everyone agree that it is the same state? If there was never again a person like Mrs. Z., who could read a 5 digit number off a card in another room, would that end the debate? No. There are people that would say, "It must be different than one experienced in a NDE."

Also, I would be interested to know your take (or possibly Pim Van Lommel's) on why not everyone experiences an NDE or an OBE in the first place. This part alone leaves room to explore the psychological factors. Which is why I find the sleep studies just as relevent.

 

[Paul Martin]

If you and I exist in a separate dimension, why is it easier for me to communicate with my body/brain in another dimension than to communicate directly with your consciousness, which is supposed to be in the same dimension? To use your radio example, if we're both in the same room, why is it that we have to use walkie-talkies and cannot talk to each other directly?

In my posts, I usually use the radio analogy only to point out my views on the brain/mind separation and the mechanism for communicating between them. When it comes to speculating on the "beings" which inhabit another world and their relationships to physical biological bodies I typically use the more complex analogy of a Mars rover.

In the rover analogy, radio is still the communication medium between the JPL scientist (the driver) and the rover on Mars. I like this analogy because the two entities are indeed in separate worlds, even though the connotation of 'world' is different in the two analogs. But the most important feature of the rover analogy is that it illustrates the car/driver relationship that I believe is equivalent to the body/mind relationship.

So to address your question, I think the answer is obvious if you think in the context of the rover analogy. Your question then becomes, "How come it is easier for the JPL scientist to communicate with the rover than it is for two rovers to communicate between themselves?" The answer is that in the grand scheme of things, communication links were specifically designed between JPL and the rover and such links were not designed for inter-rover communication. Of course the cameras on one rover could capture an image of another rover, but the recognition of the other vehicle would only occur back at JPL. This is because, as I suspect is the real case of mind/brain, consciousness only occurs back at JPL. The rover is merely part of a communication link which may store some data, but there is no recognition or understanding of what is going on in the rover itself.

So when two humans communicate, the physical link, involving larynx's, vibrating air, eardrums, etc., transmits the information from one human body to another. That part is purely physical, and easy. But all semantic content of the conversation, including all intent, meaning, and understanding, involves the mind as well as the brain, and thus requires traffic on the mind-brain link. The complete communication path would be 'mind --> brain --> acoustic link --> brain --> mind'. Note that this path has no component link which exists solely in the "other world".

By contrast, telepathic communication would require the path 'mind --> mind' which would occur completely in the "other world". At this point, we can only further speculate on our speculation. My guess is that communication among entities in the "other world" must be difficult.

To use your radio example, if we're both in the same room, why is it that we have to use walkie-talkies and cannot talk to each other directly?

To really apply my radio analogy you would have to ask why two different talk show hosts on two separate radio stations can't communicate through two radios in the same room each one tuned to a different one of the talk shows. There is simply no link between the two radios, not to mention that there is no backward link from the radio to the station. I hope my discussion above has cleared up the issue. If not, let me know where it doesn't make sense.

See, this is an issue for which not even the folk concept of spirits addresses. Why is the spirit so glued to the physical body when it's supposed not to belong to the physical world? (to which materialists answer, with a grin in their face: "because spirits don't exist, stupid" )

I'd say it is for the same reason the JPL scientist's attention is glued to the signals from the rover while he is driving it.

My feeling is that this is an unnecessary, complicated way to avoid directly answering a simple question. There must be a more satisfying answer to the question of why two people need to use walkie-talkies despite being in the same room.

If you have a simpler and more satisfying answer I would be happy to hear about it. For me, there are a few good reasons for considering the existence of several levels, or different "worlds" or dimensions, in reality, and from all the evidence, direct and indirect, it sure seems to me that the entities that exist all up and down the hierarchy, including us human beings, are limited in our knowledge and can communicate only with extreme difficulty. So to me, this evidence seems to support my answer to your question.

On one hand, you can't expect people who are going through the most important event in their lives to worry about scientific experiments.

I agree completely. That is why I suggested only passive observation and recording by the scientist, hoping to catch conclusive cases.

But on the other hand, people do report quite a lot of things upon recovering from NDEs. Those are well documented by independent sources and it does seem like people can perceive things from a perspective from outside their bodies. I am personally as convinced by those reports as I am convinced of reports that astronauts traveled to the moon.

I just think that scientists would be more willing to accept the reports from one of their own credentialed people than they would from you, me, or other "unqualified" observers. It is the scientists who need to be convinced, not you or me.

I'm not sure how much more scientific you can get than "tennis shoe on the ledge", especially when you have thousands of similar reports by independent, unbiased sources.

Again, I think it would be considered more scientific if it were reported by a scientist rather than a non-scientist.

I think you only hear about inane questions because sensible people seem to think there are more important things to do than to try and talk to spirits. It's usually only the weirdos who get into this kind of stuff. I seriously doubt you yourself have tried it.

You are right; I have never tried it myself and I don't have much to go on. Two examples did make me wonder though.

The first was the book, "Seth Speaks" by Jane Roberts. This book is a purported transcript of conversations with Seth, an entity in another world, via Jane Roberts as the medium. The book also contains explanatory material with each session explaining the circumstances, the method of transcription and later analysis and so on. The thing that struck me when I read the book was that the passages spoken by Seth seemed to come from a very intelligent "person", whereas all the supporting material surrounding it, most of which was written by Jane's husband but some was written by Jane as herself, seemed to be of a markedly lower caliber of competence and intellect. I suppose they may have been much smarter than I think they were and that they deliberately wrote in the two styles to make the book more convincing. But I really don't think they were that smart.

The second example was a fairly sizeable set of notes I received from my sister after she died. She had been a member of a social group who got together periodically to play with the Ouija board. They established contact with some entity they called Uncle Darrell and they had carefully kept all their notes. The original transcriptions of the sessions were long strings of letters with no separation between words and including many ad hoc shortcut abbreviations and corrections. It is very difficult to read these notes. Accompanying these were the notes made when the group worked out what the actual words were. Here again, the group of women demonstrated very little by way of intellect or profundity, but Uncle Darrell was a different case altogether. He seemed to be patient with the women trying to explain some difficult concepts to them while still participating in the fun they were having. I was completely skeptical when I first got those notes, but upon my first reading, I became convinced that there is something going on here that requires some additional explanation.

Something that struck me as interesting was that both Seth and Uncle Darrell frequently interjected remarks about how difficult it was for them to express their concepts in English. It is the serial nature of the language which gave them the most problem.

It is largely from these two examples that I have been dismayed at the inanity of the purported conversations that go on with entities in the "other world".

If you look at the way cells develop in a fetus, I find it impossible to believe there is not a causal connection. Millions of cells taking the right form and traveling to the precise location without some form of intelligent organization behind it? You got to be kidding. We have the evidence for causal connection already.

You mean they have got to be kidding. I agree with you, remember?

For one thing, in the US that would give creationists just what they need to bring about a new dark age.

Yes. That is a real danger to be avoided.

Shut up the fundamentalists and you will see scientists becoming more comfortable to take unorthodox views.

An excellent strategy!

Good talking to you, Dichter,

Paul

 

[DMuitW]

DMuitW,
Since you have been following this thread for a long time, I'm sure you've noticed that I've been arguing the physicalists position. While all your points are interesting, no doubt, it seems the only part of the NDE that could provide the most answers to the existence of the bridge between the different realities is the OBE.

However, all this leaves room for other posibilities. Can OBE's be studied independently of the NDE? In other words, it would be unethical to induce brain death for the purpose of providing data on OBE's that occur during an NDE. So the other option is inducing OBE's without brain death such as by external means. But would everyone agree that it is the same state? If there was never again a person like Mrs. Z., who could read a 5 digit number off a card in another room, would that end the debate? No. There are people that would say, "It must be different than one experienced in a NDE."

Also, I would be interested to know your take (or possibly Pim Van Lommel's) on why not everyone experiences an NDE or an OBE in the first place. This part alone leaves room to explore the psychological factors. Which is why I find the sleep studies just as relevent.

Standalone OBE’s can be studied separately from NDE’s. Many experiences have been provided but have been reported to occur mostly spontaneous. Only few cases report inducing them at will. This could be a path to follow in the research of the reality of these OBE’s.

I should note that OBE’s that are accompanied with other parts of the NDE’s and standalone OBE’s are two very different things. OBE’s with other parts of the NDE’s are the result of a highly stressing and life threatening event whereas OBE’s that don’t go accompanied by other parts of the NDE’s lack this feature and differ qua interpretation of their contents.
It would however be logic to assume that both kinds of OBE occurrences fall back on the same mechanism. I don’t even contest that induced experiences (I won’t call them NDE’s to avoid misunderstandings) through Ketamine and such could (partially) rely on this mechanism (on which more a little further in this text).

Why not everybody who ends up in a life threatening event experiences an NDE could be explained by different factors.
Firstly, noted by Van Lommel as well is that in order to remember an NDE, having a good short term memory seems to be essential. Patients with memory defects after prolonged resuscitation reported fewer experiences than others in the study. This can be accompanied by forgetting the experience. To quote Van Lommel: “at 2-year follow-up, two patients remembered a core NDE and two an NDE that consisted of only positive emotions that they had not reported shortly after CPR, presumably because of memory defects at that time.”

Furthermore I add that many patients psychologically repress their experience in order not to be declared mentally ill. This is a real fear that initially bothered a majority of the patients that have come over the bridge with their experience.

Secondly - and presumably more fascinating for physics – is the mechanism that is responsible for this assumed delocalized mind. When we consider our worldly reality and another implicate reality that may be out there, there should be a mechanism responsible for the connection between these two. When we consider NDE’s, it seems logic to think that this mechanism at a certain moment “lets go” the physical part of which could be connected to the brain.
I note that there are strong indicators that this mechanism doesn’t solely rely on “the physical moment of brain death”, but also may depend on a subjective decision that is in the coextensive reality out there (and therefore is inaccessible to scientific objectivism) . This is backed up by my earlier assumption that standalone spontaneous OBE’s should logically use the same principle of delocalizing the mind, and obviously don’t require brain death. Also, NDE’s occur in comatose patients, who cannot be brain dead as they lived to tell.

The implication of this is that pinning down an exact moment where an NDE or OBE occurs is hard. If indeed there is a physical counterpart that is wired to the brain, it may be possible to detect this, but this may as well be refuted by the apparent “subjective” occurrences of OBE’s that were assumed to fall back on the same principle of a delocalized mind.

Furthermore, if we look at the possibility of a delocalized mind, it should not be neglected that NDE’s pose serious ethical questions to euthanasia in comatose patients as there is no evidence that the patient is no longer in some form “conscious”.

 

[Dichter]

In my posts, I usually use the radio analogy only to point out my views on the brain/mind separation and the mechanism for communicating between them. When it comes to speculating on the "beings" which inhabit another world and their relationships to physical biological bodies I typically use the more complex analogy of a Mars rover.

I already foresaw that from your arguments, since communication between mind and body occurs both ways, but I still think the question needs to be addressed.

The way I see it, mind-to-mind communication should be as simple as mind-to-body-to-body-to-mind, unless the mind is restricted to the body (ie, unless physicalism is true). To use your analogies, it's very easy for two JPL scientists to talk to each other, all they have to do is meet. Same for two radio show hosts. You seem to be saying there's something in this extra dimension in which consciousness exists which prevents mind-to-mind communication; that fits the facts, but it sounds like an ad-hoc, after-the-facts explanation. The problem is that there is no reason to postulate that it's more difficult for consciousness to move around in this extra dimension than it is here.

"How come it is easier for the JPL scientist to communicate with the rover than it is for two rovers to communicate between themselves?"

My question was really "how come it is easier for the JPL scientist to communicate with the rover than it is for two JPL scientists to communicate between themselves?".

The answer is that in the grand scheme of things, communication links were specifically designed between JPL and the rover and such links were not designed for inter-rover communication.

Since my question was not clear, let me venture as to what your adjusted answer would be. You would probably say that, in the grand scheme of things, inter-consciousness communication links were not designed. If that is the case, then I really hope the physicalists are right, as spending an eternity in absolute loneliness must be a frightful thing.

By contrast, telepathic communication would require the path 'mind --> mind' which would occur completely in the "other world". At this point, we can only further speculate on our speculation. My guess is that communication among entities in the "other world" must be difficult.

What if it is only difficult when beings in that "other world" are busy with affais of this one? For instance, it's extremely difficult to communicate with a teenager listening to loud rock-and-roll. If your theories are true, I'd think it possible to shut off the loud music and have some sort of telepathical communication.

(then again, sometimes it's impossible to communicate with a teenager at all, even in the absence of loud music. Langauge difficulties may be a problem, as you mentioned)

I just think that scientists would be more willing to accept the reports from one of their own credentialed people than they would from you, me, or other "unqualified" observers.

Actually, what happens when a "qualified" observer tells things scientists don't like to hear, instead of paying attention they simply disqualify the person. I've see it happen quite often; contrary to materialist propaganda, scientists are people too and can often be extremely close-minded.

It is the scientists who need to be convinced, not you or me.

I see the problem in a different way. I think the ordinary person is divided between the opinions of the scientists and all other competing ideas, but is more strongly influenced by the scientific position due mostly to propaganda and censorship. We live in sort of a materialist dictatorship, except the dictators use intellectual coercion methods rather than physical ones.

I'm not sure where the pressure for materialism comes from. My guess is that the elite will force the ideology that keeps them in power, so in theocracies the dominant philosophy is some form of religion, whereas in capitalism the dominant philosophy is one that stimulates people to "enjoy life to the fullest" (meaning "spending as much money as you possibly can")

So I do think it's actually the people who need to be convinced. They are the ones abandoning traditional beliefs held for millenia. The materialists will always be around.

You are right; I have never tried it myself and I don't have much to go on. Two examples did make me wonder though.

I have also seen cases of "spirit communication". I think if you dig through the overwhelming amount of charlatanism, you do find a lot of very interesting and intriguing stuff. As I said before, those have been a part of folk knowledge for a long, long time. It's not like there's something new to be discovered.

You mean they have got to be kidding. I agree with you, remember?

I wrote "you got to be kidding" as an expression of amazement. I know we agree.

Something that struck me as interesting was that both Seth and Uncle Darrell frequently interjected remarks about how difficult it was for them to express their concepts in English. It is the serial nature of the language which gave them the most problem.

I totally sympathize with them

Now seriously, I don't really believe disembodied spirits talk to humans, unless perhaps to deceive them. It's interesting that many religions advise not to play with this kind of stuff, that the messages "come from the devil", and I think it makes some sense. If you put yourself in the position of those "spirits", you'd probably think it does no one any good giving out cryptic messages that most likely will be misinterpreted.

What I really believe is that those messages come from places in our own minds to which we have difficulty gaining access, except in altered states of consciousness. You may be impressed with Seth's writings, but the fact is that you have the power to see how intelligent they are, so you must have the same intelligence yourself. It goes even further; if you appreciate great works of art, say a masterful painting or a great work of literature, that means you have what it takes to understand it. We are not much less talented than Van Gogh or Tolstoy if we have the ability to see their works as they did. We only lack, perhaps, the ability to make creative use of our talent.

So with all those "messages from spirits", I think you can easily see that going through an altered state of consciousness often unlocks powers of the mind that are normally inaccessible. That is, Seth and Jane Roberts are the same person, except Seth is hidden inside Jane's mind and only comes out when Jane's personality gets out of the way, so to speak.

 

[Paul Martin]

You seem to be saying there's something in this extra dimension in which consciousness exists which prevents mind-to-mind communication; that fits the facts, but it sounds like an ad-hoc, after-the-facts explanation. The problem is that there is no reason to postulate that it's more difficult for consciousness to move around in this extra dimension than it is here.

You are right; my explanation was not satisfactory. It needs yet more refinement. I think the stumbling block here is confusion in the identification of an individual human being. My view makes this identification much more complicated than it is in a materialistic view where the individual is clearly identified simply as the biological body.

In my view, an individual is an ordered pair, so to speak. It is the Cartesian pair of body and mind where each component resides in a separate "world". So when we talk about two humans communicating, we have to be clear about which of the four components are involved.

I agree that it should be easy for two minds to communicate directly, and for all I know, it is. But in order for the bodies to report on that communication here in the physical world, then the bodies must also be involved.

My guess is that the difficulty of achieving telepathy between human bodies stems from the circumstances of the minds and what is going on in that mental world. Yes, two JPL scientists or two talk show hosts can talk easily if they have the intention to talk and they have some sort of communication link. But in the circumstance where one or both JPL scientists are busy driving their respective rovers, or the circumstance where one or both talk show hosts are busy conducting their respective shows, it is not likely that they would be able to talk to their counterpart simply because they are preoccupied.

As you suggested with your teen-ager scenario, it may be easier to achieve telepathy if the mind can withdraw from the preoccupation with the body, for example while the body is meditating or sleeping. I suspect that such communication goes on during sleep, but the communication is not encoded into English and not stored in the brain so upon awakening, the body can't accurately or completely report on what transpired. Those are just some of my guesses as to why telepathy is difficult and unreliable, which it obviously is.

Quote: [Paul]
"How come it is easier for the JPL scientist to communicate with the rover than it is for two rovers to communicate between themselves?"

My question was really "how come it is easier for the JPL scientist to communicate with the rover than it is for two JPL scientists to communicate between themselves?".

In order to be seen as telepathic communication between humans it would have to be the rover to rover case. If there is communication strictly between the minds, then that would be the JPL scientist to JPL scientist case but it would not be reportable by the rovers (humans).

Since my question was not clear, let me venture as to what your adjusted answer would be. You would probably say that, in the grand scheme of things, inter-consciousness communication links were not designed. If that is the case, then I really hope the physicalists are right, as spending an eternity in absolute loneliness must be a frightful thing.

I can see that I have confused things. I said that "such links were not designed for inter-rover communication", meaning telepathic links. Of course inter-rover communication links were designed (or at least they exist for sure) but they involve acoustics and they operate strictly in the physical world. I think that in the grand scheme of things, inter-consciousness communication links operate up and down the hierarchy and they may very well operate horizontally in each level also, as they do down here in our physical level. In any case, I think the prospects for eternity are good, especially if the physicalists are wrong.

Actually, what happens when a "qualified" observer tells things scientists don't like to hear, instead of paying attention they simply disqualify the person. I've see it happen quite often; contrary to materialist propaganda, scientists are people too and can often be extremely close-minded.

I agree, but I still think that route is our only hope. There will be a few obstinate daring scientists who will doggedly pursue what they believe to be a new paradigm in spite of being disqualified, shunned, unfunded, or derided. The eventual success of plate tectonic theory, and the eventual acceptance of the bacterial cause for ulcers, are prime examples of how this can happen. Myriad non-scientists proposed continental drift for years and got nowhere. Myriad non-scientists could have deliberately infected themselves with Helicobacter pylori and cured the resulting ulcers with antibiotics and the scientists would have dismissed the evidence as crackpot folklore. In each case, it took a daring "qualified" scientist to buck the dogma and force a paradigm change.

I see the problem in a different way. I think the ordinary person is divided between the opinions of the scientists and all other competing ideas, but is more strongly influenced by the scientific position due mostly to propaganda and censorship. We live in sort of a materialist dictatorship, except the dictators use intellectual coercion methods rather than physical ones.

Yes, we do see this somewhat differently. I think the overwhelming influence on the public to accepting the scientific position is the undeniable success of science in solving so many real human problems. I think this is positive and well deserved. I don't think we should turn away from science as the authority, but instead we should encourage an extension to the scope and methods of science so that they can take on even more interesting or important problems.

I'm not sure where the pressure for materialism comes from.

I think it comes from their spectacular and unqualified success -- so far.

Now seriously, I don't really believe disembodied spirits talk to humans, unless perhaps to deceive them. It's interesting that many religions advise not to play with this kind of stuff, that the messages "come from the devil", and I think it makes some sense. If you put yourself in the position of those "spirits", you'd probably think it does no one any good giving out cryptic messages that most likely will be misinterpreted.

I agree completely. I think it is presumptuous of us to think we know what might be going on in the putative spirit world. There seems to be ample evidence that it doesn't do us much, if any good, to play around with that kind of stuff.

What I really believe is that those messages come from places in our own minds to which we have difficulty gaining access, except in altered states of consciousness.

I agree with you completely here, but I suspect we interpret your statement quite differently -- that is if you don't accept my single-mind hypothesis.

In my view, when you talk about "places in our own minds", you imply that "minds" are the possessions of the antecedent of "our". Now what exactly do you mean by "our"? Who is the real owner of the mind? Since your body, with its fingers, was the thing that actually typed your post that I am reading, it seems natural to think of "us" as being human bodies, and that we "own" minds which reside someplace. That's OK, and it makes communication among us a little easier, but in my view things are a little more complicated.

If cars could talk (and believe), your statement would be tantamount to a car saying, "What I really believe is that those messages my driver is using in order to navigate and control where I am going, come from places in (or available to) my driver to which I have difficulty gaining access, except in altered states of consciousness." But cars can't talk, or believe, or experience consciousness, altered or otherwise. In my view, human bodies can talk, but they can't believe, or experience consciousness. Those things go on in the mind which is separate from the body. (As you can obviously tell, I am a Cartesian dualist. I may be the last one, but I think Cartesian duality explains much more with respect to mental phenomena than any other scheme.)

So when we say "I believe", who is the "I" making the claim? Is it the mind or the body? I say it is the mind. But who is talking, or typing? It is obviously the body. Materialists don't have to worry about this distinction, but in my scheme it is very important to keep things straight or confusion sets in very quickly.

You may be impressed with Seth's writings, but the fact is that you have the power to see how intelligent they are, so you must have the same intelligence yourself. It goes even further...

Indeed it does go further -- at least in my view. In my view, the ultimate mind of Seth is exactly the same as the mind "in me" or that "I" use. It is also the same one "driving" you, and everyone else. So it should not be surprising that by looking inward into our mind we can discover how intelligent we are. It's just that with the preoccupation of driving a body through the process of living a biological life, we have temporarily forgotten most of what we know, as Socrates pointed out long ago.

So with all those "messages from spirits", I think you can easily see that going through an altered state of consciousness often unlocks powers of the mind that are normally inaccessible. That is, Seth and Jane Roberts are the same person...

Yes, I can easily see that and I do. But I would change your last sentence here to say that Seth and Jane Roberts share the same mind. With the right definition of "person" I would agree that they are the same person.

...except Seth is hidden inside Jane's mind and only comes out when Jane's personality gets out of the way, so to speak.

I take exception to this exception. It sounds too materialistic to me. I would say that Seth has taken over Jane's body in order to use it as part of the communication link to report in the physical world some ideas Seth has in the other world. Jane's personality needs to get out of the way in order for this to work -- so to speak (good one Dichter . And that, incidentally, is exactly what Seth said is going on also.

As always, it's fun talking with you, Dichter.

Paul

 

[PIT2]

As you suggested with your teen-ager scenario, it may be easier to achieve telepathy if the mind can withdraw from the preoccupation with the body, for example while the body is meditating or sleeping. I suspect that such communication goes on during sleep, but the communication is not encoded into English and not stored in the brain so upon awakening, the body can't accurately or completely report on what transpired. Those are just some of my guesses as to why telepathy is difficult and unreliable, which it obviously is.

Some cool experiments have been done and duplicated in the last few years which seem to indicate that such a "telepathic" connection exists (though they call it "neural energy transfer" or "correlated brain signals").

Here is one:

Replicable functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of correlated brain signals between physically and sensory isolated subjects.

University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

Conclusions:
These data replicate previous findings suggesting that correlated neural signals may be detected by fMRI and EEG in the brains of subjects who are physically and sensorily isolated from each other.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=16398586&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum

And:

Electroencephalographic evidence of correlated event-related signals between the brains of spatially and sensory isolated human subjects.

Bastyr University/University of Washington Consciousness Science Laboratory, Bastyr University, Kenmore, WA 98028, USA.

The results indicate that in some pairs of human subjects a signal may be detected in the brain of a distant member of the pair when the brain of the other member is visually stimulated.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15165411

The best results were seen in pairs of subjects that were emotionally connected to each other, or when they had meditated together prior to the test.

 

[Paul Martin]

Thanks PIT2,

Those studies seem to confirm my assessment that telepathy is difficult and unreliable. But I am delighted to see that qualified scientists are putting effort into trying to understand consciousness related mysteries.

Paul

 

[Dichter]

Interesting points, Paul. You made me realize how difficult it is to let go of old ideas in order to understand new ones.

In my view, an individual is an ordered pair, so to speak. It is the Cartesian pair of body and mind where each component resides in a separate "world". So when we talk about two humans communicating, we have to be clear about which of the four components are involved.

I have no problem with the Cartesian view, the problem is thinking of a world which cannot be expressed using concepts from our language.

But in order for the bodies to report on that communication here in the physical world, then the bodies must also be involved.

That is an interesting perspective which never occurred to me.

I have noticed a strange phenomenon when I wake up in the morning; I don't know if it applies to me only, I believe everyone is the same. Many times I wake up thinking exactly the same thought I had when I went to bed, but my mood can be completely different. That led me to think I go through experiences at night (dreams) during which I'm not thinking, but the emotional outcome of those experiences still stay with me. So even though I don't remember the dreams, I'm still affected by them on a subconscious level.

This raises an interesting question for me: what is the relationship between the self and the subconscious mind? Can we become conscious of what is now within the subconscious? If we can, can we describe what we find using ordinary language?

As you suggested with your teen-ager scenario, it may be easier to achieve telepathy if the mind can withdraw from the preoccupation with the body, for example while the body is meditating or sleeping. I suspect that such communication goes on during sleep, but the communication is not encoded into English and not stored in the brain

If it's not stored in the brain, is it stored at all?

In order to be seen as telepathic communication between humans it would have to be the rover to rover case. If there is communication strictly between the minds, then that would be the JPL scientist to JPL scientist case but it would not be reportable by the rovers (humans).

Fascinating!

In any case, I think the prospects for eternity are good, especially if the physicalists are wrong.

I'm not afraid of eternity, I was just trying to point out that those horizontal channels of communication must exist.

There will be a few obstinate daring scientists who will doggedly pursue what they believe to be a new paradigm in spite of being disqualified, shunned, unfunded, or derided. The eventual success of plate tectonic theory, and the eventual acceptance of the bacterial cause for ulcers, are prime examples of how this can happen.

If history serves as a guide, you are certainly right. Still, I cannot imagine such a turn of events in the near future. A scientific proof of the immaterial nature of consciousness would do as much damage to materialism as evolution theory did to religion; it would shake the foundations of modern society. I am not sure what could possibly follow; I suspect it would mean the end of the war between science and religion, and religion would have won. Which is why I don't think it will happen anytime soon.

I think the overwhelming influence on the public to accepting the scientific position is the undeniable success of science in solving so many real human problems.

If that is the case, why do we still have fundamentalists around? Fundamentalists are witness to those successes as much as anyone else, yet they seem unmoved by them. It seems to me it's mostly people with post-secondary degrees that care that much about science.

So when we say "I believe", who is the "I" making the claim? Is it the mind or the body?

I honestly don't know the answer to that question. Certainly the sound of the words "I believe" comes from my mouth. What about knowledge of the words themselves? Does the body know English, or is that in the mind? I'd be inclined to believe language resides in the brain, but in that case what is there to an idea beyond its expression in language?

I take exception to this exception. It sounds too materialistic to me.

The real problem with all this stuff is to keep our feet on the ground. Forget the propaganda you keep hearing about science, that it is based on empirical methods or peer review or whatever; the thing that really allows people to achieve scientific success is having both feet on the ground. Now that doesn't mean we can't aim as high as possible, only that we should not embark in flights of fancy.

The problem with materialism is that much of it is true. We can't dismiss an explanation just because it is too materialistic, we can only dismiss it if it's not true.

I would say that Seth has taken over Jane's body in order to use it as part of the communication link to report in the physical world some ideas Seth has in the other world. Jane's personality needs to get out of the way in order for this to work

(I wrote a comment on this, and then deleted it because I realized I was writing out of prejudice. For personal reasons I am a bit scared of this "talking to spirits" thing; I've known quite a few people who have been negatively influenced by those ideas, in one case to the point of bringing unhappiness to a family. No matter how I try, I can't be objective about this)

 

[Paul Martin]

I have noticed a strange phenomenon when I wake up in the morning; I don't know if it applies to me only, I believe everyone is the same. Many times I wake up thinking exactly the same thought I had when I went to bed, but my mood can be completely different.

Have you thought about this possibility: Could it be that you (the conscious, thinking part of you) are waking up in a different body than the one you were in when you went to sleep? If the brain were loaded up with memories from the previous occupant, you would wake up thinking and feeling that there was continuity of identity across the interval of sleep. That could be an illusion. The different mood you described could be explained by different mood-inducing hormones that might have been released during the night, or it could be that your mood is different because you are a different driver from the one on the previous day. I think that there is no way to prove that you are the same person (i.e. conscious entity) that you were yesterday. When I wake up, I typically feel a few milliseconds of disorientation as I put together who and where I am. Sometimes, if I am traveling, this even takes seconds. I think the discontinuous nature of consciousness is a feature that will prove to play a prominent role in the true explanation of consciousness when we finally do figure it out.

This raises an interesting question for me: what is the relationship between the self and the subconscious mind? Can we become conscious of what is now within the subconscious? If we can, can we describe what we find using ordinary language?

Ahead of these questions is the interesting question of what, if anything, is the subconscious mind in the first place. Since I don't believe the conscious mind is seated in the brain, it doesn't seem likely that the subconscious mind is either. I suspect that what we call 'the subconscious mind' is a collection of disparate functions some of which reside in the brain and others of which are outside the brain with the conscious mind. Functions like the regulation of endocrine secretions or the autonomic nervous system I would expect to be located in the brain similar to the on-board computers in a Mars rover. These functions may or may not be attributed to the subconscious mind depending on personal preference -- or maybe there is an official position taken by psychologists. I just don't know. But the subconscious function of providing AHA! types of insight I suspect take place outside the brain. Those, of course are just guesses.

In any case, from my point of view, there is only one mind in existence, so there is only one self. That self transcends and subsumes all the physical bodies. While this mind is driving a body, it is obviously limited in its available knowledge. In this condition it is convenient to recognize the mind/body pair as an individual, and it is also convenient to ascribe selfhood to the pair. And so the answers to your questions about the relationships depend on exactly what you mean by 'self', 'mind', 'subconscious', 'consciousness', 'we', etc. But I have been through this before. I think we can describe these relationships using ordinary language as long as we are clear about the connotations of the words I just listed.

If it's not stored in the brain, is it stored at all?

I think so. I think that most memory, in particular all long-term memory, resides outside the brain (and outside the physical universe). This would explain why the recollection of an entire lifetime of experiences can be immediately available during an NDE. It would also explain why scientists have not been able to figure out where in the brain memories are stored.

If history serves as a guide, you are certainly right. Still, I cannot imagine such a turn of events in the near future. A scientific proof of the immaterial nature of consciousness would do as much damage to materialism as evolution theory did to religion; it would shake the foundations of modern society. I am not sure what could possibly follow; I suspect it would mean the end of the war between science and religion, and religion would have won. Which is why I don't think it will happen anytime soon.

If I were a betting man, I would bet on the other horse. I think a true breakthrough in the understanding of consciousness will happen in the near future. Surprising things happen quickly these days.

Yes, it will shake the foundations of modern society, but those foundations have been shaken before. We will survive. In my opinion, much more damage will be done to religious foundations than will be done to scientific foundations. The scientists will only have to admit that there is something going on in addition to what they have already discovered and described. That won't be any more of a problem than dark matter or dark energy. The religionists, on the other hand, will find out that their cherished notions of an infinite, almighty God who takes their side in war is in fact a Wizard of Oz with powers that are limited and finite. In fact, to paraphrase Pogo, they will find out that "He is us". I think that is good news though. The acceptance of the new view will once and for all pull the rug out from under the fundamentalists and hopefully their malevolent Jihads and crusades will cease.

If that is the case, why do we still have fundamentalists around? Fundamentalists are witness to those successes as much as anyone else, yet they seem unmoved by them.

Their heads are in the sand and their days are numbered.

I'd be inclined to believe language resides in the brain, but in that case what is there to an idea beyond its expression in language?

I believe part of the language function resides in the brain. I think Chomsky identified those functions. But I think all cognition, awareness, understanding, and other aspects of consciousness, reside outside the brain. I think there is a great part of an idea that is beyond its expression in language. In fact I think all language expressions are inadequate to fully capture any idea. Take the word 'triangle' for example. The word expresses an idea which we can easily apprehend, but think of the paragraphs of language it would take to describe one exactly with their perfectly straight sides, made of ultra-thin yet not vanishing lines, meeting precisely to form the super sharp corners, etc., etc., etc. In the big scheme of things, I think that language, as powerful as it is, is very crude and limited in its potential. Ideas make language pale by comparison.

The real problem with all this stuff is to keep our feet on the ground.

You may have noticed that I have that problem. My flights of fancy try to take me all sorts of places. My strategy though, is to tie the lead weights of sensibility to my ankles to try to keep my feet on the ground. For any wild idea I consider, I always accept it only if it makes sense to me. I think reality makes sense, so I am disinclined to accept any explanation for anything that doesn't make sense. My ideas may not make sense to others, but they all make sense to me. I am always eager to hear from anyone who thinks that my ideas don't make sense. If, after discussing an idea, someone can show me the nonsense in my ideas, I will abandon the idea immediately with no regrets. This is an open invitation to anyone reading this. Please tell me where and why you think my ideas don't make sense.

For personal reasons I am a bit scared of this "talking to spirits" thing

Me too.

Paul

 

[Dichter]

Have you thought about this possibility: Could it be that you (the conscious, thinking part of you) are waking up in a different body than the one you were in when you went to sleep?

I must confess that idea is way too advanced for me. You probably mean something completely different from what I understood so it's hard for me to comment.

But I'd like to propose a little twist to this dialogue. Since the central issue is the nature of the mind, whether it is physical or not, I think there must be a better approach than mere speculation. I also think that if the mind is not physical, then there's nothing science can do about it. If the mind is really non-physical, science will be forever constrained to postulate unknown physical processes as the cause of physical phenomena that are not well understood. Such already is the situation with all fields associated with biology.

If the mind is non-physical, I think it's not the scientists who will prove that but the mathematicians. The other alternatives are philosophers and mystics, but the former are too sloppy in their definitions and the latter are not trustworthy. Here is how I see the non-physical nature of the mind could be approached from a mathematical perspective:

We'd have to start with a clear mathematical definition of "physical". I'm not a mathematician, but as far as I know such a definition does not yet exist. I don't think it should be difficult though; we do not necessarily have to know exactly what "physical" is, all we have to do is come up with a definition that is consistent with everything we know.

I would venture that a mathematical definition of "physical" would imply that nothing physical can have infinite or zero magnitude. Then the next step would be to assert that one or more features of consciousness cannot be physical by that definition. Now the interesting thing is that mathematics is a feature of consciousness, and mathematics has a particularly interesting feature: it does not happen in time. For instance, when expressed physically in a computer program the statement "a = b + 1" takes a finite amount of time to execute, but in mathematics itself "a = b + 1" is instantaneous - zero time to execute, infinite processing speed.

Of course we are capable of doing mathematics, but we don't know if we can do it in infinite speed. Certainly expressing the result of mental computation takes time, but that is to be expected. The real problem is, exactly where is "a = b + 1" instantaneous? From a platonist perspective the answer would be "in abstract reality". If we can mathematically prove that platonism is the best description of reality (and the success of physics does seem to point that way), then we would have basically come up with a proof that the mind is not physical.

Well, as I said philosophers are sloppy, and amateur ones much more so. I just wanted to point out that the solution to the problem we are discussing may be best achieved by mathematics rather than science.

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

 

[Paul Martin]

If the mind is non-physical, I think it's not the scientists who will prove that but the mathematicians. The other alternatives are philosophers and mystics, but the former are too sloppy in their definitions and the latter are not trustworthy.

I agree completely! Although in fairness we should probably consider mathematicians to be scientists also. After all, many if not most modern scientific breakthroughs, at least in physics, are achieved via mathematics as opposed to observation.

Here is how I see the non-physical nature of the mind could be approached from a mathematical perspective:

We'd have to start with a clear mathematical definition of "physical".

Again, I agree completely!

I'm not a mathematician, but as far as I know such a definition does not yet exist.

I'm not a mathematician either, but I am aware of an attempt to rigorously define 'reality'. For many people, reality = physical so this definition might suffice for those people. The definition is that 'reality' is defined to be an arbitrary set of numbers. This definition would work equally well for 'physical' and the same conclusions could be drawn. At this point, I hesitate to go further and describe those conclusions for reasons that will become clear at the end of this post. I would like for people to continue reading.

I don't think it should be difficult though; we do not necessarily have to know exactly what "physical" is, all we have to do is come up with a definition that is consistent with everything we know.

Yes! I agree completely, although the degree of difficulty is relative.

I would venture that a mathematical definition of "physical" would imply that nothing physical can have infinite or zero magnitude.

I agree. But...the guy I will tell you about later who defined 'reality' says that this is not a necessary condition and it isn't necessarily implied by the definition. (I disagree with him and most mathematicians on the fundamental issue here, but that is another story we could get into, or just check out https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=49732)

Then the next step would be to assert that one or more features of consciousness cannot be physical by that definition.

That assertion would have to be proved. I don't think it is obviously implicit in the definition. Nevertheless, Roger Penrose attempted to prove essentially the same assertion in his "The Emperor's New Mind". In my amateur opinion, he made a convincing case.

Now the interesting thing is that mathematics is a feature of consciousness

An understatement! I think more attention should be paid to this statement by philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and biologists alike. I think progress could be made simply by examining the implications of this one statement.

and mathematics has a particularly interesting feature: it does not happen in time.

Are you sure? How exactly does mathematics "happen"? Here again, I think the examination of this question could open up some interesting possibilities.

The real problem is, exactly where is "a = b + 1" instantaneous? From a platonist perspective the answer would be "in abstract reality". If we can mathematically prove that platonism is the best description of reality (and the success of physics does seem to point that way), then we would have basically come up with a proof that the mind is not physical.

I agree with the gist of this approach and what it might demonstrate, but as I'm sure you would agree, it is a little loose.

Well, as I said philosophers are sloppy, and amateur ones much more so. I just wanted to point out that the solution to the problem we are discussing may be best achieved by mathematics rather than science.

I agree completely.

I'd be interested in your thoughts.

I'm so glad you asked. Readers, brace yourselves.

First (don't worry; this is not so controversial), someone at PF introduced me to George Spencer-Brown's attempt to do essentially what you are suggesting. He wrote "The Laws of Form" which develop a mathematical model of how the universe could have developed from nothing. I haven't learned enough about his work to comment any further than this.

Now, for the controversial part. The guy I mentioned who developed rigorous conclusions from the definition of reality being an arbitrary set of numbers is Dick Stafford. He regularly posts here and is just as regularly misunderstood. My apologies, Dick, but the way you come across in your communication here, as is so frequently and eloquently expressed by Les and others, is completely inconsistent with your actual personality. Being a personal friend of his and having spend many hundreds of hours under his tutelage trying to understand his paper (http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/reality/Contents.htm ) I can speak with some authority. He is a warm, caring, nice, very smart, but very eccentric guy.

Now, about his paper. With my background being what it is, I was able with great difficulty to follow the development in his Chapter 1 to the point I am convinced that he has discovered a new theorem of mathematics. The theorem roughly says that consistency implies the laws of physics. That is, if you have an arbitrary set of numbers, then there are constraints on the possibilities for specific combinations of subsets of this set. Dick expressed those constraints in a differential equation which I consider to be a theorem. The equation is derived in Chapter 1 strictly from the axioms of analysis. The interesting thing, though, which is presented in his next four chapters, and which I am not competent to follow in detail, is that the known laws of physics are all solutions to Dick's fundamental equation.

The way I see this, in the context of your proposal Dichter, is that Dick has discovered a mathematical way to prove that the behavior of any universe which can be described as a set of numbers can be modeled by his differential equation and therefore must obey the laws of physics. This means that the universe, or at least its phenomenal behavior, could have arisen by something producing a set of numbers. Since numbers are mental concepts, that "something" must be a conscious mind, just as Gregory Bateson suspected. And if we posit that a mental capability was primordial, all that is required is that it developed and increased in complexity and knowledge to the point where it could imagine complex sets of numbers and apply algorithms to operate on those sets. This is what you referred to as mathematics "happening". It seems to me, to answer one of your earlier questions, that mathematics (really computation) can "happen" in one of two ways: either in a conscious mind, or in some machine designed specifically to process algorithms. In the actual production of our physical universe, I suspect that a combination of both types are at work. But now I'm idly speculating again.

Those are my thoughts.

Paul

 

[Doctordick]

With my background being what it is, …

Now didn’t you get a masters in mathematics some forty years ago?

I am convinced that he has discovered a new theorem of mathematics.

Paul, with that theorem idea of yours in mind, I composed a presentation which I last updated a short time ago. If you would look at that and tell me what is difficult to understand, we might be able to create something clear. You can find it at http://home.jam.rr.com/dicksfiles/Explain/Explain.htm .

The theorem roughly says that consistency implies the laws of physics.

I personally wouldn’t put it that way. What it says is that the basic fundamental elements of any consistent explanation of anything[/color] obey the laws of physics. Put another way, that implies any consistent explanation of anything must be built as a consequence of the behavior of fundamental physical entities. In essence I proved that the answer to the question “Can Everything be Reduced to Pure Physics?” is definitively “yes”.

Since numbers are mental concepts, that "something" must be a conscious mind, just as Gregory Bateson suspected. And if we posit that a mental capability was primordial, … that a combination of both types are at work.

Why not just start with the simple fact that you are aware you can think and call it a G[/color]reat O[/color]riginal D[/color]ilemma. That perhaps the conscious aspect (what one might call the soul) is the primary element of reality (that G[/color]reat O[/color]riginal D[/color]ilemma) and that what everyone calls real is a fabrication of the soul designed to explain the experiences of the soul? Paul, does that sort of fit your picture of the situation? Grapple with that for a while and give me your conclusions.

Have fun -- Dick

"The simplest and most necessary truths are the very last to be believed."
by Anonymous