Posted on 02/15/2003 4:18:25 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Do we really have a warrant to suppose that brain and consciousness really are the same thing, when one (brain, whose functioning is captured on the EEG tape) cannot even explain the other which is said to be identical to it?
The most intellectual pleasing sentence I've read in quite awhile. Good to "save."
These are the problems. I?ve tried to demonstrate that consciousness is not a continuum, that it is something that is qualitatively different from the physical brain that it is, in fact, a thing in itself. That it has a kind of autonomy (as the process of silencing the thought stream shows). This kind of autonomy is not something the brain has. For if the brain were to cease its activity, we would simply be dead, real soon.
An quick analysis of strata at least as important as geological strata.
Just a note in passing, I read the essay that PatrickHenry directed me to. I'm running over long here, so just a quick note: Somehow, the author moved blithely from his subtitle, which said IF, to the body of his argument, which turned IF into IS. IF was a proposition that had not been validated; yet the discussion assumed it had a pre-analytical notion has, in this case, been turned into the major premise of the following argument. (There's a certain dishonesty in such operations, IMO.) What we ended up with were the qualia descriptions of conscious states of thinking and feeling that human beings are said to typically have.
Describes an unconfessed leap that is epidemic among theoriticians as they cross boundaries. It can be a leap from validity of method to invalidity, or from propositional reason to unreasonablness. It is often an unconfessed leap (listen, any who have a strong desire for objectivity) from empirical knowledge to doctrinal belief. It can come by direct assault or by inadvertently rising like bread dough past the level of a theory-set's epistemological incompetence, but it sure comes --from any human quarter.
May I note here that these qualia descriptions of experiences consisting of words -- are directly analogous to the EEG tape recording the hypothetical brain activity of the above thought experiment? For they can tell us nothing about what consciousness is, or what my conscious experience was like for me. Qualia just look to me like yet another attempt to grind down the authority of human subjective experience, to reduce it to the level where it can be handled in terms of symbols that must forever remain distinct from actual experience itself. They represent a retreat from Reality, not an explanation of real things. JMHO FWIW
A matter of human self-pride, including the defense-mechanism that Ms. b previously alluded to.
I'm saying it would be possible to put forward a theory of creation / intelligent design that included God AND was falsifiable.
That's obviously true.
Just as the Bible as literal history ala Bishop Usher is easily falsifiable, scientifically.
I see no reason why another gazillion theories, including God, couldn't be formulated. I see no prima facie reason why one of them couldn't be true.
IMHO, what we have here at bottom, unspun, is a quite serious epistemological problem. Pop! goes the fallacy.... I gather that is where "Pop Science" comes from.
Thank you for your kind words -- and for your perceptive posts.
Certainly we need to have some kind of description of what is a "healthy psyche" before we can deal with pathological states. Still, I imagine there must be limits to what a "second-hand," after-the-fact read out of brain activity can tell us about what is really going on in the brain, and how consciousness fits into the brain picture.
We really are dealing with a mystery here, IMHO. But I imagine we humans will get to the bottom of it, in due course! I think Walker is right: We can't abandon the scientific approach to the solution of these problems, for in this case, philosophy's tools really aren't sharp enough for the kind of precision we need -- yet perhaps can afford some useful insights about the direction in which science ought to go.... :^)
Thanks so much for writing, A-G! Hugs girl!
But that's a history, not a theory. For a set of statements to be a theory it must no only account for past experiences but also establish constraints on future ones. I think the general conception is of God as an unconstrained being and I don't see how such a being can be encompassed in a scientific theory.
Amazing, Alamo-Girl. Bookmarked.
Thank you so much.
Obviously. It never had any chance of being admitted in any serious public venue in the first place, for sheer lack of grounds of serious intellectual and/or public merit and/or standing.
Until our pal Antonio Gramsci came along and pissed all over Western Civilization, it would never have occurred to anyone I know (shades of Pauline Kael here....) to imagine that such a teensy minority could wreak so much public havoc; i.e., on the majoritarian scale.
I'm talking about the ideologies that set up the enormities of 20th-century warfare here. Tens of millions of our fellow human beings died.
Some say the final mortality toll numbers in the hundreds of millions, inclusive, reflecting the "contributions" of all those 20th-century potentates -- atheists every last darned one of them, to make an explicit point intended for public scrutiny -- who couldn't figure out a better use for power than to slay their enemies. Such bright boys.
Which ought to clue in experienced, rational adults that whatever motivated this carnage, "We don't want it here where we (I) live."
Time for bed. Good night, PH. Thank you and sweet dreams....
p.s.: PH, personally, I have always found you fair-minded and gracious in every way. FWIW
The prior link actually takes a position that sounds a lot like my "the brain is a transmitter/receiver for the spirit" view. To follow the analogy, an alien could learn a lot about a transmitter/receiver but unless he knew to study the radio waves, he might falsely assume it was all happening inside the box. LOL!
Yeowie! I'm gonna save this one for sure. Compliements are so rare around here that it's stunning to actually receive one. Thank you, BB. I feel the same about you.
I've read Walker now twice and I'm sure there will be a third time. There are several aspects of it that suggest it will withstand the "test of time".
The Physics of Consciousness is, or at least attempts to be, rigorous mathematically. Consciousness is found to be (or assumed to be, if you wish) fundamental, a non-material force or aspect of reality that expresses at the very foundation of physical reality, in state vector collapse. It is involved in the very "production" of physicality.
Walker goes on to explore the emergence or advent of human consciousness and gives us a quantum mechanical explanation that ties to aspects of consciousness that can be measured. Quite a feat. This latter focus may obscure the fact that Walker's math assumes or establishes that consciousness is universal, a fundamental agent in the production of physical reality. I don't think Walker is blind to this but there was only so much he could explore in one book.
A third comment would be that Walker at least implicitly acknowledges the link between beauty and truth. I liked this, personally, a lot, having been convinced for some while that this link is quite real.
Plato and Jesus and Buddha have, I believe, found a friend in Walker. Perhaps now this long retreat from the 19th Century tsunami of Materialism can begin to be reversed.
As you know my particular curiosity is harmonics (waves, resonance) which I believe is the mechanism of the algorithm of inception:
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. – Psalms 33:6
In this article, Ralph H. Abraham, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Santa Cruz since 1968 and much published author in the fields of dynamics and chaos (and evidently avid Buddhist) – “proposes a model in which communication and action are extended both into the past and into the future. The chief feature of this model is its duality, manifest in a pair of parallel space-time worlds. Interaction between these worlds – consciousness – is effected through a moving window, through which influences pass by a process of resonance.” IOW, the article shows how the phenomenon of seeing into the past and future could be:
A Two Worlds Model for Consciousness (pdf)
In this article, Alex Kaivarainen of the University of Turku Finland who is also much published Home page, gets down to the nitty-grit of the biomolecular mechanism of consciousness: “Hierarchic Model of Consciousness, proposed in this work, is based on Hierarchic Theory of Matter and Field, developed by the author, its application to properties of water in microtubules (MT) and distant exchange electromagnetic interaction between MT.” His model sounds curiously close to Roger Penrose's - but I haven't gone down that research path yet to confirm if it is so.
For those who are thinking “Jeepers, Kaivarainen's model sounds a lot like auras” – well, it does to me, too. So, if you're interested in that aspect, here’s a link to keep up with the research:
International Institute of Biophysics
Particular Strategies: Establish the specific characteristics of Ultralow Photon Emission from biological systems (biophotons) from a physical point of view by performing crucial experiments to demonstrate the non-linearity and the coherence of this radiation. Enhance the expertise and experience in order to carry out the understanding and the conceptualisation of the Ultralow Photon Emission. Examine the connection between the UPE's parameters and the parameters of electromagnetic fields active on living systems. Examine the connection between the parameters of UPE and biological parameters describing the state of living systems by combining IIB's resources with those of partners in other laboratories and universities. Expand the linkage between science and technology to enable new observational instruments that address critical scientific objectives and capture the benefits for commercial use through technology transfer. Publicise among the people the wonder of the science of life, and enhance biophysical education
Yes there is. It's called magnetic transparency. It's the way a really good piece of window glass filters out the visible spectrum.
I would like you to ponder for a moment what goes on in an MRI scan (technically an NMRI). You have a superconducting electromagnet powerful enough to make the protons in the molecules of you brain jiggle in resonance. Yet it has no discernable effect on people's ability to think, nor on the content of their thought. Why is that? Because the brain is 99.999 percent free of magnetic materials. There might be a few isolated pockets of magnetic material that may or may not be sensitive to the earth's magnetic field, but I assure you that if the brain were a radio receiver it would explode like a hamster in a microwave during an MRI scan.
Well, now, there's the difference between us. Evidently I wrote something you found memorable, but I didn't, because I haven't the foggiest what you're referring to here.
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