(2023-06-17, 01:19 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]That constructed self feeds back into the rest of the brain as a conscious self,
Firstly, isn't "self" in your context a product of awareness and not the mechanical brain? Why would a mechanical brain produce a "self"?
Secondly, the feedback theory doesn't work because the brain, or the part of it that is receiving the feedback, would have to already be conscious prior to the feedback in order to be aware of the feedback. You could easily create feedback loops on a computer but it won't make the computer conscious because chips and wires do not have the capacity in themselves to be conscious.
(2023-06-17, 05:52 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Aren't swim classes and reunions just collections of objects? There are people, a swimming pool, a location for the reunion...
What is it about swim classes and reunions that would not be captured by the mathematical descriptions of physics?
Again, these are names we give to a set of entities doing a set of specific actions. "Reunions" might not be the best example of this class of things. Better examples include a conversation, a war, a party, a ballgame, a cattle stampede, or a concert. Each of these are names we give to an event which involves a set of entities doing something in which we recognize the combined resulting event as something specific that we can name. A set of soldiers is not a war. But if a set of soldiers are shooting in patterns that we recognize as a war, that is a war.
Likewise, the mind is the name some of us give to a set of neurons (plus anything else that might be involved) doing a set of specific actions that together we would call "mind". These actions include recalling from memory, thinking about options, and deciding.
By this definition, the mind is a set of physical things doing distinct physical activities, just like a party is a set of people doing distinct physical activities.
(2023-06-18, 09:02 AM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]Your explanation is great, it's useful, it helps us understand how the brain acts like an input/output device, stores associations, weights those associations, and probably labels them on a scale of attraction -> repulsion.
However, very briefly... the problem we have is that brains are not perfectly isolated. If we can measure the summed EM field from the brain using crude metal sensors placed on the scalp (EEG), then it's obvious that such fields can work in reverse, whereby externally generated fields can also penetrate and intersect the brain. Prior to 2010, the brains EM field measured by EEG was considered to be only an epiphenomena, but research published in 2010 demonstrated that the EM field from neural firing of brain tissue, actually entrains the tissues neural network, in a feedback loop.
There is a large, and growing body of research on magnetoreception in organisms, which is only part of the much larger research area covering non-specific hyper-weak magnetic field effects of magnetobiology. Lots of effects are shown, going right down to 1 nanoTesla (nT), but often with poor reproducibility. It's suggested that the one thing we don't control for - magnetic fields - is confounding the results of experiments. Researchers like Frank Prato have reliably demonstrated bizarre hyper-weak magnetic field effects in mice, at field strengths so weak, that they are a challenge to integrate with our current understanding.
Returning to the topics of unexplained human experience, which are more generally discussed on this forum, and which we variously label NDE OBE's, Apparitions, Premonitions, Telepathy etc., there really is a lot of evidence that people do come into spontaneous possession of experiences which are not their own. But it's only when this dislocated information stands out so severely from what should be possible, that we take notice. I had one such spontaneous experience as a youngster. But I recognise that having had such an experience, it's going to be much much easier for me to entertain these ideas, than it will be for you.
I agree that there may be aspects of our mental life, such as hyper-weak magnetic fields. There could even be things we haven't discovered yet, something akin to dark energy, which we only recently discovered. We don't know.
Whether we have good evidence for apparitions, premonitions, telepathy etc., I guess that gets to the heart of this forum. Let's just say that I don't find that evidence to be nearly as solid as others find it to be.
(2023-06-18, 04:26 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, very strange.
Of course strange or rare is different from impossible.
If Materialism
were possible I might not even believe in Survival.
(2023-06-18, 09:33 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]This is a specific instance of a more generalised argument that say an uneducated peasant in a simple farming community might have no reason to believe in the existence of say, Australia or Greenland. (Apologies to inhabitants of Australia and Greenland who I'm sure have no doubts about the existence of those places). One could come up with many other examples of having no reason to believe in something.
However, people are different and in most small communities there may be someone with some unusual experiences or gifts such as precognition. These small chinks in the ordinary routine may become established as folk-tales or traditions. I suspect (my hypothesis) that sometimes such a community might have a generation or two without any such unusual people and so the task of carrying on a tradition falls to someone with no knowledge or understanding of what it is they are passing on as tradition and so it may harden into something more formalised but empty. Then someone turns up in a later generation having their own gifts and insights but is damned as a heretic.
I suppose where I'm leading to with this is the need for education. I don't mean educating people to instil in them the idea that there is no such thing as an afterlife. What I mean is to provide a basis and skills in being able to investigate and find out, as well as critical thinking. It is often easy to follow a human instinct to belong to a tribe and accept whatever that group believes. Breaking out of that zone where it is comforting to feel that one is sharing in the same beliefs as many others and instead evaluating things oneself, that is more difficult but necessary.
Yeah on the one hand belief in the afterlife seems to be doing fine, even in places where it dropped I think it seems to be coming back.
I do wonder how one would facilitate education here. I guess one could start with the logically impossibility of Materialism, then compare the research that was done on Survival with other field research and witness testimony?
If there is no a priori reason to reject, say, Reincarnation research then is the work done comparable to work done by those studying what we would consider "mundane" phenomena?
At least this is the path that led me to thinking more positively about the Survival cases, but admittedly I'm a bit of an odd duck because I am trying to separate the logical conclusion from my starting intuition there's an afterlife.
(2023-06-18, 04:13 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Again, these are names we give to a set of entities doing a set of specific actions. "Reunions" might not be the best example of this class of things. Better examples include a conversation, a war, a party, a ballgame, a cattle stampede, or a concert. Each of these are names we give to an event which involves a set of entities doing something in which we recognize the combined resulting event as something specific that we can name. A set of soldiers is not a war. But if a set of soldiers are shooting in patterns that we recognize as a war, that is a war.
Likewise, the mind is the name some of us give to a set of neurons (plus anything else that might be involved) doing a set of specific actions that together we would call "mind". These actions include recalling from memory, thinking about options, and deciding.
By this definition, the mind is a set of physical things doing distinct physical activities, just like a party is a set of people doing distinct physical activities.
A war, a party, a ballgame, a cattle stampede, a concert...What is it about any of these that isn't a collection of objects?
Even if a set of soldiers are shooting in patterns, can't that be described down to the atoms that make up the guns, people, etc?
Is there something about a war, a party, a ballgame, a cattle stampede, or a concert that is over and above the description from mathematical physics?
Conversation...that one is odd. Doesn't that require consciousness, so how can consciousness be like a conversation?
It doesn't seem like consciousness is like any of the things you mention...I suspect because these are all in some sense concepts that require consciousness? Otherwise in each case seems like it's a set of constituents physics can describe?
(2023-06-18, 04:35 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I agree that there may be aspects of our mental life, such as hyper-weak magnetic fields. There could even be things we haven't discovered yet, something akin to dark energy, which we only recently discovered. We don't know.
Whether we have good evidence for apparitions, premonitions, telepathy etc., I guess that gets to the heart of this forum. Let's just say that I don't find that evidence to be nearly as solid as others find it to be.
In your bio you mention being religious for many years...you never had any experience that
might be paranormal?
(2023-06-18, 04:40 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah on the one hand belief in the afterlife seems to be doing fine, even in places where it dropped I think it seems to be coming back.
I do wonder how one would facilitate education here. I guess one could start with the logically impossibility of Materialism, then compare the research that was done on Survival with other field research and witness testimony?
If there is no a priori reason to reject, say, Reincarnation research then is the work done comparable to work done by those studying what we would consider "mundane" phenomena?
At least this is the path that led me to thinking more positively about the Survival cases, but admittedly I'm a bit of an odd duck because I am trying to separate the logical conclusion from my starting intuition there's an afterlife.
I appreciate how you have been wrestling with this topic. When I look at the pros and cons for survival for myself, what comes up are - my experiences, other peoples experiences and various studies in fields of psi. As I've aged and gone through many medical conditions I've found my level of certainty in my belief in survival fluctuating. It seems materialism is the default meta-physic that I slip towards if I am not doing various practices which allow me to perceive an expanded sense of self which reveals directly an experience which contains information which loosens the grip of the defacto reality of materialism which is the water we swim in our modern techno culture. I usually come back to my practices and studies when the existential dread that accompanies an unconscious lean into materialist ontology makes life unbearable. It appears to require sustained vigilance to keep the defato ego-syntonic effect of materialism from degrading my “lived” experience.
(2023-06-18, 04:58 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Conversation...that one is odd. Doesn't that require consciousness, so how can consciousness be like a conversation?
It doesn't seem like consciousness is like any of the things you mention...I suspect because these are all in some sense concepts that require consciousness? Otherwise in each case seems like it's a set of constituents physics can describe?
Human conversation does require consciousness, yes. That's not the point. The point is, when two are more humans are conversing, we call the sum of their actions "conversation". That's how English works. If we want to give a name to several people conversing in ways that we recognize as something distinct, we can give that event a name. In this case, we call their group actions a "conversation". A conversation is not made of atoms. It cannot be weighed on a scale. It is not a physical object. But it doesn't really fit into the category of "non-physical object" either. It is a name we give to a set of actions by a set of entities that together makes an identifiable event --a conversation.
I gave other examples in this class where the entities doing the actions might not be conscious: a cattle stampede, a viral infection and an avalanche. The viruses and snowflakes are not conscious. The cattle might be. But in each case, these entities are together doing an action. We call the overall event by a name, such as a stampede, an infection, or an avalanche.
Likewise, when neurons are all working together to observe sensory inputs, recall memories, determine what the body will do, and issue signals that cause the body to do what the neurons collectively ask, we have a name for that conglomeration--a mind.