(2023-06-19, 11:15 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]I think that the awareness is generated by the brain as a whole.
What do you think generates your awareness? Magic? If not magic, how does the thing that you think generates your awareness differ from magic?
This is such an ironic thing to hear coming from someone who believes that unconscious matter, by some sort of categorically unknown process, magically gives rise to conscious experiences.
Another few examples from the more than 100 veridical NDEs from The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences, by Rivas, Dirven and Smit, International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition. Waiting for some plausible "normal" materialist neuroscientific explanations.
Quote:"CASE 3.9. The Hair Clip
In 2012, intensive care nurse Baroness Andrea von Wilmowsky of Pöcking, Germany, reported to Pim van Lommel the following case from her nursing days. The following account is translated by Wanda Boeke from von Wimowsky’s own German-language book: One day a woman with a severe heart attack was admitted to our ward for resuscitation. Resuscitation efforts had already been attempted for a time en route to the hospital, but it didn’t look like there was much of a chance of her surviving. She was already clinically dead. At first we didn’t really know whether we should continue resuscitation, but did it anyway. It became the most chaotic resuscitation I’ve ever witnessed. There were too many people, and they kept stepping on each other’s feet and getting in each other’s way. An IV bottle was swept off the table in the middle of this chaos and smashed to pieces. I was a newlywed at the time. My husband had cut a hair clip in the shape of a rose for me out of plywood. I was wearing the hair clip that particular day. The thing must somehow have slid out of my long hair and fallen on the floor. Once on the floor, it was broken when somebody stepped on it. I noticed I was missing the hair clip once the resuscitation had been successfully accomplished. Our patient lived, but no one thought that she would survive in the long term. She was still completely unconscious when I left for a three-week vacation after that shift. When I first returned to work after that vacation, I saw the patient again. Things were still not going well for her, but she was conscious, and now and then we were even able to talk with each other. At some certain point, out of the blue, she asked me, “What happened to your pretty rose hair clip?” I replied that the hair clip unfortunately had broken not too long ago. Something about that question perplexed me. There was something odd about it. But, I always had a lot to do, so I didn’t think about it anymore. My subconscious must have done so, though, because about three days later as I was riding home on my motorcycle on a country road, it hit me: There was no way she could have seen that hair clip, was there!? This was so disturbing to me that I had to slam on the brakes and come to a screeching halt. It was shocking! I almost couldn’t stop thinking about it until my next shift started, and then I asked her right away how she knew about my clip. In response, she told me the following: During the resuscitation she had had an out-of-body experience in which she hovered in a corner of the room near the ceiling. She had gazed down on the whole scene from above, although she knew that she was actually lying there down below and that we were working on her. But this didn’t worry her one bit. She observed everything. She also saw who had stepped on my hair clip and was able to give me a description of the “culprit.” It was a doctor, and I didn’t have a clue about any of this until that moment! She had also seen the glass bottle fall on the floor and smash to pieces. Her story made me speechless! Then she told me even more. In this most unusual situation she had seen an extremely bright light and experienced an extraordinary sense of joy—a feeling she had never had before in her life until then! All of her questions had been instantly answered. She had felt utterly happy and at one with the world—and precisely at that moment we had pulled her back into her pain-riddled body! She didn’t thank us for that. Years later I realized: This patient had told me about a near-death experience, in the middle of the 1980s in East Germany!
SOURCE von Wilmowsky, A. (2012). Segelfalter [Sail swallowtail; e-book]. Amazon Digital Services.
CASE 3.13. Tom Aufderheide’s Patient
In his book Erasing Death, resuscitation specialist Dr. Sam Parnia reported the account of Tom Aufderheide, MD, a leader in the area of resuscitation technique research. Dr. Aufderheide’s story involves the first patient whom he resuscitated when he was a brand-new doctor. The patient had a cardiac arrest, and Aufderheide felt that he had been given great responsibility because he was on his own. He thought, “How could you [the more experienced doctors] do this to me?” Aufderheide tried to resuscitate the patient using a defibrillator, but the man would just have another attack. It went on like this from about 5:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m. At about that time, hospital staff came to bring the patient his lunch. Considering the patient was unconscious and Aufderheide was famished, the doctor decided to eat the patient’s lunch. Finally, many hours later, the patient’s condition did stabilize. About 30 days afterward, the day before the patient was to be discharged, he addressed Aufderheide. He told the doctor that he had had an NDE. At the end of his story, he said, “You know, I thought it was awfully funny . . . here I was dying in front of you, and you were thinking to yourself, ‘How could you do this to me?’ And then you ate my lunch!” In 2013, Aufderheide was a professor of emergency medicine and director of the Resuscitation Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Rivas sent him an e-mail that Aufderheide answered on September 30, 2013. The doctor confirmed the accuracy of Parnia’s presentation in Erasing Death and revealed that his patient’s observations had in fact been far more extensive. The man had told him that during his NDE he had been able to witness a conversation in the hallway between Aufderheide and the patient’s wife and that he had observed a cardiac monitor that was outside of his physical field of vision. Aufderheide pointed out that the patient’s paranormal impressions started at a time when the patient’s resuscitation had not even been started yet. The patient received the thought that popped up in the doctor’s mind (“How could you do this to me?”) before the resuscitation had begun. Aufderheide wrote Rivas, “That got my attention, and to this day I have no explanation.”
SOURCE Parnia, S. MD (with Young, J.). (2013). Erasing death: The science that is rewriting the boundaries between life and death. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
CASE 3.16. Richard Mansfield’s Patient
In his book What Happens When We Die Dr. Sam Parnia included a case from a colleague: the seasoned cardiologist Richard Mansfield. Dr. Mansfield told Dr. Parnia that during one night shift, he had been called regarding a cardiac arrest. Together with other members of the medical team, he rushed to the patient, a 32-year-old man who had no pulse, was not breathing, and had a flat EKG (electrocardiogram). The team kept attempting to resuscitate the man, although there seemed to be little chance of saving him. They intubated the patient, and he was administered oxygen and 3-minute cycles of heart compression and adrenaline. He also received atropine, but his EKG remained flat and he did not exhibit any pulse. The team continued with the resuscitation for over half an hour, but when their efforts failed, they lost hope that the patient could still be saved. Considering the patient was 32 years old, they decided to keep going for a short while until it was clear that they could not succeed. Mansfield, as team leader, made the decision to stop the resuscitation. Before they stopped, he looked at the monitor once more to determine that it and the connections were functioning properly and that the patient still had no pulse. Then the team stopped and accepted that the patient had unfortunately died. They all thought that the outcome was terrible, because he was still so young. Mansfield left the patient in the room with the nurses, who prepared him for his family. The doctor went to the nurses’ station. He made notes in the patient’s medical file. While he was busy with this, Mansfield realized he could not remember exactly how many ampules of adrenaline they had given him. About 15 minutes later, he returned to the room to check the number of ampules. In the room, Mansfield looked at the patient and noticed that the man did not look quite as blue as when Mansfield had left the room. The patient looked pinker, which the doctor thought was very strange. With some hesitation, Mansfield walked over to the patient and checked his groin for a pulse. To Mansfield’s amazement, the patient turned out to have a pulse. This meant that the medical team had to resume the resuscitation. Finally, they succeeded in stabilizing the man, and he was then transferred to the intensive care unit, presumably without yet having regained consciousness. After the cardiac arrest, the medical team was convinced that the patient’s brain had suffered injury. However, about a week later, Mansfield was in this patient’s room and, to his surprise, not only had the man fully recovered, but he had not incurred any brain damage either. Mansfield described to Parnia what happened next: He told me everything that I had said and done, such as checking the pulse, deciding to stop resuscitation, going out of the room, coming back later, looking across at him, going over and rechecking his pulse, and then restarting the resuscitation. He got all the details right, which was impossible because not only had he been in asystole and had no pulse throughout the arrest, but he wasn’t even being resuscitated for about 15 minutes afterward. What he told me really freaked me out, and to this day I haven’t told anyone because I just can’t explain it. . . . I also know that I definitely checked the monitor, the leads, the gain [this is a technical means of checking that the flatline is truly flat], and the connections as well as the pulse before stopping. I just can’t explain it, and I don’t think about it anymore.
SOURCE Parnia, S. MD (2006). What happens when we die: A groundbreaking study into the nature of life and death. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House."
Thanks
, I've read that book but it's interesting to be reminded of parts I'd forgotten. The one from East Germany in the 1980s (CASE 3.9) is interesting as we in Britain didn't then hear much information from that part of the world.
The next one, "CASE 3.13. Tom Aufderheide’s Patient ", is described by Tom himself in the
video shared in this post though the written text contains some additional details.
(2023-06-19, 12:01 PM)Valmar Wrote: [ -> ] non-conscious entities do not "work together", "observe", "recall", "determine" or "issue signals". Because these are qualities known only to be exhibited by consciousness. Matter has never been observed to ever do any of these things.
Are you serious?
If this is true, then what does the matter in the brain do? It consumes a large portion of the body's resources. Does it even have a purpose?
(2023-06-19, 01:59 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I agree the stampede is not conscious, even though the cattle are. Same with the concert goers not making the concert itself conscious, the soldiers not making the war conscious, and so on.
Wow, that has nothing to do with the point I was making.
Again, I use the word "mind" to refer to a set of actions (sensing, remembering, deciding, etc.) by one or more entities. The "mind" is not a physical object. It is a name we use for a set of actions.
Similar words we use to describe a set of actions by one or more entities include a conversation, a war, an avalanche, a party, a cattle stampede, a concert, a viral infection, and a ballgame. When I say these are words we use to describe a set of actions, that is making no implication that anything involved is or is not conscious.
(2023-06-19, 01:59 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]But since we are assuming here the neurons aren't conscious, there's even more reason to believe their arrangement cannot produce consciousness.
And since we are assuming the materials in the ground cannot do the functions of a smartphone, then is that reason for you to believe that no arrangement of the materials in the ground can produce a working smartphone?
(2023-06-19, 03:31 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]To me and maybe others here, you keep repeating claims of "magic" intent coming from electro-chemical sparks, rather than seeing how biology has simulated logic gates in response to information processing demands. (1)Did neurons figure it out like little minds in themselves, or (2) did living things evolve to exploit natural information tools?
I suggest that choice two is the more pragmatic.
Can you please quote back the place where I repeated a claim of magic intent coming from electro-chemical sparks? That doesn't even sound close to anything I wrote.
Yes, I agree that living things evolved to exploit information tools. But I also think those information tools evolved.
There are many
animals without a brain. They have simple neurons that transmit a sensed condition across the body to cause simple movements. I think humans evolved from animals that had similar simple nervous systems. As evolution continued, the neurons were grouped together in a central brain. The process of transmitting the signals became much more complex, with the neurons doing complex logic on the incoming signals. This eventually evolved into the human brain.
None of this in any sense implies a magic intent from the electro-chemical sparks of life.
What are you referring to when you refer to natural information tools? How do they differ from magic?
(2023-06-19, 09:45 PM)Sam Wrote: [ -> ]This is such an ironic thing to hear coming from someone who believes that unconscious matter, by some sort of categorically unknown process, magically gives rise to conscious experiences.
Uh, can you please quote back the place where I said that unconscious matter
magically gives rise to conscious experiences?
Have we reached the point in this debate, which often happens on the Internet, where people just start making stuff up and pretending the other person said it?
Again, conscious thought is quite mysterious. I don't know how it works. I think that surely the brain is fundamental to conscious human thought. Without the brain, I see no way that any of our current conscious self can continue. But, as I have said many times, it is possible that other things are involved in conscious thought that we do not currently understand. If something else is involved in conscious human thought, then it must be one of two things:
- Something that is consistent with physics if physics was completely understood.
- Something non-physical.
And as I have said many times, my money would be on the first option. Physics keeps winning. There was a time when people thought that
Thor made lightning, Y
ahweh made locust invasions, and
Jesus held the nucleus of atoms together. But physical science has expanded to the point where all these things are explained by science. And I expect the same thing could happen with consciousness. Science keeps marching on. If you appeal to a "god of the gaps", a spiritual entity to explain a physical observation that we cannot yet explain otherwise, be prepared to do a lot of backpedaling. Defendants of a god of the gaps backpedal so often, they sometimes look like clowns on a unicycle.
If you think the source of human consciousness is a non-physical object, what does that even mean? How can an object not be physical?
And if you say the source of consciousness is not an object, what is it?
And if your source of consciousness is not physical, how does that differ from magic? If your view is indistinguishable from magic, then it must be magic.
My money is on science.
(2023-06-20, 09:54 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]And since we are assuming the materials in the ground cannot do the functions of a smartphone, then is that reason for you to believe that no arrangement of the materials in the ground can produce a working smartphone?
The processes in a smartphone are physical processes and can be physically described. Nobody can describe how unconscious matter can produce consciousness. Your comparisons are always ill thought out!
(2023-06-20, 09:43 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Are you serious?
Obviously...
(2023-06-20, 09:43 AM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]If this is true, then what does the matter in the brain do? It consumes a large portion of the body's resources. Does it even have a purpose?
Yes, apparently, but do you expect me to know what that is, beyond speculation? All everyone has is speculation, and I am no different... indeed, for anyone to claim that they actually know for certain, is arrogance.
And Materialists / Physicalists have a strong amount of arrogance in claiming that they know what the matter of the brain does or what its purpose is.
Idealists don't know. Dualists don't know. And Materialists / Physicalists most certainly do not know either, despite their sheer hubris and arrogance.
What is my speculation? That the matter of the brain somehow acts to filter or limit the scope of consciousness and what it is capable of. My speculation is merely based on observations of phenomena like savant syndrome, near-death / actual death experiences, shared death experiences, out-of-body experiences in general, reincarnation and past-life memories to a lesser extent.