(2024-02-05, 10:58 AM)Valmar Wrote: [ -> ]Hmmmmmm. I was under the impression that receiver theory was less literal, and more of a metaphorical attempt to understand how mind and brain interact. That there is a two-way communication happening. A sort of... mind influencing the direction of the brain, the brain having no life or will of its own.
However, I find receiver theory dissatisfying for this reason ~ it doesn't line up with what is experienced by NDErs, where they pop outside of their body, their mental faculties expanding. Filter theory seems much more satisfactory an explanation here, where the human filter limits the scope and range of consciousness in such a way that the consciousness has a human experience, identifying with more and more over time.
Then I would ask what function or functions do you think the brain actually accomplishes with its incredible amount of neural machinery and other types of organizations. Whatever these are they must be supremely important, because evolution has found it necessary to devote 25% of the energy consumption of the physical body to maintaining it despite it weighing only 2% of the body total.
Neurological research has revealed the functions of many different areas of the brain. To get more into this it is necessary to go to a much higher level of detail.
From
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/22638-brain :
Quote:Your brain receives information from your five senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. Your brain also receives inputs including touch, vibration, pain and temperature from the rest of your body as well as autonomic (involuntary) inputs from your organs. It interprets this information so you can understand and associate meaning with what goes on around you.
"Your brain enables:
Thoughts and decisions.
Memories and emotions.
Movements (motor function), balance and coordination.
Perception of various sensations including pain.
Automatic behavior such as breathing, heart rate, sleep and temperature control.
Regulation of organ function.
Speech and language functions.
Fight or flight response (stress response).
All these functions and more are manifested and allocated to the major specialized distinct areas of the brain:
- Cerebrum: Your cerebrum interprets sights, sounds and touches. It also regulates emotions, reasoning and learning. Your cerebrum makes up about 80% of your brain.
- Cerebellum: Your cerebellum maintains your balance, posture, coordination and fine motor skills. It's located in the back of your brain.
- Brainstem: Your brainstem regulates many automatic body functions. You don’t consciously control these functions, like your heart rate, breathing, sleep and wake cycles, and swallowing. Your brainstem is in the lower part of your brain. It connects the rest of your brain to your spinal cord."
I think the receiver/transducer theory is to some extent borne out by the neurological research derived evidence.
It's interesting and important to note that the writer instinctively takes the second person perspective in his narrative; second-person pronouns are words like “you” that refer to a person being spoken or written to. In this case of looking at what is really going on during human embodiment, I see that the author of the neuroanatomical description is addressing a hypothetical "operator" person or human consciousness designated "You" who experiences and finds meanings and understands and through the faculty of agency does things with the body depending on being complexly "enabled" or "interpreted" for to do these things by the many different functional areas of the brain. This instinctive philosophical position of there being a massive existential gulf between the body/brain and an intimately interfaced human sentient conscious "operator" is evidently taken by the neuroanatomical analysis author based on the clear implications of the neurological data, where the brain and body very much look like some sort of incredibly complex robot that has been programmed to support in many different ways its operator "you" in manifesting in the world. That is evidently how the neuroscientifically knowledgeable writer instinctively imagines the human being in toto.
This organization of the brain and its functions is instinctively imagined based on the observed organization and functional/anatomical characterization of the data, to be a separate central locus of consciousness and subjective perception with the quality of agency or intentionality, intricately interfaced with by all the functional neurological brain structures supporting and enabling the nucleous entity. Addressed by the author as a central immaterial "you" separate from the mechanism, this highest of the many human sub-entities or functional divisions is seen as really the "operator" of the overall system, an "operator" that in life becomes totally experientially merged with the autonomic functions of the neural mechanism.
The neuroscientific observation that clinches it is that brain structures for the highest mental functions like logic and abstract reasoning have never been identified, despite great efforts. These higher functions are evidently part of the immaterial spirit self, the "you" being addressed, which is the mobile locus of consciousness that is during some NDEs capable of quickly disentangling itself from all the brain interfaces to float away, separating itself from the physical brain and body and able to move elseware to observe and directly experience various things in the worlds, and then returning back into its intimate association with the brain.
As can be seen, the veridical NDE OBE data is in conformance with the receiver/transducer theory as I interpret it. There doesn't seem to be any basic conflict.
This very extensive exceedingly intricate control/response and sensory interface implemented in the brain is the part of the total brain function that physically enables the body to act in the world, and looks to account for almost all of the size and complexity and processing sophistication of the brain, and its monopolization of 25% of the body's total energy generation.
The last and also supremely important stage of the transduction function in the brain is the interface between all the multitudinous support functions, and the sentient ultimate "operator" or "pilot" of this organism, who typically becomes totally merged in experience while immersed in the operations of the physical body. That is the greatest mystery, how the various "enable" signal functional processes work in interfacing with the "operator" consciousness.