(2024-04-08, 04:17 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]AWARE 1 & 2 used secret and hidden visual targets, like other OBE researchers who use visual targets - the targets are secret, and they hide them so, no one can see them.
The remainder of the OBE researchers don't even bother using visual targets.
Whether it’s because researchers don’t use visual targets, or because they hide them, this is the reason there are no hits.
There are no researchers even studying whether the NDE OBE contains veridical visual information.
I understand (I think) the alternative hypothesis you will like to test for. I guess the problem with not using hidden targets is that it no longer will be a double blinded study. Still at a minimum understand they could add additional visible targets to the hidden targets so there are two sets of targets. Unfortunately the entire setup is not very easy to study in a scientifical setting due to the tragice circumstances underpinning every single ‘event’. I think this is the main problem they have.
(2024-04-08, 04:27 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]This is a poor argument. Where do you think the fundamental laws derive from? There’s zero/zip evidence that new properties can’t emerge at scales. There may already be empirical evidence this is happening due to the failure of quantum chemistry to predict molecular structure.
I understand you are trapped in your reductionist beliefs.
QM and Spacetime both seem to emerge from something far more primitive, and far simpler.
The Kinematical structure of that thing, when it is placed into the everyday world outside your window, looks biological.
(2024-04-08, 01:02 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]I totally agree. Please believe me, I really hope for the immortal soul for myself and everybody else. The threshold of evidence for convincing me is just not quite there yet. Now if only those AWARE studies had produced a "veridical perception" hit everything would be much easier. But Parnia have now tried for more than 20 years to obtain such empirical evidence.
sbu,
I am enjoying your straightforward comments. The case for emergence and its limits is not well understood. If you are serious about exploring the subject, I recommend the title Devil in the Details, Robert Batterman.
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=robert+batterman It is a very technical and insightful presentation.
I am in the "no doubt camp" regarding evidence for mental causation and its connection to a formal model. That model prescribes that there is structure behind observed patterns of actions. Mind is an abstraction referring to the information processing of living things. Many think of mind in a reified context, while being just a category of events.
The organization of this real-world capability is developed through use. Once developed it is a
virtual machine. Avoiding any spiritual aspects, this "machine's" output is measurable as outcomes from information processing within a separate environment from physics. This machine's activity maybe "soul". Minds process information and generate outcomes of behavior, intelligence, focus, understanding and self-awareness. These scalable results are the scientific stuff of Psychology and Social Science.
So, at the biological level the "virtual machinery" are efferent neurological signals, at the mental level its the observable behavioral output and at a third level the activity maybe seen as spiritual and soulful. So while it is part of our experiential environment, soul is not measurable in physical terms, but can be seen to be a virtual machine regarding ethics and religion.
For me and my specific point of view, some of the above debate is apples and oranges. Molecular structure is Material Science and QM is Physics. Bridge laws need to be ascertained before conclusions are reached about emergence.
Quote: The emergent structures (the rainbow itself is one of them) are not fully explainable either in terms of the finer wave theory or in terms of the ray theory alone. Instead, aspects of both theories (through asymptotic investigation of the wave equations) are required for a full understanding of these emergent phenomena.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/sum2...terrelate/
(2024-04-08, 04:43 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]QM and Spacetime both seem to emerge from something far more primitive, and far simpler.
The Kinematical structure of that thing, when it is placed into the everyday world outside your window, looks biological.
You still end up with something from nothing following this reasoning.
wait Sciborg just claimed that’s impossible
(2024-04-08, 04:49 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]You still end up with something from nothing following this reasoning.
wait Sciborg just claimed that’s impossible
The point I was making concerned your chemistry claims. I was suggesting that failure to predict poorly isolated macro molecular structures using quantum chemistry, may also be related to QM and Spacetime themselves, both appearing to emerge from a more primitive structure.
(2024-04-08, 04:27 PM)sbu Wrote: [ -> ]This is a poor argument. Where do you think the fundamental laws derive from? There’s zero/zip evidence that new properties can’t emerge at scales. There may already be empirical evidence this is happening due to the failure of quantum chemistry to predict molecular structure.
I understand you are trapped in your reductionist beliefs.
Fundamental laws? Where are these, and how do they interact with the material stuff they govern?
As for new properties, whatever is in the effect should be present in the cause and it's quite difficult to define what "proto-conscious" characteristics would be.
The argument that we lack evidence that emergence is impossible is deeply flawed logically, we need evidence of Strong Emergence and that is nowhere to be found.
(2024-04-08, 05:34 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]The argument that we lack evidence that emergence is impossible is deeply flawed logically, we need evidence of Strong Emergence and that is nowhere to be found.
Wrong. And I'm in good company with this assessment, with proponents including David Chalmers and Thomas Nagel, among others.
(2024-04-08, 05:05 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]The point I was making concerned your chemistry claims. I was suggesting that failure to predict poorly isolated macro molecular structures using quantum chemistry, may also be related to QM and Spacetime themselves, both appearing to emerge from a more primitive structure.
Yes it's possible a new more complete theory will solve the issues with reductionism. Like strong emergence and substance dualism it requires new knowledge in the physical domain to be confirmed.
(2024-04-08, 04:47 PM)stephenw Wrote: [ -> ]sbu,
I am enjoying your straightforward comments. The case for emergence and its limits is not well understood. If you are serious about exploring the subject, I recommend the title Devil in the Details, Robert Batterman. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=robert+batterman It is a very technical and insightful presentation.
I am in the "no doubt camp" regarding evidence for mental causation and its connection to a formal model. That model prescribes that there is structure behind observed patterns of actions. Mind is an abstraction referring to the information processing of living things. Many think of mind in a reified context, while being just a category of events.
The organization of this real-world capability is developed through use. Once developed it is a virtual machine. Avoiding any spiritual aspects, this "machine's" output is measurable as outcomes from information processing within a separate environment from physics. This machine's activity maybe "soul". Minds process information and generate outcomes of behavior, intelligence, focus, understanding and self-awareness. These scalable results are the scientific stuff of Psychology and Social Science.
So, at the biological level the "virtual machinery" are efferent neurological signals, at the mental level its the observable behavioral output and at a third level the activity maybe seen as spiritual and soulful. So while it is part of our experiential environment, soul is not measurable in physical terms, but can be seen to be a virtual machine regarding ethics and religion.
For me and my specific point of view, some of the above debate is apples and oranges. Molecular structure is Material Science and QM is Physics. Bridge laws need to be ascertained before conclusions are reached about emergence.
https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/sum2...terrelate/
Thank you for your kind words, StephenW. I suspect others might be growing weary of responding to my comments, so I'm considering taking a lengthy break.
Regarding your concept of a 'virtual machine,' would you say it resembles a form of dualism? How do you view the influence of bodily needs on behavioral outputs, such as binge eating, within your model?
(2024-04-08, 05:05 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]The point I was making concerned your chemistry claims. I was suggesting that failure to predict poorly isolated macro molecular structures using quantum chemistry, may also be related to QM and Spacetime themselves, both appearing to emerge from a more primitive structure.
I am not qualified to have an opinion on emergence of QM and Spacetime from deeper sources. There is ontology in this view, but has epistemological analysis that is our real guide. The primitives for a potential model that would incorporate a complete picture would include non-local factors. Information, as per Shannon's equations and meanings that can be experienced are. Free to be applied to nature's phenomena outside of space and time.
So besides the primitives of energy, matter and information, there is another. Meaningful probabilities, assumed to be there - as background to QM. This activity is the analogue to energy, but is not local. In this way, there are reductive epistemological methods to find the patterns from the ontological sources of that are energy, matter, information and wavelike meaningful probabilities. These exist in a coherent environment where past, now and future are continuous.
Kant has warned us about knowing the primitives directly. However, computable methods can lead to reductive analysis about current outcomes, their past and projections of their future. As of current opinion, the primitive of "real-world meanings" is not explicit, although its context is implicit in theories.
With reductive methods in the physical environment corresponding to those reductive activity (like logic) in the informational environment, some emergent questions can be addressed.