A major but biased new paper on consciousness

I don't know why you guys assume we are spiritual beings.  As a philosophy, I'm OK with you believing that of course, but what makes you assume that if science finds that consciousness isn't a product of the brain, it's proof that we are spiritual beings?

Depends on what we mean by spiritual beings I guess?

I would prolly say we are entities not bound the constraints of physics that binds all technology along with our physical bodies. I don't know if that's spiritual in some sense of a Cosmic Order, or that there is some greater meaning to our existence?

It only is needed to look up the basic definition of "fields" (in physics) to realize this; the definition is: "A distribution in a region of space of the strength and direction of a force, such as the electrostatic force near an electrically charged object, that would act on a body at any given point in that region." Prominent in this basic definition are the premise of the necessary existence of bodies, objects, forces, electrical charges, regions, etc., in order for fields to exist. Fields are physical, drop off in strength precipitously with distance according to the inverse-square law, etc. etc.

But even if Idealism were to be true, and there was only consciousness, there would be these fields?

It seems to be a field is "physical" in the sense that is an accepted part of physics, rather than "physical" in the philosophical sense of Physicalism where the Ground of reality is devoid of mental content.

Speaking for myself, I've long passed the point where C is not a product of the brain, and every single source of profound experience of the sort says that we are. (Science will only take you so far.)

And if you accept that C isn't a product of the brain, then how would you otherwise characterize us? And based on what sources?

Maybe you don't need to.  Maybe a mind/body being is enough.

Depends on what we mean by spiritual beings I guess?

I would prolly say we are entities not bound the constraints of physics that binds all technology along with our physical bodies. I don't know if that's spiritual in some sense of a Cosmic Order, or that there is some greater meaning to our existence?

Ok, perhaps I imagined too specific a definition of spiritual.

Maybe you don't need to.  Maybe a mind/body being is enough.

Answering the mind/brain issue with a working and testable model IS enough to answer Naturalism.  Mind being understand as a process where laws about objects that are physical AND objects which can be modeled as informational both are explaining phenomena.  It is an essential step, which the current meme blocks.

Once that science battle is won - then we can professionally address the mind/spirit, with a foundation to stand on.

I think D. Chalmers is misunderstood in how he is characterized in posts here on the Psience Quest forum.

 . It comes as no surprise that IIT and Chalmers have intersected when we read Chalmers’s earlier claims: “Perhaps, then, the intrinsic nature required to ground the information states is closely related to the intrinsic nature present in phenomenology. Perhaps one is even constitutive of the other” (Chalmers, 1996).

Still, the relationship between Chalmers’s work and IIT is not one of simple alliance. Despite the apparent similarity of their positions on what is fundamental, there is an important disagreement. Chalmers takes the physical to derive from the informational, and grounds the realization of phenomenal space—the instantiation of conscious experience—not upon causal “differences that make a difference,” but upon the intrinsic qualities of and structural relations among experiences. IIT regards consciousness as being intrinsic to certain causal structures, which might be read as the reverse of Chalmers’s claim.  In describing his path to IIT, Koch endorses Chalmers as “a philosophical defender of information theory’s potential for understanding consciousness” while faulting Chalmers’s work for not addressing the internal organization of conscious systems (Koch, 2012).

He has far more development in his thought than just the hard problem

 Holographic wave patterns, integrative circuits, excitation and inhibition transfer to neighbouring neurons, 

NB you can't claim physical expertise in signal transfer and get away with saying this stuff.

Inhibition and excitation are abstract ideas about related outcomes.  They aren't "stuff".  The expression of inhibition or excitation is a chemical regulation process. It is well mapped physically.  The process takes the form of a chemical cascade, as a series of reactions.  Excitation is expressed in the nervous system as focus.  Not as an activity solely from the nerves, but as a command and control, which is structured in the mind through choice.

Brains don't integrate ideas, they coordinate signals.  This is empirical and can be shown by experiment.  Integration of ideas can be shown logically - but not physically.

If you think "holographic wave patterns" have a distinct signal, transferring between neurons - please post an article so I can catch-up.  I could have missed the brain using lasers.

Maybe you meant something about integration of signals but - no IC's are jumping the synapse.

I think that "leaving it be" after finally establishing that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, is probably as far as the "powers that be" will allow mankind to delve into the true nature of spirit and the spiritual realms. Attempts to pin it down and analyze it and develop scientific models and theories I think will always be fruitless because of this - an outside imposed limit to the effectiveness of science in understanding the world and reality as a whole. I think that we are intended to "stew in our own juice" for as long as it takes to realize and accept this limitation.

There always seem to be enthusiasts who hope to "break the code" and communicate with the afterlife, but the great difficulties and failures encountered so far are evidence for this artificially imposed barrier to knowledge. For instance the failure (to my knowledge) of every one of the many attempts of husband and wife and father and son, and brother and brother, etc. to establish a code sequence of some sort that the first deceased will try to communicate to the surviving loved one. And there was Henry Ford's abortive attempt at communication using a radio-like technological device. No success whatsoever, except for a couple of controversial cases. Zilch. 

And attempts using mediumistic communications to gain reliable knowledge of "the other side" have been plagued by inconsistencies and other problems, to the point that at least in my opinion few or no reliable conclusions can be drawn from this source as to the real nature of the afterlife.  

Now, as a follow-up to his successful 'evidence for the afterlife' essay contest, Robert Bigelow is offering grants of up to $1M to fund attempts to actually communicate with someone who has died. My prediction is that this will ultimately prove to be an overreach and a failure, simply because we are not supposed to acquire such communication and knowledge while in the physical, as indicated by the abysmal track record so far. I hope I'm wrong about this, but this reasoning seems to be in accordance with the evidence of a century and a half of psychical research. It's very determined to remain hidden from Man's understanding.

This seems a remarkably pessimistic summary of research in this field. For example, think for a moment of the research Julie Beischel did working with mediums who agreed to work in a multiply blinded way. The best of them still got results which the sitter (who never met the medium) could recognise as relating to her loved one.

However, I wonder if you mean something else. Do you mean that information about afterlife life (so to speak) is not available? Even there we get glimpses from NDE's.

I think that "leaving it be" after finally establishing that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience, is probably as far as the "powers that be" will allow mankind to delve into the true nature of spirit and the spiritual realms. Attempts to pin it down and analyze it and develop scientific models and theories I think will always be fruitless because of this - an outside imposed limit to the effectiveness of science in understanding the world and reality as a whole. I think that we are intended to "stew in our own juice" for as long as it takes to realize and accept this limitation.

There always seem to be enthusiasts who hope to "break the code" and communicate with the afterlife, but the great difficulties and failures encountered so far are evidence for this artificially imposed barrier to knowledge. For instance the failure (to my knowledge) of every one of the many attempts of husband and wife and father and son, and brother and brother, etc. to establish a code sequence of some sort that the first deceased will try to communicate to the surviving loved one. And there was Henry Ford's abortive attempt at communication using a radio-like technological device. No success whatsoever, except for a couple of controversial cases. Zilch. 

And attempts using mediumistic communications to gain reliable knowledge of "the other side" have been plagued by inconsistencies and other problems, to the point that at least in my opinion few or no reliable conclusions can be drawn from this source as to the real nature of the afterlife.  

Now, as a follow-up to his successful 'evidence for the afterlife' essay contest, Robert Bigelow is offering grants of up to $1M to fund attempts to actually communicate with someone who has died. My prediction is that this will ultimately prove to be an overreach and a failure, simply because we are not supposed to acquire such communication and knowledge while in the physical, as indicated by the abysmal track record so far. I hope I'm wrong about this, but this reasoning seems to be in accordance with the evidence of a century and a half of psychical research. It's very determined to remain hidden from Man's understanding.

Hi again, nbtruthman. All noted but wasn't the famous cross correspondence case an example of a successful connection? It's not really my area of most interest, though, so I won't debate that with you. 

Just as an aside, I did have a very persuasive reading with an Irish medium (quite well known now) who plucked two names out of the ether in quick succession, bump, bump. And she was bang on, these were two deceased people that I was formerly close to and liked very much and the chances of her doing that (together) are astronomically slim. 

I was so surprised I still don't necesarily accept it (I don't know why) but I have no reason not to. There is absolutely no way she could have known these two names, not a chance and she didn't give me any names that were wrong. It startled me.

NB you can't claim physical expertise in signal transfer and get away with saying this stuff.

Inhibition and excitation are abstract ideas about related outcomes.  They aren't "stuff".  The expression of inhibition or excitation is a chemical regulation process. It is well mapped physically.  The process takes the form of a chemical cascade, as a series of reactions.  Excitation is expressed in the nervous system as focus.  Not as an activity solely from the nerves, but as a command and control, which is structured in the mind through choice.

Brains don't integrate ideas, they coordinate signals.  This is empirical and can be shown by experiment.  Integration of ideas can be shown logically - but not physically.

If you think "holographic wave patterns" have a distinct signal, transferring between neurons - please post an article so I can catch-up.  I could have missed the brain using lasers.

Maybe you meant something about integration of signals but - no IC's are jumping the synapse.

Sure, the words "inhibition" and "excitation" are abstract ideas. But they are firmly based or grounded on the substrate of matter and energy, the related collective behaviors or properties of very physical neurons in the brain. Inhibition and excitation as the abstract ideas, in themselves, have absolutely no physical effectivity or motive power. It is the physical organization of neurons that has the physical effectivity or motive power of "chemical cascades" or "series of reactions". So references to inhibition and excitation and oscillations and holographic waves, etc. in the paper all very definitely presume the material neuronal substrate is mechanizing and producing them.

And all this clearly implies that the basic concept in the paper is that "mind" action of some sort is tied to and is a product of or function of the physical organization of physical neurons and their synapses.

A longer quote from the abstract of the paper is: "....Our simulation provides this world representation holistically by identical information encoded as holographic wave patterns for all associative cortex regions....The resulting simulation compares well with data from electrophysiology, visual perception tasks, and oscillations in cortical areas."

"Data from electrophysiology and oscillations in cortical areas" are all definitely tied, bound to, the behavior of physical neurons in large organized structures.

Without the physical neuronal structures, informational holographic and other concepts tied to them are totally ineffectual and abstract, in fact entirely imaginary.

From https://holographer.com/interference/:

In holography, there are two basic waves that come together to create the interference pattern. First and foremost is the wave that bounces off the object we are making a hologram of. Since it bounces off the object, thereby taking its shape, it is called the OBJECT wave. You can’t have interference without something to interfere with. So a second wave of light that has not bounced off an object is used to perform this function. It is called the REFERENCE wave.

When an object wave meets a reference wave creating a standing wave pattern of interference, it is photographed and called a hologram.

Notice that holographic patterns are fundamentally an interference phenomenon of physical waves, conventionally the EM waves of visible light, but just as much of physical waves of chemical excitation in a neural organization, etc. 

The bottom line is that this approach of the paper still squarely runs into the Chalmers "Hard Problem" of consciousness, in that the properties of consciousness are in an entirely different and higher existential category than organizations or behaviors of matter.

Ok, perhaps I imagined too specific a definition of spiritual.

I've just posted a video of the NDE of Joseph Streisselberger, Brian. I've checked out his story at least as far as his injuries go etc so it seems likely to be an honest acount at least (of course we can't know that for certain). Many others have said exactly the same things as Streisselberger (many) which leads me to think this may be roughly what happens when we die. I was thinking it might paint a picture for you, if you were looking for one, which you may not be of course.