Is it the brain that produces dreams?

And you have even less of an idea how non local consciousness works, but that doesn't stop you for one moment. Mine aren't empty claims.

These aren't just "claims". I am citing actual evidence. 

And what I am suggesting actually concurs with the evidence, which your's do not. Correct me if I am wrong on this part.

So which should be believed?

You just haven't understood what I've said, that's all.

OK.

Let's give this a try...

If anyone else on this forum feels like they understand what Max is saying, you would you please say so on this thread, and perhaps explain it to me, so I can understand it?

Okay, I've tried to explain this to you before, Steve so I'll give it another go.

You cannot measure or see the human "mind" (the self)  but we know it exists, that's a fact that's not debateable. It's not your skull, it's not your eyeballs, it's not even the cells (neurons) that you claim produce it. It's not even the thoughts that the "mind" produces but although thoughts exist, just like the mind, we can't see them in an FMRI scanner.

As the mind is immaterial it seems quite reasonable to assume it could in theory at least pass "through" "or out of" the machine (brain) which either "produces" it or "harbours" it... even if it's just for a brief period. Radio waves pass through physical substance.

The reports on which the data has been gathered come from people who claim that their consciousness, their self ...somehow left or exited their physical body (usually out of the head). They feel everything that is vital about them, separating and rising up to a position where they are able to observe in real time reality everything that is going on around them.  That "mind" or "self" that they were used to experiencing from within their skull, is now OUT of their skull.

They can literally (as far as they are concerned) see themselves (their physical body)  below. They know it.

If their reports are accurate (and they are ) then the simplest explanation is that their "self" or "mind" was somehow able to relocate away from their bodies. I understand the difficulty this produces in sceptics...they want to observe and measure whatever this "mind" or "self" is, they want to see it floating around ......but they can't "see" or "measure" the mind now, inside the skull ....but we know it exists ! Why not just be open to it and wait and see what the experiments eventually reveal ?

Surely you must at least acknowledge that it may well happen to you. Why do you (clearly) assume that you would not accept it as being real, just as the millions of other people have done ?

Your right Tim, I do want things measured before I except their validity.  All of the pleading won't change that. The difference between  you and me is it's enough for you to believe. Me, I want to know.

Where as I don't understand why you ignore easily available evidence of neuron-less organisms which exhibit apparently intelligent behavior. If these organisms don't have any neurons, then they can't have any measurable neuron firing. So here are these organisms, exhibiting intelligent behavior, and they do so without any neuron firing - yet the measurement of neuron firing, is the very criteria you use to claim nothing is, and nothing can, be going on in the brain after "...after 10-20 seconds...", because scalp EEG (which measures neuron firing) is flat.

Human brain cells (neurons) are not identical to the single cell organisms, amoebas or parameciums which exhibit some kind of autonomous response. You certainly can't automatically attribute intelligence to them, though. It may just be a chemical reaction imitating intelligence. We don't know yet.

Irrespective of that, human brain cells (100 billion of them ?) don't act individually (apparently) they connect in an unknown manner to form a "whole" (apparently) and at some stage, no one knows when, consciousness is presumed to appear out of that complexity.

So I don't see how your faith in the ability of a paramecium to look intelligent, enables you to then make the giant leap of comparing them to human brain cells ?

Human brain cells that are not functioning do not suddenly turn into parameciums or multiples of parameciums able to perform tasks. And they certainly do not turn into something that has the power of conscious observation, reasoning with emotion and memory formation in real time at a distance. 


This the problem with your thinking (your idea) Max. You're making gigantic leaps without any justification or evidence.

Your right Tim, I do want things measured before I except their validity.  All of the pleading won't change that. The difference between  you and me is it's enough for you to believe. Me, I want to know.

So I was right ? You actually want to see the soul floating about before you will believe it exists ? Would you like to arm yourself with a fishing net to catch it ?

Well I'm not saying that a non functioning organ (the brain) turns into lots of parameciums, but I am saying that whatever the mechanism is, that allows parameciums to sense, navigate, and organise (which is definitely not neuronal - because they don't have any), that mechanism must be seriously considered as still being available to later Eukaryotes cells, and is just as valuable. And that it is this mechanism, and not the later evolution of neurons in larger organisms, which still shoulders the bulk of the processing which leads to my experiences.

Nobody has shown that neurons do anything other than relay information back n forth around the organism. Where as cell centrioles remain pretty much a mystery amongst cell biologists, their function appears to be strongly related to sensing, navigation and organization within spacetime. There are a growing number of studies which go back around 40 years that seem to show that the cell centriole may do a lot more than is popularly accepted.

The point being that the brain's networks are stuffed full of similar repeating protein structures. The brain seems to be an enormous site of signal integration.

I'm suggesting that neurons merely relay signals/information to and from the brain of larger organisms. And that it is not the neurons, but another mechanism within these networks that processes those signals. I'm suggesting that this mechanism is probably the same one that is used for processing by small early organisms that don't contain neurons. The best candidate appears to be these highly conserved repeating protein structures.

"Well I'm not saying that a non functioning organ (the brain) turns into lots of parameciums, but I am saying that whatever the mechanism is, that allows parameciums to sense, navigate, and organise (which is definitely not neuronal - because they don't have any), that mechanism must be seriously considered as still being available to later Eukaryotes cells, and is just as valuable."  (Eukaryotic >includes brain cells)

Why must it be considered ? Why would brain cells have a potential secondary back up function to observe or gather information from their surroundings when they already achieved that by working in tandem (according to science) through the normal sensory organs ? And why would it function just as well when the cells were not functioning normally ?

You may as well propose that our knee caps or anything composed of cells with a nucleus can observe their surroundings and gather information.    

Human beings don't function like that. They have a mind and that mind either disappears when the heart stops pumping or it carries on separately. The mind makes the conscious decisions ...not some autonomous cell structure. If what you're saying was the case, our ultimate destiny would be to become nothing more than a fleeting (sort of periscope) observation of our outside world until the cells burst and died. Furthermore, to achieve that, you're endowing these cells with magical powers for which there is no evidence.

Sorry, Max for me it's way over any boggle factor I could even begin to imagine.

We don't need to bother with the Why? Although there are lots of fairly obvious reasons that could be put forward. We don't need to go through all that, we can just look at what has been observed in studies of mammalian cells... IMO Albrecht-Buehler's research suggests mammalian cells can integrate and process signals... these studies also suggest that the best candidate organelle for such signal integration and processing appears to be the centriole... and further, these and many more recent studies investigating cell to cell communication suggest a role for EM fields.

So it's "fairy obvious" that we have two completely different mechanisms for cognitive function? 

That's silly-talk.

We don't need to bother with the Why? Although there are lots of fairly obvious reasons that could be put forward. We don't need to go through all that, we can just look at what has been observed in studies of mammalian cells... IMO Albrecht-Buehler's research suggests mammalian cells can integrate and process signals... these studies also suggest that the best candidate organelle for such signal integration and processing appears to be the centriole... and further, these and many more recent studies investigating cell to cell communication suggest a role for EM fields.

I'll read your information from the links tomorrow, Max.

As an additional point to what I've already tried to lay out, exactly what would be the evolutionary incentive and profit  for the brain cells, to be endowed with the "delusion" that they were going to survive ? Even if you were correct, there must be a reason why some experience, like seeing one's self.... and feeling peaceful and good and uncaring about a very grave situation  (of annihilation) ....is there in the first place, surely ?

I would have thought that if there was such a fanciful collective mechanism inherent in brain cells then it would do the opposite.