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You claim NDE should not happen "based on our understanding of the brain". Perhaps then you can adumbrate for us this "understanding" and explain how exactly what we know to be true precludes the possibility of NDE. You appear to be evidencing your claim by assertion alone.
That, whether true or not, is irrelevant. We are talking about the after life and saying "We do not understand X fully therefore Y" is never a cogent argument. Yes there is much about the mind and consciousness that still eludes us, but our lack of understanding of it is _not_ evidence of an after life.
Don't try to weasel your way out of this with fancy sounding philosophical speak, you claimed that there is neurological evidence that NDE's are brain based. I said you are full of it. Prove yourself.
My proof is simple. We have been measuring and observing electrical activity in the brain via MRI and such devices for awhile now. We know what normal, healthy, conscious experience looks like. It's very predictable and similar across all humans. We have been watching what the brain does while dying and being revived as well (naturally). There are tons of scientific articles on this, you can do some research if you've been living under a rock and didn't know about this.
The two states are incompatible on a neurological level. Death and life should not co-exist if consciousness is created by the brain. But, we have lots of people (even back before NDE's were a "thing") reporting fully conscious experience at times when the brain is in no state to create it(based on al the neurological evidence/research we have). Doesn't add up. Either all these people are lying or the brain doesn't create consciousness. Crazy as it sounds. I bet the idea of the world being round instead of flat blew peoples minds too, since it was obvious just by looking at the horizon that it was flat.
I love how people think we are done with the mind blowing, world changing discoveries. Like we've got it all figured out or something. We are on the verge of another "guys, the world is round and revolves around the sun".
Don't try to weasel your way out of this with fancy sounding philosophical speak
Nothing I said was that fancy, or requires any philosophical degree at all. It is basic philosophy 101 stuff. Again: "I do not understand X therefore Y" is a nonsense statement. It always has been. It likely always will. And therefore the argument "We do not fully understand consciousness therefore an after life exists, or is credible" is not an argument. It is simply intellectually laziness at best I am afraid.
YES there is much about human consciousness that we do not understand. The correct reaction to that fact is to keep asking, and trying to answer, questions. But in the interim we can not play the "god of the gaps" style argument and simply insert what we want to be true into the holes in our knowledge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofur
you claimed that there is neurological evidence that NDE's are brain based. I said you are full of it. Prove yourself.
No... it was YOU that claimed that what we know about the brain shows that NDEs should not be happening. I called you on this, asking you to adumbrate what we know about the brain and how and why it precludes NDE. You have failed to answer the question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofur
My proof is simple. We have been measuring and observing electrical activity in the brain via MRI and such devices for awhile now. We know what normal, healthy, conscious experience looks like.
Actually we are now in the realm of neuroscience, so your throw away snide comment about me living under a rock is not warranted, as this is a realm I am trained in and well versed in. You are talking to someone who actually likely knows this stuff a lot better than you, so by all means talk the technical talk to me and tell me what evidence we currently have in our current knowledge of the brain that precludes NDE.
Trained as I am in that area I have no knowledge of anything that precludes NDE. Yet you claim what we know about the brain precludes NDE. And I merely asked you why. You did not answer. So either you know something I do not, despite my training, and are refusing to share it with me.... or you were bluffing knowledge that we do not _actually_ have. And I am not sure which, morally, is worse.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofur
The two states are incompatible on a neurological level. Death and life should not co-exist if consciousness is created by the brain. But, we have lots of people (even back before NDE's were a "thing") reporting fully conscious experience at times when the brain is in no state to create it
There are several issues with what you are saying here I am afraid. I will deal with the bigger ones.
Firstly no one is talking about Death and Life co-existing. There is a reason it is called NDE. The N stands for "near". That is to say: The patient did not die, is not dead, was not dead. No death. They were NEAR death. So life and death are not co-existing here at all. Focus on the "N" a bit more.
Secondly you say the brain was in no state to create experience. What do you mean by this? How do you know this? What basis have you for declaring this? You have not substantiated any of this, rather you have merely asserted it.
Thirdly, you assume ENTIRELY that the experience was had during this brain "downtime" that you are imagining. On what basis? How do we know that the experiences the patients report having were not had on the way into, or out of, this "downtime"? Much like our dreams are not had in deep sleep (even though they feel to many that they are) but on the way into and out of deep sleep.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tofur
I love how people think we are done with the mind blowing, world changing discoveries. Like we've got it all figured out or something.
I have not seen a single person on this thread suggest, or imply, any such thing though. So I am not sure why you bring it up.
Well we are energy and it has to go somewhere. We are not wired to know the true outcome, for obvious reasons. Maybe someday we will know the outcome prior to experiencing it with technology, but it is hard to say. The answer may be as simple as physics, but as it is right now, we don't seem to know. I find it hard to believe someone doesn't know, but people wouldn't believe anyone anyway on such a subject, so even if someone was yelling at the top of their lungs, "insert (this is what happens)", no one will care.
We are now getting close to where the conversation I was having with another user was when he got so flustered and insulting that the mod had to step in, lock the thread, and delete all our posts because the other guy was getting so upset. He last night left the forum. Poor guy. Some people really can not get their ideas challenged
What I think people like him (and possibly you but it is not clear yet from your post so I will not assume) are doing is envisioning us being "made from" some as yet unidentified energy. Some energy neither measured nor substantiated in any way. And this must "go" somewhere when we die.
But there is no evidence for this that I am aware of. We know what energy is inside us. We know how it gets there (our food), how it is moved around our body (metabolism etc) and we know where it "goes" when we die (heat dissipation and decomposition).
There is no mystery here therefore. So so far we only have evidence that our consciousness is based on this energy. The processes of HOW that energy is used to produce consciousness is still a mystery yes. But we do not solve that mystery by inventing imagined _other_ energies and declaring by nothing but assertion that consciousness must come from _that_. Then we are just making up nonsense in order to explain away what we currently do not understand.
But the energy that is "us" at this time that we know of.... we know just what it is, how it gets in us, and where it "goes" upon death. We just do not fully understand the processes that _use_ that energy.
No I still am not seeing an answer to my question. You made some reference to music and radios and I do not understand what the link is. You have not answered.
If you wish to talk about "particles" then by all means list them by name.
no you don't see.
The radio was stupid simple example of how we are more than most people think. Just like the radio. Take the radio apart is like taking a human apart and finding no 'you". The "music" is an illusion from the perspective of inside the radio. stupid simple. It was showing that we are coupled to our surroundings in many ways that most people do not know about. If I have to name one, just one, particle then ...well... it's ok to not believe, It's another thing to be anti-theist based on our large gaps in understanding.
We are now getting close to where the conversation I was having with another user was when he got so flustered and insulting that the mod had to step in, lock the thread, and delete all our posts because the other guy was getting so upset. He last night left the forum. Poor guy. Some people really can not get their ideas challenged
What I think people like him (and possibly you but it is not clear yet from your post so I will not assume) are doing is envisioning us being "made from" some as yet unidentified energy. Some energy neither measured nor substantiated in any way. And this must "go" somewhere when we die.
But there is no evidence for this that I am aware of. We know what energy is inside us. We know how it gets there (our food), how it is moved around our body (metabolism etc) and we know where it "goes" when we die (heat dissipation and decomposition).
There is no mystery here therefore. So so far we only have evidence that our consciousness is based on this energy. The processes of HOW that energy is used to produce consciousness is still a mystery yes. But we do not solve that mystery by inventing imagined _other_ energies and declaring by nothing but assertion that consciousness must come from _that_. Then we are just making up nonsense in order to explain away what we currently do not understand.
But the energy that is "us" at this time that we know of.... we know just what it is, how it gets in us, and where it "goes" upon death. We just do not fully understand the processes that _use_ that energy.
That is a good, straight forward and informative post
Another thing that I finds complicates discussions of this sort is the basic low level of understanding of energy for most people. Many do not know already what you just explained about food, metabolism, and heat.
Further complicating the desire, almost instinctive desire, for ourselves to be more than just our body, is the fact that popular culture is soaked through with the "consciousness as energy" paradigm in TV and movies. Even I catch myself thinking that entertainment can be credible at times.
Yes. That is what I just said. I do not see the point of your analogy to radio. And you seem to be stone walling me asking what your point was.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arach Angle
The radio was stupid simple example of how we are more than most people think. Just like the radio. Take the radio apart is like taking a human apart and finding no 'you".
I agree it might be a stupid example. With radio we are beaming something externally into it. So everything that makes a radio what it is, is not in the "box". It requires external input.
The reason your analogy is not a good one is that it would assume something similar. The "you" in the box is the processes that operate in the brain. That is much different from radio, as I said, because you need what we beam into the radio for it to be a radio. Without that, it is just a hunk of bits that do nothing.
But the reason it is an EXTRA bad example is that it risks you being conflated with a common brand of new age thinking we have on another forum who believe that we ARE just radios. That is to say.... our consciousness is something else, somewhere else, and it is "beamed" from that somewhere else into our brains. Our brains do not produce consciousness in the same way radios do not produce music..... rather they receive it from an external broadcasting tower.
So when using radio examples, be extra careful, because you risk being conflated with people who believe THAT nonsense.
I note you did not name a single one of the "particles" you are talking about though.
That is a good, straight forward and informative post
Another thing that I finds complicates discussions of this sort is the basic low level of understanding of energy for most people. Many do not know already what you just explained about food, metabolism, and heat.
Further complicating the desire, almost instinctive desire, for ourselves to be more than just our body, is the fact that popular culture is soaked through with the "consciousness as energy" paradigm in TV and movies. Even I catch myself thinking that entertainment can be credible at times.
That is a good, straight forward and informative post
Another thing that I finds complicates discussions of this sort is the basic low level of understanding of energy for most people. Many do not know already what you just explained about food, metabolism, and heat.
I agree, many people do not know about it. But those people we can at least educate and explain this stuff to.
It is the people who _do_ know about this however, but have simply pre-decided that this energy can not explain consciousness so there must be _some other_ energy..... that are a little more difficult to communicate with. Because they are talking past you in their assumption that human consciousness simply can not be explained by the processes that use the energy _we already know about_.
So the challenge is to communicate with such people, while keeping them peaceful. And another guy, on another forum, who I was talking to about this very thing got so flustered he ended up rage quitting that forum
But essentially that is what we have to communicate. "I do not understand how process X is using energy Y.... therefore there must be some other energy Z at play here" is the claim they are making, but that is simply false thinking.
Quote:
Originally Posted by prosopis
Further complicating the desire, almost instinctive desire, for ourselves to be more than just our body, is the fact that popular culture is soaked through with the "consciousness as energy" paradigm in TV and movies.
Yeah I understand this is an issue to deal with too In fact what we have to deal with is the kind of people who do not know where the energy of a candle goes when the candle goes out. They see the "flame" and they do not realize that this is an emergent attribute of the process of burning. So when you blow the candle out they want to know where the energy "goes". Where does the flame "go"?
They do not understand the flame does not "go" anywhere. The process of which it is an emergent attribute simply ceases.
And making people understand that is similar to making people understand where consciousness "goes" when we die. It is a very similar error of assumption that such people are making. And it does not help when such people are emotionally invested in the idea of the flame "going" somewhere.
Yes. That is what I just said. I do not see the point of your analogy to radio. And you seem to be stone walling me asking what your point was.
I agree it might be a stupid example. With radio we are beaming something externally into it. So everything that makes a radio what it is, is not in the "box". It requires external input.
The reason your analogy is not a good one is that it would assume something similar. The "you" in the box is the processes that operate in the brain. That is much different from radio, as I said, because you need what we beam into the radio for it to be a radio. Without that, it is just a hunk of bits that do nothing.
But the reason it is an EXTRA bad example is that it risks you being conflated with a common brand of kook we have on another forum who believe that we ARE just radios. That is to say.... our consciousness is something else, somewhere else, and it is "beamed" from that somewhere else into our brains. Our brains do not produce consciousness in the same way radios do not produce music..... rather they receive it from an external broadcasting tower.
So when using radio examples, be extra careful, because you risk being conflated with people who believe THAT nonsense.
I note you did not name a single one of the "particles" you are talking about though.
[Snip.]
Mod cut: Orphaned.
it is an analogy. but it fits nicely when you understand what is going on. The analogy is perfect in that emr, something that does not look like music, is the source of the "music". Even if you took the radio apart. Could it be the same for us. In order to answer that we must explore what makes us up. You couldn't even understand that you are made of far more than atoms in any "now", so how could I expect a rational evaluation from you other than anti religious hate.
Lmao at "beamed in" thats just silly.
I am not even sure if you understand that "atoms" are not "things" at a fundamental level. So now how can I talk about you being a set of interactions being coupled to a larger set of interactions. Without the lager set there is no you at all? it has nothing to do with god or magic. If you stop at "atoms" in the brain, then don't call anything past that limited statment "magic" or made up.
Last edited by PJSaturn; 10-28-2014 at 12:14 PM..
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