• Members of the previous forum can retrieve their temporary password here, (login and check your PM).

Why Consciousness is Not the Brain

Migrated topic.
I never said NDE's occur without any brain activity. What I actually said is that I think it very likely there is brain activity going on but beyond the detection levels of current EEG's. But this activity may not be ample to describe the extremely vivid experiences of NDE's (a recent study found the memories of NDE's to be more vivid than either dreams/imagined events or of real waking life events).

www.plosone.org

Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories

Since the dawn of time, Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have intrigued and, nowadays, are still not fully explained. Since reports of NDEs are proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real events memories...
www.plosone.org www.plosone.org

The brain definitely doesn't just go off like a light switch. I don't really buy this memory theory of brain consciousness transition, it may be part of it but I think it is a pretty superficial description of what is occurring with a fair few holes in. The fact of the matter is we do not have a 100% complete or undisputable explanation for NDE's and how they occur at present, and the same applies to OBE's.

You need to check out the Global Consciousness Project. This isn't a micky mouse pseudoscience project but a cutting edge initiative spear headed by Princeton University in the US. While some scientists are naturally going to be threatened and/or reluctant to examine this research on its own terms, Princeton University scientists calculate "one in a trillion odds that the effect is due to chance" on the random number generators.

The Global Consciousness Project

The Global Consciousness Project, home page, scientific research network studying global consciousness
noosphere.princeton.edu noosphere.princeton.edu

The "Mindsight" experiences reported by those born blind during NDE's adds further weight to the likelihood that there is more going on with NDE's than simply oxygen deprivation or excess carbon dioxide or transitional states of consciousness (which may well be part of it, but I don't believe tell the full story). Important that science explores all these frontiers.

And yes we can measure the gravitational presence of black holes and dark/matter energy, but that is still telling us very little. Dark matter/energy are merely hypothetical names for what we think must be there from the gravity we can detect. But we know comparatively little about the nature of gravity itself! We have so much more to learn about so many things. And I think this applies to consciousness in a significant way.

I'm not sure the "pigs might fly" analogy works here. We KNOW pigs can't fly due to them lacking wings and gravity being against them. NDE's are a very different kettle of fish, what with them being a much harder thing to study, and with us lacking a full comprehensive theory of how they occur. As for the viable hit on the NDE AWARE study, I think a hit is highly unlikely even if they are viable. Whatever the case may be, NDE's are VERY intense experiences. When in the body, you may have the desire to assist in the science and go look at the number generator. When out of the body though and being drawn into a light of infinite compassion with your dead relatives beckoning you (or whatever) your priorities and perspectives are likely going to be radically altered. Furthermore, how much voluntary control and free movement do people have during NDE's to go where they will? From reports I have read it doesn't seem like much. I think the random number generator method, while I'm glad they are having a crack with it for studying NDE's would be much better suited for studying OBE's. I think science needs to better incorporate the very profound and undeniable effects NDE's have on the people that experience them. Human perceptions and conscious experiences such as NDE's/OBEs and related phenomena, as they cannot be measured and quantified in the same way as the contents of the physical universe, do not lend themselves to scientific quantification. Despite this they shouldn't be neglected however, as hard as they may be to study. After going through NDE's, people tend to have radical personality shifts, and they tend to lose the fear of death, and this is VERY common to these experiences.

Of course the brain is affected if consciousness is reduced or it is hallucinating, and vice versa. However if the brain is off line, unconscious and without blood flow, below the levels that can be detected via an EEG, it should not really be capable of experiencing hallucinations or other sensory phenomena, based on what we currently think we know about the brain.
 
Banco: As far as I know, the current research into NDEs has pretty much debunked the hypoxia/hypercarbia myth and is focused on the phenomena of REM intrusion. I don't have the exact studies, but there's evidence that during states of extreme stress, the body goes into shock and the brain switches from a waking mode of consciousness to the REM sleep mode of consciousness. There are a few theories as to why this is, but I think the most convincing one is that it was a method of self preservation: during REM sleep the body is paralyzed and the mind dissociated from it, which means that a severely injured person will not be able to go moving around, exacerbating the injury, but will rather, just lie there (it also might be good for playing dead).

There's pretty considerable evidence backing up the REM-intrusion hypothesis. A lot of well-documented REM intrusion phenomena (narcolepsy, sleep paralysis, etc) look a lot like NDEs: they include hallucinations, out of the body experiences, phenomena that people report as sometimes being 'more real,' than normal consciousness), and all of it observable and repeatable in a controlled scientific setting. Furthermore, if you look at the people who self-report having NDEs, they also self-report much higher instances of other non-trauma related REM intrusion phenomena during their life (sleep paralysis, narcolepsy, etc), which suggests to me that certain people are predisposed towards NDEs because of how their braina are wired.

The fact that some people get NDEs and some don't also strikes me as a good reason to believe that they are not indicative of some universal nature of consciousness. If consciousness is a nonlocal phenomena (which I assume applies to all people), why is it that two people might have the exact same heart attack, but only one might get the NDE/white light/dead relatives experiences? You'd think that if NDEs betrayed something fundamental about our universe or our consciousness, we'd see them much more frequently.

As for the random number generator, I'll have to look at that in some more depth.

Blessings
~ND
 
Nathanial.Dread said:
...why is it that two people might have the exact same heart attack...
Click to expand...
This is a bit of a logical impossibility, though, no?

I cannot have your heart attack and you cannot have mine.

I cannot have your mystical experience and you cannot have mine...even if we find ourselves in the joyous throes of a seemingly shared/psychically-joined/mutually-experienced experience.

We might roll our eyes and say "close enough" when such interjections appear in many conversations, especially dealing with physiological functions, but for this (and related) converstion(s), I have to ask...is it really close enough?
 
"There's pretty considerable evidence backing up..."

"I haven't seen any evidence for..."

"There is no evidence for..."

Nathanial I'm extremely skeptical when you keep making these generalized claims yet continually ignore the evidence presented (see my previous post).
 
Here's the paper on REM intrusion:


Kevin R. Nelson said:
Abstract

The neurophysiologic basis of near death experience (NDE) is unknown. Clinical observations suggest that REM state intrusion contributes to NDE. Support for the hypothesis follows five lines of evidence: REM intrusion during wakefulness is a frequent normal occurrence, REM intrusion underlies other clinical conditions, NDE elements can be explained by REM intrusion, cardiorespiratory afferents evoke REM intrusion, and persons with an NDE may have an arousal system predisposing to REM intrusion. To investigate a predisposition to REM intrusion, the life-time prevalence of REM intrusion was studied in 55 NDE subjects and compared with that in age/gender-matched control subjects. Sleep paralysis as well as sleep-related visual and auditory hallucinations were substantially more common in subjects with an NDE. These findings anticipate that under circumstances of peril, an NDE is more likely in those with previous REM intrusion. REM intrusion could promote subjective aspects of NDE and often associated syncope. Suppression of an activated locus ceruleus could be central to an arousal system predisposed to REM intrusion and NDE.
Click to expand...

As for the PAA studies, they're interesting, I'll give you that, but until I've had a chance to go through their stats myself (which I will try to do at some point during my week off), I'm going to reserve judgement. You were right, I was wrong about there being 'no evidence.' I hereby amend my claim to: "I have seen very little evidence I find convincing."

Snozzleberry: It's not that people are having different mystical experiences, it's that some are having them and some aren't having anything. You'd think that, if NDEs were indicative of some time of universal structure underlying the organization of our consciousness or the universe, that they'd be more, well, universal. But only a small handful of people report them, the vast majority of people, when they loose consciousness due to trauma are simply unconscious during that time.
 
This is true, but doesn't necessarily go against people having them. If the brain does play an integral part in the experiences despite impaired function, which if looking at the current scientific mindset is what is likely happening, and if people have certain parts of the brain impaired during "clinical death" episodes, it could be simply that they don't remember the experiences. Everyone dreams it seems but not everyone can remember them, and that is with a fully functioning brain. One of the issues facing people who have OBE's is sometimes being able to recall them even if they have them. Whatever the case, NDE's are still very much worthy of further scientific investigation.

Dr Penny Satori was an intensive care nurse for many years and she did her research on dying and observed many people going through death over many years, and she has compiled many reports of multiple family members observing seemingly supernatural events and visions of beings at the time of death...so not NDE's but an exterior observation of death as it occurs...which is also quite strange and falls well outside of the current scientific paradigm and what it can adequately explain.
 
Nathanial.Dread said:
Snozzleberry: It's not that people are having different mystical experiences, it's that some are having them and some aren't having anything...the vast majority of people, when they loose consciousness due to trauma are simply unconscious during that time.
Click to expand...
Are they?

I don't know the stats, so I can't say one way or another what "the vast majority of people" experience.

Might there not be factors at play affecting those that do or do not have these experiences and the why's of that? Might there not be factors affecting recall?

It seems to me that your argument against is essentially based on your personal feelings/opinions on the matter. That's perfectly acceptable, but it's hardly definitive.

I'm no staunch believer in NDE's or similar phenomena, but I can't claim any definitive knowledge one way or the other.

All I'm saying is that there does not appear, to me, to be enough concrete evidence to declare these phenomena as "merely ____" or "debunked" or otherwise easily explained away.
 
I'll just leave this here to read.

A paper written by cardiologist Pim Van Lommel. Most of the article is sourced from the Lancet, one of the worlds leading medical journals.

A 42 page, highly recommended read in regards to NDEs, consciousness and the possibility of consciousness, by nature, to be non-local.

This article goes into pretty thorough detail regarding what happens moments up to the experience of an NDE, in regards to the brain and heart function.

Pammel for many years considered NDEs impossible giving the parameters and strongly adhered to a materialistic/reductionist framework in his studies.

Interesting to hear from his perspective.

<3
 

Attachments

  • Nonlocal-Consciousness-article-JCS-2013.pdf
    236 KB · Views: 0
Great poetry... not so great science
Click to expand...

Some thought provoking words and author-related material in which inspired me. Interesting ideas and direction of perceptions in the heart of nature.

All ancient and indigenous peoples insisted their knowledge of plant medicines came from the plants themselves and not through trial-and-error experimentation. Less well known is that many Western peoples made this same assertion. There are, in fact, two modes of cognition available to all human beings — the brain-based linear and the heart-based holistic. The latter can be exceptionally accurate and detailed in its information gathering capacities if, as indigenous and ancient peoples asserted, the heart's ability as an organ of perception is developed. Drawing on historical examples as well as cutting-edge research, Buhner provides readers with the tools necessary to gather information directly from the heart of nature, to directly learn the medicinal uses of plants, to engage in diagnosis of disease, and to understand the soul-making process that such deep connection with the world engenders.
Click to expand...

http://www.acresusa.com/the-secret-teachings-of-plants

Also, electrocardiography can produce interesting measurements to greater understand the role of the human heart's electrical output in human disease, as well as psychedelic states. To measure the frequency of how certain entheogens play a role in awakening and heightening the hearts ability to see through non-ordinary states of mind and connect with those thoughts instead of ignoring them.. as you sometimes normally would sober. The nerve fibers of the heart are interconnected with brain nerve receptors that control many vital functions.

No, it's not really common to suggest.. but a fascinating idea nonetheless.
 

This link above is a short talk with Amit Gaswami, a nuclear theoretical physicist from the University of Oregon, in regards to consciousness & the non-locality of consciousness.

He talks considerably, explaining that material existence is looked at by scientists as 'upward causation' - meaning that from elementary particles to the basic building blocks, all the way up to complex systems, there is an upward casual effect eventually leading to whats called an 'epi-phenomena' of the brain, aka consciousness, and it having no casual efficacy apart from elementary particles or their interaction.

What he proposes is that there is another form of causality, apart from upward causation - consciousness, which is non-local by nature. Consciousness (downward causation) in turn, giving rise to all transient phenomena of the material world and not being produced by the matter of the brain. He talks into some detail regarding elementary particle potentialities and explaining non-locality and several conundrums that these theories present to materialstic scientists/physicists.


He cites a couple different experiments; one being performed at the National University of Mexico, by Dr Jacobo Grinberg , where two random people were placed and significantly isolated in Faraday cages, studying brain to brain interaction between the two individuals. The study is talked about in detail in Gaswami's interview. This study has also been duplicated by Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist and neurophysiologist at Kings College in London, and several others studies that I can't think of off the top of my head.


<3



Don't let the title of the video interview mislead you. It's several parts, but I just linked the first part.
 
Cognitive Heart said:
Our hearts are the true generators of life, IMO. Isn't it obvious?
Click to expand...
Lets just hope they're programming all that AI into the AbioCor

Without volunteering, I'd bet that you could replace every part of your body with artificial components and you would still be "you" experiencing consciousness.... but once you replace the brain... different story
 
There is a conundrum in the science/particle physics world. with upward causation - you have elementary particles building to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to matter, to brain, to the epi phenomena of consciousness, but when you look at probability potentialities and apply it to upward causation you get - possible particles giving rise to possible atoms giving rise to possible molecules giving rise to possible cells giving rise to possible matter, giving rise to possible consciousness which then in turn, looking at it from the perspective of material consciousness, you cannot look at possible matter all the way down to possible elementary particles in conjucntion with the particle/wave duality and the potentialities that apply, so actuality becomes impossible in looking at it this this way; how does actuality arise then? This comes back to the whole wave/particle duality, and from a materialistic scientific standpoint, this wave/particle phenomena cannot be looked upon by a materialistic consciousness from the perspective of a materialistic observer. A materialistic consciousness cannot convert waves of probability into actuality. How does the actuality of particle potentiality arise then when being observed by a material consciousness?

It doesn't. It might sound like a big jump to some, but consciousness being the ground of all being (the phenomenal world), would essentially be choosing from the total of potentialities of itself to give rise to the phenomenal/material world.

And looking at the duplicated studies of consciousness being non-local by nature, this lends even more credence to the theory for primacy of consciousness.

<3
 
Tattvamasi said:
There is a conundrum in the science/particle physics world. with upward causation - you have elementary particles building to atoms, to molecules, to cells, to matter, to brain, to the epi phenomena of consciousness, but when you look at probability potentialities and apply it to upward causation you get - possible particles giving rise to possible atoms giving rise to possible molecules giving rise to possible cells giving rise to possible matter, giving rise to possible consciousness which then in turn, looking at it from the perspective of material consciousness, you cannot look at possible matter all the way down to possible elementary particles in conjucntion with the particle/wave duality and the potentialities that apply, so actuality becomes impossible in looking at it this this way;
<3
Click to expand...

There's a real problem with tackling science from this particular angle.
It's no different to the claim that "in quantum-physics, particle can appear and disappear... so in theory YOU could just disappear from existence and re-appear in a different dimension"

While it is true in theory, we simply do not observe people (or indeed their body parts) disappearing or being in two places as once

Consciousness occurs after sensory input passes thru the thalamus, to their respective brain regions, with the prefrontal activity to basal ganglia performing the final stages of neuronal inhibition before the "brain" being presented with information in "consciousness".

If consciousness really was external and NOT a product of the brain, this falls short of explaining why consciousness exists in rudimentary form in primates, yet exists fully in humans. On the other hand, difference in brain size and structure, does seem to explain the difference.
 
Well to play devils advocate...Differences, even massive ones, in the type of instrument through which we see consciousness that correlate with differences in how it is expressed doesn't necessarily imply that they therefore must be generating that consciousness. Look at televisions. Differences in them can have a huge effect on what is seen (HD etc.), but they still are partially just a receiver and partially a generator of what you're watching (hopefully it's turned off though ^__^ ).
 
quote-no-problem-can-be-solved-from-the-same-level-of-consciousness-that-created-it-albert-einstein-56403.jpg


Just throwing that out there. It truly is something though, its like teaching cave men how to build a commercial air liner "must be magic cause it flies!". They (we) will never understand it, until its our time to understand it.

Great read though, turned my gears! lol as soo many conscious discussions before lol. Always reading about these things always opens my mind up to new ideas and always will.

Peace and Harmony, ---dls---
 
I'm curious about this claim that consciousness exists only in rudimentary form in primates. How can this claim be made? How does one definitively measure this thing we call consciousness in a monkey?
 
Measuring or even defining the thing we call consciousness is pretty tricky to start with. Even something more obvious like intelligence that is produced from consciousness is a very tricky thing to define and comes in many forms. We only know with certainty the human censored experience of consciousness so that kinda restricts to an anthropomorphic view on it maybe in some respects.
 
Just a thought, but does it matter if consciousness arises from the brain?

Consider for a minute that what you are doing right now is literally and figuratively what the entire universe is doing at the location known as you. The universe is looking at itself through 'you'. The UNIVERSE is CONSCIOUS of itself.

There isn't any separation between us and the environment other than arbitrary lines. Where do our bodies come from? The food we eat, the liquids we drink, the air we breath... We breath in Oxygen and exhale CO2. Trees inhale CO2 and exhale O2. Only it's just one continuous manifestation. We can talk about the subprocesses all we want, but a much grander view is to see the interconnectedness of all things and understand it as just one process.

Some say everything is one thing, but it's not really a thing at all since a thing implies something static. It's a continuously manifesting process. There is only this continuous manifestation and this continuous manifestation is conscious of itself. Does it really matter if the mechanism by which this manifestation is conscious of itself is the brain or not?
 
Back
Top Bottom