defining conciousness

Well now I don't know why you went with the most probable explanation, it's just a hardline reductionist who would do such a thing Personally I'm convinced it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Anyway I think your quote above is key. It's very likely such phenomena are highly subjective. This is why 'paranormal' effects always fail to be demonstrated under controlled conditions. There's no reason to believe that psychic connections or other "goofy stuff" is possible. I would be delighted to be proved wrong on that.

If you're asking whether entities with complex neurological networks are affected by their interactions with the world, then yes of course.

 

ok so then; is it possible that a thought can be carried subliminally, from the primary creator through a number of individuals to subconciously change the psyiology of the end reciever, like subliminal chinese whispers.

so can we theorise that, for instance.

natalie's subconcious self reflection shows exactly how close she is to giving birth without anyone conciously being able to see it. this travels from reciever to reciever and eventually over to england where it is pcked up by my mother.. now as with chinese whispers the aoriginal information is completely obscured.. but if the ultimate reciever is expecting a message and know roughly what it is going to be then the obscure message can be properly interpreted. therefore giving my mother period pains because the subliminal message sent on this wave of subliminology effects her psyiology.

 

Let me get this right: a subliminal message travels among hundreds or thousands of strangers across half the world with none of them knowing the message, knowing that they are carrying it, or knowing those for whom the message is relevant, but nonetheless ends up being perfectly translated, unconsciously, back into its original form by the intended recipient?

That sounds like a very very unlikely mechanism for the transmission of information.

 

well how subtle does a message have to be, and dependant on reciever mindset, the message can either lose power or gain power along the way. ormaybe when my mother met natalie when she was a week pregant natalies subliminal reflection planted the seed in my mothers physiology and so at the same time as natalie went into labour so did my mother experience the pains... the latter seems more likely

but back onto the wave of subliminology. how far can an intention travel... and if a large nukber of people carry a thought with them.. this thought can chage the physiology of all those who see them and so a positive thought can travel and change evryone interpretation of reality.

 

Sounds suspiciously like how the internet works... hmmm...

 

Lol @ Harry

To be honest young Andrew, you've quite lost me

An unconscious "tell" about the state of my physiology could not "travel" or "gain power" beyond the interaction between me and the person who may or may not perceive it.

Thoughts can "travel" via the medium of language as successfully communicated ideas. There's a whole theory of how this works called memetics

 

ok. the subconcious self reflection (ssr) is dependant on personality. personality is built on biasas formed from interactions, both concious and subconcious. with your external environment. each new interpretation changes the personality and so changes the SSR.
what i am preposing, is that with one initial thought a wave can flow through a community changing everyones personality. maybe not the entire though but the feeling of the thought... much the same way that a smile makes you smile. you dont know why the sender is smiling but it makes you smile none the less.

 

That could happen through language. I suppose things like smiles can be infectious among small groups who would have to be open to social interaction. Anything more complex than a smile couldn't really have any effect unless it's a unit of successfully transmitted linguistic information - rumours for instance.

 

I know what you are driving at Smartie, interactions are almost infinitely complex, it can't be discounted that a simple animalistic thought couldn't be transmitted via a massive web of interractions and actually hit it's target...

 

if suggestion is powerful enough to cause a fluctuation in personallity enough for the recipient to commit armed robbery then i find it highly plausable that a concious intention can travel from the originator and effect the recipient enough for them to pass the same ifnot close to the same message on to another.

 

Such suggestion requires high levels of skill in the person doing the suggestion. It's not just some natural force, it's the ability to manipulate somebody. That could not happen unless it's by deliberate effort.

 

Fascinating discussion.I'd very much like to know how some interesting messages were sent to me.The first concerned a kitten I found in the road on Maui.It had already been hit and an eye was hanging out of her socket.Never cared much for cats,but seeing the little thing dodging traffic induced me to stop,pick her up,take her to a vet and have the eye removed.Took her home that I shared with a couple of girls that had 2 rowdy dogs.That little cat had a lot of guts--she would stand her ground when the dogs harrassed her and I developed an affinity and I guess love for the little critter.OK.I left maui to do a roof job on Oahu and was on the roof by myself ,bangin' shakes on ,when a strange feeling hit me---.Somthing happened to my cat--I got the message loud and clear--dropped my tools,went to a phone,called Maui and as soon as my room mate answered,she started crying and said she had run over the little cat not 30 minutes before.How in the world did this message get to me?Any one care to hypothesize?The second was equally strange--I'll mention it later.

 

and if the originator diliberately wants his message to suceed then i see no difference... can deliberate also be subconcious?

scratcho...
coincidence

or maybe a chemical scent... when you cat and you friend suffered trauma from the accident. the adrenaline produced certain chemical scents which you picked up on subconciously... maybe.

or maybe its the electro magnetism.

 

No those two are opposites

It comes down (again) to thinking about how such a thing may happen. By what mechanism could a complex idea "travel" without ever being articulated? (Or a programmed suggestion be made without ever being suggested or programmed?)

 

ok heres an idea.

quantum physics suggests that the partciles that make up the neucleus of an atom vibrate in and out of existence. when they are not in existence in this dimension they are in existence in another. there are an infinite diferent dimesions all sharing the same atomic energy, and each dimesion just slighty different to your reality, from mundane dissimilarities to the completely obscure and back again. then reality becomes the majority concensus of the dimensions.
this being said... it makes sense to further conclude that fleeting thoughts are memories of a number of these dimensions.. (this is how you can think of a number of outcomes for the same scenario, becuase every possible outcome is played out in different dimensions). so the more we entetain a thought, the more often our atoms vibrate in the relevent dimesions and slowly it becomes the reality.

this happens to fit the idea of the unexplain message across the astral too.

with a big flux in reality like a death or a birth, there are a number of dimensions ( and so scenario endings) which can no longer continue. now we may only visit these dimesions very briefly but it is enough to pick up the subliminal messages that the end of a demiesion gives.. and so it is felt through all demensions and ultimately in the being of whos atoms are vibrating.

 

Quantum mechanics and string theory provide a number of fascinating possibilities, predictions and claims. Ideas like multidimensionality are not as yet formulated as falsifiable claims so remain unscientific hypotheses.

I would love this stuff to be true, and at least it is an attempt at explaining something by providing a mechanism in keeping with current thinking about how things may work. (Albeit a mechanism we are only just beginning to theorise.) But as yet this is all speculation and it would be quite foolhardy to place any belief in it. It has to remain a fascinating possibility, one among many.

That string theory may explain paranormal events to me sounds like wishful thinking. It all fits a little too neatly. If psychic happenings were real then they would be observable and repeatable, they would be happening more often and more obviously. They wouldn't just happen to coincide with perfectly explainable and understandable psychological phenomena!

So as an explanation of psychic abilities I have to say this remains incredibly unlikely. The one thing we should expect of new discoveries in this field is that they will be quite unexpected. They won't neatly explain something which people so desperately want explained. They will open up far more questions than they answer

 

woah this is really hard to take in in one sitting specially with the convo i just had, anyway, the whole electromagnetic/aura thing, there was a photographer who got some kind of chemical , dont worry i shall find out its name on monday, but yeah this chemica, when viewing an object through it will display what scientists agree seems to be an aura of so type, the guy then went on to make a lens out of the chemical and then took photos of a leaf, and then the same leaf after a piece had been cut off, leaving what looked like the aura staying where the piece was once, before it gradually faded to the shape of the leaf post cut, then fading completely.


And for the scientists among us, i wouldnt be too comfatable in your 'its been proven' seats as science is always fluid as what we think is 100% unchangable today may be disregarded because of what we discover tomorrow, for instance science stated that earth is the center of the universe and objects revolve around it, scientists swore by that fact but that was disproven. So please do not think what is proven now is undeniable truth because it isnt, its only the truth for now, because things may change tomorrow.

 

If you're talking about Kirlian photography, which I think you are, then that result with the cut leaf has not been reproducable. Kirlian photography demonstrates nothing more than that strong electromagnetism affects photosensitive plates and that objects (and people) absorb and refract electromagnetism. X-rays, and indeed visible light photography are other demonstrations of this effect

Interesting article including an explanation of the 'cut leaf' thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography
Another:
http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/k/kirlian_photography.html

Absolutely

 

PS. Hello Zooth, welcome to the forum

 

actually i been a member for quite a while, i just aint been on that much but yes, maybe the refraction electromagnetism is what causes the small EM field in the body to appear bigger to those that have eyes that are sensetive to such things, why cant eye occasionally contain rods and cones that can pick up that stuff, hence why children of people that can percieve auras can usually as well, sometimes to a greater extent because thats the way evolution is pulling them.