Religion Vs. Philisophy

But it's worth looking into further. If it ever becomes Scientifically verified that Consciousness uses the brain as its instrument, which some Scientists have already come to that conclusion, then that's a revolutionary paradigm shift for the collective consciousness.

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12135971



Conclusion


The medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate are important brain regions for accessing a sense of self. The frontal activation results are consistent with lesion studies in patients with impaired self‐awareness, as well as other functional imaging tasks involving mentalizing about the self or others. The current results suggest that studying aspects of self‐awareness is quite feasible, with functional imaging using this type of paradigm.

 

At the same time, babies are still learning coordination and how to move and are very conscious of their movements. Wasn't it yesterday or the day before that I posted that scientists generally believe that the human mind has such an amazing potential to grow in capabilities because as it masters new processes it relegates certain ones to an automatic level, do that they can be done automatically without taking up conscious focus.

Libet's experiment involves conscious awareness, while I argue that subconscious events and processes are just as important.

Yes there are many responses the human mind makes to stimuli we are not even aware of. But to take this too far carries us into the Cartesian realm of epiphenomenalism. My own philosophy, which I have labeled archephenomenalism, I believe is the polar opposite of epiphenomenalism. While there are some neurosicentists and the like who like the ideas of epiphenomenalism, and even try to revive it, it is largely a defunct philosophy discarded many years ago.

 

Just as a person who is color blind and cannot see specific colors shows us that colors do not exist. I knew it! They laughed me out of medical school when I tried to say this, yet I was right all along! Color is an illusion!!

(Sorry---I couldn't help myself----I am being sarcastic----but the point I'm making is not).

 

First off, just out of curiosity, have they come to any conclusions regarding the Pineal Gland, the so-called seat of the soul, and a sense of self or soul?

Also:

http://www.superconsciousness.com/topics/science/why-consciousness-not-brain

"In science, we have largely ignored how consciousness manifests in our existence. We’ve done this by assuming that the brain produces consciousness, although how it might do so has never been explained and can hardly be imagined. The polite term for this trick is “emergence.” At a certain stage of biological complexity, evolutionary biologists claim, consciousness pops out of the brain like a rabbit from a magician’s hat. Yet this claim rests on no direct evidence whatsoever. As Rutgers University philosopher Jerry A. Fodo flatly states, “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. So much for our philosophy of consciousness.”

"Consciousness can operate beyond the brain, body, and the present, as hundreds of experiments and millions of testimonials affirm. Consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical with the brain."

"Why irrational? Consider a radio, an invention that was introduced during William James’s lifetime, and which he used to illustrate the mind-brain relationship. If one bangs a radio with a hammer, it ceases to function. But that does not mean that the origin of the sounds was the radio itself; the sound originated from outside it in the form of an electromagnetic signal. The radio received, modified, and amplified the external signal into something recognizable as sound. Just so, the brain can be damaged in various ways that distort the quality of consciousness – trauma, stroke, nutritional deficiencies, dementia, etc. But this does not necessarily mean the brain “made” the consciousness that is now disturbed, or that consciousness is identical to the brain."

CONCLUSION

"My conclusion is that consciousness is not a thing or substance, but is a nonlocal phenomenon. Nonlocal is merely a fancy word for infinite. If something is nonlocal, it is not localized to specific points in space, such as brains or bodies, or to specific points in time, such as the present."

Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind. This view will affirm that consciousness is fundamental, omnipresent and eternal – a model that is as cordial to premonitions as the materialistic, brain-based view is hostile.

 

What does it say about it?

 

You quote mined what I said, post the whole quote and it's self evident.

 

That site seems like major fluff, this is in the mission statement.

 

Haven't you mentioned you ascribed to the notion that "Philosophy is dead" remarked by Stephen Hawking? All philosophy should be as defunct as the other in that case.

 

Yup and this attitude allows you stay in your skeptical dogmatic mind-set. I can post more links from Scientists who feel that this the new emerging paradigm, and Dr. Amit Goswami's monistic-idealism I will reference time and again. Not much I can do if you simply shrug it off as "major fluff".

Whatever their explanation proves to be, the experiments documenting premonitions are real. They must be reckoned with. And when scientists muster the courage to face this evidence unflinchingly, the greatest superstition of our age – the notion that the brain generates consciousness or is identical with it – will topple. In its place will arise a nonlocal picture of the mind.

 

Okay, I've posted your whole quote, and what is being said about consciousness isn't self-evident to me. You give a certain example of something that is a part of the conscious experience, sexual arousal, and what facilitates it in the brain.

It's an assumption in the first place that one is facilitating the other. They are associated, no doubt. But assuming sexual arousal is facilitated by oxytocin being released in the hypothalamus... Would you say that sexual arousal is oxytocin being released in the hypothalamus? If your lover asked you, "Why are you so turned on by me?" would you sincerely, without an ounce of jest, respond, "Oxytocin is being released in my hypothalamus"?

My point is that there's no real way of telling whether the brain is creating something special that is more than the sum of the chemical reactions within it. I think the problem is that it seems on the surface to be the case that it is producing something special that can't be reduced to the actions of the brain in a meaningful way.

That is, if we didn't know what we were looking at, but we saw oxytocin being released in the hypothalamus, no one would say, "Ah! Sexual arousal!" They don't seem on the surface to be equivalent. Nothing about the matter of the brain seems, de facto, to be the equivalent of the experiences it produces.

There is no meaningful way of saying that they are equivalent. You can tell me that oxytocin being released in the hypothalamus is the equivalent of sexual arousal, but I'm never going to get an erection looking at oxytocin being released in the hypothalamus.

The problem is, we have no precedent to say that chemical reactions, such as take place in the brain, do not create "something special" that we simply don't or can't understand, and thus there is no feasible way of reducing consciousness to the brain. I'm not even trying to argue that consciousness can survive the physical death of the brain. (I think it's possible that it can, but that's beside the point.) All I'm saying is that if the brain is creating this something we call consciousness, there is still no way of saying that the brain isn't creating something essentially different from its substratum.

It seems to me that the brain creates something different in that it creates concepts of the brain. A concept, to me, seems to be something that is, by definition, not material. If it were material, it would be a reality, not a concept, right?

 

How is it being in a dogmatic mind-set if I don't accept a site that obviously caters to biases, that even suggests "We don't pretend to be gurus or have answers?"

 

I don't really understanding what you're saying, we don't see oxytocin being release from the hypothalamus. If you meant on video or display or something, well an X-Ray or a picture of a leg bone doesn't necessarily make your leg move, but it would be absurd to say that it's not involved in the process.

If concepts actually exist in a Platonic sense, I would say they are not material. Otherwise if they do not have any existence outside of the human mind, or any other animal mind that can form them for that matter, they could very well be considered material.

We would Probably have to be able to talk to animals or have AI develop sentience to get a better perspective on that.

 

I did mean on some kind of display. But even hypothetically, if we could just see oxytocin being released from the hypothalamus, it wouldn't on the surface seem to be the same as the experience of sexual arousal. I mean, can you imagine someone witnessing that (on a display) and saying, "Well, this certainly seems to be sexual arousal to me"? You would never take such a person to mean that he was literally equating sexual arousal with the image of oxytocin being released from the hypothalamus. You would imagine he was talking about something that doesn't seem like that at all.

When you experience sexual arousal, it seems to be something else completely. It seems to be nice, for instance. But there's nothing about oxytocin being released that on the surface seems nice.

I'm not saying that the brain isn't involved in the process of consciousness, but what does that tell us about consciousness? That is all I'm wondering.

 

Because the world-view of modern mainstream Science that the brain creates consciousness is a superstitious assumption that is based on no actual evidence.

All that they are saying is that they aren't trying to put on a front of being some enlightened gurus. And like I said, I can post many other sources that suggest the same thing, that the brain channels Consciousness.

The Self Aware Universe came out in the '90s and is a great source.

Here's another source from online. Let's see what your dismissal of it is this time...


http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/consciousness-the-brain-mind-body-split/

http://davidpratt.info/goswami.htm

 

I just provided evidence for you ? I think you not accepting that is being dogmatic.

 

The only argument you have to fall back on distorting some aspect of consciousness into an obscure, non-descript, intangible entity which is fine if you want to hold onto that idea but it's ridiculous to ask science to say anything about that. Still if Science is revealing some tangible things about consciousness, that can potentially reveal amazing new avenues of our experience of consciousness.

 

Science DOES say something about that. Just not stubborn mainstream dogmatic Scientists. http://davidpratt.info/goswami.htm

 

There actually is no evidence, just conclusions and assumptions being made. This is common knowledge that Scientists can't fully reconcile the problem of Consciousness and explain how it is supposedly created by the mind. To think otherwise is to either be misinformed or in denial on the issue.

 

Those are far out concepts probably for most Scientists. I don't think it makes a scientists a "Mainstream dogmatic Scientist" if they choose not to pursue those avenues, perhaps you do. Even if you're a dualist, which seems appropriate for you since I've heard you make a remark along the lines of "Brain as a radio receiver," I'm not sure why more tangible pieces, such as the effects and results of neurotransmitters and behaviors in regards to the puzzle of consciousness would bother you?