Originally posted by inimalistUnfortunately there is that connection. But Consciousness as the fundamental reality is an idea that's thousands of years old (the Hindu Vedas being the earliest organized writings involving this idea). And while not on par (AFAIK) with empirical science in terms of what Westerners generally think of as reliable and valid knowledge, many of the various esoteric schools which practice meditation and interpret its effects are surprisingly systematic in their approach.
My experience is more with students who get into research rather than those who do not, so that could really slant my exposure. Consciousness is more a term associated with new age, not science.
Originally posted by Mindship
Unfortunately there is that connection. But Consciousness as the fundamental reality is an idea that's thousands of years old (the Hindu Vedas being the earliest organized writings involving this idea). And while not on par (AFAIK) with empirical science in terms of what Westerners generally think of as reliable and valid knowledge, many of the various esoteric schools which practice meditation and interpret its effects are surprisingly systematic in their approach.
It's really interesting how they way that the rotation of the Earth makes it appear as the sun is moving through the sky, in fact, even our language reflects this. We refer to the sun as rising or setting, as if it were moving away from where we could see it. It is not difficult at all to see why people for so many thousands of years could be convinced that the sun went around the Earth.
Originally posted by inimalist
It's really interesting how they way that the rotation of the Earth makes it appear as the sun is moving through the sky, in fact, even our language reflects this. We refer to the sun as rising or setting, as if it were moving away from where we could see it. It is not difficult at all to see why people for so many thousands of years could be convinced that the sun went around the Earth.
When I was really young, I wondered that if I was to be born in a previous time frame in which the earth was thought to be the center of the universe and flat, if I would accept that idea or if I would transcend accepted ideas and come closer to reality?
Originally posted by inimalist
It's really interesting how they way that the rotation of the Earth makes it appear as the sun is moving through the sky, in fact, even our language reflects this. We refer to the sun as rising or setting, as if it were moving away from where we could see it. It is not difficult at all to see why people for so many thousands of years could be convinced that the sun went around the Earth.
If we follow this through--using scientific method to collect data which reflects so-called "higher" domains--might it be possible to construct an equally effective (reliable, perhaps valid) map of transcendent reality, one which jives with the empirical world but is not limited to it?
Obviously, this kind of information gathering would be uniquely difficult; for it to occur large-scale, there'd have to be a paradigm shift. But the techniques for exploring consciousness, starting with the simple act of sustained attention (attention becomes its own object of study)...these have been around a long time.
Originally posted by inimalistYes, because there is correlation; plus to define consciousness in purely empirical terms is to miss the point. Attention should be on attention, not on the corresponding hardware.
We've looked for consciousness, it isn't thereAll of the components of what you would consider a conscious experience can be associated with certain brain regions, and damage or alterations to those areas can produce predictable changes in human consciousness.
Originally posted by Mindship
Scientific method, when applied to the empirical world, does yield reliable (and hopefully valid) information. This is because the data we collect (and the tools used to collect the data) reflect the empirical domain.
I want to say "thank you captain obvious" but your sentence thought is too complicated for it to be obvious to most. (Yes, I intended a compliment there.) The last time I checked, empirical results are from scientific methodology because the results have to be duplicated, so anything involved in the "empirical domain" would have to be replicate-able scientifically. So basically, you just said the obvious in my opinion.
If we follow this through--using scientific method to collect data which reflects so-called "higher" domains--might it be possible to construct an equally effective (reliable, perhaps valid) map of transcendent reality, one which jives with the empirical world but is not limited to it?
Higher domains? Higher domains of thought? Answering questions leads to more questions unless the answers are in absolutes but even then, they can lead to other questions. You are, of course, referring to a form of Deity aren't you? (Whether it is a intangible consciences or an individual.)
Obviously, this kind of information gathering would be uniquely difficult; for it to occur large-scale, there'd have to be a paradigm shift. But the techniques for exploring consciousness, starting with the simple act of sustained attention (attention becomes its own object of study)...these have been around a long time. [/B]
In order for it to be large scale, it would have to be a multi-dimensional paradigm shift. There are so many aspects of society, science, and theology involved in this.
I do think, however, that this is already being done at the back of the minds of every person in their respective fields and it always has been. Come on, I mean you have physicists and your students of the mind agreeing on some levels sometimes and you also have got your theologists mixing it up on both sides.
(I have a question for you. Could you please make your posts more, I don't know, conversation like? You are pontificating too much to legitimately contribute to the conversation at hand. If your posts go over the heads of those around you, there is no satisfaction in spreading your ideas other than, "yes, I am better than they are." Tis true, one can say the same things you do in more words (Thereby detracting from a good philosophical discussion in my opinion.), but it is not easy on the eyes and the brain for quick reviewing on a message board. If you are trying to come off as mystical and educated, you have done that. Maybe I am being a jerk and I apolgize for that. I know you know what I trying to get at.)
(I have a question for you. Could you please make your posts more, I don't know, conversation like? You are pontificating too much to legitimately contribute to the conversation at hand. If your posts go over the heads of those around you, there is no satisfaction in spreading your ideas other than, "yes, I am better than they are." Tis true, one can say the same things you do in more words (Thereby detracting from a good philosophical discussion in my opinion.), but it is not easy on the eyes and the brain for quick reviewing on a message board. If you are trying to come off as mystical and educated, you have done that. Maybe I am being a jerk and I apolgize for that. I know you know what I trying to get at.)I'm responding to this first because this is feedback I rarely get, and I find it valuable. Thanks for your directness, and please know my intent is purely to suggest food for thought. But if I can learn to express it better, then all the better.
Originally posted by dadudemonSometimes the obvious gets missed. Also, I hope that by starting off stating the obvious, there'll be less misunderstanding down the road.
I want to say "thank you captain obvious" but your sentence thought is too complicated for it to be obvious to most. (Yes, I intended a compliment there.) The last time I checked, empirical results are from scientific methodology because the results have to be duplicated, so anything involved in the "empirical domain" would have to be replicate-able scientifically. So basically, you just said the obvious in my opinion.
Higher domains? Higher domains of thought? Answering questions leads to more questions unless the answers are in absolutes but even then, they can lead to other questions. You are, of course, referring to a form of Deity aren't you? (Whether it is a intangible consciences or an individual.)I'm trying to avoid words loaded with connotation ("God," "spirit," etc). But yes, I am referring to things we usually save that kind of language for, especially taken from a "mystical" POV.
In order for it to be large scale, it would have to be a multi-dimensional paradigm shift. There are so many aspects of society, science, and theology involved in this.Yes!
I do think, however, that this is already being done at the back of the minds of every person in their respective fields and it always has been.I agree, or certainly like to believe this is the case.
Originally posted by Mindship
Yes, because there is correlation; plus to define consciousness in purely empirical terms is to miss the point. Attention should be on attention, not on the corresponding hardware.
It is a causative relationship. Tumors can have effects on people's conscious experience that are remedied once the tumor is removed. Drugs work on the fact that they modify the neural chemical mechanisms involved in some facets of consciousness.
The main problem with any of these ambiguous disembodied ideas of consciousness is that they have absolutely no explanatory power. What does the idea of "consciousness" really explain that isn't explained through neurology?
EDIT: Funny you should mention attention, as I spent my day in the lab today attempting to understand the multiple mechanism of attention that are operating in just visual search tasks. Attention has many neurological correlates, and there are predictable deficits in attention in patients who have brain lesions in these regions.
Originally posted by inimalistThat's a leap of reductionistic faith, IMO. There is no empirical proof which, strictly speaking, supports causation over correlation.
It is a causative relationship.
The main problem with any of these ambiguous disembodied ideas of consciousness is that they have absolutely no explanatory power. What does the idea of "consciousness" really explain that isn't explained through neurology?From an empirical/neurologic POV, consciousness may well be superfluous. But (and this may be where our worldviews part), I think human beings are more than just the sum of their cellular parts. Eg, if you lose a loved one, is it your preference that I just give you a drug to make the pain go away? Wouldn't you prefer to be addressed as a grieving individual (in addition to whatever medication might be necessary)?
EDIT: Funny you should mention attention, as I spent my day in the lab today attempting to understand the multiple mechanism of attention that are operating in just visual search tasks. Attention has many neurological correlates, and there are predictable deficits in attention in patients who have brain lesions in these regions.I'd be very curious as to the neurological correlates of attention trained on itself.
Please understand: I hold great respect for the hard sciences, and my tendency to believe that there is something more to the world than matter leads by a very slim margin due to practical benefits, as well as a fascination with possibilities.
Originally posted by Mindship
I'm responding to this first because this is feedback I rarely get, and I find it valuable. Thanks for your directness, and please know my intent is purely to suggest food for thought. But if I can learn to express it better, then all the better.
I spoke to a philosophy professor-who I work out with at a gym-about how I addressed this. I did not approach this correctly. I should have just offered a suggestion. My suggestion should have been as follows:
"Just for the sake of good conversation, can I ask that jargon be limited so others can participate with us? This is a suggestion only and I have the nicest of intentions in suggesting this."
I apologize for how it came out. Indeed, you are a very refreshing individual and I enjoy your posts.
Sometimes the obvious gets missed. Also, I hope that by starting off stating the obvious, there'll be less misunderstanding down the road.
This is a great conversation method especially if the thought being presented may not be followed very well or agreed with. I guess I am meaning that you stated the obvious in a very unobvious way by dropping jargon. Again, it's because you're educated.
I'm trying to avoid words loaded with connotation ("God," "spirit," etc). But yes, I am referring to things we usually save that kind of language for, especially taken from a "mystical" POV.
Agreed. I try to avoid that type of language as well unless that is the topic. The reason is simple; SOMEONE-SOMEWHERE might get offended. Again, it was the jargon that got in the way and I wanted to clarify that you were alluding to a form of deity etc.
You see what I mean by others not being able to participate in the conversation? It's only you, inimalist, and myself posting. I am not saying we are better than everyone else, because we're not; most posters here have great ideas and topic contributions.
Originally posted by Mindship
That's a leap of reductionistic faith, IMO. There is no empirical proof which, strictly speaking, supports causation over correlation.
-Visual form Agnosia: There is a system in the brain known as the limbic system that contains the thalmus, hypothalmus and the amygdala. The amygdala is specifically responsible for adding emotional content to stimuli, whereas the thalmus is heavily involved in integrating sensory information that is processed by various systems and sending it to the cortex for conscious experience. When a person has a physical lesion between the thalmus and the amygdala, as is seen in visual form agnosia, there are unable attach emotional content to visual information. So, in the temporal lobe, there is a region known as the fusiform face area. When you see a face, it becomes active. So, when someone with agnosia sees a face of someone they know, the realize that the person looks exactly like the person they know (as there is no damage to the temporal lobe and this processing is unaltered) but they are convinced that the person is an impostor or a robot or something, since they are unable to attach the emotional content to the stimuli before it becomes conscious. There has even been a of a person killing a parent convinced that they were a robot. The saddest part being that since they still would have been unable to comprehend the emotional attachment to the victim, they probably don't think they killed a human.
-Tumors and damage in areas of the brain known to be responsible for certain types of behaviour cause deficiencies in those areas. In the case of tumors, once removed behaviour usually returns to normal.
-People who have had their corpus collosum (the corpus collosum and its surrounding neurons are responsible for almost all of the cross cortical communication in the brain) cut as a treatment for epilepsy are unable to, in very controlled conditions, integrate the information on the right side of the brain with their conscious report of the world, as this occurs on the left side of the brain.
-Many thought and mood disorders (and other neural disorders) are seen as abnormal activation of neurons in various parts of the brain, others associated with specific neuralchemical dysfunction. In the cases where recovery occurs, the disorders that appear in fMRI (a way to measure neural activation) show activity that has returned to normal, and the cases that are treated with chemicals show a cause and effect relationship that has been shown to be far superior to the placebo effect. This always comes up when people talk about brain disorders, and I will go on record as saying that I do believe people are over diagnosed for chemical treatment. However, one of the hidden problems of this is that now that people think that kids are over medicated, the people who do have legitimate neurological disorders may miss out on the treatment that could potentially help them.
-Blindsight: So, as I was saying before about the visual system and how all of the information is processed before the thalmus sends it to the cortex for conscious processing and perception, if the connection between the thalmus and the cortex is cut, a condition known as blindsight occurs. In this, the patient cannot consciously see anything in the area corresponding to what was injured (some damage only removes parts of the visual field). But in controlled studies they are able to report line movement and other such stimuli, or they are able to reach for objects in the area of their "blindness". Their brain is aware of things that their conscious report of the world is not because the connection between the two has been physically severed in the brain.
And:
A cross-order integration hypothesis for the neural correlate of consciousness.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17509895&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Synchronization of neural activity across cortical areas correlates with conscious perception.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17360907&ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Neural Signatures of Body Ownership: A Sensory Network for Bodily Self-Consciousness.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17138596&ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Similar frontal and distinct posterior cortical regions mediate visual and auditory perceptual awareness.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=16699081&ordinalpos=6&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
I can PM you full articles on tuesday (Canada day is monday, national holiday) and I have a CD with a bunch more on them at home. I will say up front that there are SOME theories that try to use quantum mechanics to get over the neuroconsciousness thing, but it is not heavily supported by people who actually work with brains. Search for "Hard Problem" on pub med and lots will come up from all sides I'm sure.
Originally posted by Mindship
From an empirical/neurologic POV, consciousness may well be superfluous. But (and this may be where our worldviews part), I think human beings are more than just the sum of their cellular parts. Eg, if you lose a loved one, is it your preference that I just give you a drug to make the pain go away? Wouldn't you prefer to be addressed as a grieving individual (in addition to whatever medication might be necessary)?
The thing is, regardless of what I know about consciousness and the brain, I am still going to experience the world as though I am a ghost in the shell, that is what has, for pretty obvious reasons, been evolutionarily useful for us. And when you look at modern cognitive and perceptive sciences, we have found that we are only just aware enough of the world around us for our monkey brain to think we are a ghost in the shell.
however the argument from benefit is a logical fallacy. Regardless of how unenchanting the scientific facts about the universe are, they are still the way it is. I was talking to a friend last night about this kind of stuff, and he holds a very metaphysical view of consciousness and reality. I realized that the stories he has to tell about his reality are much more interesting than what I would have to say on the matter. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do and I am enamored with science and the brain and everything in it, but like, "I really don't think consciousness exists" is fairly anti-climactic.
Originally posted by Mindship
I'd be very curious as to the neurological correlates of attention trained on itself.
Thats where stuff becomes more difficult. I'm honestly very unfamiliar with attention to more abstract things. What I deal with is vision, which itself is at lest 3 attentional systems which are all affected by top down expectations that are all but magical to me at this point. Whats happening in the brain when we look at a bunch of red and green lines and try to find a horizontal red one I could give you a fairly good idea of, whats going on when we pay attention to attention, not so much. My guess is extristrirate inhibition though 😉
Originally posted by Mindship
Please understand: I hold great respect for the hard sciences, and my tendency to believe that there is something more to the world than matter leads by a very slim margin due to practical benefits, as well as a fascination with possibilities.
Don't let my fervor mislead you, I have a lot of respect for what you have to say and how you feel about the world. Like I said above, regardless of whether I think I am a conscious being or not, I have to deal with the fact that it sure appears that way.
Originally posted by inimalist
- [b]Visual form Agnosia: [/B]
however the argument from benefit is a logical fallacy.I should be more clear what I mean by benefit. When discussing consciousness in its broadest sense, from a mystical POV one inevitably broaches the subject of "higher" consciousness and "God." Since no one really, truly knows whether or not "God" exists (for the moment leaving the definition of "God" open), I choose to assume "He" does because this gives me an expanded map of reality, a larger explanatory framework, one which includes but is not limited to a purely empirical POV. Am I deluding myself? Maybe. Maybe not. In the interim, I enjoy this expanded map. It's also been my experience (in working with people who have experienced trauma) that belief in a "higher power" is a tremendous source of hope and strength, of healing and comfort. Placebo? Again, maybe, maybe not.
Thats where stuff becomes more difficult. I'm honestly very unfamiliar with attention to more abstract things. What I deal with is vision, which itself is at lest 3 attentional systems which are all affected by top down expectations that are all but magical to me at this point. Whats happening in the brain when we look at a bunch of red and green lines and try to find a horizontal red one I could give you a fairly good idea of, whats going on when we pay attention to attention, not so much. My guess is extristrirate inhibition though 😉Interesting. Meditation often involves focusing on cognitive-visual impressions.
Don't let my fervor mislead you, I have a lot of respect for what you have to say and how you feel about the world. Like I said above, regardless of whether I think I am a conscious being or not, I have to deal with the fact that it sure appears that way.Yes, it sure does.
Originally posted by inimalist
There has even been a of a person killing a parent convinced that they were a robot. The saddest part being that since they still would have been unable to comprehend the emotional attachment to the victim, they probably don't think they killed a human.
Amusing tone in the middle of that piece.
Originally posted by Newjak
I know but the question is how far up in science do we get before we no longer are sure of what we know?
when we run out of ways to test things, when we stop gentting results that are beyond reasonable doubt and factual basis.
we define what we learn from what we can test and we know by what we can prove. anything we cannot prove we dismiss all too easily.
its in any organisms nature to be curious, humans even more so.
Originally posted by inimalistExactly. Hoo-Haa and Jibber Jabber. 313
my experience is that most neurology students or bio/cognitive psyche students are reductionist and do not look at consciousness as one of the most fundamental aspects of science, if even human behaviour. (quantum physicists 🙄 )My experience is more with students who get into research rather than those who do not, so that could really slant my exposure. Consciousness is more a term associated with new age, not science.