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BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
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Subject: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 11:56 AM It seems that more research has produced various new data which could give us insight into Out of Body experiences The brain seems to, at least in SOME tests, resolve conflicting information by combining the streams of data into a recognizable, it incorrect, pattern. Sorta what I have expected for quite awhile. (Yes, I know...it doesn't 'prove' that all experiences are like this....but it is easier to explain than positing metaphysical realms..etc..hence my cute thread title..) |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 07 - 12:05 PM This will soon become an "advenure ride" at a theme park near you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 12:06 PM *grin*...now you've given away the plan, Don. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 12:09 PM This is kind of like claiming that because a projectable film was made of the Hindenberg catastrophe, and it was found that running said film through a projector recreated the experience in some way, that the original catastrophe was really just a film. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 01:07 PM no, Amos...that is not a good metaphor. We know exactly how the film was created, and running it gives exactly the same experience every time. The point is that we do NOT know how original OOB experiences happen, only that 'similar' experiences can be controlled artifically...which may give us some insight. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:03 PM Sure. But the presumption offered is that the stimulation of brain segments is similarly replicable. (And, let me offer as an aside that we do NOT know how the creative flow behind good scripts happens, either). Tweak the brain, get an OOB. Run the projector, and "Oh, the humanity!". A sentiment which I echo here. Besides -- the two points not covered in this proposition are (a) that the brain tweaking actually does bring about a release of being and cause some sort of OOB incident. And (b) that the brain tweaking is a poor replica of such an actual experience, caused by electrical re-stimulaton of some memory lode. Finally, you are forgetting or ignoring the tennis shoe. The tennis shoe is just one example of the white crow which discredits the pure mechanistic model of exterior adventures. It was observed and described in detail by a hospital patient who saw it (while out of her body) resting on a ledge outside the building, between windows, in such a position that she could not have possibly seen it from any location in the building she had been to. When her report was being considered, one of the officials of the hospital (if I recall the story rightly) went and inspected the ledge from the roof, and found the hidden sneaker in exactly the configuration which had been described. I linked to this report in one of the endless discussions we have had on this wearisome topic in the past, but I do not recall the thread name. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." --Hamlet (I, v, 166-167) A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:19 PM Amos, the tennis shoe incident, if factual, doesn't conflict with the article and the experiment. There's no conflict. Why? Because the article rather clearly indicates that this may shed light on some OOBs. No claim is made that it explains everything. I think it's really rather modestly advanced. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:22 PM Well, Dave, okay -- I'm all for modest advancement. I was just nipping Bill in the shin. I knew the minute that piece came out I'd be seeing it here under his postership. It was, like, even, pre-cognition, ya know what I mean? Weird, huh?!!!! :D A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Sorcha Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:26 PM LOL! I had one, just one. Wasn't trying at all. Trying to go to sleep and I heard a loud POP! And I seemed to be OOB....above myself on the bed as it were. Tried for years to do it again; meditation, calm, story telling to self, etc (NO drugs). Never happened again. I gave up. Frankly, it scared the shit out of me! |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:50 PM durn, Amos...how about some POST-cognition fer a change...*grin* and as Dave points out, and I indicated, we/they are a long way from any definitive answers...but it sure is a small point for MY predictions. I wish I was gonna live 127.83 more years...oh, right...I may. White crows and all that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 02:54 PM One of the research papers cited in this paper (link above) is entitled "Video Ergo Sum", which I think is unintentionally very insightful. In all the discussions and other adventures I have had concerning the nature of human awareness and its seat and source, the common denominator is that apparently non-material ability which takes on viewpoints, and by assuming them, perceives therefrom. I suspect, on this basis, that the experiements described were essentially inducing the assumption of an OOB viewpoint. But doing it by confusing perceptics, on a impulsive or reactive-response basis, rather than as an elective ability. I am far from persuaded that chemicals in strings and nets or organization can create an actual point of view from which perception occurs. And even further from persuaded that they can bring about perception itself. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 07 - 03:09 PM The parapsychological explaination involved information theory and that at death the information of a person still exists in a space time frame for a short time and is percieved as an experience outside the body. I'll take the Occam explanation even if it is overly simplistic. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 03:35 PM "the original catastrophe was really just a film." Ever see "Plan 9 From Outer Space"? |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 03:36 PM "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything" That came from a guy who believed in God. Anyone want to comment? |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 03:52 PM Deep, Peace!! :D The INVERSE of this principle is that one should not suppress or exclude phenomena which are known to exist merely because the explanation has no way to account for them. Adhering to this inverse is ethically just as compulsory, in the quest for understanding, as adhering to the original is in the quest for elegance and its concomitant convenience. The molecular model of brain action does not have any way to account for the qualitative leap between stimuli and perception. Or, between perception and understanding. Sure, it can account for rods-cone stimulation, but where does that become perception? And how come some perception occurs with no such stimulaton apparent? A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 04:03 PM Occam simply went with the prevailing thought of his time. What's come to be called Occam's Razor was applied to philosophical thought before he was born. I guess he didn't apply it to his own thinking. Substantially, I don't see that O's R is a real help in terms of 'explaining' things. At some juncture, things just ain't that simple. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 27 Aug 07 - 04:45 PM No, Occam's Razor doesn't really explain anything. It chiefly gives guidance as to adopting an explanation which may be put forward. Or better, guidance on which (if any) of multiple explanations that may be offered it is most reasonable to adopt. And it's not absolute, though usually highly persuasive, even on those things. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 05:17 PM Occam's Razor is more a guide as to when to be wary, rather than a way to specifically discredit a theory. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 05:36 PM "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything" "That came from a guy who believed in God. Anyone want to comment?" sure...at that time, God was a given...I am not at all surprised to see a logical rule applied to everything except God in Occam's time. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 05:39 PM Yeah. Especially when doing so could result in one being separated from one's own head . . . . |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 05:55 PM . . . no doubt cut off by the Razor itself. (-: |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: John Hardly Date: 27 Aug 07 - 05:56 PM ...or at the very least, a serious shaving incident. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 06:13 PM Giordano Bruno learned the hard way to be careful what he said..... |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: dick greenhaus Date: 27 Aug 07 - 06:19 PM Anyone recall Hanlon's Razor? "Thou shall not attribute any couses to explain a phenomenon when simple stupidity will suffice" |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: M.Ted Date: 27 Aug 07 - 06:22 PM Whatever it may or may not explain, the research is a great help to people who cut their own hair. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 07:10 PM Why....*I* cut my own hair...I have for 29 years now, and will do so until I die...unless I see someone open "Occam's Barbershop"...I wouldn't be able to resist. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 27 Aug 07 - 07:26 PM "The molecular model of brain action does not have any way to account for the qualitative leap between stimuli and perception." One simple phrase 'explains' it - 'emergent behaviour' - of course that may also just 'explain it away'.... :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 07:32 PM That's a nice portfolio phrase, but it simply runs the loop around one more time, IMHO. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: John O'L Date: 27 Aug 07 - 08:49 PM It seems to me that the simplest explanation for alleged OOB experiences would be an actual OOB experience. "Using virtual reality goggles to mix up the sensory signals reaching the brain, scientists have induced out-of-body-like experiences in healthy people..." Did someone mention unncecesary entities? |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 09:24 PM I'm with John O'L. The simple single postulate of beingness not glued in to the material network of the individual body solves multiple complexities with a single postulate. Leaving such a postulate out of the equation invokes a great deal of complexity to make the material model stretch around known phenomena. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Donuel Date: 27 Aug 07 - 09:37 PM Amos did you just say something in philosophical 'parodese' or do you really adhere to a reductionist view of consciousness/perception. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Consciousness has an Occum answer as simple as being the overview of all perceptions. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 09:44 PM Reductionist? Hardly. The issue is not the definition of the word. It is the desire to force it into a biological/mechnical model out of intellectually lazy inertial thinking, with concomitant rationalizations resorting to complexity as an argument. That doesn't mean I am a reductionist, unless I misunderstand your use of the word. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: M.Ted Date: 27 Aug 07 - 10:19 PM The reason that BillD and other "self-tonsured" folk would find the research useful was that, rather than trying to explain or account for Out-of-Body Experiences, it's intent was to figure out why we perceived our sense of self to be where we do. And they discovered that, by placing the eyes behind the perceivers head, they relocated the sense-of-self to that place. I am not sure that this is a great revelation, but, as I said, it would be helpful to those who cut their own hair if they could see their head from behind. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: GUEST,Peace Date: 27 Aug 07 - 10:31 PM It is generally accepted that we use about 10% of our brain. The question is then "What's the other 90% doing?" |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 27 Aug 07 - 10:34 PM "generally accepted that we use about 10% of our brain" Well we really have no idea, cause we only THINK we know what that 10% is doing - the other 90% is supporting that 10% - just ask any Military Logistican... |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 27 Aug 07 - 10:37 PM ???"... the desire to force it into a biological/mechnical model... " It would seem to some...(yes, like me)..that there is a strong desire in certain folks to force it OUT of a "biological/mechnical model" and create other models in realms that are even hard to describe clearly. We can do things like measure brain activity during OOBs etc...and we do know that these recent studies offer interesting correlations. It just seems as if the evidence suggesting subjective bias points more towards those making claims FOR OOBs. It is a delicate matter to suggest to those having OOBs, that their seemingly clear, intense experiences 'may' have bio-mechanical causes...but that IS one possibility. I just saw a documentary on Harry Houdini, who spent the last years of his life exposing intentionally fraudulent and deceptive claims about mystic experiences. *IF* even honest & sincere claims suffer from some of the same flaws, we should know about it....BOTH sides of the debate should be studied as fairly as possible, and at some point...perhaps....something close to a consensus may be realized. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 27 Aug 07 - 11:43 PM Bill: The spirit-body dualism has been the favored model for explaining the discrepancies between thought and biological systems since the days of Descartes in the West and the days of Gautama in the East. It is the notion that the atomic/molecular model must account for thought that it is the breech-birth here, intellectually, and the hard sell. Measuring brain activity during OOB or dreaming tells you know more about the seat and ownership of consciousness than does the measure of CFM of water into an estate tell you who is bathing whom. The metric has no connection with the substantive, experiential moment. Only the Who of the house can do that. I am oversimplifying. But then, so are you. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 28 Aug 07 - 12:04 AM And let's not forget 'thought'. I tend to the notion that thought becomes a different 'entity'. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Grab Date: 28 Aug 07 - 09:05 AM It is generally accepted that we use about 10% of our brain. Only by people who've heard the same urban legend. It's untrue. Even people who believe that urban legend are still using 100% of their brain 100% of the time. Whether it's helping them is open to question, though. ;-) As Foolestroupe says, think of the military model. Only 10% of the army might be firing their weapons at any one time, but it doesn't mean the other 90% are doing nothing. In the brain, there are a load of areas, each of which has its own speciality (vision, balance, language, image recognition, personality, etc.) and they all work together to make us do what we do. As with the military model, if we override orders or reports from one area to another, we're going to get odd results. And as with the military model, if some specialist parts of the brain are disabled (stroke or injury, for example), other parts can often take over, albeit not doing as good a job because they've not had the training. The simple single postulate of beingness not glued in to the material network of the individual body solves multiple complexities with a single postulate. Trouble is that it doesn't solve anything. By saying that the "soul" (or "seat of consciousness" or "essence" or whatever) is not physically manifest, it's inherently invisible to any sensor or any experiment. And hence it's not provable or disprovable - it can only be an article of faith. That's where Occam's Razor fails, because an article of faith is simple ("I believe it therefore it is so"), where a physical explanation may be very complex. For example, think gravity. For years, the prevailing wisdom on the sun and moon was that they were carried by gods. Nice simple explanation, and no-one has to wonder why they stay up there, because gods can do anything they want. Then we got the model of a clockwork universe with the sun, moon and planets mounted on spinning glass balls. Still fairly simple, but more complex than gods. Then came Newton and gravitational attraction, and the complexity went right up. Then we got Einstein, and the complexity went up a whole lot more. And even that isn't explaining everything. My point is that "forcing" stuff into a biological/mechanical framework *isn't* intellectually lazy. It might not be right, but it sets up further ideas that can be tried to see whether they make a closer fit to what's observed. If you suppose body/spirit duality though, the spirit by definition can *never* be observed. In other words, putting forward body/spirit duality is the *failure* to apply intellect, because it presents an intellectual dead end where the answer is "just because". To adopt the bath analogy, CFM flow of water down a river and good fluid dynamics models will not tell you how it feels to float down the river in a barrel - but it *will* let someone on the bank describe exactly how the barrel will travel and predict every movement felt by the person in the barrel before it happens. The fact that the person on the bank won't be feeling what the person in the barrel is feeling doesn't make the models wrong. Meantime the biological/mechanical model has been working onwards. Starting from the belief that the human body is just meat, doctors and surgeons have successfully figured out most of how the body works in terms of blood and muscles and how to fix a lot of what goes wrong and is badly put together, in defiance of earlier beliefs that the body was divinely constructed and that life and death were in the hands of the gods. It's taken about 400 years to get this far. Once you know how the mechanisms of the body work, nerves and the brain are clearly next on the list. Currently these experiments are often at the stage of metaphorically throwing people down the river in barrels and tracking the barrels to figure out how the river flows, but it's putting up some interesting results already, like this one. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: John Hardly Date: 28 Aug 07 - 10:02 AM I met a guy once who was using 11% of his brain. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 28 Aug 07 - 10:05 AM Wonderful post, Graham! Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 28 Aug 07 - 10:12 AM Graham: I am not talking about faith. I am talking about what happens when an individual perceives. There's no faith about that. Like many things accpeted on the basis of probable rightness it is not ultimately disprovable for a number of reasons, one being the extraordinary capacity of the mind for plasticity and self-imposed blanking of non-conforming data. The notion that something that is not material MUST be taken on faith ignores a great deal of experiential evidence from every region where humans strive to live. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 28 Aug 07 - 11:54 AM Graham...I have tried for years to say clearly what you just managed to express. I think I will copy this part into my collection of quotes that pop up on my screen occasionally. " ... putting forward body/spirit duality is the *failure* to apply intellect, because it presents an intellectual dead end where the answer is "just because"." I really don't know what to say to those who accept and defend 'body/spirit duality' based on the idea that their own subjective interpretation of their own experience trumps any other possible explanation. "just because" ranks right up there with "just wait until it happens to you!" I really can't see why MY having an 'interesting' intense experience would either prove or disprove any theories. Gradually, we ARE "throwing people down the river in barrels and tracking the barrels to figure out how the river flows,", and who knows what better tracking devices will show in the future? I suspect it will be more than we got from "just because". |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Amos Date: 28 Aug 07 - 12:22 PM Well, I agree it is an elegant phrasing of the point. But the point itself is wholly bogus, which kind of dulls the shine. It is not an intellectual dead-end to say that structural model do not account for observed functional events. In fact it is an opening of intellectual doors. I'll tell you what is an intellectual dead end, though: trying to cram creative power, aesthetic awareness, transpersonal consciousness and other intensely "spiritual" (for want of a better word)data sets into an arbitrary mechanistic--or at least materialistic--model, without noticing the glaring qualitative mismatches I have spoken of up thread. I am coming to the conclusion, however, that the rule of "if it doesn't fit the model, it is not data, and if it IS data, it damn well WILL fit the model" is not going to relax on this thread, and similar ones we have had before. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:20 PM Amos said: I am coming to the conclusion, however, that the rule of "if it doesn't fit the model, it is not data, and if it IS data, it damn well WILL fit the model" is not going to relax on this thread, and similar ones we have had before. Amos, the protocol of science is that, "If the data do not fit the model, the model may need adjusting, or the data may need refining or expansion." One does not throw the Leaving my rather fanciful metaphor, what we are involved with here, at least in part, is the question of "What constitutes data?" The great tradition of a number of centuries, which has served the cause of knowledge admirably, is that data must be measurable and reproducible--which is to say, verifiable. Hearsay reports of individual personal experiences are extremely difficult to investigate and verify. If they fly in the face of the model, they are indeed not data. Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Bill D Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:22 PM ...and if it is data that can only be examined once, by one person, by subjective means, it is 'truth'. I do 'spect yore 'bout right there, Amos. The standoff will continue as long as there is no agreement about even what counts AS 'data'. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Grab Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:49 PM Amos, you're right, the rule is definitely that "if it IS data, it damn well WILL fit the model" - in the same way that Newton and Einstein reinvented the models of the solar system to fit data. As the joke goes, "Scientists make the worst managers; give them facts and the buggers change their minds." ;-) You mentioned experiential evidence, using people's experiences as evidence. While people are going through these causes and effects fairly systematically, it's almost inevitable that sooner or later, something that previously was explained as "just because" will find a physical explanation. (Whether this is a "just because" from the medical side where they didn't know or claimed to know but were wrong, or a "just because" from the religious/spiritual side who claim it's a spiritual manifestation or a message from God, it's immaterial.) It's happened in every other area so far, which is why some religious folk get riled up about the "God of the Gaps". So it'd be pretty unlikely for this not to happen when people investigate brain functions. In this case for example, they've found one way of causing a brain malfunction which simulates an out-of-body experience. For another example, there's also interesting things they can do with electromagnets which makes it feel like being on a roller coaster without ever moving (strictly that's affecting the inner ear, but it's affecting perception of reality). In other words, we're putting people in barrels, throwing them down that river, and tracking their reported experience against the initial conditions. We might not be able to see all of their progress (perhaps the river vanishes down a cave) but we can use their reported experiences and what little we can see to try and figure it out. And if we drop a load of people in at the same point at the same speed, and they all report the same experiences at the end, we can be fairly sure we've got it nailed. Sure, this doesn't mean it's the *only* way that things could happen - in the same way as the existence of gravity doesn't discount the existence of a god personally moving planets around or of telekinesis. But at this point Occam's Razor *does* kick in - we have a known mechanism already, so do we need a further explanation which can never be tested? If this mechanism doesn't work for all cases then clearly there *is* a further explanation needed, but if you want to suggest a further explanation then the first requirement is to show where the proposed mechanism breaks down. Of course, anyone experiencing this will say "but it didn't feel like my brain malfunctioned". Which asks the question of what *does* a malfunctioning brain feel like, and also hits the problem of whether people will admit to this being a possible cause. Which I know is a bit of a catch-22, but the problem with your qualitative experiences is that there's only one observer, and that observer is anything but dispassionate about the results. Graham. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Uncle_DaveO Date: 28 Aug 07 - 02:13 PM Graham said, in part: the rule is definitely that "if it IS data, it damn well WILL fit the model" - in the same way that Newton and Einstein reinvented the models of the solar system to fit data. Close, Graham, but not quite. Instead, the rule is definitely, if it IS data, the model damn well WILL be made to fit it (at least potentially, if the data stand up to investigation.) Dave Oesterreich |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: Peace Date: 28 Aug 07 - 03:09 PM "In the brain, there are a load of areas, each of which has its own speciality (vision, balance, language, image recognition, personality, etc.) and they all work together to make us do what we do." True Grab, but then that may not be all the other 90% is doing. |
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Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain From: bobad Date: 28 Aug 07 - 03:36 PM We all know, at least in the male brain, what that other 90% is doing, don't we? |
