BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 04:09 PM

bobad, that's funny, but what you're talking about is, I believe, the province of the "old brain", the "reptile brain", the amydala, a very small part of the brainosphere, to coin an expression.

Sorry to be a spoilsport.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 07:13 PM

Mrrzy said it, in another thread, a while back:

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 12:20 AM

There is no "just because" in my model, and I submit that asserting that there is, as a reason for dismissing the argument, is either lazy, or dishonest, or because I have not made my point very well...probably the latter.

The machinery of mechanism-based knowing is well established and very successful. But if you use the machinery to address the question of awareness and thought you are predestined to discover mechanism as your explanation. You have painted yourself into a self-fulfilling corner.

But in doing so you have to throw out a great deal of data both anecdotal and generally observable, including the experiences you yourself have had of the world. Subtracting yourself from the viewpoint observing the data is a nice, somewhat nihilistic idea, in theory, but it never happens in fact.

Furthermore, the most developed model of brain-based thught can barely come up with a crude approximation of how patterns and emerging echelons of patterns form in the brain, and can not bridge from these complex analyses to an explanation of the most everyday moment of understanding, or compassion, let alone inspiration.

The whole thing is a cold not predicated on the dubious premise of "objectivity" and separable events and objects, serial time and uniform space. Even the physicists are giving up on these grand Newtonian postulates, but the thing is they have proven far too useful to throw out.

And that's as it should be.. But let us not fool ourselves into confusing such balderdash with the ground truth.

Anyway, it is clear I am speaking Greek in a French whorehouse here, so I think I will go down to the river and jump the next caique heading back to Piraeus....



A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Peace
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 12:35 AM

"The human heart knows things the eyes don't see, and feels things the mind cannot understand."

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Grab
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 04:43 AM

Yes Dave, that was what I was trying to get at - if the data doesn't fit, figure out a better model where the data *does* fit.

Amos, I don't entirely rule out the existence of duality. I'm simply asserting that it's something we have no way of proving or disproving, which makes it practically useless. In fact it's worse than useless, because an experience might be ascribed to the "spirit" as an explanation when a physical explanation is actually correct. But because the "spirit" explanation exists, it discourages anyone looking for another explanation - after all, we already have one, right? That's how we get to the "just because" point. Actually it's not "just because", it's that it's "spirit", but for all practical purposes the two are the same - it's saying "spirits just do that" and that's the explanation.

If people figure out every part of the brain and find that there *is* some kind of control from outside, and there's no mechanism for that control, I'm good with Holmes's "you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth". I personally suspect that won't be the case, but it's not something anyone will know for a while yet.

The problem is though that if you want to figure out and fix depression, schizophrenia, chronic pain and all the other woes that a malfunctioning brain can dump on you, you'll need more than "it's the spirit". The most basic assumption to be made is that it *might* be possible to fix them, and since the spirit is untouchable, that *might* put these down to physical problems (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to fix them). It seems obvious, but it's a point which eluded all religions until very recently - they assumed that it *was* the spirit, so the person was irrevocably damned (or holy, depending on what attributes the religion ascribed to their behaviour), with appropriate consequences for them and for society as a whole.

And once you start looking, you may find that certain manifestations are reproducable by particular malfunctions. This doesn't require nihilism to accept it, simply an awareness that our brains can be fooled and that what we perceive is not necessarily the truth. Think optical illusions - if you take a pair of straight lines and draw concentric circles over the top of them, the lines seem to be bent, but all you've actually done is fooled your brain's perception of them. In other words, you've revealed a malfunction in the brain. And if you accept the possibility of a malfunctioning brain for vision, why not for other illusions, including spiritual experiences? I don't say it's the only game in town, but if someone finds a brain malfunction which reliably causes this, it's not too big a leap to suppose that people in the past who've experienced this were having that brain malfunction and not a spiritual experience.

The classical explanation of perception is a "dusty mirror". I think a better explanation is a warped fairground mirror. A whole bunch of people might look into the mirror and say "hey, we all have really short legs and deformed heads". They're all experiencing the same thing, but it doesn't make it true.

Graham.

PS. Thanks, Dave and Bill.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Grab
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 09:27 AM

Sorry: "description", not "explanation" in the last para.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 10:29 AM

Amos, I don't entirely rule out the existence of duality. I'm simply asserting that it's something we have no way of proving or disproving, which makes it practically useless. In fact it's worse than useless, because an experience might be ascribed to the "spirit" as an explanation when a physical explanation is actually correct. But because the "spirit" explanation exists, it discourages anyone looking for another explanation - after all, we already have one, right? That's how we get to the "just because" point. Actually it's not "just because", it's that it's "spirit", but for all practical purposes the two are the same - it's saying "spirits just do that" and that's the explanation.

The liability of electing one cause over the other incorrectly is a two way street. The strong conviction in the fundamental of matter and structure as the provenance of thought is just as corrosive as the strong conviction that consciousness is the ground that matter appears on, as a transient figure. It is not the case that the relationship between mind, spirit and body cannot be tested in general. But it is difficult to test it by physical lab standards which is frustrating to some who feel such standards are identical to "good scientific process". But the two are not identical by any means.

As for saying "spirits just do that" I would disdain such a claim as an argument in explaining phenomena just as roundly as I would reject the argument "It's complexity that acts that way, and the universe is complexity from there on down!" Because I insist that the phenomenology of consciousness be fully taken into account does not mean that it should be considered a deus ex machine for explaining things. That would be silly.

There is of course the difficult fact that life makes decisions and generates intent. Good ole molecules behave much more tractably. They don't jump up and postulate new space or generate insight just when you are writing up your lab report. Consciousness does do such things, and that is one reason why well-trained physical scientists don't like to mess with it. I can sympathize that they feel they have "real" (meaning material-universe) work to do and wnat to get on with it.

But if serious scientific work were to be done in a framework that allowed for such phenomena, and ways were devised to at least measure them in a general way, or otherwise generate "data" from them, I think we could get a lot further in the fields where it is important, such as psychology and medicine. And if we got a lot further in them, the ripples of betterment in the madhouse of Western culture would probably be valuable, too.

The problem is though that if you want to figure out and fix depression, schizophrenia, chronic pain and all the other woes that a malfunctioning brain can dump on you, you'll need more than "it's the spirit". The most basic assumption to be made is that it *might* be possible to fix them, and since the spirit is untouchable, that *might* put these down to physical problems (otherwise it wouldn't be possible to fix them).

There's no reason spiritually oriented remedies cannot be brought to bear on ordinary mental conditions, and to the degree they were effective, they would militate for the truth of the model. In a sense all Rogerian, client-centered therapy is spiritual, in that it works on the premise that thought and communication is able to remediate the psychosomatic and thus change structure. This is a large subject and won't be covered in these few sentences. But I would urge you to consider the consequences, for example, of a person reporting that they left their body, wandered about for a while, and returned to it.

If they are told by authorities such as doctors that this was an illusion, and that in fact they are not a spiritual viewpoint but are just a biochemical cluster of great complexity, the strong possibility exists that their morale will sag dramatically and the spark of creative insigth they were beginning to discover wihtin themselves will snuff out. If it does not make sense to you why this would occur, spend some time observing children who are heavily invalidated by their peers or parents.

Anyway, I don't mean to wend on intemrinably, please forgive the length of this post. I could sum it up by referring to the dot and the line story. If you run into a three-dimensional post in a two-dimensional world, arguing that it cannot exist is probably your least profitable course.

A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 10:35 AM

Amos said, in part:

But if serious scientific work were to be done in a framework that allowed for such phenomena, and ways were devised to at least measure them in a general way, or otherwise generate "data" from them, I think we could get a lot further in the fields where it is important, such as psychology and medicine.

True, but it reminds me of the following:

If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs.

IF!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Grab
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 12:46 PM

Good ole molecules actually *do* do some weird stuff and screw up your nicely-planned tests! Read NewScientist or some other science-related magazine and see how often people are surprised by what happens! :-)

As far as investigating the phenomena that constitute consciousness, that's what all the barrels-down-rivers experiments are looking at. The problem is that since consciousness covers so many areas, the only structured way to hit the problem is to deal with each area in turn. And from there, the only way to investigate each area is to find what it does under a load of different situations, including ones where it gets bogus data or carries out bogus operations (either by injecting bogus data into a healthy brain, or with the assistance of someone whose brain naturally produces bogus data or operates incorrectly). Hence the experiment in the original post.

Physical phenomena aren't the only way of tackling consciousness, of course - sometimes the river goes through that metaphorical cave, in which case the challenge is to get lots of people to do the same thing and see what works. I do tai chi, and I'm well aware of the theories about chi "flow". I'm also aware that they're no more than exercises in visualisation to promote relaxation and hence faster movement, or exercises in muscular mechanics to give a more powerful/flexible/resistant body position, but it doesn't mean they don't work for me or other people. Our tai chi instructor is also using techniques from neuro-linguistic programming, which are scientifically-derived procedures from studying how consciousness responds to inputs. There have been (and will be again) studies in using hypnosis and visualisation to control pain from real bodily damage such as in surgery. Not to mention the placebo effect, which is the reason for controlled trials.

If you want to call this aspect of investigation "spiritual" then OK. The problem is though that the notion of duality requires a dividing wall - *this* is physical, *that* is spiritual. So far, all attempts to build such a wall have resulted in the train of physical science ploughing straight through it. Whilst we might not yet be able to do any controlling in many cases, the various scans possible on brain function make it clear when things are/aren't happening, giving definite physical input and output. So I'm afraid I can't see how your attempt to build this wall will be invulnerable to the oncoming train.

Certainly I don't see that your idea about doctors "invalidating" people who've had OOB experiences are a reason. What "creative insight" could you see arising from this? Sure, all medical staff are trained to be positive around patients, because a positive mental attitude helps recovery. But beyond that, what purpose does sustaining the illusion serve?

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 01:23 PM

I'm sure you have The Holographic Universe. One can use the word duality to describe the nature of a holographic universe despite the fact there are more dimensions at play.

Einsteain called the effects of the split photon experiment "spooky action at a distance.

There certainly is spooky action at a distance which may open a door to perceptions outside the body.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 01:35 PM

GRaham:

Because life is self governing by its own postulated decisions, and when in a condition of reduced strength it is suggestible in the extreme. Suggest to an eagle that he is a field mouse, and if he is in a mental state to take your suggestion on board, he will be very depressed.

Furthermore your assertion that the doctor in my example should not "further the illusion" indicates exactly the sort of loop and prejudicial conclusion (and desire to enforce agreements) that I am partly complaining about.

Don't get me wrong -- I am all for physical science, and am a regular reader of Science NEws, Phys.org, and other literature in the field. Doing brain scans is wonderful interesting stuff, i concur. I have seen nothing in the literature that really indicates that the phenomena is any more than a reflection of cognitive precursors. The idea of non-physical cogntive precursors, of course, is unuseable to physicists, and this premise glues them in to a "thought from brain" model (as distinguished from, say, a "thought into brain" model) as surely as Harvey's detractors were locked into the tides and humours model of circulation and preferred (in some cases) not to even think about pumps and pipes as an alternative model.

A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 01:37 PM

What it seems to come you is that we tend to feel ourselves as being located in the place from whence we are looking - even when what we are looking at is our own body seen from a distance. That hardly seems very surprising. No different in that way from looking at yourself in a mirror - you locate yourself (correctly in this case) behind your eyes, not somewhere inside the mirror.

The question is, where do people reporting out-of-body experiences get the images they report seeing which couldn't have been seen through the eyes located in their body on the operating table or whatever.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 02:55 PM

(still reading, though not commenting...the exchanges between Grab & Amos are giving me much to ponder. Both are expressing alternative views in ways that impress me. I may have more to say later.)

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 01:52 AM

"As far as investigating the phenomena that constitute consciousness, that's what all the barrels-down-rivers experiments are looking at. The problem is that since consciousness covers so many areas, the only structured way to hit the problem is to deal with each area in turn. And from there, the only way to investigate each area is to find what it does under a load of different situations"

Ah, Science is very good at designing experiments that single out individual 'cause/effect' pairs: problem is that in Real Life, very few such individual pairings exist. When a multiplicity of 'causes' exist, they interact with each other (what happens when we ingest a given quantity of ONE drug is known, what happens when we ingest a soup of much smaller quantities of hundreds of drugs is really not very well known!) or even have powerful synergistic/catalytic effects.


"where do people reporting out-of-body experiences get the images they report seeing which couldn't have been seen through the eyes located in their body on the operating table or whatever. "

Having experienced a few such OOB images myself...

If you can't specify a 'Scientific Explanation' for the mechanism, then you end back up at the 'Faith based Religion' position.

I believe that 'Religion' was man's first groping attempts to discover 'Science' - it taking the very limited faith based path of 'knowing everything to start with' whereas Science takes the path of 'know nothing to begin with, just watch VERY closely'. The problem is that all 'Scientists' have inbuilt ASS-U-MEptions, as an "Act of Faith" anyway.... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 04:51 AM

The problem is that all 'Scientists' have inbuilt ASS-U-MEptions, as an "Act of Faith" anyway.

Are 'Scientists' meant to be different beasts from scientists? The game is all about exposing those assumptions, and it's a very competetive one. If anyone can show that the last one to publish forgot something, just look at the glee on their face.

I believe that 'Religion' was man's first groping attempts to discover 'Science' -- I think the origin of religion may have been the first time someone noticed that a week after the sabre-tooth had eaten Grandad Ugg, he came and talked to them in the night.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Grab
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 07:53 AM

Amos, I'm aware that I used the word "illusion" without qualification. Maybe better would be to say that if the medical profession are aware the hallucination experienced is a well-known symptom of what the patient has experienced, and there is a good physical explanation for it, why should they pretend that it's anything other than a hallucination? Sure, you don't raise the point when the patient is still unwell and doesn't need any self-doubt. But if they bring it up when they're well again, why not? (I know in this case the physical explanation still needs some work, but in general.)

I guess I'm wondering why this particular hallucination should be treated in a different way to vision distortion, bright lights and strange sounds during concussion, for example? Or again, the hallucinations in schizophrenia where a chemical imbalance causes people to genuinely believe that God is telling them to do things.

For a personal example, earlier this year I had a fantastic roller-coaster ride for I guess about 5-10 minutes - whilst sitting flat still in a sauna, very hot and a bit dehydrated. Did I really swirl round the room like Neo in the Matrix? Did the room really lift off the ground and swing round the Earth several miles up? It sure as hell felt like it, but somehow I doubt it. :-)

Yes, those cases presuppose it's a hallucination. If it's not a hallucination, for an OOB the key point is establishing that the person wasn't merely extrapolating the view from their situation, but could actually see things they couldn't otherwise have known. There have been a few attempts at this with mixed results AFAIK - certainly I've heard of nothing conclusive here. I'm not so worried about McGrath's "how does it work?" question so much as "does it work at all?".

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 08:57 AM

"a week after the sabre-tooth had eaten Grandad Ugg, he came and talked to them in the night. "

Ah yes, a 'Dream' - very potent in "Religion'...

No, but 'Religion' started right after this, when a canny Powermunger realised that if he said just the right sort of thing, he could assume a 'Position of Political Power' over all the other 'Little Uggs'....

:-)

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 09:34 AM

Graham:

Thanks for the reasoned answer.

IF you can track down the "sneaker on a ledge" example, it would provide the white-crow case you are talking about. There are probably many others which would stand up to pretty close analysis. It might be fun for you to explore the literature -- some of it is quite disciplined.

The jury is till OOB on this whole issue of man's fundamental nature, and how awareness of higher orders occurs. My apologies if I seemed to be shoving one particular perspective excessively. There's an awful lot of data out there that cannot be allowed into the scientific lists, because it is experiential data. I think this is a shame, and to a degree is actually bad science even though it is an effort at rigor. Maybe it depends on how you define rigor -- in other words, carefully including only repeatable data certainly rules out anything as dynamic and volatile as the life of the mind (or the human spirit, if you allow such talk).

A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 10:02 PM

OMG

in another thread one of out regular irregulars has just claimed an OOB after eating peanut paste...

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 10:16 PM

(yeah....but he has had an OOM set of experiences for years!)

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 11:56 PM

I think you should try that, Bill. It does one good to step OOM and hit the reboot switch once every ten years as a general rule. It's like changing the oil regularly,. :


A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:17 AM

Gives a whole new meaning to the old line

Anyone need a lube job?

For which the usual answer was a slap in the face....

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Grab
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 07:54 AM

Cheers Amos - in my copious free time (not! :-) I'll try to have a look at that. My problem with most of the stuff I've seen is that the people doing the looking were clearly biased. The mind-so-open-that-the-moths-fly-in-and-out situation is sadly a bit too common around these kind of areas, where people might well be cherry-picking their reporting to support their spiritual (or other) beliefs. :-( As I said earlier, that's the basic problem with dualism - how do you handle it when one half of the pair (the physical side) keeps encroaching on what was previously thought to be the other side of the dividing line?

Not that scientists can't also be biased - it's always worth keeping an open mind. That's what annoys me with Dawkins, is that he combines his scientific input (which is considerable) with his anti-religious beliefs.

I guess my view is that I don't mind it not being easily repeatable, so long as at some level it *can* be shown to happen more than once - that's basic epidemiology. And as a software engineer, I'm fully aware of bloody awkward bugs that only crop up on the night of the full moon whilst the user dances on one leg and waves a rubber chicken. :-) The trick for those kind of things is to prepare ahead for those kind of things, so you can nail them when they *do* happen. In the OOB case for example, the classic test of an envelope on top of a cupboard will do for starters.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 09:52 AM

The sneaker story was very much that sort of situation, Graham. You might also enjoy reading Ingo Swan's reports on his Department of Defense work in the 1970's, which were run at Stanford Research Institute, where some more rigorous controls were imposed on efforts to assess remote viewing. Unlike rigorous molecular set-ups, the results were not 100%. But they were well over chance and maintained that level for years of ongoing trials.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Donuel
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 10:52 AM

Bill I've seen your hair. No one would be surprised that you cut it yourself every 4 years if you need it or not.

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 11:31 AM

I've sworn I'd have it cut professionally if the Queen invited me to tea....(maybe I'd do an OOM reboot at the same time....)

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Amos
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 11:35 AM

The day the Queen finally calls you in to tell you what a paradigm of virtue, insight, courage and all-around manhood you are, Bill, you very likely WILL have an OOB experience. I know I would.


A

Subject: RE: BS: OOB - Occam-Organized Brain
From: Bill D
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 12:21 PM

But you cheat and PRACTICE ahead of time, Amos...I'd be at a loss and probably faint. (in amazement that she got it right!)

....wait, maybe fainting is a necessary component of OOB!