BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:46 PM

I'd say Oliver Sacks definitely belongs on this thread, Dave.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:46 PM

The structural aspects with their intricate explorations of mechanism, chemical and electronic patterns and brain-mapping are endlessly intriguing. But my bias is toward communication as a healing medium and an avenue of discovery. There are things at play in communication which seem to me to break the bank of mechanism, whether we are talking about live communication between viewpoints or the semi-live communication of a Self appreciating things in the environment. For one thing, live communication enhances the individual sense of space and makes one feel bigger and more alive. (I have to add that not all noises coming out of people are really live communication, because sometimes they are just old tapes being replayed without present-moment exchange being considered at all, just dramatizations, and these don't have this effect.)

But live communication, now, also has the magic end result of bringing about understanding, the moment when you grok the point of view to which you are paying attention, or the delight of knowing that your expression has been grokked. (Sorry for the technical lingo). For one perspective it is like "trading consciousness".

I think this phenomenon is central to all learning and healing.

Perhaps this seems over-simplistic, but it strikes me as being of monumental importance.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:49 PM

As does the metaphysical.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: autolycus
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 01:54 PM

In my neck of the Gestalt psychotherapy woods, we say that the healing takes place in the relationship.

   Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 02:41 PM

"At this point in time, we can begin to grapple with issues of function, of the mechanics of things. it does not tell us what consciousness is, what consciousness means, or what mindfulness is."

Janie, "consciouness and mindfulness" are idea constructs. There is no way to measure something that is in an idea form and not necessarilly physical. If these thing become measurable, then we will have useful information. In the meantime, we have to be satisfied with someone's experiential view of these elements which may not be shared by others.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 03:32 PM

And what about perceptions the person is taking in, that the individual is not consciously perceiving?

Subconscious. Unconscious. Conscious. Collective conscious. Experience. Interpretation. Perception.

Related to your remarks about pure consciousness and the object of which it is being aware, who or what is the observer?

Some of the people I work with have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder.) , and many people experience dissociative states.   People with DID have compartmentalized (in any number of ways and configurations) both the conscious and the unconscious. There is clearly one body, one human entity, sitting in the chair opposite me.   That one entity experiences itself as being more than one human entity, sometimes simultaneously, and sometimes not, and with various degrees of "co-consciousness" of the other identity fragments, depending on the completeness of compartmentalization.   Assorted "personalities" with conscious awareness of other of the "personalities" may have the perception of sharing a body with other 'people', other of the co-conscious "personalities" may believe they inhabit a separate body, even to the point of attempting to physically kill other of the personalities, unable to recognize it as an attempted suicidal act. (Rude awakening when that happens!)

"I think, therefore I am" is not existentially confirming when one mind is fragmented such that there is the subjective experience of more than one "I" accompanied by belief based on that subjective experience that the separate "I"s are truly separate beings, whether they inhabit the same physical body or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 03:35 PM

The consciousness of others may be an idea construct, Frank, but I doubt that your own consciousness, dynamic and central to your thought processes about every aspect of existence, really strikes you as an idea. It's more of a center, your own place of being aware and being the Who that is you. Or so mine seems to me, anyway. Not an idea, a live ongoing experience.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 03:48 PM

Can't talk intelligently about reality without talking about perception.   Can't talk about perception without talking about consciousness. Can't talk about consciousness without talking about experience. Can't talk about anything related to life without talking about biology. Can't talk about the individual without reference to the social.   

Thanks, Janie. I hadn't followed the other thread. I like the way you put that.

Ivor said:
consciousness roughly = being alive and awake

awareness       "    = noticing.

Not sure I agree completely, based on my experiences with patients who were not conscious, yet upon waking, remembered hearing, i.e. noticing, what was said around/to them when they were "under." As a patient, I remember the same type of thing. Hearing is the last faculty to go and still works even when we are heavily sedated, so...there can be consciousness even if one may not be awake?

Of course, there is also consciousness based on metaphysics, which to me, would be an "all aware" consciousness (higher self) regardless of the circumstances. Whether I/ego? grokked (to use Amos') onto what that consciousness, within me, was aware of or not, would depend on whether I was paying attention, interested, open to, etc. And, right there we have a conundrum because I believe I am never separate from that higher self, so it feels odd to refer to myself as apart and having to "notice." In some AMORC monograph, many, many years ago, I am sure there was a better explanation. (Obviously I didn't retain it.:-)

For the thirty years or so I have studied metaphysics, I soaked up what I believed of the teachings, having proven them to myself (subjective/perspective/etc. I know!)and they became innate or meshed with what was already within me. Once that became the case, I did not retain the particulars of what I read, so I can offer only anecdotal experiences. I have been reluctant to share those in recent times on the Mudcat as they didn't meet certain criteria. I didn't think they would be appropriate for and/or measure up to the high bar this thread has raised.:-) I'll keep reading. Thanks.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 04:05 PM

Ivor, I think most psychotherapists agree on that, regardless of the neck of the woods they inhabit.

Frank, I tend to think of them as theoretical constructs more so than simply idea constructs.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 07:03 PM

One jumping off place for theories, research and definitions on consciousness.

.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 07:24 PM

We know enough now regarding that naturenurture matrix in brain development to understand why, just like snowflakes, each human being is unique.

It also explains why a clone of me would not be another me.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 07:54 PM

Neuroscience is at work trying to identify and understand the neural correlates of consciousness.

I think this means that there is implied agreement that consciousness is not a 'thing'. It is a dynamic process.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 08:12 PM

One of the earliest case histories in the subject, the remarkable story of Phineas Gage, who accidentally became the first documented case of a prefontal lobotomy.

It has never made sense to me that the action of intentionally removing prefontal lobes became a preferred practice for certain cases, when this case history makes it clear that the action either did nothing or made him significantly worse. YEt up until the early 1970's in the United States over 40,000 people were treated with vartiations of this technique. One of note was Rosemarie Kennedy (JFK's sister) who received the operation when her father complained of her "moodiness". (See this page.)

Just an aside concerning where we've been in the not too distant past.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 08:30 PM

As humans, it is difficult, if not impossible to separate our subjective sense of our own consciousness from our sense of identity.

What may happen with practices such as meditation is the subject/observer is able to acheive a conscious state where they reach, or at least approach, an awareness of the separateness of consciousness and identity. This may lead to a perception of a larger, or cosmic consciousness or awareness. Whether that is a misperception, or whether that is an intimation of some trancendant something or other that humans can only anthropomorphically describe as consciousness, is interesting, but probably not very important to know as we go about our daily business of being humans.   I do know that state is a psychologically healing environment for the wounded psyche.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 08:36 PM

Having typed the above, now I wonder what the subjective experience of consciousness is of the individual with advanced Alzheimer's.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Cobble
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 08:37 PM

What a load of crap all round.

Cobble

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 08:44 PM

Gee, Cobble -- it was such an interesting conversation, too!! Would you care to expand on your observation?

Because, tell ya what, I don't think it is a load of crap, and I think your impulse to categorize it as one is a big red flag, reflecting more on your own battened-down and welded-shut mental state than on the thread itself.

'Course, maybe you don't think you have a mental state, and maybe you'd be right. But something came up with your enlightening remark.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 09:10 PM

Occasionally, head injury patients are referred to me with a request that I "do something."

It is a testament to the flexibility and regenerative powers of the human brain that many head injured people recover physically and cognitively as much as they do. But there is not, to my knowledge (and I don't have any expertise in the area of work with head injury patients) any thing that can be done psychotherapeutically to address the personality changes, impulse control, impaired judgement, psychotic symptoms, & emotional lability that often occur.

There was a doctor at the big state mental hospital at Spencer, WV, who performed hundreds of 'ice pick' lobotomies, I think right up until the very early 1960's. I had a friend who worked there as a tech who said the back wards of the hospital were inhabited by a number of people who had the "benefits" of his treatment. I've only encountered one lobotomy patient, and that was long before I went to graduate school and moved into mental health. She was quite bizarre in her presentation.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 09:40 PM

A dear friend of mine had an onset of brain damage because of a toxic batch of vitamins / amino acids (synthetic) that got into this country and caused a run of bizarre symptoms, known as eosiniphelia myalgia syndrome. She suffered from cognitive lapses, language skill loss, and sometimes complete switch-offs. After many trials of various things, her neuropsych told her to learn new things, and she set about doing so with determination. She swears she could feel the brain pathways clicking when she finally managed to retain the new data she was forcing herself to go over nad over until it lodged. Gradually she recovered her old competencies by exercising herself in the pursuit of new knowledge. The condition is in complete remission. She was one of the lucky ones, though. Some died, and some lived in severely reduced cognitive states.

True story. :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Art Thieme
Date: 16 Dec 07 - 11:48 PM

Janie, Thanks for providing me with your ruminations tonight. They have precipitated some flights of verbiage of my own that, if I could recall the specific instances, I would tell you how many times in the last week my recent memory has failed me, how many times I fell down, how my hands feel sheathed in padded leather and prohibit my playing any instruments now. Somewhere along the line of my life, or so I've been told, my own immune system is doing ice pick lobotomies all over my brain's white matter and spinal cord. The diagnosis is MS --- finally --- !! After the l-o-n-g years of spinal surgeries for those same symptoms, finally TO KNOW is like a huge weight lifting. And the symptoms change every other day. Quite a roller coaster ride that, when one is acclimated, can be even exhilarating.

Janie---it's an adventure and a half, and they say I'm doing it to myself -- attacking my own synapses and myelin nerve insulations randomly, piecemeal. Physicality failures, cognitive diminishment, bodily functions askew and shut down.-------- We spend our life looking at our own personal variations of the thoughts you've raised in this good thread. Looking for some answers. I only seem to find myself sadly preoccupied with "ME"---flailing around, now, like a turtle in my own tale of "The Great Turtle Drive" who is over on his back in the middle of this road I was once the king of. All 4 limbs are wildly waving in the wind. My "perceived reality" you speak of is different now from the way it's always been. Who'd-a-thunk it!

As Robert Frost said in his good poem called "The Oven Bird", I find myself left, after all is said and done, pondering "what to make of a diminished thing!"

Legs waving in the wind! The wind... As Dylan said, "That's where the answers are blowing!!" Maybe. Matbe not.

I will leave this heavy stuff to you intellectuals who have the inclinations to search therein. If I am still alive when you solve all of it, please, let me know-----especially if it leads to a cure for MS... Maybe! Maybe not.

I say all of this with great respect for the ideas generated here. My tongue, and my foot,too, probably, are firmly set in my cheek--and lodged in my mouth -- respectively. For now, your good words are making my head hurt too. So, I'm going to bed!! **SMILEY FACE**

Love,

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 12:13 AM

Love you, Art.

Your brother's writings have a way of making my head hurt in the same way. There is so much going on in them! Remember this one of his writings: Click Here? Certainly relevant to this thread, imo.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 02:33 PM

Kat, ---- Yep, my li'l bro, Richard, is pretty amazing to me. Thanks for posting that. Some of the other Mudcatters might like to see his writings too. They are all at

www.thiemeworks.com

He does have a book out containing several of his columns. The title is:

ISLANDS IN THE CLICKSTREAM
by Richard Thieme

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 02:34 PM

An interesting list of brothers-in-discovery who have undetrtaken less conventional research projects into the realm of consciousness. And sisters, too, yeah.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 09:01 PM

The degree and nature of the body's role in thought has always been problematical. To a purely mechnistically-minded researcher, of course, i is the noiton of a "tinker" aside from the body that is problematical.

Here is a general survey on the subject of out-of-body perception and movement.

The implication is simply that there is a large collection of experiences going n in the world supporting an alternate model: that a unit of awareness operates as different from the body, and capable of being fully identified and locked inside it, or of various degrees of freedom from it.

Personally I find this to be a hopeful idea. But aside from that it is an interesting spectrum of experiences being discussed. It is, as you would expect, wildly variable in the consistency and analysis provided.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Art Thieme
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 09:25 PM

Could be what Joseph Campbell called "the wisdom body.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 09:43 PM

I was fortunate enough to learn of my pre natal perceptions as a result of adolescent fevers that would re trigger them.

Survival, threat perception, awareness of history and 'nowness' were all there but encoded within shapes and time/distance rather than language.

Hey Art, we both share doing talks about ufos. I did so for radio shows and local Rochester NY clubs. As a hypnotist there were many al night BS sessions about consciousness, let alone the experiments.

autoclus; Suppose you were omnicient. Tell us if the affairs of mankind require any special attention or guidance at this time.

Amos, point of view in memory is an interestinf topic n itself especially when put in the context of information theory.

Janie, what made you think of consciousness and reality at this time? :)

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 09:55 PM

I recall a topic on consciousness and the quantum experience thread inspired by 'what the bleep do we know ' was fun for me while others percieved a different reality.

Afterall we tend to see more of what we think than what is there.

Something entirely (and I mean entirely) different to your reality frame of reference will most likely be invisible to you, unless you have been trained otherwise.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 17 Dec 07 - 10:30 PM

Art,

I bet it is quite a wild ride, in more ways than one. From what little I know about you, it seems you have a life long tendency toward paths and journeys that are not exactly 'typical.' Although MS is not at all a path you have chosen, may the lessons and experiences of those other journeys along 'roads less travelled' serve you well along the path of this journey thrust upon you.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 12:29 AM

Talk about a hurting head! Last night, I thought to post definitions of objective reality, so off I went to Google. Yowee Zowee! First the philosophers, then the quantum physics and mechanics theorists!   I knew I was an ignorant cuss, but didn't know how ignorant!

After skimming 15 articles in 15 minutes, I am, naturally, now an expert in all things quantum (not!)

Thinking about rational, empirical, knowledge, belief, perception and reality.   

Before I took my little tour around the web last night, Quantum theory meant nothing other than some physics theory that people talk about that is really freaky that has to do with how very small particles behave and however they behave it is not what you would think if you didn't know anything about quantum theory.

I'll be honest. That is still all it means to me.

AND, it also appears to include some evidence or theory - I couldn't quite sort this out - to suggest that nothing that we perceive as real is actually real, except that there is some argument that there is local realism, or only that which is observed is real, and then, only if it is being observed. In otherwords, scientific evidence (I think), and interpretation, that sounds just like the philosophical arguments around subjective vs. objective reality, except that photons are involved.

Interestingly, the first discussions and articles I read regarding quantum theory were from sites and blogs relating to existential, usually spiritual, interests. When I googled the names of the physicists, I did not find any articles or research reports authored by the scientist themselves that drew any conclusions whatsoever related to any 'big picture' ideas about the result of their experiments. So I found myself wondering, are the metaphysically inclined drawing, at least thus far, rationally unwarranted conclusions because it fits with whatever paradigm they are looking to confirm, is the scientist just not interested in any inplications the work and findings may have beyond their own narrow speciality, Or what?

NOt enough info. for me to draw any conclusions.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: autolycus
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 01:43 AM

" autoclus; Suppose you were omnicient. Tell us if the affairs of mankind require any special attention or guidance at this time"

      Donuel, Never having been. or ever going to be, omniscient, (obviously}, I cannot begin to answer your question.

      From where I'm sitting, they always need attention and guidance.

    As for the latter, I doubt if enough people are prepared to be guided. They want to tell everbody else what to do.

   Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 10:19 AM

There are a couple of things about quantum mechanics that cleave more closely to maya than to particle endurance and intereaction, but even the Rutherford atmoic structure was 99.9% space, and no-one could define what the space was. I have found that people like myself who sometimes blovate about general schools of thought often do not care to do the work necessary to understand what the fug they are really talking about.

Happy Xmas, consciousness lovers everywhere....


A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 12:45 PM

There's no question on the macro scale that solids are solid to the viewer, and light bounces off solids and gets picked up by various waiting eyeballs, and so on, and waves of sound get sensed and smells get smelled.

The possibility exists however that this whole spectrum of apparent solidity is the way it is because of postulated conditions set up by and in consciousness. This perspective aligns more closely to the Hindu cosmology than it does to most Westerrn schools. The big knotty question it raises is whether any given individual viewpoint (such as thee or I) could be restored to the level of energy or causation (or whatever it should be called) from which it made/subscribed to those conditions, thus regaining an ability to shift them about.

Richard Bach plays with these ideas to great effect in The Bridge Across Forever.

If a spiritual being gets dragged down to hynotic agreement with spacetime as it is experienced by bodies ioperating on their limited bandwidths, what gets "him" stuck therein, and how does he get to undo the addiction?

And if this is the case, what happebns to his own perceptions when he does undo the habits of lifetimes being focused soelly on the forces and frequencies of the apparent material plane?

I think these are really interestin questions, even though they are based on a hypothesis.

If, converesely, our basic nature IS just complex networks of cells and nerves and all consciousness is a projection from these arrays, like a movie projector pointing back at itself with mirrors or some such, then the questions become very different indeed. SUch as, "where does virtue come from"? , etc.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 02:03 PM

"And a third question arising from these is whether there is such a thing as "pure consciousness" without an object of which it is being aware." - Amos

Recently, I learned that language is learned in the womb. Not the actual words but the rhythms. Speech is just little bursts of air which we control with out tongues, throat, lips, etc and those little bursts of air are transmitted to the womb in waves of energy and arrive at the fetus via waves in the amniotic fluid. Therefore, regardless of what language is spoken in the home following birth, a child's first language is the language spoken by the mother while pregnant.

I'm not sure if this has any bearing on the subject under discussion but I do think that language and self are closely intertwined, if not one in the same. It is, at least, the way we communicate to others who we think we are. My guess is that consciousness occurs with that first breath but that the formation of language occurs in the womb.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 07 - 02:45 PM

Well, if there is such a thing, I would have to suspect it would not be anchored to the brain-body complex. Nor even to the mind-and-language complex. I like the metaphor of step-down transformers used in electrical and electronic systems.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 12:14 AM

According to this link, Mind, neuroscience makes no distinction between the mind and the brain.    I think this is a relatively recent development as the neurological correlates of the mind are beginning to be identified and studied. Neuroscience is one of the hard sciences that involves the collaborative work of neurologists, neuropsychiatrists and neuropsychologists. Although it is largely a field of multidiciplinary research, it's influence on the nature of the practices of general psychiatry is reflected in changes in nomenclature of inpatient psychiatry units, especially at large, research medical facilities.   For example, the inpatient psychiatric section at UNC Hospitals was renamed the UNC Neurosciences Hospital when it underwent major renovations in the mid and late 1990's.

Here is a Standard dictionary definition of the mind.

Perhaps the mind can be viewed as representing the synthesis of the sum total of the functions of the brain that relate to consciousness.

I am reluctant to use the terms mind and brain interchangeably.   I am even reluctant to think of the mind as the product of the brain. Synthesis sounds less threatening to my beliefs and assumptions about the specialness of being human.   I don't know enough about the available research to have an informed opinion. I have a visceral aversion to the idea that my mind is nothing BUT biology, vs. enabled by biology.   That aversion can skew any analysis I might be inclined to do on the available research, especially if i am unaware that I have this emotional reaction to the the mere idea.



The following link is a more technical description and discussion of the amagdyla. The amagdyla is very instrumental to emotional learning and the storing of emotional memories.   http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Amagdyla

As Ivor noted upthread, much of the work of perception happens in the brain/mind. And that work is all interpretive. Emotions can, and usually do, play a strong part in our interpretations of much of the information entering the brain through the senses.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 04:30 AM

Human consciousness? It doesn't exist. You only think it exists.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 10:52 AM

Janie:

I think conflating mind and brain is an instance of supreme arrogance, or at least overweening assertiveness about a little-understood phenomenon.

I mentioned earlier the simple observation that most people can move pictures around and view them near of far away from the body. So obviously there is no 1:1 correllation in mapping.

This whole "brain is thought" shtick is, to my mind, a peculiar blind alley, sort of like the Galen model of circulation by tides and humours. It was persuasive enough to be totally accepted for centuries, until someone bothered to look.

If there is a single instance of thought occurring after brain-death (and according to Kubler Ross and others in her field, there is) then the model is flawed.

If there is a single instance of a "brain" containing data which has no legitimate business being in it, such as knowledge of language to which it was never exposed, or memopries from a lifetime in which the brain did not exist, the model is flawed; and there are many such instances reported in the studies that have been done on alternative models.

If there is a single verifiable instance of a being moving out of a body, then it (the notion of brain=mind) is immediately compromised.
Research into OOB experiences will bring up many reported, a few of which are not controvertible.

I prefer to think of the mind as the content, without screwing up the question by insisting on an uunprovable assertion about structure. But then, my interest has always been in function, what minds do and how they can do it better.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: autolycus
Date: 19 Dec 07 - 04:00 PM

Yes quite, to pick that last sentence, what our respective interests are, also plays a part in what we're interested, what out goal/s ie/are,not to mention the ways we might "prefer2 to think of things, the role that scientific proof has to play for each of us - don't want to hurt anyone's head!!!!

Sorry (in a way) for setting off so many hares at once earlier.

   in my neck of the woods, where healing and becoming human are central, I don't place such emphasis on how the brain works, what cosciousness might be etc.

   I'm interested in the concern for getting to self-awareness; it's hard enough becoming aware.

   So being aware of the other, and, dimly, of the sheer reality of the other is also a fascinating, enlightening move to make.

   And about knowledge,fwiw, when a client says (or I say)," I'm feeling.......", I don't then ask for prof or a scientific demonstration.

       (((And I know some pschological jokes)))


    Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Janie
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 12:42 AM

While waiting in my son's Dentist office today, I picked up the 12/3/07 copy of Time Magazine and read the cover article,What Makes us Moral. I found it pretty interesting and thought provoking.

I lifted the following from it:

Sociobiology has been criticized as one of the most reductive of sciences, ascribing the behavior of all living things--humans included--as nothing more than an effort to get as many genes as possible into the next generation....

My response is that the sentence, and the thinking of those who view these efforts at understanding more about life and living as reductionist might be a bit turned around. I see it more as looking backward to try to find the seed(s).   I'm a gardener. Seeds are wondrous, awesome, mysterious, even knowing what I do about how they are formed, what is inside, and about germination and plant growth. I have never looked at a flower and thought of it as nothing but a seed factory. I have never once looked at a large oak and thought it was really nothing but an acorn, though I have marveled that it came from something as small and apparently insignificant as an acorn. The tree is not diminished in any way by my knowledge that it came from that acorn.


Ivor,

You said, "And about knowledge,fwiw, when a client says (or I say)," I'm feeling......., I don't then ask for prof or a scientific demonstration. "

I'm trying to understand your context for that statement. Can you say what prompted that remark?

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: autolycus
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 01:38 AM

Janie,

I did also ask or meant to ask what each poster's interest is.
   
Mine is, roughly healing.

Much of the thread is about science and proof.

Healing, which so many may want, doesn't require scientific proofs to be effected.

   Ivor

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 03:28 AM

I think conflating mind and brain is an instance of supreme arrogance, or at least overweening assertiveness about a little-understood phenomenon.

It's a long time since neurologists made the distinction between the hardware (the brain) and the process running on that hardware (the mind). It's certain that brain damage severely compromises the mind, spirit, soul, or whatever you like to call it.


I mentioned earlier the simple observation that most people can move pictures around and view them near of far away from the body.

No they can't.

If there is a single instance of thought occurring after brain-death...

If there is a single instance of a "brain" containing data which has no legitimate business being in it,...If there is a single verifiable instance of a being moving out of a body...

A lot of big ifs. Whenever tested properly, they have been proved illusionary. You seem to be desperate to have "something extra". That's just greedy. Read Oliver Sachs and wonder.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 07:54 AM

Keinstein:

I beg to differ. Perhaps moving your own pictures around is not something you have tried or cannot do. How arrogant to assert this is true of al people.

You may not have read all of this thread, or the earlier discussions -- or you are ignoring them in your rush to sameness.

Your blunt statement about proper testing is, itself, incorrect, in my opinion.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 08:51 AM

A smile for the day from DIlbert.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 09:22 AM

Amos, all you are saying is that you can imagine a scene from a different point of view. That's nothing to write home about, all it requires is a recognition that you have seen many scenes from different angles, and can mentally apply the transforms to get a different view of it. The result will probably be more or less accurate depending on how much experience you have of viewing the object imagined, and other similar scenes, from different aspects. That doesn't require any modifications to even the most primitive concepts of how the mind runs in the brain. It CERTAINLY doesn't require that the mind should ever have to run outside the brain.

If you are making any stronger claim than that, until you provide the evidence, I stand by my statement: to any claim that the mind can be detached from the brain, the reply is, no, it can't. Prepared to modify that statement on the basis of evidence.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 09:55 AM

K:

Well, that is not at all what I was saying, actually.

Your conviction that mind and brain are inseparable and even identical is understandable, especiall y at this time and place. But I would not call it a fact.

The Targ and Puthoff series at Stanford Research is one body of evidence you might want to examine. THere's quite a lot of material out there, and I am under a bit of pressure at work this morning, so I cannot spare the time to dig up a bibliography for you.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 10:21 AM

I didn't say mind and brain were identical. I said that the one was a process running in the other. If you can dig up any contrary evidence, that the mind can run without the brain, let's see it.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,Keinstein
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 10:34 AM

Ah, Targ and Puthoff. They conducted a series of "remote viewing" (a sort of telepathy) tests, the results of which have never been replicated by independent investigators, and the methods of which were highly dubious.

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Amos
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 11:42 AM

Did a quick Google, didja?

:D

I guess you showed them!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: GUEST,Janie
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 12:03 PM

On the premise that it is OK for people to ask for what they want, and it is also OK for others to say no, I would like to see this thread stay clear of turning into arguments about who is right and who is wrong in their thinking.

Like was said upthread - no one has a corner on the market of objective reality. It is possible to explore, discuss and note differences, expound on why one believes or opines as one does, without turning it into a pissing match.

Think about the difference between these two statements:

"This is the way I see it" -   "I am right, (and you are therefore wrong."

Subject: RE: BS: Human Consciousness & Perceived Reality
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Dec 07 - 02:02 PM

100 and STILL confused