From Brain to Consciousness to Mind--the biological basis

@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin, thank you for the interesting posts. Always a pleasure to read your work.

@KaseiJin,

Firstly I have no god or the desire to obtain one, so lets not assume my motivation is for salvation from this mortal frame. Why do you assume that my view is incorrect just because you have labelled the contents of my brain. If you analyse a sponge cake it will not tell how nice it tastes. The seat of human, not animal remember, consciousness has the capacity to be present in the brain, it could function as an animals conscious ability but not as a human, not without that certain input. We are talking about human conscious ability, are we not? I have never said that the ability to be human does not rest within the brain but its not exclusively the brains ability. I have never said it needs a god like figure to make my assumption correct, I have never said our conscious earthly existence will survive our death. Its not a desire to find a super being but a reason to explain my experiences.

Removing any functional part of my brain and it would interfere with my ability to operate as a conscious human. Taking away the bit that stores my memory would stop me acting normally but does that prove I never had a memory. I cant remember most of childhood but it helped form my character that was destined to live this life. You come from too many certainties and refuse to accept you might just be wrong. There is more than Susan Pocket by the way , did you read my link? Im not saying its proven but then your not are you?

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@ehBeth,

And with that, ehBeth, I likewise, thank you, for your willingness to enhance my otherwise weary, rainy evening here in our 'rainy seasoned' Japan with your appreciation!

KJ

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@KaseiJin,

No I don't think Jesus is waiting for me in heaven , I have no idea if heaven or hell exists. I have never seen a ghost. I have no idea what awaits us, oblivion is still a possibility, it wont disappoint us. Your experience is easily solved and I have no way of convincing you of mine but you cant dismiss mine so flippantly or easily to my satisfaction. This is not the thread to debate all the experiences and unexplainable events that humans report but nor can you dismiss them without debate.

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@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin wrote:

preconscious visual stimuli prompts to premotor neurons so as to cause them to become active thus giving rise to the sensation of wanting to do some in a matter of tens of micro seconds before M1 executes the action...thus causing the apparent consciousness level result to appear as though it was fully an event executed by the state of having consciousness, rather than mostly by totally unaware, non-conscious events...the kind which brain does most of the time anyways

That seems to have interesting implications for free will, which could perhaps be explored in a new thread. I have participated in a number of discussions about free will, but they rarely concentrate on the biological aspect.

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@xris,

xris wrote:

Firstly I have no god or the desire to obtain one, so lets not assume my motivation is for salvation from this mortal frame. Why do you assume that my view is incorrect just because you have labelled the contents of my brain.

Let's stop right there, first of all. Why might have salvation ever been needed in the first place? Why might any animal have ever had the ability to even come up with such an idea? (it is a fact that not only we H. sapiens have this state called consciousness, you must keep in mind) Is it simply due to brain build after all? By extension, is it not that any tendency to emotionalize for perpetual life process has actually come down to us exactly by such need for salvation in the first place? (and please do not forget, Alan had had that experience, and if one reasons that a mental experience equates a real, external reality [as you have argued for], then you'd best accept his savior, hadn't you?)

Then, xris, on what grounds might you assume that your view were correct in spite of not only labeling areas of the brain, but also seeing function in action, en vivo? Additionally, on what grounds might you argue that the activity of the neurons of your brain, which will not be-- specifically--any different from my brain, my cat's brain, nor that clever crow's brain (who comes and skillfully [and untaught, I mind you] pulls the cat food tray away from the door area before starting to eat so as to give margin for escape) can be used to provided evidence that the effect of such active neuronal states means a non-physical state?

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@ACB,

ACB wrote:

That seems to have interesting implications for free will, which could perhaps be explored in a new thread. I have participated in a number of discussions about free will, but they rarely concentrate on the biological aspect.

ACB, I be almost willing to bet that you'd be surprised at some of the data that is coming out. I am doing my 'darndest' to keep on top of it, and am sure most of it simply does not really get out to the public at large. There is even this professional meditator (sp?) with whom I have exchanged communication on that, who is much more so in the 'free will is an illusion' camp due to the data on hand. Especially the work with open brain surgery and en vivo work with free moving mice and cats, has brought this out. Of course, the more specific scope of this thread (especially now), as you have mentioned out of consideration, is not ready for that at all, at the moment.

I appreciate your mentioning that, and your carefully following along, here.
KJ

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@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin wrote:

salima, meree baheen, the studies and documentaries I've seen on remote viewing have quite fully demonstrated a number of substantial points. One is that the said events are never 100% accurate, another is that they are always inconsistent across efforts to achieve results, and finally, that they are very close to never reproducible--they cannot be done more than once. However, another point is simply regarding information. The essence of what could be considered to be happening, holding, for the moment, that such were possible, is how the information is bound by brain. What it means to mentally visualize a matter, is a different thing that what it means to have ones occipital lobe doing its heavy work all the way up to V5...and projecting it to the prefrontal cortex.

When a person imagines a scene, as a purposeful act in a state of consciousness, or when dreaming, even, a different brain state is employed than when one is receiving signals through LGN through the two pathways...one in consciousness, and the other in non-consciousness. This would be what would be happening in a remote viewing setting. But, there is actually a lot involved in that happening, and it would have to be accounted for too. At the moment, salima chan, it cannot be successfully enough demonstrated that remote viewing is due to any non-physical event at all.

just to make sure i understand your reply:
is it the conclusion of science that to date any apparent test where remote viewing was successful in its result was purely an accident by the person who only imagined they perceived something at a distance?

my own thoughts would be that since it is a faculty or skill that has not been practiced or even considered to be credible there would be very little expertise in it, IF in fact such a thing were possible. it seems a little hasty to dismiss it all on the basis of its not being repeatable or 100% accurate. is it not enough that it seems to have happened at times to warrant further investigation?

and let me ask you this:
if it were proved that remote viewing were possible, would that still be explainable with your model of how the brain works to generate consciousness?

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@salima,

Let me see if I can pin this one down a little better, in as concise, and clear, a wording as possible.

salima wrote:

just to make sure i understand your reply:
is it the conclusion of science that to date any apparent test where remote viewing was successful in its result was purely an accident by the person who only imagined they perceived something at a distance?

In what I have come across, there is a question as to actual success, and even a question as to how to rate how the idea of attempting to know whether the actually-caused-by-light-hitting-the-retina-and-brain-processing event/state could be effectually, equally perceived by a separate brain, ever came up in the first place. In other words, it very much looks as though there had been an opinion which some had tried to attempt to demonstrate, rather than some naturally occurring phenomenon to which some then applied the carefulness of scientific method. And where did that opinion come from in the first place? I'm not sure on that one, but most likely in a place and time before the knowledge we have today, had informed the views of the real facts of the external world which we all share; and thus some pre-conscious, implicit and unrecognized effort to mentally support a already accustomed to idea, could possibly be getting in the way too.

salima wrote:

my own thoughts would be that since it is a faculty or skill that has not been practiced or even considered to be credible there would be very little expertise in it, IF in fact such a thing were possible. it seems a little hasty to dismiss it all on the basis of its not being repeatable or 100% accurate. is it not enough that it seems to have happened at times to warrant further investigation?

We might be warranted to ask, nevertheless, just how it is that we might conclude that we are dealing with some faculty or skill which needs to be practiced in order to be achieved. Additionally, where would we more fairly and realistically start from--or do we wish to demand that only the H. sapiens, and none other of the homo genus, would have had such a brain-based capability?

I would say here, that firstly we'd have to verify the claim to know that such said event is happening in two involved brains exactly as interpreted to have been happening. There had been a time when almost anyone could make any claim and rumor would spread it well and thick, quite easily. The test of time and empirical experience, however, has put much greater limits on that, and the tests have become more secure in their reasoning.

Therefore if a claim is made that a certain external event is happening which will cause two exact internal brain states to be synchronized in such manner, the evidence will have to clearly show that such claim is viable above a rate of chance event. The fact that inconsistency and lack of full equality of scene description, and a rate which around chance, is the result, it can hardly be verified to be a given fact of brain capability by any means, actually. (if the sender were colored blind, would the receiver see what that brain ordinarily does not register?...I'd be very, very surprised if such were to happen)

salima wrote:

and let me ask you this:
if it were proved that remote viewing were possible, would that still be explainable with your model of how the brain works to generate consciousness?

Yes, it would. The reason being, quite understandably, that if remote viewing were to happen, even, as claimed, it is only obvious that each brain would have to have the state of having consciousness. I mean, it has been very well demonstrated that the actual visual field in the extreme peripheral of normal vision can be, and is, acted on by brain without as much as a fringe event of consciousness--as though through a zombie (and of course blind sight is a real thing) You see, salima, meree baheen, the state of having consciousness is often times confused, it seems, with the content of that state as of a given moment. Additionally, it has been most clearly shown that attention and the state of having consciousness are two separate things, after all.

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@KaseiJin,

So whats your point? if I wanted salvation my understanding is wrong? Do you judge all scientific reasoning on the scientists religious beliefs. I'm sorry to disappoint you but have no religion, so what does your opinion on motivated views have about me?

I'm not assuming im correct, I'm pointing out that you might just be wrong.

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@xris,

xris wrote:

So whats your point? . . .
I'm not assuming im correct, I'm pointing out that you might just be wrong.

Perhaps you somehow missed that point, xris, but I'm not convinced that it's worth trying to further work on since I hit it from couple of angles already, actually. But, in a nutshell, the point is that the ancient tendency to believe in never dying is more likely very much tied up with the instinct of survival, which, in turn, fed the theist-based belief systems of old...and that notion has been hard to shake. Then, since you tend to discard that (and not without fair reason) you must likewise discard the notion that simply because you have experienced something, it is a fact of external nature. (otherwise you'll have to admit that Alan's experience was a fact of nature, and Jesus and heaven are real facts of nature)

Thanks, xris for that further explanation; I understand the emotion. It is nevertheless true that the evidence is very secure, xris, very secure, and, if one were to desire to point out that the understanding is mistaken, one will have to show how the data is wrong or misinterpreted, and how the methodology of the studies is faulty, and how the logic is in error. I'm not convinced that you might be in a position to do that, right now.

Oh...and what about those questions? And that reminds me, there was one further study, a paper in the Journal of Neuroscience which came out in May, on how the brain build makes all the difference in facial interest for those with Elfin Syndrome. (which further reminds me, how is that gender differences [which are real] firstly be non-physical things?...why the need for sexual distribution in the non-physical universe?)

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@KaseiJin,

Im not doubting your science or the natural conclusions that can been drawn from this continues study. I dont think the advances make the subject more or less valid. It has always split opinions, your further delving into the workings of our brain are only manifestations of the same argument. If you are saying that consciousness has been definitely located i would like the scientific reference for that claim, please. It really is a stale mate , I wont accept you have located the conscious ability and you will never accept the evidence of experience. One thing I do object to, is this idea that I am pre programmed to require some type of belief in an after life. Is it something you have avoided? if so, why must you assume I'm not capable of realising this as weakness and accept it?

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@salima,

The idea that remote viewing could be possible , widens and questions the view that we are isolated blobs of electrochemical activity. If the brain or mind is capable of receiving valid information by distant viewing then the EM field may be the key to answering this intriguing phenomena. Clocks placed near each other assume the same swing of their pendulum, they self synchronise. Our brain frequencies vibrate at virtually the frequency of the Earths electromagnetic field. Why should we doubt we are possible in tune with each others EM fields. It could be that we are not capable of screening out misinformation and tuning our EM field to what we are concentrating on. The brain is an instrument we are only just understanding, I dont doubt its secrets are more than we can envisage. If this possible then subtle ethereal influences are not beyond possibility.

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@xris,

xris wrote:

Im not doubting your science or the natural conclusions that can been drawn from this continues study. I dont think the advances make the subject more or less valid.

Alright; but I do wish to encourage careful and logical thinking. What could you possibly mean to actually say, however, with, 'I dont think the advances make the subject more or less valid?' 'The subject' (consciousness and mind) ' can be made more valid, or less valid a subject' due to investigation and research into the subject?

xris wrote:

If you are saying that consciousness has been definitely located i would like the scientific reference for that claim, please.

I'll tell you what I'll do then, xris, I'll post as many of the major studies demonstrating such as I reason necessary, later on this evening, or tomorrow (or, at the worse, Tuesday evening...since some of my resource material is at the uni, and I'm at the house today [although I may chose to not cite that, for this very reason...if I post tonight]) and I hope you will take to time to consider them, at least by carefully considering each title...I cannot present all the abstracts, nor conclusions, even . . . this is simply not the medium for such. Also, since my cataloging is not up to date, it'll take some time . . . BUT I am very willing to spend that time, xris, for you.

xris wrote:

I wont accept you have located the conscious ability and you will never accept the evidence of experience.

After all these months, xris, you have somehow still not congealed the understanding; it is not...let me try to emphasize this...NOT experience which I am not accepting at all, rather, it is the often attached claim that the experience is, or is of, an external, real fact, which fact is denied by mountains of evidence for its falsehood. I know Alan didn't die, even though he tried, on a couple of occasions to assert as much, and so I know his experience of meeting 'Jesus' was only an internal event, something that the brain that is him put together...just as it would in REM, or (on those much fewer occasions) SLW. He had a real experience, that I'd never deny, but the truth of the matter is, that it was all in the brain's functioning alone...not an external fact of nature of our world. Do you see what I am saying here, xris? Then, why are you now contradicting your statements above, in an almost 'premeditative' nature? (but that's just you, I'm kind of used to it, so . . . )

xris wrote:

One thing I do object to, is this idea that I am pre programmed to require some type of belief in an after life. Is it something you have avoided? if so, why must you assume I'm not capable of realising this as weakness and accept it?

I think you have kind of missed the point again. We are built to survive, xris, as ALL living things are, and that fact, along with the big brains we of the Homo genus had come up with having (and maybe especially the H. sapiens connectivity which stressed social bonding), has led, over several ten thousands of years, to the thus naturally derived 'intuition' of the continuity of life without end, and eventually, theist-based religious belief systems. Of course life process has thus far only been completely found on our planet alone, and maybe, just maybe, on Mars (but hardly worth betting on at the moment, I'd argue). This means that while life does go on (and will until the sun expands and scorches the earth for good, some 50 billion years from now, or so), the life that is an individual at a particular moment, an extremely, almost totally unimaginable instantaneous spark on even the solar time scale, does not. That is the conclusion that the average of the best of all the evidence out there, ends up at.

xris wrote:

The idea that remote viewing could be possible , widens and questions the view that we are isolated blobs of electrochemical activity. If the brain or mind is capable of receiving valid information by distant viewing then the EM field may be the key to answering this intriguing phenomena.

Firstly, xris, the EM theory is dead; is a false assertion. If the excitable brain cells, especially the neurons, didn't have protein pumps and channels in the membrane there would be no depolarization. If there were no depolarization, there would be no local field potential, no local electromagnetic field, no hertz, no brain process, thought process, sensory process, at all, because the neuromodulators and neurotransmitters would not flow. It's not the fields, xris, and this is a fact that is simply a fact...whether you are aware or it or not. Your efforts in making false assertions are unhealthy.

Then, when was the last time you have heard of 'remote feeling' (although a seemingly so phenomena can occur from time to time, it does not reason out that it is because one person or animal is merging into the brain of another person or animal), or 'remote olfactory sensing,' or 'remote auditory sensing?' Even if we were to hold that sensory perception could involve an element of space/time 'override' (as it were), we'd still not have it that mind is something which is beyond the necessary bounds of a fully functioning, living brain. Rather, we'd simply have to investigate how the sensory perception would be working.

xris wrote:

Clocks placed near each other assume the same swing of their pendulum, they self synchronise.

Why might such a thing happen in particular cases, then? There is something happening, and have you studied up on that?

xris wrote:

Our brain frequencies vibrate at virtually the frequency of the Earths electromagnetic field. Why should we doubt we are possible in tune with each others EM fields. It could be that we are not capable of screening out misinformation and tuning our EM field to what we are concentrating on. The brain is an instrument we are only just understanding, I dont doubt its secrets are more than we can envisage. If this possible then subtle ethereal influences are not beyond possibility.

You are spreading false claims again, xris. All brains share similar wave lengths, be they human or mouse, or otherwise. However, your major error is again, as I have mentioned before, emotionally buying into a 'teaching' before, and without, firstly verifying the hard and fast details of the thing the concept depends on. For each time that you try to falsely claim, or assert, that it is the electromagnetic field which leads to, say, remembering what you said to your wife during that heated emotional exchange, and again 'reliving' that emotion along with the memory, I will correct you. It is the flux, reception of, and re-uptake of biochemical messengers, not the electrostatic-state alteration which thus naturally has an electromagnetic field, doing it !! Not at all !! This, xris, is the truth of the matter, do you understand this? (I'm not asking if you wish to accept the truth of the matter, but am simply asking if you understand it)

OK, I'm gonna run over to my library and start pulling out those papers and reports and book points...it'll take some time.

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This is a great subject, and one that has always fascinated me. What is "consciousness" if not an organizing abstraction applied to other organizing abstractions like "sensation," "emotion," and "qualia," and so on? What is the "self"? Clearly these abstractions are related to the abstraction "brain."

In my opinion, an important aspect of this question is obscured by prejudices justified more my utility than dialectical coherence. I would say that sensation-emotion-conception just is, but there is something unspeakable beneath these organizing abstractions that cannot be put into language. Why? Because speech/though is discrete and also abstract. To speak in abstractions, which is the only way to think, is to cut out "chunks" from raw perception are treat these chunks as unities. The color of a rose( "red") just is, and so is its scent. But we learn to attach a word to these "properties" ("properties" is one such word) and before long we are living so much in our words/thoughts that we forget the non-spoken/unspeakable element is the foundation of all meaning and significance.

Sure, "consciousness" is a useful concept, but upon close examination it's another confusion. Concepts exist systematically in a sort of system of differences, and most of these differences are binary. Hot/cold, up/down, consciousness/matter, true/false, male/female, etc. And all of these concepts are unifications and delimitations of other concepts or nonconceptual "raw feels" which I must use concepts to point at.

In the end, these "raw feels" can never be satisfactorily named or explained. They are radically simple, and radically elusive. They are of a different (non)-substance than concepts that organize them. They just are. From the position of this "is-ness" we invent/discard useful/beautiful concepts to add or subtract from our system. Even the notion of the self is a pragmatic invention and ultimately confused. In my opinion, philosophy has been so immersed in an un-confessed pragmatism that it misses something beautiful and (anti-)essential.

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@KaseiJin,

The logic of this debate is that you have not been capable of locating the conscious ability. You have pointed to various portions of the brain and their crucial employment. If you had, I'm sure you would have pointed it out to me. I can find no reference in any journals where this has been confirmed. I have said if you can point to a link where this is stated I would be grateful. I dont think the EM theory has been discounted, it has been questioned but not discounted. Im not claiming the EM is created externally but is the result of the brains activity. Consciousness does exist in all creatures , whose deny this. Its the ability of humans that separates us.

Alan does not represent the empirical evidence for experience, no one does. It is a personal conclusion. I may doubt Alan's experience but Alan does not. You may doubt mine but I dont. You have never given me doubts about my experiences. You fail to realise that I have thought about the dangers of natural desires and deluded self motivated interests. It has plagued my logic for years. I came from your position and had no wish to question the scientific reasoning. If the explorer slept and slipped past the Island of discovery, because his charts showed no island , what would we think of him.

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@KaseiJin,

take your time, i pondered your reply to my last post until i ran out of time and i still dont get it...i'll be back later after a bath and some chai!
namaste!

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@KaseiJin,

KaseiJin wrote:

Let me see if I can pin this one down a little better, in as concise, and clear, a wording as possible.

salima wrote:

just to make sure i understand your reply:
is it the conclusion of science that to date any apparent test where remote viewing was successful in its result was purely an accident by the person who only imagined they perceived something at a distance?

In what I have come across, there is a question as to actual success, and even a question as to how to rate how the idea of attempting to know whether the actually-caused-by-light-hitting-the-retina-and-brain-processing event/state could be effectually, equally perceived by a separate brain, ever came up in the first place.
why do you want to rate how the idea came up in the first place? i imagine it came up because someone remotely viewed something and thought it was really cool.
In other words, it very much looks as though there had been an opinion which some had tried to attempt to demonstrate, rather than some naturally occurring phenomenon to which some then applied the carefulness of scientific method.
it doesnt look like that to me...
And where did that opinion come from in the first place? I'm not sure on that one, but most likely in a place and time before the knowledge we have today, had informed the views of the real facts of the external world which we all share; and thus some pre-conscious, implicit and unrecognized effort to mentally support a already accustomed to idea, could possibly be getting in the way too.
so you think there was a time before we knew it wasnt possible to see without our eyes what someone else saw with their eyes and that is where the idea originated?

i dont see how that really tells me whether or not i understood you. above where i stated what i thought you had meant, can you look over that and say is that what you meant or if not then what was it?

salima wrote:
my own thoughts would be that since it is a faculty or skill that has not been practiced or even considered to be credible there would be very little expertise in it, IF in fact such a thing were possible. it seems a little hasty to dismiss it all on the basis of its not being repeatable or 100% accurate. is it not enough that it seems to have happened at times to warrant further investigation?

We might be warranted to ask, nevertheless, just how it is that we might conclude that we are dealing with some faculty or skill which needs to be practiced in order to be achieved. i would think it needs to be practiced because according to the tests it doesnt work very well...it isnt 100% successful and isnt repeatable Additionally, where would we more fairly and realistically start from--or do we wish to demand that only the H. sapiens, and none other of the homo genus, would have had such a brain-based capability? no, as far as i know all the other animals can do remote viewing really well, but there isnt any way to test that, so let's not bring that into the issue at this point.

I would say here, that firstly we'd have to verify the claim to know that such said event is happening in two involved brains exactly as interpreted to have been happening. There had been a time when almost anyone could make any claim and rumor would spread it well and thick, quite easily. The test of time and empirical experience, however, has put much greater limits on that, and the tests have become more secure in their reasoning.

Therefore if a claim is made that a certain external event is happening which will cause two exact internal brain states to be synchronized in such manner, the evidence will have to clearly show that such claim is viable above a rate of chance event. The fact that inconsistency and lack of full equality of scene description, and a rate which around chance, is the result, it can hardly be verified to be a given fact of brain capability by any means, actually. (if the sender were colored blind, would the receiver see what that brain ordinarily does not register?...I'd be very, very surprised if such were to happen)
i thought they had achieved results that were above the mathematical chance of happening but i could be wrong. so if they did that, even if it was not repeatable-like even if two people in a controlled environment did it ONCE...wouldnt that mean if not conclusive evidence at least something worth investigating, that there could be a connection between to separate brains?

salima wrote:
and let me ask you this:
if it were proved that remote viewing were possible, would that still be explainable with your model of how the brain works to generate consciousness?

Yes, it would. The reason being, quite understandably, that if remote viewing were to happen, even, as claimed, it is only obvious that each brain would have to have the state of having consciousness. I mean, it has been very well demonstrated that the actual visual field in the extreme peripheral of normal vision can be, and is, acted on by brain without as much as a fringe event of consciousness--as though through a zombie (and of course blind sight is a real thing) You see, salima, meree baheen, the state of having consciousness is often times confused, it seems, with the content of that state as of a given moment. Additionally, it has been most clearly shown that attention and the state of having consciousness are two separate things, after all.
so you are saying that if two people successfully completed a remote viewing experiment verified by an objective third party under controlled circumstances that it would prove nothing except that both brains were conscious?

do you see where i am going with this? what i want to know is do you believe there is a purely physical way that two brains can sense the same stimulus maybe in different ways or one brain can sense what another is sensing and maybe even thinking. because if you dont and it is proved to happen, i rest my case. i dont think it should be all that hard to come up with a way that it could happen without having to ascribe it to that mysterious ghost in the machine...

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@xris,

xris wrote:

The logic of this debate is that you have not been capable of locating the conscious ability.

This is simply not true at all; not one bit, xris. The logic of, and in, my presentation, the understanding that is securely enough held in the field, is exactly that, xris, logic. It is the application of logical thinking, through the process of scientific method, that conclusions have been reached. The conclusion on consciousness which is best supported is that consciousness is exactly due to process of brain. Additionally, consciousness is a continuum across time and species and individual brains--in other words, conscious is what builds to the threshold of conscious which is having a state of consciousness, for the individual.

I have corrected you before, and you simply wish to ignore it (fair enough...I'm not trying to persuade you, really) yet the truth of the matter is that you will not find consciousness without a brain--as the word is empirically and pragmatically defined/described. It is a mistaken concept to think that because the whole of brain is building to the state of having consciousness--with some structures playing more active roles than others--instead of a single area of the brain which alone and by itself produces consciousness, that consciousness is not only a matter of a working brain. That is illogical thinking, and that really appears to be one thing that is getting in the way.

xris wrote:

I can find no reference in any journals where this has been confirmed.

I'm going to call your bluff here, xris, I don't think you have any access to any journals dealing with this matter.

xris wrote:

I have said if you can point to a link where this is stated I would be grateful.

Yes, you did . . . and I answered (impatience again?). Also, I had come on line just now to check with you about that. I started collecting those studies, as I said I would in an earlier post, and while I have pulled the relevant studies from up to 2007 in Science (with portions of at least 4 other journals to go), I have already 92 citations. Now, it'd be kind of stupid to make a post with all those (I'd guess maybe ending up at around 130 or so at least) So I'm thinking about grouping them and giving two prime impact studies per relevant point (to reduce the post spacing). Is that OK with you?

xris wrote:

I dont think the EM theory has been discounted, it has been questioned but not discounted.

I'm sorry, xris, but it basically has been put down...primarily because the interpretation you have been driving at, which some have been trying to spin out of the study results, never was there in the first place, actually.

xris wrote:

Im not claiming the EM is created externally but is the result of the brains activity. Consciousness does exist in all creatures , whose deny this.

Yes, that is exactly the case. Neuronal activity, with the flow of ions, is exactly what produces the various local and general electromagnetic fields.

I most likely would refrain from using the word 'all' there, but yes, many mammals clearly display that state. Additionally, as you may recall from older arguments, each species is different in some way, or another, and while the H. sapiens was kind of lucky to end up with this big brain, other members of the Homo genus had big brains too...special abilities make a continuum of states as well. It's not good to get hung up on just ourselves.

You still didn't get what I was saying about experiences, or else you may be uncertain on just how to word it. Regardless of a person's thinking that a certain non-externally induced mental experience is a true fact of nature, it is only true within the confines of their brain build/state. One continuous point in your presentation has been that only because of a non-externally induced mental event, or a number of such events (experiences), you claim to know that it is true that the consciousness and conscious content, memory, sensory functions, inner speech, and otherwise emotional and cognitive events of a person's brain continue unabated at somatic death. The evidence says that is simply not true at all...it is not an external, true fact of our natural world. As the lungs no longer function and have no active output in them once all their cells have died, as the intestines no longer function, nor sense, nor have active output when all their cells and neurons die, the brain also, no longer functions, no longer has active output, and no longer thinks, feels remembers, or speaks when all its cells and neurons die.

Now, is my idea of narrowing down the citations into groups with just a couple of high-impact studies representing the tens of studies under each category, OK?

salima, meree baheen, chan, please let me get back with you on that tomorrow. I've got a little more homework to do here, and feel a bit tired ... been burning some midnight oil the last three nights. I have kind of run over your more recent post, and think I can see your concerns. Let's see if I can address them clearly. Catch you tomorrow !! phir milenge ji !

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I'm not sure whose posting here? this subject could go on forever. I thought infinity was impossible. Im tempted to ask numerous questions about NDEs , dreaming the future, aware of being stared at and numerous other skeptical subjects. The evidence is inconclusive ,to me, but very clearly is totally unfounded nonsense for others. I can dismiss certain events or strange coincidences with the same certainty but not all of them. The trouble is, with a subject such as this no one will accept an impasse. Its very difficult to not bring up other subjects without clouding the debate but its also very difficult trying to oppose the idea of a biological origin of consciousness without resorting to these other subjects.

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From Brain to Consciousness to Mind--the biological basis

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