May 27 2014
The Brain Is Not a Receiver
Whenever the discussion of a dualist vs materialist model of the mind comes up, one common point made to support the dualist position (that the mind is something other than or more than just the functioning of the brain) is that the brain may not be the origin of the mind, but rather is just the receiver. Often an explicit comparison is made to radios or televisions.
The brain as receiver hypothesis, however, is wholly inadequate to explain the relationship between the brain and the mind, as I will explain below.
As an example of the brain-receiver argument, David Eagleman writes in his book Incognito:
As an example, I’ll mention what I’ll call the “radio theory” of brains. Imagine that you are a Kalahari Bushman and that you stumble upon a transistor radio in the sand. You might pick it up, twiddle the knobs, and suddenly, to your surprise, hear voices streaming out of this strange little box. If you’re curious and scientifically minded, you might try to understand what is going on. You might pry off the back cover to discover a little nest of wires. Now let’s say you begin a careful, scientific study of what causes the voices. You notice that each time you pull out the green wire, the voices stop. When you put the wire back on its contact, the voices begin again. The same goes for the red wire. Yanking out the black wire causes the voices to get garbled, and removing the yellow wire reduces the volume to a whisper. You step carefully through all the combinations, and you come to a clear conclusion: the voices depend entirely on the integrity of the circuitry. Change the circuitry and you damage the voices.
He argues that the Bushman might falsely conclude that the wires in the radio produce the voices by some unknown mechanism, because he has no knowledge of electromagnetic radiation and radio technology.
This point also came up several times in the 600+ comments following my post on the Afterlife Debate. Commenter Luoge, for example, wrote:
“But the brain-as-mediator model has bot yet been ruled out. We can tamper with a TV set and modify its behaviour just as a neurosurgeon can do with a brain. We can shut down some, or all, of its functioning, and we can stimulate to show specific responses. And yet no neurologist is known to have thought that the TV studio was inside the TV set.”
There are two reasons to reject the brain-as-mediator model – it does not explain the intimate relationship between brain and mind, and (even if it could) it is entirely unnecessary.
To deal with the latter point first, I have used the example of the light-fairy. When I flip the light switch on my wall, the materialist model holds that I am closing a circuit, allowing electricity to flow through the wires in my wall to a specific appliance (such as a light fixture). That light fixture contains a light bulb which adds resistance to the circuit and uses the electrical energy to heat an element in order to produce light and heat.
One might hypothesize, however, that an invisible light fairy lives in my wall. When I flip the switch the fairy flies to the fixture where it draws energy from the electrical wires, and then creates light and heat that it causes to radiate from the bulb. The light bulb is not producing the light and heat, it is just a conduit for the light fairy’s light and heat.
There is no way you can prove that my light fairy does not exist. It is simply entirely unnecessary, and adds nothing to our understanding of reality. The physics of electrical circuits do a fine job of accounting for the behavior of the light switch and the light. There is no need to invoke light bulb dualism.
The same is true of the brain and the mind, the only difference being that both are a lot more complex.
More importantly, however, we have enough information to rule out the brain-as-receiver model unequivocally.
The examples often given of the radio or TV analogy are very telling. They refer to altering the quality of the reception, the volume, even changing the channel. But those are only the crudest analogies to the relationship between brain and mind.
A more accurate analogy would be this – can you alter the wiring of a TV in order to change the plot of a TV program? Can you change a sitcom into a drama? Can you change the dialogue of the characters? Can you stimulate one of the wires in the TV in order to make one of the on-screen characters twitch?
Well, that is what would be necessary in order for the analogy to hold.
As we have learned more and more about brain function, we have identified many modules and circuits in the brain that participate in specific functions. During the Afterlife debate I gave a few of my favorite examples.
Disruption of one circuit, for example, can make someone feel as if their loved-ones are imposters, because they do not evoke the usual emotions they should feel.
Disruption of another circuit can make a person feel as if they are not in control of a part of their body – so-called alien hand syndrome.
A stroke that leaves the ownership module intact but unconnected to the paralyzed limb can rarely result in a supernumerary phantom limb – the subjective experience of having an extra limb that you can feel and controlled (but that does not exist).
Seizures are also a profound area of evidence for the mind as brain theory. Synchronous electrical activity in particular parts of the brain can make people twitch and convulse, but also experience smells, sounds, images, feelings, a sense of unreality, a sense of being connected to the universe, an inability to speak, the experience of a particular piece of music, a sense of deja vu, or pretty much anything you can imagine. The subjective experience depends on the part of the brain where the seizure occurs.
There is also copious evidence from strokes and other forms of brain damage. As a practicing neurologist I can examine a patient with a stroke and with a high degree of accuracy predict exactly where the lesion will be in the brain on subsequent imaging. Everything you think, do, and feel has a neuroanatomical correlate in the brain, and if that function is altered or not working, that will predict where the lesion can be found.
The only limitation is the current resolution of our neuroanatomical and circuitry map of the brain. No one denies that the brain is fantastically complex, and that our current models are a long way from capturing this complexity down to its finest level of detail.
I think, however, that non-neuroscientists grossly underestimate the degree to which we have mapped the circuits in the brain. Also, as our technology improves (with the addition of fMRI and transcranial magnetic stimulation, for example) the materialist model of the brain is becoming more successful. If this model were ultimately wrong, then the materialist approach would be running into serious problems. It isn’t. It is a remarkably successful research paradigm.
A dedicated dualist might still argue that each specific mental function requires its own specific receiver. Brain circuits are receiving specific signals. If you stimulate the circuit it acts as if it is receiving the signal. Eventually, this argument leads to a brain that has all the circuitry necessary to produce everything we can observe about mental function – it leads to the light fairy argument, where the light fairy is simply not necessary.
If, on the other hand, the receiver model were correct then it would be reasonable to predict that as we investigate the relationship between brain function and mental function in greater and greater detail, the physical model would break down. We would run into anomalies we could not explain, and it would seem as if the brain does not have the physical complexity to account for the observed mental complexity. None of this is what we find, however.
Conclusion
The brain-as-receiver hypothesis is nothing more than a convenient way for dualists to dismiss evidence for the correlation between brain function and mental function. The hypothesis, however, is dependent upon a gross misunderstanding of the state of our knowledge about brain function, and the intimate connection that has been documented in countless ways between brain function and mental function.
The simplest explanation for the tight correlation between brain and mental function is that the mind is what the brain does. There is no more reason to hypothesize a mind separate from brain than there is to hypothesize that there is a computer fairy that performs all the necessary calculations and then feeds the results to specific circuits in your computer.
1,708 Responses to “The Brain Is Not a Receiver”
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Thanks for posting Dr. N. Someone in the AfterLife thread wisely pointed out:
If the brain is a receiver, what is it receiving? Why can’t we detect the consciousness waves? We can and do detect radio waves, all forms of electromagnetic energy, etc.
Dualists: if you say the brain is a receiver, show us what it is receiving, then we can have a discussion.
Another good point in regards to the radio analogy: if you tweak any of the wires in the radio circuit, the whole thing fails. But if you tweak a brain circuit, there is not catastrophic failure but subtle and “graceful degradation” (this is a key technical feature of neural networks). This is more evidence that the radio analogy is not a good one.
Is the fact that transcranial magnetic stimulation is a sort of transmitter receiver as described by dualism proof that there is no transmitter? If there is a transmitter and we can at very least override the signal, then it should be the same type of signal.
But I don’t think there is any evidence of electromagnetic signals going to the brain.
There’s another way in which the brain could be a receiver. It’s possible that the data being transmitted to the brain is simply very noisy, such that tweaking various components of the brain can produce a very wide variety of behaviors and thoughts.
The problem you run into here is why a “soul” would be a “noisy” thing. This is a question you can’t answer, though, because it’s attempting to interrogate the supernatural. It’s certainly possible that souls are noisy, but we have no reason to think so a priori. The simplest explanation, of course, is that there is no soul transmitting data to the brain.
At it’s core the hypothesis would seem to be unfalsifiable. You could discover some ‘consciousness waves’,I suppose,and eventually prove the hypothesis,but if no proof ever emerges,then proponents will always be able to continue to move the goalposts in response to new discoveries that support the materialist model. In other words,as long as people want to believe this idea,the idea will never die,despite evidence to the contrary.
I noticed that nearly every person I engaged in a conversation about mind and brain is somewhat either ignorant, disagreeing or uncomfortable with the idea that the brain creates the mind. This is why to me the gap between what neuroscience says and what the general public believes is one of the biggest among all scientific subjects that really matter and affect people. Obviously particle physics and the kind – which are not known at all by the general public – do not enter in this category.
People are not aware of all those neuroanatomical correlates, and the extent to which behavior and subjective experience can be impaired/modified through brain damage, drugs etc. Therefore they are shocked once told that their brain is merely a machine. They are OK with the idea that other animal’s brains may be machines, but not theirs.
I posited server and client as a more appropriate metaphor for dualists to consider, since that is a two-way relationship, while radio and TV are passive receivers. At least in the server/client model, you can alter the server/soul’s processes by altering the client/brain’s processes. But, as you’re saying in the post, neuroscience is leaving less and less for the soul to allegedly do. The client’s so thick, one wonders why it bothers to connect to a server.
I brought up the idea of a spiritual Faraday cage a couple times. If there’s a signal going back and forth between the brain and soul, presumably that signal can be blocked to demonstrate a loss of function. If we discovered dualism is true that way, where do we go from there? How do we examine the inner workings of souls? How do souls explain consciousness, inner subjective experience, qualia, or whatever?
Bronze Dog-
Deprive the brain of oxygen. That should do the trick.
That all sounds good, but I have 4 important counter-arguments:
1. quantum mechanics
2. consciousness
3. parallel universes
4. science doesn’t know everything.
check and mate….
I think the dualist position is essentially “a gross misunderstanding of the state of our knowledge about brain function, and the intimate connection that has been documented in countless ways between brain function and mental function” meeting the inertia of belief/motivated reasoning.
@steve12 – you forgot ghosts and automatic writing.
Ekko – I think I missed the automatic writing, and I’m afraid of what I might find.
Sean Carroll touched on how much we know about reality in the afterlife debate. It is better explained at his Skepticon speech here, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrs-Azp0i3k , at about 37 minutes.
His contention is for most physics that happen at our scale we have figured it out. So for a dualist using the receiver hypothesis you need someway that the soul is interacting with the body via the brain. I am also using soul interchangeably with mind. You can then go two ways:
1. There is an energy or some type of field that is communicating the souls intentions to the brain, and it is some type of energy we have not discovered. This is pretty much in the not bloody likely category.
2. The interactions follow our current understanding of physics, but we have not understood what is happening.
So we have 4 forces to reach for I would think we are hard pressed to figure how the soul is communicating via a nuclear force, weak force, and gravity. And an interaction with these forces seems unlikely at best. So we are left with electromagnetism this would be possible. Electrochemical processes happen in the brain, and electromagnetic fields can effect the brain. I think someone mentioned trans-cranial stimulation.
So now we have to posit an electromagnet force effecting the brain that we have not detected before. This is where the dualists are in trouble. If the force has the possibility to interact with the brain why have we not detected something. While we might not understand the interaction it seems it should at least be detectable.
So unless someone is detecting a signal it seems at this point there is nothing there.
However being a layman am I missing anything. Is it fair to say if that if there was a mind/brain dualism we would have detected by now?
Attila
Our brains are RC receivers for ghosts; We are remote controlled by ghosts. Otherwise we’d be zombies. C’mon guys, this is like day-one dualist stuff. Duh.
While that would be a very effective way to stop signs of consciousness, it wouldn’t enlighten us as to whether it’s because the brain died or because the soul got cut off.
“Deprive the brain of oxygen. That should do the trick.”
That would presume that oxygen is somehow carrying the signal to the brain. This is unlikely. This would rather be like unplugging the radio, as opposed to blocking the signal.
Not very useful in telling us whether the radio is receiving a signal or generating those sounds on its own.
So how would an alien show that a radio was receiving an external signal as opposed to the radio generating sounds on its own?
An alien could detect the external signal (no luck with consciousness), manipulate/interfere with signal itself WITHOUT futzing with the receiver itself (again no luck), show that the same sounds can be played on materials/machines other than radios (still no luck). The alien could move the receiver away from the signal source to show effect of distance, could triangulate location of a source via several receivers, yada yada, you get the idea…
The point is that, like tmac and others have pointed out, this position ultimately retreats to “consciousness is non-physical spiritual ghosty-stuff” via goalpost moving. But if this is non-physical it loses all explanatory power or ability to prove, anyway, and is just useless light fairies.
There are hundreds of cases of patients in coma, under operation and with no vital signs reporting having seen not just the medical team operating on them but their relatives in the waiting room and reported accurately what they did and said. This is not possible if they were fully awake lying in the operation room. I have posted a dozen of videos to such claims here http://alisina.org/blog/2013/08/28/why-i-believe-in-god-and-afterlife-now/
Until that is not explained all this talk is intellectual masturbation.
I’m really not sure why we should stop with this one ad hoc hypothesis in any case. There is no compelling evidence for it,so why limit speculation to just one idea (in reality,I suspect there are many).
Let’s try this one on for size: Because we are outnumbered 10 to 1 by bacteria in our microbiome, I suggest that the collective activity of the bacteria are creating a consciousness a la the Borg hive mind. Much like a TV picture is made up of billions of pixels to form a coherent whole,our minds are mediated by trillions of bacterial transactions to form an emergent activity that we call consciousness.
C’mon guys lets use our imaginations to really rock new ideas! Don’t be limited by reality,just spitball something interesting.Who knows,it might just catch on. It’s not like anyone is actually going to test it out or anything.
Attila –
That’s my understanding.
One either has to simply affirm dualism, making the whole radio analogy extremely hokey, or run foul of physics. The fact is that we can measure the electromagnetic waves produced by the brain, and that we can influence the mind through electromagnetic waves makes it impossible to claim that this would be the mechanism used by the brain to receive and send information from and to the soul. If this were it, we would detect it, and would be able to manipulate it.
To make the whole thing even less believable, the receiver theory usually dispenses with the sending part, claiming that the soul acquires all the sensorial information autonomously (because it’s supernatural), not realizing this renders the idea that the brain has to receive the return signals like a radio devoid of sense.
I guess the analogy appeals to technically and scientifically naive people, who do not understand that we know enough about reality to make talking about unknown forces and implicit information transfer rather ridiculous. The watchmaker argument for intelligent design is similar, using the most complex piece of technology known at the time and dangling its awesome complexity in front of a gullible audience. Today’s woo-meisters are doing the same with quantum physics.
Could the brain be a transmitter and not a receiver? Maybe everything that our bodies do can be explained by the known laws of physics. But maybe there is some entity in some other dimension or something that receives inputs from the brain. And maybe we are those entities without any ability to control anything that the body does, but under the illusion that we are in charge.
(This sounds wishy-washy, but it is like someone from the middle ages trying to speculate about radiation. If they realized that a rock made of uranium was weird, how would they describe their thoughts?)
This could be similar to virtual reality rides like the Spiderman ride in Universal Studios. We sit in the machine and have no control over what will unfold, but if we sit in it our entire lives, and are made aware of what will happen a fraction of a second before it actually happens, we might start believing that we are actually controlling the machine.
Basically, I find it very hard to accept that I am just a highly advanced robot. There must be something that is experiencing what I am experiencing. However, I am prepared to accept that I have no control over what I will do, and the belief that I am in charge of my body is just an illusion.
tmac57 —
I definitely like P J Farmer’s “wathan” technology and his take on consciousness. I wouldn’t mind being resuscitated on Riverworld.
(Continuing my earlier comment)
Likewise, I suspect that even if we are able to build robots as complex as us in 100 years, the robots will not be conscious, unless we link the robot’s CPU to an “entity in the other dimension”, just like us.
“There is no more reason to hypothesize a mind separate from brain than there is to hypothesize that there is a computer fairy that performs all the necessary calculations and then feeds the results to specific circuits in your computer.”
Gods, I was thinking that exact same thing as you closed in on the end there. Nicely done.
Lol, where do I start?. I am afraid the light fairy analogy that Steven Novella uses is a terrible analogy to say the least. He is saying the receiver theory is too complicated that a simpler theory such as the mind does what the brain does should be accepted instead. At the end of the article he said if the mind is not produced by the brain we should run into anomalies that the theory cannot explain. Well, I am afraid we have such as terminal lucidity, stigmata etc.
Here is an excellent article by Steven Harp on the brain being a receiver of consciousness.
http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/viewFile/269/301
M. Hector Durville did experiments on finding out if there really is an astral body. The subject of the experiment is constantly rapport with the double. Usually this is cylindrical , but may sometimes appear to be a sort of ribbon. As to the clothes of the phatom, these seem to be composed of a sort of “fluidic gauze”. Various sense-impressions are conveyed to the body by the means of the astral cord. the question of temperature is imporatant; as too much light has a detrimental effect upon the astral body. Experiments with the dynamometer showed that the muscular strength (grip) of the subject was always greater after the projection than before. On the contrary, the temperature of the hand, particularly of the right hand, almost invariably fell as the result of the experiment. The action of the phantom upon the double of another subject both being “projected” at the same time; and upon the physical body of another person.
Some positive results were apparently secured in both cases. Some successes were also reported in obtaining physical movements of objects and raps, and moving the straw of a sthenometer, at a distance from the entrenched subject by the projected astral body, and various vital radiations emitted by it or by the physical body.
These experiments were cited in this book http://books.google.ca/books?id=PmmmhS-pT38C&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=m+hector+durville+experiments+astral+body&source=bl&ots=yVonYP6Iob&sig=89iaZGFtgG0dijBpKOIIiUpgwFo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eC2FU4ymMaKV8QHkrYCgDg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=m%20hector%20durville%20experiments%20astral%20body&f=false
He concluded like many scientists have that the projection of the astral body is a certain fact, capable pf being demonstrated by means of direct experiment. Also, since the phantom can exist and function apart from the physical body. It may also exist after death. That is, Immortality is a fact thus proved scientifically.
@Leo
Harps article is just a ridiculous amount of goal post moving. He accepts we can measure specific physical reactions in the brain that coincide with the processes of the mind. But because we can’t literally measure ‘consciousness’ he’s seeing up a strawman and ignoring anything materialist point to.
As an aside I find it hilarious you guys have built this bogeyman called materialism. I find it ironic you basically have to say ‘stupid materialists always have to have a rational explanation. ..’
@leo
“He concluded like many scientists have ”
What constitutes many Leo, the current scientific consensus does not support a belief in magic.
Grabula
Well we can’t measure consciousness that should be obvious. One of the fatal problems with materialism a dead end you can call it is the fact that consciousness is subjective if you are going to say that brain activity is consciousness itself then you have turned it all around by saying consciousness is physical. But consciousness isn’t physical at all its subjective.
@leo
We can certainly measure the effect altering the physical brain has on the mind. In fact Dr. Novella points out that is understood more than most people really know. Anti-materialists have not been able to touch the fact that changing the brain changes the mind in highly predictable ways.
“Lol, where do I start?. I am afraid the light fairy analogy that Steven Novella uses is a terrible analogy to say the least. He is saying the receiver theory is too complicated that a simpler theory such as the mind does what the brain does should be accepted instead. At the end of the article he said if the mind is not produced by the brain we should run into anomalies that the theory cannot explain. Well, I am afraid we have such as terminal lucidity, stigmata etc.”
Hahaha – this is too funny.
leo100 —
You can’t even define consciousness. Don’t get me started on your “something out there somewhere somehow non-physical but sending information to the brain but somehow not needing to receive anything because magically it has access to all experiences and memories even if the brain is damaged so that I remain whole once and alive after I’m dead” drivel.
It’s the same “OMG we cannot be just animals” reaction people had to Darwin.
Grabula, but is electrical activity the same as consciousness no it isn’t. Can the brain affect the mind in highly predictable ways like you said? yes, sure it can no dualist denies that. Steven Novella is putting up a strawman.
Bill
Well I can at least give it a substance something tangible where you materialists like us to believe consciousness can magically be produced by electrical brain activity.
leo100,
> Grabula, but is electrical activity the same as consciousness no it isn’t.
How can you make a claim like that when you cannot even define consciousness?
leo100,
> Can the brain affect the mind in highly predictable ways like you said? yes, sure it can no dualist denies that. Steven Novella is putting up a strawman.
No, you have just made a straw man.
Steve does not mention consciousness anywhere in the article.
Steve is not saying that dualists deny or not deny that, he is putting it forward as an example of a logical, science based theory on brain function that does not require magic.
> Well I can at least give it a substance something tangible where you materialists like us to believe consciousness can magically be produced by electrical brain activity.
Your sentence begins with nonsense and ends with a straw man. Bravo!
When we materialists (I strongly prefer ‘physicalists’) say that dualism is exactly as necessary for the explanation of consciousness as the charmingly invoked light bulb fairy would be for the explanation of electrical heating – and consequent lighting up – of a tungsten filament, what we are adressing is dualism of substance. This is very important, because it would also mean building a straw man to claim that physicalists deny that there is a phenomenological distinction between a subjective experience and its neurological correlate. On the contrary, the relation of the two is one of the most important areas of scientific research, philosophical analysis and human thought in general – what David Chalmers named ‘The Hard Problem’.
All the more reason, I think, to steer well clear of any explanation that requires / depends on (substantial) dualism, i.e. existance of an immaterial soul. To accept such a notion would deny any hope for improving our answers to existing questions or improving our questions to existing answers, so that our understanding of Nature (and that includes ourselves and the organ we use for the process of understanding) might progress.
Mr Qwerty
Looks like you didn’t pay any attention to his post he said and I quote “The hypothesis, however, is dependent upon a gross misunderstanding of the state of our knowledge about brain function, and the intimate connection that has been documented in countless ways between brain function and mental function”. How, is that a strawman? I am simply stating that no dualist denies the very strong connection between the mind and brain. Its nonsense to believe that somehow consciousness can come out of electrical brain activity its like a a magic rabbit jumping out of a hat.
leo – The strawman is yours. I clearly stated that dualists acknowledge there is some correlation – they underestimate its magnitude, and the details that strongly suggest that it is brain function that is the underlying cause of conscious subjective experience.
Your next statement is just a naked assertion – on what basis would you conclude that consciousness cannot be a manifestation of brain activity? There is no magic necessary.
From your previous comments you are also attempting to establish as a factual premise that psi abilities exist – but these have not been proven scientifically. Far from it. These remain fringe claims because the scientific evidence is either crap or negative. There is no psi phenomenon that demonstrates a clear positive result, with good signal to noise, and independently reproducible. It simply doesn’t exist.
AliSina (your link is not working) – those cases are not well documented. They were not controlled, and we have no idea how much cold-reading type evolution of the narrative took place. They are useless as scientific evidence.
The burden is actually on you to document consciousness absent brain function. Such evidence does not exist. There are preliminary controlled studies that are negative, and a larger study about to be published. We’ll see what that shows. In these studies they have information placed in the operating room or ED that can only be seen from the vantage of someone floating near the ceiling. So far no one has reported the content of such information, but again we are awaiting the latest study.
@Steven Novella
Where exactly would that be? nowhere, in your article can I find that and you call dualists mostly non neuroscientists who have no vast knowledge of the magnitude as you call it of the correlation. Like, dualists don’t know that a simple blow to the head radically effects consciousness or how drinking alcohol affects a person’s thoughts. You got to give me a break we do. Because brain activity is nothing like consciousness, electrical activity is a physical thing consciousness isn’t.
Well I would advise to actually look at the evidence for psi phenomenon with a open mind. Not too open that your brain falls out but open enough to at least realize that the evidence meets at least the scientific standards.
Well I would advise you to actually look at the evidence for psi phenomenon with a open mind. Not too open that your brain falls out but open enough to at least realize that the evidence meets at least the scientific standards. So it looks like the strawman is yours Steven but your trying to pass it on me. I will admit your a very smart man Steven and that is why you can get away with sweeping statements such as mind is what the brain does. No one here hardly would question you on it because of your qualifications in neuroscience.
leo – you completely missed one of my major points. The correlation goes beyond head injury or alcohol diminishing consciousness. You can make specific changes to subjective experience by altering or damaging specific circuits in the brain. I have multiple examples. There are countless more.
Saying that consciousness is not physical is meaningless. Consciousness refers to a process, not a thing. The brain is the thing, consciousness is a function of the brain. Saying that a process is not physical is just meaningless wordplay – and it seems to be your entire premise.
I have looked very deeply into the evidence for psi. I have written about it many times. If you think it is real, then please provide me with references documenting a psi phenomenon that is objective (rigorous methodology), measurable, with reasonable signal to noise ratio, and independently reproducible. I am saying – after years of searching, of challenging proponents, and of publicly writing on this topic – that it doesn’t exist. Every single time someone claims to me that it does, and I push them for references, they reference crappy research, one-off studies, discredited research, or the like. Never what I ask for.
“Because brain activity is nothing like consciousness, electrical activity is a physical thing consciousness isn’t. ”
Leo- You are confusing yourself with language. Do you feel the same way about digestion? Digestion is what the GI tract does, yet digestion is not physical. Does this cause you to be a dualist about digestion, photosynthesis, respiration, etc? These are human concepts about certain processes that take place within the physiology. Making these concepts intectually does not create new entities.
Your arguments and the way you talk about them assume dualism, so you are essentially begging the question and you don’t seem to realize it.
leo has already referenced his “studies” in the After the Afterlife Debate comments. They are either links to books where cool stuff happened or they are “crappy research, one-off studies, discredited research, or the like”.
“open enough to at least realize that the evidence meets at least the scientific standards”
It’s been repeatedly pointed out to you, for a myriad of reasons, why the evidence does NOT meet scientific standards.
leo I hope one day you look back on these comments and cringe because that will mean you have learned something but personally I’m going to stick to my theory that you are just trolling.
Leo100’s comment on 27 May 2014 at 8:48 pm which mentioned the test of an alleged astral body experiment from the occultist Hector Durville as “Immortality is a fact thus proved scientifically” was copied and pasted from:
http://paranormalandlifeafterdeath.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/m-hector-durvilles-experiments-on.html
On a second visit it looks like this may be his own blog, as he recently wrote:
“A little update on this post I was recently discussing how the mind is probably not produced by the brain on Steven Novella’s blog called Neurologica. The whole thing was a waste of time I knew it would it be but I though maybe just maybe one of the skeptics on there was open minded to at least admit that there is strong evidence for an afterlife and psi phenomena and say I don’t know if there is or isn’t an afterlife.”
http://paranormalandlifeafterdeath.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/the-afterlife-debate-is-death-is-final.html
As for Hector Durville he was a French occultist who practiced “animal magnetism”. This has been discredited. For criticism of those experiments into “astral bodies” in the séance room see Milbourne Christopher’s book “Search for the Soul” (1979). It is the best book on the subject that looks at all the attempts of early parapsychologists to measure or weigh an “astral body” or “soul”.
Christopher discusses the flaws in these experiments, most famously the ones by Dr. Duncan MacDougall who claimed to measure the soul The book also discusses the experiments of physicist R. A. Watters who chopped up loads of insects in a chamber and claimed to have observed their soul on camera. According to Christopher the pictures depict dust. The experiments contained sloppy controls and were never replicated by the scientific community.
More about Watters here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/R._A._Watters
ANOTHER troll flogging their blog! Arrgghh!! Leo almost had us believing he sincerely wanted honest feedback on his views. How silly of us.
Aardwark – i think that was well said
I would like to know what a dualist’s response would be to this comment from Victor Stenger:
“Considerable evidence exists for the hypothesis that what we call mind and consciousness result from mechanisms in a purely material brain. If we have disembodied souls that, as most religions teach, are responsible for our thoughts, dreams, personalities, and emotions, then these should not be affected by drugs. But they are. They should not be affected by disease. But they are. They should
not be affected by brain injuries. But they are. Brain scans today can locate the portions of the brain where different types of thoughts arise, including emotions. When that part of the brain has been destroyed by surgery or injury, those types of thoughts disappear. As brain function decreases we lose consciousness, as when under full anesthesia. Why would that happen if consciousness arose from an immaterial soul? There is no objective evidence that brain function stops entirely during a reported NDE.”
Victor J. Stenger “Life after Death: Examining the Evidence. In The End of Christianity edited by John W. Loftus, Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 2011.
To me this underscore a real need to educate more people on the principles of Emergence. It’s like the gnomes from South Park:
1. Physical Brain
2. ?
3. Consciousness
Understanding that step 2 is an emerging system seems to get lost in the shuffle by simply equating it to “electrical brain activity.” There’s much more going on than that.
A deep and thorough understanding of emergence helps immensely in making sense of step 2. (Aside:Although I still think it needs a lot more research to start to understand how the smaller behavioral rules manifest as organizational patterns to use practically).
I’m unclear why the brain requires this phantom “receivership”, when no similar claim is made about an ant hive. Similar principle. No centralized control, no single ant has the whole view, just a collection of individuals making individual decisions (http://inspiringscience.net/2012/08/28/how-does-an-ant-colony-coordinate-its-behaviour/). Where are the arguments that the hive itself is a “receiver” from some “ant soul” to explain the organizational complexity of the hive itself and how tasks and work is accomplished?
I think BJ7 was the first to point it out – but Leo is a dirty copy/paste troll and should never be responded to, as tempting as it is.
Midnightrunner
So his criticism is true because he said so?. Yes good old rational wiki a very trustworthy site for sure lol. It has made huge misrepresenting people such as Michael Prescott and Michael E Tymn so why should I take this site seriously?.
I got your point loud and clear Steven Novella no dualist denies that you can make specific changes to subjective consciousness. The dependency is very strong between the mind and brain I don’t doubt that nor does other dualists either. What matters is what type of dependency is it productive or permissive or transmissive function as William James mentioned before in his article on two objection against the doctrine against immortality. Is there anything subjective that we know of besides consciousness that is a process of something else that is physical besides the brain?. As you assume along with other materialists. Plus assuming consciousness is a process is reductionism your ignoring the reality of consciousness by assuming its a process.
“When we materialists (I strongly prefer ‘physicalists’) say that dualism is exactly as necessary for the explanation of consciousness as the charmingly invoked light bulb fairy would be for the explanation of electrical heating – and consequent lighting up – of a tungsten filament, what we are adressing is dualism of substance. This is very important, because it would also mean building a straw man to claim that physicalists deny that there is a phenomenological distinction between a subjective experience and its neurological correlate. ”
But subjective experience is the result of brain processes in the same way that light is the result of heating tungsten. We treat consciousness is if it has special status, but we really have no scientific reason for doing so. It’s implicit dualism.
“On the contrary, the relation of the two is one of the most important areas of scientific research, philosophical analysis and human thought in general – what David Chalmers named ‘The Hard Problem’.”
I disagree. I don’t think science is going to find a satisfactory answer to the hard problem any more than it’s going to give you a satisfactory answer to why you love your kids. We can describe the processes, break them down, identify necessary and sufficient condition – hell, even make it some day. But none of these things will answer this. It’s because it’s an ill-posed scientific Q. It’s a metaphysical Q, not a scientific one.
“All the more reason, I think, to steer well clear of any explanation that requires / depends on (substantial) dualism, i.e. existance of an immaterial soul. To accept such a notion would deny any hope for improving our answers to existing questions or improving our questions to existing answers, so that our understanding of Nature (and that includes ourselves and the organ we use for the process of understanding) might progress.”
I agree with this.
Leo,
You keep asserting that materialism is wrong because consciousness is not physical. That is only true if you define consciousness as not being the product of something physical. In other words, your argument is tautological. To resolve this, may I ask that you define consciousness, not the mechanism of consciousness but consciousness itself.
@midnightrunner2014,
“I would like to know what a dualist’s response would be to this comment from Victor Stenger:”
I would imagine the response would be that the receiver (brain) is damaged/impaired and so the signal (soul/consciousness) is not coming through clearly. This is addressed by the light fairy analogy in the original post.
@ Bill Openthalton 28 May 2014 at 3:23 am
“It’s the same “OMG we cannot be just animals” reaction people had to Darwin.”
Spot on. Well said.
Steve12,
We clearly agree on what is essential, or perhaps we agree completely, but for some clumsiness in my use of language.
What I really wished to emphasize was that after we (hopefully some day) gain a full understanding of the physical processes that consciousness is the result of, there will still remain the question of qualia – the Hard Problem. Perhaps we can shrug and say that this requires no further explanation. On the other hand, perhaps it is precisely in some future insight(s) that would allow us to reframe this question (admittedly perhaps not as strictly scientific, but not necessarily as metaphysical either) that the way forward may actually lie.
AliSina
“There are hundreds of cases of patients in coma, under operation and with no vital signs reporting having seen not just the medical team operating on them but their relatives in the waiting room and reported accurately what they did and said. This is not possible if they were fully awake lying in the operation room. I have posted a dozen of videos to such claims here [Link]
Until that is not explained all this talk is intellectual masturbation.”
I don’t deny that people have near death experiences, but I believe the burden of proof has not been met with the claim that the experiences happen outside of the brain. The evidence you present for the claim that consciousness happens outside of the brain has no controls and is a mixture of hearsay and testimonials. This is weak evidence, and to suggest the evidence is anything but weak is dishonest.
Dr Novella has written in the past about NDE and gives a few possibilities for their explanations.
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/studying-near-death-experiences/
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-on-near-death-experiences/
On a side note, the AWARENESS study by Dr Sam Parina has completed its first phase and has been submitted for peer review. http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=293
“The skeptics explain that when the brain is deprived of oxygen it hallucinates. This is just their theory.” – Ali Sina ‘Why I Believe in god and the Afterlife Now’
It is a natural explanation that does not fit your conclusion. You fail to rule these explanations out, but you’re more than happy to just ignore them.
I have a feeling you haven’t investigated any of these claim yourself.
“New findings have made some to believe that memory is also stored in the heart. One interesting case is about an 8-year-old girl who had received a heart transplant from a 10-year-old girl that had been murdered, began to have nightmares about the donor’s murderer. After several consultations with a psychiatrist, it was decided that the police should be notified. The 8-year-old recipient was able to identify key clues about the murder, including who the murderer was, when and how it happened, and even the words spoken by the murderer to the victim. Amazingly, the entire testimony turned out to be true and the murderer was convicted for his crime. You can read about more such cases here or by searching “heart memory”.” – Ali Sina ‘Why I Believe in god and the Afterlife Now’
Wow, what a convincing story. This is truly amazing evidence of “heart memory” that was verified by police several times over. There is only one little problem- this story is completely unverifiable and cannot be considered more than hearsay evidence, which is one of the weakest forms of evidence. I found the source of the story, something I doubt you even attempted.
Paul Pearsall, ‘The Heart’s Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Your Heart Energy’
“The Heart that Found its Body’s Killer
I recently spoke to an international group of psychologist, psychiatrist, and social workers meeting in Houston, Texas. I spoke to them about my ideas about the central role of the heart in our psychological and spiritual life, and following my presentation, a psychiatrist came to the microphone during the question and answer session to ask me about one of her patients whose experience seemed to substantiate my ideas about cellular memories and a thinking heart. The case disturbed her so much that she struggled to speak through her tears.
Sobbing to the point that the audience and I had difficulty understanding her, she said, “I have a patient, an eight-year-old little girl who received he heart of a murdered ten-year-old-girl. Her mother brought her to me when she started screaming at night about her dreams of the man who had murdered her donor. She said her daughter knew who it was. After several sessions, I just could not deny the reality of what this child was telling me. Her mother and I finally decided to call the police and, using the descriptions from the little girl, they found the murderer. He was easily convicted with evidence my patient provided. The time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he worse, what the little girl he killed had said to him…everything the little heart transplant recipient reported was completely accurate.”
As the therapist returned to her seat, the audience of scientifically trained and clinically experienced professionals sat in silence. I could hear sobbing and saw tears in the eyes of the doctors in the front row. Instead of commenting on the story, I asked the audience if I could lead them in a prayer. I asked the technician to softly play the Hawaiians call a “pule ‘ohana,” a prayer in honor of our spiritual connection as family. Unlike many of the presentations, this one produced no expressions of doubt or skepticism. The very real possibility of a hear that remembers seemed to touch all of us in our own hearts.”
New findings my ass – more like double hearsay.
Steven Novella
“A more accurate analogy would be this – can you alter the wiring of a TV in order to change the plot of a TV program? Can you change a sitcom into a drama? Can you change the dialogue of the characters? Can you stimulate one of the wires in the TV in order to make one of the on-screen characters twitch?
Well, that is what would be necessary in order for the analogy to hold”.
No, quite the converse. If altering the wiring did these things the analogy *wouldn’t* hold.
Briefly, the picture quality on the television set that can alter without affecting the dialogue or plot being shown, can be compared to our various psychological states. Contrariwise the dialogue or plot of the programme being shown can be compared to one’s self. So, in a comparable manner to the way that the quality of the picture displayed on a television set can change, but without changing the plot/dialogue of the programme being shown, our psychological states are free to change without in any way altering or changing the self.
Steven Novella
“There are two reasons to reject the brain-as-mediator model – it does not explain the intimate relationship between brain and mind, and (even if it could) it is entirely unnecessary”.
It’s unnecessary? Reductive materialism leaves out the existence of consciousness. Non-reductive materialism entails epiphenomenalism. Those who suppose the brain produces consciousness are obliged to subscribe to *strong* emergentism. But that’s kinda magical. So rather than being entirely unnecessary the filter hypothesis is actually the one hypothesis which doesn’t appear to have any glaring problems
Steven Novella
“The physics of electrical circuits do a fine job of accounting for the behavior of the light switch and the light. There is no need to light bulb dualism.
The same is true of the brain and the mind, the only difference being that both are a lot more complex”.
I’m afraid this is simply flat out false. If this were true then there wouldn’t be a mind/body problem.
ian – you are wrong about the analogy. Changing the brain can change the content of your thoughts, feelings, and personality. Stimulating a part of the brain can make you smell lilac, or hear a particular piece of music.
You just demonstrated one of my main points – those who deny the current neuroscientific model are largely ignorant of the type and amount of evidence for an intimate connection between brain function and mental experience.
And – you are assuming there is a mind/body problem, but no one has demonstrated that there is a problem. Daniel Dennett has it right – there really is no hard problem.
“But that’s kinda magical.”
Emergence is not magical. There are countless examples in both living and non-living systems. You might as well say evolution of life itself is magical. It is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t magical in the sense of inexplicable or of unknown origin.
“the filter hypothesis is actually the one hypothesis which doesn’t appear to have any glaring problems”
This is pretty funny. Where is consciousness coming from then? Is it being broadcast to our brains from space? It just exists in the ether? Or is it the Akashic Records? A Galactic Library of Consciousness? I guess if you consider just blind assertions and ignoring all the mind-brain connections already covered to be “no glaring problems” then yes bingo!
Ekko give me an example of strong emergence. Not weak emergence which is compatible with reductionism.
There’s no hard problem when why is there so many neuroscientist saying there is a hard problem such as John Searle, Chrisof Koch, Susan Blackmore etc. You are making an argument of authority right there Steven. For someone like you, you should know better than that.
That’s “then”
Niche
Consciousness is the inner subjective feeling of being someone. Your consciousness is what makes you who you are.
As I’ve said before, appropriate brain damage should actual change the self (in the existential sense rather than alterational sense). But it doesn’t happen. Similarly damaging a TV set doesn’t change the plot of the programme being screened.
This suggests that just as the plot isn’t a product of the TV set, neither is the self a product of the brain.
Exactly Ian there never is a existential change only a alterational change.
Beyond the lack of science knowledge, dodgy reasoning, and vague philosophical buzzwords, Ian uses a semantic trick wherein he confuses the biological and psycholgical “self”. The actual physical “self” and the psychological sense of “self” are not the same thing.
As I’ve pointed out before, this is just a rhetorical parlor trick, as is often the case with high-minded philosophy that’s really just BS.
What do you mean by “reductionism” Ian. In your own words, please.
“Ekko give me an example of strong emergence.”
How about an obvious one: life is a strong emergent property of genes, genetic code and nucleic/amino acids.
“As I’ve said before, appropriate brain damage should actual change the self”
You are saying that if I get brain damage, my self will not change? My subjective experience of reality will not be any different? So if I suffer a severe traumatic brain injury, my “existential self” will be unaffected – just like a sitcom plot will continue even if the TV is smashed? Wow – this is fantastic news!! So when I lie comatose in the hospital how can I access this existential self? It would be good to know beforehand!
Leo,
Thank you. I appreciate your response. It’s interesting to contrast your definition with those provided by a quick Google:
Leo’s: “Consciousness is the inner subjective feeling of being someone. Your consciousness is what makes you who you are”
Other/Formal: “the fact of awareness by the mind of itself and the world.”
In neither case is materialism excluded unless, as you seem to, you simply can’t accept the proposition.
___
Ian,
I know you’ve been asked this multiple times, but why is existential change required? I’ve read your blog and you do not, in any of the articles you’ve referenced in recent weeks, define why. You’ve asserted it repeatedly based upon a teleportation thought experiment however you’ve failed to explain why you think that the equivalent of teleportation must be happening all the time. Why is that? Our physical bodies persist. The processes that are carried out by our bodies persist over long periods of time. There is no discontinuity in the conventional materialist view of the body. Why do you presume that there must be?
steve12
“Beyond the lack of science knowledge, dodgy reasoning, and vague philosophical buzzwords, Ian uses a semantic trick wherein he confuses the biological and psycholgical “self”. The actual physical “self” and the psychological sense of “self” are not the same thing”.
Steve there is no biological self.
There is a possible self, and there’s a sense of self.
A materialist can only believe in a sense of self, what you refer to as a psychological “self”. A sense of self stands to a real self, as a sense of a table stands to a real table.
Reductionism is the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their constituent parts. It is the motions of these parts and how they interact together which explain the phenomenon concerned. For example, consider a clockwork clock. By looking at the components of that clock – namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels – and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the minute and hour clock hands move.
Ekko can we have an example of strong emergence apart from life and consciousness (since I believe all life might well be conscious).
Jeez guys sorry to spill the beans but…
Do you not know who Ian is? He is almost like an online celebrity for very silly comments on the paranormal. He was famous for this quote:
http://www.fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=9429
“Indeed it is clear to me that the existence of fraudulent psychics makes the existence of genuine psychics more likely”.
This was not a parody post, he actually believes what he wrote. He was banned on the JREF forum for such silly comments and has a track record of banning’s elsewhere.
Debate between Ian here and three skeptics on the skeptic forum, Ian has a history of claiming the Victorian medium Leonora Piper was in contact with spirits or utilized psi but when he was shown evidence debunking Piper’s mediumship, he left the forum calling users biased.
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21638&start=40
Can’t win with this guy. He’s been doing this sort of thing for years online debating with skeptics, nothing wrong with that I guess but he’s been doing this for ten years now and in that time he has not acknowledged any of the evidence that goes against his belief system.
“Steve there is no biological self.”
You’re saying that my body doesn’t exist? Can you be more vague? (answer:no).
“There is a possible self, and there’s a sense of self.”
You need to define what you mean here, but probably can’t in any exacting way.
“Reductionism is the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their constituent parts. It is the motions of these parts and how they interact together which explain the phenomenon concerned. For example, consider a clockwork clock. By looking at the components of that clock – namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels – and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the minute and hour clock hands move.”
Yeah, but the complexity and interaction are all studied as well in science. You keep using this critically, e.g.:
“Ekko give me an example of strong emergence. Not weak emergence which is compatible with reductionism.”
What does this mean in terms of your definition?
I think reductionism=meaningless 99% of the time it’s used. It’s a word that people who, (a) don’t understand science and (b) don’t understand what the reductionism means, use to criticize science.
I have raised 4 children, one with Trisomy 21, and have been a teacher, mother, and childcare-giver for 35 years. I have a Master of Arts in Teaching. I have taught or cared for children over periods of many years in many different environments, thus able to observe them develop and grow. The last 7 years I have been an adaptive P.E. teacher for students with special needs, ages 5-21. I have taught roughly 50 students per year, some of them for all 7 years, seeing them once a week during the school year. Because these 50 students all think so uniquely, and because the activities I ask them to do require them to actively manifest how they think because they have to translate my directives into an action, I hit the observational jackpot. At year five I had an explosive insight that I am writing a book about. I believe we have been using the wrong definition of the human personality. I have since learned the field of psychology does not mutually agree on any one definition of personality and they have 8 theories of personality, none of them verified, verifiable, or applicable. Psychology is the science of the human personality without a definition for what it is. I am writing a book about the subject and would love to correspond with you. Your ideas are all in alignment with how I see the human personality in most ways. I would describe our relationship to our emotions slightly differently than you do. I believe the only active role we play in our human existence if that of critical thinking, evaluating, organizing, and managing information in order to make decisions about “what to do next.” We are critically thinking every moment of every day and most of our biological structures and functions are devoted to critical thinking, not reproductive success. Our reproductive capacities take care of themselves just like digestion does. To eat and to reproduce, we have to make good decisions, sometimes only indirectly related to the actual act of eating and reproducing. Our entire biology is geared towards making effective and successful decisions, not towards reproducing. All my observations back this idea up, but thus far it is only a hypothesis. I believe our personalities are the reflection of how we understand and manage information in order to make decisions for what to do next. As such, I have figured out that all of our emotions are connected to our understanding. And, when anything challenges our understanding, in any way, we humans are wired with a life or death kind of ferocity to defend our own mode of understanding. Once I understood our biological imperative as making the best possible decision in any given moment in order to sensorially, physically, and cognitively manage the outcomes of our decisions, I had insight after insight about why we behave as we do. I applied my insights in the classroom and the results were better than I dreamed possible. I was teaching the hardest to teach kids in all the schools in our district. Engaging them effectively became effortlessly easy once I figured out the reasons behind our behaviors. I believe my ideas have merit and would love to discuss them with you. karenkilbane1234@gmail.com
midnightrunner, the quote — “Indeed it is clear to me that the existence of fraudulent psychics makes the existence of genuine psychics more likely” — was at the long end of a discussion where I was patiently explaining to “skeptics” that fraudulent psychics do not constitute any evidence against the existence of genuine psychics. They failed or pretended to fail to understand.
I’ve written a brief piece on my blog explaining this:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/does-discovery-of-fake-psychics-provide.html
Both skeptical attacks on Homes and Piper have been debunked.
http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/reviews/hall.htm
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
“Consider a clockwork clock.” God I love that Ian quote, gets me every time.
This actually reminds me a lot of discussions with climate change denialists and creationists. The practice of trying to focus on or pick holes in scientific theories (note: not the everyday layman’s use of the word “theory”) and the use of outliers, anomalies and/or poor quality evidence as though these somehow prove anything. Unfortunately, this afterlife and spirit self stuff is even more lacking. The climate change denialists could teach leo and Ian a thing or two. I’m still really curious how Ian comes up with these distinctions like “an actual self” and a mere “psychological sense of self” (note: please don’t refer me to any blog posts). Especially considering my “actual self” is impervious to brain damage!
Ian,
Doesn’t your argument apply to, well, everything that the human imagination has ever dreamt up? Fake bigfoot means bigfoot is real. Fake lake monsters mean lake monsters are real. Fake alien crop circles mean alien crop circles are real. If that construction is valid, then you are effectively saying that we cannot exclude ANYTHING, not matter how ridiculous, so long as SOMEONE, at any point in time tried to fake it.
I mean I guess the conversation would be fairly circular and go something like this:
“What is the difference between your actual self and your psychological sense of self?”
“Your actual self is real – like a table is real – while your sense of self is just fleeting and changes over time.”
“So you believe your actual self is eternal then in some sense – that it is the same now as when you were three?”
“Yes”
“How do you know you aren’t just confusing your psychological sense of self with what you call your “actual self”?”
“Because of how I remember myself when I was three and because of NDEs, ghosts, and other evidence for an afterlife.”
To me this is purely motivated reasoning (that helps ignore all evidence to the contrary and all shoddy qualities to the evidence for) stemming from a fear of death of the ego (and the physical body). It is identical to a religious belief in Heaven.
Niche Geek, the words “more likely” simply means the likelihood has increased. That increase might be very small indeed. It might, for example, have increased from say 0.01 to 0.011 probability. Nevertheless that would still be extremely unlikely.
You might be interested in reading about “Hempel’s Ravens Paradox” (ignore the last paragraph at the end of the Addendum, it’s an irrelevance).
http://platonicrealms.com/encyclopedia/Hempels-Ravens-Paradox
Ekko, we all do that — the motivated reasoning I mean. We all decide we believe something, then dream up arguments to support our beliefs, and rationalise away counter-evidence and reasons.
All we can do is be aware of it and try to minimize this tendency in one’s own case.
Ian,
That actually doesn’t address, at all, my point. Does it not apply to all things that humans have ever imagined?
Niche Geek
“Does it not apply to all things that humans have ever imagined?”
Yes it does. My shorts are blue. This gives evidence for the hypothesis that all ravens are black. So what? The evidence is so incredibly slight that for practical purposes it might as well be no evidence at all.
“Both skeptical attacks on Homes and Piper have been debunked.”
This is not true Leo100, it seems to me you just cite anything quickly you can find on the internet that will reinforce your belief without really investigating the subject. The first link that you gave was a book review by Stephen E. Braude for Trevor H. Hall’s book “The Enigma of Daniel Home: Medium or Fraud?”.
Stephen E. Braude is a parapsychologist and spiritualist who has claimed controversially that practically all Victorian mediums were genuine (including Eusapia Palladino). He does not acknowledge hardly any of the skeptical material on the subject in his writings, even Braude has admitted this to me in emails, apparently he has a new book coming out at the end of this year which for the first time acknowledge some of the skeptical material. Trevor Hall’s book does not even discuss the Crookes experiments with Daniel Dunglas Home, it is a book which mainly presents the case that D. D. Home was from a fraudulent background i.e. he made up his ancestry to get in with the rich. Your claim that skeptical attacks have been debunked is not true because there are many skeptical works on Home with valid criticisms which have not been addressed i.e. Gordon Stein’s book The Sorcerer of Kings (1993), Guy William Lambert (1976) essay and Frank Podmore’s criticisms (1910). Note that Lambert and Podmore were both believers in telepathy but accepted the evidence Home was a fraud. I cite these because you have a history of dismissing books as “biased” if they are skeptical.
We also see the truth of the matter here which is well referenced:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dunglas_Home#Critical_reception
Home was caught in fraud by a number of different observers (even fellow spiritualists, see the account from Frederick Merrifield). Most of these exposures are not mentioned in Braude’s book review nor in any of Braude’s writings.
As for Leonora Piper your link is to the blog of Michael Prescott, which in turn is mostly a copy and paste job from another spiritualist Greg Taylor. Taylor’s essay misrepresents the primary sources on the subject. For example he quotes two early psychical researchers Henry Sidgwick and Frank Podmore as believers in Piper’s mediumship but this is not entirely true, as both rejected the spiritualist hypothesis and wrote Piper’s trance controls were clearly fictitious creations.
Prescott is a fiction writer and spiritualist, not a reliable source for information on these subjects. It’s well known similar to Braude he is notorious for ignoring the skeptical material on the subject.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Prescott
As for his alleged criticisms of Martin Gardner, they have been addressed and they do not stand because William James’ maid was friendly with Piper’s maid, there was a strong link between the two households and Richard Hodgson was not a reliable source for information about the Piper case, he was caught fabricating evidence i.e. lying about séance sittings in relation to information about George Pellew.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Piper
This information is just a click away on the internet that debunks these mediums with countless references. It amazes me how you can still go on believing in these Victorian spiritualist mediums.
Niche Geek, have you considered the consideration of a clockwork clock? That will help resolve your confusion.
For the Dualists:
What is the reason for a hypothetical, specific ‘self’ or consciousness’ to target and sustain it’s presence in an individual for their entire life? How are we ‘chosen’?
Why doesn’t the proposed ‘signal’ jump from person to person and minute to minute?
Explain why people have a sense of continuity of self.
For me,all of the above questions make more sense only in the context of my consciousness being part of my biological being that developed and changed alongside my growth and life experience as a complex animal. And I see it’s gradual decline as my body and brain age. This is what one would expect if the mind were part and parcel of the brain.
@Ian Wardell
I got you here bud, don’t sweat it : Ians absolute proof for life after death- a table is a table, a table painted is still a table but now is painted. A table replaced by a table is still a table but also again is the table replacing the table though not the same table as the first table even if both tables are painted, therefore life after death.
Nailed it.
I think my favorite part is watching arm chair (or table? ) philosophers explain to a neuroscientist how the brain works. .. The hubris kills me.
I note that Bernardo contributed to the comments in “After the Afterlife Debate” about a week after my last comment. You all seem to have no understanding of his arguments either! Well . .well . .that’s a surprise
grabula
“I got you here bud, don’t sweat it : Ians absolute proof for life after death- a table is a table, a table painted is still a table but now is painted. A table replaced by a table is still a table but also again is the table replacing the table though not the same table as the first table even if both tables are painted, therefore life after death”.
Very amusing!
Be better if you could grasp my arguments though. Disagree with them by all means, but at least try to understand them. How can you you have any faith in the correctness of materialism if you’re unable to understand the arguments against it?
@ian
“The evidence is so incredibly slight that for practical purposes it might as well be no evidence at al”
Right, observable evidence from multiple sources is slight. Not to mention even when one doesn’t see a thing the same way others do, color blindness, you still get predictable.
You guys have some of the worst arguments in this ever.
@Ian,
Several of us spent an entire thread trying to interpret your egotistical drivel with no success. The problem is YOU make the mistake of not realizing what the common denominator is when several intelligent people can’t follow you. Hint, it’s not their lack of ability or intelligence no matter how badly you want that to be true. Most of the commentators here aren’t teenagers in a coffee shop you can confuse with nonsensicsl statements and hyperbole.
midnightrunner
Well this is good news for me when you said Stephen Braude says that every victorian medium is genuine because guess what? he doesn’t in fact he admits there is a lot of fraud in physical mediumship such as the old ectoplasm stuff. Which was just cheese cloth. Haha oh my god not the rational wiki again lol Michael Prescott made a nice blog post on this laughable garbage that rational wiki spews out on him. Not rational wiki but irrational wiki.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2012/12/irrationalwiki.html
I guess you haven’t read the actual article I sent you of Stephen Braude’s response I quote
The accusations of fraud cited by Hall (‘considered’ would be too strong a term) are those of Messrs. Morio (the so-called Barthez exposure) and Merrifield. Quite apart from the fact that Hall was apparently unable to dredge up more than two mere allegations concerning nearly a quarter-century’s worth of mediumship, he makes no mention of Zorab’s examinations of both sets of allegations(5). Zorab’s more detailed and penetrating discussion demonstrates that the cases are far more complex than Hall suggests, and that there are good reasons for thinking that Home was guilty of no fraud at all. Furthermore, although Hall cites Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo’s paper as his source for the Morio, accusation (p. 48), he conveniently fails to mention the author’s reluctant conclusion that the evidence seems only to have been second- or third-hand. Nevertheless, Hall will undoubtedly mislead many readers simply in virtue of including that citation in the text. It creates the false impression that his examination of the evidence is scholarly and thorough. And although in fact there is no good evidence that Home was ever guilty of fraud, Hall will probably deceive many readers into thinking that damaging testimony was suppressed.
You probably just read the part that are keep your belief that this stuff is all nonsense. Believe what the debunkers would like you to believe but it simply isn’t true. Richard Hodgson was a arch skeptic as Michael Prescott correctly put its and he e permitted no such information leakage of the type that Gardner imagines. He once berated a sitter for bringing an umbrella into the house on a rainy day, because, he said, the umbrella could have concealed a secret message! I quote.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
I strongly advise you to actually read both sides of the issue first because jumping to conclusions.
Tmac those are interesting questions that still need to be answered. Skeptics think that if there was an afterlife we would know all these answers but the truth we wouldn’t because if an afterlife does in fact exist a lot of the evidence would be indirect.
@Ian
Hempels raven paradox is philosophical. It also shows where guys like you go wrong in understanding the scientific method. For example one can safely theorize that most Ravens are black after observing that most Ravens are indeed black. Science doesn’t assume all Ravens are always black, only that most appear to be black most of the time.
You’re issues with trying to prove science wrong through philosophical absolutes was addressed add nauseum in the other thread.
Just to remind everyone about how this is going to go with Ian Wardell
First phase is spout a bunch of stuff and pretend we’re too stupid to understand him.
Second phase is to begin receiving his blog because he’s explained the universe there brilliantly using tables and he doesn’t have time to educate you on the subject
Third phase is to bail once he realizes no one’s buying his crap, or cares about his blog
This conversation won’t be any more comprehensible than his last so you are definitely wasting your breath.
grabula
“The problem is YOU make the mistake of not realizing what the common denominator is when several intelligent people can’t follow you. Hint, it’s not their lack of ability or intelligence no matter how badly you want that to be true”.
To quote Bernardo
“People who are active on ‘militant skeptic’ websites are not trying to understand anything, but rather interested in making a point”.
Might sound a bit harsh, but you guys are just insulting and ridiculing anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine desire to actually consider and engage with peoples’ arguments. It’s all just playing to the skeptic crowd.
grabula: “Hempels raven paradox is philosophical….one can safely theorize that most Ravens are black after observing that most Ravens are indeed black. Science doesn’t assume all Ravens are always black, only that most appear to be black most of the time”
Spot on, grabula. But even the logic of this “paradox” doesn’t sound right to me, this is from the Hempel link provided by Ian: “According to the laws of logic, a conditional is equivalent to its contrapositive….This rule of logic is incontrovertible.” With the rule being that the statement If A then B is an equivalent statement to If Not B then Not A.
Wouldn’t a counter-example be: “If I have 1.463 billion dollars then I am rich as $hit.” Contrapositive of this would be “If I am not rich as $hit then I do not have 1.463 billion dollars.” But it seems to me still possible to be rich as $hit without having exactly that amount of money. Sound right?
Ian we are too deeply embedded in our own highly cherished and deeply felt scientific belief systems here, maybe if you had gotten to us sooner, when we were young, you may have had a change at converting and saving us…but I’m afraid it is too late for most all of us here in the Skeptic Brotherhood…peace be with you
Midnightrunner
Another interesting honest skeptic at least looking at the case for and against DD Home
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Examskeptics/Playfair_goodskeptics2.html
I agree Ian and I should just leave myself which is a good idea.
That way the skeptics can talk to themselves and see how good of a conversation they get going.
@ian
““People who are active on ‘militant skeptic’ websites are not trying to understand anything, but rather interested in making a point”.”
I’ll call your bull right here, and again Ian. In the last conversation you were consistently condescending to anyone who didn’t agree with you. You literally only came to spout your rhetoric and generate interest in your blog, then predictably quit when you weren’t being fawned over for your ridiculously incomprehensible way of trying to explain yourself. I say predictably because I spotted and called your pattern and you successfully fulfilled my prediction.
It doesn’t take a sharp eye to spot your patterns Ian, you’re far from the first and you’ll not be the last.
Ironically while guys like you and Leo and Bernardino use writers and phrases like materialists and militant skeptics, you fail to budge on your own shoddy logic no matter how much your evidence is refuted. You out together arguments that aren’t understandable by a rational mind while Leo spins his wheels over and over the same territory. On to of all of this the both of you have the sheer hubris to argue with Dr. Novella on even the simplest of subjects regarding brain functionality when that’s his field of expertise. That simple fact right there, you’re inability to atleast consider that someone might know a little more than you is what damn you to the fringe until you realize you don’t have all the answers.
Ian – I asked you about your definition of reductionist earlier because you use it quite a bit, and I’m not sure what you mean.
““Ekko give me an example of strong emergence. Not weak emergence which is compatible with reductionism.”
Can you give an example of each?
“Reductive materialism leaves out the existence of consciousness. Non-reductive materialism entails epiphenomenalism. ”
Can you explain the difference?
Ian:
“I note that Bernardo contributed to the comments in “After the Afterlife Debate” about a week after my last comment. You all seem to have no understanding of his arguments either! Well . .well . .that’s a surprise”
Can you briefly explain what he was saying that we missed? Like an elevator pitch of the what his idea is?
Do you agree with it?
“Might sound a bit harsh, but you guys are just insulting and ridiculing anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine desire to actually consider and engage with peoples’ arguments.”
I disagree. Firstly, most people here do not have “beliefs”. They look for good evidence, based on sound science, logic, etc. and come to probability driven conclusions accordingly. Most people here would love for there to be afterlife and have said as much. It’s just that the evidence for an afterlife, psi powers, a soul, etc. is at a trash level in terms of quality. A lot of good questions get asked of this dualist/after life outlook, and very rarely are there anything but vague answers. As has already been said, there is a lot of armchair philosophizing and Dunning-Krugerizing of neuroscience but good arguments and good evidence are sorely lacking…instead there is a blind commitment, a faith, in cherished “beliefs”. Which is fine as your personal choice, but really you shouldn’t be surprised when others don’t buy it.
@leo
First your latest link again isn’t good skepticism, it’s true believers sullying the concept by disguising themselves l themselves as skeptics. You’re sources are tripe.
How about you lurk a while, and see how skeptics engage in conversation. The solar powered road is a good place to start. There are some differences of opinion but we talk through it and then we move on.
“Might sound a bit harsh, but you guys are just insulting and ridiculing anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs. There doesn’t seem to be any genuine desire to actually consider and engage with peoples’ arguments.”
Nah. If anything, you might say that we’re parroting the scientific consensus. But the scientific consensus re: psi and the like are what they are for a reason – the evidence is weak. YOu think the scientific consensus is BS, and we should accept your claims on the evidence you’re presenting – but that’s not how science works.
When people are generally critical of science I simply point to the scoreboard. All the shit you’re embracing has been around for thousands of years, and our understanding of the universe (and therefor ability to manipulate it) crawled at best. In the few hundred years we’ve had science, however, we have lunar landings, smart phones, and blogs where people can criticize science.
IOW, I think we’ll keep the standards right where they are.
“Nah. If anything, you might say that we’re parroting the scientific consensus. ”
Awesome
Just trying to be helpful, Grabula. Thought I’d throw him a bone and give him a criticism that makes sense.
Ian got his chance on the last thread he showed up in to pimp his blog. Then he got condescending and and showed he wasn’t here for intellectually honest reasons. He’s that guy in high school who wow’s a bunch of his stoner buddies with double talk and big words strung in unintelligible sentences. Throw in some sweet sounding book references and between bong hits they all nod as his ‘sagacity’. He’s probably deluded himself into believing the stuff he says makes sense and still seeks to be the smartest guy around the hookah but these days is getting harder and harder for him to get the ego stroking he requires outside of his woo circle.
Leo atleast generally sticks to attacking arguments besides the occasional attack on materialists in herbal. Ians’ pompous behavior however I find uninteresting and intolerable. He got shredded on the last discussion and quit and I expect to see the same pattern here.
Similarly, it’s plausible for science to consider that fire could be the product of witchcraft because a “Kalahari Bushman” (or some other convenienly scientifically illiterate racist stereotype) might wrongly conclude that a toaster is.
.
@leo
You were asked to define consciousness, do so please.
Following that, provide your evidence for the brain as a reciever. Note: referencing woo hasn’t got you anywhere. Scientific evidence only please.
Finally provide us your specific explanation for why the mind is so directly affected, predictably, by making changes to the brain
You should be able to provide a solid basis in one reasonable length post, and still remain coherent.
Ian and Leo,
I’m still trying to grasp why you both feel that materialism requires existential change of self. My previous question was ignored so I’ll try a different approach. Ian has used a table analogy several times. I’d like to try another. Imagine a typical hurricane. It forms off the coast of Africa, travels across the Atlantic, up the eastern seaboard of the US before making landfall in Nova Scotia and dissipating. Is it the same storm at the start and end? Is it a discreet entity? Is it a process? Is it an emergent phenomena?
@Niche Geek: “Ian has used a table analogy several times. I’d like to try another.”
I think the problem here is that the table “analogy” (and indeed the radio” “TV” and “Bushman” analogies) were introduced for a purpose entirely the opposite of the service an analogy is actually supposed to perform. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy
.
Steve’s blog post is a receiver for leo100’s “stuff”. A lightning rod. Oy.
@ Steven Novella
Yes the cases of patients seeing and hearing things that from their bed, even if they were fully awake, could not see or hear are well documented and confirmed by the doctors, the nurses and the relatives of the patients. There are thousands of such cases.
Until last year I was an atheist. I explained that in my article http://alisina.org/blog/2013/08/28/why-i-believe-in-god-and-afterlife-now/
The page opens but the site is experiencing some problem and it is slow.
Facts are stubborn and at the end they rule. Science is not the ultimate authority: facts are! Any time facts and science collided, facts won and science had to change in order to accommodate them.
Denial is futile. The evidence that consciousness survive the death is overwhelming. OVERWHELMING! All you have to do is watch the hundreds of videos about Near Death Experience and pay attention only to those that have been confirmed by someone other than the patient themselves.
The tales of the ND experiencers are weird and fantastic, but so is the world of quantum physics. Nothing in quantum physics make sense and yet no one denies it because it is observable. The same applies to the evidence of the survival of consciousness after the death of the body.
It is time for yet another shift in paradigm and this one is the biggest. The most earth shattering.
AliSina,
“Facts are stubborn and at the end they rule. Science is not the ultimate authority: facts are! Any time facts and science collided, facts won and science had to change in order to accommodate them.”
How do you determine what is fact? How have you used these facts to develop hypotheses and how have you tested your hypotheses? How have you controlled for human bias? What is the explanatory power of the theories you’ve developed? Where is the body of knowledge you’re theories have built?
It seems you’re willing to accept the worst forms of evidence to back up the conclusion you’ve formed through wishful thinking and confirmation bias; anecdotes and subjective experience. As has been repeatedly stated here, the scientific method is the best (based on RESULTS; technology, space exploration, medicine, pharaceuticals etc.) method we have for understanding and describing the nature of reality; the nonsense you’re peddling has been spinning it’s wheels for centuries.
“I explained that in my article http://alisina.org/blog/2013/08/28/why-i-believe-in-god-and-afterlife-now/
The page opens but the site is experiencing some problem and it is slow. ”
Keep your argument to the forum on which you’re making it, even if it means copy pasting from your own blog – you’re transparently attempting to get hits on your own blog.
“Nothing in quantum physics make sense and yet no one denies it because it is observable. The same applies to the evidence of the survival of consciousness after the death of the body.”
In one breath you’re implicitly acknowledging a lack of observable evidence for an afterlife; in the next you say it’s overwhelming. If the evidence isn’t observable, then how is it evidence?
“Denial is futile. The evidence that consciousness survive the death is overwhelming. OVERWHELMING! ”
“It is time for yet another shift in paradigm and this one is the biggest. The most earth shattering.”
I don’t frequent true believer forums or blogs, so my only exposure to them is when they drift over to skeptical sites such as this. It’s nice to see this level of confirmation of my own stereotype – you really are hitting all the tropes aren’t you, AliSina?
” you really are hitting all the tropes aren’t you, AliSina?”
The trifecta in fact! My truths will charge the world! Is just like quantum physics! And finally, check out my blog!
I love this one: Quantum Physics doesn’t make sense. My ideas don’t make sense. Quantum physics is true, therefore my ideas are true. Yay!
I typically don’t bother checking out the blogs of these fisherman but I got bored and checked out alsinas. As you would expect, skeptics are evil, even though he claims to be one. Lots of credulous rationalization based on anecdotes about NEW including done 2 year old kid who ‘remembers’ being a ww2 veteran. Alot, I mean ALOT of bs to get through to the bottom line. .. which is also bs. Serves me right for even looking.
NEW=NDE
A lot of comments overnight!
@The Other John Mc You don’t understand the Hempel raven paradox
grabula
“I’ll call your bull right here, and again Ian. In the last conversation you were consistently condescending to anyone who didn’t agree with you. You literally only came to spout your rhetoric and generate interest in your blog, then predictably quit when you weren’t being fawned over for your ridiculously incomprehensible way of trying to explain yourself”.
I was asked questions and only linked to entries on my blog where I had already answered the point in question. I do not make any money whatsoever from people clicking on my blog. I do not get paid for it nor are there any advertisments on it. What would you prefer me to do? Simply copy and paste what I’ve already written?
grabula
“Ironically while guys like you and Leo and Bernardino use writers and phrases like materialists and militant skeptics, you fail to budge on your own shoddy logic”.
Why would I budge on my position when no-one has provided any reasons to do so? I have yet to see anyone even understand my arguments, certainly they have not rebutted them.
grabula
“you have the sheer hubris to argue with Dr. Novella on even the simplest of subjects regarding brain functionality when that’s his field of expertise”.
The mind/body problem is a philosophical issue. Dr Novella gives every impression of having absolutely no understanding of this problem whatsoever. The same goes to those “arguing” against me in the comments.
@steve12 Regarding strong and weak emergence. Read this paper:
http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf
steve12
“Can you briefly explain what he was saying that we missed?”
It seems to me no-one understood anything he said.
I’m not sure if I agree with everything Bernardo says. I gravite towards idealism, but maybe a different kind to him. I’ll be reading his materialism is balony book sometime in the near future.
Steve12
“In the few hundred years we’ve had science, however, we have lunar landings, smart phones, and blogs where people can criticize science”.
Obviously you mean *scientists*. One can criticise scientists when they assume or make unsubstantiated metaphysical claims which many prominent scientists are prone to eg Hawkings, Krauss, Dawkins et al
grabula
“He’s that guy in high school who wow’s a bunch of his stoner buddies with double talk and big words strung in unintelligible sentences. Throw in some sweet sounding book references and between bong hits they all nod as his ‘sagacity’. He’s probably deluded himself into believing the stuff he says makes sense”.
Do you have the same opinion for everything I say on *any* subject? Or does this criticism only apply where my thoughts are in conflict with materialism?
Niche Geek
“I’m still trying to grasp why you both feel that materialism requires existential change of self”.
I explain this on my blog. I’m not sure I should simply paste it in since this post already is rather long. So the link is:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/does-self-as-opposed-to-mere-sense-of.html
Niche Geek
“Imagine a typical hurricane. It forms off the coast of Africa, travels across the Atlantic, up the eastern seaboard of the US before making landfall in Nova Scotia and dissipating. Is it the same storm at the start and end? Is it a discreet entity? Is it a process? Is it an emergent phenomena?”
Weak emergence. I don’t actually believe in material substance, I only believe in mental substance. Whether you want to call it the same entity or not is a matter of convention.
Ian,
“How can you you have any faith in the correctness of materialism if you’re unable to understand the arguments against it?”
How can you have any faith in the correctness of dualism if you’re unable to present any cogent arguments for it?
Ian,
I asked you on another thread where your terms ‘existential change’ and… I can’t remember the other one, come from. I also asked you to demonstrate how this is a necessary condition for materialism. I have checked out your blog but you don’t answer the question there sufficiently either. You’re assuming premises that nobody here agrees with, and reasoning from there. You need to start from the ground up and actually demonstrate that your premises are correct.
Ian,
This was your argument as far as I remember it from the other thread: For materialism to be true, humans would have to undergo ‘existential change’. Humans don’t undergo ‘existential change’, therefore materialism is false.
P1: Materialism requires existential change
P2: There is no existential change
Conclusion: Materialism is false
1.) You have not demonstrated that materialism requires existential change
2.) You have not demonstrated that humans *cannot* in theory, undergo existential change. While it may be highly unlikely we’ll ever see a brain injury cause the kind of change that would fit your criteria, it is possible in theory, given a fine enough mapping of the brain and its functional parts and ability to manipulate those parts, to create it artificially.
Conclusion: Valid based on the premises but not sound.
@ian
“The same goes to those “arguing” against me in the comments.”
Yes Ian we get it. Anyone who disagrees with you obviously doesn’t understand you. It couldn’t possibly be that when they do make sense they’re so childish in thier makeup that they get torn to pieces over and over and over again.
Common denominator. ..
“Or does this criticism only apply where my thoughts are in conflict with materialism?”
Most of them really. You have a hard time putting a cogent argument together. This was expressed by all in the last discussion you participated in, you’re just not getting where the issue lies.
People complain about when I go, but there’s absolutely nothing substantive being said. And people keep asking me questions that I’ve already addressed either in my blog or in that other thread.
What is being achieved here? No ones going to concede anything to me. I’m unlikely to be persuaded by anything you guys say, not least of all because of the fact that no-ones given any indication that they understand what I’m saying.
@mumadadd
I probably gravitate towards idealism rather than any form of dualism.
I don’t think I can add anything regarding existential via alterational change to what I’ve already said both on my blog and in the other thread. If you don’t get it, so be it. So getting drunk demonstrates that nothing could survive our deaths? OK fair enough. If there is a “life after death” you won’t be like you are now, so perhaps you don’t consider my concept of survival to be worthwhile anyway.
I don’t think I have used the persisting self argument to argue against materialism. It’s a more convoluted and obscure argument than the main arguments.
Incidentally brain damage and subsequent personality change could only create a difficulty for a “life after death”. It wouldn’t create a difficulty for interactive dualism since interactive dualism doesn’t entail there’s a life after death. Likewise brain damage and subsequent personality change doesn’t support materialism. There are *conceptual* i.e philosophical problems with all flavours of materialist positions. You cannot have scientific evidence for something incoherent. Same goes for the denial of “free will”. In as much as this denial is adopting an epiphenomenalist stance, I’m afraid this is incoherent.
Ian,
“So getting drunk demonstrates that nothing could survive our deaths?”
It looks like you addressed this to me, but I never said anything of the sort. Neither did anyone here, to my recollection. The effect of alcohol on brain state, and the reliable correlation of that change in brain state with a predictable and temporally later change in mental state is used as one of many ways examples of correlation. Nobody said it was their reason for dismissing the possibility of an afterlife.
Did I misrepresent your argument in my previous post? If so, how?
“There are *conceptual* i.e philosophical problems with all flavours of materialist positions.”
Elaborate, please.
“You cannot have scientific evidence for something incoherent.”
What is incoherent? How?
AliSina- If hundreds of videos attested to by others were valid proof of extraordinary claims,then all manner of the paranormal,conspiracy theories,alien abduction,free energy,contrarian cosmology,and outlier miracle cures should also be considered as plausible based on such a weak standard.
Sorry,but that is an obvious fail.
mumadadd
“It looks like you addressed this to me, but I never said anything of the sort. Neither did anyone here, to my recollection. The effect of alcohol on brain state, and the reliable correlation of that change in brain state with a predictable and temporally later change in mental state is used as one of many ways examples of correlation. Nobody said it was their reason for dismissing the possibility of an afterlife”.
But this is the whole argument that people opposed to a “life after death” make. Brain damage changes our personalities, drugs, including alcohol, change our personalities, growing up from childhood to adulthood changes our personalities.
Therefore if we *are* our personalities, and personality is changed when the brain functions differently, there cannot be anything which survives our deaths.
That is the argument! And it includes alcohol. So even having one pint of beer shows there’s no life after death since there’s a very slight effect.
Ian,
“But — so the materialist will argue — the exact same position pertains in our everyday second by second existence. We have an almost identical physical appearance, almost identical memories and more generally an almost identical psychological state from one second to the next. However there’s absolutely nothing persisting anymore than a table does if we were to continually destroy the table and replace it with almost identical versions every second.”
No materialist here argues this. I have yet to encounter a materialist that argues this. You misunderstand the materialist position. For myself, it is best to think of consciousness as a process and not an object like a table. The materials and energy undergo existential change while the process only undergoes alterational change. Further, I don’t believe consciousness is a monolithic process, it is a process with multiple sub processes which are able to monitor each other.
Given that your linked paper consistently uses the phrase “if it exists” when describing strong emergence, can you provide an example of strong emergence, particularly one that can be differentiated from a “god of the gaps”?
Ian: “You cannot have scientific evidence for something incoherent.”
Quantum mechanics, ever heard of it? It is logically incoherent, yet absolutely and definitely proven true with 100 years worth of impeccable and irrefutable data. The science doesn’t cede to philosophy; it should be the other way around my special friend.
Niche Geek: Ian clearly defines “strong emergence” circularly, as anything that cannot be relegated to reductionism. Then he assumes consciousness is strong emergence, and given the fact that consciousness exists: whammo! He can conclude consciousness cannot be accounted for by reductionism. Circles circles circles.
Ian,
“I don’t actually believe in material substance, I only believe in mental substance.”
So you’ve solved the mind-body problem by disbelieving the body.
The Other John Mc
“Quantum mechanics, ever heard of it? It is logically incoherent, yet absolutely and definitely proven true with 100 years worth of impeccable and irrefutable data”
Well it’s certainly not logically incoherent. It’s not even weird. It’s only weird for those who subscribe to a mechanistic conception of reality.
Niche Geek
“You misunderstand the materialist position. For myself, it is best to think of consciousness as a process and not an object like a table. The materials and energy undergo existential change while the process only undergoes alterational change”.
I was talking about the self, not consciousness. Of course the materialist considers the self to be a process. That’s the whole point, there is nothing that remains the same from one second to the next. Like one cannot step into the same river twice. We call it the same river by convention. It looks the same, occupies the same area. The materialist says we are the same self by convention. But *in reality* the self is changing (existentially) all the time. This can best be understood with teleportation/replication thought experiments.
The Other John Mc,
Point well taken. I believe I understand, that many of us understand, his arguments. I reject his premises, many of which are either unsupported or assume his conclusion.
Ian,
“Therefore if we *are* our personalities, and personality is changed when the brain functions differently, there cannot be anything which survives our deaths.
That is the argument! And it includes alcohol. So even having one pint of beer shows there’s no life after death since there’s a very slight effect.”
No, that’s not the argument against dualism, it’s evidence in favour of the hypothesis that brain causes mind. It’s one of the predictions that comes from this hypothesis, that appears to hold up in every way we can test it. Dualism is simply an unnecessary layer on top that adds no explanatory power and makes no new predictions that can be tested.
Or correct me if I’m wrong – what predictions can your hypothesis make and how would we test it? If the answer is, “yeah, but NDE and ESP anecdotes…” then your hypothesis is scientifically useless, so the default position should be to reject it. There are no anomalous phenomena that would even require a non materialistic explanation, never mind any examples of phenomena that can be demonstrated to have such an explanation.
You still haven’t answered my point about your dodgy premises, or even explained why you haven’t answered, save to say I don’t get it. If you have logic and evidence on your side this should be easy. If I got it wrong, then explain why.
mumadadd
“No, that’s not the argument against dualism, it’s evidence in favour of the hypothesis that brain causes mind”.
I’m not talking about dualism, I’m talking about the materialists contention of overwhelming evidence that there is no “life after death”. Anyway it seems you now agree.
mumadadd
“it’s evidence in favour of the hypothesis that brain causes mind”
Brain changes precipitating personality changes is also evidence in favour of the filter hypothesis.
Ian,
Sorry, when I said dualism I should have said the filter hypothesis.
“Brain changes precipitating personality changes is also evidence in favour of the filter hypothesis.”
No. It’s not incompatible with it, but it is not evidence in favour of it. The filter theory is simply unnecessary – see previous post.
You have it backwards anyway – it’s not that there is a huge amount of evidence against life after death, it’s that the evidence for this proposition, or any of its component parts, like disembodied consciousness, is utter garbage.
mumadadd
“it’s not that there is a huge amount of evidence against life after death, it’s that the evidence for this proposition, or any of its component parts, like disembodied consciousness, is utter garbage”.
Oh I see. Thanks for letting me know.
Slight addendum – if all evidence predicted by a hypothesis is absent, this can be taken as evidence that the hypothesis is wrong. Can’t remember what that’s call, but there you go.
As Ian stated, he is in fact not a dualist but a kind of monist, because to him the Universe is made of one substance which is consciousness/the soul/whatever. But I have yet to hear how he accounts for every change the mind undergoes through physical/chemical action to the brain, though to him the brain doesn’t really exist…
I guess his disagreement with us is deeper than what we’re discussing here, since he doesn’t even acknowledge the physical world as sometimes existing in itself, but rather a construction of the mind, or something like that. That’s why he says we don’t understand him, and maybe the debate should be about idealism vs materialism and not dualism vs materialism.
Do I present your views correctly Ian ?
# Ian
>steve12
>“Can you briefly explain what he was saying that we missed?”
>It seems to me no-one understood anything he said.
>I’m not sure if I agree with everything Bernardo says. I gravite towards idealism, but maybe a different >kind to him. I’ll be reading his materialism is balony book sometime in the near future.
Ian – read carefully. I’m asking YOU for your synopsis of what Bernardo is saying (very briefly), what you agree with or not, and why. YOu just repeat that we don’t get it. I’m asking you: what don’t we get?
Part of the problem with you guys is that you throw a lot of vague phrases around, and I don’t think you know what they mean. There’s a real lack of explanatory depth and shallow semantic level reasoning. Show me that I’m wrong.
>”@steve12 Regarding strong and weak emergence. Read this paper:
>http://consc.net/papers/emergence.pdf”
I was asking you to specifically explain the distinctions in the examples again, not simply offer a link. I can offer you all sorts of links on all sorts of things. That’s not how conversations work.
>”“In the few hundred years we’ve had science, however, we have lunar landings, smart phones, and blogs >where people can criticize science”.
>Obviously you mean *scientists*. One can criticise scientists when they assume or make unsubstantiated >metaphysical claims which many prominent scientists are prone to eg Hawkings, Krauss, Dawkins et al
>grabula”
Again, you’re not reading what I’m writing carefully. You’re advocating that science accept evidence that we consider weak and that we throw out materialist assumptions, which are central to the technical definition of science (i.e., you’re for re-defining science). That was how things were pre-science, so I’m speaking to the power of the current model. I never said scientists should be beyond criticism.
Isn’t emergence a necessary consequence of reductionism? Two sides of the same coin, right? If you can break a whole into parts that each lack the complex features of the whole, I would think that necessarily implies that those parts can come together to form a whole with features they lack as parts.
@mummadadd: I know it as the Modus Tollens Exception.
Human consciousness is an illusion created by the brain, which has usefully served our species by producing in each of us the unique, and obviously apparent, actor whom we refer to as, and totally believe to be: Me; Myself; I.
To the vast majority, this illusion is so overwhelmingly powerful that it seems well beyond the bounds of reason to even consider the possibility that the self is, perhaps, only an illusion (albeit a damned good one!) rather than being our personal autonomous agent (our manifest self).
To a small minority with certain types of sudden-onset brain damage the self gradually reveals some of its many illusory tricks as time goes by. Some of the revelations are unsettling, but many are educational, and some are awesomely hilarious in retrospect. The concept of dualism is therefore completely nonsensical to this group of people for reasons that I’m sure will be obvious to anyone who thinks about it.
“Ian: “You cannot have scientific evidence for something incoherent.”
The problem is that you’ve not shown it incoherent. You just keep saying it and offering weak philosophical musings as evidence.
This gets back to what I was saying above. These same type of musings have been around for thousands of years, and during that time our ability to manipulate the physical world went almost nowhere.
Add science, with the assumption of naturalism and mix of empricism+rationalism, and BOOM – modern world in a few hundred years.
Why would we turn the clock back re: our assumptions and evidentiary burden as you advocate? IF these methods and assumptions are incoherent, why are they so successful?
What’s more powerful, rhetoric or results?
@Insomniac
I don’t know what my own view is, but probably some form of idealism yes.
I’d rather argue about materialism. It is so absurd on so many levels. The idea that everything we see is an illusion — no colours, no sounds, no smells actually exist out there. That the solidity of objects is an illusion. That nothing we ever experience is real. The notion that we have no free will, that the self doesn’t even exist from one second to the next, that there is no objective morality, that we are merely biological robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe. All this is unwarranted in my opinion.
And of course materialism — which ever variety — cannot accommodate the existence of consciousness.
Midnightrunner
When you said all of the psi evidence has been debunked. Aren’t you the one that was on Michael Prescott’s blog before as well as Greg Taylor’s Dailygrail. I remember that you admitted that you were defeated. Its hard to have a conversation with someone who thinks there skeptical sources are in fact intacted when in reality they are not. Oh yes I just found you under another name called honestskeptic where you got totally destroyed.
I quote- I apologise for my previous comments, I have been a dishonest troll. Greg Taylor has got it correct and he has debunked the pseudoskeptics. Leonora Piper was in communication with spirits. Greg Taylor is my hero.
Lots of love.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife?page=1
Leo,
“I quote- I apologise for my previous comments, I have been a dishonest troll. Greg Taylor has got it correct and he has debunked the pseudoskeptics. Leonora Piper was in communication with spirits. Greg Taylor is my hero.”
You now owe me two new desks and two new foreheads.
Lord Ian, where to even begin?
“The idea that everything we see is an illusion — no colours, no sounds, no smells actually exist out there.”
Wavelengths of light objectively exist, color is a constructed perception based roughly on this information from the environment. Loudness, pitch, timbre, etc. of sound again are mentally-constructed perceptions based on wavelength and intensity of physical acoustic vibrations which demonstrably exist in the external environment. Smells and touch, too, are perceptions based on physical analogues in the external environment. What are you not understanding about this?
“The notion that we have no free will.”
But we have the illusion of free will, that’s seemingly as good as the real thing for most practical purposes. So what? You just don’t want to entertain the possibility because it doesn’t *feel* right to you.
“that the self doesn’t even exist from one second to the next.”
Meaningless statement as far as I can tell. My self, The Other John Mc, am roughly the same individual pattern inhabiting roughly the same body as I was 10 years ago, and you can’t prove me wrong on this, ergo my self exists through time, your point refuted (if you had a point).
“that we are merely biological robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe.”
We are biological robots instilled (instilled via evolution) with purpose; to do the things that provide us happiness and pleasure, and to avoid the things that do not. Seemingly coincidentally, the things we typically like to do (have sex, eat calories, spend time with family and friends, achieve success, play sports, etc., etc.) contributed to our ancestors ability to survive and reproduce, thus we inherited these tendencies.
“And of course materialism — which ever variety — cannot accommodate the existence of consciousness.”
Dr. N already nailed it: Consciousness is a physical process, a particular and seemingly unique type of information processing, carried out demonstrably by a physical object, the brain. What are you not getting? Materialism accommodates it just fine as long as you aren’t in stubborn denial.
The Other John Mc
“Wavelengths of light objectively exist, color is a constructed perception based roughly on this information from the environment. Loudness, pitch, timbre, etc. of sound again are mentally-constructed perceptions based on wavelength and intensity of physical acoustic vibrations which demonstrably exist in the external environment. Smells and touch, too, are perceptions based on physical analogues in the external environment. What are you not understanding about this?”
None of this contradicts what I said. The world is divest of any colours, smells, sounds, everything that makes reality real. I’m talking about *colours* not the redefinition of colour made by scientists.
Ian,
“I’d rather argue about materialism. It is so absurd on so many levels. The idea that everything we see is an illusion — no colours, no sounds, no smells actually exist out there.”
You honestly believe things like colour, sounds, smells, etc. exist in some absolute objective sense? That there is no subjective perception component? That every organism, no matter their sensory apparatus and brain, perceives the same thing? With smell for example, that the odorous molecules have some kind of absolute, universal smell property to them that exists independent of our olfactory receptors? This is what is absurd my friend…
Those molecules, those wavelengths of light, those vibrations in air – those are real, those exist, those are not illusions – but our perception of them as colours, sounds, smells is dependent on the structures our of particular sensory apparatus and our brains. They will smell, taste, sound, look different to a dog. It’s an interpretation of something real on our part. Why is this absurd to you?
Ninja’ed by the TOJMc.
But: “I’m talking about *colours* not the redefinition of colour made by scientists.”
What does this even mean?
What are “*colours*” Ian?
Ekko
“You honestly believe things like colour, sounds, smells, etc. exist in some absolute objective sense? That there is no subjective perception component? That every organism, no matter their sensory apparatus and brain, perceives the same thing? With smell for example, that the odorous molecules have some kind of absolute, universal smell property to them that exists independent of our olfactory receptors? This is what is absurd my friend…”
Yes I think colours, sounds, smells as perceived exist out there. They are not objective but subjective though. And percipients will have different experiences — the shade of green I might perceive when looking at some plant might not be exactly the same shade as you perceive.
The world as we perceive it really exists out there, but it is nevertheless conscious-dependent. It’s out there in the sense it is not the creation of my own consciousness but is something imposed on my consciousness.
Read my blog entry:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-very-brief-introduction-to-subjective.html
A colour is a particular characteristic experience — a particular quale.
Qualia, most likely.
Ian: we can’t base science on your existential crisis.
He beat me to it!
The brain does not generate the mind — one of its functions is to mediate between the mind and the body. Data enters the system through the sense organs, and is transferred into the brain for processing. The mind interprets the processed sensory data, and responds by sending data to the brain, which may involve activation of voluntary muscles.
(Most of the brain’s functions, by the way, are unrelated to mind or consciousness, and involve all the myriad tasks that must be overseen and regulated to keep the body alive.)
The fact that mental states correlate with brain states does not explain the relationship between mind and brain.
When brain functions are disrupted, the mind’s relationship with the “physical” world is disrupted. All sensations, and perceptions, including emotions, are mediated by the brain.
Stroke patients who don’t recognize family members are missing the systems that interpret sensory data and generate appropriate emotional states.
The brain is FAR more complex that Steve N. implies. He keeps saying it’s complex, but then states that he doesn’t understand it down to the very last detail. Well that implies that he understands most of it. NO, that is a very inaccurate estimation of current knowledge.
Many correlations are being observed, thanks to imaging technology. Materialists are thereby deceived into thinking these correlations provide understanding. They do not.
Steve N. uses an analogy of a light switch. The “materialist” explanation, he says, is the one that follows the obvious causal chain. That is NOT an example of materialism. It is an example of a clearly defined and well understood system.
He says the non-materialist theory of the light switch involves a magic light fairy. That is NOT an example of non-materialism.
Steve N.’s materialist / non-materialist dichotomy is nonsensical.
The light switch analogy can be used to illustrate a different point. Steve N. would say that the light goes on and off by controlling its own switch. I would say that an outside agent is needed to control the switch. The outside agent may be a person, or a machine that was created by a person.
Every intelligent system must have an outer context. This was demonstrated by Godel, for example.
An intelligent system is one that is able to respond to its environment and deal with changing events. Every new thing that happens is at least slightly different from anything that happened before. A mindless mechanism can deal with things that have happened before, but they cannot respond to even the slightest change.
A lot of what goes on in our minds and brains is mindless mechanism (habits). But the systems that form the habits can NOT be mindless mechanisms.
steve12
“we can’t base science on your existential crisis”
Science is neutral between materialism and idealism . . no . . actually science is more compatible with idealism. Under idealism there is no “hard problem” of consciousness.
“Yes I think colours, sounds, smells as perceived exist out there. They are not objective but subjective though. And percipients will have different experiences — the shade of green I might perceive when looking at some plant might not be exactly the same shade as you perceive.
The world as we perceive it really exists out there, but it is nevertheless conscious-dependent. It’s out there in the sense it is not the creation of my own consciousness but is something imposed on my consciousness.”
You realize this leads to the conclusion that every organism that perceives an external world is living in a different world from every other organism right? Is that what you believe?
That shade of green that we see differently makes it so when you interpret it as something that “really exists out there” and is “imposed on” us rather than interpreted by our own brain and senses.
Leo100 you are correct about one thing, all of the information on Greg Taylor’s blog post in the comment section debunking Piper was by me on my account “honestskeptic”.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife?page=1
Taylor’s friend invited me to his website to have a debate but he and his spiritualist buddies never responded to any of my criticisms and I spent over 5 hours typing it all out – it’s just more evidence to me believers are not interested in these cases. For example there’s evidence Piper started her career as a physical medium doing slate writing (this evidence comes from William James, so not a skeptic), there’s evidence she charged a fortune for her séance sittings even turning those who could not pay away, there’s evidence Richard Hodgson deliberately fabricated evidence. I could be talking about the Piper case all day but very few people want to know the truth of it. As for the debate on Taylor’s blog the next thing I knew was that Taylor banned me from his blog and someone impersonated me with a silly comment. The comment you quote claiming “Greg Taylor is my hero” and admitting to being a “dishonest troll” amongst other silliness was posted by a user called “egomanicaltroll”. You should be able to tell this is a parody post by a troll account, it has nothing to with me and I certainly wouldn’t post such nonsense. Unfortunately this is what the internet has come to, paranormal believers or spiritualists can’t acknowledge serious research against their beliefs so have to resort to ad-homimem or impersonations – I have dealt with this for a long time, it is very sad, this is why I rarely engage in this anymore online.
Anyway as for some of your early comments I won’t mention D. D. Home anymore because I have covered it all here in over 40 posts on the JREF forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=258077 I originally was going to self-publish a book on Home but I decided to just put some of my research online. There’s various pieces of evidence to suggest that Home used a secret accomplice.
Back to the Piper thing – The reason of focusing on the Piper case is because it is one of the main cases that paranormalists, spiritualists or proponents of an afterlife use for their beliefs, but as I have shown on countless websites Piper was a fraud. Even most psychical researchers accept Piper’s trance controls were alternative personalities and that she “fished” for information (see William James, Frank Podmore or Henry Sidgwick etc).
As for your comment “Richard Hodgson was a arch skeptic as Michael Prescott correctly put its and he e permitted no such information leakage of the type that Gardner imagines. He once berated a sitter for bringing an umbrella into the house on a rainy day, because, he said, the umbrella could have concealed a secret message!”
The problem is that Hodgson was not “an arch skeptic”. He was a believer in mental mediumship and spirits before he began investigating Piper. There is solid evidence for this. I am not denying that Hodgson was skeptical of physical mediumship i.e. table tilting, “levitations”, ectoplasm or materializations (most psychical researchers have been skeptical of this stuff).
I appreciate Richard Hodgson’s research, I have been reading about his psychical research for over twenty years. He exposed Madame Blavatsky as a fraud, he exposed the tricks of Eusapia Palladino, he exposed the tricks of the slate writer charlatan William Eglinton etc. He even wrote an important paper on the fallacy of memory and malobservation in the séance room which has been well received by skeptics. Richard Wiseman for example in his book “Paranormality” has a chapter discussing Hodgson’s research. The problem is that Hodgsons’ lover (his cousin) Jessie D. died and he sunk into depression. He literally lost his mind. On the day of his Jessie’s death he claimed to have communicated with her spirit. This was in 1879 before he investigated Piper.
You can read about Hodgson’s mediumship in a very rare book “The Life of Richard Hodgson”. The book costs around $125-300 I am not expecting many people to have read it. It is the only biography of Hodgson. We learn in the book that Hodgson was actually a medium i.e. he claimed to communicate with spirits. After Piper died he also claimed to communicate with Piper’s spirit. He spent the rest of his life mostly in isolation in his locked room as he believed that a “magnetic atmosphere” would disturb the spirits away. Hodgson was not an “arch skeptic” leo100. You was also caught in two cases of deception (lying about various details in the Piper case deliberately). He was very eager to believe that Piper was in communication with spirits because he wanted to communicate with Jessie. Belief is a powerful thing and it destroyed him and his critical skills and his sense of reason.
Michael Prescott, Greg Taylor, Michael E. Tymn etc and other spiritualists who I have debated do not acknowledge this evidence. I was the first person to publicly put this information on the internet two years ago. It is up to you if you want to accept it or not. I have studied such cases for over twenty years and debated many spiritualists it makes no difference to me if you come to see the truth that Piper was a fraud or not. I also have rare sources such as private letters and notes from Hodgson and Piper which reveal some interesting things, I may make some of this information public online one day. I will not further discuss the Piper case on this blog as I don’t want this to drift off topic. Regards.
hardnose: “Every intelligent system must have an outer context. This was demonstrated by Godel”
Nope. Try actually reading Godel, his conclusions have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with intelligent information processing systems. Keep trying.
I think I need steve12 to again point out the absurdity of amateur philosophers and wanna-be brain scientists trying to explain to us idiots how the mind REALLY works, because they thought about it real, real deeply so they obviously know.
Ian: “world is divest of any colours, smells, sounds, everything that makes reality real.”
You mean really real reality? Or just real reality? Does this have to do with the clockwork clock thing?
Midnightrunner – hats off to you and your awesomeness.
hardnose had too many howlers to deal with. I especially liked this one though:
“Steve N. would say that the light goes on and off by controlling its own switch. I would say that an outside agent is needed to control the switch.” L-O-L
I also generally liked the way he tried to school the neuroscientist on how the brain and mind work…
Midnightrunner
You seem to be the worst troll ever and your also lying as well. As another commentator pointed out on daily grail and I quote
“Are you not aware that wikipedia is edited by any sundry, uneducated joe-blow who can operate a keyboard? And that several universities have banned the use of wikipedia, because so many of its entries are rife with factual errors? How about the fact that Larry Sanger, co-creator of wikipedia, severed his affiliations with site because he got fed up having to deal with biased editor trolls and trying to make amends to all the misinformation abounding on the wiki?”
Greg Taylor had to put you straight because you were lying and I quote
“The reference is one you posted yourself to RationalWiki a month ago. Please do not lie to readers of this website. I am allowing you to continue posting, as I encourage debate, but your continued deceptions and sock puppetry will not be tolerated any further than this point – clean up your act please, or you will be blocked”.
—
Kind regards,
Greg
” The comment you quote claiming “Greg Taylor is my hero” and admitting to being a “dishonest troll” amongst other silliness was posted by a user called “egomanicaltroll”. You should be able to tell this is a parody post by a troll account, it has nothing to with me and I certainly wouldn’t post such nonsense”
Its called using another user name.
This means nothing you say Midnightrunner should be taken seriously at all. I am 100 percent sure your wrong about dd homes too just as you were about Piper.
midnightrunner2014
“For example there’s evidence Piper started her career as a physical medium doing slate writing (this evidence comes from William James, so not a skeptic), there’s evidence she charged a fortune for her séance sittings even turning those who could not pay away, there’s evidence Richard Hodgson deliberately fabricated evidence”.
There’s evidence for this . .there’s evidence for that . .there’s evidence for the other.
“Skeptics” make all these claims all the time, yet time after time after time, when you start digging it transpires they’re talking bollox.
It really doesn’t matter if any specific psychic turns out to be a fraud anyway. It’s highly unlikely they *all* are.
This one made my giggle and laugh at the same time when you were told off by Greg Taylor by using multiple usernames on numerous other sites and I quote.
What’s more interesting to me is that you post under the username ‘HonestSkeptic’, despite already having a username here that works perfectly fine. Though perhaps we should inform readers this is a habit of yours, you post under multiple different usernames on almost every forum I’ve spotted you on. At least this time (so far) you haven’t created another username in which you pretend to be your opposition, trying to ingratiate yourself with them, which you’ve also done multiple times? Will you be linking (spamming) to RationalWiki soon? You know those hit pieces on the likes of Michael Prescott that you wrote, then denied you wrote to readers here (under your old username here)? I did like the touch though of linking to Wikipedia articles to support your cause, when you’re the one who has been writing/spamming those entries over the course of this year, flooding them with…cherry-picked information that supports just your own conclusion.
Honest skeptic? More like a dishonest troll methinks. And I don’t feed trolls.
My suggestion to you? Create a website and post your rants there, rather than flooding Wikipedia, TDG and various other websites with your proselytising.
—
Kind regards,
Greg
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife
“Science is neutral between materialism and idealism . . no . . actually science is more compatible with idealism. Under idealism there is no “hard problem” of consciousness.”
No. This is just technically incorrect.
Science assumes naturalism. You can’t interpret experiments w/o naturalism.
You want to supplant science with something else. Science is not simply a colloquial “search for truth”. It is a specific set of assumptions and methods.
“My suggestion to you? Create a website and post your rants there, rather than flooding Wikipedia, TDG and various other websites with your proselytising”.
Leo please consider taking your own advice.
Ian: “It really doesn’t matter if any specific psychic turns out to be a fraud anyway. It’s highly unlikely they *all* are.”
Care to speculate why none of these people have taken or claimed the $1 million James Randi prize for demonstrating such powers? Or why they would have all, every single one of them, resisted the temptation of incredible fame/fortune that would befall anyone who could *actually* demonstrate such powers?
Ok Ian I read your blog post. I’m responding to claims you’re making in your entry. You guys should read the bits of his article I’m quoting because that tells you a lot about Ian’s actual position.
“The world is as it seems.”
Demonstrably untrue.
What about optical illusions ?
What about a mirror ? It seems I am standing in front of me, but is that so or is there another explanation (namely the mirror reflecting my image) ?
What about people who need glasses to see ? If they don’t use their glasses and experience a blurry Universe, is the Universe blurry ?
“The answer is that Berkeley held that when I see something I am participating in God’s conception of the world. Our various perceptual experiences — vision, sounds, smell, tastes, sense of touch –is a result of God directly conveying to us his conception. Our perceptual experiences of the external world are a direct communication with God.”
Ok you’re saying a bit later that you don’t necessarily follow him to this point with God communicating with sentient beings. But still, you’re using his theories as a basis and then modify them so that’s it suits your views. This is not an actual argument against you, I’m just quoting to present what kind of ideas you are thinking of.
“The existence of unobservable entities such as atoms, although more hypothetical or theoretical, also play a fruitful role in our hypotheses and theories about the world and therefore can be said to exist in a comparable manner to the common objects of our experience.”
Atoms are observed.
http://ncem.lbl.gov/images/OAM/dumbell.jpg
Feel free to ask how we got these pictures, I’ll be happy to explain.
“The tree is still there because the computer game environment is governed by rules implemented by a computer programmer. Likewise our external world exhibits uniformity due to physical laws, with physical laws simply being directly caused by God.”
Do you need God for your worldview to hold ? Because if so, you would have to prove God exists first.
You criticize materialism but don’t you also want to present your worldview and let it be subject of scrutiny and criticism ? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to elude your criticism. I think your arguments against materialism are based on fragile and dubious premises, and materialism is not undermined in any degree whatsoever. But I’d like you to show how you reconcile idealism with the actual phenomena observed, even with our naked senses.
You can try, but my conclusion is that your view is absolutely barren and fruitless. You claimed in the other thread one could do science in an idealistic framework, but I’m wondering how. How could you account for Cherenkov radiation if not by assuming particles unseen with the naked eye ? You can bring no mechanism whatsoever if you’re only based on your unaided subjective perception. And by the way, some of the things you’re saying are not true or don’t exist are the consequences of what we see, if not with our naked eyes, with a microscope. Is using a microscope legitimate or are we somehow distorting our qualia so that every conclusion we have using a microscope must be wrong ?
Some things exist while we can’t see them : an electron can be detected. Like it or not, it’s part of your world, and it’s physical.
Science as a whole is based on a different framework than yours. I think that they are mutually incompatible. If you want to say you can do subjective idealism science, you have to build your own model, you can’t borrow it from the actual science. I’m curious how you would proceed.
By the way, if you accept atoms, which it seems is the case, you can’t deny that matter is mostly vacuum and therefore you contradict your statement that “the world is as it seems”.
The only escape you have is to say that it’s both : mostly vacuum if you look carefuly with a scanning electron microscope and not vacuum if you just have an apple in your hand and look at it. Then reality is plural : if you put blue spectacles then here is another world !
And I apologize if the quotes from your blog don’t include enough to make sense (while I’m wondering if they would make sense anyhow). I just took the bits I was interesting in, but I read the whole entry.
“Science as a whole is based on a different framework than yours. I think that they are mutually incompatible.”
Exactly. People usually will stop short of saying science it BS because it’s so damn succesful. But when they don’t like something resulting from the scientific method, they try to change the meaning of science itself.
Doesn’t work that way. It’s been successful method WHEN FOLLOWED. When not followed, it’s literally something else.
The Other John Mc
That wasn’t my own advice that was Greg Taylor directing his message to midnightrunner, honestskeptic, egomaniactroll and so on the funny thing is all one person.
The fact that atoms can be in a sense, be in more than one place at a time is mind boggling.
Ian Wardell says: “It really doesn’t matter if any specific psychic turns out to be a fraud anyway. It’s highly unlikely they *all* are.”
OK, well then by that logic we can conclude:
It really doesn’t matter if any specific claim of 16th century witchcraft turned out to be false. It’s highly unlikely they *all* were.
It really doesn’t matter if any specific claim of alien visitation turns out to be false. It’s highly unlikely they *all* are.
It really doesn’t matter if any specific claim of Hindu statues drinking milk from a spoon turns out to be false. It’s highly unlikely the *all* are.
It really doesn’t matter if any specific claim of body thetans turns out to be false. It’s highly unlikely they *all* are.
It really doesn’t matter if any specific claim of human levitation turns out to be false. It’s highly unlikely the *all* are.
See how that works?
Ian – If I use my vast fortune to pay people to spread the word that you murdered your neighbor, if I convince my friend Rupert Murdoch to bring his resources to bear to convince the world that you are a murderer, if millions of people around the world are convinced that you are a murderer, how is it possible that *ALL* of them could be wrong?
In the immortal words of Tim Minchin:
““Look , [Ian], I don’t mean to bore ya
But there’s no such thing as an aura!
Reading Auras is like reading minds
Or star-signs or tea-leaves or meridian lines
These people aren’t plying a skill,
They are either lying or mentally ill.
Same goes for those who claim to hear God’s demands
And Spiritual healers who think they have magic hands.”
Tim leaves out one category of paranormalist… the person who truly believes they have a supernatural gift because they’ve never been encouraged to think critically, and have been surrounded by people who support their confirmation bias.
Many psychics (or dowsers or others) who get on stage with skeptics for a public test are genuinely surprised when they fail. And they are often all to quick to later rationalize reasons why they failed the test. These people are neither lying nor mentally ill – they are simply unfamiliar with skeptical thought.
The spectacular failure rate of psychic claims creates a very unfavorable set of prior probabilities for the next psychic claim. This is EXACTLY comparable to patent claims for perpetual motion machines. If you make such a claim, the evidence must be big, dramatic and highly testable. Anything less fails to overcome the sheer weight of prior probabilities created by centuries of failures, frauds, dupes and true believers.
So, Ian, we all know YOU’RE convinced. But you want to believe, so there’s no work involved in convincing you that people possess psychic powers. Alas, your belief isn’t convincing. If you want ton convince people then you’re going to have to provide some dramatic evidence, far from the noise level, replicated by skeptics. Anything less is just a continuation of parapsychology’s sordid history of failure and unfulfilled desires.
@Insomniac Nothing you say constitutes any problem whatsoever. All existents are a hypothesis about how the world is. Tables are, quarks are. Some are more hypothetical than others but there is no strict demarcation. It is a confusion to ask do they really exist. It is merely helpful or unhelpful to think of reality that way. Even the notion of a 3D reality is something we impose upon the world.
Think of it this way. Let’s suppose the world is governed by physical laws. *We do not need a consciousness-independent reality in addition to these physical laws*. The physical laws all by themselves suffice.
Insomniac
“Do you need God for your worldview to hold ? Because if so, you would have to prove God exists first”.
No I don’t. But even if I did I wouldn’t need to prove it. What if I were to say you need to prove that consciousness-independent objects exist? Or that other people are conscious? Or that physical laws will continue to exist from this moment onwards?
We build up a metaphysical picture of reality. The best we can hope for is to make it intelligible. We live in a world of uncertainty and can prove nothing outside formal logic and mathematics.
It might be helpful to read another blog entry by me:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/are-perceptual-illusions-always.html
@RickK Various characteristic anomalous phenomena has been observed throughout history and across all cultures. I’ve only skimmed the surface of all the paranormal literature. But you guys seem to have read none at all. Your comments reveal a complete lack of familiarity with all the evidence.
“Various characteristic anomalous phenomena has been observed throughout history and across all cultures.”
Yes, like:
– Witches and witchcraft
– Demons
– Many different gods
– Ghosts
– Extraterrestrial alien visitors
– Astral projections
– Statues that drink, weep and bleed
– Body thetans
– Out of body experiences
– Psychic communion with the dead
– Prophetic predictions
– Mind reading
There is nothing in that list that is inconsistent with human desire, human imagination and human ignorance.
“I’ve only skimmed the surface of all the paranormal literature. ”
… while apparently avoiding historical and skeptical literature.
“Your comments reveal a complete lack of familiarity with all the evidence.”
Ahh, the Courtier’s Reply.
Do you consider a large number of anecdotes to be reliable evidence for the existence of a paranormal power or being? Do you find anecdotes for some of the items in my list above more convincing than anecdotes about others? If so, why?
Here’s a hint, Ian: volume doesn’t equal quality. Ten data points gathered under controlled conditions can teach us something profound while millions of uncontrolled data points can tell us nothing.
But let’s sincerely try to find some common ground. Give me a recent, well-documented example of a person with a paranormal ability that they were able to replicate under controlled conditions in the presence of skeptics, and we can discuss it.
Ian,
Your use of language is imprecise both here and in your blog. In your perceptual illusions blog entry you say
“Let’s consider the “illusion” above again. If this were a real 3D object and we were to approach it and view it from various angles, then we would see that squares A and B are very different colours. Indeed their intrinsic colours would be precisely as we perceive them in the illusion above.”
If all of physical reality is hypothetical (“All existents are a hypothesis”) and our subjective perception is the only truth, then how can the squares have an intrinsic colour?
“It might be helpful to read another blog entry by me:”
You have figured it al out, haven’t you?
steve12
“You have figured it al out, haven’t you?”
I think about things a lot. I mean about what the world is, why we’re here, what it all means etc. More so than the average person.
But no, I know next to nothing. But I do know I know next to nothing. Unlike others.
“But no, I know next to nothing. But I do know I know next to nothing. Unlike others.”
You can’t be serious. You’re here saying that you’ve bested the last 150 years of science, but you’re a humble guy unlike us?
Please. As I pointed out before: you’re more confident that you’re right than I am. This despite me having mountains of scientific evidence on my side.
I mean, you go prattling on about the brain all the while evincing that you are unaware of the most basic neuroscience findings. That kind of chutzpah precludes humility, Ian.
I just want to point out that Ian will only answer my posts when I don’t ask something specific of him.
Look up at all of the unanswered posts – whenever I wanted him to get his hands a little dirty, I got no response.
Ian : We actually know and acknowledge our lack of expertise, that’s what studying science does. In a sense, science goes and in hand with modesty. The more you study science, the more you’re aware of the huge amount of things you don’t know.
“What if I were to say you need to prove that consciousness-independent objects exist? Or that other people are conscious? Or that physical laws will continue to exist from this moment onwards?”
I would have to reply that assuming those things exist is a fantastically successful working hypotheses. But I agree that no one can prove they exist. I read a bit of philosophy so I’m quite aware of those questions.
“We build up a metaphysical picture of reality. The best we can hope for is to make it intelligible. We live in a world of uncertainty and can prove nothing outside formal logic and mathematics.”
Can’t you prove that heredity is based on DNA ? That water is made of two hydrogen and one oxygen ?
RickK : Actually, out of body experiences exist and can be achieved with specific drugs for example. So I’m afraid you should have it removed from your list. By the way, I like the quote from Tim Minchin, actually his beat poem Storm is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
Ian: “Under idealism there is no “hard problem” of consciousness”
No problem at all.
The Universal Consciousness is, was, and always will be.
Sound familiar?
He is in you.
He is in me.
He is in every thing.
He is every where
Oh sing the good Lord’s praises!
HardNose: “Most of the brain’s functions, by the way, are unrelated to mind or consciousness, and involve all the myriad tasks that must be overseen and regulated to keep the body alive”
Oh, earth shattering, life transforming revelation, you! Where have you been hiding all my life?
Insomniac said: “Actually, out of body experiences exist and can be achieved with specific drugs for example. ”
Thank you. I was imprecise. I meant OBE remote viewings like Susan Blackmore’s – those that claim to be more than the combination of perception and invention of a physical brain.
You are right.
BillyJoe: “The Universal Consciousness is, was, and always will be.”
It does sound very familiar.
“The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” – Carl Sagan
@ BillyJoe7
“He is in you.
He is in me.
He is in every thing.
He is every where”
real thin…
Or… put another way:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_hkIN38qnY&feature=kp
“The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be.”
@steve12,
“I just want to point out that Ian will only answer my posts when I don’t ask something specific of him. Look up at all of the unanswered posts – whenever I wanted him to get his hands a little dirty, I got no response.”
I’ve had pretty much the same experience. But this is what I would expect when specific questions are put to someone who subscribes to some form of philosophical idealism. Ian’s fondness for tables likely stems from George Berkeley, an 18th C philosopher. Ian already dodged my critique of idealism but Bertrand Russell demolished it long ago anyway. 10 different people’s sense data of a table = 10 different tables because there is no such thing as an external material object. I find it funny that Ian considers materialism “absurd” but the idea that there is no external world of things, only sense data in my mind that must be perceived to exist doesn’t strike him as as logically absurd.
No one knows how the brain works. So neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists have that ignorance in common.
I am a computer scientist (with a Ph.D.). I think someone in my field might have a better grasp of what intelligence is than a typical M.D.
And by the way, in case I was misunderstood, I do NOT think the mind is something supernatural. I think it is perfectly natural, but is made of substances and energies not yet recognized by mainstream science.
I don’t believe in dualism. I think the brain is an important part of the mind, and that it allows us to interact with the “physical” world.
Does that mean I believe there are non-physical worlds? Not really, but I do think there are levels of reality that mainstream biology has not tried to explore.
It seems odd to me that mainstream physics assumes there are alternate universes, higher order dimensions, etc., yet mainstream biologists and M.D. seem to have never heard about any of it.
Hi hardnose I agree with you it seems mainstream physics is in conflict with biology/neuroscience as no where in biology or neuroscience alternative universes the connection is never even considered.
Ian: “The world as we perceive it really exists out there, but it is nevertheless conscious-dependent.”
Absolute rubbish. If every human and every “conscious” (whatever that means) entity were to simultaneously disappear the world, and every planet, star, and grain of dust would continue to whirl as it has.
Or, to put it another way, the universe doesn’t need you or anyone, and doesn’t give a flying fig about your juvenile, self-centered dorm-room-stoner hubristic philo-sophistry.
You should read Aesop’s fable The Gnat and the Bull some time.
.
The universe may have never existed without observers Davdoodles that is what experiments shown in quantum physics. That you need an observe to make collapse the wave function. That doesn’t mean of course that we create reality but it means the observer and reality exist as a pair.
Hardnose: “I am a computer scientist (with a Ph.D.). I think someone in my field might have a better grasp of what intelligence is than a typical M.D.”
Good grief.
“And by the way, in case I was misunderstood, I do NOT think the mind is something supernatural. I think it is perfectly natural, but is made of substances and energies not yet recognized by mainstream science.”
Is that how you think computers work too? Mysterious ethers?
In any case, why introduce these “substances and energies” that you “think” the mind is “made of”?
As so many above have asked, and you have steadfastly ignored, what explanatory power does it add, and what testable hypothesis doe it generate?
Until you can answer those simple questions, you might as wll be saying the mind is “supernatural” or “Bigfoot did it”.
Ian: “The world as we perceive it really exists out there, but it is nevertheless conscious-dependent.”
Davdoodleson
“Absolute rubbish. If every human and every “conscious” (whatever that means) entity were to simultaneously disappear the world, and every planet, star, and grain of dust would continue to whirl as it has.
Or, to put it another way, the universe doesn’t need you or anyone, and doesn’t give a flying fig about your juvenile, self-centered dorm-room-stoner hubristic philo-sophistry.
You should read Aesop’s fable The Gnat and the Bull some time”.
Thank you so much for your input. It was complete with a deep thinking philosophy predicated on an in-depth analysis. I bow to your superior knowledge and absolutely deft ability to make an informed statement. I await your sure-to-follow missive which I know will completely obviate the necessity for any further debate on this topic. I intuit that your philosophy has transformed into a complete and absolutely accurate knowledge of our universe. I now still my small voice and await the moment when I can sit at your feet and absorb the magnificence of your wisdom. Please do not make me wait too long, sir.
The Other John Mc,
“…If A then B is an equivalent statement to If Not B then Not A….
Wouldn’t a counter-example be: “If I have 1.463 billion dollars then I am rich as $hit.” Contrapositive of this would be “If I am not rich as $hit then I do not have 1.463 billion dollars.” But it seems to me still possible to be rich as $hit without having exactly that amount of money. Sound right?”
No. Your counter argument is fallacious – an example of equivocation. “If A then B, therefore if not B then not A” is sound logic.
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/524-phil/Handouts/Philosophical/LogicAndArgument.htm
However, I’m not commenting on the original argument. I wasn’t paying attention
Leo100: “That doesn’t mean of course that we create reality but it means the observer and reality exist as a pair.”
I have no idea what you mean by “reality” in this context, but that isn’t what “Ian” wrote. He claimed that “the world… is conscious-dependant”.
The World. Dependant. Not merely that the world is, by some happy accident, currently populated by some observers. Rather, that the world depends on consciousness for its existence.
.
Ian, I can sympathize with certain attempts you’ve made to communicate the nature of the hard problem. But what I wonder about, and am hoping you might address is (you said):
“Let’s suppose the world is governed by physical laws. *We do not need a consciousness-independent reality in addition to these physical laws*. The physical laws all by themselves suffice.”
This is very confusing to me. What are the physical laws doing if there’s nothing physical for them to govern? In other words, what do the physical laws suffice FOR? Without sensory data, what is the content of consciousness? If there’s no objective world, from whence the sensory date?
Also, and I’m not sure if or how this would tie in, but: if only consciousness exists, why do we have eyes? Whose consciousness or what consciousness do my eyes exist in? Just my own? How come other people seem to look at them when they’re talking to me?
Thank you
Well Davdoodles we can never know really we could be living in a computer simulation.
“Thank you so much for your input. It was complete with a deep thinking philosophy predicated on an in-depth analysis. I bow to your superior knowledge and absolutely deft ability to make an informed statement.”
You’re most welcome.
“I intuit that your philosophy has transformed into a complete and absolutely accurate knowledge of our universe.”
Not really. I leave the physics and astronomy to the physicists and astronomers. I’m only pointing out:
(i) that you are (and forgive me if I’m giving you too much credit here) a little too old to still be spouting that sophomoric hubristic nonsense about how the laws of physics only operate on trees falling in forests, when some great-and-powerful “observer” witnesses it, and
(ii) That the science is clear that that the world was here long before even your and my single-celled ancestors were around for it to “depend” on. And it did just fine without us.
.
@Mlema
A reality existing independently of consciousness is a superfluous hypothesis. Nor could we ever know it exists anyway.
There are selves and their conscious experiences. The physical laws can be used to predict the patterns in our perceptual experiences.
Mlema
“If there’s no objective world, from whence the sensory date”
From God? A collective creation of all minds? Or why couldn’t they just be a brute fact.
Even if we have a mind independent reality we can ask the same question. What are physical laws? Do they actually coerce reality to behave in a certain way? Where do they come from if so?
Mlema
“if only consciousness exists, why do we have eyes?”
I didn’t say only consciousness exists. I denied the existence of a mind-independent reality. The mind perceives things which exist, it’s just they don’t exist when not perceived.
BillyJoe7 – For some reason,I now have ‘I Am The Walrus’ earworming itself through my brain.
I have to agree with RickK about the long list of ‘anomalous phenomena’ observed throughout history.
There seems to be no end of things that people seemed to be very sure of that,under objective observation,turn out to be either explained by natural causes,or unique to certain individuals or cultural myths,and rarely seem to happen to anyone outside those belief systems,and especially never happen under controlled and highly scrutinized conditions.
What would be the plausible explanation for such ‘shy’ phenomena? Is it the case that the non-materialistic world is trying to hide from skeptics and scientists who seek to understand it?
Maybe I just need a Jill Bolte Taylor event in my life to send me into the camp of the people like Ian or Leo,but I think a ‘stroke of insight’ is much less likely than a more prosaic stroke ,in my future.
@Ian
“People complain about when I go, but there’s absolutely nothing substantive being said.”
That’s why people complain Ian, you almost never have anything substantive to say. for example:
“So getting drunk demonstrates that nothing could survive our deaths? OK fair enough. If there is a “life after death” you won’t be like you are now, so perhaps you don’t consider my concept of survival to be worthwhile anyway.”
You miss how getting drunk affects the brain and as follows, the state of the mind. It’s pretty simple Ian. You keep talking about how dumb people are, that they don’t get what you’re talking about but you miss the most basic of points. You won’t be like you are now…a nonsensical statement backed up by absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
“There are *conceptual* i.e philosophical problems with all flavours of materialist positions.”
Again, this is your problem, trying to apply philosophy to real life. I don’t how many times your philisophical argumetns are taken to pieces in no time flat but you keep insisting this is somehow evidence for life after death.
“But this is the whole argument that people opposed to a “life after death” make. Brain damage changes our personalities, drugs, including alcohol, change our personalities, growing up from childhood to adulthood changes our personalities.
Therefore if we *are* our personalities, and personality is changed when the brain functions differently, there cannot be anything which survives our deaths.”
See Ian, I knew you’d start to figure it out.
“Well it’s certainly not logically incoherent. It’s not even weird. It’s only weird for those who subscribe to a mechanistic conception of reality.”
See there you go again, we’re too stupid to understand it, but you’ve got it all figured out.
“I don’t know what my own view is, but probably some form of idealism yes. ”
You’re out of your mind, you have the audacity to tell us we can’t comprehend your argument and YOU can’t even tell us what it is.
“I’d rather argue about materialism. It is so absurd on so many levels. The idea that everything we see is an illusion — no colours, no sounds, no smells actually exist out there. ”
This is an idiotic misrepresentation of what most of us understand to be reality. You build your strawmen by over simplifying then attack!
“That nothing we ever experience is real. The notion that we have no free will, that the self doesn’t even exist from one second to the next, that there is no objective morality, that we are merely biological robots living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe. All this is unwarranted in my opinion.”
Again, nothing solid to work here but the same old ridiculous arguments againsty materialism. TIRED is the word I’d use. Nothing of substance here bu philisophical musings, which you’ve mistaken to be evidence for your points.
It’s objective Ian, we see the same colors, we feel hot and cold the same. Some alterations of the mind can alter the way these are percieved but this is no way makes it ‘holographic’. Objectivity, something both you and Leo miss consistantly, can be tested easily.
You’re morality argument against materialism is a red herring. It’s a weak argument that’s already been slamdunked a number of times as ridiculous.
“None of this contradicts what I said. The world is divest of any colours, smells, sounds, everything that makes reality real. I’m talking about *colours* not the redefinition of colour made by scientists.”
Redefining terms to suit your particular world view isn’t helpful. It’s this kind of crap that people have a hard time understanding what you’re trying to say Ian.
“Yes I think colours, sounds, smells as perceived exist out there. They are not objective but subjective though. And percipients will have different experiences — the shade of green I might perceive when looking at some plant might not be exactly the same shade as you perceive”
I remember haing this discussion in a Perkins my junior year of high school. Turns out we got farther than Ian did in finding answers.
““Skeptics” make all these claims all the time, yet time after time after time, when you start digging it transpires they’re talking bollox.”
Actually Ian, we so consistantly uncover this stuff AS bollox. The problem is no matter how many times we SHOW you true believers the evidence you deny deny deny. In fact Ian YOU don’t even deny, you just make it all up on the fly and pat yourself on the back for confusing people.
“RickK Various characteristic anomalous phenomena has been observed throughout history and across all cultures. I’ve only skimmed the surface of all the paranormal literature. But you guys seem to have read none at all. Your comments reveal a complete lack of familiarity with all the evidence.”
Based on what Ian, the mountains of evidence we can supply daily that shows there’s nothing behind this garbage. You ridiculously believe in anything magical and call us irrational…
You’re child like Ian in your understanding of what evidence is, and how philosophy and science actually relate. That’s not an ad hominem, you literally argue like some of my friends did in high school. The difference is they figured out where they went wrong long before they hit their 20’s.
You can’t even explain your stance succinctly. When asked point blank you admit you have no idea what your stance is.
Here’s a very serious question for you Ian:
How would YOU have a discussion with someone who can’t solidify their own stance, can’t explain themselves using language appropriately, can’t understand the boundary between science and philosophy and spends most of his time dismissing anyone who fails to agree with them on their spurious points?
Davdoodles
I must intervene here when you stated this
That the science is clear that that the world was here long before even your and my single-celled ancestors were around for it to “depend” on. And it did just fine without us.
I think you should watch this video about physicist Andrei Linde explaining that maybe not so. Its pretty short just a little over 4 minutes.
http://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-explore-cosmos-and-consciousness
@Ian
“Or, to put it another way, the universe doesn’t need you or anyone, and doesn’t give a flying fig about your juvenile, self-centered dorm-room-stoner hubristic philo-sophistry”
Other than you usual insulting tripe, this is exactly right Ian.
@Leo/Ian
Stop ignoring the direct questions, answer RickK’s question. You’re both so busy trying to slide around and avoid direct answers to questions it’s ridiculous. It’s why you aren’t taken seriously.
“But let’s sincerely try to find some common ground. Give me a recent, well-documented example of a person with a paranormal ability that they were able to replicate under controlled conditions in the presence of skeptics, and we can discuss it.”
Leo: “Well… we can never know really we could be living in a computer simulation.”
You’re correct. Although hypothesizing, testing hypothesis, and philosophizing about our reality being The Matrix is fine, acting upon the belief could potentially bring unnecessary harm and reenforcing irrational behavior and thinking. There are an infinite number of possibilities, and you know what? I don’t have to proven a single one wrong. The burden of proof is on the other side – those making factual claims. Idealism and your interpretation of reality has not met the threshold of proof. The standards you’re using for collecting evidence have major flaws where your conclusions cannot logically follow.
Non-naturalist/non-monist: How does your interpretation of reality differ from the reality of naturalism or materialism? Do these differences manifest themselves where they can be perceived/detected?
I’m of the opinion that dualism and idealism serve no other purpose than to justify or a product of other (irrational) beliefs.
@Ian
I missed this doozy:
“I think about things a lot. I mean about what the world is, why we’re here, what it all means etc. More so than the average person.
But no, I know next to nothing. But I do know I know next to nothing. Unlike others.”
This is laughable Ian. You’re assumption that you think about things more than other people is patently ridiculous, otherwise provide some proof. You’re false humility is even more ridiculous. You spend most of your time here trying to laud your own intellect over others – failing miserably mind you. Someone of some intelligence can also effectively communicate. You see it all the time here. You’d best be served lurking here and learning about all that stuff you don’t know.
grabula
“How would YOU have a discussion with someone who can’t solidify their own stance, can’t explain themselves using language appropriately, can’t understand the boundary between science and philosophy and spends most of his time dismissing anyone who fails to agree with them on their spurious points?”
I can’t. I’m just wasting my time.
@Hardnose
On a neuroscientists blog you state this absurdity:
“So neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists have that ignorance in common.”
You ever look up the definition for irony?
“I don’t believe in dualism. I think the brain is an important part of the mind, and that it allows us to interact with the “physical” world. “
You’re partially right, without a brain you’ve got no mind!
“It seems odd to me that mainstream physics assumes there are alternate universes, higher order dimensions, etc., yet mainstream biologists and M.D. seem to have never heard about any of it.”
Mainstream physics assumes nothing. The multiverse, other dimensions and so on are extremely theoretical. You and leo keep taking these concepts on the extreme edge of science at the moment and assuming consensus just exists. That shows a profound misunderstanding of how science works and the specific sciences in general.
@Ian
“You can’t. I’m just wasting your time.”
I fixed that for you.
@Ian, Hardnose, Leo
The question the three of you keep getting asked, and keep avoiding is this:
Given that changes to the physical brain show changes in the mind, and given that specific changes to specific parts of the brain give predictable results, how do you explain this is your make believe world?
You don’t have answers and that’s why you avoid the question but I’ll ask again anyway, just to prove the point.
@grabula. OK wasn’t going to make another post, but since you ask:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/is-after-death-conceivable.html
Mainstream physics does actually most physicists think we live in a multiverse. The evidence is growing that we live in a multiverse.
http://www.messagetoeagle.com/evidencepararelluniverse.php
http://www.space.com/25100-multiverse-cosmic-inflation-gravitational-waves.html
Hoss
Neither has your case met the threshold of proof. Your making an announcement that we know what reality is we have no clue what reality is. But we know that reality thanks to quantum physics is far more expansive than naturalism/materialism could have ever thought.
Grabula
We have already given your answers but you refuse to even consider them. We are not here to repeat ourselves for your satisfaction.
Leo,
“But we know that reality thanks to quantum physics is far more expansive than naturalism/materialism could have ever thought”
Quantum *is* a materialist theory.
Leo,
Please read your own source:
“It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously.”
“May… Suggests”
So not accepted, and not even necessarily taken seriously. I personally find the possibility interesting, but you do yourself no favours when you over state it.
Niche Geek
Did I say parallel universes are a fact? no I didn’t I said the evidence however is growing. Could that model in physics be overthrown sure it can. If, you know a lot about physics please give me a model that doesn’t have a multiverse in it?.
Niche Geek
Was it brought in by the framework of materialism sure. Does it strongly challenge materialism? it sure does. As materialism assumes a casually closed universe but if there is a multiverse then the universe is not casually closed. Its open instead.
@Leo
“Mainstream physics does actually most physicists think we live in a multiverse. The evidence is growing that we live in a multiverse. ”
I don’t know how many more times we need to tell you this is not even close to accepted as a consensus and generates a lot of contention. No matter how many times you say it, it still won’t make it true.
“We have already given your answers but you refuse to even consider them. We are not here to repeat ourselves for your satisfaction.”
No, you haven’t. You’ve danced around the subject. You’ve made outrageous claims about what mainstream science accepts or doesn’t accept but you have literally not delivered a direct response to my question, posed to you, by many others. again, you dodge the issue.
“Did I say parallel universes are a fact? no I didn’t I said the evidence however is growing.”
No, this is literally the first time you’ve acknowledged it’s anything but mainstream – see my quote from you above.
Leo, ultimately until you realize that the dichotomy you’ve built around materialism and the rest of the world is full of holes, you cannot make any progress in your understanding. It’s approaching dogma.
@Ian
“OK wasn’t going to make another post, but since you ask:”
Quitting already? In all honesty I thought it would have happened sooner but still falls successfully within my predictions, am I psychic?!
More importantly, I’m not feeding your ego-train by going to your blog. Cut and paste or try to explain it to use muck dwellers if you can. So far you’ve failed to here and the few who have visited and criticized your blog have shown there’s nothing of substance there either.
So the physicist Sean Caroll who was with Steven Novella debating the afterlife was wrong when he said and I quote. “Sean Carroll’s observation, “As crazy as it sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
I mentioned that the filter theory of consciousness can explain those observations. You and other skeptics here just keep ignoring it.
@Leo
“So the physicist Sean Caroll who was with Steven Novella debating the afterlife was wrong when he said and I quote. “Sean Carroll’s observation, “As crazy as it sounds, most working physicists buy into the many-worlds theory”.”
Yes, he overstated the case.
The filter theory has been taken apart here, including the blog post your posting on right now. Is that really you’re only shoddy evidence for something other than the brain/mind connection?
leo100,
“Was it brought in by the framework of materialism sure. Does it strongly challenge materialism? it sure does. As materialism assumes a casually closed universe but if there is a multiverse then the universe is not casually closed. Its open instead.”
You’ve confused yourself. Quantum is well established by experimentation. Multiverse is a mathematical implication that is not yet verified. How is quantum mechanics a challenge? It’s only a challenge to Ian as it shows that the world doesn’t actually work in the way we perceive it.
Niche Geek —
Not even that — it shows that at the fundamental level, we cannot use analogies based on the level we experience. Electromagnetic waves are not like waves on a pond, as Michelson and Morley discovered.
As far as the multiverse is concerned, you are so right to make the distinction between the mathematics and reality. It is a fact that often progress in mathematics has preceded discoveries in physics. When one knows how to approach something, it becomes a lot easier to study. But that doesn’t mean that reality always follows mathematics — negative numbers don’t make -2 apples possible.
leo : “The universe may have never existed without observers Davdoodles that is what experiments shown in quantum physics. That you need an observe to make collapse the wave function. That doesn’t mean of course that we create reality but it means the observer and reality exist as a pair.”
This is just not true, this is an incorrect interpretation of quantum mechanics. The collapse of the wave function is just a matter of interaction with the macroscopic world, what we call a “measurement”, it happens even if there is no one observing. Maybe the use of the word “measurement” is misleading because it entails an observer. When you look at electron interferences, individual electrons have their wave function collapsed as soon as they hit the wall, and for that no human presence is required (or that of any sentient being for that matter).
Ekko : “Ian already dodged my critique of idealism but Bertrand Russell demolished it long ago anyway. 10 different people’s sense data of a table = 10 different tables because there is no such thing as an external material object.”
Actually I don’t know from which Russell’s work you got this, because I recently read On Our Knowledge of the External World and he clearly states that he could not prove that things don’t exist when not perceived. It’s still a good working hypothesis though. He just says that the perfect coordination of all senses stimuli when you move with respect to one object make it highly likely that the thing is just out there.
“Not even that — it shows that at the fundamental level, we cannot use analogies based on the level we experience. Electromagnetic waves are not like waves on a pond,”
I have always thought of it in a very basic sense, if you take an ant and make him as big as a human, he will not be the same as just a big ant, he will probably break under the weight of his own carapace. Just because something works at a micro or macro level does not mean it will work at all in the same way at the other end of the scale. Quantum woo-woo seems to revolve around trying to shoehorn macro and micro all in one.
That is my very simple understanding of it.
Looks like I ruffled a few feathers here.
The survival of consciousness in fact and the evidence is out there for anyone who cares to check them out. I did. I was challenged when I made the same baseless claims that you are making. Someone said, you claim to be after truth so watch these videos. I watched more than what he asked me. I watched hundreds of them. At the end I had to admit that if I keep denying I would be guilty of the same fault I accuse the Muslims of.
“I love this one: Quantum Physics doesn’t make sense. My ideas don’t make sense. Quantum physics is true, therefore my ideas are true. Yay!”
Sorry, it is not my fault that you have tenuous comprehension. I explain again so even you can understand.
Our logic is based on our experience of things with which we interact, i.e. the Newtonian world. The world of quantum physics is beyond our experience. They are counterintuitive and strange. This strangeness is not the attribute of the minute particle but a characteristic of a word that is not dominated by time and space. The behavior of particles gives us an idea of what happens when space-time quantum is absent. Time and space are properties of matter (substances larger than atom). Without matter, there is no time or space. We can’t envision a world without time and space. Quantum world allow us to peep into such universe.
Since consciousness is not made of matter, it is not subject to time and space quantum. The behavior of particles in a timeless and spaceless universe can give us an idea of the behavior of consciousness. So just like electrons consciousness can be in multiple places at the same time, it also can pop in and out of here and now.
It is also absurd to say since we can’t see or measure consciousness it therefore does not exist. Has anyone seen or measured dark matter. Dark matter is all around us. It goes through us and neither can we sense it nor our instruments can detect it. Yet we are pretty much positive that it exists. Why? Because of its effect on galaxies. There is evidence that it exists. The evidence for the survival of consciousness is in the psychic/telepathic ability of the near death experiencers. There is no other way for us to detect it. This is the only way we can know that it is real. When there are thousands of people reporting coming out of their body, looking at the medical team operating on them from above and reporting accurately what the people did and said we can’t keep denying the phenomenon. When many of these unconscious patients go to the other rooms to find their relatives and the report accurately what they said and did, it would be intellectually dishonest to keep defending an ideology. Facts are facts and they are easily accessible to anyone who cares to check them out. Don’t pooh-pooh things that are beyond your ken. Check them out. You don’t want to know because you have already made your mind. You “know” there is nothing to be learned and hence why waste time. I deal with people like you all the time. My job is to show Muslims the fallacy of their belief and I am quite familiar with this attitude. Those who know least are often more convinced. They have no use to check out any evidence presented by their opponents since this to them mean waste of time. After all what is left to learn after having learned it all. Sorry buddies, but that is not the right attitude.
We debate until cows come home. People have been discussing his subject for hundreds of years, if not thousands. This problem cannot be solved through discussion and argumentation. It can only be settled through observation.
In the last 40 years, since doctors have managed to resuscitate dead patience millions of near death experiences have been reported. Thousands of them have been verified by the doctors, nurses and the relatives of the patients. I am only interested in the latter. Unless there is a worldwide conspiracy that includes the medical professionals and the relatives of patients, I have no reason to doubt that these reports are true. Only if one of them is true, it is enough. But we have hundreds.
I fact I myself had a peep into a different dimension for a few seconds while fully awake and in good health. It happened over two decades ago. I could not make sense of it until I learned about the stories of the near death experiencer and realized I have been there.
Woooooo!
AliSina true believer trope counter:
– You just don’t get it
– Skeptics are too closed minded to see the truth
– I used be a Skeptic but now my eyes are open
– My woo is true because quantum physics
– Extensive strawmanning
– You tube videos of anecdotal experience as evidence
– The materialist paradigm is about to be shattered
Keep them coming AliSina, help me pass some time today.
@AlSina
“Looks like I ruffled a few feathers here.”
You’re in the middle of a glut of true believers here at Neurologica Blog. I blame Dr. Novella, apparently afterlife/consciousness brings out the real wackadoos.
“Sorry, it is not my fault that you have tenuous comprehension”
We’re hearing this ad nauseum these days. Seems if someone goes with the evidence instead of the series of irrational loopty-loops one has to do in order to get around the evidence, then they obviously just don’t understand. So many geniouses and so little time…
“They are counterintuitive and strange. ”
You woo guys have got to get on board with a common theme here. Some of you say it’s completely understandable, some of you equate it’s strangeness with proof that whatever you want to believe in exists.
I think the underlying problem here is that if you’ll pause to notice for a moment, the skeptical view is pretty synchronous amongst us skeptics. Wonder why that is? Possibly because we’re attemtping to follow the evidence and the science instead of trying to wing it as we go along. It’s why if you take 10 different woo practitioners of any one woo, they’ll give you 1000 different ways to do it. There’s no consensuse because there’s no evidence to support a consensus.
“Since consciousness is not made of matter, it is not subject to time and space quantum.”
Dr. Novella already addressed this bizarre belief – consciousness is a process. For example the process of evolution is also not made of matter, but it doesn’t require crazy quantum woo to explain it.
“So just like electrons consciousness can be in multiple places at the same time, it also can pop in and out of here and now. ”
Here’s why you’re already annoying me, guys and girls like you come in swinging with these absolute statements and nothing to back them up except some philosophizing. Philosophy is not science, though you and Ian both seem to make the mistake of thinking it’s so.
“It is also absurd to say since we can’t see or measure consciousness it therefore does not exist. Has anyone seen or measured dark matter. Dark matter is all around us”
Again, your ignorance leads you astray. For example ‘dark matter’ is theoretical – it’s not a specific thing. However, based on the hypothesis scientist have been looking for specific affects predicted by the theory and so far so good, it’s held up pretty well. We know there’s something but we have yet to identify what exactly it is, only some of it’s effects. Just like we can measure the effects of dark matter to strengthen the hypothesis, we have also observed how altering the physical brain alters the function of the mind. In both cases there are measurable and predictable effects.
“The evidence for the survival of consciousness is in the psychic/telepathic ability of the near death experiencers. There is no other way for us to detect it.”
Then you have absolutely no way to prove or disprove your theory. Anecdotal NDE’s does not evidence make. Someone said it earlier on this thread – thousands of anecdotes do not make good science. Millions are just as worthless as one. Show us even a couple of strong experiments proving any of these psi phenomena you guys keep claiming exist, and lynchpinning your arguments on.
“When there are thousands of people reporting coming out of their body, looking at the medical team operating on them from above and reporting accurately what the people did and said we can’t keep denying the phenomenon”
There are much simpler explanations for these than having to reach out and create a magical phenomena from thin air, with absolutely no evidence to support it.
“Check them out. You don’t want to know because you have already made your mind. You “know” there is nothing to be learned and hence why waste time”
We have, there’s no evidence,the last sentence holds some truth however.
“When many of these unconscious patients go to the other rooms to find their relatives and the report accurately what they said and did, it would be intellectually dishonest to keep defending an ideology”
Again, anecdotal evidence isn’t. It’s intellectually dishonest to avoid all the evidence for a mundane explanation just because you can’t get past your infantile need to exist beyond your death.
“Sorry buddies, but that is not the right attitude.”
Are you and Ian Wardell pals? I ask because you both have this way of trying to establish you know ‘stuff’, then turning around and accusing everyone else of representing themselves as knowing all. WE only know what the evidence shows us. YOUR only defense against that is to ad hominem because you cannot present facts or evidence to support your stance. You don’t even seem to be able to understand the problem with anecdotal evidence.
“It can only be settled through observation. ”
Then how about you take the pepsi challenge Leo, Hardnose and Ian are flailing away at. Explain to us and provide evidence to support your case for how all the evidence points to a brain/mind link, but you still come to the conclusion there is something else. Don’t link to your blog, I took a look last night against my better judgement and it’s as bad and unintelligible as Wardells’.
“Unless there is a worldwide conspiracy that includes the medical professionals and the relatives of patients, I have no reason to doubt that these reports are true. Only if one of them is true, it is enough”
No but you have enough motivated reasoning to ignore the evidence against and only select what you think supports your claims – mountains of useless anecdotal evidence.
“I fact I myself had a peep into a different dimension for a few seconds while fully awake and in good health.”
I took about twice as much acid at a party one night and saw monsters and flames swim across the sky for hours. All explained biologically and chemically. Your story is anecdotal – starting to see a pattern in your evidence?
haha, mumadadd beat me to it, and much more efficiently too!
grabula,
Thanks. Did I miss any? Can’t wait for the next instalment…
mumadadd, AlSina hit all the classics so I think you covered it pretty well!
AlSina,
Did any ONE of those thousands of cases you’ve investigated reveal the code on top of the cupboard?
No?
Then report back when you find one.
That’s all we ask – just ONE verified case
Is that really too much to ask?
Shouldn’t YOU be asking for such a case…I mean…as a true sceptic!
“Shouldn’t YOU be asking for such a case…I mean…as a true sceptic!”
Come on BillyJoe! There are THOUSANDS of people saying they had NDE’s. Using “Wardells Standard” (TM) – if there are thousands of them, not all of them can be wrong!
I want to emphasize one point:
“Unless there is a worldwide conspiracy that includes the medical professionals and the relatives of patients, I have no reason to doubt that these reports are true.”
But that is just it – there are plenty of good reasons to doubt that the reports are accurate and true. It’s called psychology. There are countless psychological experiments demonstrating in various ways, and unequivocally, that we cannot trust our memories of our perceptions. Our memories are not recorders. Rather, we actively construct a narrative that is just as much about belief and expectation as it is about our (also faulty) perceptions.
Many belief systems built on millions of profound anecdotal experiences vanished under careful and controlled observing conditions.
Haven’t you ever been in an argument with someone, and then immediately after the two of you have very different memories of the conversation you just had? You probably assumed it was the other person who was wrong (a natural assumption), but it’s likely you were both wrong.
This is precisely where skeptics and believers separate. It is NOT because skeptics are closed minded or have already made up their minds. (If anything, the opposite is true.) Rather, it’s because skeptics understand the power of self-deception and the need for critical thinking.
Millions of people can be profoundly and systematically wrong if culture, belief, and cognitive biases lead them there.
“Given that changes to the physical brain show changes in the mind, and given that specific changes to specific parts of the brain give predictable results, how do you explain this is your make believe world?”
And changes in the mind influence the physical brain. How do you explain that in your 19th century materialist world?
The checkerboard illusion revisited.
Ian has again linked to his interpretation of the checkerboard illusion:
“http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/are-perceptual-illusions-always.html”
(Don’t click on this link)
I’m not sure why, because he has consistently got it wrong as has been pointed out many times before.
Here is a link to the checkerboard illusion so you don’t have to click on Ian’s blog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grey_square_optical_illusion.PNG
(Note: The checkerboard illusion is a 2D illusion – simply the flat 2D screen of your computer with variously coloured areas on it. The areas on your computer screen marked A and B appear to be different colours but are actually the same colour)
Ian: “I’m sure that all of us are astounded that the squares A and B are actually the same colour. It is the shadow cast over B by the cylinder which makes us think otherwise”
If A and B are actually the same colour (which they are) the shadow cast over B by the cylinder would make B appear darker than A. In fact B appears lighter than A, so this cannot be the correct explanation The correct explanation of why B appears lighter than A is that B is surrounded by dark squares (making it appear lighter than it actually is) and A is surrounded by light squares (making it appear darker than it actually is). The reason that the “shadow” is added is that, without it, the actual colour of B would be too light to match the actual colour of A. The shadow makes the actual colour of B a little darker so as to match the actual colour of A.
Continued…
Ian: “If this were a real object you are seeing, then squares A and B are very different colours. Our senses are not deceiving us”
Really?
Here is a video of the “real object”.
You decide…are our senses deceiving us or not?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Sen1HTu5o
“How do you explain that in your 19th century materialist world?”
I love the fact that hardnose doesn’t believe in supernatural, but doesn’t believe in materialism. WTF does that mean.
But if you really try to pin down hardnose, he just won’t reply. Like Ian. He just trolls comments until he finds one where he thinks he has the upper hand.
Getting to the nitty-gritty is their cryptonite – and for obvious reasons.
Ian : As BJ7 pointed out, and also from what transpires in your blog entries, you’re demonstrably wrong by claiming that we are never fooled by our senses and that the world is as it appears to be. Forget about drugs or hallucinatinos, just think about mirages… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage
For me, as long as you keep asserting that, it’s nail in the coffin for your idealistic worldview as a whole.
Please address this point, and don’t try to elude this remark. If you do then you should know you’re losing the last remaining bit of your credibility.
Philosophizing is great and it’s fun.
But you guys are engaging in the same epistemological model as Aristotle. Which is fine until you become so filled with hubris as to think that you’ve trumped science!
I know you guys literally don’t know what science is (as you’ve shown above)- but science has moved on. We’ve made our assumptions – no solopcism, no supernatural causation, etc – and we’re actually getting it done. All of you who say your dialectic reasoning has trumped science are getting nothing done. No predictions. No discoveries. Nothing, nada, zilch.
While you guys write yet another blog post that is in reality a re-hashing of the same ideas that have been around for millennia, we’ll be in our labs or clinics actually finding out a little something about how the world works or APPLYING that knowledge in a way that evinces actual understanding.
I know I posted a variant of this above, but it bears repeating. This is like the losing football team in a 100-0 game sneeringly professing that they’re still #1. Completely contradicted by the data.
Leo: “Neither has your case met the threshold of proof. Your making an announcement that we know what reality is we have no clue what reality is.”
I’m never made an announcement that I know what reality actually is – I’m calling BS. Quote me and prove it.
“But we know that reality thanks to quantum physics is far more expansive than naturalism/materialism could have ever thought.”
You understand that the methods used to reach beliefs are extremely important, right? Before evidence is presented, belief is not justified. There is no telling to how crazy the world, even beyond quantum mechanics, actually is. This is not incompatible with naturalism or materialism. In fact, the methods build around naturalism and materialism was what was used to discover quantum mechanics in the first place.
Pragmatically idealism, dualism, and supernaturalism are useless, while naturalism and materialism delivers the goods.
AliSina: Why don’t you respond to my previous comment to you? I did more than call you out on your bullshit. I proved, in at least one instance, that your method of researching life after death was lazy and resulted in collecting bad evidence that does not support your conclusion.
Grabula: “You’re in the middle of a glut of true believers here at Neurologica Blog. I blame Dr. Novella, apparently afterlife/consciousness brings out the real wackadoos.”
lol This is the most wackadoos I’ve seen on the site.
I wasn’t sure what idealism is so I just read something by Bertrand Russell on the subject. I think this paragraph sums it up best:
“He then proceeds to consider common objects, such as a tree, for instance. He shows that all we know immediately when we ‘perceive’ the tree consists of ideas in his sense of the word, and he argues that there is not the slightest ground for supposing that there is anything real about the tree except what is perceived. Its being, he says, consists in being perceived: in the Latin of the schoolmen its ‘esse’ is ‘percipi’. He fully admits that the tree must continue to exist even when we shut our eyes or when no human being is near it. But this continued existence, he says, is due to the fact that God continues to perceive it; the ‘real’ tree, which corresponds to what we called the physical object, consists of ideas in the mind of God, ideas more or less like those we have when we see the tree, but differing in the fact that they are permanent in God’s mind so long as the tree continues to exist. All our perceptions, according to him, consist in a partial participation in God’s perceptions, and it is because of this participation that different people see more or less the same tree. Thus apart from minds and their ideas there is nothing in the world, nor is it possible that anything else should ever be known, since whatever is known is necessarily an idea. ”
What a crock of shit! How would it be possible to distinguish this from a materialistic world? What’s the point??
BJ, thanks for again pointing out Ian’s silliness with the checkerboard color illusion. Ian and his ilk are so confused by this (and the many hundreds of other) perceptual illusions because they provide overwhelming, easy-to-demonstrate, and obvious proof against their interpretation of the mind. Why aren’t our perceptions always accurate reflections of reality? Because our perceptions, minds, and consciousness are a constructed, interpreted model *based* on information from an external reality (but obviously not equivalent to the external reality, as these illusions so clearly demonstrate).
Insomniac
This is just not true, this is an incorrect interpretation of quantum mechanics. The collapse of the wave function is just a matter of interaction with the macroscopic world, what we call a “measurement”, it happens even if there is no one observing. Maybe the use of the word “measurement” is misleading because it entails an observer. When you look at electron interferences, individual electrons have their wave function collapsed as soon as they hit the wall, and for that no human presence is required (or that of any sentient being for that matter).
You said when you look at electron interferences that is the point of the observer phenomenon its not just simply that a observer looks at something its that a observer can interpret something like results like you mentioned with the electron interferences and bring it into reality.
You should watch this short video by Andrei Linde explaining the observer effect in quantum physics.
http://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-explore-cosmos-and-consciousness
I’m never made an announcement that I know what reality actually is – I’m calling BS. Quote me and prove it
What I met was you seem awfully sure that materialism is true you seem to get all your feathers are ruffled when someone challenges it.
“But we know that reality thanks to quantum physics is far more expansive than naturalism/materialism could have ever thought.”
You understand that the methods used to reach beliefs are extremely important, right? Before evidence is presented, belief is not justified. There is no telling to how crazy the world, even beyond quantum mechanics, actually is. This is not incompatible with naturalism or materialism. In fact, the methods build around naturalism and materialism was what was used to discover quantum mechanics in the first place.
In fact your wrong and John Wheeler knew how incompatible naturalism was with quantum physics.
And I quote from here
Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism — at least with regard to the human mind — is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being … including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”
http://vereloqui.blogspot.ca/2012/07/materialists-who-didnt-get-quantum.html
The mind changes the brain because the mind is the brain. The brain is wetware – it’s own activity changes it’s own function. It is communicating with itself.
We call this strange phenomena memory and learning.
@Steven Novella
Memory and learning are a part of consciousness. You said mind changes the brain therefore mind is the brain but then say the brain changes itself. Well which one is it?.
Leo – quantum mechanics is not incompatible with materialism, nor is it necessary to for consciousness. Here is a good discussion of the topic by a physicist. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/05/quantum_consciousness_physics_and_neuroscience_do_not_explain_one_another.html
Key point – “The problem with Klemm’s assertions, as well as those of many others who misuse the word quantum, is that their speculation is based on a superficial understanding of one or both fields. Physics may or may not have anything informative to say about consciousness, but you won’t make any progress in that direction without knowing a lot about both quantum physics and how brains work. Skimping on either of those will lead to nonsense.”
“You said mind changes the brain therefore mind is the brain but then say the brain changes itself. Well which one is it?.”
If mind is the brain, then these are both the same thing, right. What’s your confusion?
You seem to be starting with the assumption that the mind is something other than brain function. If you treat this as a hypothesis, however (rather than a philosophical starting poimt) that hypothesis has failed.
The mind as brain hypothesis has been remarkably successful, on the other hand, and is compatible with all reliable data we have.
leo:”In fact your wrong and John Wheeler knew how incompatible naturalism was with quantum physics.”
Ohhh, damn. I’m sooo wrong. You got me with that argument from authority. Good job using a fallacy to prove me wrong.
If quantum mechanics are not compatible with materialism and naturalism, how is it possible science, which assumes methodological naturalism, discovered quantum mechanics? How is it possible that quantum chromodynamics is so successful and accurate at explaining strong interactions? Quantum mechanics is one of the most accurate and successful branches of science.
Quantum mechanics are not incompatible with naturalism or materialism.
There is a slight problem trying to define the scope of naturalism and materialism – basically there isn’t a limit to what is possible within naturalism and materialism. Your arbitrarily setting a limit on naturalism and materialism, excluding phenomena that fall outside the bounds of common sense, in order to misrepresent materialism and naturalism.
Hoss
I would think John Wheeler knows what he is talking about as he is an expert in quantum physics.True they discovered quantum physics but they didn’t expect to find what they found. They found that reality is far stranger than materialism would say it is. I agree quantum mechanics indeed is. Materialism states that everything is physical in nature that the universe is casually closed.
Steven Novella
But your admitting mind affect the brain makes it sound like you are following interaction dualism. Because that is what it says mind affect brain and brain affects mind a two way relationship.
So your view is that consciousness can be explained by the brain and classical physics instead of quantum physics?.
Leo – again, you are getting lost in semantics. The mind is simply a process of the brain. So, when I say the mind affects the brain I am saying the brains functioning affects itself. When one neuron fires and affects the firing of a neuron to which it is connected, the dendrites become more dense, the receptor density may change, the synapse gap lessens, and the astrocytes modify their function further. It’s all biological stuff happening in the brain, all the way down.
You are making an argument from authority, relying on a subset of physicists who have ventured outside their area of expertise, causing mischief. The majority of quantum physicists don’t buy this malarky. I linked to an article by one who lays this out. Sean Carroll is another, my partner in the Afterlife debate. In fact, every physicist I have ever spoken to agrees this is a nonsensical abuse of quantum theory. It’s just a few celebrity crackpots who are talking about such nonsense.
I further never said that you can explain anything completely with classic physics. The reason we need quantum physics is because, when you dig deep enough, classic physics doesn’t cut it. However, that’s different than saying that quantum wierdness exists at the macroscopic level. It doesn’t. Decoherence and the De broglie limit see to that.
Leo – to emphasize a key point, it seems that you are overly relying on a minority of physicists who have ventured into mysticism and areas outside their area of expertise. This is understandable, as they get disproportionate attention. But if you check, the majority of physicists don’t buy it. Just read the article I linked to in my prior post.
Also – their arguments just don’t hold up, and they are generally ignorant of neuroscience.
Leo,
The mind is a process. The process affects the physical substrate, like the process of cloud formation affects the water droplets in the cloud. Are you being deliberately asinine?
Oops, didn’t refresh so didn’t see Steve’s comment.
“Leo – again, you are getting lost in semantics.”
Cut them some slack Steve – that’s all they’ve got.
@Steven Novella
Thanks for clarifying. I would disagree they know consciousness has something to do with quantum physics they just don’t admit it. Consciousness is the skeleton in the closet when it came apparent it has some relationship with quantum physics.
http://quantumenigma.com/
Steve12
If that is all we have then why bother debating with us.
“If that is all we have then why bother debating with us.”
Good question.
Leo, same question; why do you?
“I love the fact that hardnose doesn’t believe in supernatural, but doesn’t believe in materialism. WTF does that mean.”
Steve12,
So … for every philosophical controversy there is an A answer vs. a B answer? That would make the world very simple and not much thinking would be required.
But even if you prefer a simple world where you don’t have to wear out your brain with too much thinking, that is not reality.
“The reason we need quantum physics is because, when you dig deep enough, classic physics doesn’t cut it. However, that’s different than saying that quantum wierdness exists at the macroscopic level. It doesn’t. Decoherence and the De broglie limit see to that. ”
Well Steve Novella, you managed to ignore the article I linked in one of your earlier posts, about some birds using quantum entanglement in their navigation systems.
Things will only get worse for you quantum-deniers, as the research continues. This might be fun to watch.
@ the devil’s gummy bear
Maybe because its kinda fun when people have different views from my own.
Hardnose
I asked you to explain what a non-supernatural, non-materialist reality would mean. I laid out all of the several relevant questions and asked you to clarify / comment. You ignored them all, as you always do.
A non-supernatural, non-materialist universe makes no sense. But I don’t expect you to get into any of the details. YOu don’t do that.
“But even if you prefer a simple world where you don’t have to wear out your brain with too much thinking, that is not reality.”
So if I don’t agree with you, I believe in a simple world? That’s ridiculous.
hardnose, what exactly is a quantum-denier? when you get around to answering any of steve12’s questions, you might consider explaining (I am eager with anticipation!).
Leo: You really need to educate yourself about what quantum mechanics actually is before using something you don’t understand as evidence to support your ideas. (I don’t know what quantum mechanics are, but I know they support my philosophy) Read up on it.
I’d suggest starting with something simple like the Feynman lectures. It starts off with a Newtonian mechanics understanding of would happen with the Slit experiments then goes into what is actually observed(quantum mechanics).
http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/III_01.html
@Leo
Well, you’ve answered your own question. It is fun. As an exercise. And it is endlessly fascinating how people like you think. The foibles of human thinking gone awry are a curiosity, interesting to observe, and a cautionary example to remind me, at least, to remain vigilant in exercising critical thinking.
Hoss
I got a good understanding of quantum mechanics and so does the two physicist’s you came up with the Quantum Enigma book.
Leo: “I got a good understanding of quantum mechanics.”
Sure you do, buddy. I’d ask you to explain entanglement or the quantum eraser experiment but I’ve had my fill of copypasta.
You actually don’t.
Even for a layperson, you seem to have less than a rudimentary understanding.
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/11/16/the-illusion-of-explanatory-de/
+
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
+
too much self confidence
= the problem for Ian, Leo, Hardnnose, etc.
The Other John Mc
Why would I have to explain it to you or any of the other skeptics on here?. You ask me to do that then ask me how that has any connection to psi/afterlife. I am not an expert in physics or another other fields but I do have some knowledge about it.
Devil’s Gummy
Because I say that quantum physics casts doubt on a materialist worldview?.
Steve12 you and other skeptics here you have it totally backwards you seem to be awfully confident in materialism.
Nope.
Leo, part of having an “open mind” is understanding and admitting that one probably doesn’t know a whole lot about most things outside of their very specific area of expertise.
Leo: You’ve yet to provide a sound argument that puts materialism into question. All you’ve done is make erroneous assertions questioning the validity of materialism. Then you solve the non-problems of materialism, that you created, by asserting your philosophy is true through arguments from ignorance.(there is also equivocation fallacies, arguments from authority, flat out denial,…. – the list goes on and on.)
Your methods are sloppy and inconsistent. You need to stop trying to defend your beliefs and fix your methods of inquiry, which are currently leading you to beliefs without valid justification.
Let me clarify; because you make statements like this without irony. That’s why.
(I say this knowing full well it will be entirely lost on you)
leo: “Because I say that quantum physics casts doubt on a materialist worldview?.”
That just means your ignorant of materialist philosophy and/or quantum mechanics.
Yet another shining example of “Quantum mechanics is weird and difficult to undestand. My ideas are weird and difficult to understand. Quantum mechanics is true. Therefore, my ideas are true. Yay!!! In your face, you ignorant asshatted materialists!”
“Why would I have to explain it to you or any of the other skeptics on here?. You ask me to do that then ask me how that has any connection to psi/afterlife. I am not an expert in physics or another other fields but I do have some knowledge about it.”
Translation: I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m right anyway.
Now that’s funny shit right there….
Leo100 wrote:
“Greg Taylor had to put you straight because you were lying”
Leo I have not lied about anything, like I said before I have spent over 20 years investigating psychical research and I take the various case studies very seriously. If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be spending as much as $125 on various books to acquire little known information. I was a Wikipedia editor for over six years, I do not hide this fact as it is a great place to upload references, all the articles I created can easily be found.
Most of the articles on Wikipedia relating to psychical research or spiritualism were either created/ or updated by me – I have put countless hours into making content publicly available about many of these old mediumship or psychical cases, you would never do this i.e put yourself out for others and give all this knowledge out. Helen Duncan, Minda Crandon and every other Victorian medium were all frauds, even yourself said that ectoplasm is nothing more than cheesecloth, so what’s the problem with mentioning the fraud? We should not supress this information. It seems to me you just want to believe in the paranormal without really investigating these cases.
I and several other editors updated Leonora Piper’s Wikipedia page with all the evidence for her tricks and her failed mediumship communications. A month after this happened a different encyclopedia called rationalwiki decided to copy some of my paragraphs about what I had written on Wikipedia onto their own site about Piper. I personally don’t have a problem with this as I have several admin friends on rationalwiki and Wikipedia has no copyright problems, stuff on this website is copied all over the web, it is free knowledge. But Greg Taylor being a spiritualist and big promoter of pseudoscience hates rationalwiki and often posts libel about it on his twitter. Once he suspected I was involved in rationalwiki, i.e. he saw that the website was using the same material I had originally sighted he banned me from his blog without engaging in any of the material I presented, no comment from him at all on any of it. That’s the truth of the matter. You have done basically the same – ignoring my huge reply to you about Richard Hodgson communicating with spirits and just throwing ad-hominems at me or other nonsense.
“You seem to be the worst troll ever and your also lying as well.”
You have absolutely no evidence I am a troll or a liar apart from deliberate libel and misrepresentation from a spiritualist Greg Taylor. Do you know who Greg Taylor is? He is the owner of DailyGrail one of the most famous pseudoscience and conspiracy theory websites on the internet. He will make stuff up about me because I exposed his pseudoscience.
Look at the nonsense he publishes on his website, just a latest example:
http://www.dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2014/5/Australian-UFOs-More-100-Years-Ago
“Australian UFOs More than 100 Years Ago”
http://www.dailygrail.com/Guest-Articles/2014/5/Can-Science-See-Spirits
“Can Science see Spirits”.
Anything he says about anything should be taken with caution, especially his nasty remarks against Martin Gardner and other skeptics with border on libel.
The case with you Leo seems to be that if anything a paranormal believer says you automatically believe it over a skeptic. All spiritualists like Taylor hate me because I have debunked all the mediums they believe in, all they had left was Piper but I debunked her. They hate me so much all they have done for the last six years on various blogs and forums is make stuff up about me. The latest allegations have been funny thing such as claiming I am Jon Donnis founder of badpsychics or Robert Todd Carroll of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, being paid by the government to destroy mediumship research or being paid by Susan Gerbic of the Guerrilla Skepticism Wikipedia team to discredit spiritualism. The newest ones (from you) is being a troll or liar. None of those are true.
I won’t discuss this further as I have your paranormal blog and I will email you leo100 if you want any rare material on Hodgson or Piper. Cheers.
Truth is here if you want it tho bro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Piper
” The reason we need quantum physics is because, when you dig deep enough, classic physics doesn’t cut it. However, that’s different than saying that quantum wierdness exists at the macroscopic level. It doesn’t. Decoherence and the De broglie limit see to that. ”
What is a quantum denier? Steve N is one example. He states, as if it’s a proven fact that quantum “weirdness” does not exist at the macroscopic level.
I have posted a link at this blog to research showing that some birds use quantum entanglement (which Steve N would call “wierdness”) in order to navigate.
There are other biological studies showing quantum effects in plants and animals.
Steve N is a quantum denier because he either ignores scientific facts that don’t fit his 19th century world view. Or he does not pay attention to research outside his own field (a very bad mistake, I think).
How can I disagree with materialism, and also with supernaturalism? Because I think both are wrong.
Materialism is wrong because it doesn’t make any sense given current scientific knowledge. We know that “matter” is not made out of little particles of “matter,” for example.
I don’t believe in supernaturalism because nothing can be outside of nature. That is also an old and outdated way of thinking.
I have said many times at this blog that I believe the universe is made out of information. And I believe there are higher dimensional levels, and possibly alternate universes.
I don’t claim to know all about what the universe is made of and how it began. Unlike Steve N, I know enough to know that we understand very little.
Ha, ha, ha… Spiritual paths and scientific paths both reveal different truths for different purposes. Both are entirely based on symbolic representation of a reality that is far beyond our understanding. That the believers and the skeptics are forever arguing is hilarious to me. Different modes of inquiry people! Both produce results! They don’t need to be reconciled when you recognize they’re both just ways of working with reality (whatever the hell that is…).
Chill.
Robert
“Materialism is wrong because it doesn’t make any sense given current scientific knowledge. We know that “matter” is not made out of little particles of “matter,” for example.”
Yeah – but that’s still materialism. QM, M-theory, etc are all consistent with materialism. It comes down to semantics of what you consider materialism, I suppose. There are a lot of (IMO) false BS philosophy distinctions.
Hardnose: I could copy and paste quotes from Steven that contradicts everything you just said.
Your agenda of proving Steve wrong about everything he says is getting annoying. You constantly misunderstand what he says, then you vengefully attack your incorrect interpretation. People then have to constantly have to correct your false premises. Its getting annoying, but at least it isn’t as bad as it use to be.
Quite a statement, Robert, but it dissolves into meaninglessness towards the end. What are some results spiritual inquiry produces!? What do you mean by that?
Eh, I like the most bang for my buck (he tapped into his science machine).
Midnightrunner
Apparently you don’t care to bring up that Greg Taylor has refuted you numerous times as well as other readers on this blog. The same with Michael Prescott. No problem with mentioning the fraud but you have overstated your case.
A poster by the name kaviraj refuted many of your arguments against Piper
I quote
HS,
I provided a summary of points about Piper that I find interesting, including some of the conditions that were set in place that I regard as stringent and sufficient to rule out fraud. I hate repeating myself, but (AMONG OTHER THINGS): (1) the investigators had private detectives tail Piper, (2) Richard Hodgson dismissed those private detectives (when they informed him that Piper wasn’t getting intel from secret sources or engaging in any questionable behavior) and decided to stalk Piper to catch her himself, (3) Hodgson wouldn’t even let a sitter bring an umbrella inside on a rainy day (!), (4) the investigators often had stenographers write down every word, (5) the investigators took precautions against muscle reading and addressed that concern in detail, (6) the investigators often had *strangers* act as proxies for the actual sitters, (7) the investigators read all of Piper’s mail, (8) the investigators brought Piper to another country to test her, etc.
Under those conditions, Piper’s controls often produced highly intimate hits immediately, even in cases where stenographic records show *no* evidence of fishing, in cases where strangers sat in for the actual sitters, and in cases where the sitters were far removed from any of the investigators (in terms of personal connections).
I mentioned all of this before. I also already acknowledged that some of Piper’s controls sometimes fished for information. That was already reported in the PRIMARY literature by the ORIGINAL investigators. But there were times when they didn’t fish and also times when they would have been UNABLE to fish (such as times when strangers sat in for the actual sitters).
Then I reminded you of that fact and pointed out that you have been unwilling or unable to actually address my points via argument.
You replied to me by citing a Wikipedia entry on mediumship per se that only very briefly deals with a handful of mediums and then said that you would become a “believer spiritualist” like me if I could “refute all of this”. C’mon man… that is simply not an acceptable approach to conversation or debate.
The wiki entry you provided does NOT mention (let alone seriously engage) ANY of the points I mentioned. Not one.
wiki wrote:
In an experiment to test if Piper’s “spirit” controls were purely fictitious the psychologist G. Stanley Hall invented a niece called Bessie Beals
It’s certainly an embarrassing case and certainly OUGHT to be taken into consideration along with all of her other cases (failures and successes alike). But here are a few things I like to point out:
(1) Stanley Hall later acknowledged that there was an actual Bessie Beals, although she wasn’t his niece and he says she was still alive at that time (I’ll take his word for it). (2) Hall admitted that he had “no desire whatever to obtain ‘test messages'” (and so he ignored and failed to follow up on the Hodgson control’s attempts to communicate information about other people). (3) There were no detailed stenographic records taken and so nothing for others to investigate for themselves. (4) In the midst of the deception, The Hodgson control actually said the following: “I am interested in seeing I I I am interested in seeing how many stories you can tell in a minute. They are awfully bad. They are awful whoppers. They are awful whoppers. I never heard so many from one in a minute.” That sure sounds like the Hodgson control saying that he was aware of their BS but wanted to play along…(5) In any case, it was already known and openly acknowledge by all of the primary investigators that some of Piper’s controls were ridiculous and dishonest. But (6) none of this justifies the full dismissal all of the cases where Piper’s controls quickly produced *very* intimate hits under the fraud-resistant conditions I described earlier (and more details could have been added).
wiki wrote:
The psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote that Piper pretended to be controlled by spirits and fell into simple and logical traps from her comments
Except that Piper’s trance was tested by having needle prick her skin, ammonia placed beneath her nostrils, having a flame make contact with her skin, by having spoonfuls of perfume and laundry detergent shoved into her mouth, and by having her pupil responses and respiration measured. Her trance was genuine. She wasn’t (consciously) faking *anything*, even if the controls were secondary personalities.
wiki wrote:
Researchers who studied the mediumship of Piper came to the conclusion she was a cold reader
At best, this is a very irresponsible claim. At worst, it was intentionally misleading. Most of the primary researchers came to the opposite conclusion because of the specific points I summarized earlier.
wiki wrote:
and would “fish” for information
Except in cases where STRANGERS sat in the actual sitters, cases where stenographic records fail to show evidence of fishing taking place, etc.
wiki wrote:
The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett who examined Piper’s mediumship in detail wrote it could be explained by “muscle-reading, fishing, guessing, hints obtained in the sitting, knowledge surreptitiously obtained, knowledge acquired in the interval between sittings and lastly, facts already within Mrs. Piper’s knowledge.”
I already addressed that. No thanks don’t email I don’t you spamming me next thankyou.
The source of that conversation is here http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife?page=1
Hoss
Keep saying that quantum mechanics don’t shown that materialism is probably false that isn’t going to change the fact that its false.
leo,
Please explain in your own words how quantum mechanics shows that materialism is false.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. I would ask you to define what you think the words you used in that sentence mean, but that would go nowhere.
rjbullocks,
“Spiritual paths and scientific paths both reveal different truths for different purposes”
Bullocks.
Show me just one “truth” arrived at via the spiritual path.
Show me just one contribution one such “truth” has made to the world.
“Both produce results! ”
What results does the spiritual path produce?
“Please explain in your own words how quantum mechanics shows that materialism is false.”
If he reads aloud the text from the link he’s going paste, will this count as his own words?
What am I talking about, he doesn’t read these links before pasting!
steve12, 10 internets says it’s going to be a (rolls dice)… a wordpress link.
@the devil’s gummy bear
Your one funny person.
@Ekko
Paul Davies and John Gribbin do a good job of showing how quantum physics undermines materialism.
It reveals matter itself has far less substance than what we might believe it to be- Paul Davies. Another scientist in that wiki entry is Max Planck. I would strongly advise you study the physics of today not of decades and decades gone by.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
Leo, I have read this very article on materialism on wikipedia in order to try to understand where you’re getting your definitions from. I see I was pretty spot on… However, which section of this article are you basing your definition of materialism on? How are you defining “materialist” or “materialist view”?
IN YOUR OWN WORDS, DEFINE MATERIALISM!!!
leo: Materialsim is the idea that everything is made up of matter/energy. There is nothing in quantum mechanics that contradicts this. Also,to head off any of Hardnose’s objections, information is a type(my wording might be a little off here) of matter/energy and not some other thing.
Science assumes methodological naturalism – not methodological materialism.
I believe in philosophical naturalism, which is much larger in scope than materialism.
I have a feeling you’re about to play more semantic games. I would prefer to argue for naturalism rather than materialism. Do you think quantum mechanics contradicts naturalism?
“Sorry, it is not my fault that you have tenuous comprehension”
“We’re hearing this ad nauseum these days.”
Let us analyze this. I said here the behavior of particles as demonstrated in quantum physics make no sense and yet we do not reject it because it is observable. I then said the same applies to consciousness surviving the death. Even though unexplainable, it must be accepted because it is observable. So the commonality is observation. One genius commenter mocked my argument thinking that the commonality I am suggesting is the inexplicability of the two phenomena. Is that commentator stupid? I doubt it. So why he prefers to engage is straw man and ridicule fallacies instead of refuting my argument rationally? This behavior is peculiar to believers. So don’t call yourselves skeptics when you act like believers.
I said it before that any discussion on this subject is intellectual masturbation. It is like trying to argue whether Big Foot is real or not through logic. This argument can settled only through evidence. For thousands of years the evidence was scant and hearsay. In the last 4 decades such evidences have been accumulating and now number hundreds of thousands. All is left to do is look at the body of the evidence. But obviously the believers in materialism have not use for evidence. They have already figured out everything, so why waste precious time digging for evidence. It is must more pleasant to intellectualize.
“Some of you say it’s completely understandable, some of you equate it’s strangeness with proof that whatever you want to believe in exists.”
The two positions are not mutually exclusive. The phenomenon is unexplainable through Newtonian physics, the physics that is intuitive to us. But it can be perfectly understood and explained through quantum physics. All you need is a shift in paradigm. Think of countless visual illusions. See this for example. Is this a cat or a rat? http://knowledgeoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/scary-optical-illusion-29.gif Survival of consciousness makes no sense if you wear materialistic glasses. Materialism filters anything that does not interact with matter directly and hence cannot be detected. At one point, even the materialists have to bow to evidence. The best example is the dark matter that I mentioned before. Why do we even consider such thing when dark matter is just as ethereal and undetectable as spirit? We accept the existence of dark matter because we see its effect. It is evidence that compel us to believe in something no one can see or measure. We have now plenty of compelling evidence that consciousness acts independent from the brain and survives its death. The evidence is there for any genuine skeptic. But the believers is materialism have no use for evidence. They rather intellectualize and engage in mockery than waste precious time checking out the evidence. Isn’t it true that you have figured out all the secrets of the universe and that there is nothing else to be discovered? Isn’t it a fact that our great scientific ayatollahs such as R. Dawkins and Carl Sagan are/were materialist? So why bother?
“Dr. Novella already addressed this bizarre belief – consciousness is a process.’
That is not fact but theory. Consciousness is not a process or the function of the brain. I debunked this theory in an article titled “The Faithfulness of the Skeptic.” You can search it on Google. I don’t give the link since Dr. Novella does not seem to like me giving links to my blog. Again I backed my argument with evidence.
“Philosophy is not science,”
Isn’t this exactly what you people do all the time? Isn’t the above article philosophy in the garb of science? Science is supported by evidence. This article ignores the mountain of evidence altogether and engages in nothing but philosophy. Providing rational arguments that are not based on evidence is straw man fallacy. Yes you make perfect sense but since your premises are wrong, you are wrong. It is like saying since 2+3= 8 then 2+4=9. There is nothing wrong in your logic. Your error is in your premise. Your premise is wrong because you ignored the body of evidence.
As for dark mater you first mocked me (which shows you are highly smart) and then rehashed the same thing I said. As for altering the brain and thus changing its function, it is does neither prove your argument nor proves mine. You can also tinker with a radio receiver and alter its function.
“Then you have absolutely no way to prove or disprove your theory. Anecdotal NDE’s does not evidence make. Someone said it earlier on this thread – thousands of anecdotes do not make good science. Millions are just as worthless as one. Show us even a couple of strong experiments proving any of these psi phenomena you guys keep claiming exist, and lynchpinning your arguments on.”
That is denial of facts. Tell us then what constitute evidence for you? A patient is brought to hospital. She is unconscious. She is taken to the operating room and flat lines. No vial sign exist in her. She is clinically dead. She is then resuscitated and reports accurately seeing what the doctors were doing, (confirmed by the doctors). And reports accurately what her relatives in the waiting room were doing and that too is confirmed by her relatives. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EydWO5vqT80
When we have thousands of cases like this, it is only intellectual dishonesty to dismiss them all as hearsay. I am dealing with faithful believers and I nothing you say surprises me. You can’t accept the evidence because it will shatter your faith in materialism. Read my article “The faithfulness of the skeptics”
“When there are thousands of people reporting coming out of their body, looking at the medical team operating on them from above and reporting accurately what the people did and said we can’t keep denying the phenomenon”
There are much simpler explanations for these than having to reach out and create a magical phenomena from thin air, with absolutely no evidence to support it.
Okay! Please provide those “much simpler explanations.” I am all ears! If you can provide them you have be back into atheism. that would end the discussion. So since you are going to provide those simpler explanations, there is no point for me to answer the rest of your arguments (logically fallacies)
BillyJoe7, my particular spiritual path is Tibetan Buddhism. Here are the truths I’ve learned:
1) Nothing has any intrinsic reality. All identities are imputations or projections (however you want to put it). The ultimate nature of reality is far, far beyond our thoughts about what it might be. This should be obvious to us but it is not. It’s obvious to quantum physicists. But no, we don’t need scientists and especially not physicists to “prove” this is the case; we just need to look at our own direct experience, contemplate it, and we’ll see it is true if we look very, very carefully. Everything is empty of true existence. We mistake our models of reality for reality itself and end up in some pretty strange arguments because of that!
2) Naturally, there is no self. “Self” is also a conceptual fabrication, top to bottom, a convenient way to refer to a whole host of aspects that are roughly associated (body, thoughts, feelings, social position, name, etc.). If anything is a self, it would be the continuity of experience, but as that has no identity, it’s not much of a self.
3) Since identities / models / concepts, etc. are all basically imaginary, to cling to them is the most ignorant thing you could do, but it’s our intense clinging that causes us our greatest suffering.
Now, the above to you might a) seem like bullshit and if not then, b) not seem to have anything to do with spirituality. If (a), then we’re in for a long discussion. If (b), then you don’t get that “spirituality” need not evoke supernatural beliefs. The point of spirituality is to help us work through the existential dilemma’s we face, to overcome our psychological suffering and to live happy, meaningful lives. That’s it, in my opinion. All of the metaphysical claims and speculations about what we “really are” are just a lot of wasted air… It might be sometimes fun to talk about such things, but they’re really quite beside the point of a spiritual path as far as I am concerned.
AliSina,
“I said here the behavior of particles as demonstrated in quantum physics make no sense and yet we do not reject it because it is observable. I then said the same applies to consciousness surviving the death. Even though unexplainable, it must be accepted because it is observable. So the commonality is observation.”
The problem here is where you claim that consciousness surviving death is observable. It is not. The evidence for it is in no way comparable to evidence/experiments in quantum physics. The two are not on the same order of credulity in any way imaginable.
rjbullock, so… Hot air, is it? RESULTS!
Not really the same results as, say, oh… I don’t know, parking shit in geosynchronous orbits, is it?
“Yeah – but that’s still materialism. QM, M-theory, etc are all consistent with materialism. It comes down to semantics of what you consider materialism, I suppose. There are a lot of (IMO) false BS philosophy distinctions.”
Steve12,
You take a word, such as “materialism,” and then do with it whatever you like. That’s fine, but don’t expect anyone to understand what you mean by the word. I have absolutely no idea what you mean by “materialism.”
Well, actually, maybe I can guess. By “materialism” you mean that things such as ghosts, spirits, gods, angels, etc., are not real. They are hallucinations.
I think you need to find a better word to describe your belief system.
Maybe you should call yourself a “hallucinationist.” Meaning that everything anyone experiences that does not fit your preconceptions must be a hallucination.
Ha! Hardnose – materialism is a classically slippery definition in philosophy. You seem to think material means you can hold it in your hand.
So educate me hardnose. How are you defining materialism?
AliSina: You should read what I wrote, specifically, to you. Hoss on 28 May 2014 at 2:58 pm
Your methods of inquiry are garbage as they lack reliable standards.
The only thing people here(the naturalist) are denying about NDEs is your interpretation of them – that they happen outside of the body. No one here is denying that people are having these experiences. You’re presenting poorly controlled evidence as incontrovertible. I’m sorry but science does not work like that. The explanations that science provides for NDEs are much more satisfying and does not invoke unnecessary, unverifiable variables.
Oh, and Hardnose:
When you answer that “everything is made of matter”, please explain your words here a bit more:
>Materialism is wrong because it doesn’t make any sense given current scientific knowledge. We know that >“matter” is not made out of little particles of “matter,” for example.
How do we know this?
Hardnose: When answering steve12, remember e=mc^2
HardNose,
“What is a quantum denier? Steve N is one example. He states, as if it’s a proven fact that quantum “weirdness” does not exist at the macroscopic level.
I have posted a link at this blog to research showing that some birds use quantum entanglement (which Steve N would call “wierdness”) in order to navigate.
There are other biological studies showing quantum effects in plants and animals.”
Here is your problem.
Steve says that macroscopic objects don’t EXHIBIT quantum effects.
You counter by giving examples of quantum effects having CONSEQUENCES at the macroscopic level.
Do you see your problem?
The macroscopic consequences of radioactive decay are clicks on a geiger counter.
The macroscopic consequences of interference at the quantum level is an interference pattern on a photographic plates in double slit experiments.
But photographic plates themselves do not exhibit interference.
The macroscopic consequences of quantum tunnelling in the Sun is that the Earth gets warmed.
But the Earth does not exhibit quantum tunnelling.
Tennis balls do not pass through solid brick walls.
The macroscopic consequences of entanglement in electrons within certain molecules in the retina of migrating birds is that birds migrate successfully.
But birds do not exhibit quantum entanglement with other birds.
The macroscopic consequences of entanglement in the chloroplasts of plants is that plants are able to use the energy from the Sun at >90% efficiency.
But the plants do not exhibit quantum entanglement with other plants.
I am labouring this so that you will understand this and not make that mistake AGAIN!
If quantum effects did not have consequences at the macroscopic level, then they would not be detectable and physicists would not even know that they exist. So, of course, quantum effects have consequences at the macroscopic level. In fact, the entire macroscopic world is a consequence of quantum interference, entanglement or tunnelling. But the fact is that macroscopic objects do not themselves exhibit quantum interference, entanglement or tunnelling.
(Theoretically, a tennis ball could pass through a solid brick wall but the universe would have to continue for another trillion trillion trillion times as long as it has already existed in order for there to be a trillion trillion trillion to one chance of that happening – my figures may be off here but, hey, it aint gonna happen!)
Here is an interesting article I thought relevant to the current discussion.
“Is materialism “known to be false”?”
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/12/is-materialism-known-to-be-false.html
On a side note, I greatly respect many of the commenters here and of course Dr Novella. The insight and entertainment is very much appreciated.
AliSina,
But still not ONE verified case where the code placed on top of the cupboard was successfully read.
Why is that?
After so many thousands of cases, why is that ONE piece of incontrovertible proof missing?
@ # Steven Novella
“There are plenty of good reasons to doubt that the reports are accurate and true. It’s called psychology. There are countless psychological experiments demonstrating in various ways, and unequivocally, that we cannot trust our memories of our perceptions.”
This argument would have had some validity if the reports of the NDErs were solely confined to them. Many of these report are confirmed by their doctors while there was no possibility for them to see from their bed, even if they were fully awake. You must explain how one in coma gains psychic ability that they can see things happening in other places and their reports are confirmed.
I am not going to be impressed with your explanation of how a person with comatose brain can hear and see. It is not rational, but I even accept this fallacious argument if you can explain the telepathic and psychic phenomenon. In the article “Why I Believe in God and the Afterlife Now” I posted a dozen of such cases. There are hundreds of them on youtube.
“It is NOT because skeptics are closed minded or have already made up their minds”
I have no argument against this statement. My argument is that many who love to call themselves skeptics are hardcore believers. When you deny evidence and dismiss a mountain of proof as hearsay, you are a believer.
You dismiss all the testimonies of doctors and the relatives of patients who corroborated the stories of the patients and say they were not done under controlled observing conditions. What constitute controlled observing conditions? Does placing a picture in a high place satisfy your criterion? Why should it? You still have to rely on the testimony of the doctors or experimenters. As far as your reasoning goes it is still hearsay. Please explain in what way it differs from the testimony of doctors and nurses that we have now?
Raymond Moody has compiled the testimony of over 300 relatives of dying people who although in good health themselves claim to have shared the NDE of their dying relative. That to you is still hear say. I am dealing with believers on daily basis. I know their mindset. You are a believer my dear doctor. I am a skeptic. I left Islam when I saw the evidence, even though it went against everything I held sacred and dear some 18 years ago and less than a year ago I again changed my core belief from atheism to spiritualism, when I see the facts. Denial is stupid. I am committed to truth not to an ideology. I have proven I can change my mind when facts are shown to me. How many times have you changed your mind? You were born with truth. You are above searching for it. Truth bubbles from inside you, so why search it anywhere else.
Well I was not born with truth inside me. Not as lucky as you I suppose. So as a self-professed ignorant I know the only way for me to become wise (like you) is by being humble and question my beliefs and convictions every day. I pray never arriving at the conviction that you and other faithful believers have arrived.
AliSina, it appears you are not going to “impressed” by what we mean by controls, blinded studies, or quality evidence.
It appears you are not going to “impressed” by psychological explanations for supposed phenomena, or belief therein, or explanations that are mundane or common (not necessitating flights of fancy).
You seem to be “impressed” by anecdotes.
@Steve 12
“How are you defining materialism?”
I don’t think there is a consensus on the definition of materialism. However, since the meanings of word are conventional, for me matter anything bigger than atom. There is not the universally agreed upon definition. It is just my definition
Subatomic particles are forms of energy. Yes energy and matter are convertible, just as water and ice are convertible, but they are not the same.
Consciousness is also a form of energy. It is just as real as matter, but with a different vibration.
Everything is energy. Or perhaps a better way to say it is, everything is consciousness. Even matter is consciousness. To put it in a simpler way, everything is thought. Maybe the old Hindu sages had it right when they said, the universe is the dream of Brahma.
AliSina- What you consider evidence and mountains of proof are still firmly in the realm of ancedote.
How many times have we heard from the persons who once visited a so called psychic,that “They knew things about me that there IS NO WAY for them to know!”
But sadly,we DO know how psychics can ferret out such information,through cold reading, hot reading,guessing combined with the motivated sitter unconsciously colluding with the psychic by forgetting the misses and only remembering the hits.
And as time passes,the story (just like a ‘big fish’ story) gets more eerie and uncanny than it actually was. People’s memory of such things are really,really terrible and fallible to confabulation and exaggeration.
All of this is the exact reason why no one in their right mind (rational) would accept such unusual stories as fact,solely on the testimony of observers.We are (all of us) really shit when it comes to observation,and especially so when it feeds in to our expectations,wishes,and cultural biases.
That is why the scientific method was developed.It is not perfect,but out of the whole range of cognitive tools that we have for interrogating reality,it is the one that has again and again got the job done,where other methods have fallen flat for centuries.
@ the devils gummy bearon
“It appears you are not going to “impressed” by psychological explanations for supposed phenomena, or belief therein, or explanations that are mundane or common (not necessitating flights of fancy).”
Sure I will be. Please impress me. Explain how patients in coma gain psychic and telepathic ability to see things in other rooms and I will be immensely impressed.
Explain under what psychological conditions doctors share their patients’ psychosis when the patients are in coma and incommunicado from the world and I will be very impressed.
What does not impress me is to deny the millions of evidences and pooh-pooh the testimony of those around the patients as shared hallucination. That I find dishonest and disingenuous.
I agree with Alisina that the evidence for near death experiences is very good. How do you explain people with very little brain activity having these experiences?. Even neurologically speaking these experiences should be impossible if the mind really produced by the brain. Plus, skeptics say that there can still be some deep level of brain activity that could account for these experiences well I don’t think lower cortical processes can take over higher cortical processes. As its usually assumed that the cerebral cortex of the brain is the crucial area for consciousness itself.
Hoss
From the blog post you linked too. It is a non-starter to say that reality becomes stable only through the presence of an observer. What was the universe doing before we came along?
As Andrei Linde puts it nicely you can’t cut me out of the observations and my observations is my consciousness so its kinda weird isn’t it because it assumes that consciousness may have some independent importance. Lawrence Kuhn asks Andrei Linde a question the same one posed above. So sentinent creature have been around for lets say 100,000 years or 10 million years pick your number but the universe seems to have to been around a lot longer than that. Andrei Linde then says that true it seems that way as if it were around that long and this brings me too a quantum interpretation of Copenhagen that everything comes to existence by the time it is observed you reduce the wave function of the universe into a certain state after you observe the universe. Before you make an observation there is no such thing as a real existence of anything there but once you make an observation everything looks as if it existed all the time before it happens.
Hoss
Quantum physics says that matter isn’t primary anymore that energy is now. But, my point is that consciousness fits perfectly into quantum mechanics and many physicists know this. I find naturalism a dead end when it comes to consciousness and other phenomenon that I think are indeed real like some mediums, near death experiences, out of body experiences, apparitions and so on.
Leo: Holy crap….
I don’t have time to deal with you, but you’re wrong about the science.
I am unaware of any verifiable evidence that demonstrates psychic or telepathic abilities. Will you provide me with this evidence, cited appropriately? This will surely be impressive, will it not?
Doctors share patients’ psychosis when they are in a coma? I’m afraid I don’t follow (and I don’t want to presume)
I don’t understand what “millions of evidences” means. As for pooh-poohing the testimony of… I think I understand what you’re getting at, but it would appear you are not open explanations that are not inline with what you believe in. If I am to take your statement at face value, you are saying that explanations that you don’t agree with… are dishonest and disingenuous?
Sorry AliSina, I made a markup mistake and pasted the same quote twice. It should be obvious what I meant anywho…
There’s no way to reconcile this guys, isn’t that obvious? Different models, different purposes.
From a certain perspective you can say the brain produces consciousness… from the perspective of a neuroscience major *perhaps* (and not even definitely)…
But from the perspective of a laymen, we use “folk models” for describing the ways we experience reality. That’s our primary concern: *how we experience reality*… not what is “real” or “true” or “scientifically valid” but what makes a difference in the quality of our lives. Utility, in other words.
For example…
While I am in no way a theist, I find great utility in the use of symbolic beings to represent various states of mind… So, for example, when you are in a very kind, compassionate state of mind you call that “Chenrezig” (a sound symbol) and perhaps give it a visual symbol as well… something that looks like a human or a mythical creature, or a simple geometric design, etc. Then, when you wish to enter that state of mind, you call that symbol to mind, you “supplicate it” (that is, generate the desire to enter the target state of mind) and you’re either their or not.
That’s a spiritual practice but it makes perfect sense, does it not? It’s an incredibly powerful way to work with our own minds. Now, if you were to say, “But that’s just symbolic! True believers take the symbols literally!”, I would agree, that is a mistake. But why do the fundamentalists / literalists get to lay claim to spiritual traditions and teachings they don’t even understand?!
@steve12
“I love the fact that hardnose doesn’t believe in supernatural, but doesn’t believe in materialism. WTF does that mean”
Hard nose definitely believes in the supernatural, he’s defended it on this blog on the past. Don’t let him fool you.
@leo
“In fact your wrong”
You idiots have yet to prove a single concept you’ve defended and yet you keep making this absolute statement. You’ve shown less than a basic understanding of science, the scientific method, physics or evidence and somehow keep making this statement.
How about you try this Leo, next time you want to accuse someone of being ‘in fact’ wrong, you then follow that with some evidence for your statement?
rjbullock, no offense, but what you are describing as “incredibly powerful” spiritual practices, I call naval gazing.
*”Navel gazing”
Not to be confused with leering at hot sailors.
@leo
. “I am not an expert in physics or another other fields but I do have some knowledge about it.”
And yet some knowledge allows you to state absolutely that people who disagree with you are ‘in fact’ wrong. Dunning, this is Kruger, I have another subject for our study
Neither do on have the time time to deal with you either Hoss. I have evidence why not look at my blog instead of me having to repeat the sources.
http://paranormalandlifeafterdeath.blogspot.ca/
There it is. There’s the money shot. Blog to flog.
@ the devils gummy bear
>>I am unaware of any verifiable evidence that demonstrates psychic or telepathic abilities. Will you provide me with this evidence, cited appropriately? This will surely be impressive, will it not?<>Doctors share patients’ psychosis when they are in a coma? I’m afraid I don’t follow (and I don’t want to presume)<>“it would appear you are not open explanations that are not in line with what you believe in.<<
I could say that same about you. This is not true in my case. I have provided my evidence and you can find plenty of them if you search NDE on Youtube. Ignore the ones that are not confirmed by someone other than the patient. Just pay attention to the ones attested by others. If you spend time watching many of them, you eventually agree that something is going on and it is no longer honest to dismiss all these testimonies as hearsay.
@midnight
“I already addressed that. No thanks don’t email I don’t want you’re rationality and science intruding on my woo”
There, I fixed Leo’s response to you
@ the devils gummy bear
Sorry for the double posting but the first one was not published correctly I supposed the signs I entered were interpreted as html code.
“I am unaware of any verifiable evidence that demonstrates psychic or telepathic abilities. Will you provide me with this evidence, cited appropriately? This will surely be impressive, will it not?”
In the article Why I Believe in God and Afterlife Now I posted a dozen of such examples. You can find it with Google. I am a guest here and have to follow the orders of the host. He is not happy with me posting links to my articles on his blog.
“Doctors share patients’ psychosis when they are in a coma? I’m afraid I don’t follow (and I don’t want to presume)”
The examples I posted in the above mentioned article all are endorsed by people other than the patients, which exclude the claim that their experiences were subjective and hallucinatory. For example, a patient dies. His doctors, end the operation and leave him to be taken to the morgue. A couple of them then discuss among each other in the corridor about what they could or should have done. There was no way for the patient to see them or hear their conversation from the bed he was lying on, even if he was fully awake. (He was dead.) Then the patient comes back to life, on his own and reports exactly what the two doctors were discussing and where they were standing. He even says who had his arms crossed and was leaning against the wall. If anyone can explain what psychological phenomenon can make two doctors and their resuscitated patient share a hallucination of this kind I will be very impressed. Forget about me. You will be making a name for yourself in science and will certainly win the Nobel Prize.
The believers in materialism will go to any absurd explanation to deny that such experiences are real. Sorry I am not a believer. I have no faith to defend, no ideology to fight for. I accept the truth when sufficient proof is provided. What I have seen in NDE is more than enough proof. Those who deny them have not seen them. They have not seen them because they feel no need to. Why waste time when they already know the truth?
“it would appear you are not open explanations that are not in line with what you believe in.”
I could say that same about you. This is not true in my case. I have provided my evidence and you can find plenty of them if you search NDE on Youtube. Ignore the ones that are not confirmed by someone other than the patient. Just pay attention to the ones attested by others. If you spend time watching many of them, you eventually agree that something is going on and it is no longer honest to dismiss all these testimonies as hearsay.
@alsina
“That is not fact but theory”
Supported by tons of evidence, repeatable. This is something you guys keep missing the point of. You want to put strictly anecdotal evidence up against hard, experimentally verifiable evidence.
“Isn’t this exactly what you people do all the time? ”
Uh no, we support or claims with actual dyed in the wool scientific evidence. You guys dint seem to comprehend the difference. That’s why the continuous statements about us not understanding you come ase extremely ironic. You need to grasp the basics before you can start pointing fingers
“The Faithfulness of the Skeptic.”
Alsina, you can’t debunk something if you dint even understand the fundamental basics you are arguing with our against. With each ridiculous claim your hole gets that much deeper.
@rbullock
“It’s obvious to quantum physicists”.
Fantastic, another one to add to the flock. You haven’t done much reading around these parts have you. The minute you invoke quantum physics as an excuse to believe what you want to believe because it’s ‘wierd’ you’ve already defeated yourself, no effort on our part needed
If there’s one lesson you true believers should walk away with, it’s that just because quantum physics is wierd, it in NO WAY supports any type of bizarre magical thinking you want to defend. The minute you make this mistake you lose all credibility.
I apologize for the string of posts guys. I go to bed and wake up 7 hrs later to find the special needs kids still pushing against the door that says pull
@AlSina
“So as a self-professed ignorant I know the only way for me to become wise (like you) is by being humble and question my beliefs and convictions every day”
I’m not buying your BS. This is yet another tactic by you woo believers, a claim of humbleness in the face of skeptical hubris. Except where you guys accuse us of being absolutely wrong, incapable of understanding your arguments or your ‘evidence ‘. Please read up on Dunning/Kruger to find the source of your mistakes.
@AlSina
“Explain how patients in coma gain psychic and telepathic ability to see things in other rooms and I will be immensely impressed.”
Evidence please.
I was seriously hoping that Alien Hand Syndrome link was going straight to a picture of Dr Strangelove saluting
@rjbullok
“There’s no way to reconcile this guys, isn’t that obvious? Different models, different purposes”
This is wishful, magical thinking at its worst. All things are subjective dudes. .. It’s all good, interpret and believe in whatever makes you comfortable. ..
Okay.
I have to search YouTube for your evidence?
So… Ignore some, but not others? I don’t understand the criteria.
If I spend time, let’s say a lot of time, watching videos, many of them, but if I don’t come to the conclusion that “something” is going on, are you telling me I would have to be dishonest by that point? What if there are other explanations that are plausible? Is any explanation not inline with what you believe going to be a form of “dismissing testimonies as hearsay”?
I have to do a web search to find your “examples”? What are your examples?
Steve isn’t allowing you to share links? I wouldn’t know anything about that.
I don’t understand the purpose of this story. Is this an anecdote you heard?
I don’t think you will be “impressed” by anything. I think it is you, who will be making a name for yourself, winning a Nobel (or whatever), but I don’t think you are going to get anywhere with stories.
Sure.
@AlSina
“This is not true in my case. I have provided my evidence and you can find plenty of them if you search NDE on Youtube”
I have a challenge for you AlSina, can you define anecdotal evidence and can you explain to us why anecdotal evidence is problematic. Don’t cut and paste, just answer the question
@pious fraud
Lol, I keep getting flashes of idle hands…
Whether Dr.Novella cares about blog posts or not, if you came here to discuss there’s no reason you can’t post your arguments here. I don’t click on blog links about 99% of the time because it’s just fishing for hits.
Sure.
You’re not a believer. Believers go to absurd… Denial… Yada yada yada. You have no faith to defend. No ideology to fight for. You accept the truth… Adequate proof… Provided… Deniers… Why waste time… Got it.
Totally.
Godspeed with all of that.
Gummy Bear out.
“This is wishful, magical thinking at its worst. All things are subjective dudes. .. It’s all good, interpret and believe in whatever makes you comfortable. ..”
No, that’s not what I said. I did NOT say that “all things are subjective”… I said that SOME things are subjective and we have ways of working with THOSE things and it’s called, among other things, “spirituality”… You apparently believe that the scientific mode of working with reality is the ONLY means of working with reality. I say that’s a pretty narrow approach.
Guess what? Subjective reality is a reality!
Another one of you Adherents of Scientism dismissed my religious practice as “navel gazing”… Ah, sure, right. Because there’s nothing else to see here, learn here or realize here except the terms, methods and conclusions of The Scientists.
Grabula
Stop misrepresenting my response to Midnight he is an obvious troll and has an axe to grind. He is also a spammer and liar as well. He leaves too when at the end of the daily grail discussion when someone called his out on his arguments and debunked them.
@rjbullock
“I said that SOME things are subjective and we have ways of working with THOSE things and it’s called, among other things, “spirituality”… ”
This is nonsensical. What you’re trying to say is since we don’t understand everything, therefore magic!
Science is a methodology, a way of finding answers and it’s the absolutely the best process we have currently. Just because it doesn’t support what you want to believe doesn’t make it anything more or less.
Anything goes pomo land. WHEEEEEEE!!!
Now now, no need to get cranky. No one cares what you believe in. You’re welcome to it. And you’re also full of it. Who cares?
@leo
“Stop misrepresenting my response….”
I don’t care what your beef to grind with midnight is. It appears he’s called some true believers out and they don’t like it. What’s more telling to me is that you’re so busy cut and pasting some argument someone else has with him, and not busy enough trying to understand where you reason has gone. I highly recommend you start with the last article Hoss posted. Massimo dies a good job of breaking down the problems you guys are having with reconciling your deep misunderstanding of physics and consciousness.
@midnight
A full rebuttal of arguments against DD Home mediumship can be found here. http://bensteigmann.blogspot.ca/2014_02_01_archive.html
You kill me leo…
“http://bensteigmann.blogspot.ca/2014_02_01_archive.html”
He builds ridiculous strawmen such as our ‘fear’ that an acknowledgement of psi or the soul would somehow bring us back to the dark age. What people like you and him don’t understand is that most of us are behind the advancement of knowledge and our understanding of the universe. I would LOVE to find out there is life after death, the problem is, I won’t follow that desire credulously. Psychic powers, pretty sweet if they were real. Being visited by aliens from another world, my dream come true. However where skeptics part with true believers is the scientific method, not fear.
The second thing I find ridiculous about this article is all his ‘heroes’ he admits aren’t lauded, and ate typically regarded as charlatans and frauds within the scientific community. Of course he sees a conspiracy to keep the truth down but we know better than that don’t we Leo. If these guys were providing good, hard evidence they wouldn’t be viewed as crackpots would they?
Are you so sure about that?. The psychology is pretty simple here you guys don’t care one ounce about scientific evidence. It would bring us back to the dark age the costs are too high are on your side of the fence. I don’t believe in conspiracies at all because there is no good evidence for any conspiracy theory that I have heard of. But I do think that materialists like to slow the progression of science down. Sure has materialism succeeded greatly before it sure has it gave us all this technology we have today. But when it runs into a brick wall when it comes to evidence it can’t erase such as life after death evidence, consciousness, psi phenomenon evidence as well as quantum physics.
“Steve says that macroscopic objects don’t EXHIBIT quantum effects.
You counter by giving examples of quantum effects having CONSEQUENCES at the macroscopic level.
Do you see your problem?”
No BillyJoe7 I don’t see the problem. If birds can use quantum entanglement, then we know quantum effects can be perceived by at least some animals. This makes all kinds of “weirdness,” including ESP, possible.
Materialists love to say this is all woo and nonsense. But as more evidence is collected, it will get harder for them to ignore. Of course, then they will say that the researchers cheated, or are complete idiots who don’t understand anything about science. EVEN IF the research is published in the Physical Review.
I have an honest set of questions for those of you that think: “if some subset of people believe it [OBE, NDE, Bigfoot, spirits, etc.] then some of them MUST be correct, therefore it must be true.”
Am I correctly representing your thinking with the following?: There are thousands of reported sightings/experiences of [OBE, NDE, Bigfoot, spirits, etc], so if only a measely 1% is correct, then there are almost certainly *dozens* of true reports of these things, and it’s not possible all of them are lying/hallucinating/confused/on-drugs/etc. Ergo, some are true, this is good proof.”
This is a pretty convincing argument, except for the fact that you have the math totally and 100% ass-backwards. I’ll explain with an easy to follow demonstration:
Some people, some of the time, misperceive and misunderstand what they experience, they sometimes lie, sometimes are on drugs, sometimes (most likely I believe) they are honestly confused. I think (hope) we can agree this is undeniably and absolutely true.
There are 7 billion people on planet earth. Let’s say each of us, once per week, has some experience that results in some type of misperception, it could be minor (I thought I put my keys over here!), it could be major (OMG I just saw a flying monkey!), but let’s assume on average one occurs once per person per week. Any type of notable misperception will do.
Misperceptions = 7 billion/week. In a given year that’s 364 billion opportunities for some misperception of the external environment to occur, for whatever reason. Out of all the possible misperceptions that might occur, maybe only a tiny tiny tiny fraction (let’s say .00000001%) involve the misperceived feelings of OBE, NDE, or seeing Bigfoot in some nearby shrubbery. This math predicts that roughly 3,640 reports of OBE, NDE, or Bigfoot should occur each year, due ONLY to misperceptions that we all agree can occur at anytime to any of us.
The important point to notice here is that there are MORE than enough possibilities of misperceptions to account for ALL REPORTED sightings of Bigfoot or OBE or NDE experiences reported each year across the world (and this is excluding possiblities of outright lying or drug use, which demonstrably occurs at a high rate). It really is simple math here, you just need to work in the proper direction without ASSUMING beforehand that some of these experiences must absolutely definitely undeniably have to be true, because the math speaks for itself.
@leo, you’ve shown that what you think and the reality are not the same thing. When presented with actual evidence you do nothing but deny. You simultaneously claim weer know nothing and aren’t interested in evidence then proclaim your own ignorance and deny evidence presented to you.
I don’t believe ANYTHING that advances or knowledge of the world will inherently set us back. In fact is probably true that many skeptics started out wanting to believe but when the evidence collapsed faced the reality instead of running screaming from it and into the arms of the irrational. As a child I read every book on ufo and aliens I could. I soaked up comic books like any other young boy would. I didn’t one day decide not only does all of that stuff suck but now I have to fight ruthlessly against it no matter what. I came slowly, kicking and screaming, to the realization that that isn’t the world we live in. I decided that is only rational to follow the evidence.
This is one of the biggest strawmen true believers construct about us to defend their intellectual dishonesty. Instead of accepting the evidence plainly in front of them they’re still in that kicking and screaming phase and they won’t let go.
So far any brick wall science had run into has been moved past in favor of a path to more knowledge.
Not only would I like to see any of this stuff confirmed by actual evidence, the little kid inside of me still gets excited to see reports of ufo or Bigfoot or psychic powers. The problem is time and time again that little kid still gets let down.
I’ve Tim Minchin’s Storm (NSFW) on my mind, after the latest leo/hardnose/rjbullock (yes, rjbullock too) barrage.
I want there to be evidence for something incredible. That would be something. That would be AWESOME! That would be so fucking massively cool.
What do we get instead of evidence? Limp debunked-to-fuck links and links and links… and links… that go on and on and on into tunnels of dim dinky dumbness forever and ever, and advocates so steeped in credulity that they can’t even see the end of their noses through the dank of their thinking.
A related question regarding OBE’s after resuscitation from “death.” Out of the total number of people that are “dead” but then resuscitated, how many report OBE’s? My guess would be a small percentage or even a tiny one. But if the soul is real and explains consciousness (plus some quantum mechanics thrown in), and this survives after death, and lives deep inside all of us…why only the small percentage of people that this actually occurs to? Why not a majority, or even all resuscitation patients? Seriously, why the huge disconnect. Please think about why this occurs so very rarely.
A random but perhaps related quote by Jack Handey: “If God lives inside all of us, like some people say, I hope he likes burritos because that’s what he’s getting!”
Grabula, why do you have to be so rude and condescending? Does it fill an emotional need of some sort? I’m sure it’s VERY rational, whatever it is.
HardNose,
Nope, it seems you don’t see the problem…
“No BillyJoe7 I don’t see the problem. If birds can use quantum entanglement, then we know quantum effects can be perceived by at least some animals. This makes all kinds of “weirdness,” including ESP, possible”
In that short paragraph you have made no less than three errors.
Firstly, the idea that birds use quantum entanglement for navigation is, at present, pure speculation: It was observed that a magnetic field one thousandth the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field could put a migratory bird off course. They only way they could think of that that could happen is if there is a quantum explanation for the phenomenon. They then hypothesised about what a quantum explanation would look like, and they came up with a possible mechanism involving quantum entanglement.
But none of this has been verified. After three years it remains as pure speculation.
Although I agree that this is a plausible explanation, it is telling that you have latched onto this possible, maybe, as yet un-evidenced, preliminary idea as if it’s been set in stone.
Secondly, how these birds “perceive quantum entanglement” is essentially no different from how physicists “perceive quantum interference”. The hypothesis is that migratory birds have a map of the Earth’s magnetic field superimposed on their retinas, and hence their vision. This is no different from the interference pattern that appears on the physicists’ screen in the double slit experiment.
Also, anyone can perceive radioactive decay (listen to a Geiger counter!) or quantum tunnelling (stand out on the sun).
Thirdly, just because quantum effects are weird doesn’t allow you to pull in any sort of weirdness you like. No matter how weird quantum effects are, they are real with incontrovertible evidence to back them up. That quantum effects are real and weird lends no credence at all to any other type of weirdness being possible. Quantum physics has done the hard yards of evidence. ESP has been driven out of the yard by the lack of evidence.
AliSina,
Okay,
You have got thousands of anecdotes.
But, you have not got one piece of hard evidence.
You have got the anecdotal basis for an hypothesis.
But, you have not got the evidential basis for a theory.
May I suggest the following:
(Seeing that you have been unable to come up with that ONE case I asked for)
Instead of collecting more fairly useless anecdotes, use your valuable time to collect some hard evidence. Set up an experiment where codes are placed on top of cupboards in a resuscitation wards around the country. Then wait for someone experiencing an OBE to crack the code.
Done.
No more arguing.
But you have to be willing to put your belief in the afterlife on the line – are you up to it?
@rjbullock
“Grabula, why do you have to be so rude and condescending? Does it fill an emotional need of some sort? I’m sure it’s VERY rational, whatever it is”
I’m calling your BS. I’m not as patient as the rest of these guys for the silliness some if you bring to these conversations. You have no interest in an intellectually honest conversation, you’re just here to spot off your crappy philosophy you have mistaken for science. We’ve been dealing with just your brand of bs so much in this thread I could have your argument for you. As the rest of them you’ll come here, spout the vacuous crap you have, refuse to acknowledge any kind of evidence we provide you refuting your claims. You’ll mistake your huge gaps in understanding as proof for your claims. You’ll condescend and say we don’t understand your arguments, then you’ll turn around and try to paint yourself as just a humble question asker who’s keeping an open mind while us evil close minded skeptics continue to not understand poor rjbullock.
It’s tiresome, and I’ve lost all of my patience. Some if these guys feel honest discourse is going to get them sonewhere with you but the problem is you’re not here asking honest questions, you’re here to test you’re personal theories with non believers but you’ll get frustrated because we won’t buy your unintelligible and unsupportable stance. If we’re really ‘lucky’ you’ll start posting links to your blog so you can atleast score some hits there before you go.
It’s extremely rare to gety someone in here who starts talking about woo based garbage who is honestly keeping an open mind. 99% of you tiresomely repeat the same crap making the same bad arguments. YOU within two posts jumped straight to quantum physics to support your crap, classic mistake.
Maybe you’re getting the picture? Close minded commitment to useless misunderstandings of science do not a conversation make.
@ the devils gummy bear
“I have to search YouTube for your evidence?”
All you have to do is type NDE in Youtube and you’ll find hundreds of videos.
“So… Ignore some, but not others? I don’t understand the criteria.”
Since you will dismiss the testimonies of people with NDE with no other person corroborating them as hallucination, I said you can ignore them. But if you want to believe them you may do so and it will make my job easier.
“If I spend time, let’s say a lot of time, watching videos, many of them, but if I don’t come to the conclusion that “something” is going on, are you telling me I would have to be dishonest by that point? What if there are other explanations that are plausible? Is any explanation not in line with what you believe going to be a form of “dismissing testimonies as hearsay”?”
If you have any explanation I would be glad to hear them. So far the only explanation I heard is that these stories are hallucination. That is not a correct answer. A dead person cannot hallucinate what is going on in the other room and be right about it.
“I have to do a web search to find your “examples”? What are your examples?”
I am afraid you have to search my article as I was specifically told by the owner of this blog not to post links to my blog. Just type the title I gave you and it will be the first article on Google search.
“Steve isn’t allowing you to share links? I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
I was told not to do it. You can read it yourself
“I don’t understand the purpose of this story. Is this an anecdote you heard?”
It is one of the cases I posted on my blog. But you can watch it on Youtube. Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08
‘I don’t think you will be “impressed” by anything.” This is projection. You are projecting your own trait on me. I am always open to hear new ideas and willing to change my views. Done it at least twice! I was a Muslim and then an atheist and now a spiritualist. You can still read my atheistic articles on my blog. Haven’t changed them.
@ BillyJoe 7
“Instead of collecting more fairly useless anecdotes, use your valuable time to collect some hard evidence. Set up an experiment where codes are placed on top of cupboards in a resuscitation wards around the country. Then wait for someone experiencing an OBE to crack the code.”
And in what ways the above is different from the cases I provided in my article? It is my understanding that such test is being conducted. It is only a matter of time to get result.
No one knows why only a fraction of people who flat line have OBE. That is of yet a mystery. But I suppose if one person has a soul everyone must have it.
BJ: “Set up an experiment where codes are placed on top of cupboards in a resuscitation wards around the country. Then wait for someone experiencing an OBE to crack the code.”
AS: “And in what ways the above is different from the cases I provided in my article?”
You really don’t know do you?
You really don’t know the difference between anecdotes and hard evidence.
“It is my understanding that such test is being conducted. It is only a matter of time to get result”
But what do you care?
You don’t even think that hard evidence is necessary.
All you need are your anecdotes.
Hey AliSina, I’m more than willing to return to a discussion, but I would prefer a more thoughtful one, as I’m sure you would too. I gave you a little bit of my time, please tell me if this acceptable- give my five minutes of your time… Here’s a starting point, regarding anecdotes and testimonials and so forth, brought to you by the SGU 5X5 (our distinguished and lovely all around host’s companion podcast): http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/5×5/112
It will only take five minutes of your time.
Also, tell me if you’re not even going to bother, just as a courtesy, if you wouldn’t mind (I don’t want to spend any more time on anything if you’re not going to spend any time either).
And if you’re really up to talking about this stuff, like for realz… Here’s Steve et al discussing NDEs and OBEs: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/5×5/68 (c’mon, you know you have 5 more minutes, I mean, all of the questions you’ve asked me, the things you’d say you’d be “impressed” by, are gone over right there).
If you’re really serious about this stuff, AliSina, let’s start here. Or not. That’s fine to.
Oh…
I’m pretty sure a dead person means they’re dead. Died. Gone to meet his maker… Pining for the fjords. Passed on. Ex-parrot. Etc.
What I mean, AliSina, is that if you a person is “dead”, you are of course referring to brain death? You know there’s no coming back from that, right? There’s no story time after brain death.
Not to get ahead of myself here, I want to know if you’re going to bother listening to those 5X5s. This comment you made caught my eye for some reason. I’ll get to the rest of your comment after I find your site/blog.
@ the devils gummy bear
I listened to the audio on anecdotal evidence. I have no problem with that definition. I told you to watch the videos about NDE and ignore the ones that are not corroborated by someone other than the patient. You wondered why. It is because those testimonies are anecdotal. Someone can report he went to heaven and met God and his grandparents. We have no way to confirm that his experience was real.
However, if this person also sees an aunt of his in heaven of whom he had no knowledge because she had died before he was born and no one had told him about her, then he is coming back with information that he could not have known. Then you can no longer dismiss his experience as anecdotal. If you dismiss that experience then you have to explain how he came to know of his aunt? There are several cases like that. One child died and when he was resucitated he said he met his sister. No one had told him about his dead sister. Another two years old child has memories of being a pilot in the Second World War and his airplane being shut by the Japanese. His agnostic father finally decides to investigate and finds out that a pilot as described by his son actually had been killed during a bombing mission on Japan. The boy also remembered the name of his friend in the war who was also identified and was still alive in his 80s. Cases like these cannot be classified as anecdotal.
So while the first category of testimonies, that I said ignore, is anecdotal the second category is not. They are also not scientific. They can’t be tested in laboratory or replicated. This is all we can get and that is good enough. The test you are proposing and is being conducted will not give us anything more than what these proven cases give us.
I hope it I was successful to explain the difference between anecdotal and proven cases.
Just search my name on any search engine and you can get to my blogs
I do not see the purpose of these stories or understand where you’re getting them from. Regardless, these are anecdotal stories.
If this is all we can get, then it is not good enough.
BJ7 suggested an experiment to test your hypothesis. It is a very good example of the sort of controlled example that could test your claim.
I see no indication that anything has ever been proven.
I’ve found your blog, and can make very little sense out of it, and don’t understand what I’m supposed to find there. I also watched the YouTube video you linked to. Every physician I know has a freak story or two. I didn’t find his interesting at all, in fact, as far as freaky doctor stories go, that one was kind of lackluster.
If your threshold for what constitutes as “proven” is this low, then I have a bridge to sell you.
(And don’t worry, a guy who knows a guy says he spoke to someone about the bridge and their story vaguely lines up with another bridge story about this same bridge, if you tell the story just so, so they line up, so, you know; proof)
“I do not see the purpose of these stories or understand where you’re getting them from. Regardless, these are anecdotal stories.”
In that case I see no point in continuing debating with you I explained very clearly the difference between anecdotal and proven stories. If you did not understand there is no point for me to continue and if you understood and still insist because that would mean you have to reevaluate your entire Weltanschauung and find it hard, then there is no point in debating with you. If all you are interested in is intellectual masturbation, you better fine another partner.
The stories I quoted are not made up by me. You can check them up in the article Why I Believe in God and the Afterlife Now.
@AlSina
“In that case I see no point in continuing debating with you I explained very clearly the difference between anecdotal and proven stories”
Nothing, I don’t get why you can’t understand this alsina. A story is just that, a story. Unless they perform repeatable experiments you literally have nothing but stories.
Serious question, do you belief in Bigfoot? There are hundreds of stories of people who have witnessed them. Many of these by multiple people. Ufo’s?
You claim to be an atheist? There are hundreds of people who’ve witnessed miracles. My grandmother swears when she got hit by lightning she literally saw jesus Christ reach down from the clouds to pull her into heaven.
Alisina,
The example about the dead aunt: this is not good evidence. The person may have seen photographs of this aunt, they may have come back from their NDE with a vague discription of seeing a woman, and later concluded this was their aunt, either through their family jumping to that conclusion based on vague information and embellishing the details, or a predisposition to believe that they were in the afterlife and then later trying to find a fit for what they saw. This is the same way in which people come to believe horoscopes and phychic readings: they seek out patterns that vaguely fit and then shoehorn in the details. You need some sort of objective evidence. If the experiment mentioned earlier with placing cards in operating rooms where they could only be seen from a high vantage point, and recording the number of NDE experiencers who are able to correctly identify the card, comes back dead negative, will you alter your position? My guess is not, but can you see the value of this experiment, and how it would undermine the notion of disembodied consciousness if it turns out negative?
The same goes with pilot example. You start of with a reported past life experience of a pilot being shot down, then off you go to trawl through however many hundreds or thousands of documented cases of this happening to find a match. It seems unlikely you wouldn’t find a match given the sample size available to trawl through. It would be more impressive if this person could have said what their name was in their past life, and it could be demonstrated that they had no exposureto this information, but I’ll bet this wasn’t the case.
This all comes down to human cognitive biases. We are asking for examples that can’t be easily explained by loose criteria for a hit, retrofitting to fit a personal narrative, confirmation bias etc.
The fact that you have a lot of anecdotes makes them not the slightest bit better evidence.
And seriously, a friggin 2 year old. That seems awfully you to be able to give an accurate, and sufficiently detailed account of a vision or NDE that it could later be corroborated to a high enough degree of confidence to claim it as a hit. Do you honestly not see the huge red flags here?
*awfully young
AliSina : We’re not saying you’re making this up. While the people involved in this NDE story may actually have made it more compelling, even if it’s exactly what they experienced, it’s not good evidence. If you accept this level of evidence, you may well end up believing in every single anecdote you hear. And that includes UFOs, Bigfoot, or alternative medicine stories.
quote
Just a test.
What are the HTML tags for a quotation on this site?
[quote] lihfoihvfshiv [/quote]
(Without the spaces)
Okay, try again…
Put the word blockquote in angle brackets.
You’ll probably be able to guess the rest.
BJ7,
Much obliged!
It had occurred to me that asking via this forum might cause problems getting the answer across…
HARDNOSE to me:
You take a word, such as “materialism,” and then do with it whatever you like. That’s fine, but don’t expect anyone to understand what you mean by the word. I have absolutely no idea what you mean by “materialism.’
ME to HARDNOSE:
So educate me hardnose. How are you defining materialism?
When you answer that “everything is made of matter”, please explain your words here a bit more:
>Materialism is wrong because it doesn’t make any sense given current scientific knowledge. We know that >“matter” is not made out of little particles of “matter,” for example.
How do we know this?
HARDNOSE’s Reply? Well, there is none. This is the point in the discussion that requires addressing the details of what he’s trying to say, and Hardnose just doesn’t do that. He replies only when he feels he has some rhetorical advantage. He can’t defend his own thoughts with any sort of depth – but he knows that they’re right.
So Hardnose? Are you gonna reply this time, and reply to the full comment?
AliSina true believer trope counter – updated.
Previously:
– You just don’t get it
– Skeptics are too closed minded to see the truth
– I used be a Skeptic but now my eyes are open
– My woo is true because quantum physics
– Extensive strawmanning
– You tube videos of anecdotal experience as evidence
– The materialist paradigm is about to be shattered
NEW!:
– Skeptics are afraid of the truth
– Skeptics are the true believers
– Skeptics don’t look at the evidence
– Abuse of skeptical terminology
– Complete lack of understanding of human cognitive biases (this is a biggy)
– Skeptics are deniers
– Lack of response to specific criticisms or requests for better evidence
– Begging the question
– Utter hypocrisy
“It is my understanding that such test is being conducted. It is only a matter of time to get result”
This reminds me of the bigfoot people.
They spend more time trying to convince people that we should accept hunter’s sightings than they do LOOKING FOR BONES and BIGFOOTS (feet?)! That always drove me nuts. We need to accept the match that the visual system of a half drunk hunter came up with through trees from 200 yards away at dusk. They know what evidence would automatically count, and it’s very simple to collect if it’s real.
Same here. An good NDE experiment is absurdly easy to design. Just do it and come back if it works.
Steve12
Its not that easy to design as people from prior experiments seen things from the other side of the vantage point where the signs were put up. Also, very few people survive cardiac arrest and fewer reports accurate perceptions when they are down.
@Steve12
Its not that easy to design as people from prior experiments seen things from the other side of the vantage point where the signs were put up. Also, very few people survive cardiac arrest and fewer reports accurate perceptions when they are down.
Whoops seems the comment thing is all messed up said I already said that but it didn’t appear right away.
No Leo.
Designing experiments that isolate and tease out different cognitive functions is hard.
This experiment is very, very easy.
I’ve heard of the hidden number experiments for OBEs. While emergency patients are hard to come by, there’s probably a good supply of people who have OBEs naturally. Given all the clever things neurologists can do, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already found a way to intentionally induce them.
Leo,
This experiment is easy to double blind. Just have somebody not involved in the surgery, who has no interaction with the people involved in the surgery or performing the study, place a playing card or a code in a position that’s impossible to see from any vantage point but the ceiling or close to the ceiling, then seal the answer in an envelope (or something more extreme like a safe) until the results are in.
It’s quite difficult to decipher your gibberish – who, and from what prior studies are you talking about? What the hell is the other side of the vantage point?
Personally, I think you’re the village idiot of Stupidville; you have no idea what you’re talking about, haven’t been able to construct one singe argument, constantly link to credulous woo sites as evidence, seek out arguments from authority then parade them around as if it makes your point, don’t have a clue about even the basics of the science you reference, throw up mutually exclusive ideas providing they deny that death is the end of consciousness, blindly support anyone or anything that challenges skeptics even though you haven’t the faintest understanding of the arguments, copy/paste your way through any response you give…
Anyway leo, keep on cracking on and someday you’ll overturn reality. It doesn’t matter anyway, because when you die you’ll just magic into another you in another universe.
@Mumadadd
Other studies that they designed near death experts did but failed. Because, the patients were looking on the other side of the bed where the signs were not put at. But they saw things where that side of the bed and heard conversations. Plus let me ask you this if you were outside your body would you give a damn about a sign or an envelope that has no damn relevence to you at all? No, you be looking down at the doctors and your loved ones that are in that room. That is the last straw for me I am out of here for good. Personal attacks like that on me will not be tolerated by me.
Leo,
=special pleading. For f*ck’s sake leo, grow up.
Try summarising your point like this:
– science assumes materialism
– science generates many, many successful hypotheses
– therefore materialism is true
“Plus let me ask you this if you were outside your body would you give a damn about a sign or an envelope that has no damn relevence to you at all?”
If you put enough unusual words in enough places someone would see them. You could put “supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus” in 40 spots around each room. There’s 100 ways to do this. (In reality you’d need a different word for each room, of course).
If you put it in enough places, and this business is true, someone will see it. If 5% of people came back and said they saw “supercalafragalisticexpialadoshus”, I’d say something weird was going one.
But any standard without wiggle room will always be unacceptable for the purveyors for uggity-buggity.
leo,
You’ve said this before but failed to deliver. I hope you can now follow through on your promise. You’ve been treading water since you appeared – it’s now time to kindly f*ck off and stop wasting everyone’s time.
Off you go then….
@ grabulaon
I generally ignore messages of people who think rudeness is a good substitute for reasoning. Your last message was uncharacteristically not rude so here is my reply.
“A story is just that, a story.”
Not so! If someone dies and comes back with information that he did not know prior to dying then his story is not just a story. I gave two cases of two boys. One died and after coming back said he met his sister. No one had told him about his sister who had died before he was born. It is dishonest to dismiss this as a child’s fantasy. The onus is on you to explain how he learned he had a sister when no one had told him about her?
The other case I mentioned was of a boy who at two claimed to be a pilot whose plane was shot by the Japanese. No one had told this two years old child about the Japanese war. Then his father finds out that the person his child was claiming to be actually existed and his plane was shot over a bay in Japan. The boy also remembered the name of his pal during the war and he too was found to be alive in his 80s.
There are 100s of cases like these. All you have to do is watch them on Youtube. These are testimonies of real people. These cases do not fall in the category of anecdotal because they are evidenced. The argument that the oxygen deprived braid generates vivid false memories, does not explain these cases. That argument is ridiculous. But let us accept it for the sake of argument. I want the you the faithful believers (in materialism) to explain to me how can dead people gain information that they could not have even if they were fully alert in their bed.
As for the claims about the Big Foot, they are all anecdotal. So though I don’t categorically dismiss the existence of Big Foot, I am inclined to believe those claims are honest mistakes.
“All you have to do is watch them on Youtube.”
SCIENCE!!!
@ mumadadd
As long as you adamantly refuse to look at the evidence you are excused to make such assumption, even though our disinterest in looking at such evidences is inexcusable.
The child who met his sister in heaven was not told she had a sister died at infancy. The two years old boy who identified himself as a WW2 pilot, gave his name and the name of his friend. That is how his father could find them. Here is that story. Google my article “Why I believe in God and the afterlife now,“ and you will find the video of this boy and 11 other unexplainable cases. The cases I have collected are not anecdotal.
All your arguments to question the authenticity of these stories are valid, but they do not apply.
So nobody, in his family and their extended circle, ever told him he had a sister who died? That seems pretty unrealistic to me. I’m well aware of my grandparents’ parents – they died well before even my parents were born, but were still referenced in conversation. I’m pretty sure if I had a sibling who died, my parents would have told me, and have had copious amounts of photo/video evidence of their existence. Were these people in Sudan or something?
Like I said before – a friggin 2 year old? Did his past life regression give him the language skills to be able to convey the detail necessary to identify a specific person and events? Or was the father a superstitious buffoon who, on scant details, went off on an exercise in motivated reasoning and confirmation bias?
And I see you have still not moved past your fixation on anecdotes, or acknowledged any of the criticism of doing so.
Good work, AliSina.
leo,
“Other studies that they designed near death experts did but failed. Because, the patients were looking on the other side of the bed where the signs were not put at…Plus let me ask you this if you were outside your body would you give a damn about a sign or an envelope that has no damn relevence to you at all?”
How convenient!
In NOT A SINGLE CASE did the person experiencing an OBE
1) have a vantage point where the card is visible.
2) notice the card sitting on top of a cupboard.
3) ignore the card sitting on top of the cupboard.
So you already have lots of excuses why all future experiments will fail.
Leo, the real reason that NOT A SINGLE PERSON experiencing an OBE will ever crack the code is because NOT A SINGLE PERSON experiencing an OBE is actually floating above the operating table. Really, think about it. It’s all happening inside the brain. It’s been shown that OBEs can be simulated by oxygen deprivation, certain drugs, and by stimulating certain parts of the brain. Why should OBEs in people having near death experiences be any different?
Plus let me ask you this if you were outside your body would you give a damn about a sign or an envelope that has no damn relevence to you at all?
Different people evaluate relevance in different ways, based on desires, knowledge of a subject, and goals. For all the talk of subjectivity earlier, you seem quite dismissive of it with how you phrase that question.
If I was lucid during an OBE, I’d certainly try looking for stuff I could use to prove to myself at the very least that I actually left my body, because otherwise I’d just think of it as a lucid dream or hallucination. I’ve experienced plenty of dreams and a few surgery-related experiences at varying levels of lucidity, so it wouldn’t really mean anything to me otherwise. I know that my experiences and memory can be pretty unreliable, especially in such circumstances, so I acknowledge the need for extra effort in how I interpret them. Nothing generic to medical emergencies would do, only things outside my knowledge and expectations. I’d probably try looking at high shelves, hidden locations, and such for long numbers I could memorize the moment I realized I was having an OBE. As soon as I was conscious and remembered the experience, I’d ask someone to write down the details I deemed important for this purpose so that I’d know I wasn’t modifying my memory in light of new information.
@ mumadadd
“And seriously, a friggin 2 year old. …Do you honestly not see the huge red flags here?”
Not if you are an honest person. A 2 year old can have a lot of fantasies, but if he tells you he was a pilot in the war shot by Japanese and give you’re his name and the name of his friend and then you do a search and find out such person actually existed, he was shot by the Japanese and he had a friend by the exact name your 2 year old boy said he had, then it would be utter intellectually dishonesty to dismiss that as anecdotal coincident or fluke.
There are many more stories like these. A girl dies and is buried She is born again to the same parents as another girl. She then remembers who she was before and when visiting the town where her parents lived in the previous life she takes them to the cemetery and directly goes to the tomb where she was buried. She claims having attended her own funeral and remembering the cemetery and her grave.
You will find hundreds of cases like this, if you watch the videos about NDE.
grabula says: “I’m calling your BS. I’m not as patient as the rest of these guys for the silliness some if you bring to these conversations. You have no interest in an intellectually honest conversation, you’re just here to spot off your crappy philosophy you have mistaken for science. We’ve been dealing with just your brand of bs so much in this thread I could have your argument for you. As the rest of them you’ll come here, spout the vacuous crap you have, refuse to acknowledge any kind of evidence we provide you refuting your claims. You’ll mistake your huge gaps in understanding as proof for your claims. You’ll condescend and say we don’t understand your arguments, then you’ll turn around and try to paint yourself as just a humble question asker who’s keeping an open mind while us evil close minded skeptics continue to not understand poor rjbullock.”
That’s a load of crap, grabula. You called me a “true believer” when I’m nothing of the sort. I try to point out to you that I think there are different modes of knowing and working with reality and that those different modes are all valid in their own way for their own purpose, that is all. CAN YOUR SIMPLE MIND ABSORB THAT AT ALL? Or even genuinely reflect on what I’m saying? I don’t think so…
You are a dogmatic asshole who is thoroughly convinced you’re so wise and 100% correct. You do NOT address a single actual point I made, you just dismiss them all with cliches and false characterizations of my positions.
I don’t believe in “quantum woo”… I don’t “believe in” life after death. Again, you lump people into broad categories and barely address what they’re actually saying.
You are narrow minded, literal minded and not especially smart but go ahead and keep attacking people, talking like a moron and see how life unfolds for you.
AliSina,
I will not add anything more until you do.
Skepticism and belief are situational. No one is always a skeptic or always a believer. Everyone believes in some things and is skeptic of other things. If you believe in a religion, you are skeptic of other religions. If you believe in God, you are skeptic of atheism and if you are an atheist you are skeptic of theism. It is important to be clear on this. No one has the monopoly on belief or on skepticism. It is deceptive to call a group of people skeptic, because everyone is skeptic of something and believer in something else.
In this article I will argue that the so called skeptics are just as faithful believers as the religious believers whom they so love to disparage. But let us first study the anatomy of faith. The following passage is from the skeptic website.
Read the entire article from my blog. You can find it by searching “The faithfulness of the skeptics”
rjbullock,
I sympathise with your rhetoric on one level: I am currently trying to use meditation for insomnia, and also agree with most of the Buddhist philosophy, but you can’t just suddenly arrive on a skeptical/scientific blog, where many of the posters are working scientists, and equivocate every other worldview with science. As you’ve seen, you’ll get a hostile reaction…
AlSina,
“The onus is on you to explain how he learned he had a sister when no one had told him about her?”
Actually the onus is on YOU to verify that this is what happened.
I mean, are you telling me that you have not personally verified these stories? That you believe anything and everything you see on youtube without question? Without verifying them for yourself or confirming that they have been verified by independent sources? Are you telling me that you have changed your whole world view from atheistic to Christian on the basis of unverified stories on youtube? Are you for real, AlSina?
@Leo 100
[quote]Personal attacks like that on me will not be tolerated by me.[/quote]
Come on now! Don’t you know ad hominem and insults are great substitute for reason for those who lack the latter? Why they insult you and mock you they feel smart and powerful.
AliSina,
No. Present your arguments here.
No. Skeptics are all about understanding how our biases affect our worldview and trying to apply that understanding to how we evaluate the world and claims made about that world. You, on the other hand, are seeking to fulfill a conclusion you reached when you were 5 years old.
AlSina,
“he learned he had a sister when no one had told him about her”
How do you know no one, not a single person, at any time during his life prior to the NDE ever told him about his sister? How could you possibly know that?
How do you know he never chanced upon a picture of his sister or overheard conversation about her? How could you possibly know that.
How do you know the people in the video did not know that he did know or conveniently forgot or actually forgot that he did know? How could you possibly know that?
Yet you changed your whole world view based on these stories.
I don’t get it. I’d need a whole lot more than unverified stories on youtube to change my whole world view.
AliSina, you present excellent insights and I agree with most of them.
Robert
Okay then, you’re on the side of woo and misinformation. Good to clarify.
@BillyJoe7
I would have dismissed these stories if they were few. But when I see a doctor standing in front of the camera and putting his reputation at risk to attest his 7 year old patient who was brought to the emergency room after being drowned and remained unconscious during the entire operation recognized him when she recovered, told him what he did to her and that after the operation took her to another room, when there was no way for the girl to know all that, I start paying attention.
Here is that story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMuHHiWFCjc
When I see hundreds of these stories I can no longer defend my materialistic view of the world. My commitment is to truth dear Billyjoe7 not to an ideology. I have no faith or religion to defend.
@BillyJoe7
“I don’t get it. I’d need a whole lot more than unverified stories on youtube to change my whole world view.”
They are unverified for you because you don’t care to look into those claims. Who do you think should verify them for you? Are you expecting Steven Novella to verify them so you can accept them as true? He won’t. He has his own dogma to defend. You are the one who has to do your own research. Have you bothered to read my article? Did you watch the videos I posted to back my claim? Did you follow my line of reasoning? Did you read my article “The faithfulness of the skeptics?” If you haven’t then you are the one who needs to search for the truth. There are thousands of testimonies of real people on Youtube. Spend time and watch them. You will be bombarded with so many evidences that you can no longer dismiss them as “stories”. Ignore the ones that are not verified by someone other than the patients.
I’ve got one for ya, AliSina. A “case”. I’ll be brief.
So my kid brother was born a few months after an uncle of ours kicked it. Kid brother became the namesake of said late uncle (his middle name, however).
When kid brother was about 2 going on 3, he started talking about imaginary friends. One of them was… Allegedly our late uncle, our mom’s older brother. He would tell our mom childhood stories only late uncle and mom would know about. For about a year, kid brother and the spirit of our late uncle would romp around and get up to all manner of hijinks and mischief (according to mom). Mom thought this was miraculous and encouraged this relationship… Mom would report strange bumps in the night, rattling chains in the attic, strange occurrences… How could my kid brother know about someone who passed away before he was born? Kid brother called his spirit friend by his first name (which is the kid’s middle name, but surely it couldn’t be a coincidence, the late uncle must have found his way to the small child named after him…)?
Seems pretty spooky and compelling, aye? Would you like to know what was really going on? Or would you prefer to count this story as a hit (if it were in a YouTube video interview, with the people involved, including “impartial” people who “ovserved” this that or the other thing, like grandma too) and declare it an irrefutable “proven case”, one so bulletproof one would have to be dishonest to dismiss?
DOM! DOM! DOMMMMM!
To be concluded after lunch.
AliSina,
What say you?
the devils gummy bear,
It seems to me you have a genuine case on your hands that disproves all us nasty skeptics. Why are hanging around here? Go tell it to the man, so they can stop people dying without getting to spend the rest of eternity in bliss because quantum physics. Goddamn you man, have you no sense of responsibility? Get on with it sir! Release us from this mortal coil!
>Materialism is wrong because it doesn’t make any sense given current scientific knowledge. We know that >“matter” is not made out of little particles of “matter,” for example.
How do we know this?
We know this, Steve12, from 20th century physics. What are those little ultimate particles they expected to find? They did not find them. They found multidimensional vibrating “strings,” whatever they heck that is. Nobody is smart enough to figure out what “matter” is made out of. It certainly is not little tiny ball bearings, or whatever your 19th century imagination dreams up.
@ the devils gummy bear
I am sure you are smart enough to know you are engaging in a logical fallacy. You are saying that since you know of fake story of an argument then all evidences backing that argument must be false.
Such reasoning, which is the favorite of materialists, is not worthy of consideration. I am not interested in your fake stories. I invite you to provide a logical explanation to each the ones I posted on my blog.
No, this is a true story. Here, let me finish.
@ mumadadd
“If the experiment mentioned earlier with placing cards in operating rooms where they could only be seen from a high vantage point, and recording the number of NDE experiencers who are able to correctly identify the card, comes back dead negative, will you alter your position? My guess is not, but can you see the value of this experiment, and how it would undermine the notion of disembodied consciousness if it turns out negative?”
I think this is a very valuable test. It should be conducted in numerous hospitals, with flashing lights inviting the soul of the patient to look at the words or image placed at above 7 feet, but not in an envelope. It should be visible to the soul hovering at that height.
The result can take time to come. The reason is that most people that flat-line, don’t report having had any experience. This happens only to a small percentage. No one knows why. Also many of them are zapped into a tunnel soon after they are out of their body to the other world. Only a smaller percentage of them hang around to watch the operation. We need a system to grab their attention, with a note telling them about the experiment. Asking them to please come back if given the choice and remember the code or the image they see printed on the card, explaining the importance of their contribution to the science and human understanding of reality. I know I would be tempted by such an offer. Heaven can wait.
I am sure eventually we will get result. One doctor reported that her patient told her about her out of body experience. The doctor (she was a nurse at that time) was sympathetic and told her to rest. She had heard that before and was not pay much attention. The patient, realizing the nurse is not believing her, said write down this number. She then dictated a number consisting of 12 digits. She said this is the serial number of this respirator. You can read it at the top of it. The respirator was 7 feet tall, so they placed a small ladder and saw the two numbers are identical. The patient was getting bored and started memorizing the number.
If say 100 hospitals participate in this experiment and after two or three years no returning soul can tell us about the experiment, then we have to find a logical experiment for the apparent psychic ability of some of the patients. Why can they see things in other rooms when they are under operation? The enigma will not be solved. But I would discard the suggestion that the soul leaves the body.
Now what about you? Will you accept OBE if we find one or more patients correctly reporting what is written on those cards? One is enough. Two is plenty. Three proves the case beyond the doubt. Do the math and you’ll see that the chances of someone to guessing a code is astronomically low! How many cases would you need to be satisfied? Since you made a guess about me, let me make a guess about you. My guess is that not even a 100 of them will satisfy you. I don’t know you, but I know the mind of the believer and how it is wired.
Oh, did I mention that a doctor verified the events of this story?
@ mumadadd
“No, this is a true story. Here, let me finish.’
Your story is either true or false. If it is true then you can take it as evidence and if it is not then it is a false comparison. I can’t comment or opine on your stories. Don’t carry one with logical fallacies. I have debated with thousands of believers and have heard all of the fallacies in the book and more.
Oops! The above message was for the devils gummy bear
AlSina,
“I would have dismissed these stories if they were few…When I see hundreds of these stories I can no longer defend my materialistic view of the world”
But have you verified just ONE of these stories?
That’s all I need – and the least you should demand of yourself – just ONE genuine verified account of someone relating something after an OBE that they could not possibly have known before the OBE.
Aren’t you interested in knowing for sure? I mean, you can’t possibly investigate them all, and some could not possibly be verified (you cannot prove that that child could not possibly have found out about his sister at any time in his life before his OBE), so pick just ONE that looks as if it would be possible to verify the details and go for it. You owe yourself that at the very least before changing your world view.
“My commitment is to truth dear Billyjoe7 not to an ideology. I have no faith or religion to defend”
You will not find it in youtube videos of OBEs
And you are a Christian now and I think that’s what you are now trying to defend.
Those youtube videos caused you to become a Christian. Conversion by youtube video! You owe it to yourself that to make sure the foundations of your house are not sitting on sand
“One doctor reported that her patient told her about her out of body experience. The doctor (she was a nurse at that time) was sympathetic and told her to rest. She had heard that before and was not pay much attention. The patient, realizing the nurse is not believing her, said write down this number. She then dictated a number consisting of 12 digits. She said this is the serial number of this respirator. You can read it at the top of it. The respirator was 7 feet tall, so they placed a small ladder and saw the two numbers are identical. The patient was getting bored and started memorizing the number.”
I am interested in this. Can you please give your reference for this claim, and some additional details if possible i.e. the doctor or patients name etc. I know of a case in the 1960s that used a 5 digit code, but have never heard of a 12 digit code being used in an OBE experiment.
Hardnose
>We know this, Steve12, from 20th century physics.
Really? Do tell!
>What are those little ultimate particles they expected to find? They did not find them. They found >multidimensional vibrating “strings,” whatever they heck that is.”
They found empirical support for M-theory? Wow – have to alert the Nobel folks – or at the very least Peter Woit!
A simple google search could have shown you that you’re wrong, Hardnose. M-theory has, sort of famously, never been shown empirically (and may not even be testable). It’s a mathematical model that may resolve the problems between gravity and QM, but it has no empirical support. IOW “they” did not find ‘multidimensional vibrating “strings,” whatever they heck that is.’. If they ever do, they’ll be definable in terms of energy (as they are in the models) anyway, which is the same as matter (some famous dude said this once).
>Nobody is smart enough to figure out what “matter” is made out of. It certainly is not little tiny ball >bearings, or whatever your 19th century imagination dreams up.
But hold on – you said that my definition of materialism was wrong – now you can’t define it either because you don’t know how to define matter?
AlSina,
“They are unverified for you because you don’t care to look into those claims”
I would need a really good reason to dedicate that amount of time and I haven’t seen any reason at all to spend more time on it than I’m spending here trying to find out why you think youtube videos are sufficient reason to convert you to Christianity.
“Who do you think should verify them for you?”
I am suggesting that you need to verify them before accepting them as a basis of your conversion to Christianity.
“There are thousands of testimonies of real people on Youtube. Spend time and watch them”
Yeah well, that is your style, not mine. I’m not impressed by thousands of testimonials. I would be impressed by just ONE genuine verified real bona fide case of knowledge gained during an OBE that could not possibly have been obtained before the OBE. That would be the slam dunk beside which a thousand testimonies on youtube would shrink to nothing.
If you don’t have ONE such case, so be it, but seemingly unlike you, I require cold hard evidence to change my world view.
“Ignore the ones that are not verified by someone other than the patients”
Really, that adds almost nothing. There are all sorts of hidden reasons why another person could be motivated to confirm another persons story. You can do this yourself. You can easily get someone to agree they saw something that you said you saw that you know you didn’t see. I fact, you can find youtube videos demonstrating this! How much easier would it be for someone who actually believes he saw something to convince others that they saw it too. People are easy to fool, especially you and me. We must both of us all of us be on our guard.
Part 2 of Return of Spooky Uncle or Touched by an Uncle
So, how did kid brother, who was born after uncle died, know about uncle? How did he know stories only mom and uncle would know? What about the spooky spectral stuff? And what about the doctor who verified all of these events?
(hang on mumadadd, I’m getting to it)
It’s pretty straightforward really. You just need some additional, but critical, information.
Mom had gotten into supernatural stuff at the time, reading spooky paperbacks and gobbling up all the paranormal media she could find. This was the late 80s/early 90s, and she was always watching the precursors to today’s paranormal cable shows. She would read “true story” books about NDEs or other contact-with-the-other-side, books about spiritualism. She wanted to believe.
She and grandma had even been to a psychic or two. They were terribly grief stricken. They wanted to believe.
So when kid brother got to the age where kid’s imaginations shift into hyperdrive, all the pieces were in place, the environment was primed.
It was unintentional at first. Innocent enough, you might say. Kid brother had loads of ad hoc imaginative tales to tell. At some point between the ages of two to four, kid brother’s stories, in the midsts of mom’s paranormal media environment, took a turn (according to mom). He made contact with his uncle’s spirit, and the two of them became thick as thieves… Uncle, interestingly, often appeared to kid brother as a kid himself, as the kid version mom grew up with…
What really happened, of course, is mom pretty much coaxed and confabulated this entire situation. Not on purpose, I can’t even categorize it as pious fraud. My mom really believed this was happening. She was actively encouraging kid brother to produce certain stories, leading the witness and so forth… And kid brother was more than happy to oblige in this playtime. It made mom enormously happy when he would “play along”. Pretty high stakes playtime for a little boy.
Stories like this, are a dime a dozen. Nearly every family has at least one.
If you tell this particular story of mine in a certain way, omitting certain information, and only focus on the narrative you want, you can point a video camera at it… And had you interviewed my mom in.. oh, 1995 on camera, you would have gotten a result identical to, or uncannily similar to, any one of these of YouTube videos you’ve been going on about.
And what of the doctor I mentioned who could verify this story? She would have been sitting right next to my mom on camera, putting her “reputation on the line”, confirming various aspects of my mother’s stories; For this doctor was a witness, you see, who could (and did, and continues to) to dispel any skepticism that there could be any other possible explanation, other than the spirit of the departed befriended a small child, and told this child stories only a person present in the mid 1960s could know. The intricate details which my kid brother was miraculously privy to, as told to him by the spirit of the late uncle were irrefutable, according to this doctor. Because she was there. My grandmother is a doctor.
My point with this analogy, AliSina, is you need to think a little more critically about these sorts of stories being told in these YouTube videos of yours.
(Followup: mom grew out of her paranormal “phase”, due in part to all of her kids going on to earn advanced degrees in the sciences, while challenging her to think more critically about things along the way. Kid brother is finishing his PhD at USF. Dr. Grandma remains convinced her dead son came back and befriended her grandson. No ghost uncles were harmed in the retelling of this tale)
AlSina,
BJ: “There are all sorts of hidden reasons why another person could be motivated to confirm another persons story”
See the devils gummy bear’s illustrative story above.
I have one of my own – which is one of the reasons why I am not fooled by so called corroborated stories – but one is enough for our purposes.
And the lesson stands even of you don’t believe his story.
Or my claim that I have a similar story.
I mean, I hope you would want independent verification before you allow it to change your world view!
@ BillyJoe7
“But have you verified just ONE of these stories?”
I had a brief vision of the other world more than 20 years ago. I ignored it and became an atheist because I could not make sense of it. Now that I came to see so many people have been in that world I realize I was there too.
Said this, your question is disingenuous. You believe in many things when you have not verified them yourself. Have you ever verified the claim that cyanide kills? Have you ever been bitten by a cobra? How do you know Venus is not filled with gorgeous women when you have never been there? I can go on. After watching hundreds of cases of NDE only a brain-dead fool can remain unaffected. Once you see several of them you will starts suspending disbelief and pay attention. I explained the difference between anecdotal and confirmed. There are hundreds of the latter stories to convince any hard core skeptic. But you need to be a genuine skeptic to see the truth, not a hardnosed believer, deceiving yourself with that label. Most materialists who love to think they are skeptic are fanatical believers. You must learn to be a freethinker. As a freethinker you can’t belong to any school of thought. That is a deception. It is like believing homosexuals are actually merrier than others because they call themselves gay. Don’t fall for the labels. The self-proclaimed skeptics are not skeptic. Materialism is a faith. You must be a truth seeker and a free thinker if you want to be a true skeptic.
I am also not a Christian. No Christian will accept my Christianity. I am an evolutionist Darwinist and don’t believe in most of the fables in the Bible. I however recognize Jesus as a highly evolved spiritual being. Why? I am older than Jesus. I am more educated than him. I have read hundreds of books whereas I doubt he had read a single book. Books did not exist when he lived on Earth. I have access to all the knowledge through the Internet. Despite all my advantages, any time I discover a spiritual truth, which is after many struggles, I realize Jesus had already talked about it. I could not see it before because I could not even distinguish it. If you are a bushman you can’t possibly make sense what the heck Leonard Susskind is talking about. You need to have some understanding of physics to understand it. I can now see the vastness of the spiritual wisdom of Jesus, only after years of study and search for truth.
Said this, I don’t believe the Bible to be the word of God or even a holy book. I compare it to a gold mine, which means most of it is plain dirt. So as you see, no Christian will accept my Christianity and I don’t even pretend to be one. I also find enlightenment in the teachings of Buddha and much wisdom in the philosophies of Hinduism. As for whether God exists or not I can’t be sure. I think He does and we are all part of Him, in the same way that water molecules everywhere are part of the ocean. This is all philosophy. I am not sure of any of that. One thing I am sure of now is that we survive. We were never born and will never die. Consciousness is a form of energy. In fact the essence of everything is energy. And we both know that energy cannot be destroyed.
We are eternal. This universe is eternal. It changes form, but its essence is energy and energy is eternal. If the universe is eternal it precludes God and the act of creation. The universe and by extension, we sentient beings, existed always, which means we are God. God is in everything – humans, animals, plants, and rocks.
If you are interested in this subject you can read my article “Should we fear God.” Search it on Google. It comes up in the first page, or add my name to your search to get it at the top.
AliSina,
Your dodging of the question is disingenuous. We know cyanide kills because of the mountain of verified scientific data behind the hypothesis that cyanide kills. If you put 20 people in a room and give ten of them cyanide and ten water, those ten who took cyanide will die.
You have not once given any form of verifiable evidence for your claims. You might convince people who have a very low evidence threshold, who are just looking for hope, but you will not convince anyone on this blog without something a bit more substantial.
Every single thing you have said and all of your arguments have been seen here many many times before and they have ALL been addressed at some point multiple times. You are really not bringing anything new to the discussion.
PS “If you are a bushman you can’t possibly make sense what the heck Leonard Susskind is talking about.” This is bordering on racist. I think I know what you are saying, but couched in those terms you could be implying that a bushman doesn’t have the capacity to learn as much as others.
AliSina, do you know what a thousand anecdotes add up to? The exact same amount as one anecdote. A story.
The devil’s gummy bear
I have decided to come back I am used to personal attacks. Especially, the one mumadadd threw at me all I will say about that is the reason why he scooped to that level is because he can’t refute my arguments. He knows that. I have a good rebuttal on skeptics proclaiming that anecdotes are completely useless.
http://subversivethinking.blogspot.ca/2009/01/pseudoskepticism-anecdotal-evidence-and.html
How convenient!
In NOT A SINGLE CASE did the person experiencing an OBE
1) have a vantage point where the card is visible.
2) notice the card sitting on top of a cupboard.
3) ignore the card sitting on top of the cupboard.
So you already have lots of excuses why all future experiments will fail.
Leo, the real reason that NOT A SINGLE PERSON experiencing an OBE will ever crack the code is because NOT A SINGLE PERSON experiencing an OBE is actually floating above the operating table. Really, think about it. It’s all happening inside the brain. It’s been shown that OBEs can be simulated by oxygen deprivation, certain drugs, and by stimulating certain parts of the brain. Why should OBEs in people having near death experiences be any different?
@BillyJoe7
Its a legitimate problem that if you were outside your body you would care less about some silly sign or card as it would have no meaning or relevence to you. The only thing that would matter is your lifeless body laying there and your family. I am sorry but its been shown that oxygen deprivation is not the cause of near death experiences, the same with drugs that been debunked hundreds of times the same with stimulating certain parts of the brain.
AlSina,
Well, I didn’t expect a sermon, despite it being a Sunday morning here.
I’m usually being entertained by the chirping of birds on my Sunday morning hill run.
Alas I have an Achilles strain.
AlSina: “You believe in many things when you have not verified them yourself”
This what I said the first time I bought up the verification issue:
BJ: “Without verifying them for yourself or confirming that they have been verified by independent sources”
Since then I have shortened it for brevity. Sorry if you missed my first mention.
I don’t believe in any thing that I have not either verified myself or that has not been verified by independent sources and, I might now add, confirmed by further independent sources. Replication and all that. My beliefs are in proportion to the verifiable evidence for them. Otherwise I know from bitter experience that I will be fooled into believing something that has either been proven to be false or not proven to be true and therefore not worth hanging my world view on.
So, no, I don’t need to test cyanide on myself, or cobra venom, or go to Venus. There are plenty of independent sources that can inform me what dose of cyanide or cobra venom will kill me and that Venus is not conducive to life as we know it. This is called doing science.
Similarly, you don’t need to verify these stories yourself, you can refer to independent sources that have verified them. This, after all, is what I asked for in the first place. But it seems, from your lack of references, that these independent verifications do not exist. It seems you are happy to go with unverified and unreliable youtube personal testimonies and so called corroborated witnes testimony, despite the many known psychological reasons why this sort of “evidence” is almost totally unreliable.
Hey Leo, don’t let the bastards keep you down. Give ’em hell man.
Oh shit, AliSina I missed your latest opus above. You are one hot mess.
I wish we had some sort of award system here to hand out prizes in categories, like “most incredible random weird thing to say”. After spending some time on your site, and after deciphering your monolithic blocks of tirades here, I’m quite literally speechless. Words fail me.
leo,
It seems you are pretty certain that NOT A SINGLE PERSON having an OBE will ever see the code on top of the cupboard.
I’m left wondering why you are so CERTAIN of this.
You might look up “cognitive dissonance”.
Leo, your links go nowhere but to the fringes, where people about as coherent as you lurk and lurch about. Stephen Bond picks his ass, and Leo’s got a link to it.
Leo, on behalf of pseudoskeptics everywhere, you win. We pseudoskeptics are a bunch of asshats and dumb-dumbs who wouldn’t be able to see things for what they really are, even if our earth doppelgangers in universe c137 popped in with a portal gun and punched us in the face (you guys get Rick and Morty over there, yeah?)
Happy?
And I’m not pandering when I say this; the special things you believe are fine. Although you haven’t been able to explain your beliefs or ideas, I’ve gathered that you think something in quantum mechanics _________________, thus multiverse and then _______________, therefor afterlives and _____________. I know it may seem like I’m taking the piss out it man, but I’m not. You believe in something that is amazing to you, so go forth and be proud my Canadian interblaging friend, for no one can take that away from you. Multiverses forever, Leo. Multiverses forever. Huzzah!
Leo, you have a serious problem with projecting your attitude and priorities onto all other people, here. Sometimes I wonder if people who do this sort of thing believe other people are just inferior copies of themselves. It’s an incredibly condescending and narrow-minded view of humanity.
Again, if I had an OBE and was lucid, noticing things like those signs and cards would be my highest priority. Without confirmation like that, I’d consider the OBE to be just another dream or hallucination, and nothing to change the way I view the world.
Bronzedog
Lol, the only way they can test for them is in a cardiac arrest situation in a hospital. So with that being said my life is threatened lets say by a heart attack I am not going to be concerned about validating what some scientists want to validate or invalidate because my mind is on more pressing issues.
Devil’s gummy bear
I don’t think you guys are dumb or stupid at all in fact many of you guys are very smart and intelligent. It’s just that you have a different worldview from mine and the conversation will never really go anywheres.
So our ghost selves have panic attacks that prevent them from observing anything meaningful or of consequence. Hey, the logic works out.
BTW, how do ghosts see things? Just out of curiosity; how do our floaty OBE ghosts “sense” things anyway? How does that work? Serious question.
Also, what’s the point of believing in OBE floaty ghost-times, if while in this unincorporated hazy state these floaty ghosts, out of their bodies, are going to be so preoccupied with episodes of trauma/panic/disorientation, they won’t remember anything reliable anyway. Why do ghosts only see things that a person can experience in a dream or in a drug induced state anyway? Or can otherwise construct over a drowsy in and out period some time later?
It’s kind of like Sagan’s Dragon or Sam Harris’ giant diamond, isn’t it? You ask an obvious question, like why don’t ghosts remember things well or accurately, and the answer is because ghosts are lousy with memory, and can’t be trusted anyway… Then what’s the point?
@leo
[Blockquote]. But they saw things where that side of the bed and heard conversations[/blockquote]
Leo, you’re done. This is a really childish form of special playing.
{Blockquote} test {/blockquote}
Lol what’s the trick again?
Alsina
“It is dishonest to dismiss this as a child’s fantasy. The onus is on you to explain how he learned he had a sister when no one had told him about her?”
No, it is intellectually lazy to assume a couple of young kids aren’t making up a story. One that might happen to coincide just enough with a real one to be accepted with credulous thinking. Eye witness and anecdotal evidence is bad enough now you’re trying to tell us not only is it OK but it’s OK to accept it from children
The devil’s gummy bear
I think the soul uses ESP as the sensory of sight as normal sight works but way better than normal vision. Your defining ghosts as all knowing but when you die you don’t just get the secrets of the universe in your hands it doesn’t work that way. The soul works the same way as a person would act they don’t care about silly signs etc that scientists have set up trying to prove its existence.
@alsina
“The child who met his sister in heaven was not told she had a sister died at infancy.”
How common are miscarriage or infancy deaths? What are the chances the child overheard done talk about it? What are the chances a child’s imagination leads him to create a made up sister he met in heaven?
“The two years old boy who identified himself as a WW2 pilot, gave his name and the name of his friend. That is how his father could find them”
This is just ridiculous.
I’ve got a story. My sister when we were young knocked a tv over and it hit me in the head and I had to go on for surgery. I ‘remember’ waking up surrounded by bright light and hearing my mom’s voice. I also remember green aliens surrounding me. My mom mentoined when I got older I was sedated do they could work and the Dr’s and nurses all wore green surgical outfits including masks. I can’t even tell you if what I remember is real or dream to be honest but you could see how one might misread the memory
@rjbullock
“That’s a load of crap, grabula. You called me a “true believer” when I’m nothing of the sort”
Sure rjbullock, so I’ll just go ahead and re post the ‘truths’ you discovered since you’ve already forgot the crap you came out of the blocks with:
“1) Nothing has any intrinsic reality. All identities are imputations or projections (however you want to put it). The ultimate nature of reality is far, far beyond our thoughts about what it might be. This should be obvious to us but it is not. It’s obvious to quantum physicists. But no, we don’t need scientists and especially not physicists to “prove” this is the case; we just need to look at our own direct experience, contemplate it, and we’ll see it is true if we look very, very carefully. Everything is empty of true existence. We mistake our models of reality for reality itself and end up in some pretty strange arguments because of that!
2) Naturally, there is no self. “Self” is also a conceptual fabrication, top to bottom, a convenient way to refer to a whole host of aspects that are roughly associated (body, thoughts, feelings, social position, name, etc.). If anything is a self, it would be the continuity of experience, but as that has no identity, it’s not much of a self.
3) Since identities / models / concepts, etc. are all basically imaginary, to cling to them is the most ignorant thing you could do, but it’s our intense clinging that causes us our greatest suffering.”
-invoking the strangeness of quantum physics, check
-we don’t ‘get’ reality therefore magic, check
-no need for science, I figured it ouy staring at my navel, check
-is so easy, why don’t you her it skeptics, check
-magical thinking based on mysticism, check.
Did I miss anything?
Uh, Leo, you do realize that some people, scientist or not, have this thing called “curiosity,” right? If I have an OBE, I’m going to be damn curious if it’s real or not. This isn’t just about “some scientists,” it’s also about me and what drives me. Besides, what good is it going to do me to watch the doctors or my family if I can’t do anything about my condition? I’d rather do something productive with that weird, likely one-time state of existence than sit on my ethereal posterior and worry ineffectually.
I often have dreams where I gain the power of levitation. In one of the more lucid ones, I floated around a lot, trying to figure out just how I was doing it and what the limitations were. My maximum altitude was a few feet above solid surfaces, but if I went over an edge or down an incline, I’d gradually descend, rather than immediately drop to the new maximum height. I would move horizontally by leaning very slightly in the direction I wanted to go. My maximum forward speed would reduce the angle of descent to about 30° going down 45° stairs, and about 45° if I floated off a vertical wall. The physical sensation was like that of magnetic repulsion and included a hollow feeling in my shins. It activated when I was in the air and pointed my toes downward. I remember being dissatisfied with the vague Dragon Ball Z invocation of “energy” in a woo sense because it’s not a meaningful answer. I wanted an account of every joule of real energy involved, where it came from, and how it got converted into kinetic energy.
AliSina,
Just to be clear, the card, or code, would not be obscured by an envelope in the OR/emergency room; but the record of what the card/code is should obviously be obscured from anyone involved in the experiment. That’s the blinding I was referring to – I wasn’t suggesting that souls should be able to see through envelopes or safes…
Silly scientists. And their gotcha experiments. Trying to test ideas against reality. When will they learn, Leo?
I haven’t defined ghosts as all-knowing anything. They appear to exist only in the minds of the credulous (which sort of sets the bar pretty low for what ghosts should be expected to “know” anyway).
They are being described here as essentially inept phantom drunks that don’t remember anything interesting, and don’t do anything AT ALL. They are invisible and undetectable, can’t interact with anything in any way, and their memories (while OBE) are compromised to the point of being essentially useless, only remembering things that otherwise occur in dreams.
So, ghosts “see” with Extrasensory Perception. How could that possibly work, Leo? How could ESP work?
@alsina
“Have you bothered to read my article? Did you watch the videos I posted to back my claim? Did you follow my line of reasoning? Did you read my article “The faithfulness of the skeptics?” If you haven’t then you are the one who needs to search for the truth”
So your evidence is…a couple articles you wrote and spoke YouTube videos providing anecdotes.
I don’t think you’re being obtuse on what anecdotes evidence is alsina, I thin you’re being disingenuous.
@alsina
“My guess is not, but can you see the value of this experiment, and how it would undermine the notion of disembodied consciousness if it turns out negative?”
You’ve built yourself quite the impregnable fortress there alsina. Effectively, if you get a negative outcome from an actual experiment then it’s just undermining your system of beliefs. You are well on your way to making it compelling unfalsifiable.
@alsina
“Said this, your question is disingenuous. You believe in many things when you have not verified them yourself. Have you ever verified the claim that cyanide kills? Have you ever been bitten by a cobra? How do you know Venus is not filled with gorgeous women when you have never been there?”
I see as things move forward you abs Leo have stooped to childish new lows. YOUR IMPLICATION is disingenuous and you know it. Just in case you’re really that thick let me enlighten you in your error. ..
-We know cyanide kills because it’s been observed, is scientifically backed by experimentation and we understand exactly how and why it kills. We’re not relying on Youtube videos of people claiming it kills.
-I’m not even sure your point on the cobra so I’ll just take apart the whole thing. First I’ve seen cobra, YouTube has videos of cobras, not stories of people talking about cobras with no evidence. How do we know they’re venemous? See my explanation of cyanide.
-ah yes, the classic were you there. Venus had been studied by probes, spectrometry and observation. We have pictures of the surface, enough to validly theorize is not filled with beautiful women. YOU would be making an outrageous claim saying it is and the burden of proof would lie on you to prove it.
After this walk through can YOU AlSina tell me where you went wrong? Bet you can’t.
@devilgummy
“So our ghost selves have panic attacks that prevent them from observing anything meaningful or of consequence”
That’s right, never mind the anecdotal OBE expedience I’ve listened to often claim a strange calmness. ..
As with alsina Leo had built an unfalsifiable fortress around his beliefs and cannot be budged
For some reason, when I read any of leo’s posts I now have the theme from Noddy running through my head. (It’s a kids’ TV show from the 80s).
Leo – are you the happiest little fellow in all Toyland?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaHMyvqwU84
Grabula – you have it right but you’re using the wrong brackets – try these <
In case that doesn't show up, it's the ones that you'd use for greater than or less than….
leo,
Why can’t you even make good on your (ahem) “threats” to stop wasting everyone’s time?
Boom, thanks mumadadd!
Quite welcome–BJ7 told me how to do it earlier today.
@mumadadd
“Why can’t you even make good on your (ahem) “threats” to stop wasting everyone’s time?”
I don’t get why we continue to humor these guys. We literally haven’t made a dent in any of these guys, even after offering cogent and thorough arguments. We get bizarre rationales and loose support. AlSina is literally supporting his entire argument on anecdotal evidence. Leo defended the failure of a test with ‘the ghosts looked in the wrong direction’! And yet we still continue to try imparting some reasoning on these guys.
I work nights at a slow job and even I’m getting tired of it lol
Devils gummy bear,
You owe me a new keyboard! This one might be ruined due to the water that sprayed out of my nose when I read that.
grabula,
Don’t capitalise the word blockquote.
Otherwise you were correct with the angle brackets.
That’s why I rarely use them…too easy to stuff it up and having your post resemble leo.
Grabula,
I, for one, am quite happy to stop responding to leo, other than to ridicule him until he either ceases to post inane shit or actually comes up with something that hasn’t already been countered many times over. I think it was Steve12 who suggested this ages ago–I think we have more than enough evidence now that he’s totally incapable of any form of reasonable discourse.
We should come up with some criteria for engaging weirdos, diverging like this:
They must:
-make a solid definable hypothesis
-provide evidence free of fallacious thinking
-refute point by point each but of evidence against
-not post links to their blogs in lieu of an answer.
This current batch of clowns is so bad I can literally predict their arguments before they make them. That should be a hint that maybe, just maybe the unique conclusion you’re swearing by has probably already been attempted and failed
@grabula
“No, it is intellectually lazy to assume a couple of young kids aren’t making up a story. One that might happen to coincide just enough with a real one to be accepted with credulous thinking. Eye witness and anecdotal evidence is bad enough now you’re trying to tell us not only is it OK but it’s OK to accept it from children”
You have to explain how these children could gain access to information that they did not have?
It is not limited to Children. Here is the testimony of an atheist Russian scientist who was killed by KGB and spent two days in the morgue and returned to his body on his own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8j2g-IsBPQ
Not only he learned that his parents did not abandon him at childhood as he was led to believe but were killed by KGB, and information that he did not have prior to his experience and turned out to be true. He also visited his friend in spirit and saw his little daughter crying. He learned that the baby had a fractured hip and the adults did not know of it. When he recovered, he told his friend about it and an X ray showed the baby had a fractured hip.
I deal with fanatical Muslims all the time. I see no difference between you and them.
AliSina,
For the love of god man, stop posting anecdotes! You have told repeatedly that they are worthless–even if we’re wrong, you know we are not going to be swayed by them.
See grabula’s suggested framework above, and see if you can come up with anything that meets these criteria. Otherwise you are wasting your breath. Go hang out on Youtube; maybe you can convince some people there with this twaddle.
Ignore that video. It does not have the stories I told you about. Watch this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcEbQdy-BAM
AliSina,
I would need to be convinced that there was no ‘pious fraud’ on the part of the experimenters, but I’d be absolutely ecstatic if this experiment bore fruit and could be replicated. Like I, and many other posters have said, I want you to be right. The reason I disagree with you is not because I’m threatened by your woo, but because you are not able to demonstrate that what you’re spouting off is true.
@AlSina
“I deal with fanatical Muslims all the time. I see no difference between you and them.”
That’s rich kid. You provide me actual evidence and I’ll take your theory seriously. You buy into a few stories credulously and somehow I’m the fanatic?
I’ll state this as simply as I can for you AlSina, as I did for leo. Provide me with credible and robust evidence and I will look at it seriously. That’s all I require. So far you’ve failed to do that
The story so far: Essentially, our brains are RC antennas for souls, which operate their meatsack avatars through an unknown mechanisms.
The basis of this claim: Dream-like stories of invisible, undetectable, incorporeal out of body experiences during unconsciousness (which BTW entirely encompeses the scope of NDEs). Unsurprisingly, these OBEs retain no meaningful information beyond that of a dream, information which only gains narration through collaboration with others (not a single story has been “corroborated”, Alsina. Collaborated on? Yup. Often times through pious/innocent coercion/fabrication. A single one corroborated? Nope. A critical distinction, hopelessly lost on you).
Is this astral-RC-meatpuppet notion even an hypothesis? Is it falsifiable? I used to think so, until I was introduced to the special pleading here; that unincorporated OBEs, by their very nature, will evade any attempt to verify their existence. Leo has suggested that OBEs are lousy for remembering things, and can’t be trusted to notice anything or retain any remarkable memory at all. So this notion fails to make it to the hypothesis stage due to unfalsifiability. Further, there are ordinary explanations for these anecdotal OBE stories.
Invisible, undetectable ghosts who do not remember things do not pass go, and do not collect $200.
“The Dragon in My Garage” by Carl Sagan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJRy3Kl_z5E
(and for Leo, the Canadian version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frI5y6tNsZg)
The scope of your qualitative data collection, and analysis, in a nutshell.
@ mumadadd
“For the love of god man, stop posting anecdotes! You have told repeatedly that they are worthless–even if we’re wrong, you know we are not going to be swayed by them.”
Are you really stupid? You can’t even know the difference between anecdote and evidence. How else we would know that consciousness survives? It is like people climbing a hill and coming back saying there is a village behind that hill and you would call all those reports anecdotes and dismiss them. How else can we know if there is a village behind that hill? I am baffled at the stupidity of you guys. You are actually more brain dead than Muslim. You ask for proof and when I show them to you, you don’t want to look at them. Sorry, have no time for stupid people.
Good bye
“The scope of your qualitative data collection, and analysis, in a nutshell.”
I shot soda out of my nose I laughed so hard
@ AlSina
I demonstrated a very commonplace way this occurs. Scroll up.
You must first rule out the ordinary explanations before you leap like an idiot to the extraordinary.
@mumadaddon and grabulaon, regarding interacting with the weirdos; I second the ridicule approach, after it becomes derpfully pointless. I find this quote particularly apt (due to AlSina’s strange Christainy rant):
“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them…”
– Long Tom Nickleface Pantaloons, 3rd place runner up for President of ‘Merika
Houston, AlSina’s brain here. The Eagle has landed.
@alsina
“Are you really stupid? You can’t even know the difference between anecdote and evidence. How else we would know that consciousness survives? It is like people climbing a hill and coming back saying there is a village behind that hill and you would call all those reports anecdotes and dismiss it”
See how wrong you are again? A Town on the other side of a hill is plausible. I can test it by walking up and observing that fact myself. Until I do I have only anecdotal evidence that it exists. It seems plausible enough. However if I am at the top of the hill observing the absence of a town, but they insist it was there, the burden of proof is on them to show evidence it existed. Until then I still only have anecdotal evidence.
I really don’t get why it’s so hard for you to understand that a bunch of stories still only adds up to a bunch of stories.
““Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them…”
– Long Tom Nickleface Pantaloons, 3rd place runner up for President of ‘Merika”
It really is. Once you hit the wall of obstinate ignorance you have nowhere else to go
ALiSina,
If you tell me that you have a pet cat called Chairman Miaow, I will accept your anecdote without question, as it comports with reality as I understand it; I know that you are a human, I know that cats exist, and I know that people often keep cats as pets.
But if you tell me that souls exist, and can leave the body during NDEs, I will not accept any amount of anecdotes as evidence unless their content can be demonstrated not to be the result of known neurological processes. I would start to pay attention if, for example, everyone who flatlined saw Jesus, or the slug god I once saw in a K-hole. But we do understand how memories are confabulated and retrodicted to include new narrative details, and we do understand that people generally want to believe that death is not the end, and we do understand cognitive bias and how this whole sorry mess results in credulous twerps like yourself spaffing off inane anecdotes as though they represent evidence.
Oh, for shame, AliSina, for shame.
AlSina,
“You are actually more brain dead than Muslim”
I think you meant Islam. Because Muslims are pretty much like Christians – a mixed bunch of ordinary people until they embarrass themselves talking about their religion. Of course there are fanatics on both sides with admittedly more than a fair share on the Muslim side. But no need to generalise.
But, I’m sorry, Al, all your stories ARE simply anecdotes and, as I explained above, the witnesses do not change this. It is just easy to fool someone, and much easier when you have fooled yourself as well. Most “witnesses” fall over themselves to agree. Really, if youtube is your thing, look it up. It’s hilarious.
“You have to explain how these children could gain access to information that they did not have”
Nope. You have to verify that they actually had access to information during the OBE that they did not have before the OBE. Unless and until that verification is available, it’s a waste of time trying to explain how they gained this information. Because without that verification, there is nothing to explain.
I truly hope you understand this at some level.
So….
Just ONE verified case.
That’s all I ask.
…and what you should demand yourself.
AliSina,
I think the word that best descrobes you is ‘nincompoop’.
You’re Bigears to leo’s Noddy.
mumadadd-
You saw it too? K is a hell of a thing…
Oh yeah, total alteration of reality – synesthesia even. The slug god is a parasitic universe that craves any and all conscious experience; suffering, pain, pleasure, orgasms, whatever.
Indeed. AliSina has been given more than enough time to come up with something intelligible. And it’s nice to bust out the N-bomb (nincompoop) occasionally.
AliSina,
For realzies? Pinky swear? Leo has let me down countless times on this….
Missed this one…
leo: “I am sorry but its been shown that oxygen deprivation is not the cause of near death experiences, the same with drugs that been debunked hundreds of times the same with stimulating certain parts of the brain”
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers07.html
http://psychology.jrank.org/pages/444/Near-Death-Experience.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
Leo and Alisina:
http://enidblytonsociety.co.uk/author/covers/noddy-and-big-ears-have-a-picnic-house-book-6.jpg
I don’t know how reliable this source is, but the author claims there is not yet ONE verified case of successfully reading a placard placed seven foot above the floor:
http://www.paranormalpeopleonline.com/is-the-aware-project-really-finding-answers-ndes-and-the-science-of-death/
Perhaps leo and Al are aware of this, and this is why they are already making excuses:
Goddamn those pesky placards not getting noted!
It couldn’t be because…
No, BJ7! Leo and AliSina have already explained that blinking lights needed to be used to attract the souls’ attention. If you don’t get it then I guess you don’t get it. HUFF!!!
Ali Sina,
I Googled you to see if you’d been posting on other forums. I have to commend you on publicly and actively taking a stand against Islam. Your arguments on this forum are still totally vacuous, but I totally respect your activism efforts! (sarcasm) peace be upon you! (/sarcasm)
I’ve been playing with the placecard experiment in my head today (It had been ages since I’d encountered OBE/NDE/Astral-projection stuff, this afterlife debate and brain receiver stuff has really churned up some loons). I can, right off the bat, rattle off a few dozen ways the blinding could be easily compromised by the old place card facing up, then put in an envelope type setup. Too much room for human error to enter into the experiment, unintentional or not.
Thinking through ways to rule these out, I started thinking of using a simple (extremely simple) LED displays instead of place cards. The resolution doesn’t have to be anything more than an old Lite Brite toy (remember those), or it could be an Android tablet.
And as I’ve been following along here, and okay… I’m willing to account for the idea that alleged out-of-body entities are (big understatement) atypically impaired. Perhaps much too impaired to see or remember numerals? Or letters? Or words? Unable to “crack a code”? Okay. Sure. Then let’s make it easy; shapes and colors. A solid red circle… A blue Square… A green X. A yellow triangle. A blue triangle. You get the picture.
I liked the idea of a whole bunch of place cards all over the operating room. You know, placed up on everything, or positioned strategically, out of site and controlled of course. So, instead of place cards, LEDs everywhere, facing up. They would synchronously display the same color/shape all at once. To an observer overhead, they would see, let’s say- blue squares everywhere. THAT would be overwhelming visual characteristic of the environment, when looking down, blue squares out the wazoo- impossible to miss, even if the observer’s attention was singularly focused on the operating table, there would still be a dozen or two blue squares basically in the way.
These LED Lite Brite/Android tablets, programed to be randomized, would need to log/time stamp their output information. The system could be activated automatically or by switch when a patient is admitted, or the displays could just be left running on an endless randomized pattern, one color/shape left on for… An hour? Or even randomize the “change screen saver every ______ minutes” function.
Then of course, I immediately think, well, how bright are these things going to be? If I’m thinking Lite Brite pegs/LED tablet bright, well, so much of operating rooms are reflective surfaces, and how on earth would one control for that?
If this were my research project, and I had access to the rooms where my experiments would be running in, I’d be sitting in there for a good long while, pacing around, sitting on the floor, sticking my iPhone on top of things on full brightness, thinking things through… Hovering around during operations. And this is pretty much the limit of being able to design an experiment in my head, without the help of input/feedback/thoughts of my peers or other people thinking about things (I haven’t done lit. search, actually, I think I will now that I think about it).
What do you guys think?
Get out of my head, mumadadd.
I’m just thinking outloud. For people like Leo or AliSina, if your reading this, this is how an intellectually curious person, with some amount of creativity and scientific training, starts thinking through the ways to solve the problem of detecting a frustratingly hard thing to detect, i.e. I’m actually trying to think through ways to detect OBEs, partially because I’m curious, but mostly because I really want to detect them….
And that last bit is something I think a lot of people get wrong about skeptics and scientists.
I immediately jumped to LEDs after reading this paragraph, but didn’t follow it through to the extent you did with reducing it to shapes and colours (I thought randomly generated words)–but I totally agree. I’ll pray to Alan that such an experiment is conducted, and even sacrifice one of my virgins in heaven if it does.
It’s a pretty robust design that could be used to test other claims, such as remote viewing and psychic readings (you have a person view the LEDs then ask the psychic to psychically infer the images, obviously with no hints about the criteria).
Jeesh, I was about to say I’m just as rusty on remote viewing as I am on OBEs… But then, I guess, nothing has really “happened” after centuries of trying to detect any level of clairvoyance (Leo, that’s what the Force was called before it got rebranded as ESP and psi, after years and years of parlor tricks in séance rooms turning up nothing, except parlor tricks, “clairvoyance” started getting a bum rap… Which is why us “pseudoskeptics” sort of toss your boring old claims that never worked ever in the history of looking into them onto the enormous heap of bullshit that’s been piling up for centuries, the same old crap, a mountain of it by now… compared to not a single shred of evidence for something interesting)
I never keep up with the million dollar challenge, I wonder if a consultant has come up with an app for remote viewing. An iPad in an empty room, on a table. I suppose the utility of this would be the ability to double or triple blind the output information, but then, has no one ever gotten statistically significant hits with boring old cards? I can’t think of any interesting reason to look into it any more.
In my bleary-eyed insomnia, I’m dreaming a rig, a chandelier to suspend from the operating room ceiling, a circular rig. With a dozen iPads facing up. I wonder if I can find an OR with a ceiling over 8′? Anyway, how weird would it be to paint the ceiling flat black? And those reflective grills in the fluorescent bays would have to go, and diffused screens would be put in their place. I’m thinking up more and more elaborate rigs, but I’m of the jamie hyneman school: the mark of a master of designer is elegance/simplicity. So everytime I start to get carried away, I have to stop myself and think “simpler” “more elegant” “idiot-proofness through bare bones”. I’m full of it tonight. Can’t sleep.
Are people really still claiming that they can astral project? Or remote detect? What are they calling this crap these days? Haven’t these types never yet, not once, been able to detect anything better than statistical random guessing? I’m genuinely curious.
Missed this one- AliSina (Yesterday, eh, 31 May 2014 at 3:39 pm) said:
Alright AliSina, just in case you ever come back, you need to understand a few things.
Look, we try really hard not to bother our high priest. Whenever Steve comes down from Mount Sinai, he usually smashes things something awful, and busts up our little graven things down here in the comments (it’s the reason we can’t have nice things).
Where are we going to get our dogma if Steves is smashing the tablets? Damn it man, let us dance around our golden idols of incredulity and skepticism, and of not taking YouTube video-stories as gospel.
Alisina, I love how you can declare, in 30 foot high letters that you “are not a believer”, or have no horse in this whatever you said, have no ideology to defend, etc, again and again… And in the same breath holler that anyone who doesn’t see things in your extreme black and white terms is a dogmatic liar.
That’s nuts. That’s something a crazy person does. That’s zealot stuff. That’s the stuff fanatics shout at people. Stark raving mad couldn’t take enough adderall to keep up with you.
BJ7 calmly and civilly responded to your denunciations with measured and reasonable politeness. His straightforward elegance is remarkable to read through, compared to your hostile vitriol.
“BJ7 calmly and civilly responded to your denunciations with measured and reasonable politeness. His straightforward elegance is remarkable to read through, compared to your hostile vitriol”
Hmmm..
You’re right!
I had to go back a full 24 hours to find an even mildly snarky remark.
I would have thought a nagging Achilles strain would have made me a little more testy than that.
BJ7
Those materialist objections to near death experiences has been rebutted
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.ca/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html
Also, I knew the problems before they created these experiments like placement cards apparently they were not taking the problems seriously.
There’s one thing that’s just so irritating about some woos. Even though they’re so certain of their correctness, they’ll often go out of their way to rationalize failure as the only possible outcome to the experiments we propose. It leaves one to wonder who they’re really trying to convince. Skeptics, or themselves?
LED displays with randomized simple shapes? Sounds good like a good angle if there’s enough color and shape combinations. If there’s too few, someone might get it right by chance. Though for near-sighted souls, you’ll want to make sure all the shapes are easily distinguishable. Wouldn’t want them to confuse a square for a rhombus/diamond, for example. Doing so would also provide less excuse for experimenter degrees of freedom.
I would suggest an experiment of a picture of someone in their family that they would notice put on both sides of the bed.
Why?
Ah yes, because it’s a high probability hit, and NDE experiences often contain reports of seeing one’s family, so let’s match the protocol with what we expect people to report. Never mind trying to find some proper evidence.
It’s also sufficiently generic that you could massage a vague response to fit the correct answer–woman, middle aged, fair hair; oh it was your aunt, not your mother, but clearly there was some psychic intuition as you were close! No, it wasn’t your mother but your father, but was a parent so souls exist!
leo : On the link you provided one can read this :
Many red flags here…
This should arouse your suspicion as to the honesty of whoever wrote this. You might want to look for a probable agenda they may have…
Speaking of magicians….So do these really credulous people just straight-up piss themselves with sheer wonder when they go to a magic show? Are they like: OH MY SWEET JESUS that man was just sawed IN HALF! Then he disappeared and instantly re-materialized on the other side of the room, this violates all known laws of physics (but not quantum) and proves the supernatural DOES exist, HOLY CRAP STICKS!!
Mumadadd
Let’s see because its important to them and it means something to them not some silly sign with a nothing on it. Or some envelope.
Insomniac
Well he is right no red flags seem to be only red flags when a paranormal proponent mention it but if a skeptic mentions that most scientists uncovered fraud in all mediums and that mind is somehow produced by the brain that doesn’t raise any red flags?.
leo : Well, no. You won’t see anything like that in a blog like this one. There’s nothing but arguments from authority. It strikes me when I read things like this and it immediately makes me feel like I should be wary. Read again what I pasted, it tells you a lot about the guys who’re involved in this website.
I’m not using double standards, really. Think about it.
Isomniac
They are not arguments of authority he using scientists yes that have rebuttal what other materialist scientist’s said about near death experiences in their studies. It’s that the evidence from rem intrusion, lack of oxygen and so on for near death experiences fall apart when looked at with a critical mind.
Leo, you really don’t understand mumadadd’s point, do you? You really don’t understand. I can’t magically grant you the capacity for curiosity or learning, or the interest in understanding the thinking behind designing an experiment with independently controlled variables that would show statistically meaningful results. Putting familiar pictures of loved ones on place cards could not possibly demonstrate any kind of interesting effect, because NDEs report hazy/vague recollections of loved ones. You do not see why this is an issue. I give up. You refuse to, or are otherwise unable to learn. I’m afraid to say these ideas can’t be dumbed down any further. I spent a good hour going through your blog the other day (and I would encourage anyone trying to figure what’s going on with our colleague here, to take a look), and this isn’t an ad hom or tone trolling or anything, this is an honest to goodness appraisal of the situation; for the peanut gallery; I think there might be some developmental issues going on here, for real. Just something to bear in mind. Leo, bud… I’m sorry, but I give up. Ridicule wouldn’t even the ease the frustration. End of the rope. Good luck and godspeed.
Not to belabor the point of why putting pictures of familiar faces on both nightstands of a hospital bed wouldn’t yield interesting results… But I was up late reading about OBEs. I was reading one of BJ7’s links (Blanke at the University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne inducing OBE-like effects in a woman). What struck me, was when she was experiencing out of body sensations, she could only see her immediate surroundings from the vantage point of her bed… She couldn’t see her own face or head, but only her trunk, arms and legs- the things you see when lying down. Isn’t this the case in all OBEs, that the only verifiable sensory experiences reported are what the patients can see in their immediate vicinity? Or what they can guess at, imagine to be what things would appear to look like in the most general terms without any particular details, or otherwise construe from descriptions they overhear or talk about later? OBEs seeing things that patients could otherwise see from lying in their bed would only show that nothing extraordinary is occurring.
I read something by Thomas Metzinger – he’s a philosopher who’s also quite involved with neuroscience, and describes being able to float around the room in his own OBEs. It might just come down to how powerful the individual’s visual imagination is as to how much they can reconstruct.
Another problem too is the fact that death is a process itself not an event.
Devil’s Gummy Bear
I will admit I am considered “mentally challenged” or learning disability but that doesn’t mean you have to be bias either and say nothing of what I say is useful. Although once when I have a phobia fear of death I went to a psychiatrist and checked out if I was able to read good remember what I read and according to him I have no learning disability whatsoever. I have looked at the near death literature and they don’t report like you said “hazy recollections of their loved ones”.
Hey Leo, I didn’t mean that disparagingly. I’ve just noticed some of us, including myself, have flown off the handle, perhaps a little too harshly. If it’s any consolation, I see a psychologist weekly for some things (I even see a psychiatrist every other month. Medical science; booyah!). Here’s to striving for a world where these things are no longer taboos, no stigmas attached; Cheers.
But… For the life of me, I cannot figure out a way to inspire some modicum critical thinking in you, and I’m a little short-staffed in the patience department these days. So, I must resign myself of it.
A common trait in NDEs are reports of reunions with the departed (loved ones). Thus hazy recollections of. A common characteristic of OBEs is the alleged observation of people in the room. These people are very often loved ones. Thus hazy recollections of.
The devil’s Gummy Bear
If you actually read the near death experience literature Olaf’s patient had a hallucination not a real out of body experience like people who are close to death have. They don’t report seeing their legs becoming shorter or just seeing their trunk and arms.
leo,
They merely argue that the OBEs induced by oxygen deprivation and drugs are different in quality from OBEs during NDEs. Well, I’m not surprised. I would expect them to be different in quality. Different circumstances and all that. They have not rebutted oxygen deprivation and drugs as causes of OBEs.
They also think they can pin down the actual time the OBE occurs but, to do so, they are assuming their conclusion. This is called “circular reasoning” or “begging the question”.
And where’s the rebuttal that stimulating the right anterior gyrus induces an OBE.
BillyJ7
If they were the same then OBEs and NDEs probably are brought on by oxygen deprivation and drugs. Skeptics say they probably occur before or after it occurs not when it happens. But when nde proponents say they can pin point when it occurs the skeptics get all mad.
I have yet to encounter any compelling research that would indicate OBE phenomena require extraordinary explanations, Leo.
Ordinary explanations include; hallucinations, oxygen deprivation, magnetic stimulation, dreaming, stroke, ketamine, or any plethora of drugs for that matter, etc etc etc.
Let me change tact for a moment, so it doesn’t seem like I’m dancing around something, just to make this one single point, so I don’t have to come back to it: I have yet to see a need to invoke an extraordinary explanation for OBEs, i.e. there is no such thing as “real” OBEs. There is not a single shred of evidence to indicate they occur.
I’m sort of bored with amusing Leo’s belief that OBEs are magic carpet rides of the soul-ghost. My point, above, is there is no aspect of OBE phenomena that requires paranormal explanations. Instead of accumulating evidence for psi (there is none, which is basically a deathblow for these ideas), there has been an exponential growth of evidence in neuroscience and medical science that all purported OBE phenomena occur within a malfunctioning brain.
This is how I arrive at the above stated conclusion.
If OBEs are magic carpet rides for ghosts and if NDEs are ferry rides to Valhalla… Then it is going to take more than a bookmarks folder full of links to the vaguer, fringer, netherwebs to convince me.
/rant
Lol you need to read up on some near death experience accounts. I have read hundreds of them.
I have made up a list of accurate out of body veridical perception cases 7 years ago on my blog. Here is the list.
Out Of Body Verdical Experience List
veridical nde perceptions
http://www.nderf.org/julie_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/robert_e_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/della_m_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/sally_s_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/rf_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/ruud_l_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/warida_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/bernardita_b_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/gwen_p_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/sandra_j_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/tim_b_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/barbara_g_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/francesca_t_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/earl_w's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/sherry_g's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/amy_p's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/andy_n's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/graciela_h's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/monik_j's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/billly_d's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/andrew_c's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/tina_j's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/eve_h's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/annie_m's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/kris_k's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/charlene_k's_nde.htm
http://www.oberf.org/donald_m_obes.htm
http://www.oberf.org/david_sobe.htm
_________________
http://www.nderf.org/araceli_s_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/S's%20NDE.htm
http://www.nderf.org/celeste_y's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/kristin_d's_nde.htm
http://www.nderf.org/david_m's_2614_nde.htm
1. The case of Al Sullivan: Al was a 55 year old truck driver who was undergoing triple by-pass surgery when he had a powerful NDE that included an encounter with his deceased mother and brother-in-law, who told Al to go back to his to tell one of his neighbors that their son with lymphoma will be OK. Furthermore, during the NDE, Al accurately noticed that the surgeon operating on him was flapping his arms in an unusual fashion, with his hands in his armpits. When he came back to his body after the surgery was over, the surgeon was startled that Al could describe his own arm flapping, which was his idiosyncratic method of keeping his hands sterile.
2. The case of the Chinese woman: The author Maggie Callanan in her 1993 book, Final Gifts, wrote about an elderly Chinese woman who had an NDE in which she saw her deceased husband and her sister. She was puzzled since her sister wasn’t dead, or so she thought. In actuality, her family had hid her sister’s recent death from her for fear of upsetting her already fragile health.
3. The case of Pam Reynolds:This is reported by Michael Sabom in his book Light and Death. Pam Reynolds underwent a very risky operation to remove an aneurysm from her brain, in which her brain was drained totally of its blood so that the doctors could clip off the swollen blood vessel. During this procedure, Pam had a deep NDE in which she saw all of the details of the operation and later reported on it with complete accuracy, even though she was “dead” by usual criteria (no heartbeat or respiration, and a flat EEG) for much of it.
4. Cases of the blind who can see: As recorded by Kenneth Ring in his book, Mind Sight, there is solid evidence for 31 cases in which blind people report visually accurate information obtained during an NDE.
Leo, I am intimately familiar with the state of psi phenomena, i have quite literally read “hundreds” of NDE accounts over the years. Probably thousands of accounts. I spent the first half of my life steeped in this stuff. And unless anything remarkable has developed in the past 15 or 20 years or so years since I stopped paying attention to this shit, then I don’t care. At all… For me, It’s been interesting to communicate a little bit with believers (since the Afterlife Debate), and it is endlessly fascinating for me to see how your minds work. I’m getting off now.
Wouldn’t you be happier spending your time with anti-pseudoskeptics and psi proponents?
@the devil’s gummy bear
Yeah I would be happier spending time there instead.
Sorry, leo, I can’t decipher your response.
@Leo
“I have read hundreds of them.”
And?
@Leo
I don’t know if you noticed where AlSina got torn to pieces but it was insisting anecdotal evidence is anything.
The other thing I notice is you true believer types tend to assume we haven’t read up on this stuff. Just another indication you haven’t been paying attention to what people have told you this entire time.
Hallucinations of viewing your body from another viewpoint (which I think many NDE/OBE’s probably are) seem interesting from a visual psychology perspective. If you have normal binocular (two-eyed) vision, then your “sense of self” actually exists in space at the midpoint between your eyes, called the “cyclopean eye” or “cyclopean viewpoint.” Providing even further evidence that your sense of an external spatial environment (and your perceived place in it) are an elaborate mental construction.
But, interestingly, there’s no theoretical reason your “sense of self” cyclopean view couldn’t exist at another point in space or from another viewpoint on your body. The reason for its location may be due to the primacy of vision as a high-fidelity sense, and also it seems reasonable that your sense of self should probably correspond to your actual physical self as you make your way through your spatial environment (to largely avoid misperceptions of the environment and avoid walking off cliffs or into obstacles; there’s almost certainly an evolutionary advantage that has shaped this).
During some experiences of near-death brain states, trauma, etc., the mental module responsible for locating your sense of self at the cyclopean viewpoint seems to be disengaged, probably allowing for degraded, hallucinatory-type perceptions of viewing the world from other positions in space and even “seeing” your body from another perspective. Other commenters I believe have already pointed out some of the brain areas likely involved in this, though I can’t recall off the top of my head (no pun intended!).
Lep,
Let me try to explain why we aren’t moved by your anecdotal evidence. First, let’s take a hypothetical situation where a patient flatlines in hospital, is then resuscitated and reports an NDE – that first report, if taken in a controlled manner, without any family or friends around and before they have even see them–to avoid any kind of contamination of the report with external details–should be your only data point for this report.
If it could be then demonstrated that the subject was able to provide information about things happening elsewhere while they were flatlined, and in sufficient detail; or if they reported meeting people and describe them in specific detail (not generalities), AND it could be later proved to match a dead relative that they were completely unaware of, THEN you would have something approaching mildly compelling.
There are still huge issues with the scenario above – how likely is it that they were completely unaware of this dead relative? How could this be verified? How much could be accounted for by coincidence (most people have dead grandparents, or great uncles, or whatever, and they have certain common features)? There are certain things happening within hospitals or waiting rooms that most people would expect to be happening, so how much of what’s reported can be accounted for by general expectation? There are certain ways most people would expect their loved ones to act in the waiting room whilst they are flatlining, so how much of that can be explained by general expectation?
Most of the time we don’t get even any where near this – what you have is reports from days, weeks or months after the event, with plenty of time to confabulate memories and incorporate elements from other people’s recounting of the event. Plently of time to twist events to fit a narrative and your own cultural beliefs. This could be deliberate to some extent in some cases, but most of the time this will happen completely unconsciously.
Do you understand this, leo? I don’t think you do, as when we were discussing how to design an experiment to actually give us some useful outputs, eliminate as many of the sources of biases as possible, you advocated trashing this model and using photos of loved ones “because the souls won’t be interested in shapes or numbers.” Having read what I just laid out, do you now see the problems with what you were suggesting?
And this is all without even taking into account the extreme implausibility of a non-corporial soul that can leave the body but still have sensory input and form memories.
Oops – typo. That was addressed to leo, not Lep!
I had trouble reading your comment after that typo. Gave me the giggles for some reason and I needed a few minutes to collect myself before continuing.
But, yes, spot on.
Mumadadd
Do you think someone is going to be interested in a silly sign while there hovering above their body you said you would be but that’s you lots of others wouldn’t be. Extreme implausibility as you already know such a thing doesn’t exist. Also I should point out that people are radically transformed after a near death experience if it was a hallucination that isn’t something you would not expect. There are lots of those cases where souls have seen dead relatives they never saw before and later like you said actually did match a dead relative that they remembered they saw.
@Grabula
I need to ask you what types of evidence for survival have you researched? Near Death Experiences? Automatic writing? Cross Correspondences? Drop Dead Communications? Apparitions? Proxy Sittings? After Death Communication? Deathbed Visions? Poltergeist activity? Electronic and Instrumental Transcommunication? Past Life research? Xenoglossy? Astral Body Experiments? Out of Body Experiences?.
leo100 should be renamed to SpecialPleading101
leo,
Oh dear. The rebuttal to examples you just referenced are in the post you were responding to…
At this point, are you ready to acknowledge that further discussion is futile? You aren’t able to acknowledge the fundamental problems at the base of your reasoning, and you sure as hell haven’t challenged anyone here’s stance on these issues.
This is incomprehensible. Was that double negative intentional?
Mumadadd
You know what I mean if it was a hallucination why is there such radical transformation of the person?. I know what you said before you said you would see those signs because it would interests you but I just said many others would not be interested like you are. I think I have that is why you came up with that lowball attack on attacking my character. Skeptics very commonly used the tactic of name calling such as crackpots among other words when they realize there arguments have no substance.
leo,
“You know what I mean if it was a hallucination why is there such radical transformation of the person?”
What sort of transformation are you talking about? I think if came close to death but pulled through, I’d be transformed (in a sense) temporarily. And if I saw something seemingly inexplicable, sure, that would have an effect too. But that would be no reason to expect anyone else to believe in souls and an afterlife.
“I know what you said before you said you would see those signs because it would interests you but I just said many others would not be interested like you are.”
I think you’re mistaking me for someone else. No worries it’s a long thread.
“I think I have that is why you came up with that lowball attack on attacking my character.”
Think you have what? What are you referring to?
“when they realize there arguments have no substance.”
Very rich, leo, very rich.
leo – others have addressed the general problems with such evidence. They are narratives that emerge after the fact in the context, often, of prior belief.
The Pam Reynolds case, as an example of distortion of these histories, is often misrepresented. Her brain activity was no flat lined during the entire procedure, only a small part of it. There was plenty of opportunity for her to have formed those memories during compromised, but not “flat lined,” brain activity.
Mumadadd
We are not talking about some temporary transformation but actually a permanent transformation. I think I have come up with good arguments is what I mean. Mumadadd sure do you hear believers saying pseudoskeptics, closed minded yes a lot. Do you hear skeptics saying crackpots, woo woo believers, closed minded back to them yes a lot. I would not like to be classified as a believer myself as I think I have very good reasons for thinking there is a lot of scientific evidence for the existence of psi and the afterlife.
leo “I think I have very good reasons for thinking there is a lot of scientific evidence for the existence of psi and the afterlife”
That’s what we are trying to tell you, speaking as actual practicing scientists, is that you don’t have SCIENTIFIC evidence for the existence of psi and the afterlife. You have ANECDOTAL evidence and crappy, uncontrollabe, pseudo-scientific “experiments” at best. We are telling you, as scientists, that these do not in any way meet the normal standards of science, and you are just confused or refuse to believe what we are telling you.
The Other John Mc
Well that is your opinions many practicing scientists would disagree with you. Even some skeptical scientists are admitting that the evidence is very good.
But I guess I should trust your opinion? you know what I don’t take anyone’s opinions at face value I decide for myself.
You don’t have to take anyone’s word…that’s the beauty of science. Literally dozens of people have walked you through mutliple cases explaining why what you are claiming fails the rigorous standards of science, yet I think you have managed to fatigue them all with your obstinence. As long as you admit you are relying on non-scientific anecdotal evidence to support your belief, there is little anyone can say about it, until you start saying Science is on your side because it clearly isn’t.
“many practicing scientists would disagree with you”
No. No they wouldn’t. Not at all, you are dead wrong on this. A few fringe-dwelling scientists who do shoddy experimental work might support your views, but as we saw with one of the links you provided, their crap doesn’t get published in respectable journals because its awful, so they unsurprisingly stick to non-peer-reviewed works or even start their own crappy journals (e.g., the Journal of Scientific Exploration).
I said:
“If OBEs are magic carpet rides for ghosts and if NDEs are ferry rides to Valhalla… Then it is going to take more than a bookmarks folder full of links to the vaguer, fringer, netherwebs to convince me.”
To which Leo responded with:
“I have made up a list of accurate out of body veridical perception cases 7 years ago on my blog. Here is the list.
…”
Sorry Leo, I think today would be better spent getting caught up on things, and then going for a cycle ride up Big Cottonwood Canyon here in gay olde SLC. It’s probably a beautiful day in Nova Scotia, you should get out and breath it in
Leo,
It’s not impossible that you’re right, and souls are much more interested in pictures of their loves than codes or LESs. Now can you please explain how you’d go about designing the experiment to test their recollection of who the picture was of?
“he’s going into cardiac arrest! Nurse, go through his wallett and see if he has any photos of his kids or a pet dog!”
Following this thread and other recent ones should demonstrate the clear differences of skeptics and others who claim to be skeptics. There is no way these threads should EVER reach the # of comments they have – although I do wish I had more time to be a regular commenter, both sides proceed WAY to far too fast before agreeing (or not) on premise. This is not about belief – this is about how beliefs are formed.
Leo, Ali, Hardnose, Sonic pay attention…ANY story, no matter how convincing, no matter how many there are, no matter how many people seem to corroborate it, DOES NOT meet the threshold for scientific evidence. It may meet your standard for evidence, and therefore your have formed your world view based on this and you consider it “evidence.” Until you come the realization that the standard for actual scientific evidence is much MUCH greater than anecdotes (hearsay), you will continue to accept and shape your beliefs based on fantastic and unsupported claims. Knowledge is belief that is true and JUSTIFIED. Whether you think so or not, your beliefs in psi and the like are NOT justified. Raising your standard of what constitutes evidence is the entire crux of these comments. This includes Ali’s personal NDE experience which seems to have had a powerful effect on him – his experience should be accepted as extremely powerful. This happens to millions of ppl around the world, and thankfully there are those like Dr. Novella and Sam Harris who are trying to shed light on the true neurological nature of these experiences.
To the true skeptics that sometimes become so frustrated by this lack of understanding – it is easy to let the ad homs fly – they are quite entertaining, but keep in mind there are thousands or readers like myself who can plainly see which side has has the better argument. We should be compassionate in our understanding that not everyone has the same capacity for understanding. No amount of explaining facts or methodology will do – the only way to change someones mind is to help them achieve cognitive dissonance in their own mind. Those of you who ask these types of questions to believers of woo are on the right track. Keep your comments short and interactive while pressing for answers to questions that really get to the root of why beliefs formed in the first place.
The Other John Mc
I am not just talking about proponents which there is a large amount of them but others as well that are actually interested in psi and afterlife research but keep there job in science because it helps them keep food on the table.
Mumadadd
Well I would make sure that it was very controlled. It doesn’t have to be a photo of a loved one it can be as simple as their own shoe that they wear. They would identify with that or their hat.
Leo,
Okay, keep going. What would you control for and how? Try to be specific.
I would control for contamination, make sure the shoe is a good distance from the bed.
I’ve come to find out that these guys are right about NDEs and OBEs. Saturday night, I saw Heaven: The Light, the euphoric warmth – the whole deal.
Now, in all fairness, I should mention that I had 12 Lagunitas IPAs just prior to this happening, but I don’t think that the effects on my brain can explain this spooky story.
By the next morning, I had turned away from the “The Light”, but I somehow knew that my wife was furious with me despite her having been home the whole time. How could I have remotely sensed this? It would seem that quantum mechanics (or ghosts) had allowed me to read her mind (or traverse our shared consciousness). There is no other explanation for this truly spooky action at a distance.
Turns out it’s not just me. All over the world, people in a similar euphoric state are able to remotely read their spouses’ minds from all kinds of distant locations – bars, jails, strip joints – whatever. You can’t just dismiss the claims until you’ve read the stories.
Materialism is dead, Q.E.D.
@Steve12
LMAO, I have had experiences with the paranormal and I can tell you I have looked at all the natural explanations to account for them first I never jump to a paranormal explanation. What have I found? that in my experiences they couldn’t be explained by natural explanations. That was hard actually for me to admit that.
leo,
You know that you’re being totally stupid about this don’t you, leo?
I mean, you really want us to believe that if you had an OBE, you would not notice one of the placards with a shape drawn on it placed on a seven foot high shelf on each of the four walls of the resuscitation ward? A shelf placed there for no other apparent reason than to hold that placard with the shape on it? You wouldn’t even have to pay attention to it or to memorise it. All that would need to happen is for you to notice it and recall later that there was a placard with a star shape on it. Come on, leo, there’s a large star shape on a placard on a shelf specially attached to each of the four walls of the resusciation ward and you’re not going to notice it. Is that what you’re asking us to believe?
Is that REALLY what you’re asking us to believe?
The problem is that personal experience trumps scientific evidence every time. Leo100 is totally genuine in his belief there are no natural explanations for his experiences. When I was much younger I was “cold read” by an amateur astrologer, and I still remember how utterly convincing it was (even though this amateur astrologer was a fellow student, and hence knew me rather well — so I guess it was a “lukewarm reading”).
If something feels good it is very difficult to abandon, even with iron-clad scientific information available. It’s not our natural way of approaching information, and the ability of the rational part of the mind to override the subconscious parts that generate the good feelings is very limited.
To use Jonathan Haidt’s analogy — the rider has very little influence on where the elephant goes, and little option but to explain to the best of his abilities why they landed up where they landed up.
Souls always seem to be stupid, insipid, incurious, have bad memories, or are otherwise just plain incapable of anything beyond comforting platitudes. Leaves me to wonder what’s the point of having it linger after death.
What we need to do… guys and gals… is look at the evidence mosaic instead of demanding silly rigorous scientific evidence.
@Bronze Dog
How are souls stupid? insipid? incurious? bad memories? there is nothing in the evidence for survival that indicates that.
@Bill Openthalt
I didn’t say that but we should move away with the same old explanations like hallucinations especially if they been shown they were not involved.
BillyJoe7
If a soul is able to go anywhere’s it wants too what do you think it will do? Probably, check in on its family from miles away.
Those are fairly typical excuses given when someone asks that a soul to do something other than comfort the living or sit and watch its body. The difference is I rephrased them in less polite terms.
Bronzedog
You wouldn’t comfort the living or sit and watch your body?.
Leo “If a soul is able to go anywhere’s it wants to”
Why can’t a soul leave it’s body at any and all times? What’s holding it back? Don’t you think it is an utterly fantastic coincidence that the soul seems to leave the body ONLY in cases in which the physical body and/or brain happens to be under intense duress, injury, stress, under the influence of drugs, etc.? Do you not literally see the relationship there?
You don’t even need to respond to this, please just think about what a strange and bizarre coincidence that is.
Leo: “You wouldn’t sit and watch your body?”
That sounds like the most boring, god-awful thing I could ever imagine my soul doing, ever. Plus, my soul already knows what my body is doing, so why bother watching it in action? I’d be flipping through the channels on the hospital room’s TV, or snooping around watching people enter in their PIN numbers at the ATM, or paying attention to ridiculously obvious placards with secret numbers and shapes on them, so I could ACTUALLY FINALLY PROVE the existence of my soul and win a Nobel Prize. You know, something useful. Anything to avoid watching my own body lay around like a useless meatsack.
The Other John Mc
The soul leaves it’s body every night but we often don’t remember our dreams. No it wouldn’t know what your body was doing until it came out with an out of body experience. That isn’t useful to a lot of people winning a nobel prize what is useful to a lot of people is seeing if their loved ones are ok and finding out if they are going to be leaving this world or not.
My PKE meter just exploded. I forgot i set it on stupid. I give up.
@Devil’s Gummy bear
Lol you mean your bs meter that’s what you skeptics call it.
We’re being punk’d right? Any minute now Ashton is going to leap out of the bushes, laughing and pointing… I mean… C’mon, seriously? Really? You have got to be kidding me…
Ashton is a pretty funny guy. Have a good night folks.
Leo, I’ve already told you what I’d be doing if I had an OBE and why, but given how you speak, apparently you think know me and my family better than I do.
@leo
“I need to ask you what types of evidence for survival have you researched? Near Death Experiences? Automatic writing? Cross Correspondences? Drop Dead Communications? Apparitions? Proxy Sittings? After Death Communication? Deathbed Visions? Poltergeist activity? Electronic and Instrumental Transcommunication? Past Life research? Xenoglossy? Astral Body Experiments? Out of Body Experiences?.”
Like any good skeptic whenever a subject becomes interesting to me I look into it. In this case it was about 10-15years ago so I can’t recall specific sources. A few books, some documentaries, a little cruising on the internet both on credulous and non credulous sites. that’s the cognitive dissonance you guys have with skepticism. Atleast on it’s face you appear to assume or believe that we just automatically dismiss anything fanciful. It’s typically the opposite. As I’ve stated before, I’d love to see evidence for most, if not all of this stuff. However I absolutely do require robust, and thoroughly investigated evidence before I believe it’s true.
@Leo
“I have had experiences with what I thought was the paranormal and I can tell you I have looked at all the natural explanations to account for them first I never jump to a paranormal explanation. What have I found? that in my experiences they always had natural explanations. That was hard actually for me to admit that.”
There Leo, change a few words and you get exactly my thoughts on the subject. We can’t have both now can we?
Thank you Bronze Dog, now you’re speaking my Changuage:
Also, they eject themselves from our bodies at the precise moment when we need them the most. The hell?
Leo,
When I asked you to explain how you’d set up and control the NDE experiment, I was giving you a chance to demonstrate that you understand the purpose of blinding and controlling variables. And you come back with:
This is beyond a joke. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t expecting a decent answer but I had held out the tiniest sliver hope that you would show that you’d learned something.
Can somebody else help me out with something – I thought that there was an experiment such as we discussed (we excluding leo) that was close to completion; I think somebody here mentioned that something like this had already been conducted and not produced the results leo would have liked, which is why he’s got this hand-waving and special pleading already in the chamber and ready to fire.
Can anyone link to this/these studies?
mumadadd : Hoss was referring to the AWARENESS study by Dr. Sam Parina, it’s currently at the peer-review stage (http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=293).
Steven also mentioned there has been a preliminary study, with negative results, but I don’t have any link.
Sorry, it’s called the AWARE study.
Insomniac – your link worked so I found it anyway. Much obliged.
Street Epistomologist – good comments. In regards to: “both sides proceed WAY to far too fast before agreeing (or not) on premises”.
We seem to be caught in the trap described by Sam Harris: how do you explain to someone the value of logic & empirical evidence, using logic & empirical evidence, when they don’t value logic & empirical evidence in the first place.
“We seem to be caught in the trap described by Sam Harris: how do you explain to someone the value of logic & empirical evidence, using logic & empirical evidence, when they don’t value logic & empirical evidence in the first place.”
Important enough to be repeated.
Street epistemologist – The thing we’re up against for example in this thread is several individuals who believe. If you spend the time to read through for example Leo’s comments since he’s been the most persistent, you’ll see patterns. For example, he often ignores direct evidence from us, or in some cases direct questions. If he doesn’t he almost as often insists he’s already explained it to us (or it’s on his blog, classic!). His evidence, as you’ve pointed out, is strictly anecdotal. He doesn’t seem to understand that even scientists are capable of credulous thinking and he equates a few fringe ideals as ‘accepted’ by modern science, when the evidence doesn’t bare this out. He often engages is pointing out the specific light absorbing properties of our kettle, while missing those of his own pot. His accusations are ironically often his most glaring problems when it comes to logically looking at the evidence.
Recently we’ve had a rash of these guys. Some of them, for example Ian and AlSani have both convinced themselves with little to no evidence, that they’ve figured out what others haven’t been able to. Leo I think is a true believer who hasn’t necessarily figured it out for himself but is more than willing to swallow whatever reinforces his beliefs. This conversation moved past the point of any real intellectual discourse with these guys shortly after it started but I think some of us are just bored enough to engage anyway.
“This conversation moved past the point of any real intellectual discourse with these guys shortly after it started but I think some of us are just bored enough to engage anyway.”
I often get more engrossed in these kinds of conversations than the original topic. It is some kind of strange fascination, much like rubbernecking car crash scenes. I have also noticed quite a few more cranks coming out the woodwork recently. It might be because the blog is getting a higher profile, more hits through facebook linking etc… Steve has the numbers and might be able to verify that.
The Other John Mc —
Actually, I don’t think this is the case. When one asks “believers” if they value sound reasoning and evidence, they assure you they do. The problem is that there is no agreement on what constitutes evidence (e.g. Leo’s page of anecdata) or sound reasoning.
Our first task is to convince people to accept our definitions, but as this inevitably leads to their abandoning their convictions, it is an uphill battle.
The Street Epistemologist,
“We should be compassionate in our understanding that not everyone has the same capacity for understanding”
Well, that’s down right patronistic of you now isn’t it. (:
Could I just ask a question? Does anyone have a link(s) to what they consider to be the best arguments opposing an afterlife?
Ian,
Here you go:http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
And I’m not being snarky.
@mumadadd That link doesn’t seem to contain any arguments.
Even though, as Grabula also said, there’s little chance of any real intellectual discourse, I can’t tear myself away. I guess it’s a bit tribalistic, like playing a team sport maybe.
Apropos of nothing, I was just skimming through one of leo’s links (‘rebuttals’ of materialist explanations for NDEs: http://ncu9nc.blogspot.ca/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html) and this caught my eye (regarding cultural expectations):
The general theme of these ‘rebuttals’ seems to be that each explanation in isolation can’t account for all components of every NDE–therefore MAGIC!
Ian,
If you’re looking for philosophical arguments, I don’t know. But the success of methodological naturalism and the scientific method is the best argument, in my opinion, to reject claims that either fall outside of this scope or fail every claim they make that is within this scope.
There are some links to arguments against methodological naturalism on the page, so maybe start there and look for the counters to the counters?
@mumadadd Since methodological naturalism and the scientific method have had absolutely no success whatsoever in explaining the existence of consciousness *before* death — and indeed nor could it in principle since it deals with the quantitative where as consciousness is in the realm of the qualitative, should we conclude there’s no “life before death” either?
Anyone got a slightly better link?
“Does anyone have a link(s) to what they consider to be the best arguments opposing an afterlife?”
The fact that evidence is pointing towards the mind as brain theory would heavily suggest that an afterlife does not exist. That and the overwhelming lack of good quality evidence for the existence of it.
It is like you haven’t read anything anyone has said in the 500 posts before, let alone the original blog post.
@Bruce What evidence?
“It is like you haven’t read anything anyone has said in the 500 posts before, let alone the original blog post” — seriously Ian, you want to restart the entire series of conversations like they never even happened? lemme sum up: Ian has outsmarted everyone and all the overwhelming evidence just by his extraordinary thinking skills, so go read his awesome blog. Bam! done.
That’s funny you skeptics have a double standard when it comes to the paranormal you said eyewitness testimony and video footage is garbage but when it comes to a event that happens like physical events that happen around the world you say the evidence is overwhelming don’t see the double standard here?.
@Grabula
All I want is the truth I could actually care less if there is an afterlife or not because I realize that that even though and afterlife would be great I can’t let my emotions cloud my judgement. The same goes with no afterlife blinking out of existence would be awesome after a temporary existence because at least I had the opportunity to have a very tiny slice of the pie.
Do you only have the mind-brain correlations as evidence?
leo,
“That’s funny you skeptics have a double standard when it comes to the paranormal you said eyewitness testimony and video footage is garbage but when it comes to a event that happens like physical events that happen around the world you say the evidence is overwhelming don’t see the double standard here?.”
Where to even start? You can’t see the difference between an actual event being filmed by multiple cameras from multiple angles, backed up by thousands of eyewitnesses and individual testimonies of that individual’s subjective recollection of an experience that is scientifically unverifiable and, in fact, contravenes vast swathes of scientific knowledge? Really? REALLY?
Some missing punctuation made that a bit ambiguous. Corrected below:
Where to even start? You can’t see the difference between an actual event being filmed by multiple cameras from multiple angles, backed up by thousands of eyewitnesses; and individual testimonies of that individual’s subjective recollection of an experience that is scientifically unverifiable and, in fact, contravenes vast swathes of scientific knowledge? Really? REALLY?
Yesterday I said in a facebook group “But damage to the brain doesn’t even rule out a “life after death””. I got booted from the group. The guy who booted me said “Wow, f******g moron. Get the f**k out!!” (without the *’s of course). Then I found I couldn’t post any more in there. I sent him a private message asking:
“Hi, I’m interested in you stating your reasons why you believe it’s moronic to subscribe to a “life after death”. Reductive materialism is unintelligible. Non-reductive materialism leads to epiphenomenalism which is incoherent. Strong emergentism (as opposed to weak) also has problems although not so formidable. And then there’s a colossal amount of evidence which lends support to such a notion (although a lot of it is confusing and sometimes seems to me to be contradictory). Perhaps there’s something you’re seeing which I’m simply not getting. Care to enlighten me?”
No response.
None of you guys are anywhere near as hostile and emotional about it. Some of you are even quite friendly eg mumadadd
But it’s got me thinking and is the reason why I’ve come back.
2 questions.
1. What makes skeptics so absolutely certain that consciousness doesn’t continue?
2. Why do some of them get so emotional about it? I mean if it’s so obvious why not just view unenlightened people with amused indifference?
Ian: “why not just view unenlightened people with amused indifference”
I imagine there are dozens or hundreds of people right now doing just that.
“1. What makes skeptics so absolutely certain that consciousness doesn’t continue?”
The fact that evidence is pointing towards the mind as brain theory would heavily suggest that consciousness doesn’t continue. That and the overwhelming lack of good quality evidence for any kind of consciousness continuing.
It is like you haven’t read anything anyone has said in the 500 posts before, let alone the original blog post.
“1. What makes skeptics so absolutely certain that consciousness doesn’t continue?”
No evidence. I’m not “certain” of anything. But there is no quality evidence for it, and your philisophical constructions are simply semantic tricks that you refuse to defend once they’re broken dow.
“2. Why do some of them get so emotional about it? I mean if it’s so obvious why not just view unenlightened people with amused indifference?”
Everyone gets emotional, including you. The idea that pretending to have a greater sense of detachment means your poitns carry more weight is just an argument tactic.
But here’s 2 things that annoy me:
a. Many of us have worked very hard to reach the level of understanding that we have. Having someone who is unfamiliar with the basics (and unwilling to learn about them) tell us that we have it all wrong is galling.
b. It’s annoying when people play games with their arguments as you do. When you are challenged in very specific ways, you obfuscate or ignore. Like Hardnose, you suffer from Selective Post Reading Syndrome (SPRS).
I’m not angry at you – you’re not a troll like Leo. I have many friends who think as you do. But when you zero in on the crux of the disagreement and the person dodges – it’s a little annoying.
Ok, I jsut copy and pasted my response from before, but the principle is the same.
Unless you can provide evidence that stands up to scrutiny, you are not going to convince a skeptic. We might hope and really want there to be something, but I am afraid nothing you or Leo or any of the afterlife proponents have put forward here (or anywhere else I have stumbled upon) has gone anywhere towards convincing me. I suspect the same can be said for most other skeptical commenters here.
Ian Wardell —
This seems to be a matter of dogma for you. How can I argue a science-based approach to consciousness if you place it outside of the scientific realm by definition?
How would you recognise something non-human to have consciousness?
Ian,
We’ve covered this in some depth over the course of this thread. I don’t want to spend time trying to repeat what others have said more eloquently already, but I will add a couple of points under question 2.
Firstly, you’ve actively sought out the argument; it’s not like us nasty skeptics are bashing down your door and trying to force you to convert to materialism. You’re here on a skeptical blog telling scientists they’re wrong about science, and then not properly engaging with their responses.
Secondly, and speaking for myself here, part of my frustration is that I so badly want you to be right – I want to be convinced, but I simply can’t be convinced by obviously faulty logic or shoddy evidence.
steve12
“Many of us have worked very hard to reach the level of understanding that we have”.
None of you seem to be even cognisant of the mind/body problem. Everyone on here gives every impression that it’s a “mere” scientific problem which advancing science will eventually solve.
So this claim that you’ve worked very hard is just laughable.
Bruce
“Unless you can provide evidence that stands up to scrutiny, you are not going to convince a skeptic”.
I want some positive evidence we are annihilated. We cannot see consciousness. We only infer it from one’s bodily behaviour. Once the body’s stopped functioning then with what justification is there to assume consciousness is not still existing?
It seems as far as far as I can see that it’s the mind body correlations — nothing else.
Ian, you are still hung up on your ASSUMPTION that consciousness is a non-material “thing” that needs some magical explanation as opposed to a pattern of information processing carried out by a physical object, the brain. What are we supposed to do with your assumption when it conflicts with that of current scientific knowledge and understanding? What kind of explanation would satisfy you?
Ian,
You’re playing that like it’s some kind of all powerful trump card. Sure, it’s difficult to intuitively grasp that matter can have subjectivity. Have you ever considered that our cognitive abilities have a limited capacity, and that some things may be eternally beyond our ability to intuitively grasp?
I’ll ask you again – how would you distinguish an idealistic world from a material world? What predictions stem from this hypothesis? How do you test them? What explanatory power does it give us?
Please at least have a stab at answering these questions.
I’m not willing to believe in unfalsifiable magic because just because qualia are weird.
“None of you seem to be even cognisant of the mind/body problem. ”
Everyone here has explained why we don’t think the problem exists. YOu just don’t like the answers.
“Everyone on here gives every impression that it’s a “mere” scientific problem which advancing science will eventually solve.”
Another case of SPRS. Me, Steve Novella and several others have told you why we don’t think there is such a thing as a mind/ body “problem”. Like Dennett, I don’t buy that there is a hard problem. I know these issues quite well, and it’s all above or in the other 600 post thread. But you selectively read. That’s not my problem.We don’t agree on them, but the idea that I’m not familiar with them is absurd.
“So this claim that you’ve worked very hard is just laughable.”
So you wanna know why people are annoyed with you (beside the fact that you want to rehash the same discussion w/o anything new to add?) I busted my ass for the understanding I have at a 70 hr/week clip for 10 years now. You’ve spent very little time really trying to familiarize yourself with any brain science. Your blog posts on vision and the brain (which I unfortunately tried to read) are proof positive of that. They’re silly nonsense written by a person with too much time on their hands who is too lazy to go to school or read a book, and so armchair supposes-it-out himself. Trust me: it’s much less work to sit in your bedroom writing whatever comes to mind footloose and fancy free than study science.
So when people like you who are unwilling to put in the work call me lazy – yeah, that annoys me.
I came back here in a forlorn hope that somebody could provide a link to some good arguments. OK, you can’t. I’ve already discussed this with you guys and no one has said anything interesting.
So sorry to have bothered you. Bye.
OK Ian,
Maybe you can find a site with experts to help you figure out how the brain works instead of one filled with neurologists and neuroscientists.
Good Luck!
Steve
Ian: “Once the body’s stopped functioning then with what justification is there to assume consciousness is not still existing?”
Your statement confirms your supremely misguided protocol for justified belief. Your default position is to ASSUME things exist until proven otherwise. This protocol necessarily generates acceptance of multiple mutually exclusive claims. Knowledge is added incrementally, not subtracted from an all encompassing assumption that everything must be true unless it can proven otherwise. I, for one, thank you for continuing to post here, so thousands of other readers can objectively weigh these arguments, enjoy and learn how to accumulate true knowledge.
For others, there is but ONLY ONE default assumption of science – that there is no magical or supernatural hand of interference (for lack of a better term) – for that would negate the abilty to confirm experimental results through repeatibility, among other problems. Yes this is materialism/naturalism – supported by mountains of evidence. Other than that, science assumes nothing (not to be confused with hypotheses) – thats the beauty. We can stop here if you disagree that the scientific method has proven to be the most reliable way to gather knowledge (esp. vs. thought experiments which are not self-correcting). You can also stop using computers, cell phone, airplanes, MRIs, vaccines, etc if you disagree – since you would then agree that knowledge is not valuable (which for some it is not).
@Mumadadd
Admit it the reason why you don’t consider it at least is because of a ideological commitment to naturalism. Your turning it around here I said that paranormal proponents have thousands upon thousands of testimonies as well as camera footage from different angles as well just like an physical event happens with the same level of evidence. But, you the skeptics except the physical event with the same level evidence but discount genuine paranormal phenomenon with thousands upon thousand of testimonies as well as camera footage from different angles.
Also, I should point out its been claimed that on this blog that skeptics never used the logical fallacy- the argument of authority well awhile back Steven Novella did when he said that Daniel Dennett agrees with him that their is no hard problem of consciousness. It pretty convenient of materialists to sweep away the hard problem realizing deep down its a unsolvable problem for them. So why not just call consciousness an grand illusion that’s what your doing when you say there is no hard problem.
The closest thing I see to a double standard is a justified one: The higher the stakes are, and the more comforting the belief is, the more evidence we need to change our worldview. We don’t want to make important decisions on hunches and ambiguous evidence. The issue gets compounded for alternative worldviews that are seductive, since we know we’re prone to bias from wishful thinking. We don’t want to make a mistake and live in comfortable stagnation or denial, so we raise the bar and distrust our gut.
“A funny (but plausible) thing happened to me the other day” from a trusted friend typically has very low stakes, so we can usually take their word for it without being significantly harmed or opening ourselves up to future harmful deceptions base on that assertion. Believing in the afterlife often has much more profound effects many peoples’ decision-making process. I’ve seen a lot of suffering justified in part by afterlife beliefs.
Science works on falsification. Tear into new hypotheses, especially your own, as if you expect positive results to be the product of cheating. Or at least assume that you’ll be publicly embarrassed from making an obvious mistake if you don’t put in the required effort. Bone up on all the known methods of deception, including self-deception. Learn about human nature and the numerous ways we’ve rationalized our irrational beliefs throughout history. Design an experimental protocol that eliminates these possibilities as best you can while allowing your hypothesis to still get results. Submit the experiment to peer review so others have a chance to catch things you’ve missed. If several people with differing agendas can still get positive results when they replicate the experiment, despite all the protocols to tear them down, then we can be confident and pleasantly surprised the hypothesis is true. This isn’t something extraordinary, this is the everyday routine of science. It’s hard work being on the bleeding edge of human knowledge.
All this is done to falsify the null hypothesis, which is the hypothesis that X doesn’t exist, doesn’t have effects, is random, doesn’t make a difference between otherwise identical circumstances, and such. Science assumes the null hypothesis by default to keep things as simple as possible and handle things in individually justified steps, rather than make haphazard blind leaps. The opposite approach would have us at the mercy of whoever has the wildest imagination and/or an ulterior motive to posit new entities. The more rigorous the experiment, the more meaning the results have because it narrows the possible interpretations. If they come out negative, the Modus Tollens exception applies and we have a study in favor of the null hypothesis. If we have repeated positive results no matter who performs the experiment, then we have reason to reject the null and accept the implications of X on our worldview.
Because of this standard, science has been making enormous progress and we’ve earned great confidence in our theories because they didn’t need dodgy rationalizations to deliver accurate predictions and useful explanations that we can apply as technology.
Make your worldview too easy to change, and we’d ping-pong back and forth whenever the news publishes a routine “everything you know is wrong” article that misrepresents the scope of some small, incremental discovery. Make your worldview impossible to change by making it unfalsifiable or vague enough to ad hoc into unfalsifiability, and it’ll be impossible to disprove it if it’s wrong and impossible to understand and apply it in any meaningful way even if it’s right. Hence, skeptics often refer to unfalsifiability as “not even wrong.” Clearly wrong ideas are more easily dealt with by preponderance of evidence. Unfalsifiable ideas spawn long threads trying to nail popular gelatin deserts to a wall.
This is why “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.” I hate that slogan these days because it’s all too easy to perpetuate the misunderstanding of “extraordinary” as “supernatural” or “paranormal” when the real issue is the assertion of new entities and forces, even material ones, that necessitate changing our decision-making process.
—
Ian:
1. Because a lot of people are happy to make political decisions that negatively affect society based on irrational notions. They’re also happy to discriminate against minorities. That makes me mad.
2. Because I want to be surrounded with thoughtful people and safely carry an intellectual conversation with a larger portion of the populace, rather than view the social world as a field of landmines. It’s also why I support public education.
3. Because I get zero jollies out of thinking I’m somehow superior and entitled to remain superior. I look at irrational people, and I see how I could have turned out if my circumstances weren’t so favorable. I used to believe silly things until I started having meaningful conversations with skeptics.
4. Sometimes, displaying emotion is how you can get people to pay attention. I also think it’s a stupid notion that a person can never be both emotional and rational at the same time. If they’re being irrational, you focus on their bad logic or bad premises to expose it. It’s also possible to be both apathetic and irrational.
leo,
Do you also believe in Bigfoot? The chupacabra? These also are supported by thousands of anecdotal testimonials and camera footage.
Ian:
“I want some positive evidence we are annihilated.”
Ok, you want evidence that something no longer exists?
How about no way to measure it, no way to see it, no way to smell it, no way feel it, no way to hear it? Would that suffice enough for you? If not then there is no reaching you, if it does then I would point you towards all the verified evidence we have of an afterlife:
…
Oh, sorry… there is none!
The onus is on you to provide evidence that it does exist, because otherwise all you have is a heatless, soundless, massless, smell-less dragon in your garage and a bunch of philosophical conjecture.
Leo,
If you have camera footage of souls leaving the body please share it.
Jesus Leo, stating that you agree with somebody or that they agree with you is not the same as saying that you are right because that person agrees with you.
Mumadad – I agree with most of your comments, but you may have misspoken above. If we have learned anything from this thread (and Ali) it is that ‘thousands of eyewitnesses’ is meaningless under the lens of science. Thousands of eyewitnesses have seen ghosts, aliens, NDE’s etc, but we know that does not constitute uncontrovertable evidence. HD photographs and video are much better of course :] and have more weight depending on their nature.
Leo – Science is dependent on naturalism (as we define it, see my above post). If we do not assume cause and effect, then we cannot conduct, and subsequently repeat, experiments. We could not gain knowledge, and we could not invent computers, technology, radio telescopes, fMRI machines, modern medicene, electron microscopes, telecommunication satellites and your fully charged cell phone. Please stop using these since science/naturalism has failed you and humanity. Otherwise, unfortunately I can’t stop you from slapping the faces of countless people throughout history who have dedicated thier lives to advancing our knowledge of the universe by observing, hypothesising, testing, verifying, publishing, and finally adding to our understanding of our place all within the framework of the scientific method.
Science has not overlooked your scources, and there is a reason they are on the fringe (I would also argue that the fringe today is different and more marginalized than the fringe of 100 years ago since we can share, reivew and critisize information at the speed of light today). If there is truly something there, it will be tested, teased out and accepted over time. Unfortunatley for PSI, these tests have been done and the results are in…not good.
Street epistomologist,
In this case though, even without the addition of camera footage, I’d say that thousands of eyewitness testimonies of the same event, at the same time, positing no forces or phenomena previously unknown to science, gives us a pretty solid evidence based.
Bronze dog : amen sir, nicely put.
Bruce
“Ok, you want evidence that something no longer exists?
How about no way to measure it, no way to see it, no way to smell it, no way feel it, no way to hear it? Would that suffice enough for you?”
Obviously not since since before death there’s also no way to perceptually perceive consciousness.
If it were then consciousness would be a material phenomenon.
Ian,
I don’t get it. We can observe conscious behaviour, and observe the corresponding brain activity. What else is there?
I’m trying to follow your logic and extrapolating a bit, so I might be wrong here, but are you headed towards not being able to observe qualia in other consciousnesses? If so, why is this a problem for materialism?
@The Street Epistemologist
I would disagree, in fact the cross correspondences a test on mediums a century ago showed that mediums could communicated with the dead. Of course, at that time the age of reason came in so anything that smacked of superstition would be ignored and would send us back in the dark ages of superstition. Videos have been produced numerous time sure there uncontroversial on what they really are. Sure naturalism has been very successful and I am not denying that but my point its runned into a big road block when it comes to consciousness. Science doesn’t like dealing with the subjective but that is what we have with consciousness.
@Bronzedog
I agree its easy to throw paranormal into extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence but what is wrong with introducing new entities into nature when the evidence really shows that we have too?.
Ian,
So, you want us to prove that something that only exists in our head when we are alive continues to exist when all mechanisms for what makes those things in our head work stop working?
You need to prove it exists outside of our own head (ie brain) before you can get us to even start to think about it existing after we die.
Do you not see how many logical jumps you are making and shortcuts you are taking?
“what is wrong with introducing new entities into nature when the evidence really shows that we have too?.”
“When the evidence really shows that we have to?”
“When the evidence really shows….”
“…the evidence…”
That’s what’s wrong Leo. There is no quality evidence that shows anything. Again, do you also believe in bigfoot?
It’s about the quality of evidence that one will accept. Poor quality evidence does not show anything other than the gullibility of true believers.
Leo100 writes:
“I would disagree, in fact the cross correspondences a test on mediums a century ago showed that mediums could communicated with the dead.”
No, this is not true. The spiritualist hypothesis was never demonstrated for the cross correspondences – most psychical researchers believe the explanation was telepathy (see Frank Podmore’s book “The Newer Spiritualism” for an example). But even this magical explanation is not needed. Skeptics who have studied this case have suggested chance coincidence, cognitive biases and apophenia (looking for meaningful patterns that do not really exist) explains the data. There is also evidence that fraud may have been involved as two of the mediums knew each other and communicated – Mrs Willet and Mrs Verrall (The skeptic Edward Clodd covers this in his book “The Question” (1917)). Also See Amy Tanner’s book “Studies in Spiritism” (1911) for a psychological take on the case.
More recently in 2003 Professor Christopher Moreman analysed the the original writings from the cross correspondences and found they could best be explained by chance coincidence.
Christopher Moreman (2003). A Re-examination of The Possibility of Chance Coincidence as an Alternative Explanation for Mediumistic Communication in the Cross-Correspondences. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 67: 225-242.
You should be able to find this paper or extracts of it online. The paper was published by the Society for Psychical Research – a psychical organization. You seem to dismiss skeptical papers without reading them but this was a paper published in a psychical journal. What do you have to say about this paper? Please only reply to this if you have anything worthwhile to say about the paper, don’t bother replying with ad-hominem attacks or the usual copy and paste jobs that you have done in many of your previous posts. Cheers.
It’s the quality of the evidence that’s the question, Leo.
Psi experiments usually don’t take the human capacity for deception and self-deception into account. It’s one reason why some of them were fooled by admitted fakers. The results also show the pattern of being strong when the controls are weak and shrinking into statistical insignificance when they’re tightened, suggesting the rigorous controls remove the real causes. The question of how they can distinguish different types of psi without experimental protocols to make that determination is reason to question their ability to grasp the philosophy of science and the whole point of conducting experiments.
Unusual experiences like NDEs and OBEs generally already have the person’s brain under some form of abnormal state, so we’d already expect someone in that state to have various non-standard experiences and a compromised ability to self-evaluate. People can alter their perceptions and memories without consciously being aware of it, too, so there’s plenty of fertile ground for stories to emerge after the fact.
Additionally, the excuses you’ve provided for the lack of unexpected results are ad hoc hypotheses that effectively strip souls of useful features in order to fit them to the data and our expectations and thus get trimmed off by Occam’s Razor. You seem to prefer doing this, rather than make predictions that contradict the model of the mind as brain function. Ironically, it also makes the idea of souls less comforting. In the end, what’s left of the hypothesis to salvage?
@midnightrunner2014
You got the nerve man, I actually do the skeptical sources I just don’t find them convincing. I have read it however most studies that have been done on the cross correspondences seem to indicate that chance is not an altogether coherent explanations for the scripts. I am sure you won’t read this interesting rebuttal on the possibly of chance coincidences in the cross correspondences by the late Montague Keen.
http://www.montaguekeen.com/page59.html
@Ekko
No I don’t believe in bigfoot because there is no good reason to justify that belief.
Bronzedog
They do in fact as much as they possibly can that why there has very tight controls in psi experiments.
Leo100 —
We haven’t made conscious machines yet. Conscious as talking about themselves as “I”, and experiencing a red rose in such a way they can share that information with us. Ian never came back to me with his definition of consciousness, other than saying we cannot perceive it, but know we have it. If one assumes the existence of an immaterial something called “consciousness”, it remains an entity, and such amenable to being modeled using the tangible objects of our everyday experience. The human mind searches for known analogies to understand concepts and phenomena outside of its experience (cf. EM waves and waves on a pond).
The way you and Ian look at consciousness is by modeling it as an object. Of course you know it is not a ectoplasm, and it must be outside the scope of our senses, but like an ectoplasm, you feel it has to exist as an entity. This is, I am sorry to say, a rather primitive way to describe a process.
Processes are very difficult to grasp because they are unlike anything we can observe through our senses. What we can observe is the result of a process, but the process itself lies beyond our senses. When a computer runs a program, we can describe every state of the processor and memory, but by doing so we do not describe the process. In actual fact, analysing a process more often than not modifies it to the point it is no longer recognisable (something computer programmers are acutely aware of).
Consciousness is a process, and we can only sense it through its effects. Without the processing units the process does not exist, and at no time can one dissociate the process from the processing units. These units are physical entities, fully understandable and reproducible. The steps of the process can be identified and described (though this is no mean task even for a simple process), but mean nothing unless they are performed by the processing units. Think of the relationship between a musical score and the music. The score describes the music, but only performing the process on the processing units (the musicians) produces the actual music — a process.
Consciousness is the music of the brain.
@Bill Openhault
But how is consciousness a process when its subjective?. We have a lot of things that are processes but they don’t have any subjectiveness to them.
leo100 —
What do you mean by subjective? This is a genuine question.
Bill,
“Consciousness is the music of the brain.”
Love it – very well put.
leo,
“No I don’t believe in bigfoot because there is no good reason to justify that belief.”
Do you understand my point and maybe why people here also feel the same re: an afterlife/a self-consciousness without a brain?
Leo100 writes:
” I have read it however most studies that have been done on the cross correspondences seem to indicate that chance is not an altogether coherent explanations for the scripts.”
If you have read Moreman’s 2003 paper which is 17 pages long tell me the first line to his paper (not the abstract) and the last line of the paper. You won’t be able to because I don’t believe you have read it Leo. You had never heard of Moreman’s paper until I just mentioned it, what you have done is a quick Google search to try and find any criticisms of the paper without reading it, you will cite anything published by anyone no matter how crazy to reinforce your belief and it was an easy find considering Keen’s is the only one online. I debated Keen over his investigation with the Scole experiment. He was a devout spiritualist. But I am not interested in other peoples criticisms right now I am interested in your own take on this case. Explain in your own words why you believe the cross correspondences are evidence for an afterlife and why chance coincidence is not an adequate explanation.
“I am sure you won’t read this interesting rebuttal on the possibly of chance coincidences in the cross correspondences by the late Montague Keen.”
I have already read it. It was published 10 years ago in a 2004 issue for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research and contrary to that website it was co-written with Archie Roy. I can easily shoot down many of their silly points (i.e. Mina Crandon) but you need to demonstrate that you know this subject, I am not typing out huge replies to you like I have done before with information just for it to be ignored.
Midnightrunner
I don’t believe anyone I make up my own mind thank you. The only thing I found on the paper was here, it is a small abstract of the paper. But I do have enough information to go on with Montague Keen’s response of where Moreman was coming from with his paper. My opinion is that Moreman is wrong that the evidence is far too strong to be caused by coincidence.
It looks like I might add that Moreman wants to have his cake and eat it too. I quote
“As the first author wrote to Moreman in 2001, “You really cannot have it both ways: you cannot draw a conclusion based entirely on chance, while finding yourself obliged to postulate a no-chance explanation”.
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2003-11005-001
Ekko
But bigfoot and life after death evidence are nowhere near the same level.
I found another person rebutting the view that the cross correspondences are just a chance coincidence. This is probably not convincing to Midnightrunner who’s mind is already made up on the skeptic side.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=7FlnAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT202&lpg=PT202&dq=cross+correspondences+chance+coincidence&source=bl&ots=uhbSrZI4hf&sig=iJ7eO6x1NIFGQk7rUiige4sxcws&hl=en&sa=X&ei=W3eOU8ChIInn8AHquYCgDQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=cross%20correspondences%20chance%20coincidence&f=false
midnight, you nailed it.
Bronze Dog, <a href="midnight, you nailed it;
It’s just a hole. A bottomless hole. Is there anyone up”>you made me want to kiss my computer screen on the mouth (but not in a weird way). That was exceedingly well put.
Wow, Well, i screwed that up… Better call it a night 😛 What I mean to say; What Bronze Dog said.
http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/finding-bigfoot/lists/bigfoot-evidence.htm
“Researchers eventually come to realize that if there are indeed so many credible eyewitnesses across the land, then the species they so consistently and emphatically describe probably exists also.”
@Ian
There’s no evidence for consciousness before or after death. Naturalism/scientific method can be used to provide evidence for this yet no one has. You continue to build ridiculous arguments based on a total lack of understanding on the world around you, or the scientific method.
““Does anyone have a link(s) to what they consider to be the best arguments opposing an afterlife?”
Yes, let’s kick start the whole argument over again. You were provided plenty of information. You want a single link? Get real, AlSina can link you to youtube all the evidence he wants but that’s not how real evidence is supported. Real evidence comes from all kinds of sources investing something from several angles. The more you guys visit this thread the more ridiculous you get. Literally. Leo’s special pleading for lack of experimental evidence. You completely blowing off almost 1000 posts spread over two different discussions on the same topics.
“. What makes skeptics so absolutely certain that consciousness doesn’t continue?”
We’re certain there’s no evidence for it. why can’t you udnerstand the difference here?
“Why do some of them get so emotional about it? I mean if it’s so obvious why not just view unenlightened people with amused indifference?”
People are people. You in particular get me pretty angry Ian. Your insistance on knowing the truth, your insulting manner and your ridiculous arguments strictly from a philisophical direction, all add up to making you particular annoying. You can’t have a real discussion because you’re too busy fluffing your own ego. I’m not as patient as these other guys with ignorance. As an example you clown:
“None of you seem to be even cognisant of the mind/body problem. Everyone on here gives every impression that it’s a “mere” scientific problem which advancing science will eventually solve.
So this claim that you’ve worked very hard is just laughable.”
The clown clowns but wants to be taken seriously.
Listen guys, stop feeding Ian. Where Leo is just hopelessly lost, Ian is convinced of his own superiority. All his questions when he ‘came back for honest discourse’ were all the questions that have been addressed to him ad nauseum and he instantly fell into the same patterns.
@mumadadd
“I’m trying to follow your logic and extrapolating a bit,”
We already established Ian has no interest in the science. His arguments lie purely in the philosophical, he just confuses that for science. There is not real logic involved.
@Leo
“All I want is the truth I could actually care less if there is an afterlife”
I’m having a hard time believing this Leo. After your arguments for an afterlife have been dismantled pretty handily on here you have yet to sway even a little bit on the possibility that you could be wrong. That presents itself as dogmatic and entrenched.
“Admit it the reason why you don’t consider it at least is because of a ideological commitment to naturalism”
You guys are ridiculous attached to this war on naturalism/materialism. I’m going to let you in on something Leo, while’d I’d heard it referred to before, the concept had never crossed my mind much and doesn’t dictate the direction I move. I move strictly with the evidence and I’m pretty sure thats’ the way these guys move as well. It’s easy to demonize something once you give it a name right?
“I agree its easy to throw paranormal into extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence but what is wrong with introducing new entities into nature when the evidence really shows that we have too?”
Nothing wrong with it if the evidence bares this out. Right now there’s no evidence to support your claims.
“The only thing I found on the paper was here, it is a small abstract of the paper”
So as midnight called it, you’ve never read his paper, only dug around in your woo circle of belief for a ‘refutation’ of the paper. You see why you’re way out of your league here Leo?
“But bigfoot and life after death evidence are nowhere near the same level.”
They’re at exactly the same level – no evidence for either yet people still cling to their beliefs.
Ian Wardell ,
“A reality existing independently of consciousness is a superfluous hypothesis. Nor could we ever know it exists anyway.”
I accept that we can’t prove that a reality independent of consciousness exists. But because it can explain why we are conscious OF something, I wouldn’t characterize it as a superfluous hypothesis. If by superfluous you mean unnecessary, then we’re back to the question: what comprises experience?
“There are selves and their conscious experiences. The physical laws can be used to predict the patterns in our perceptual experiences.”
Why do you differentiate between self and conscious experience? If I’ve never had any experience, that is, if I’ve never been conscious of anything, what is my self? It’s probably difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no sensory experience – but – what would your self be if separate from the content of your mind? If you had no sensory organs, what would your mind consist of? If there’s no physical world, and only conscious experience, why would we need to learn how to predict pattern in our perception? What would we be perceiving?
me: If there’s no objective world, from whence the sensory data?
“From God? A collective creation of all minds? Or why couldn’t they just be a brute fact…Even if we have a mind independent reality we can ask the same question. What are physical laws? Do they actually coerce reality to behave in a certain way? Where do they come from if so?”
I would say: Physical laws exist in our minds as reflections of our observations of conditions and inter-relations in the physical world. They’re representations of our understanding. Of course they don’t coerce reality. I would say that reality is the brute fact, and physical laws are mental, symbolic representations of consistent order and relationships that we’ve observed in the natural world. They “come from” our imaginations and insight inspired by the objective world, and are honed to be useful in understanding and expanding the scope of our experience. If we say that sensory data comes from God, of course that answers everything. Except how would that happen? That really isn’t different than saying that it comes from an objective world, but at least with the objective world we can build consensus about what it is. Is God in this case the same as the objective world? It has been postulated thusly. I guess it’s a matter of taste: is it God I’m experiencing, or an objective world? It’s an interesting proposition, because there could possibly be a different character of interaction. But, in that case, the unknowability does in fact make the hypothesis superfluous. And of course a collective creation of all minds is a theory which creates many problems. How would that happen? If I’m not conscious of creating this reality, it becomes a baseless assertion. In fact, Bernardo makes this assertion and bases it on abnormal psychology. He says it’s like split personalities, and what appears to be the objective world is actually an “unconscious” collective creation. Frankly, I don’t see how it can be supported. If it’s something we can’t be aware of, how are we creating it? Unwittingly? There would be no predictability if it’s really like the subconscious mind. All that construction just to avoid the possibility of an objective world? How is this “new” idea valuable?
“I didn’t say only consciousness exists. I denied the existence of a mind-independent reality. The mind perceives things which exist, it’s just they don’t exist when not perceived.”
I had somehow missed that you didn’t say only consciousness exists. But if there’s no mind-independent reality, isn’t that saying the same thing? What are these things which exist when perceived, but don’t exist when not perceived? Are they ideas? Mental creations? What is the relationship between the mind and the things perceived in the statement: “The mind perceives things which exist, it’s just they don’t exist when not perceived.”?
For me there are unanswered questions here. But I also find unanswered questions in other philosophical viewpoints too. I’m not committed to a philosophical viewpoint at this point
missed this:
Ian: “From God? A collective creation of all minds?
Now that, my friend, is a superfluous hypothesis.
Ian Wardell —
There is also no way to “perceptually perceive” a computer program. There is no way to “perceptually perceive” radio waves. The best we can do is perceive (some of) their effects. Still both are very real, and quite amenable to inquiry. There is far more to the material world than humans can “perceptually perceive”.
Leo100 —
One definition of subjective is based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
Personal feelings, tastes and opinions are part of human consciousness. Subjectivity is brought on by consciousness, which in itself is not subjective.
People perceptually perceive real reality, just like clockwork clocks, just as Ian suggested.
Wow this guy — Dr. Michael Graziano — doesn’t believe in the existence of consciousness! :O
http://www.skeptiko.com/246-michael-graziano-near-death-experience-astrology/
Ian,
He’s on the interview circuit at the moment because he has a book out. I listened to an interview with him recently on ‘Brain Science Podcast’, and I’m pretty confident that that is absolutely not his position. What specifically did he say that brings you to such a sweeping statement?
Yay, Ian posted a link that wasn’t to his own blog…so I read it…and Graziano doesn’t say that. Ian what the hell is with the selective cherry-picking of quotes, as if that is supposed to support your whack-ass views? That is an intellectually-dishonest bullshit move.
Graziano CLEARLY states he didn’t like the framing of the phrase “brains creating consciousness” but instead preferring describing it as a process, and information process involving mental constructions….which coincidentally is exactly what dozens of people have been patiently trying to explain to you.
It’s very simple. He uses an analogy. This guy thought he had a squirrel in his brain. Absolutely nothing could shake his conviction no matter how persuasive the counter-arguments.
He’s saying that we likewise are convinced we are conscious. But we’re not really conscious anymore than that guy had a squirrel in his brain.
# grabulaon 04 Jun 2014 at 1:11 am
@Leo
“All I want is the truth I could actually care less if there is an afterlife”
“I’m having a hard time believing this Leo. After your arguments for an afterlife have been dismantled pretty handily on here you have yet to sway even a little bit on the possibility that you could be wrong. That presents itself as dogmatic and entrenched”.
I have mentioned before I am open to the possibility that death could be the end. As from as the arguments been dismantled pretty handily as you say I would disagree no where near that.
“You guys are ridiculous attached to this war on naturalism/materialism. I’m going to let you in on something Leo, while’d I’d heard it referred to before, the concept had never crossed my mind much and doesn’t dictate the direction I move. I move strictly with the evidence and I’m pretty sure thats’ the way these guys move as well. It’s easy to demonize something once you give it a name right?”
Well the name is justified and I agree with you I also move where the evidence takes me.
“I agree its easy to throw paranormal into extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence but what is wrong with introducing new entities into nature when the evidence really shows that we have too?”
“Nothing wrong with it if the evidence bares this out. Right now there’s no evidence to support your claims.”
I disagree
“The only thing I found on the paper was here, it is a small abstract of the paper”
“So as midnight called it, you’ve never read his paper, only dug around in your woo circle of belief for a ‘refutation’ of the paper. You see why you’re way out of your league here Leo?”
Unlike Midnight I tend to analyze both sides carefully he doesn’t. Even though he claims too.
“They’re at exactly the same level – no evidence for either yet people still cling to their beliefs”.
No there not there is experiments done with mediums etc there isn’t with big foot. Plus I should add if a big foot exist it would be a natural phenomenon.
So, seeing that Steve quoted from Incognito, David Eagleman has actually at the end of a longer Interview (8:44) for closertotruth (http://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-consciousness-part-1#video-3935) said that the ‘radio theory’ is exactly as consistent with the evidence from neuroscience as the materialist hypothesis.
IMO, a neuroscientist should know better.
… the monkey chased the weasel…
We sailed past this point long ago, but what the hell:
Dr. Michael Graziano:
I reject the things that ended up in the “non-material” category on a case-by-case basis, not a categorical one. I’m a “materialist” because I lack an ideological need to acknowledge a “non-material” category. I’d rather categorize things by meaningful and useful criteria.
@mumadadd
What Graziano says there is just reductive materialism. A denial of the existence of consciousness goes beyond that.
Of course Graziano wouldn’t say that he’s denying consciousness. This is because he has a different definition of this word. Hence he thinks puppets are conscious. Not because they experience greenness, pain and fall in love, but because neither puppets or we humans actually have any qualia.
http://philosophyandpsychology.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/quote-for-the-day-michael-graziano-thinks-puppets-can-be-conscious/
Ian: “Of course Graziano wouldn’t say that he’s denying consciousness”…exactly, so you are admittedly putting words in his mouth.
“This is because he has a different definition of this word”…different implies there is another, which you have yet to provide beyond saying ‘perceptual perceptions’, ‘real reality’, and ‘clockwork clocks’, you trolly troll.
Ian,
I haven’t read his book so I can’t say how representative that quote is of his position; but anyway, I think he’s actually using a metaphor to illustrate this point:
He’s coming at consciousness from a different position and in doing so is redefining his terms. But even if your interpretation of his position is correct, what’s your point?
Leo, midnight nailed it. You didn’t read the paper, whether or not you got through the abstract is questionable. You instead relied on Keen, and only Keen for your information.
Thus BS:
Cut the crap. You will scroll up and read midnight’s previous INFORMATIVE posts on these matters. This is tiresome. I don’t think there’s any point to any more. Unless somebody wants to take the bigfoot analogy on, or his previous whopper about there being some sort of photographic or video “multiple angles” statement head on, and all the cornmazes he’s led himself down with that kind of thinking. I simply don’t have what it takes.
Midnight called it. Whatever we say, no matter how laboriously we discuss these things, no matter how much we boil it down for the guy, he’s just gonna google-fu up a link to one of his fanboy sites, and pay us no mind. I don’t know, should we put it to a vote, ayes and nays about responding to him anymore? Or do you guys find a utility in the exercise of trying to explain things? Or do you think there is a benefit of this exercise for people reading along?
I’m frankly ready to jump off a cliff, I guess we could vote on that instead.
I’m in. Let’s Thelma and Louise this thang…
Count me in. Let’s take our collective responding out into the woods and put two in the back of its head.
Okay, I had to torture that metaphor but you get the idea…
the devils gummy bear,
Leo100 (Leo MacDonald) has just exposed himself.
See his comment on Michael Prescott’s spiritualist blog published less than 24 hours ago:
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2014/05/calling-all-minions.html?cid=6a00d83451574c69e201a3fd16d3c8970b#comment-6a00d83451574c69e201a3fd16d3c8970b
“I can’t find this suppose paper but a man by the name of Christopher Moreman came up with an alternative explanation for the cross correspondences. He called it chance coincidence. I found this. If anyone can get access to this paper and do a rebuttal to it would be appreciated. I would myself but I can’t get access to it.”
As you can see Leo is asking other paranormal believers to do his “debunking” for him. He has no real interest in these cases, has never even read the material on it, he only cites it because he believes it’s evidence for life after death, he will just believe no matter the evidence and give any old thing he can get hold of that reinforces his belief. It’s lazy. This person is not worth engaging. Don’t waste time on this, I spend ages doing huge replies to him and he ignored most of what I said about various cases. He usually copies and pastes other peoples materials. I have seen no evidence he has read any of the books on this subject. In short he has no idea what he is talking about.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/committee.php
Please also see the above link, Leo is a committee member of the famous “Debunking skeptics” SCEPCOP website. This website does not have a good reputation. The owner Winston Wu is an admitted schizophrenic who has a history of abusing skeptics and spamming skeptic websites.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/SCEPCOP
I certainly haven’t read his book. I’d never heard of him earlier today. I’ve only read that interview, realised he was denying the existence of consciousness, and then posted on here.
I only found the link where he asserts puppets are conscious afterwards.
My point is that it is transparently obvious that we are conscious in Nagel’s sense i.e X is conscious if it is like something to be X People like Graziano are simply off their trolley.
“winston wu”. Ha, a very fitting name.
The Other John Mc
“different implies there is another, which you have yet to provide beyond saying ‘perceptual perceptions’, ‘real reality’, and ‘clockwork clocks’, you trolly troll”.
We can’t define consciousness apart from what Nagel says.
One things for sure though. Consciousness means that we experience things like greenness, pains, fall in love etc. Graziano’s definition is simply not consciousness.
It’s utterly pathetic that none of you guys are able to bring yourselves to condemn someone who denies the existence of consciousness. This demonstrates that none of you can be taken remotely seriously on this subject.
good God, one of their committee members is “indigo child”.
midnightrunner, yeah… The other week, I dug up our dear Leo Mac’s posts on SKEPCOP (ebunkingskeptics dot guh) going all the way back to 2007, in which he was soliciting help from that anti-skeptic community, in order to argue with our ilk… All the way back then, too, he’s been at this for quite some time. He even posted (over in the SKEPCOP forums) some revealing statements, in which he seemed to take particular delight in reeking some amount of havoc in comments sections/forums, gloating about frustrating the “pseudoskeptics”.
But we we’re long passed disingenuous here, anyway.
Drink every time time Ian types “reductive materialism”.
We can get this nonsense train to 1000 posts! We can do this!
But i’m just so tired, can barely go on….consciousness… getting hazy….clockwork…..clock…..
Ian,
Based on that interview, he simply isn’t saying what you think he is saying. Consciousness is a model the brain constructs of itself selectively processing information about it’s internal model of reality. This is not in contradiction with what anyone (well, except leo, Alisina and you) have been saying here.
This is the reason nobody immediately jumped to condemn the guy.
I’ll let the neuroscientists respond directly to that. Should make for entertaining reading.
The devil’s gummy bear if Midnightrunner would kindly send me a link to the actual paper that is 17 pages long I will read it. But, I ain’t going to pay money for something that appears to not have much substance too it at all. Midnightrunner if you really read any material on the evidence for life after death why don’t you a actually prove to me you have?. Just saying you have means squat.
I will admit I do copy and past links a lot, unlike you you doesn’t admit to
Midnightrunner is the same clown that posted a rant on Michael Prescott here
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michael_Prescott
Where he was destroyed here
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2012/12/irrationalwiki.html
There are numerous things me and Winston Wu do not agree on but I do agree that there is pseudoskeptics.
Now this is what we call Lazy Midnightrunner
As Michael Prescott nicely puts it
Are all these RW articles written by the same person? This passage about Chris Carter is very similar to the ones about me and Michael Tymn that I quoted in the main post:
“Carter ignores any evidence contrary to his beliefs, he chooses to ignore ectoplasm becuase it was discovered in seance rooms to be the result of fraud made of butter, muslin, plastic dolls or newspaper clippings. He also rejects the psychological evidence for mediumship.”
Whoever is posting these articles seems to have just two or three all-purpose criticisms, which he rearranges in arbitrary fashion. Very slipshod work.
This is so awesome from the same person Midnightrunner
“Global warming flapIn a notable case of a skeptic being unskeptical, Randi caused a tempest in a teacup by mouthing off about global warming on his blog. His sins included citing the Oregon Petition and pulling the “science was wrong before” gambit.[8][9] Randi retracted his earlier comments and included a link to eSkeptic’s debunking of the Petition.[10]
[edit] Personal lifeRandi is gay,[11] thus demonstrating the inherently superior rationality of Homo sapiens homo and proving that atheism, skepticism and joined-up thinking is part of the gay agenda in particular and the liberal conspiracy in general.[12] ”
No one is safe!
“The devil’s gummy bear if Midnightrunner would kindly send me a link to the actual paper that is 17 pages long I will read it.”
I will post it online or email it to you, I am thinking of joining the academia website and so can post free. I will be posting a refutation to Chris Carter’s book on the afterlife as well.
“Midnightrunner if you really read any material on the evidence for life after death why don’t you a actually prove to me you have?”
I don’t need to prove anything to you, but you can see the evidence here that I have read hundreds of books on the topic http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=258077 . This is the most detailed refutation of D. D. Home’s mediumship on the web. Even Home’s biographer Peter Lamont and the parapsychologist (who you have cited) Stephen E. Braude were fascinated by all the sources I dug up after I sent them my research.
“Midnightrunner is the same clown that posted a rant on Michael Prescott here”
What proof have you got of this Leo? I told you before I have never edited on rationalwiki. I know Michael Prescott though for two years or so and even he congratulated me on my research in debunking various mediums over email discussion last year. Note – because of me Prescott no longer endorses the views of most physical mediums. It was me who sent him all the material of fraud in the séance room.
“Where he was destroyed here”
Michael Prescott still believes ectoplasm is real and he has claimed there is scientific evidence for levitations and spirits in the seance room on his blog, i.e. from the fraudulent medium Eusapia Palladino. He did not “destroy” anything. The rationalwiki piece represents what his beliefs are.
“Are all these RW articles written by the same person?”
This is easy to check Leo, check the edit history of the article and you will see which users have edited it. It seems more than one person has created many of those articles, nothing to do with me.
“This is so awesome from the same person Midnightrunner”
You have lost it Leo and I have no idea what you are pasting in. You said early you have special needs. You are not thinking rationally and are just being stupid here. Think through what you are typing. You are talking nonsense.
My vote is aye. Personally, I’m done with this deceitful/disingenuous, bottomless, impossibly dense black hole. There’s no point, midnight… No point.
“But i’m just so tired, can barely go on….consciousness… getting hazy….clockwork…..clock…..”
No! We can do this! We’ll post on like Clockwork Clocks!
Though seriously, don’t drink every time Ian says “reductive materialism” – you could end up in the hospital.
Midnightrunner
Not really easy to check because you have been known to change your usernames numerous times before. Greg Taylor has some knowledge of tracking ip addresses however and said before that it was you who came up with that rant on Michael Prescott. All you have to do is create a free blog on blogger that is where you can post your rants at. It’s a lot easier than flooding many sites up with your rants. Like you did to dailygrail and Michael Prescott. For example when I was reading the comments you made on dailygrail you commented 8 times in a straight row. No comments in between those comments either. That is what we call spamming. You should educate yourself about what spamming is. If your going to send me a copy I would suggest don’t spam me or I will block you.
Go ahead and attack me with an emotional attack I don’t care I prefer if you don’t speak to me again. Because I got the feeling you will spam me next.
From midnight’s link (to Prescott’s blog), in the comments on June 03, 2014 at 04:28 PM, Leo wrote:
Now now Devil’s gummy bear unless your also midnightrunner lol. Well that is all Moreman is making here is a argument with no substance whatsoever.
“example when I was reading the comments you made on dailygrail you commented 8 times in a straight row. No comments in between those comments either. That is what we call spamming.”
This is more dishonesty from you Leo. The definition of spam is sending “the same message indiscriminately to (a large numbers of Internet users).”
You can see here in the comment section that none of my messages were the same.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife
I take the case seriously as I have researched the medium Leonora Piper for over twenty years and have spent a fortune in acquiring rare materials about this case. I was invited to Greg Taylor’s paranormal website by a spiritualist to debate Greg on the subject. I had previously already debated Greg. I showed Greg all the evidence Piper was a fraud but like yourself he is a convinced believer in anything paranormal and is not interested in any evidence against his beliefs. His book filters out anything negative against Piper.
As shown by the post above you have also been lying about other things for example you posted on this blog that you have read the Christopher Moreman paper on the cross correspondences but at the same time elsewhere on Michael Prescott’s blog said you have not read it. I also noticed in your post on Prescott’s blog you said “I found this”, which is not true either.
Ugh, I’m really butchering the tags. Sorry guys. Better lay off the html for a while.
It doesn’t matter than none of the messages were the same. One of the users caught you not actually read all the primary material of Piper his or her username was Kaviraj. I quote
honestskeptic wrote:
I have not come across any evidence for “stringent conditions”,
If you actually read all of the primary Piper material, then yes you have. That’s just for starters… but, with no offense intended, I must insist that I don’t think I’m going to get much further with you given that I’ve already said many things that you’ve been unwilling or unable to actually address via argument.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife?page=1
This is my favorite showing that you are indeed a spammer. Spamming is not just simple what you stated above its also copy and pasting links without even giving credit. When I said I found this I was searching through google and found the link.
Posted by jfly
Nice – an attempt at a “rebuttal” supported by Wikipedia citations. Without taking any sides on this debate, your argument immediately loses all of its credibility as soon as you copy-and-paste the web addresses to wikipedia entries on controversial topics to back up your position. Every grade school kid can do it without having to do any research or exercising a shred of critical thinking on his or her own.
You’re not being skeptical – your doing no more than making an appeal to authority.
Are you not aware that wikipedia is edited by any sundry, uneducated joe-blow who can operate a keyboard? And that several universities have banned the use of wikipedia, because so many of its entries are rife with factual errors? How about the fact that Larry Sanger, co-creator of wikipedia, severed his affiliations with site because he got fed up having to deal with biased editor trolls and trying to make amends to all the misinformation abounding on the wiki?
And this gem: “Jon Donnis and Harry Price both legends.” Yeah, in your mind. Sounds like hero aggrandizement. Biased? You? No way.
Now, I don’t want to hear anymore from you. Go back under that slump wherever you came from.
Grrr… Must…. Resist… tags… must fight…html… willpower… abating… grrr..
Let me try that one more time, corrected, for the hell of it:
From midnight’s link (to Prescott’s blog), in the comments on June 03, 2014 at 04:28 PM, Leo wrote:
However, shortly before posting this over there, Leo posted this bit of shit over here (03 Jun 2014 at 4:17 pm):
Further, let’s then put the following bullshit (later that night, in these comments, at 1:11 AM) into its proper context:
This is of course complete bullshit. No interest in evidence (and no idea what that word even means anyway). This assclown will move wherever he can get crowdsourcing for his bullshit.
Full of it, etc.
I will admit I never actually read Moreman’s paper I really don’t have the money to purchase it.
Booyah! Better quit now (leaps into a bush).
(Booyah to getting the markup fixed)
691…that is all Wait! The brain still is not a receiver.
Minor correction: “…I also move where the evidence takes me.” was from this morning (04 Jun 2014 at 10:05 am), and not from 1:11 AM. My bad.
@Bronzedog
“I reject the things that ended up in the “non-material” category on a case-by-case basis, not a categorical one. I’m a “materialist” because I lack an ideological need to acknowledge a “non-material” category. I’d rather categorize things by meaningful and useful criteria.”
This is well put bronzedog. It seems when you’re attached to dogma it’s ok to also assign others to a dogma, whether they are or not. I’ve never considered myself anything but curious and requiring evidence. That’s it.
@midnight
“As you can see Leo is asking other paranormal believers to do his “debunking” for him”
Nice! Leo, caught again unable to form his own opinions but claiming he has it all figured out. Atleast Ian did his foot work – albeit completely in the wrong direction and only dealing with it philosophically.
@Leo
“But, I ain’t going to pay money for something that appears to not have much substance too it at all. Midnightrunner if you really read any material on the evidence for life after death why don’t you a actually prove to me you have?”
You’re on a committe to ‘debunk’ the debunkers but you can’t take the time o rmoney to understand the arguments? It’s rpetty clear you don’t take this stuff very seriously, as Ian pointed out Leo. You’ve spent the vast majority of your time parroting what others give you. When confronted on what YOU believe in YOUR own words, you get caught cutting and pasting, or begging for help to refute arguments. How do you expect us to take al lthis seriously Leo?
“As Michael Prescott nicely puts it ”
Cause why say it yourself when someone else can say it for you right Leo?
“Now, I don’t want to hear anymore from you. Go back under that slump wherever you came from.”
Leo, midnghtrunner has done nothing here but build cogent arguments refuting your own. Your only ‘case’ against him is that some of your true believer buddies don’t like him. Meanwhile YOU have continually abused your credibility over and over again. Maybe, just maybe you need to take your own advice.
Aight fellow skeptics (and Ian and Leo I guess), I’m going to try to stay done with this thread. Leo and Ian and a handful of others have failed miserably to make their cases, promised to quit more than once and have kept coming back to repeat the same old tired arguments (or repeat others same old tired arguments).
It’s obvious they aren’t here to learn anything and this thread has gone around in circles so much it’s violently wretching in the corner hoping no one is watching. It’s been like a bad car accident, hard to look away from but imam do my best to move on to something worth my time.
…and please stop responding to leo.
Talk ABOUT him if you must, but please resist the urge to argue with him. He is a liar and a copypasting cheat. Not only is he intellectually deficient, as he has admitted himself and as is obvious from the construction and content of his posts, but he is morally deficient as well. Any half decent person would have slithered back into the undergrowth with the exposure of his lying and cheating. But not this little rattle snake.
Enough…
Discussion by Michio Kaku over at Nautilus about consciousness: http://nautil.us/issue/14/mutation/michio-kaku-explains-consciousness-for-you
I don’t *love* Kaku, he tends to greatly and needlessly oversimplify (e.g., the triune brain model is quite dated and simplistic), but gives pretty good descritpions of what we’ve been talking about as consciousness re: feed-back loops, awareness, memory, sense of time, etc.
I also agree with his take on the question “what is qualia”, he argues basically this question will probably get pushed aside over time as we realize it might be a meaningless, silly, unanswerable, and/or just-too-complex question, and we should still be able to make progress without it, similar to the way biology has pushed aside the question “what is life”…very good discussion.
@BillyJoe7
I admitted that I copy and pasta before then I started to give the links at least where the source came from.
@Grabula
They refuted Midnightrunner’s weak arguments very well. I agree with you it’s time to move on.
700!!!!!
And the ghost hunter’s arguments have not evolved at all…
Dammit, Steve12! I wanted to swoop in on post 700…
mumadadd:
You can grab the big 1000
Thing is, the engine that drives 600 plus comment threads is cranks like leo – but I totally agree with others that he isn’t worth responding to any more. Maybe Ian will come back and try to educate us on philosophy.
Michio Kaku has always rubbed me the wrong way. He’s like a merchandising machine, a brand stretched too far, he’ll show up in anything if the check clears… I have a good friend who is something of a Michio groupie, and I inevitably end up having to sit through all this Michio stuff that gets churned out every other day. For the life of me, I can’t see the appeal.
@Mumadadd
Educate you on the evidence for life after death and psi.
Just to show you skeptics how well read up I am on you guys I have been numerous sites of yours. Such as crank dot net, jref forum, rationalwiki, skeptico blog, this blog neurologica, skeptic articles against near death experiences/out of body experiences. Your view that I don’t read up on any skeptical material is bogus.
Picking on my grammar and spelling and you guys are not any better. I happen to type very fast and I lot of times skip putting in the comma’s.
Another blog entry by me I’ve just published:
http://ian-wardell.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/self-driving-cars.html
It’s nice to have a bit of constancy in one’s life, I suppose….
Ian,
Why would I want to click something that appears to have nothign whatsoever to do with the topic we are discussing.
Quite disgusting self promotion.
Gummy bear: “Michio Kaku has always rubbed me the wrong way. He’s like a merchandising machine, a brand stretched too far, he’ll show up in anything if the check clears”
I feel the exact same way, and when I saw a link to him on Nautilus talking about consciousness, I thought, Oh god here we go, more quantum+consciousness nonsense….but was refreshingly surprised by his take on this. His thinking is fairly sophisiticated yet he successfully dumbs it down (sometimes too much) for a general audience. Not sure if I’ll be able to bring myself to buy and read his new book about this…
I just got to the qualla bit. Considering the nonsense that’s frothed up since the Afterlife Debate, Kaku, in this, is having an antidote-like effect on this gummy’s bear brain, after a bad acid trip through the madder comments from the fringe.
And now I can send my Kaku-nut buddy a link (I hope this doesn’t encourage him). Hmm… I like that, nuts for Kaku: “Kakunuts”. Not in a derogatory way. Not yet anyway.
Leo100 writes:
“It doesn’t matter than none of the messages were the same. One of the users caught you not actually read all the primary material of Piper his or her username was Kaviraj.”
I have read everything on the Piper case. Kaviraj did not catch me out at all. He believes the original Piper séance sittings with William James, Richard Hodgson, Oliver Lodge and James Hyslop in the late 19th century were done in the most “stringent conditions”. I disagree with this view for a number of reasons. For a start Mrs Piper knew most of these séance sitters, she communicated with them out of the séance room, she even was staying at Oliver Lodge’s house. The location of some of the séances were also unsuitable not in a controlled environment. Hyslop, Hodgson and Lodge were all convinced spiritualists before investigating Piper, no skeptic was present. This is utter bias and not suitable investigators for such a case. Similar to Martin Gardner I believe a blindfold or mask should have been used on Piper at all times so she could not see her séance sitters but this was never done and a magician (or at least trained observer in fraud) should have been present during all her séances, this was never ever done. Piper would also hold the hand of most of her séance sitters, this should have been ruled out but it wasn’t. If you know anything about mentalism then you will know about muscle reading.
During Piper’s séances sometimes the sitters would sit outside the door whilst waiting, Piper could have easily picked up information and there are at least four cases on record that suggest this is what happened. Also note that Piper’s daughter was present at some of the séances or at least in the same building, this is another possibility of sensory leakage. Lastly William James maid was a friend with Mrs Piper maid and there was a strong link between the two households. Piper had stayed at many of these psychical researcher houses. Basically there are a tonne of ways Piper could have found information about her sitters. Her séances are not evidence for spirits.
James Hyslop put on a mask when he entered the séance room in an attempt to conceal his identity but took it off 5 or 10 minutes into the séance when he believed Piper had fallen into a genuine trance, the problem here was that Piper’s eyes were open during various periods of the séance… it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what she was doing. In short Leo the conditions were totally un-scientific with little if any controls. There were possibilities for all kinds of clues from the sitters.
As for the rest of your post Leo again is just a copy and paste job from other people, in this case from convinced spiritualists on Greg Taylor’s paranormal website. Perhaps for a change you can offer your own opinion on this subject.
As for Kaviraj I have debated this person a number of times, he doesn’t like Wikipedia because he was banned on it for promoting fringe pseudoscience beliefs over and over into articles which is against Wikipedia policy, his profile can be found here:
https://www.blogger.com/profile/05165517217688742598
As you can see he describes himself “Homoeopath, Writer, Spiritualist” he also says medical evidence is a “sham”. Basically every person you have cited in this thread Leo is a pseudoscience proponent or quite frankly nuts. Like I said above if you want to continue this little discussion about Lenora Piper, then offer your own opinion about it or cite some of your own research. Are you saying you believe Piper communicated with spirits? If so what is your evidence for this claim? Cheers.
Please don’t give him any more. It will never end.
@Midnightrunner
I read the comment section you are nice to him and now you like to invalidate everything you said to you by saying he is a nutcase. Will you admit that you said that Jon Donnis and Harry Price are legends in your view?. Even Moreman that you mentioned earlier mentioned that not just coincidence could explain the cross correspondences but also some psi as well. Need to ask you do you think near death experiences are good evidence for an afterlife?. Go back to the second page of the comments on the dailygrail and actually read what Kaviraj its an good rebuttal to your arguments against Piper. Hodgson is skeptical of mediums I don’t know how you can say that.
My opinion on this is neither me or you were there at the time this happened so its your arguments against ours. I have to lean towards the evidence that Piper was a real medium the hits she made were remarkable. The burden is on you to show that the controls really crappy as you call them. Because the primary sources say different.
Don’t do it midnight… Break the cycle. You kin doooo eeeeeet….
I had a quick look at scepcop, the site midnight linked to yesterday, and let’s just say it’s what orac would call “a target rich environment”. I honestly think these people are mostly children or have diagnosable mental health issues, or maybe some combination of the two.
Anyways, in a nutshell, there’s this big conspiracy to suppress the “Truth” that all paranormal claims are real, by the evil “pseudoskeptics” , through means such as mind control (really) and policing of Wikipedia. The mind boggles.
After reading through the hundreds of comments, I have changed my opinion on this subject. My initial opinion was in full alignment with title of this post “The Brain Is Not a Receiver”, as in: the brain is not a type of radio or TV receiver.
The commentators who have presented their cases against this proposition have convinced me that their brains do indeed possess a type of radio receiver.
Allow me to illustrate two types of radio receiver…
Type 1: A state-of-the-art radio receiver. These incorporate: a phase-locked loop tuning mechanism to prevent them straying from the desired source of information (the transmitter); automatic gain control with muting (squelch) and a high precision channel filter (both functions serving to avoid the inadvertent reception of garbage); complex mechanisms to suppress impulsive noise and other unwanted interference. Such receivers have an outstanding information-to-noise ratio.
Type 2: A crystal set. These radio receivers are totally wide open to receiving anything and everything, which makes the reliable reception of information impossible. Such receivers have an outstanding noise-to-information ratio.
There’s not even one piece of solid evidence to clearly demonstrate that any human approaches being a Type 1 radio receiver.
The comments in this thread have clearly demonstrate that some humans are exemplary Type 2 radio receivers.
mumadadd, I did what you did, and came away with the same sense.
Way up at the top of these comments, midnight figured out pretty quickly that our guy was quoting from his own blog, and from there, I went over to SKEPCOP, and then back to the blog, and read a bit…
There are times on the interwebs, when you have to step back and think; who is this person I’m speaking with… Because it matters… If it’s a kid (or a younger adult), you know, step waaayyyy back and be helpful and edu-mi-cational, and there are limits… I don’t know how to deal with serious mental health stuff, or learning disabilities. If it’s a jerk or a fundamentalist on the other end; chose your own adventures I guess.
It certainly is a target rich environment over at SKEPCOP.
(here we go again)
Hi Pete A, you’ll forgive me if I doubt all of what you’ve said.
Leo100 writes:
“I read the comment section you are nice to him and now you like to invalidate everything you said to you by saying he is a nutcase.”
I have no problem with calling kaviraj a nutcase, I believe this comment is justified if you read what’s on his blog and he is dangerous one, he wants people to stop using conventional medicine and replace it with homeopathy. He also claims the moon landing was a hoax.
http://kaviraj-howabouttellingthetruth.blogspot.co.uk/
“Go back to the second page of the comments on the dailygrail and actually read what Kaviraj its an good rebuttal to your arguments against Piper.”
I have read it and did respond to him elsewhere but I never got a reply, he gave no references for his claims. You already copied and pasted his reply to me in this thread earlier on, I will take it line by line in another post later.
“Will you admit that you said that Jon Donnis and Harry Price are legends in your view?”
Dam right they are legends. They are two men who have spent a heck of lot of time debunking fraudulent mediums.
“Need to ask you do you think near death experiences are good evidence for an afterlife?”
No. The exact same imagery that appears in the NDE appears in use of drugs, patients who have suffered from brain damage or cases of sleep paralysis etc. I recommend the paper “Life after Death” by Ronald K. Siegel in the book “Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Supernatural” edited by George Abell and Barry Singer. Siegel describes the NDE as a “dissociative hallucinatory activity of the brain”.
“Hodgson is skeptical of mediums I don’t know how you can say that.”
I have already addressed this in two long posts on this blog. Richard Hodgson was only skeptical of physical mediums, i.e. mediums who claimed to use ectoplasm or “levitate” tables. Hodgson was a believer in mental mediums and claimed to be a medium himself and communicate with spirits. Whilst his work in debunking some physical mediums should be respected he was not skeptical of paranormal phenomena, he claimed to have observed the spirit of his lover after she died, he was very eager to believe.
“I have to lean towards the evidence that Piper was a real medium the hits she made were remarkable.”
What hits? You need to be more specific. Site examples and/or references if possible.
“The burden is on you to show that the controls really crappy as you call them. Because the primary sources say different.”
Incorrect. The burden is always on the paranormal believer by default because it is you who is making the magical claim. Can you please define what the “primary” sources are. I take it you are referring to early Society For Psychical Research papers published by spiritualists such as Hodgson, Hyslop or Lodge. I already listed about ten examples above why the controls were unsatisfactory.
Damn it.
It’s OK TDGB! You are a but a cog in the machine that will take this thread to 1000!
@the devils gummy bear
Apologies for my engineering-based satire being less than blatantly obvious.
I think Pete A is making fun of the ghost hunters via the noise:info vs. info:noise ratio comment
Leo, do you think you could write a little about the value of an open mind?
Sorry Pete – didn’t see that you had responded…
PeteA
“Apologies for my engineering-based satire being less than blatantly obvious.”
My first read through I didn’t pick it up, but second time through it twigged. Nice one.
Ah, you got me… Nice.
Midnightrunner
In my own words Piper came out with information she could not have possibly known such as people she never met before and others she knew nothing about.
Here is an interesting link by the way discussing Leonora Piper a neutral look
http://www.prairieghosts.com/piper.html
It also has a neutral look on DD Homes and the cross correspondences
http://www.prairieghosts.com/ddhome.html
http://www.prairieghosts.com/cross_corr.html
Incorrect. The burden is always on the paranormal believer by default because it is you who is making the magical claim. Can you please define what the “primary” sources are. I take it you are referring to early Society For Psychical Research papers published by spiritualists such as Hodgson, Hyslop or Lodge. I already listed about ten examples above why the controls were unsatisfactory.
Yes from there well I don’t find your examples compelling. In fact Martin’s Gardner’s attack on Piper and its similar to what you are bringing up.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html
Well your a liar again when you said near death experiences can be explained by drugs etc when in fact you said in the comments section on the daily grail that you liked that part of his book. Harry Price was also controversial.
http://www.prairieghosts.com/harryprice.html
Kaviraj believes that that is his opinion. My point is his objections against your arguments are valid.
@Steve12
Leo, do you think you could write a little about the value of an open mind?
It’s to look at both sides of an topic which I have done and there is a lot of value in that. Have I looked at both sides of the arguments from mediumship? no I haven’t but like I said I don’t find midnightrunner’s arguments convincing.
I have already addressed this in two long posts on this blog. Richard Hodgson was only skeptical of physical mediums, i.e. mediums who claimed to use ectoplasm or “levitate” tables. Hodgson was a believer in mental mediums and claimed to be a medium himself and communicate with spirits. Whilst his work in debunking some physical mediums should be respected he was not skeptical of paranormal phenomena, he claimed to have observed the spirit of his lover after she died, he was very eager to believe.
Your wrong as I quote here
After Mrs. Piper’s return to America Dr. Hodgson took charge again. His first report was published in 1892 in Vol. VIII of the SPR Proceedings. In an excess of caution he refused to consider, on the available evidence, the acceptance of the spirit hypothesis as justified. Yet his inner self was wavering. He was torn with doubts. But not for long. In 1892 a notable evolution was witnessed in the Piper phenomena in the quality of trance communications by the development of automatic writing and by the advent of Pelham as control. Hodgson’s second report, which appeared in SPR Proceedings, Vol. XIII, in 1897, ended with the adoption of the spirit hypothesis. His statement was very firm:
“I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the ‘chief communicators ‘… are veritably the personalities that they claim to be; that they have survived the change we call death, and that they have directly communicated with us whom we call living through Mrs. Piper’s entranced organism. Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the ‘spirit’ hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the ‘spirit’ hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the other hypothesis is not.”
The source: http://web.archive.org/web/20080102071706/http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/mediums/piper.htm
As you can read at first he was not accepting of the spirit hypothesis when he looked at the evidence at the first conference.
steve,
“Leo, do you think you could write a little about the value of an open mind?”
Now look what you’ve done.
Now we have more indecipherable nonsense from leo!
“It’s to look at both sides of an topic which I have done”
So, he has looked at both sides of the topic.
But, hold on…no he hasn’t:
“Have I looked at both sides of the arguments from mediumship? no I haven’t”
No, he hasn’t.
Yes he has. No he hasn’t.
Is that his final word? No it isn’t:
“but like I said I don’t find midnightrunner’s arguments convincing”
So, yes he has!
Yes he has. No he hasn’t. Yes he has.
YesNoYes sheit hasn’thashasn’t.
“I happen to type very fast and I lot of times skip putting in the comma’s.”
If only his only problem was missed commas.
Sorry, “comma’s”.
COMMA’S!
This guy is hilarious.
…but he happens to type very fast!
midnightrunner2014…
He is a black hole, he feeds on the spaghettification he causes. He gets off on deorbiting people’s time and energy down, down, down, into his impossibly dense core. No thought can escape.
BillyJoe7
I didn’t read the suppose arguments against mediumship. I got enough clues from other proponents such as me who know how to rebut that Moreman’s argument for example, have no real substance. The same goes with the Leonora Piper they have no real substance at all.
This isn’t satire, it is epistemology (the very foundation of knowledge, and consequently science)…
Internalized faith: belief without evidence.
Externalising one’s faith: pretending to know things that you don’t know. Example: wielding the word quantum in an attempt to justify absurd metaphysics.
I think this nicely illustrates one of the profound counter-intuitive consequences of supposing that brains produce and determine mental states.
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
The hero undergoes existential (not alterational) change every night. Of course in reality he would undergo existential change every infinitesimal fraction of a second.
@BillyJoe7: Welcome to Moonside!
If you stay here too long, you’ll fry your brain.
No, you won’t.
Yes, you will… not.
Yesno, you willwon’t.
Leo100 writes:
“Your wrong as I quote here”
Again you are not doing any deep research here or citing any proper references but just citing the first thing you can find that you think reinforces the idea of spirits. You are citing a spiritualist website. Some of the information is incorrect. But you did not even find this website yourself – you copied it from Michael Prescott’s blog. The reason I know this is because the source you gave is taken from web archive, but if you look from last year the link has been updated and is no longer dead. Survival after death.org has moved to http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/ but you wouldn’t know this. You just copy and paste from any old blog you can find.
Lazy Leo, real Lazy.
But let’s look at your copied quote. Firstly it was written by Nandor Fodor and taken directly from his book Encyclopedia of Psychic Science (1934). Fodor was originally a spiritualist but later became mostly skeptical. By the 1950s Fodor was heavily interested in the ideas of Sigmund Freud and retracted many of his previous claims about mediums. He no longer believed in spirits, instead believing medium’s controls could be explained in psychological terms. Of course you have not even checked who you are quoting from. But you are quoting from Fodor.
As for Fodor’s Encyclopedia it is filled with false and inaccurate information. Let’s look at his quote:
“His first report was published in 1892 in Vol. VIII of the SPR Proceedings.”
Nothing wrong with this but a full cite to the paper would be nice, here it is:
Richard Hodgson. (1892). A record of certain phenomena of trance. Proceedings: Society for Psychical Research. 8: 1-167.
You have not read this paper Leo. Don’t pretend you have, not many people really have read it – it’s 167 pages long. It’s quite hard to locate. Only some of it’s content has been uploaded online.
What needs to be pointed out about this paper is that full stenographic records were not used so many of the reports used in the actual over-all report were unreliable relying on memory. This refutes the early comment you quoted from the spiritualist kaviraj who claims all Piper’s séances used stenographic data and your own claim that the séances were performed in excellent conditions.
“In an excess of caution he refused to consider, on the available evidence, the acceptance of the spirit hypothesis as justified.”
This isn’t true. Whilst Hodgson does not openly endorse the spiritualist hypothesis in his 1892 report he thinks there’s a paranormal element to some of Piper’s mediumship. He claimed her mediumship could not be explained by fraud. As I already told you, Hodgson was already a believer in spirits. Consult Hodgon’s biography Alex Baird. (1949). The Life of Richard Hodgson if you want to see his own claims about communicating with spirits. Hodgson claimed to be a medium himself! He was not an “arch skeptic” like you or other spiritualists like to claim. Skeptical of some mediums yes, but very much a believer in the paranormal.
“Hodgson’s second report, which appeared in SPR Proceedings, Vol. XIII, in 1897, ended with the adoption of the spirit hypothesis.”
This is incorrect information from Fodor, firstly Hodgson was already a proponent of the spirit hypothesis before this date and there was no report in 1897, the report was a year later in 1898. Here is the full citation to the paper:
Richard Hodgson. (1898). A further record of observations of certain phenomena of trance. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. 13: 284-582.
This is a huge paper hundreds of pages long, I am not expecting you to have read it Leo. If I can remember correctly even your spiritualist friend Michael Prescott admitted he has not read all of it.
“Having tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several years, and the ‘spirit’ hypothesis also for several years, I have no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance that the ‘spirit’ hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the other hypothesis is not.”
Even this quote contradicts what Fodor previously says. Note Hodgson says he tried the “spirit” hypothesis for several years previously, he is referring to before 1898. But even this isn’t the full truth. He was very eager to believe and a proponent of the spirit hypothesis before these dates. That aside this is one view from one psychical researcher. Most psychical researchers (including some who sat with Piper) did not believe she communicated with spirits, it’s not just skeptics who have criticised Piper. Even William James admitted she fished for information.
“As you can read at first he was not accepting of the spirit hypothesis when he looked at the evidence at the first conference.”
There was no conference Leo. It was a psychical report published in a paranormal journal (the SPR). No scientific journal would publish such a thing. We have already established that stenographic data was hardly used for any of the séances so Hodgson was relying on memory not just from himself but from other séance sitters. As I have already written on this blog (and you can find this on the internet and in books) Hodgson was later caught fabricating data, i.e. lying about information in the séance room about séances that Professor Fiske attended with Piper. He is not a reliable source. I have evidence he lied about other things as well. It shows how he desperately wanted to believe he ended up deceiving others.
Here’s what the skeptic Joseph McCabe has written about it:
“”A cousin of Pellew’s wrote to Mr. Clodd to tell him that, if he cared to ask the family, he would learn that all the relatives of the dead man regarded Mrs. Piper’s impersonation of him as “beneath contempt”. Mr Clodd wrote to Professor Pellew, George’s brother, and found that this was the case. The family has been pestered for fifteen years with reports of the proceedings and requests to authenticate them and join the S.P.R. They said that they knew George, and they could not believe that, when freed from the burden of the flesh, he would talk such “utter drivel and inanity.” As to “intimate friends,” one of these was Professor Fiske, who had been described by Dr. Hodgson as “absolutely convinced” of the identity of “G. P.” When Professor Pellew told Professor Fiske of this, he replied, roundly, that it was “a lie”. Mrs. Piper had, he said, been “silent or entirely wrong” on all his test questions.”
Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London Watts & Co. p. 103
I am not expecting you to reply to any of this Leo. You have never studied this case and probably don’t know any of this stuff. I will take the devils gummy bear advice and what other’s including myself earlier said on here, just leave this discussion because we are wasting our time doing long replies to you whilst you just ignore it all. I am not expecting a detailed reply to you and I probably won’t bother replying you back. But if you really have to go on believing after this there really is something that should at least give you some doubts about the spirit hypothesis, look at Piper and the Dean Connor case, if she was really in communication with spirits then why did she make such a mistake like that? Think about it. Regards.
I am sure Martin Gardner is your hero too Midnightrunner. Did you help edit rationalwiki about Leonora Piper?. Because you sound like that person on there. Never do you show any knowledge that you actually read any pro spiritualist literature on this but instead keep bringing up the skeptical literature on Piper. You seem fond in omitting information that doesn’t fit your conclusion that you came too on this manner.
You got to see this to all skeptics here and I quote from the source. Amos Oliver Doyle wrote.
To Whom It May Concern: ( HonestSkeptic, Ivy, Forrest, Trees etc. etc.)
I don’t want to encourage you by responding to your comments. Although I may like to discuss topics of mutual interest with you I cannot, because of your inclusion of personal libelous attacks on me and any other person who has an opinion differing from yours. Since you do not personally know me or any of those other persons you malign, your attacks are specious as are most of your other comments and any intelligent person will not get into a pissing match with you over illogical, incomplete and blatantly false comments. Apparently if you can’t convince them with logic you just try to dazzle them with verbiage. If you have so much to say, why not pay for and maintain a web site as others have done and expound upon your hypotheses concerning parapsychology. Perhaps you will attain a large following as Michael Tymn, Michael Prescott, Robert McLuhan, Greg and others have done.
Unfortunately, I must respond to your comments about me as you not only demean my character on this site but on the internet at large.
1. I respect other bloggers and blog sites enough that I don’t bog them down with my own egotistical verbiage; I have my own website. As you will note above, I gave a link to a web site with information supposedly written by Houdini that anyone could read if they were so interested. I respect Greg’s site enough not to quote the entire content of the link. Anyone may link to it and read it. They are free to form their own opinions. I have my opinion—you have yours. I believe that Houdini had a vested interest to prove that Mina Crandon was a fake as he implies in his own words. I do not “accuse” him of anything but I believe that his own words speak for themselves. Anyone with a little worldly experience can read between the lines. What is your source for Walter Franklin Prince’s comment about Mina Crandon? Then I will be able to respond to your request.
2. You label me as a “devout spiritualist” but that is news to me. If anything, I would label myself as a skeptic in the true sense of the word. Do I believe that there might be “spirits”? Well yes, there might be, but that is not enough to label me as a “devout spiritualist” as you claim. You don’t know me. How could you know what I think or believe in? You have made this claim several times on other sites. Frankly I am getting tired of it and request that you stop it! You have included it in your defamation of Michael Tymn on Rational Wiki. Please take out any reference to me on that page.
3. I have not claimed that “all kinds of mediums communicated with spirits” as you report. (What kind of a puerile statement is that? Please provide the source of your information about me.)
4. You allude to my anger and say of me that “you get angry and accuse people of being “biased” or “pseudoskeptics” and then you state that “you will still go on believing, like you have done in very blatant cases of fraud like Helen Duncan. None of that is true. I am not angry nor am I an accusatory person and I have little or no interest in the Helen Duncan case although I might have commented about it somewhere at sometime on the internet. The Helen Duncan case is only one among hundreds of cases that suggest a spiritualistic source of information. My only real interest in spirits is the Patience Worth case which I discuss at http://www.patienceworth.com
5. And, I have to say that at least two of your often-quoted resources for information; Joseph Jastrow and Joe Nickell, provide, in my opinion, the most superficial, opinionated, biased, undocumented drivel of any writer who tries to debunk the paranormal. These two men are writers of opinion unsupported by evidence.
So there! Put that in your pipe and smoke it! – AOD
As we can see you have had a long history of personal attacks on people who have a different opinion. After he or she told you off you continued your personal attack on him or her.
We are getting there folks keep your popcorn and pop on standby.
I used also point out that some of the books that Midnightrunner mentions are from Prometheus books they are a publishing company founded by Paul Kurtz who also founded CSICOP. There main objective prometheus books is to debunk and they don’t care what the opposing side has to say.
By the way I was able to dig up some links that Midnightrunner would like me to read. So I will read them. Here they are. I am going to copy them into my notepad and save them and read them soon.
“Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?” by Joseph McCabe, text online at:
http://archive.org/stream/isspiritualismba00mccarich#page/n3/mode/2up
An anti-Leonora Piper essay by Ivor Lloyd Tuckett:
http://archive.org/stream/evidenceforsuper00tuckrich#page/320/mode/2up
“Trick Methods of Eusapia Paladino”:
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89090346453#page/333/mode/1up
“Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge”:
http://archive.org/stream/spiritualismsiro00mercuoft#page/n3/mode/2up
I found these links on a older comment that Michael Prescott made on one his blog post on “Seth again”.
PeteA – exactly. I had to double check you weren’t Pete B.
“Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.”
― Peter Boghossian
Unfortunately, I do not think posters like Leo and Ian have ‘faith’ in their claims, they truly believe the evidence is on their side and that their beliefs are justified. I have maintained the value of blogs such as this will not be in changing their minds, but rather the many other readers who will benefit from learning how to evaluate and judge evidence that is most likely to support a claim.
Aside from the obvious absurdity of faith, we should think about the term “belief” – as it implies a firmly entrenched point of view unlikely to evolve easily. Rather, I “accept” a claim but am ready to reject it when following the evidence.
When is the last time anyone here changed their mind?
@devils gummy
Pete’s being ironic, I thought it was pretty funny.
This was my favorite bit of craziness:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/hijackingterms.php
I will reiterate to those readers who follow this blog but who do not typically post:
With regard to those in defense of fantastic claims (PSI, souls, OBEs, NDEs). Notice how decades of rigorously controlled, double-blinded studies with negative results are dismissed. Notice the lack of understanding on who the burden of proof should fall upon. Notice how anecdotes and thought experiments are mistaken for unequivocal evidence in support of the claim. Notice how powerful the motivation to believe is (in their minds and your own). -To paraphrase an interview with Sam Harris, “The Tiger Woods of PSI would have no problem performing successfully and to the satisfaction of skeptics worldwide, where is he?” I would add the $1M JREF prize would pale in comparison.
Are these phenomena in the realm of possibilities? They would have you believe that if the answer is yes, then it must be true somehow, somewhere. That is not the most effective strategy for accumulating knowledge.
Street,
“Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.”
― Peter Boghossian
GodDAMN, that is a beautiful quote. Thanks.
Streets ahead, Street. And for Pete’s sake grabula, I was late getting there… Even after Bruce, Steve, and Pete clued in, it was (and still is) a little too dead on. Eerily dead on. Right up to that uncanny/perfect fine line of satire, Pete A.
@The Street Epistemologist
Thanks for your reply and for quoting Peter Boghossian (I have the paperback version). I’m interested in your thoughts on the following…
Faith = justified belief. (I think this is equivalent to your term “truly believe” because belief without justification is simply a personal opinion.)
Knowledge = justified, true, belief.
E.g. I believe 2×2=4; it is true (a fact); and my justification for holding this belief is that it can be independently validated (at any time). Therefore, this belief is an item of knowledge.
A subtle, but mandatory, element of the justification is: If it comes to light that the item is false then the believer(s) must relinquish their belief, relegate the item to history, and openly admit that they were wrong. This element enables science to be a self-correcting accumulation of knowledge.
Now, let’s look at an item of faith. There is no requirement for it be true therefore the strength of the item depends solely on the strength of its justification; it never depends on the number of people who believe it.
What about those who believe that the mind is more than the brain, perhaps some kind of radio receiver? The comments in this thread demonstrate that there are sources providing some justification, which means this belief is an item of faith rather than simply being opinion.
As so frequently happens with faith, the justification boils down to little more than: We already know this is true; we continue collecting anecdotes, pseudoscience, antiscience, and rhetoric to thrust at every non-believer who dares to question our faith. This is, of course, the antithesis of the scientific method and it is the fundamental reason why faith and science are totally incompatible.
Perhaps the real question we need to ask the believers, and have fully answered, is: “What if you are wrong?”
Ian: “…in reality he would undergo existential change every infinitesimal fraction of a second”
I don’t suppose you could offer an actual explanation this time.
(Please don’t just post a link to your blog)
@PeteA
I’d agree with most of what you’re saying. Once you lose your justification you can no longer be honest in your belief in a fact to statement that appeared true. I also believe the ‘truth’ can change as we expand our knowledge on a particular subject.
I think what’s most interesting in this thread is we’ve seen essentially 2 distinct paths. In Leo’s case he’s come to his conclusion generally through his desire to believe ‘justified’ by any source he feels sufficiently backs up his belief. He’s shown an inability to consider an argument against but can’t form a cogent argument for and so relies on the ‘evidence’ provided by others.
Ian Wardell on the other hand has come to his belief I believe on his own. This has led him to a sort of delusional belief that he alone has figured it out. This isn’t an attack per se, but an observation. He relies mostly on his own evidence to support his arguments – which strictly speaking are philosophical and not based in science or as he refers to it naturalism/materialism (The apparent bogeyman of woo).
In both cases they’ve girded their beliefs so thoroughly, whether through a strong desire to believe (Leo) or through intellectual narcissism (Ian) that they can’t be shifted with actual evidence. One believes he has an answer through the application of outside sources while the other believes he’s reached the answer on his own and being superior, only has to educate the dirty masses.
What’s also of interest to me is while the true believers come at their belief from all sorts of different angles, skeptics appear to follow the same basic arguments against. I think more than anything else it’s telling which community is attempting to be more intellectual honest.
@BJ7
“I don’t suppose you could offer an actual explanation this time.”
Doh, you fell for his trap again. I’m seeing snide remarks to the affect of your stupid, it’s too easy to figure out, and/or blog links! When you have a pattern you have a pattern!
Grabula,
“In Leo’s case he’s come to his conclusion generally through his desire to believe ‘justified’ by any source he feels sufficiently backs up his belief”
I’d even go further and remove ‘sufficiently’ from that sentence. Leo will latch on to anything or anyone at all that disagrees with skeptics; doesn’t matter if the ideas are mutually exclusive. This is why I called him a denier in the other thread; it’s all about denying that death is the end, once that criterion is met he doesn’t care what he’s spouting.
I’ve been following this thread from the beginning, and now I don’t even bother to read leo’s posts, because he’s obviously not going to contribute anything beyond what he’s been doing all along, and it’s just a complete waste of time. Trying to engage him is like trying to teach algebra to a dog; he’s just not capable of understanding.
“He relies mostly on his own evidence to support his arguments – which strictly speaking are philosophical and not based in science”
Re Ian – aside from the philosophical masturbation, Ian believes that NDEs are evidence of souls and seems to believe firmly in the afterlife. So I think he’s also guilty of reasoning backwards from a cherished conclusion, although focuses mainly on bastardising logic to fit this conclusion and bolster his belief.
@Mumadadd
Good points. In Leo’s case knowing now his affiliation with Scepcop and having done some reading on that site he’s most likely here to fight ‘pseudoskeptics’ as they so affectionately refer to anyone who isn’t a true believer. Perusing that site was an eye opener into Leo’s motivations.
Ironically the Scepcop site does a pretty good job of describing what a skeptic should be here: http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/characteristics.php but as usual is misguided as to who is actually following the proper parameters.
In case I was unclear, my point was that at root they’re both the same – desperate to reinforce a cherished belief. One clings to anecdotes and the other to philosophy in doing so, but both start with this belief and work backwards from there.
@mumadadd
“desperate to reinforce a cherished belief.”
I agree, I just feel they approach it from completely different angles
Oh man, this is priceless. It’s from SCEPCOP, leo’s site. These are some of the characteristics of ‘pseudoskeptics’ (http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/characteristics.php
-Are not interested in truth, evidence or facts, only in defending their views.
-Are willing to lie and deceive to discredit their opponents.
-Are judgmental and quick to draw conclusions about things they know little or nothing about.
-When faced with evidence or facts they can’t refute, uses semantics, word games and denial to try to obfuscate the issue. (this one leo isn’t capable of)
-Will never admit that they are wrong no matter what, regardless of evidence.
Hypocrite much?
Pete A —
What about this:
Opinion = unverified belief
Faith = unverifiable belief shared by one’s group
Hypothesis = verifiable belief
Knowledge = verified belief
mumadadd —
No, just different definitions for “evidence” and “fact”.
@Billyjoe
Your position on teleporting is *precisely* the same as mine! You might put it a different way, but our actual positions *do not differ one iota*. And we both agree with *Win*. He persuaded both of us at the same time!
You do however disagree with most of your materialist friends on here. So why the bloody hell are you asking me questions??
mumadadd
“NDEs are evidence of souls and seems to believe firmly in the afterlife. So I think he’s also guilty of reasoning backwards from a cherished conclusion, although focuses mainly on bastardising logic to fit this conclusion and bolster his belief”.
Evidence but not compelling evidence. The existence of void like and hell-like NDEs considerably reduces the evidential value.
Ian,
Can you tell me in your own words what you mean by reductive materialism?
Ian,
I know you’ve just been asked several question but I’m going to throw some more at you, and I implore you to answer as I’ve asked a couple of times already and you didn’t respond.
-How can we tell the difference between a materialistic reality and your proposed idealistic one?
-What testable predictions can you generate from it?
-How can we test those predictions?
I’m honestly not trying to trip you up but it seems to me that there would be no way to tell the difference, and that being the case, doesn’t idealism become unfalsifiable, with no possible evidence to find?
@Grabula
I am sorry but you are dead wrong I don’t have a mission to change people’s mind’s on here. Also, when I joined that site I didn’t think it would be loaded with that conspiracy garbage but it was. But they are right about this when it comes to pseudoskeptics.
PseudoSkeptics / Closed-Minded Skeptics
Does not question anything from established non-religious institutions, but takes whatever they say on faith and demands that others do the same.
Does not ask questions to try to understand new things, but judges them by whether they fit into orthodoxy.
Applies “critical thinking” only to that which opposes orthodoxy or materialism, but never to the status quo itself. Skeptics such as (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Immediately judges as false and debunks anything that contradicts their paradigm.
Are not interested in truth, evidence or facts, only in defending their views. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Cannot think in terms of possibilities, but sees their paradigms as fixed and constant. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Are willing to lie and deceive to discredit their opponents.
Automatically dismisses and denies all data that contradicts materialism and orthodoxy. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Are judgmental and quick to draw conclusions about things they know little or nothing about.
Scoffs and ridicules what they oppose instead of using objective analysis and examination.
When faced with evidence or facts they can’t refute, uses semantics, word games and denial to try to obfuscate the issue. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Unable to adapt their paradigms to new evidence, and denies data which doesn’t fit into them. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
When all conventional explanations for an unexplainable phenomenon are ruled out, are still not able to accept paranormal ones. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Dislikes mystery and uncertainty, and insist that all unknown phenomena must have a mundane explanation. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Views the scientific establishment as a religion and authority to be taken on faith and never questioned or challenged. Does not understand the difference between the scientific process/methodology and the scientific establishment institution.
Assumes that the scientific establishment is objective and unbiased, and free of politics, corruption, control, censorship and suppression for no other reason than blind faith in authority. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Will never admit that they are wrong no matter what, regardless of evidence. (Grabula, Mumadadd, Devil’s gummy bear, Steve12 etc)
Source: http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/characteristics.php
By the way Midnightrunner was confronted with Greg when Greg Taylor told him that there is a bigger criticism of Piper than Ivor Tuskett’s criticism and that was of Trevor and Hall . I quote Greg Taylor here.
“Well if it’s page counts you’re deciding it on, I’d say Hall and Tanner’s “Studies in Spiritism” would be the ‘big one’. Not to mention the fact that they actually sat with Piper. Not sure how it doesn’t make your list of “long refutations”, considering it’s 408 pages long (although admittedly with a couple of chapters on Mrs. Verrall and general chat on mediumship)?”.
Leo:
Why do you think it is that the formal scientific community are the ones who “Are not interested in truth, evidence or facts”, while you actually are interested in these things?
Do you think that the formal scientific community is just BS, and in fact, you and Ian are the REAL scientific community?
@Grabula — Many thanks, you’ve enabled me to comprehend what’s been going on. The strikingly different levels of intellectual honesty had not escaped me (it inspired me to concoct my radio receiver satire).
@Bill Openthalt — I like your definitions because they are more intuitive than my offerings. My definition of knowledge is based on Plato’s definition, not because it’s correct, but because the justification component serves as an audit trail for aggregated knowledge and it is a useful aid to constructing and analysing arguments. Practical example:
If one reads through lines of a mathematical proof and comes across the use of an approximation, we should immediately ask: “What is the justification for this approximation?” The justification given must include very sound reasons and state the range of values over which it is valid. This minimizes the chance of creating silly errors in practical usage of the proof, such as a divide by zero error.
@Steve12
In my own words I think the scientific community ignores any evidence that points towards against a naturalistic worldview. Because you know and I know that naturalism has been extremely successful it has given us computers, cell phones, televisions and so on. It also has shown that a lot of supernatural phenomenon was false such as Zeus throwing thunderbolts from the sky when in fact we understand how lightening works naturally. However, there are numerous things that don’t fit into a naturalistic picture of the world such as the evidence I mentioned about such as life after death and psi phenomenon.
But Leo – you said that members of the scientific community:
Are not interested in truth, evidence or facts
Unable to adapt their paradigms to new evidence
Views the scientific establishment as a religion
On and on it goes.
So I ask you:
1. How are we successful with these kinds of attitudes?
2. If we hold these attitudes but you don’t, aren’t you the proper scientific community and not us?
If not, why not?
“However, there are numerous things that don’t fit into a naturalistic picture of the world such as the evidence I mentioned about such as life after death and psi phenomenon.”
Don’t forget Bigfoot Leo. I find you incredibly closed-minded that you don’t believe in Bigfoot. It still fits within the naturalistic paradigm even! Come on – all those eye witnesses can’t be wrong!
@Ekko
A lot of the eyewitness reports just said they saw a large animal and attached a label to it calling it a sasquatch. The same goes with the Locus Monster, orbs as well. May I ask do you believe in Bigfoot?.
@Steve
I ain’t the scientific community either because science is a method not a position.Skeptic like to push it as a position not a method. Not all skeptics as some really want to find out the truth no matter even if its not want they want it to be.
“I ain’t the scientific community either because science is a method not a position.”
I understand that science is a method. But the people who employ the method form a community for the purpose of meaningfully reviewing one another’s work. Peer review is part of the process, and your peers are the scientific community.
Do you think that you are a truer scientist – a truer utilizer of the scientific method – than those currently in the scientific community? And by scientific community, I mean people in each discipline that are asked to review scientific papers?
It’s a simple question, why are you dodging?
leo,
Maybe you are unfamiliar with the full depth of the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon. It is much more than just eye witness reports saying they saw a large animal. There are thousands of tracks and imprints of footprints as well as video evidence and photographs dating back many decades – physical evidence. Many scientists and profesional trackers have been involved. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) is a group of scientists, researchers, journalists, and specialists from around the world that collaborate to investigate and document this creature. But no, I do not believe in Bigfoot. Many reports have turned out to be hoaxes or frauds. It relies on stories and notoriously unreliable eye witnesses. Most people feel the evidence is supremely lacking so far and too much conflicts with what is known about large apes and their habitat and survival. Sound familiar? It’s quite similar to the evidence you refer to with mediums and reports from NDEs and how it relates to what is known from neuroscience. Yes, Bigfoot and Life after Death could be real – but right now, the evidence does not support that conclusion – the opposite is far more likely. Sorry. Life is still grand though – so don’t waste it chasing after illusions and phantoms!
There is no double or triple blind experiments done on Bigfoot sure there is video evidence and photographs I am well aware of that of there not convincing at all. Compare that to life after death evidence where it is convincing as well as consistent and not going away unlike Big Foot. That organization isn’t open to the possibility as far as I know that there isn’t a Bigfoot only that there is. Where in psychical research they were open that there wasn’t an afterlife that all mediums are frauds but that is not what they found.
@Steve12
No I don’t but I do think scientists like Rupert Sheldrake, Julie Beischel and others deserve not to be ridicule because there evidence simply conflicts with a naturalist worldview.
There are triple blinded experiments proving life after death? Who knew? Who is the third party that is blinded? Is it the researcher, medium, and ghost?
“There is no double or triple blind experiments done on Bigfoot…”
This is not true I believe that JLU (Jack Link’s University) had triple-blind Sasquatch trials in the NEJM last issue.
Leo, I’m not sure you know what blinding is. Or for that matter, what experiments are.
You do sound more knowledgable when you copy/paste your replies.
But for now, we have an uneasy alliance until we get to the elusive ‘Land of 1000 Comments’ ….
@Ekko
The newest experiments on mental mediumship are done here
http://www.windbridge.org/
@Steve
A blind experiment is is a way in which the information of a test that may lead to bias itself in the results is concealed from the the subject. Yeah they could do trials on Bigfoot that are triple blind but its the evidence itself would not be convincing. Based on the fact that first we don’t even have good reliable eyewitness accounts.
As experiment is a procedure that seeks out to verify, establish or refute a hypothesis.
Ian,
Okay, let me rephrase the question:
How does my materialist interpretation of the teleportation experiment lead to your conclusion that there must be existential change every instant for materialism to be true?
@Billyjoe
I suggest you read up on your own comments that you made a year ago on here.
One thing’s for sure. I’m not going to argue with you for a position you fully agree with. You must think I’m utterly daft. Argue with your materialist friends that you disagree with you on this issue i.e seemingly everyone on here.
“A blind experiment is is a way in which the information of a test that may lead to bias itself in the results is concealed from the the subject.”
Only half right. Maybe a little less, actually.
“Yeah they could do trials on Bigfoot that are triple blind but its the evidence itself would not be convincing.”
Briefly describe how your trials would be conducted.
“As experiment is a procedure that seeks out to verify, establish or refute a hypothesis.”
Too vague to be marked correct sir.
Ian, I’ll ask again:
Can you tell me in your own words what you mean by reductive materialism?
@Steve12
I am not a scientist, just look at the work from the Windbridge Institute, Dr. Julie BiescheL is doing experiments on mental mediums there.
“The newest experiments on mental mediumship are done here”
http://www.windbridge.org/
So leo, reading these sorts of studies has convinced you there is an after life and our consciousness survives death?
These are studies where a medium speaks over the telephone with someone who has recently lost a relative and produces statements like:
The discarnate is female.
She is a mother.
She is about 5’4″
The discarnate was English.
They also intentionally select people to speak with the medium who are highly motivated to hear news of their deceased relative, believe in mediumship, and believe in an afterlife. These same highly motivated people then score the medium how well they did based on responses like the above. They do not choose people to speak with the medium who do not fit this belief system.
I think this speaks for itself as to the quality of evidence we are talking about here.
P.S. I want to say something obvious about blinding and Bigfoot research but I also don’t want to spoil steve12’s fun.
@Ekko
They are not as general as that as that would be cold reading or fishing for information. There is specific information that only would come from discarnate entity. That is why there is double and triple blind experiments being done to control for things and to rule out cold reading, hot reading and warm reading.
Ian,
As you’ve ducked all the pointed questions I’ll try a different tack.
What is your opinion on the scientific method?
-Observation
-hypothesis
-design a test
-confirmation of prediction/
-disconfirmation of prediction/
-neither
-try to replicate the result/
– design
It’s difficult to do this on a phone. Bloody pressed submit accidentally.
Ian,
As you’ve ducked all the pointed questions I’ll try a different tack.
What is your opinion on the scientific method?
-Observation
-hypothesis
-design a test
-test
-confirmation of prediction/
-replicate results
-disconfirmation of prediction/
-design a different test/
-reject previous hypothesis
-make more predictions and test them
-gradually endorse hypothesis in proportion with positive confirmation of predictions
I don’t know why you consistently ignore my questions. You have responded to me directly several times, so I don’t think it’s because you are skipping my posts. In fact you selectively ignore all of the questions that your ideology is not equipped to deal with. It’s time to put up or shut up…
Ian,
Why? Because the afterlife has to be nice and fluffy?
-Observation: Ian has weak argument
-Hypothesis: Ian can’t answer questions his ideology isn’t equipped to answer
-Test: ask Ian questions that I think his ideology isn’t equipped to answer
(contol: ask Ian other questions. Result: Ian posts links to his blog)
-Replicate results: ask said questions repeatedly, same lack of response
-Hypothesis: approaching scientifically verified theory
“I am not a scientist, just look at the work from the Windbridge Institute, Dr. Julie BiescheL is doing experiments on mental mediums there.”
So you talk a lot of shit, and then when you’re asked to defend what you say you cop out.
Maybe the problem is that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Actually, let me remove the maybe: you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Steve12,
Leo is not worth your time. Why bother trying?
Also, are you one of the Steves of project Steve? Perhaps the twelve?
Twelfth even.
@Steve12
I am have no problem defending what I say I got the definitions of experiment and what blinded is from wikipedia but I put it in my own words. But still not good enough eh?. Like I said I am not a scientist I have never conducted any experiments before.
“But still not good enough eh?”
Not really. That you only sort-of-get-it should give you pause before lecturing scientists on how science works. That’s just self evidently true to everyone but cranks.
Still waiting on how the bigfoot trials would go down…..
“Leo is not worth your time. Why bother trying?”
No. But 1000 posts is!
800!
“Also, are you one of the Steves of project Steve? Perhaps the twelve?”
No – I don’t know what that is, but I’ll check it out now.
@Steve12
Well I am sorry but I have a dislike for materialist scientists who aren’t open to changing their minds when confronted with massive amounts of evidence that doesn’t fit into their closed boxed worldview.
Materialists assumed that reality was all there was that solar system was all there was. That changed when Quantum Mechanics came along showing that reality is far more expansive that we don’t live in a universe that is casually closed.
Heading off to bed now.
So no you’re not bothered that you know very (VERY) little about science?
mumadadd, I take issue:
-Dogs are not ideologically obsessed with the denial of algebra
-Dogs are not inherently reality challenged
-Are capable of rudimentary communication
-Don’t believe in ghosts, magic, or other things that don’t exist
Okay, so it’s not algebra. But it’s also not a short deck of cards, as far as dog stuff goes.
The sad fact is; We’re not talking to a 3rd grader who is coming to terms with reality (or english composition) for the first time. We’re talking to a grown man who believes in ghosts and magic, a man who has made it his prime directive to engage in fits and tantrums about his Santa Claus crap in forums and comments sections full of people who are basically experts in his belief system. This last bit is something he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to cope with (midnight inspired some fantastic bouts of anger, probably because Leo can’t tolerate a “pseudo-skeptic” knowing an order of magnitude more about his dumb shit than anyone else he’s ever heard of before).
Don’t go to a ghost fight with “scientismists”, psi experts, or “pseudoskeptics” expecting “because ghost stories” and “you’re blinded by your faith in materialism” to get you very far.
I mean, we’re nearly at 800, but how far have we come? We’re back to him ripping wikipedia for things a grade school student knows. It’s just gonna keep going round and round. The guy believes in weird things… Fundamentally believes in very silly things. And he gets off on trolling. We probably should have given up amusing him in the Afterlife After Debate thread. He wants to believe in bullshit, and he will never be convinced that the materialist/naturalist/scientismist cult in his head is just as imaginary as the ghosts in there too. I mean, he’s lacking a grade school education in science, and he’s hellbound and determined as fuck not to acquire one.
So, yeah… TLDR: Teaching a dog algebra… Which is kind of a slight to dogs.
Ian,
“I suggest you read up on your own comments that you made a year ago on here”
I don’t need to.
The concepts on which those comments were based are all still here right in my head.
In fact, I did read them again a few weeks ago when someone linked to that thread.
“I’m not going to argue with you for a position you fully agree with”
I do not agree with your position.
Your position is that materialism implies existential change every instant.
I do not agree with this and you haven’t shown me any reasons to do so.
“You must think I’m utterly daft”
No, I know that is the case.
Just look at your assessment of the checkerboard illusion!
You don’t understand what causes the 2D illusion and you deny that a 3D version would be an illusion.
“Argue with your materialist friends that you disagree with on this issue i.e seemingly everyone on here”
I’ve not seen anyone disagree with me that materialism does not imply existential change every instant.
The truth is you cannot explain how you came to that conclusion that from the teleporter experiment.
Otherwise you would have done so by now.
@leo
“I am sorry but you are dead wrong I don’t have a mission to change people’s mind’s on here”
You’re not changing minds here without evidence Leo, why haven’t you figured that out yet? I spent some time on the scepcop forums, it’s mostly ridiculous. You guys are completely delusional about what true skepticism is.
What you should consider Leo, is possibly examining the ACTUAL evidence and changing your mind.
@Leo
“In my own words I think the scientific community ignores any evidence that points towards against a naturalistic worldview. ”
How do you and the Wu gang explain the success of “naturalist” science over paranormal true believers?
A little insight into Leo and his gang and their bizarre way of thinking:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/index.php
I read through a bunch of threads, it’s a collection of mostly crazy.
“As you’ve ducked all the pointed questions I’ll try a different tack.”
Guys, Ian is only interested in preaching, not discussing. It should have become obvious a while ago.
@Billyjoe.
You’re a waste of space . .
mumadadd
“Why? Because the afterlife has to be nice and fluffy?”
No, but it has to make sense. Either the purpose of life is love or it is not. Pleasant NDEs and Hell-like NDEs give precisely opposite messages. Which one is telling the truth?
No don’t answer that. Suffice to say I think NDEs only provide weak evidence for an afterlife. This is in contrast for the evidence for reincarnation in the form of young children seemingly remembering previous lives.
As a newcomer to this site I notice another heated debate between believers and skeptics. I also notice endless reptitions of the same tired old “saws” enlessly reiterated by believers in what they call the “transmission theory” of the mind, or the reality of the soul, or whatever sort of immaterial controller of the brain people believing in this theory propose. This is the old-fashioned cartesian dualism. This is an old idea, and ancient even before the philosphers Rene Descarte and Willam James proposed them many years ago.
Unfortunately for believers, the brain is the generator of all aspects of what we understand as a conscious mind. The “transmission theory” is easily proven to be totally bankrupt as a model for the functioning of the brain. Midazolam is a drug used to manage multiple millions of patients all over the world, and its effects conclusively prove the ridiculous nature of this idea.
interested readers can read this at: http://anesthesiaweb.org/anesthesia-and-the-soul.php
From this website:
•The mind-model of dualism states that the physically conscious body of a person is a sort of mindless robot under the control of the soul.
•Midazolam administered at doses sufficient to cause amnesia does not induce loss of consciousness. After such doses of midazolam, most people are somewhat sedated, yet perceive and react appropriately to their surroundings. They are cooperative, talk normally, answer questions appropriately, and otherwise react appropriately with speech and movements.
•According to the logic of dualism, the physical body transmits perceptions of speech, sight, touch, and surroundings in some way to the soul, which then controls the body to speak, move, and act appropriately in response to others and the situation.
•Believers in the mind-model of dualism claim that the soul is the indelible repository of all memories.
•The mind-model of dualism states that the soul is unaffected by drugs affecting the physical brain.
•Therefore, according to the mind-model of dualism, memories of thoughts, speech, actions, deeds, and perceptions made while sedated with midazolam, but physically conscious and cooperative, are all indelibly stored within the soul.
•All physical brain functions return to normal after the body eliminates all the administered midazolam.
•Memories of the perceptions, speech, sounds, and events occurring around the conscious physical body while under the influence of sedative doses of midazolam, are public memories. They are memories much like hearing and remembering a conversation, hearing a sound, or remembering a snippet of news from a newspaper. They are public memories—not memories of anything secret, intended only for the use of immaterial beings or souls.
•Therefore there is no conceivable reason why people cannot recall conscious actions and speech during procedures performed under midazolam sedation.
•So if the soul is the indelible repository of all memories, then all people should be able to remember all that occurred while sedated, but physically conscious and cooperative.
•But most people remember nothing of what they thought, said, did, or perceived during the period their physical brains were affected by midazolam.
The only logical conclusion is that the brain is the repository of all memories.
But then believers come with the objectsion that the soul, separable conscious mind, or whatever is subordinate to the physical brain when inside the body. This idea is also a load of nonsense, as is proven by their own logic.
Near death experiences (NDEs), and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are proof of the silly nature of this concept.
– After repturning to their bodies, many people reporting their NDEs tell of undergoing a change of personality and living a more spritual life because of what they “learned in the NDE afterlife”. This means their souls were once agin within their bodies, and controlling their bodies to live a “better” life. – ergo the embodied soul controls the body, and is not subservient to it.
– Subsequent to returing to the body after an OBE, people relate the content of their OBE(s) to others by means of speech and writing. These memories are within what was once a disembodied soul. – ergo the embodied soul controls the physical body to relate these memories, and is therefore not subordinate to the body.
All these things prove the foolishness of belief in a separable consciousness, whereby the brain is simply a sort of biological receiver.
Ian,
Since you mention purpose, you may be interested in this paper:
Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose
Abstract
“Cognitive theories of religion have postulated several cognitive biases that predispose human minds towards religious belief. However, to date, these hypotheses have not been tested simultaneously and in relation to each other, using an individual difference approach. We used a path model to assess the extent to which several interacting cognitive tendencies, namely mentalizing, mind body dualism, teleological thinking, and anthropomorphism, as well as cultural exposure to religion, predict belief in God, paranormal beliefs and belief in life’s purpose. Our model, based on two independent samples (N = 492 and N = 920) found that the previously known relationship between mentalizing and belief is mediated by individual differences in dualism, and to a lesser extent by teleological thinking. Anthropomorphism was unrelated to religious belief, but was related to paranormal belief. Cultural exposure to religion (mostly Christianity) was negatively related to anthropomorphism, and was unrelated to any of the other cognitive tendencies. These patterns were robust for both men and women, and across at least two ethnic identifications. The data were most consistent with a path model suggesting that mentalizing comes first, which leads to dualism and teleology, which in turn lead to religious, paranormal, and life’s-purpose beliefs. Alternative theoretical models were tested but did not find empirical support.”
Online: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Willard_Norenzayan_Cognitive_Biases.pdf
@midnightrunner
I would find it vastly more interesting if there were research which attempted to uncover the reasons why reductive materialists believe what they do. After all, in the history of our world, it’s the beliefs of “educated” people in our modern western culture which are an aberration.
What we have here is the pre-supposition by reductive materialists that their position is the more reasonable one, and moreover that it is obviously true. Hence the need to explain why everyone does not recognise this obvious truth.
Unfortunately not only is it *not* the case that their position is obviously true, it is in fact obviously false.
Take teleology for example. It’s just a transparent obvious fact it exists. I am writing this post for example for the express purpose of conveying a message. The letters appearing on the screen are not random which would be expected if teleology didn’t exist. They are arranged in a specific order with the end goal of conveying a message.
@Steve12
So no you’re not bothered that you know very (VERY) little about science?
I know more than you think I know.
@Grabula
I no longer post on there its been a long time since I did. There is quite a few things I don’t agree on with Winston Wu such as that 9/11 was a inside job. I think the evidence shows that 9/11 was not an inside job.
Ian,
“It’s just a transparent obvious fact it exists.”
Wait, do you think that the materialist/naturalist position is that teleology doesn’t exist at all?
Ian,
“You’re a waste of space . .”
Well, that’s one way to not answer impossible questions.
Well done, Ian.
Here is your prize:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Sen1HTu5o
😉
Leo:
“I know more than you think I know.”
OK, well, let’s try an example so that you can strut your stuff.
Describe to me how triple-blinded bigfoot experiment is gonna work Just a brief explanation of how you would do the experiment would be fine – don’t feel like you have to fill in every detail.
Ian,
CAn you please, please, please define reductive materialism in your own words?
You use this phrase a lot, so are you saying that you don’t know what it means? That can’t be the case, I hope!
OMG BJ7!!!!
That link is the greatest thing ever. I’ve used that illusion 1000x – but I never realized there was a live action version!
I’m geeking out here over this. Wonder if someone’s put it on at VSS….
@Steve12
I guess your not understanding me I read up on numerous science articles in the past and I know the literature pretty well. As far, as experiments go I don’t know how to do an experiment I am not a scientist. Knowing that you are one please tell me how you would go about a triple blind experiment on Bigfoot.
@Steve12
I can tell you what I think reductive materialism means its a part of identity theory it supposes that mental states are in fact physical states of the brain. That all types of mental states are numerically identical with ( is one of the very same thing as) some type of physical states or process within the physical brain or nervous system.
@The Devil’s Gummy Bear
Just noticed your comment above. You state:
– This last bit is something he doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to cope with (midnight inspired some fantastic bouts of anger, probably because Leo can’t tolerate a “pseudo-skeptic” knowing an order of magnitude more about his dumb shit than anyone else he’s ever heard of before).
Anger because he is a troll that has used multiple usernames and has an agenda to make everyone think the same way he does. He was called on his crap when Greg Taylor told him that Trevor and Hall’s criticism of Piper was longer than that criticism that he claimed by Ivor Tuskett was actually the longest. Trevor and Hall actually were at the sittings with Piper so they know what they are talking about. Where Ivor Tuskett doesn’t he just throws out accusations without any evidence to back them up. Midnightrunner’s claim that spirtualist’s don’t read the skeptical literature is a load of bs.
Leo100 writes:
“Anger because he is a troll that has used multiple usernames and has an agenda to make everyone think the same way he does.”
You have no evidence I am a troll, just more ad-hominem. You have trolled this blog with dishonesty and nonsense not me so I think the definition would you actually fit you better.
“He was called on his crap when Greg Taylor told him that Trevor and Hall’s criticism of Piper was longer than that criticism that he claimed by Ivor Tuskett was actually the longest.”
Who is Trevor and Hall, Leo? You don’t even know the names of who you are talking about! Lol you are a funny guy. It is Amy Tanner and G. Stanley Hall, and their book was called Studies in Spiritism (1911). They were two early psychologists who did indeed sit with Piper.
As for “Ivor Tuskett” is it Ivor Lloyd Tuckett, at least spell their names correctly. You have never read his book.
“Trevor and Hall actually were at the sittings with Piper so they know what they are talking about.”
It’s not Trevor and Hall – It’s Amy Tanner and Hall but if you are claiming they know what they are talking about then you accept Piper was not in contact with spirits. Because that is what they concluded Leo.
“Where Ivor Tuskett doesn’t he just throws out accusations without any evidence to back them up.”
Hmmm… this is real dishonest Leo, you have never read his long chapter on Leonora Piper – it is the most detailed refutation of Piper’s mediumship on record. I am not interested in “length”, I am interested in detail. The majority of the Hall and Tanner’s book was not a criticism of Piper – it was a psychological look at the subject, interesting yes but Ivor Lloyd Tuckett covered examples suggestive of fraud – Hall and Tanner never did this.
“Midnightrunner’s claim that spirtualist’s don’t read the skeptical literature is a load of bs.”
No it’s the truth. Greg Taylor for example had never heard of Ivor Lloyd Tuckett before I mentioned his criticism of Piper. Taylor spiritualist book “Stop Worrying! There Probably is an Afterlife” does not cite hardly any of the skeptical literature, not even in the bibliography. He does not mention Tuckett’s criticisms.
Tuckett’s book can be found online here:
https://archive.org/stream/evidenceforsuper00tuckrich#page/n5/mode/2up
Go to page 321 to see his chapter on Piper. Trying actually researching this subject before talking nonsense Leo. You are embarrassing yourself.
@Midnightrunner
I am sorry I got the name wrong it is Amy that is correct. He mentioned he covered examples key word here is suggestive not proven but suggestive. Also, that would be the best he could do knowing he never actually sat with Piper. Amy Tanner and Hall were rebutted by Greg Taylor, Michael Prescott. Lol, lets see here you have gone by usernames such as Trees, Midnightrunner, Honestskeptic, Ivy, Forrest etc. etc) as I have shown in a earlier post.
You were caught here for example
Honestskeptic wrote:
Just found this reference from a website someone quoted:
Leonore Piper lived in the United States around the turn of the century. Through her, a number of “spirits” related stories of persons and events concerning which Leonora Piper denied any knowledge. However, a number of incidents cast doubt on her ability to contact the dead. For example, she gained some degree of fame with a “spirit” revelation about the circumstances of the death of a man called Dean Connor. However, when the revelation was finally checked out, it turned out to be grossly unreliable. In another incident, the family of George Pellew-whose departed spirit supposedly conveyed much of the news of the “other world” to Leonore- was shown the information furnished by “Pellew” about himself; they judged it to be highly inaccurate. On another occasion, Leonore claimed to have contacted the spirit of Bessie Beals, who was a fictitious person invented on the spur of the moment by the psychologist G. Stanley Hall. Later in her life, Leonore Piper made the following statement: I cannot see but that it must have been an unconscious expression of my subliminal self… it seems to me that there is no evidence of sufficient scientific value to warrant acceptance of the spiritualist hypothesis.”
The reference is one you posted yourself to RationalWiki a month ago. Please do not lie to readers of this website. I am allowing you to continue posting, as I encourage debate, but your continued deceptions and sock puppetry will not be tolerated any further than this point – clean up your act please, or you will be blocked.
Greg Taylor
swiffer01
“Therefore there is no conceivable reason why people cannot recall conscious actions and speech during procedures performed under midazolam sedation.
So if the soul is the indelible repository of all memories, then all people should be able to remember all that occurred while sedated, but physically conscious and cooperative”.
I agree it is strange but I can’t see how it’s helped by supposing the brain stores memories. Why is it not problematic under that hypothesis?
Do these memories not exist at all? Or merely that we don’t have access to them?
@Midnightrunner
That is because Greg Taylor is only interested in the serious accusations such as Amy Tanner and Hall. Ivor Tuskett’s accusations are unfounded he was never there at the sittings.
swiffer01
“But then believers come with the objectsion that the soul, separable conscious mind, or whatever is subordinate to the physical brain when inside the body. This idea is also a load of nonsense, as is proven by their own logic.
Near death experiences (NDEs), and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are proof of the silly nature of this concept.
– After repturning to their bodies, many people reporting their NDEs tell of undergoing a change of personality and living a more spritual life because of what they “learned in the NDE afterlife”. This means their souls were once agin within their bodies, and controlling their bodies to live a “better” life. – ergo the embodied soul controls the body, and is not subservient to it.
– Subsequent to returing to the body after an OBE, people relate the content of their OBE(s) to others by means of speech and writing. These memories are within what was once a disembodied soul. – ergo the embodied soul controls the physical body to relate these memories, and is therefore not subordinate to the body.
All these things prove the foolishness of belief in a separable consciousness, whereby the brain is simply a sort of biological receiver”.
—————————————————————————————————-
Dualists who subscribe to survival believe that the self and brain interact. How can the self be subordinate to the brain if it has the power to affect it? How can the brain be subordinate to the self if it has the power to affect it?
I should also add from what I read of Ivor Tuskett’s attack on Leonora Piper about “muscle reading”
There is an excellent rebuttal to that objection. I am going to type this here. Now it is true that formely Mrs. Piper because entranced while holding both hands, or at least one hand of the sitter. She often dropped the sitter’s hands and lost contact with them for half an hour at a time.
More can be found here
http://books.google.ca/books?id=JDmPxlZorSoC&pg=PT3&lpg=PT3&dq=mrs.+piper+muscle+reading&source=bl&ots=ASVfQVBwk8&sig=WBgzKkRdLeaXaovHwxWzFLrr0Ac&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iDyTU_jeCsaR8AHvq4D4AQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=mrs.%20piper%20muscle%20reading&f=false
“Also, that would be the best he could do knowing he never actually sat with Piper. Amy Tanner and Hall were rebutted by Greg Taylor, Michael Prescott.”
Leo,
You seem to be saying that you won’t read any skeptical material on Piper by skeptics or scientists that were not present at Piper’s sittings. This is silly because you are citing Michael Prescott and Greg Taylor two spiritualists who were not present at Piper’s séance sittings. By your own logic you should not be reading their books either then.
G. Stanley Hall was famous for much research in psychology that he actually pioneered. He knew what he was talking about – he had demonstrated in various trance sessions with Piper that her controls were not spirits. He used various psychological tests to catch Piper out. Instead you will ignore this work of Hall a professional psychologist and go with Michael Prescott a science fiction author and Greg Taylor a conspiracy theorist who runs the Dailygrail pseudoscience website that endorses everything from aliens to fairies. Neither Prescott or Taylor have any education in psychology or science. You are choosing to believe woo-believers over proper scientists. It’s real silly. But anything that reinforces your belief I guess, no matter how nutty.
I would appreciate it if you would also stop copying and pasting Greg Taylor’s messages word to word onto this blog, firstly what has this got to do with anything? I have already addressed Taylor’s rationalwiki claims in two long posts on this blog. Taylor is wrong. End of story. BTW Taylor doesn’t exactly have a good reputation either he regularly posts libel about skeptics on his twitter and has had to delete some of his comments.
As for your other comment:
“That is because Greg Taylor is only interested in the serious accusations such as Amy Tanner and Hall. Ivor Tuskett’s accusations are unfounded he was never there at the sittings.”
This isn’t true regarding Greg. His book cites spiritualists who were not present at the Piper sittings like most spiritualist books do and he is happy to cite that material. He is happy to cite secondary spiritualist material, but when it comes to skeptic material doesn’t read it apart from this case Tanner and Hall. The claim about Tuckett’s accusations being unfounded is unfair because he was not claiming to be present at the sittings. If you read his essay it is a critical analysis of some of the reports published in the SPR. He found errors and flaws in the reports.
You have also contradicted yourself because with many of the later Piper sittings (not the early ones) with Hodgson and other investigators the stenographic data was used, i.e. every word Piper said was written down. You can easily tell from many of the things she said that she was guessing or fishing, she never gave any specific information. No conjurer or trained magician was ever present during Piper’s séances. The burden is not on the skeptics to disprove spirits, the burden is on the spiritualists such as yourself to prove that she communicated with spirits but this has failed. There was no conclusive proof. The reason was because there was a number of ways Piper could have found information about her sitters in her séances, none of these possibilities of fraud were ruled out, the controls were terrible and none of the sittings were repeated by neutral scientists. In an earlier post I already mentioned about ten possibilities of sensory leakage in the Piper séance sittings.
“There is an excellent rebuttal to that objection. I am going to type this here. Now it is true that formely Mrs. Piper because entranced while holding both hands, or at least one hand of the sitter. She often dropped the sitter’s hands and lost contact with them for half an hour at a time.”
Lol dropped the sitter’s hands but only after a while into the séance though. In other words she still could have practiced muscle reading as she was holding her séance sitters hands. This was already addressed in Greg’s blog. Taylor also used to put her hand on the forehead of her séance sitters, is that normal for spirit communication Leo?
I meant to say Piper instead of Taylor ignore that typo in my previous comment. Anyway here it is:
Martin Gardner wrote “Mrs. Piper liked to hold a client’s hand throughout a sitting, or even to place the hand against her forehead. This made it easy to detect muscular reactions even when a sitter remained silent.”
Source: Martin Gardner. (1992). On the Wild Side. Prometheus Books. p. 223
This is muscle reading, Leo. It’s a mentalist technique not evidence for spirits.
@Midnightrunner
You seem to be saying that you won’t read any skeptical material on Piper by skeptics or scientists that were not present at Piper’s sittings. This is silly because you are citing Michael Prescott and Greg Taylor two spiritualists who were not present at Piper’s séance sittings. By your own logic you should not be reading their books either then.
But they read the literature of Piper accept the ones who weren’t present at Piper’s Sittings. Did the ones that were not present at Piper’s sittings actually read the literature the pro literature I don’t think so. If they did they wouldn’t be coming up with silly unfounded accusations.
Also you claim it was fishing, guessing, and muscle reading. However, a commenter on the dailygrail showed that wasn’t the case.
Not in proxy cases where *strangers* sat in for the actual sitters and not when available transcripts (which are still publicly available) fail to show these techniques at play.
Hodgson, Myers, et al had seen dozens of fraudulent mediums and *knew* full well what to look for. As William Newbold noted, he and Hodgson had “seen much of professional mediums, and are thoroughly familiar with the methods of ‘fishing’ upon which they generally rely” and so they “always had such possibilities in mind”. He confidently notes that “it would have been impossible for any large amount of detailed information to have been extracted from us in this way without our knowledge.” In any case, one can just look at the available transcripts in all cases where “hits” were made. It’s a good thing they often used stenographers!
Sir Oliver Lodge wrote:
Lodge wrote:
I am familiar with muscle-reading and other simulated ‘thought-transference’ methods, and prefer to avoid contact whenever it is possible to get rid of it without too much fuss. Although Mrs. Piper always held somebody’s hand while preparing to go into the trance, she did not always continue to hold it when speaking as Phinuit.
http://www.dailygrail.com/Essays/2013/12/Top-Five-Phenomena-Offer-Evidence-Afterlife
Good copy and pasta there who said this same thing on the link above. “Martin Gardner wrote “Mrs. Piper liked to hold a client’s hand throughout a sitting, or even to place the hand against her forehead. This made it easy to detect muscular reactions even when a sitter remained silent.”
Your claim that Ivor Tuskett’s criticism was like 300 pages is wrong I went through your link and there is only like 6 pages there of it.
Of Piper that is.
I remember awhile back how shooked up Steven Novella was when one of his friends came out and spoke out against the view that consciousness is produced by the brain.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527427.100-you-wont-find-consciousness-in-the-brain.html
“Your claim that Ivor Tuskett’s criticism was like 300 pages is wrong I went through your link and there is only like 6 pages there of it.”
I never said it was 300 pages long. His chapter on Piper is pages 321-395, that’s 74 pages long.
I will help you out, here’s the exact page it starts at:
https://archive.org/stream/evidenceforsuper00tuckrich#page/320/mode/2up
Definitely more than 6 pages!
You write:
“Did the ones that were not present at Piper’s sittings actually read the literature the pro literature I don’t think so. If they did they wouldn’t be coming up with silly unfounded accusations.”
Please read Tuckett’s chapter – the whole thing is literally citing the SPR reports. So his accusations are definitely not silly. Like I said he found various errors and flaws in those reports. Only Walter Franklin Prince responded to Tuckett’s criticisms, no other psychical researcher has. They have never been addressed by the spiritualists.
“Lodge wrote:
I am familiar with muscle-reading and other simulated ‘thought-transference’ methods, and prefer to avoid contact whenever it is possible to get rid of it without too much fuss. Although Mrs. Piper always held somebody’s hand while preparing to go into the trance, she did not always continue to hold it when speaking as Phinuit.”
This has already been addressed. Lodge was a Christian spiritualist who endorsed all kinds of fraudulent mediums as genuine i.e. Eusapia Palladino and Gladys Osborne Leonard, definitely not experienced in mentalist techniques. But I don’t have a problem with the latter part of his quote. It’s true Piper did let go of some of her sitters hands but only after she held them for a while.
You said earlyier you were going to read Spiritualism and Sir Oliver Lodge (1917) by Dr. Charles Mercier which is a criticism of Lodge’s investigation of Piper and other spiritualist claims. The book is online here: https://archive.org/stream/spiritualismsiro00mercuoft#page/n3/mode/2up
Note that your spiritualist friends Michael Prescott, Michael E. Tymn, Victor Zammit or Greg Taylor did not refer to Mercier anywhere in their books.
Ian,
I think I need to clarify my previous comment: are you using your own purposeful use of a device as evidence for purpose in nature or are you arguing that naturalists believe that nothing, including people, can have purpose?
Midnightrunner
You do realize its rather easy to get ride of muscle reading and other thought transference methods that is why she avoided contact as much as possible to get rid of it.
Please read Tuckett’s chapter – the whole thing is literally citing the SPR reports. So his accusations are definitely not silly. Like I said he found various errors and flaws in those reports. Only Walter Franklin Prince responded to Tuckett’s criticisms, no other psychical researcher has. They have never been addressed by the spiritualists.
Ya and twisting them to fit his agenda the first part of his book taking about what facts are was ridiculous in the extreme. I am sorry it wasn’t 300 pages but it was 74 pages either. I am sorry I was reading that other part on Piper he talked about earlier on in the book.
As in your statement on the Daily Grail Forum states
The physiologist Ivor Lloyd Tuckett examined Piper and her mediumship in “75” pages and came to the conclusion it could explained by “muscle-reading, fishing, guessing, hints obtained in the sitting, knowledge surreptitiously obtained, knowledge acquired in the interval between sittings and lastly, facts already within Mrs. Piper’s knowledge”.
Leo100,
Yes the Tuckett’s critical analysis of Piper’s mediumship it is 74 pages, not 75 that was a mistake from me but only by a page lol. If you look in the contents section of the book it says for the chapter “The Mediumship of Mrs. Piper” that it starts on page 321, the next chapter “Defects in Some Experiments on Thought-Transference” starts on page 396, as you can see it’s a simple mistake that can be made. This is silly discussing this. We have gone round in circles here.
These are the best criticisms of Piper’s mediumship:
1. Ivor Lloyd Tuckett. (1911). The Evidence for the Supernatural: A Critical Study Made with “Uncommon Sense”. K. Paul, Trench, Trübner. pp. 321-395
2. Joseph Rinn. (1950). Sixty Years of Psychical Research: Houdini and I Among the Spiritualists. Truth Seeker Company. pp. 183-246
3. Milbourne Christopher. (1979). Search For The Soul: An Insider’s Report On The Continuing Quest By Psychics & Scientists For Evidence Of Life After Death. Thomas Y. Crowell, Publishers. pp. 152-175
4. Edward Clodd. (1917). The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism. Grant Richards, London. pp. 190-214
The Tuckett book is online as is the book by Clodd. I am not expecting many people to have read the Rinn book, it’s about 60$ and out of print. Of course there are other books filled with criticisms of Piper mediumship (like C. E. M. Hansel but they are not as good as these. Unfortunately no spiritualist has addressed the criticisms of Tuckett, Rinn, Christopher or Clodd. Two years ago I put all the criticisms from these books online i.e. on online on various websites but there still has been no response from the spiritualists. They just ignore it deliberately.
You own a paranormal blog Leo, and you claim to be a paranormal researcher – well why not address the criticisms or skeptical material of Piper in your post like Clodd or from Joseph McCabe who has refuted other mediums. The problem is you won’t. You won’t read the skeptical material on this subject. No matter how many times this material is sent to Greg Taylor, Michael Prescott, Victor Zammit, Michael E. Tymn or spiritualists such as yourself etc they just ignore it and spout out ad-hominems. I don’t believe these people are really interested in these cases deep down, their only interest is that it reinforces their paranormal belief. They need to believe in the paranormal I understand. It’s psychological but it would be nice if paranormal “researchers” such as yourself acknowledge what some of us skeptics have been saying about these cases for over a hundred years.
You own a paranormal blog Leo, and you claim to be a paranormal researcher – well why not address the criticisms or skeptical material of Piper in your post like Clodd or from Joseph McCabe who has refuted other mediums. The problem is you won’t. You won’t read the skeptical material on this subject. No matter how many times this material is sent to Greg Taylor, Michael Prescott, Victor Zammit, Michael E. Tymn or spiritualists such as yourself etc they just ignore it and spout out ad-hominems. I don’t believe these people are really interested in these cases deep down, their only interest is that it reinforces their paranormal belief. They need to believe in the paranormal I understand. It’s psychological but it would be nice if paranormal “researchers” such as yourself acknowledge what some of us skeptics have been saying about these cases for over a hundred years.
The problem with the works you mentioned are they are only accusations of fraud from second hand sources. By the way muscle reading and thought transference has been debunked by the link I mentioned earlier. Why should I read silly weak arguments such as these?. I am sorry life is too damn short to be wasting all my time on reading weak silly arguments such as these.
If you had any shred of honesty you would admit your arguments have been debunked. But instead intend on forcing your garbage down spiritualists throats because you believe these skeptics are right.
“Leo can’t tolerate a “pseudo-skeptic” knowing an order of magnitude more about his dumb shit than anyone else he’s ever heard of before.” -Me, from the past
@Devil’s Gummy Bear
Anger because he is a troll that has used multiple usernames and has an agenda to make everyone think the same way he does. He was called on his crap when Greg Taylor told him that Trevor and Hall’s criticism of Piper was longer than that criticism that he claimed by Ivor Tuskett was actually the longest. Trevor and Hall actually were at the sittings with Piper so they know what they are talking about. Where Ivor Tuskett doesn’t he just throws out accusations without any evidence to back them up. Midnightrunner’s claim that spirtualist’s don’t read the skeptical literature is a load of bs.- Me from the past. Hush I am gummy bear I am trying to increase the post count as much as I can.
“The problem with the works you mentioned are they are only accusations of fraud from second hand sources. By the way muscle reading and thought transference has been debunked by the link I mentioned earlier. Why should I read silly weak arguments such as these?. I am sorry life is too damn short to be wasting all my time on reading weak silly arguments such as these.”
Can you please explain in your own words how muscle reading has been debunked Leo? Even the source you quoted admitted that Piper held her séance sitters hands! You then say thought transference has been debunked? Are you now a skeptic Leo?
Thought transference is an old word for telepathy. In the above post you also again mention “Trevor and Hall” but you have got confused. Trevor Hall was a skeptic nothing to do with the Piper case. What you are referring to is Amy Tanner and Stanley G. Hall’s criticisms. We all make mistakes but you are making too many, you have even admitted you have not read most of the literature on this subject. It’s lazy pal and I don’t usually criticise people but you look like a fat slob. You say life is short but that hasn’t stopped you from trolling skeptic blogs all these years has it. If you are so convinced of the spirit world why do you even bother doing this.
I don’t think telepathy had nothing to do with is and if you had any knowledge of what super psi is you would know there has been a debate over survival v.s super psi. Because if you actually read the link I had up earlier it was pointed out clearly that muscle reading has been shown to be inadequate to explain Piper’s readings. Earlier I admitted it was Amy and I made the mistake by saying it was Trevor. Sorry but I am under the weather today. Because, I realize there is no such thing as facts only probabilities weighing the evidence on both sides. Well I haven’t seen your picture yet you could also be a fat slob we will never know.
“If you had any shred of honesty you would admit your arguments have been debunked. But instead intend on forcing your garbage down spiritualists throats because you believe these skeptics are right.”
Leo, you are contracting yourself because first you say the spiritualists don’t need to acknowledge the skeptics arguments because they are silly or they were not present at the séances, now you are saying they have been debunked. The problem is that they have not been debunked, if they had then the spiritualists would be writing rebuttals. No spiritualist has ever taken on Milbourne Christopher, Edward Clodd, Joseph McCabe, Joseph Rinn or Ivor Lloyd Tuckett on the Piper case. They are ignored.
I would like to see you debunk every criticism of Piper on this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Piper
Remember it was you who said the skeptical arguments have been debunked. Please show this information with references if possible. This is your chance to prove you have a shred of honesty in you.
“Well I haven’t seen your picture yet you could also be a fat slob we will never know.”
Why don’t you use your psi abilities and find out?
You misunderstood what I met Amy Tanner and Tucker criticism has been debunked, as well the muscle reading and transference of thought arguments. We spirtualist’s don’t have the time we debunked every single silly weak argument you skeptics have. As we now are in this time period debunking skeptic approaches towards near death experiences etc. If Ivor’s Tuskett is the best you got I can bet the others would be of weaker variety. I thought you guys had something better than muscle reading an accomplice argument would actually be better. Let’s not forget that is what the accusation was against Sir William Crookes with Katie King.
Midnightrunner
I don’t have to have psi abilites to at least know that your an dishonest,, troll, who pastes wiki citations from one from to another. To top that of also like to make personal attacks on how someone looks and attack people who don’t believe like you do.
This is just embarrassing.
This is rather funny
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2013/12/there-probably-is-an-afterlife.html
Some guy told him it was so and then he put it in a book so it must be true. No different then the fundamental Christians. Give me a break.
Hmm it sounds familar?. No no no it couldn’t be could it?
I didn’t know this but Edward Clodd was debunk in the above link in the comments section.
Clodd first primes the reader for what follows by using an alleged ‘quote’ by one of Lodge’s ‘intimate friends’ to show that Lodge has a desire to believe almost anything. Note that he does not name this person – so he could just be making it up, or is indulging in the habit mentioned by Baloney earlier in relation to McCabe’s claims. I doubt very much that this would have been allowed in the peer – refereed journal that Clodd is quoting Lodge from.
It is pretty clear to me that Clodd is saying that Lodge has recommended that a ‘hazy’ state of mind is better than a ‘keenly awake’ one and it is therefore implied strongly that Lodge’s testimony as to the nature of psychical phenomena is therefore not to be trusted.
It is just as clear from Lodge’s version that he is merely speculating as to the apparent nature of the trance state – as he and others have observed it. He is not referring at all to the best attitude of mind with which to act as an observer. He is actually saying the exact opposite to what Clodd is implying. And, ironically in the present context, he uses Piper as an example. What is also hilariously obvious is that Lodge doubts that Piper’s Phinuit control is anything other than an aspect of her own personality – so much for ‘longing to believe something’ on his part.
If that isn’t proof of a deliberate and utterly disgraceful misrepresentation, then I don’t know what is. In my opinion it amounts to a premeditated, effective ‘lie’. Are we really supposed to believe that someone of Clodd’s standing didn’t know exactly what he was doing? No wonder this approach has been carried forward in print and online since. Skeptics have been uncritically absorbing rubbish like this ever since Clodd’s day and rarely looking beyond it to see if it’s actually true. Indeed, Clodd’s material in relation to this subject has often been cited by skeptics (including McCabe).
The two short quotes from Lodge’s ‘Address’ are from quite early in the piece. So it could be that Clodd just speed read the first bit and came to an astonishingly naive conclusion.
The anonymous quote from Lodge’s ‘friend’ is the give away for me, though. IMO that betrays a streak of calculating cruelty in Clodd’s character. He was a far from stupid man, being (ahem) a successful banker.
The following shows intellectual dishonesty on the part of McCabe and Rational Wiki (and also the wikipedia article on Myers, which was obviously edited by the same person who put in the info on Rational Wiki):
Part of the Rational Wiki article on Frederic Myers is an attempt to attack him on his sexual activities, including vague allegations of sexual relations with mediums biasing his arguments. Then we come upon this misrepresentative assault (this version is from the Rational Wiki article on Myers as of November 14, 2013, 1:03 PST):
“The skeptic Joseph McCabe discovered false information in Myers book Phantasms of the Living (1886) a book which documented anecdotal experiences of apparitions and phantasms. Myers included an alleged “personal experience” by a retired Judge Edmund Hornby involving a visitation from a spirit, however the whole thing was a hoax and Hornby admitted there was no truth in it. Myers did not do proper research on the subject.”
The reality is quite different, and when we conduct a full investigation into this, we gain extreme doubt that the RW coverage of spiritualism or any other subject they don’t like is in any way reliable or, in the cases where they may accurately cite sources, if it is in any way objective. As follows:
First, McCabe did repeat such insinuations, but not in the manner alleging that Myers made things up, as RW editors defamatorily insinuate. He states of Edmund Hornby that he “could only mutter that he did not understand his own mistake”: https://archive.org/stream/isspiritualismba00mccarich#page/98/mode/2up
Doing relevant primary source research we find, when we come upon commentary concerning this and the argument of Balfour that McCabe cites against this anecdote (The Nineteenth Century, Volume 16, p. 851: http://books.google.com/books?id=K9YaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA75&dq=Visible+apparitions.+Nineteenth+century+1884&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6huFUpefBOOrjAL4g4GIBw&sqi=2&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=courtesy%20in%20sending%20me%20Mr.%20Balfour%27s%20letter&f=false) – you may have to scroll down to the correct page, that Hornby’s defense against the assertions of Balfour, showing that even if the story can be disputed, Myers did not fabricate information – and also that McCabe gave a MARKEDLY BIASED presentation that did not represent the substance of the argument – Hornby did not state “that he did not understand his own mistake”, but instead, Hornby directly challenges Balfour. He may be wrong, but the fact is that tone of the RW towards Myers on this is over the top (allegations of false information – implying he fabricated it, rather than contentious information – the assertion is that Hornby stated that there was no truth in it, such an assertion ignores his statement “If I had not believed, as I still believe, that every word of it [the story] was accurate, and that my memory was to be relied on, I should not have ever told it as a personal experience.”)
Another point – debunkers of Piper make a lot of mention of Hodgson, but little mention of James Hyslop (and regarding Piper’s “confession”, see: http://tinyurl.com/knvw7le, regarding Hodgson’s initial attitude, see: http://tinyurl.com/jvsusqz – and of Piper, Oliver Lodge said, “By introducing anonymous strangers and by catechising her myself in various ways, I have satisfied myself that much of the information she possesses in the trance state is not acquired by ordinary common-place methods, but that she has some unusual means of acquiring information. The facts on which she discourses are usually within the knowledge of some person present, though they are often entirely out of his conscious thought at the time. Occasionally facts have been narrated which have only been verified afterwards, and which are in good faith asserted never to have been known; meaning thereby that they have left no trace on the conscious memory of any person present or in the neighbourhood and that it is highly improbable that they were ever known to such persons. She is also in the trance state able to diagnose diseases and to specify the owners or late owners of portable property, under circumstances which preclude the application of ordinary methods.”: http://tinyurl.com/mbmgbzg – and regarding Piper’s errors, the ever so ridiculed Michael Tymn who has written me a partial response to the Rational Wiki article on him also wrote the article “Debunking Babe Ruth & Leonora Piper”: http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/entry/debunking_babe_ruth_leonora_piper/)
A comment on the Fiske/Pellew letter – this is a central argument for debunkers, so refuting it would make their case more problematic.
First – in an SPR review of Joseph Rinn’s book, p. 434, the letter is dismissed as hearsay for good reason, and some of Rinn’s errors are discussed in the review: https://ia601200.us.archive.org/13/items/NotesonSpiritualismandPsychicalResearch/Salters%20Review%20of%20Rinn%20JSPR%20Volume%2036_pg93to100.pdf
But much more importantly, in the following SPR article comparing the “letter” to the actual facts, Pellew’s brother’s charges are found, even in the case of Fiske, to be completely spurious – thus his brother is impeached as a witness, not Hodgson – Hodgson is rehabilitated as a source: https://ia601200.us.archive.org/13/items/NotesonSpiritualismandPsychicalResearch/MunvesJGpsYoungerBrotherANoteJsprVolume60_pg401to405.pdf
This blows away a major argument of debunkers.
Sorry my comment is awaiting moderation.
Here’s the link to a very good rebuttal to skeptics attack on Mrs. Piper
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2013/12/there-probably-is-an-afterlife.html
Once again Leo you are not doing any deep research just citing the same old blogs you have cited for years written by loons. You don’t even bother to research who you are quoting from.
“Here’s the link to a very good rebuttal to skeptics attack on Mrs. Piper”
The blog is owned by Robert McLuhan, a pseudoscience proponent:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robert_McLuhan
And the guy doing the comments is Ben Steigmann – a spiritualist and anti-Semite who you have cited already.
http://bensteigmann.blogspot.co.uk/
Steigmann is a banned Wikipedia editor who has attempted to get parapsychologists to take legal action against Wikipedia (but failed). Here’s what a user wrote:
“It is interesting to note that a psychic believer is all over it called Ben Steigmann (he is a banned Wikipedia user) who has been banned on over six sock puppets for being disruptive on Wikipedia and he is now telling Targ to take legal action!
http://doubtfulnews.com/2014/05/the-latest-fringe-researcher-to-complain-about-wikipedia-russell-targ/
Here’s just one nutty comment from Steigmann:
“My belief is that there is an ideological origin to this extremism and hate in the Jewish religion, fueling this mask that is the public face of the global oligarchy – and I have devoted time to it in order to penetrate this layer of our World System that the “educated” refuse to question because they are living under mind control”
http://bensteigmann.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/proclamation-pt-iii.html
He believes the government practice mind-control on people. He has also written a bunch of nutty self-published articles about Zionism and “sexual” magick. This is your “source” Leo. You are quoting lunatics and charlatans. Anything to reinforce your paranormal beliefs tho, no matter how nutty!
“I thought you guys had something better than muscle reading an accomplice argument would actually be better.”
Piper didn’t need a secret accomplice. She took her information from cues from the sitters, she was an expert cold reader and fisher for information. She made clever guesses and used hints from the sittings. She listened to her sitters before and in interval between sittings. She read local newspapers, she stayed at the houses of the psychical researchers who investigated her and became friendly with their wives. She knew most of her sitters. She could observe her sitters during her séances, no tight controls were ever used and no trained magician was ever present during her séances. She held her sitters hands, muscle reading was just one thing she practiced, you are missing the bigger picture.
You have not been able to cite a single example where Piper gave information that could not have been learnt by naturalistic methods. This is why the spiritualist argument has no basis. You have no case at all.
Midnightrunner
I very much doubt you will read the excellent rebuttal to the skeptics attacks on Piper. The link was in the last post above.
You ask me to dig up rebuttals to criticism’s against Piper from a spiritualist you challenge me on it and I did what you told me to do.
Link is crap. Not a “rebuttal”. It is a glowing book blurb, basically… On a typepad blog. paranormalia, blog of the pseudoscience nut Robert McLuhan.
Holy crap.
My god, this guy thinks a “rebuttal” is an informationless book blurb via typepad. Even for a low information person, this is just stupid.
This must be what insanity feels like. Do not like. I’m done.
“Leo”
“I guess your not understanding me I read up on numerous science articles in the past and I know the literature pretty well. ”
You do not.
“As far, as experiments go I don’t know how to do an experiment I am not a scientist.”
You’re getting closer to the truth here
“Knowing that you are one please tell me how you would go about a triple blind experiment on Bigfoot.”
The joke here is that a double blind experiment doesn’t apply here. You don’t even know the most basic aspect of science, yet you argue with scientists about science. Think about that.
“I can tell you what I think reductive materialism means its a part of identity theory it supposes that mental states are in fact physical states of the brain.”
This is sort of an implication….
“That all types of mental states are numerically identical with ( is one of the very same thing as) some type of physical states or process within the physical brain or nervous system.”
Numerically identical?
The rebuttal is in the comments section good old gummy bear. By the way I like gummy bear candy.
I don’t want your definition, TBH, Leo. You have a hard time grasping that you have little understanding of these issues. And you won’t learn because you can’t admit you don’t know.
I want Ian to tell me – he’s the one that throws the phrase around.
@Steve12
Numerically identical?
As in one of the very same thing.
The joke here is that a double blind experiment doesn’t apply here. You don’t even know the most basic aspect of science, yet you argue with scientists about science. Think about that. ‘
I knew that just seeing if you knew that as well.
Would you like sites I have visited before that were from skeptics.
Ok here we go
Neurologica blog
Jref forum
Skeptical articles against near death experiences being indicative of an afterlife.
Keith Augustine’s article the case against immortality
Infidels forum
Ebonmusings article- an attack on dualism
Skeptic Blog- Michael Shermer
Pz Myers blog- Pharyngula
Ian,
“…I can’t see how it’s helped by supposing the brain stores memories. Why is it not problematic under that hypothesis? Do these memories not exist at all? Or merely that we don’t have access to them?”
The following are facts about the brain:
The prefrontal cortex holds memories short term.
The hippocampus converts these short term memories into long term memories.
The cerebral cortex stores these memories long term.
So, quite simply, if short term memories held in the prefrontal cortex are not converted by the hippocampus into long term memories in the cerebral cortex then we don’t have access to them long term.
Quite a neat materialist explanation don’t you think?
BTW, Ian, have you seen the 3D version of the checkerboard illusion that you insist does not exist, or is it causing you too much cognitive dissonance to attend to? (;
Here it is again for you to ignore:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Sen1HTu5o
“I knew that just seeing if you knew that as well”
BJ7, I snorted my coffee over that. It takes me back to the level of discourse on the public school bus in elementary school. My memory is fuzzy, but even then, surely it wasn’t this god awfully dumb (insert short bus joke if you want).
No. Think about that, you dolt.
Okay, seriously, I’m outs… Jeesh (seriously, this must be what going insane feels like). Here’s to 1,000 derps. Go get ’em Leo. You’re a special little snowflake, you show these scientismists what’s what.
leo100 —
That ‘evidence’ is incredibly weak. Ask yourself how you would feel if you would be convicted in a court of law based on the evidence for, say, remote viewing or telekinesis. No-one has ever moved a toothpick over 5mm using telekinesis, or remote-viewed with sufficient accuracy to describe a landmark spot-on.
It’s easy to claim there are problems with the naturalistic worldview, but ask yourself how a world that is truly non-naturalistic would be. I think it’s fair to say no sane person believes in superheroes or Greek gods with magic hammers (or even in Hancock :)), so do you propose a world that for all we currently know is naturalistic, but becomes magical for the phenomena you would love to exist? Or is it a world that perversely becomes naturalistic if one looks hard enough (remember all the things people have believed in over the ages)?
@Bill Openthalt
I would disagree just look at the stargate program. It’s only controversial among skeptics who think the evidence doesn’t point favorably that remote viewing does exist.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vision_remota/esp_visionremota_14.htm
I would say that is how it looks that these phenomenon do in fact exist.
Leo:
“I knew that just seeing if you knew that as well.”
OMG – really? I know that you don’t have much of a reputation to lose, bust Jesus J Christ this is the lamest goddamn thing I’ve heard.
Actually, I think BJ7’s response to “I knew that just seeing if you knew that as well.” was much funnier than mine…
Nearing 900…
Jesus H Christ.
Indeed, BJ7. Indeed…..
What is the longest thread on this blog?
The thread where a little snowflake got melted all by itself.
The thread where a shiny high nose and a silver spoon mouth got taken down to boganville.
The thread where science, rationality, and logic walked on over the dust of broken dreams
“I would disagree just look at the stargate program. It’s only controversial among skeptics who think the evidence doesn’t point favorably that remote viewing does exist.”
Have you read the official report by Mumford, Rose and Goslin? It was prepared by the American Institutes for Research.
In their report they write:
“Remote viewings have never provided an adequate basis for ‘actionable’ intelligence operations-that is, information sufficiently valuable or compelling so that action was taken as a result… a large amount of irrelevant, erroneous information is provided and little agreement is observed among viewers’ reports… Remote viewers and project managers reported that remote viewing reports were changed to make them consistent with know background cues.
http://www.lfr.org/lfr/csl/library/airreport.pdf
It is not only “controversial” among skeptics. The Stargate Project was a complete failure. Once again your “source” is an alien conspiracy theory website. I have not seen you cite a single reliable source in any of your posts on this blog.
“Link is crap. Not a “rebuttal”. It is a glowing book blurb, basically… On a typepad blog. paranormalia, blog of the pseudoscience nut Robert McLuhan.”
Leo is happy to quote McLuhan’s blog but he doesn’t mention that McLuhan is a global warming denier, a proponent of intelligent design and a believer in “evil” poltergeists.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Robert_McLuhan
“My god, this guy thinks a “rebuttal” is an informationless book blurb via typepad. Even for a low information person, this is just stupid.”
Exactly. But if you look who Leo was citing as his “rebuttal” in the comments section it was Ben Steigmann. Leo has already cited this person. He is a banned Wikipedia user, I have a friend who debates him several months ago on his own blog. But Google this person’s name for a lot of nonsense he has written over the years about conspiracy theories.
Steigmann is a conspiracy theorist who writes a lot of nonsense about Zionism and “mind control”, just an example:
“My belief is that there is an ideological origin to this extremism and hate in the Jewish religion, fueling this mask that is the public face of the global oligarchy – and I have devoted time to it in order to penetrate this layer of our World System that the “educated” refuse to question because they are living under mind control”
http://bensteigmann.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/proclamation-pt-iii.html
That’s Leo’s “rebuttal”, another nutter! Well done Leo.
midnightrunner2014
“Leo is happy to quote McLuhan’s blog but he doesn’t mention that McLuhan is a global warming denier, a proponent of intelligent design and a believer in “evil” poltergeists”.
Irrelevant — indeed it’s a argumentum ad hominem — although I’d be interested if you could back up these assertions?
You get some believers who will just believe anything — these constitute a good majority. You also get a few believers who are very thoughtful, acknowledge all the difficulties, are very well read on the subject having read the *original* sources. Robert McLuhan is very much of the latter. His book Randi’s Prize is simply superb. Have you read it?
Your credibility is shot to pieces.
Ian,
It is interesting that you consider that accusing someone of climate change denialism, belief in creationism, and belief in poltergeists as an ad hominem.
Or should that be poisoning the well?
On the other hand, it doesn’t seem irrelevant to me that someone is a nutcase with regards to climate change, evolution, and the paranormal when considering whether to take him seriously. For example, with that track record, who would ever bother to read his book.
😉
Anyway, as regards credibility…
@ Billyjoe I’m guessing neither me nor you are experts on climate or poltergeists. Therefore coming to definitive conclusions on these subjects is not the sign of rational person seeking to understand the world. As for intelligent design, apparently from what I understand this doesn’t simply mean that our Universe was designed by some intelligence, but Americans mean something far more specific by it. So can’t say anything about it since I don’t know what it means.
We still don’t have any evidence that Robert subscribes to those things. In fact I think he does believe in anthropic driven climate change, but not absolutely sure.
Given the circumstances, I’d say it’s a relatively rare example of a non-fallacious ad hominem. A more common example is considering a pathological liar’s testimony to be unreliable because they are a pathological liar.
In this case, if someone demonstrates poor reasoning and fallacious rationalizations that leads them to reject well established theories and facts about multiple topics with broad implications, it strongly suggests they’re going to do the same on other topics. Thus, reading their analysis is likely going to waste time.
Skeptics usually have a comparatively narrow topic or two they can be irrational about, but they tend to be more strongly compartmentalized. Cranks have broad rationalizations that apply widely, hence crank magnetism.
@Midnightrunner
Aww, what’s wrong? someone actually read your skeptical sources against Piper and ripped them apart piece by piece?. Sure Ben Steigmann has some strange beliefs but that doesn’t counter the awesome rebuttal he gave on the criticisms of Piper. Also, Ray Hyman admitted that the results were above chance. One of the reason’s why the results were rejected is because according to them there wasn’t a positive theory of anomalous cognition.
However according to Joseph McMoneagle’s book Mind Trek (1997) these scientists were not shown 99% of the documented results of remote viewing, which were and are still classified, were forbidden to speak with any of the remote viewers or project managers and were not given any means to evaluate the operational effectiveness of the information they were shown (1997: 218-229). Some people claim that the program did not really end and it is being carried on in secret.
So your guys goal is to get to 1000 posts and if I stay here I will be playing right into your hands. I had enough. Enough is enough no need to be wasting my precious time and life on skeptics who aren’t willing to change their minds. I know I said this plenty of times before but that’s it. Goodbye. Adiós.
“skeptics who aren’t willing to change their minds.”
If you gave any evidence whatsoever, you might have a little more of a chance of changing minds here.
It has been fun (mostly) reading through your ramblings, enjoy whatever forums you frequent in the future!
Ian, why won’t you respond to my question?
YOU are the one who throws “reductive materialism” around over and over, but you refuse to define it?
Please stop being a coward and define your terms. If you can.
“So your guys goal is to get to 1000 posts and if I stay here I will be playing right into your hands. ”
In all fairness, I think this is just me.
Leo,
We will change our minds when you present a compelling case. But as you haven’t yet managed to do so despite the impressive (although copy/pasta) word count, it seems unlikely you will do so at any point in the future.
I’ve stopped reading your posts, Leo. I only responded now because I’m sunning my self in the canary islands so have not checked this forum in a while, yours was the last and was short, so I did read it, and I see you’re yet again (ahem) threatening to leave us.
And I’ll say, again, off you go then, back to the deapest darkest corners of the bowells of the intertubes to immerse yourself in woo.
1000 comments seems like a worthwhile goal just for the sake of it..
He’ll be back. There are only so many street corners in New Glasgow, and I’ve got the impression he doesn’t get a lot attention at SKEPCOP, or much love in the comments of Prescot/McLuhan (or anywhere else in Wooville). Even for the idiotic, he’s a little hopeless. This is probably the most human interaction he’s had in years. He won’t be able to stay away.
Ian
“@ Billyjoe I’m guessing neither me nor you are experts on climate or poltergeists”
The experts on non existent phenomena are all over the blogs you frequent. Why not ask them?
Why, why, oh why do you continue to post here but blatantly dodge so many questions? Yes, the ones that ask you to define your terms. The ones that you can’t answer through the lense of your ideology. I appreciate intellectual rigour, and sticking to your interpretation of reality , but simply ignoring tricky questions or observations that conflict with your philosophical narrative is utterly dishonest of you.
Ian,
“We still don’t have any evidence that Robert subscribes to those things”
This is an odd comment considering all you have to do is read Robert McLuhan’s paranormalia blog or his books to find him endorsing all kinds of woo such as poltergeists, mediums, intelligent design etc.
Here, he has a whole category dedicated to his belief in poltergeists! Check his blog posts:
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/poltergeists/
McLuhan has also written a book called “Poltergeist People: Eyewitness Accounts of Remarkable Events” – type this on amazon to find it. He talks about alleged poltergeist attacks and old cases and claims that some poltergeists are evil.
As for intelligent design, he endorses it here:
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2009/01/psi-and-creationism.html
I have indeed read McLuhan’s book “Randi’s Prize: What Sceptics Say About the Paranormal, Why They Are Wrong, and Why It Matters”. In some of the first half of the book he talks about poltergeists… The book also claims the fraudulent medium Eusapia Palladino had psychokinetic powers… you don’t believe that do you Ian? See chapter two “Eusapia Palladino and the Phantom Narrative” pages 61-104… over 40 pages dedicated to Palladino but hardly any of her exposures were mentioned. Oddly McLuhan actually accepts Palladino was caught in fraud on two occasions which I respect him for admitting but concludes she still communicated with spirits… !? remember this is meant to be a book debunking the skeptics but McLuhan embarrasses himself. The book also claims the most notorious frauds of spiritualism the Fox Sisters were actually genuine, McLuhan’s invokes conspiracy theories about their confession… you don’t believe that do you? He claims Rupert Sheldrake’s psychic dog experiments were genuine… The book is filled with nonsense Ian, he misrepresents many of the skeptical sources on purpose and many are deliberately ignored.
ian,
Either the purpose of chocolate buttons is to enhance journey times on the train line between Surrey and Edinburgh or it’s not.
This is technically true, as is your statement. It’s implications are also as divorced from rigorous observation of real events as your statement.
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: reality does not owe you a nice little explanation for itself, tied up in a bow and with all the nice consequences you can confirmation bias and rationalize your way to believing.
I’ve been on the all-inclusive booze for 14 hours so I’d be pretty willing to retract my points if you can counter them, Ian. (as in I might be talking shit).
My hotel room has a table and a clockwork clock in it though, and I’m considering both of them very hard right now.
Wow, that was elegantly put, mumadadd. I’m probably going to plagiarize you.
@midnightrunner2014
If you want me to conclude you’re not lying then you are required to provide the appropriate quotes to substantiate your claims:
“McLuhan is a global warming denier, a proponent of intelligent design and a believer in “evil” poltergeists”.
@midnightrunner2014
“Tricia describes a number of other cases that are anyone familiar with the poltergeist literature will recognise – mostly seeming to be caused by discarnates, friendly or otherwise. One that was investigated by her colleague Archie Roy in the 1970s involved very disruptive activity over an extended period. At one point it seemed as if someone
“with an enormous sledgehammer was taking it and hammering it against the side of the house to such an extent that the whole house shook, a blow coming every 5 seconds or so, hour after hour, till in desperation one would say, ‘Oh stop it.’ And it would stop. For a while . . . on one occasion after a long interval of blessed silence Max said, I believe we will get to the bottom of this. Immediately there was a sustained banging as if to say, ‘oh, no you won’t’””.
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/poltergeists/
Is this what you mean by a poltergeist being evil? Robert is merely quoting an alleged case of a poltergeist. He’s not saying he takes it at face value. And it wouldn’t have stopped if it were evil!
Devils,
Just saw this. I know you wound up your post more or less agreeing with me. I don’t know what Leo is… He’s obviously more intelligent than a dog as he knows how to abuse the internet, a computer, a keyboard…
Maybe I’m as much of an idealogue as he is. I mean I’m pretty committed to this sketicism thing…except I want him to be right, so throw out motivated reasoning. I’m also guilty of not looking at his evidence, but this is primarily because I’m not 14 anymore, and I don’t think there’s a sophisticated scientific conspiracy to delude the general public about the existence of life after death; I think any evidence of this would not only be embraced (to say the least) by the public but would inspire the biggest research paradigm ever, ever in the history of humankind.
And in the link about “intelligent design” he specifically denies creationism.
Booyah!
Ian. Questions. Answers?? Let me know if you need them restated. Let me know if you think they’re irrelevant. Let me know if you think I’m just a materialist fool not worthy of your high minded philosophical brian (that believes in reincarnation).
@midnightrunner2014
OK you’re not lying, but you have misinterpreted what he’s said.
Anyway, if poltergeists exist and they’re not all hoaxes and examples of macro-psychokinesis from some living agent, why shouldn’t some of them be malevolent?
Or is your beef with the fact that he’s open minded about the existence of poltergeists regardless of whether they’re friendly or “evil”?
@mumadadd
What questions?
Ian,
You are correct.
Robert McLuhan has no opinion about climate change because, as he says, he knows nothing about the subject. He is therefore happy to go along with what the experts on climate change have concluded based on the accumulated scientific evidence. And he is generally supportive of action to mitigate climate change.
Also, as you point out, he specifically denies creationism and finds the evidence for evolution convincing.
But he does find the evidence for paranormal phenomena convincing.
(Personally, I don’t find his reason for doing so convincing but there we are)
Ian,
You are deliberately ignoring some of the things what I wrote in my posts. Robert McLuhan has written an entire book endorsing poltergeists. It seems to me that you are embarrassed over this because you have cited McLuhan else where on the internet and now you have just found out he endorses all kinds of nonsense. Here is his book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poltergeist-People-Eyewitness-Remarkable-Paranormalia-ebook/dp/B00717UPQ4
Here’s what he writes in the introduction:
“My view? Reading these narratives – letters, witness statements, pamphlets, journal articles – it’s hard to escape the feeling that the phenomenon is something that occurs in nature. I recognise this is hugely problematic for science, which rejects notions such as psychokinesis, let aline “noisy
ghosts”. At the same time, I can’t sense to the idea, favoured by debunking sceptics like James Randi, that it’s caused by children playing pranks. To me, that idea only really works if you’re ignorant of what it is exactly that people experience.”
If you continue to read into the book he mentions various cases like the fox sisters and he concludes they were genuine – he does not believe they can be explained by fraud. My statement that McLuhan believes in “evil” poltergeists is accurate because if you read his section on Tina Resch he believes this was an evil spirit. Look at the definition of poltergeist it is allegedly supposed to be spirits that cause physical disturbances or malicious intent etc. Of course poltergeists don’t exist.
The Tina Resch case was a hoax:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Resch
Yet McLuhan claims it is genuine evidence for a spirit. You have also not commented on the Fox sisters, do you believe they were genuine Ian, because McLuhan does.
“Robert McLuhan has no opinion about climate change because, as he says, he knows nothing about the subject”
Ok fair play I have just found this, McLuhan writes:
“I know practically zilch about global warming. I have to admit, the sceptics could be right and I could be completely wrong. But what I have learned along the way tells me whose judgement I can and cannot trust.”
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/climate-change/
I retract my comment about him being a global warming denier but he definitely supports intelligent design. Whilst he accepts the evidence for common descent and denies religious creationism, he thinks there is some built in creative intelligence behind psi.
Right then:
Define, in your own words, ” reductive materialism” (Shit, at this point I don’t remember if that’s right, but it’s your term so you will)
Idealism:
-how do we distinguish it from a materialistic reality?
-what testable hypotheses stem from idealism?
-how do we test them?
-what explanatory power does idealism give us?
(and yes, I know you will ignore these questions)
Do you really regard Wikipedia as being reliable?
Anyway I know very little about poltergeists and cannot express an opinion on them. The same goes for the Fox sisters.
Anyway if you guys want to talk about evil poltergeists, I’ll leave you to it. I can’t meaningfully contribute to this conversation.
If they do exist it is weird I’ll grant you that.
@mumadadd
Idealism and materialism are metaphysical positions. If we could test for them directly, then they would not be metaphysical positions.
I’ve already spelt out the meaning of reductive materialism.
Reductionism is the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their constituent parts. It is the motions of these parts and how they interact together which explain the phenomenon concerned. For example, consider a clockwork clock. By looking at the components of that clock – namely the cogs, the springs, and the wheels – and how they all interrelate together, we can actually understand how the minute and hour clock hands move.
Let’s reset the clockwork clock to be generous.
Ignoring hard questions count:
-1
Ian,
I was typing my post so couldn’t see yours.
Now the rest…. Come on, Ian. Try!
Ian
In the interests of fairness, the ‘ignoring hard questions’ count will go up by one for every post you make without attempting to address the hard questions I stated.
MNR,
“Whilst he accepts the evidence for common descent and denies religious creationism, he thinks there is some built in creative intelligence behind psi”
What you said is that he believes in intelligent design.
Which I take to mean that he believes in creationism and therefore in god.
On the other hand, it seems to me he is undecided and, moreover, that he believes this question is probably unresolvable:
“I may not be typical in this regard, but the First Cause problem has lurked obscurely in the background of my consciousness for as long as I can remember. It’s an ever-present question. I accept that it can’t be resolved in this world, with this mind, but I also struggle to understand how it could ever be resolved – in any future state. That frustrates me, so I’m never completely at peace about it”
So, I think your criticism of McLuhan has traction only as regards the paranormal.
“For example, consider a clockwork clock. ”
I got him to reiterate that position for you, Other John Mc.
“Reductionism is the belief that all aspects of complex phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their constituent parts. ”
This is so oversimplified that it doesn’t mean anything.
Ian,
You have used that phrase again despite the jocularity with which it was received the first two times.
So you must have a good reason for using it.
Can you explain the difference between a clock and a “clockwork clock”.
Is it just that a clock is never completely accurate, whilst a hypothetical “clockwork clock” displays perfectly accurate time?
But then why does that matter for your argument?
…oh, and I’m still interested in any comment you may care to make regarding the 3D checkerboard illusion.
Failing that, I will assume you have conceded the argument.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Sen1HTu5o
This video illustrates two errors you have made on your blog
– your explanation for the illusion seen in the 2D version is incorrect.
– your opinion that a 3D version would not show the illusion is incorrect.
Ian,
“Idealism and materialism are metaphysical positions. If we could test for them directly, then they would not be metaphysical positions.”
Materialism in science and especially in neuroscience is not a ‘metaphysical position’ – it doesn’t make any such claims. You need to separate materialism as a philosophy and materialism as a scientific hypothesis. The philosophy is the one that makes a metaphysical claim and an empirical one (when applied to the mind-brain relationship). Materialist thought that matter was THE fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena are the result of material interactions.
‘Materialism’ as a scientific hypothesis which applies to the mind-brain relationship only makes the second claim – that the mind is the result (effect) of it’s cause (brain activity) – this is a statement about a causal relationship which can be investigated by the scientific method. Novella actually has a number of posts on this blog about dualism where he explained the logic and evidence behind the materialist hypothesis quite well. And of course, he’s not the only one:
“There are now countless experiments and cases in which it is clearly demonstrated that doing something to the brain reliably results in a change of the mind. The arrow of causation is clear.” – http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-on-god-of-the-gaps/
“However, as neuroscience begins to reveal the mechanisms underlying personality, love, morality, and spirituality, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical correlates in brain function. Furthermore, pharmacologic influences on these traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the physical bases of these central aspects of our personhood.” – Martha J. Farah and Nancy Murphy, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA/School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, – ‘Neuroscience and the Soul letter’
“Optogenetics is hot stuff because it allows researchers to intercede deliberately at any point within the tightly woven networks of the brain, moving from observation to manipulation, from correlation to causation.” – Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle/ ‘Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist’
“Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Describe for me three different aspects of the brain-mental relationship. One is simple correlation. Second is causation – even though it is correlated there is cause there. And the third is identity – that it is exactly the same thing – that you just have two names for it, like venus being the morning star, two different things – but it’s the same thing.
Patrick Haggard: Okey, so that’s a good question, and I’m only going to answer the first two parts, because the third part is a philosophical question, the third part is a question about ‘what do we mean by’ consciousness, what’s the semantics. The first two questions are scientific, is it correlation or causation between brain activity and conscious experience? The really important point here is that some of our scientific methods are causational and not correlative. Let’s make a distinction between a method like fMRI – brain imaging, where we might ask a participant to lie in a brain scanner and show them some visual stimuli and where we find that we get activation in the visual parts in the brain in the back in the occipital lobe, now that’s just really noticing a correlation between the fact that we showed them some visual stimuli and the fact that these areas of the brain light up. So that’s just showing a correlation between the visual experience that they have and the activity in these parts of the brain. But in some cases we can actually intervene in the brain. So animal experimentation is a very important method of intervening in the brain, but we can’t work out much about consciousness in animals because we can’t ask them or if we do ask them they are not going to replie right, so there are a few ways in which we can intervene in the human brain, one of them is a very important technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation, so it basically consist of making neurons in the superficial areas of the cortex fire by exposing them to a brief but strong magnetic field. Now in some areas of the brain – not all – you can produce a conscious experience by artificially activating the brain using TMS – transcranial magnetic stimulation. So if you stimulate over the visual cortex you can make people see flashes, and as you move the coil around the different bits of the visual cortex they see a flash in the different parts of their visual field, if you hold the coil over the different bits that process the movement of visual stimuli, they see a flash that wips across their visual field like a lightning bolt – i think that this is a very beautiful demonstration that making neurons fire – in this case artificially – causes conscious experience. I think that’s the evidence for causation.” – Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Patrick Haggard, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept. Psychology/’Closer to Truth – How Brain Scientists Think About Consciousness’
“The mere existence of psychedelics would seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt—for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows.” – Sam Harris/‘Drugs and the Meaning off Life’
Just a few examples.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-mani/
Nomen Nescio
“Materialism in science and especially in neuroscience is not a ‘metaphysical position’ – it doesn’t make any such claims. You need to separate materialism as a philosophy and materialism as a scientific hypothesis”.
What can be said to people who simply won’t listen and keep uttering falsehoods no matter how much it is patiently explained?
Everything I’m saying on here just falls on deaf ears. I’m not interested in communicating with people who simply won’t listen and are unable to understand anything. Goodbye.
I just read the rest of Nomen Nescio’s post.
“The mere existence of psychedelics would seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt—for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows.” – Sam Harris/‘Drugs and the Meaning off Life’
But he contradicts himself as he’s also said:
“The efficacy of psychedelics might seem to establish the material basis of mental and spiritual life beyond any doubt, for the introduction of these substances into the brain is the obvious cause of any numinous apocalypse that follows. It is possible, however, if not actually plausible, to seize this evidence from the other end and argue, as Aldous Huxley did in his classic The Doors of Perception, that the primary function of the brain may be eliminative: Its purpose may be to prevent a transpersonal dimension of mind from flooding consciousness, thereby allowing apes like ourselves to make their way in the world without being dazzled at every step by visionary phenomena that are irrelevant to their physical survival”.
http://richarddawkins.net/2014/06/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-life/
How could anyone come to the conclusion that psychedelics establishes that brains produce such experiences?? It is seriously bad. Eyes cause us to see. Does that entail what we see doesn’t exist?
“Now in some areas of the brain – not all – you can produce a conscious experience by artificially activating the brain using TMS – transcranial magnetic stimulation. So if you stimulate over the visual cortex you can make people see flashes, and as you move the coil around the different bits of the visual cortex they see a flash in the different parts of their visual field, if you hold the coil over the different bits that process the movement of visual stimuli, they see a flash that wips across their visual field like a lightning bolt – i think that this is a very beautiful demonstration that making neurons fire – in this case artificially – causes conscious experience”.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Patrick Haggard, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience & Dept. Psychology/’Closer to Truth – How Brain Scientists Think About Consciousness
Yes and opening our eyes causes us to have conscious experiences too. Therefore my conscious experience of a table is caused by opening my eyes and not because there’s an actual existing table.
So much for the reasoning of “brain scientists”.
Sam Harris says in the article I linked to:
“Those who employ it invariably forget that we are the music, not the radio. If the brain were nothing more than a receiver of conscious states, it should be impossible to diminish a person’s experience of the cosmos by damaging her brain. She might seem unconscious from the outside—like a broken radio—but, subjectively speaking, the music would play on”.
Erm. . . I assume that whilst ones self operates through the brain then consciousness may or may not be expanded or diminished by damage to the brain; depending on the nature of the damage.
The radio is the brain. The music is the mind. The radio waves are the self. He’s suggesting the mind shouldn’t be affected by a damaged brain? But then if it were not, then presumably it shouldn’t be affected by an undamaged brain either. But then there wouldn’t be a physical reality at all and we’d all be in the afterlife realm.
Sam Harris :
“Whatever the case, the action of these drugs does not rule out dualism, or the existence of realms of mind beyond the brain—but then, nothing does. That is one of the problems with views of this kind: They appear to be unfalsifiable”.
a) It’s doubtful that falsificationism accurately characterises scientific progress. One can always introduce auxiliary hypotheses and “save” the main hypothesis.
b) That doesn’t matter anyway since dualism, materialism, idealism etc are metaphysical hypotheses. It is unclear that Popper (who was the one who advocated falsificationism) meant it to apply to such hypotheses. Also he was a dualist himself!
c) Being metaphysical hypotheses one needs to employ philosophical arguments (although of course informed by science).
d) Materialism is also unfalsifiable.
Not only you guys, but also the people you link to don’t understand the underlying philosophical issues. OK I’m not coming back. I’m not interested in any responses.
Ian,
It seems you did take a stab at answering but we cross posted. Thanks, and I’ve turned off the clockwork clock!
“But he contradicts himself as he’s also said: ..“
No, he doesn’t contradict himself. You forgot to post the rest of it:
“Huxley was operating under the assumption that psychedelics decrease brain activity. Some recent data have lent support to this view; for instance, a neuroimaging study of psilocybin suggests that the drug primarily reduces activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region involved in a wide variety of tasks related to self-monitoring. However, other studies have found that psychedelics increase activity throughout the brain. Whatever the case, the action of these drugs does not rule out dualism, or the existence of realms of mind beyond the brain—but then, nothing does. That is one of the problems with views of this kind: They appear to be unfalsifiable.
We have reason to be skeptical of the brain-as-barrier thesis. If the brain were merely a filter on the mind, damaging it should increase cognition. In fact, strategically damaging the brain should be the most reliable method of spiritual practice available to anyone. In almost every case, loss of brain should yield more mind. But that is not how the mind works.“
“How could anyone come to the conclusion that psychedelics establishes that brains produce such experiences?? It is seriously bad. Eyes cause us to see. Does that entail what we see doesn’t exist?“
They clearly show that it is brain activity that is the underlying cause of these mental experiences. That right there is what the materialist hypothesis says in action.
“Yes and opening our eyes causes us to have conscious experiences too. Therefore my conscious experience of a table is caused by opening my eyes and not because there’s an actual existing table. So much for the reasoning of “brain scientists”.”
We know quite a lot about what happens when light reflected of an object strikes the eyes and what processes then occur in the nervous system and in the brain that allows us to see, and i don’t see a problem here.
The point of the example Haggard gave is that we can by stimulating the brain (inducing/enhancing brain acitivity) cause some mental state or process. That right there is causality.
“Erm. . . I assume that whilst ones self operates through the brain then consciousness may or may not be expanded or diminished by damage to the brain; depending on the nature of the damage. The radio is the brain. The music is the mind. The radio waves are the self. He’s suggesting the mind shouldn’t be affected by a damaged brain? But then if it were not, then presumably it shouldn’t be affected by an undamaged brain either. But then there wouldn’t be a physical reality at all and we’d all be in the afterlife realm.“
This is irrelevant to this discussion.
“d) Materialism is also unfalsifiable.“
Wrong. Materialism as a scientific hypothesis generates a number of specific falsifiable predictions. An observation of a mental state that does not correlate to a brain state would be enough, for example.
“Not only you guys, but also the people you link to don’t understand the underlying philosophical issues. OK I’m not coming back. I’m not interested in any responses.“
You can play word games as long as you like. But the fact is that you are the one here who doesn’t understand the relevant science and logic. For example, you have a few times used the “correlation is not causation“ straw man argument when it comes to the evidence from neuroscience for a tight connection between brain function and mental function, which is not just correlative.
Goodbye.
Ian: “you guys…don’t understand…”
In a recent interview about his upcoming book “The Sense of Style: Scientific Communication for the 21st Century”, Steven Pinker said the following:
“assumption of equality between writer and reader makes the reader feel like a genius. Bad writing makes the reader feel like a dunce”
There may be a lesson in there for you, Ian.
It might just be YOUR fault that no one understands what you’re trying to say.
I do usdertand solipsism, Descartes’ cogito, and idealism. The point is that while they may or may not be true, there’s no way to test for them, no predictions to be made from them, and nothing added to our understanding of reality. In the mean time we’re forced by necessity to treat the world as though it’s made of physical stuff, and other people as though they exist as entities separate from our own perception. The assumption of methodological naturalism underpinning science has led to the most successful explanatory paradigm in human history.
So my question to you is, what use is any of this philosophical conjecture? Subjective idealism does not logically lead to survival of consciousness after death.
You also have explicitly admitted that these metaphysical positions can’t be tested for, yet you’ve been constantly referring to psi phenomena, which of course can be and are tested for, as if it backs up your position. You can’t have it both ways, Ian.
steve12: “I got him to reiterate [clockwork clock] for you, Other John Mc”
YES!!!! that has made my week, and it’s only Monday morning!
Now if we can get Ian to say “perceptual perceptions” and/or “real reality” again my life will be complete….1000 comments here we come!
“a) It’s doubtful that falsificationism accurately characterises scientific progress.”
Except that it has historically as a matter of fact, not opinion.
“One can always introduce auxiliary hypotheses and “save” the main hypothesis.”
Can you give an example of what you mean?
“b) That doesn’t matter anyway since dualism, materialism, idealism etc are metaphysical hypotheses.”
But where science comes in, we have to assumer materialism for methodological reasons.
” It is unclear that Popper (who was the one who advocated falsificationism) meant it to apply to such hypotheses. ”
Probably did not becasue it’s not falsifiable.
“c) Being metaphysical hypotheses one needs to employ philosophical arguments (although of course informed by science).”
Science is out of the game because of it’s assumptions.
“d) Materialism is also unfalsifiable.”
Yeah. It’s a starting assumption of science precisely because we require it to interpret our observations.
The reason I think it is in fact true is because we’ve never seen anything contradict it. Find me a perpetual motion machine – i.e., a clockwork clock that runs on something other than matter/energy. Then you’d get my attention. Assuming materialism has been wildly successful. Metaphysical masturbation has been around for thousands of years and produced 0 except interesting discussion. You wanna get change the very nature of science, you’re gonna need more.
Find me ONE violation of the assumption that the universe is made of matter and energy. You have nothing except your poor semantic construction for why consciousness is other than material and ghost stories.
You’re welcome John. What I’m here for.
Good job guys! I think it’s pretty clear that Ian, Leo, et al. have realized that the reason the whole scientific community disagrees with them is because they haven’t really thought things through. Now that they’ve had the opportunity to hear the arguments laid bare, they’ve become enlightened.
I think it’s great when the blogosphere can serve to educate.
Dr Novella, what a crock of errant waffle. You debunk a ridiculous straw man “receiver” model as your excuse for retaining your “brain” model? In the receiver model, what is sending signals to the brain for it to broadcast as “consciousness”? God, Martians, or nothing? The proper “receiver” model would have every receptor site across anatomy feeding those signals to the brain for it to finalize sensory experiences and anticipate responsive moves as conditioned by past successes and retained in strengthened connections.
You waffle on about plasticity, but the salient point there, which again you missed, is that the anatomy feeding those signals to the brain for finalization of processing and conscious awareness after 100 milliseconds (or so) is PRIMARY, not a brain that automatically facilitates it by sensory awareness and responsive moves. In fact it is by specific conditioning of functions that errant neural processing of “phantoms” is removed. Likewise it is by functional conditioning that we can bypass damaged brain regions. The brain is not “the determinant” – it is bypassed by functional conditioning when a limb is missing, and its damaged regions are bypassed by functional conditioning when they provide errant processing. The brain breaks down, which is a problem for many, including contributors to this blog.
Dr Novella and contributors, wake up. Start valuing the functional sites that make up your entire anatomy beyond the brain. Then you might value their inputs to the brain and discover how they coordinate there for “rationality” beyond mere “perception”. You are nowhere near to understanding anatomy, and focussing on an automatic Black Box brain that is DETERMINED by our coordinated anatomical functions is the wrong approach. You are correct that “consciousness” is a brain experience, but an automatic one to facilitate anatomy and ITS capacities using neurons – not the other way around. Plasticity show this, and you should know it better. You should read my free work at http://sdrv.ms/1a4HBbk lest you fall too far behind the game. There is no Homunculus up there making the decisions, just an AUTOMATIC processor of MANUAL anatomical functions in the world.
There is a world out there Dr Novella, and our functional interfaces with it are facilitated, not determined, by a brain.
So, this thing has pretty much shifted into Ian? Is that an upshift or a shift down?
Hmm… Where do I remember M_Morgan from? Seriously, does anyone know? This is bugging me.
Don’t know, he is popping up in a few threads calling us “vultures” names. Mostly his gambit is “you closed minded skeptics!”
Bruce and Friend, or tiny minded vultures as I prefer. The syntax or semantics of my comment above are beyond you no doubt. Pity you can only do one-line nonsense with no back up. Let’s see if Steven can do better. Catch you tomorrow.
M_Morgan has a book that is Time Cube-esque insane. Real-deal, old fashioned crank.
M_Morgan – can you send us the link to your book? I can’t find it.
D’OH! There it is. Thank’s Steve. Time Cube!
No – he didn’t do the Time Cube. i’m just saying it’s like the time cube – just as crazy.
Not Time Cube… No… Why can’t I put my finger on it. I know I spent some time on it… This is irritating.
I missed it – he linked the book above:
https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=6FEA28FB59400A2B!237&ithint=file%2c.pdf&app=WordPdf&authkey=!AMSu8tf2UjDMRww
Oh dear… ghhhhhhod…
I am suddenly paralyzed by what feels like nitrous oxide/ether cocktail…
Yeah – but it’s got it ALL. Some people wanna call people cranks if they have a few weird thoughts. That’s weak tea.
M_Morgan, however, brings it! The hopelessly epic scope, the incomprehensible reasoning, the hubris, the cantankerous dismissiveness of all that’s known. He’s a 10. National treasure for Aussies everywhere.
M_Morgan’s book makes clockwork clocks look like…well, clocks.
You know, it’s funny, I was just thinking today that this thread was not going to make it to 1000 posts unless we had some kind of resurgence of hysterical, crackpot, self-published, delusional, capital-C crankness and suddenly a wild M_Morgan appears to rescue this thread from petering out. That word salad of receptor sites, neurons, anatomy, and sheer undaunted craziness while all the while saying absolutely nothing is solid gold…
I just read part 7: “Modern Scientific Context”.
Even for the internet, this is pretty strange. Everything Marcus had to say, from Newton on was factually incorrect (at best), but mostly incomprehensible. Whoa. And the strange diagrams…. This is seriously Time Cube-y.
I like M_Morgan’s purity. This isn’t denialism, or religious BS, or politically/commercially motivated spin.
With a real crank, it’s about the love of the game. I appreciate that.
“The syntax or semantics of my comment above are beyond you ”
Oh, wow, he really has a high opinion of himself. There seems to be a lot of these kinds recently. They put long strings of big words together in an attempt to sound intelligent and then call us some form of not not as intelligent as them when we read it and dismiss it for the over-wordy bollocks that it is.
It’s about the love of the game. The purity of the true crank. I laughed pretty hard about this, steve12. Sigh. This is gold.
@Ian
“Not only you guys, but also the people you link to don’t understand the underlying philosophical issues.”
Boom, and there it is.
Marcus Morgan is a solicitor in Melbourne Australia (about 40 km from where I live) with n o formal training in science, who has spent a few hours each week for the last few decades teaching himslef science and, finally, rewriting science for all the world’s scientists who have been at it every working day of every year for the whole of their working lives. He has done this in complete isolation from scientists and without subjecting himself to peer review. He has invented his own vocabulary but, even apart from this, his book is incomprehensible gibberish. Where he does make an occasional clear statement he is demonstably wrong and his lack of understanding of the subject is obvious and laughable.
In a word, Marcus Morgan is a crank.
His only claim to fame is that he was the first and, so far, only crank to visit the Neurologica blog.
He is seriously not worth wasting any time on except as an object of ridicule and fun.
So what is the record for longest comment thread on Neurologica? We’re at over 950 and Marcus Morgan is only just entering the fray.
The brain may not be a receiver, but this topic is definitely a strange attractor for crank and woo.
Rick,
The thread where a little snowflake got melted all by itself.
The thread where a shiny high nose and a silver spoon mouth got taken down to boganville.
The thread where a cranky old wig fell apart at the seems.
This thread.
Marcus, my name is Miles Mathis ( http://milesmathis.com/updates.html )and I have written far more than you on the absolute shambles of traditional, accepted science, which has got it all wrong. Unfortunately for you, this is all we agree on. What you have written is not in line with my revolutionary insights on the Charge Field, which elegantly solves all the problems I have identified. If anything, your wrongness is even more wrong than the wrongness of traditional science.
Before you write another message on this board, please read all my publications, such as my groundbreaking work on Plate Tectonics, or on CO2 and Charge, or my take down of Sheldrake and the Skeptics ( http://milesmathis.com/shel.pdf ). There are thousands of pages of revolutionary, earth-shattering science you need to read before you can comment on anything.
Don’t bother commenting until you have read everything. This is the only way you can prove your good faith and cease to be an ignoramus.
Might as well go for 1000–
Regarding the evidence about ‘remote viewing’-
Here are the papers and some quotes-
From Jessica Utts- (a statistics professor)
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jutts/air.pdf
“Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic
functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far
beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to
methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to
those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a
number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by
claims of flaws or fraud.”
From Ray Hyman-
http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewing/refs/science/air/hyman.html
“I agree with Jessica Utts that the effect sizes reported in the SAIC experiments and in the recent ganzfeld studies probably cannot be dismissed as due to chance. Nor do they appear to be accounted for by multiple testing, file-drawer distortions, inappropriate statistical testing or other misuse of statistical inference. I do not rule out the possibility that some of this apparent departure from the null hypothesis might simply reflect the failure of the underlying model to be a truly adequate model of the experimental situation. However, I am willing to assume that the effect sizes represent true effects beyond inadequacies in the underlying model. Statistical effects, by themselves, do not justify claiming that anomalous cognition has been demonstrated–or, for that matter, that an anomaly of any kind has occurred.”…
“Obviously I do not agree that all possibilities for alternative explanations of the non-chance results have been eliminated. The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present. Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility–especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered.”
Tired of ‘moving the goalposts’? Why not just remove them entirely?
Seems like ‘priors’ at work here.
Regarding the Compatibility of Contemporary Physical Theory with Personality Survival (from a PhD physicist).
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Compatibility.pdf
On a different note–
Good news–
Turns out my card playing buddy has access to the recently rediscovered actual real footage of bigfoot.
No kidding– the real footage rediscovered.
Apparently it is quite old, so we are awaiting processing to see what is still on the film.
Oh, the excitement!
Sonic –
These links are of two flavors
1. Two wrongs make a right (statistical sins that ARE in fact common, but shouldn’t be)
2. Quantum Woo. When a consensus, or even fairly large portion, of the physics community starts to espouse these kinds of theories, I’ll take it more seriously.
BJ7:
Is Marcus Morgan famous in Australia?
“His only claim to fame is that he was the first and, so far, only crank to visit the Neurologica blog.”
This guy’s been here a few times:
http://www.human-brain.org/
steve12-
Do you see the bit about ‘removing the goalposts’?
Nice turn of phrase, don’t you think?
Are you suggesting the ‘orthodox interpretation’ of QM is ‘woo’, or is it something else about the paper I linked to?
“Do you see the bit about ‘removing the goalposts’?
Nice turn of phrase, don’t you think?”
I mentioned this in the homeopathy thread. This is our fault: the p-hacking is out of control, which makes science less efficient and nonsense seem sensible.
“Are you suggesting the ‘orthodox interpretation’ of QM is ‘woo’, or is it something else about the paper I linked to?”
I don’t understand QM. When these ideas get real traction in the physics community, I’ll take it seriously. Until then, I’m not going to play amateur physicist.
To balance Sonic’s cherrypicked quotes from Ray Hyman, there’s this:
“THE SAIC PROGRAM
As I have indicated, the SAIC experiments are an improvement on both the preceding SRI experiments as well as previous parapsychological investigations. The investigators seem to have taken pains to insure that randomization of targets for presentation and for judging was done properly. They have eliminated the major flaw in original SRI remote viewing experiments of non-independence in trials for a given viewer. Some of the other features can be considered as improvements but also as possible problems. In this category I would list the use of the same experienced viewers in many experiments and the use of the same target set across experiments. The major limitations that I see in these studies derive from their newness and their having been conducted in secrecy. The newness simply means that we have not had sufficient time to debug and to grasp fully both the strengths and weaknesses of this protocol. The secrecy aggravated this limitation by preventing other investigators from reviewing and criticizing the experiments from the beginning, and by making it impossible for independent laboratories to replicate the findings. (1)
The fact that these experiments were conducted in the same laboratory, with the same basic protocol, using the same viewers across experiments, the same targets across experiments, and the same investigators aggravates, rather than alleviates, the problem of independent replication. If subtle, as-yet-undetected bias and flaws exist is the protocol, the very consistency of elements such as targets, viewers, investigators, and procedures across experiments enhances the possibility that these flaws will be compounded.
Making matters even worse is the use of the same judge across all experiments. The judging of viewer responses is a critical factor in free-response remote viewing experiments. Ed May, the principle investigator, as I understand it, has been the sole judge in all the free response experiments. May’s rationale for this unusual procedure was that he is familiar with the response styles of the individual viewers. If a viewer, for example, talks about bridges, May–from his familiarity with this viewer–might realize that this viewer uses bridges to refer to any object that is on water. He could then interpret the response accordingly to make the appropriate match to a target. Whatever merit this rationale has, it results in a methodological feature that violates some key principles of scientific credibility. One might argue that the judge, for example, should be blind not only about the correct target but also about who the viewer is. More important, the scientific community at large will be reluctant to accept evidence that depends upon the ability of one specific individual. In this regard, the reliance on the same judge for all free-response experiments is like the experimenter effect. To the extent that the results depend upon a particular investigator the question of scientific objectivity arises. Scientific proof depends upon the ability to generate evidence that, in principle, any serious and competent investigator–regardless of his or her personality–can observe.
The use of the same judge across experiments further compounds the problem of non-independence of the experiments. Here, both Professor Utts and I agree. We believe it is important that the remote viewing results be obtainable with different judges. Again, the concern here is that the various factors that are similar across experiments, count against their separate findings as independent evidence for anomalous cognition.”
Hardly a slam dunk, Sonic.
And yes, “priors” are indeed at work here. Hyman goes on at some length to list many of the failures (fraud, bad statistics, bad methodology) that have plagued the high-profile psi “successes”. The prior probabilities stacked against psi powers are HUGE – they represent a major hurdle – and that hurdle is completely and totally appropriate. Deal with it. Provide results that get over the hurdle, or get out of the race and go home.
The history and results of psi experimentation are EXACTLY what we would expect to see from generations of dedicated, motivated researchers who really want to find something that isn’t actually there.
I encourage everyone to read Hyman’s discussion under the heading “WHAT NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED” to see clear articulation of several issues with parapsychology investigation.
steve12-
ad populum is so enticing…
I have some familiarity with the orthodox interpretation of QM (I’m not an expert), but I don’t really know exactly what ‘woo’ is.
The paper I linked to is certainly about standard QM, but I can’t tell you about the ‘woo’ part.
Perhaps if you can define ‘woo’ rigorously enough, I could determine to what extent modern physics is ‘woo’.
That would be helpful.
RickK-
My point was that the ‘evidence’ for psi is fine– it is the ‘priors’ that make for the disagreements.
Your more complete quote makes that even more clear.
The priors may or may not be reasonable- that’s the discussion, the ‘evidence’ is fine without the priors, and no evidence will ever make the grade according to the standards dictated by the priors of Hyman.
(I don’t know how to design an experiment that is free from all possible flaws- even those that have yet to be discovered… do you?)
Sonic – the “priors” gambit is tired, as is the Utts-Hyman debate.
The bottom line is that the evidence for psi is unconvincing, regardless of your priors.
Effects are inconsistent, inversely proportional to rigor, low signal to noise ratio, and lack sufficient true independent replication.
We also have much more knowledge now about the power of subtle behaviors, like p-hacking, which can easily explain a positive residue in the data.
This is all consistent with research into a phenomenon that does not truly exist. We see this same pattern for other claims, like homeopathy.
Steven, here is why I think you are ultimately wrong, though I do agree with some of your points:
http://www.bernardokastrup.com/2014/06/the-brain-as-filter-metaphor-comments.html
“ad populum is so enticing…”
No, plain old wrong. Citing the consensus is not ad populum.
If 99 doctors tell you that Drug X will save your life and 1 says Drug Y will, taking Drug X isn’t logical because it’s an appeal to popularity?
I don’t understand QM beyond what most non-physicists know. When people who know what they’re talking about are intrigued by this, I’ll take it seriously.
“In a word, Marcus Morgan is a crank.
His only claim to fame is that he was the first and, so far, only crank to visit the Neurologica blog.”
Bernardo? He’s not half the crank Morgan is, but I think he qualifies easily.
Sonic,
Defining woo is an interesting proposition. I’ll take a stab, and keep it basic.
-start with a conclusion you want to be true
-use confirmation bias to affirm your belief
-build other beliefs about reality upon this pillar
-these other beliefs affirm your prior assumption through confirmation bias
-people tell you you might be wrong
-people talk about science
-science is wrong because you know you’re right
– science is also right because you can do it improperly and get results that support your correct conclusion
-invent your own science, because as you’ve demonstrayed, everyone can do science, and all conclusions reached through science are equal…
So, Bernardo’s points are:
1. Subjective experience is the only reality.
2. The brain does not produce consciousness, consciousness “just is”.
3. An objective, material world is an illusion, generated by…consciousness…and somehow locally perceived by our brain?
Is that about right?
And with these assertions, he feels he has demolished a materialist view of reality?
So, before humans appeared, or before conscious animals appeared, before planets even formed in the universe, reality was somehow still the product of some disembodied consciousness (in order to maintain consistency with his premises)?
And to avoid solipsism, this subjective consciousness is somehow collective?
Sounds very muddled and imaginary to me…
It’s basically the belief that, say, Jupiter did not actually exist in our solar system until someone discovered it…
Actually, I see his premises are basically all based on subjective idealism of the 1800’s philosophers – and a “world mind” is magically posited as a way to avoid the inconvenient facts of things existing before people were around to perceive them.
I wonder if subjective idealists, who believe everything is consciousness and matter doesn’t exist, feel that we are capable of super human feats like walking through walls, teleporting, ESP, flying, etc. if only we were sufficiently aware. Sort of like waking up to the fact that we are living in the Matrix essentially and in so doing, able to then acquire these powers. It seems like the sort of “logical conclusions” one would come to after having done a lot of psychedelics and not really come back with the same reality testing intact.
Bernardo Kastrup,
If I get a video camera and place it in a room and turn it on and lock the door, then come back the next day there will be footage on the tape of the room yet no human observer was present. You seem to be saying that nothing exists outside of subjective experience (consciousness). So how do you explain this? It’s clear that an objective material world exists outside of consciousness. The videotape experiment easily demonstrates this.
Likewise if someone get’s a tape recorder and leaves it in the middle of the forest then travels several miles away and a tree falls down, the tree will make a noise on the tape recorder. No human experience is needed – it happened. How do you explain this? All this talk about subjective reality being the only reality is a load of nonsense. Just my opinion pal.
Steve12, total rubbish, you have nothing to say about mind and brain – no facts, no logic.
RickK, total rubbish, you have nothing to say about mind and brain – no facts, no logic.
BillyJoe7, total rubbish, you have nothing to say about mind and brain – no facts, no logic
BillOppenhault, your “work” is nonsense, read mine and get educated – no facts, no logic
Various Others – crackpots. A waste of 5 minutes reading that rubbish. Nothing but smear – no facts, no logic, just rubbish. They can’t even counter my post above or any posts of mine to date – just one words smears “crank”. Shove off and let me deal with the crackpot “theory” of Dr Novella.
Bernardo – I will find time later to read back over your comments. Perhaps you favour an extreme view of subjective awareness. The simple FACT is that indeed we do construct our own awareness by neural capture of stimulations (from our own moves and from a world of stimulation). It is a contained personal experience – a construct by our individual anatomies subject to challenge as to its usefulness. As Descartes said “I think, therefore I am” meaning I only know I exist because I can think (or feel) that I exist. The subjective experience IN FACT precedes the SUPPOSED existence of a world “out there”. The world “out there” is only purportedly “known” to us by an experience we synthesize by processes currently unknown in objective scientific terms.
It’s quite likely with the errant work of Dr Novella that we will never explain the subjective experience in objective terms, but if you read my work at http://sdrv.ms/1a4HBbk you will see how to make progress. Whether the world “out there” exists depends upon our capacities to detect it and create an experience of awareness about it, as THE FIRST STEP. Once we have an experience of awareness, we purport that the world exists, and I purport that we know it exists due to neural capture of its stimulation. But the experience of thoughts and feelings is a contained finalization in the brain after 100 milliseconds or more of processing AFTER stimulation. Consequently it is an intact experience ISOLATED from the world and not a DIRECT awareness of what is “out there”. It is an intact PROCESSED event we synthesize by our anatomy, and we do not know how that is done. All we can do is merely purport to “know” what exists “out there”. What we certainly “know” is our constructed experience of thoughts and feelings as we synthesize them, but whether they are “dreams” or “realities” is an open issue – and a live issue for the ignorant vultures here. The vultures here drift into their own silly dreams of reality. They must have nothing better to do.
Bernardo, a narrow view of subjectivity is arguable by strict logic, but the better view is to assume that the world stimulates the experience we have of a world “out there”, even though we cannot explain how the experience arises from that stimulation. We don’t merely construct our own awareness in a vacuum. We construct it from interface with a world. There is not much doubt about that.
So Dr Novella, your crackpot “theory” of “Brain equates to Mind” is at least correct is placing the experience as a neural construction in the brain. But the brain has no moving parts, it makes no decisions, it is not a Homunculus deciding what we do by ITS Mind. Brain does not equate to Mind, The reasonable proposition is that a Brain equates to an AUTOMATIC facilitator of an entire anatomy using it as a junction. No doubt the brain reaches a finalization in processing inputs for responsive outputs and adds as great to deal to what eyes or hands send to it – but AS AN EXTENSION TO AND FROM FUNCTIONS OF ANATOMY AND ENTIRELY DEPENDENT UPON WHAT THAT ANATOMY DOES IN THE WORLD.
I gave you lots of capital letters there so the vultures can’t blame their poor eyesight for their inability to counter ANY of the posts I have made here. The Brain takes a neural flow from MANUAL function in the world (a world in which we are entirely immersed and to which we entirely respond at all times), completes the processing of their inputs AUTOMATICALLY and likewise their outputs in response, and during that process reaches a level of sufficiency of flow for the experience arise.
An AUTOMATIC generator of an experience of MANUAL activities in the world. Any vultures want to counter that claim and step back from Brain = Mind, or just keep hiding and pitching rocks from the bleachers? Keep hiding vultures, you are like the characters in the Muppet Show. No facts, no logic, just smear at what you do not want to know. Start changing what you want vultures and you might be able to start reading and arguing. I suspect you will just keep dodging, hiding, and smearing.
What’s your response Dr Novella, to being exposed as a very limited thinker, and most likely a crackpot in proposing Brain = Mind – simplistic rubbish!
“Steve12, total rubbish, you have nothing to say about mind and brain – no facts, no logic.”
I didn’t address any of the points i your book because there aren’t any to address. It’s utter nonsense.
I mean, it’s fun to think about this kind of stuff, and if you had fun putting your thoughts on paper, great. But the notion that you’re going to solve all this shit by starting from scratch without first seeing what the rest of the human race has accomplished on the topic over the course of human history is well… rubbish.
Also you don’t know what vulture means.
Some of what your describing sounds a little like ecological psychology? You might want to do some investigating of OTHER peoples’ work.
But let me be clear M_Morgan:
I’m a fan! If you’re gonna be a crank – BE A CRANK! Dismiss shit you know nothing about, call people names, have theories that explain EVERYTHING! Don’t inquire – PREACH!
Forget legitimate science. Push the crank-velope. Literally stand up, fists shaking at the heavens, and exclaim: “They said I was mad – MAD!!!!”.
Steve12 – you are a frustrated typist, no more. Get a job.
Dr Novella – I wanted to repeat my amazement at your lack of understanding of plasticity and the FACT that anatomical functions conditioned in the world around them ARE RESPONSIBLE for making processing changes in neural networks to by-pass errant networking. I had to reiterate, because you are clearly way off track – back to front. The brain is an automatic facilitator, not a Homunculus directing the Mind at all! If you can’t come to grips with that, at your level of expertise, I see little hope for progress. Repeating the dull ignorant mantra Brain = Mind is mindless! Almost as mindless as Steve12, but not quite.
M_Morgan,
If I may, I am trying to understand a few points you are making, such as: “the brain has no moving parts, it makes no decisions, it is not a Homunculus deciding what we do by ITS Mind.”
Would you say then that a presynaptic neuron releasing a neurotransmitter like serotonin and it activating a receptor site on the postsynaptic neuron is not an example of a moving part? Would you say that the actions of the autonomic nervous system (respiratory rate, heart rate, fight or flight response, etc.) are not decisions made based on feedback received? Perhaps I am missing something.
Also, this part of your book on page 143, when you say:
“The brain is a democratic chamber for sites to resolve in the blend in mind and meld at sites, to tend deductive or inductive in impetus. In processing for site moves we identify a last move and whether anticipation preceding it was realized, and anticipate a next move and whether identification after it will be satisfying, for incremental deductive or hypothetical inductive development. Causal features need not evolve before effected if entities are secured by a niche to advance to a future, as a Biosphere is a preset potential in which all life evolves with interdependence at all levels.”
Do you see this process as analogous to a chess stratagem like Boden’s mate where you are working backwards from the end game of a mated king using bishops?
“Steve12 – you are a frustrated typist, no more. Get a job.”
I have a job as a cog neuroscientist as luck would have it.
But my passion is Australian Legal theory. I’ve written a book on the topic that I’d like you to read. The bottom line is that every man, women and child in Australia of European descent is a SLAVE TO THE CROWN per the Statute of Westminster !!!!! I DEFY you to show me where this is wrong!
Ahhhhh!!!!!!
Soldiering on to 1K. I got the number of the beast on a previous attempt.
Just to put the record straight, I am not really Miles Mathis. I just wanted to point Marcus Morgan to a far more impressive body of alternative science, done with more flair and in a far more accessible language. And Miles is a first rate portrait artist, a far more honourable occupation than a lawyer.
Obviously, Marcus dismissed his colleague’s travails out of hand. So predictable.
Marcus Morgan in your book “The Human Design” that you linked to you wrote:
“I am a lawyer who converts jargon to real language for clients, or to read facts on Sundays. No scientists at all have exchanged views despite attempts over decades. The Philosophy Department Chair at Lehman College, New York, evaluated my work as “utter nonsense” and “shit”.
You need to sit down and think about this. The reason your work has been dismissed as nonsense for decades because it is nonsense. Nobody but yourself is to blame for this. Your book makes a lot of claims but there isn’t a single reference used and you have a problem of expressing your beliefs in simple language. Your book includes a lot of fringe claims about physics but you are not a physicist and no physics scientific papers are cited. You have written a book without referencing any scientific papers at all for your claims, why should anyone take you seriously? Not a single scientific paper is cited in your book. Your book is basically a wacky rant. In your bibliography you have listed six books, but most of these were written hundreds of years ago. I would like to see what neuroscientific papers you have been reading or what scientific evidence you have for your claims about the brain and mind. Regards.
Ekko —
Mating with two bishops is laborious, but it’s impossible to mate with one bishop
Off with my head!
That was a Marvelous Marcus Morgan Mental Masturbation quote. My head’s still spinning (somewhere down the passage).
Getting closer, Alice!
The closer we get 1K, the more nervous I get. I’ve got the champagne chilled and t-shirts printed, but I’m a Red Sox fan old enough to remember 1986 so I can’t count any chickens yet….
@Bernardo
In your article:
“What the evidence does show is that brain hacking (for lack of a better expression) can cause incoherent or limited hallucinations”
Uh no, Dr. Novellas point is that you can make drastic and PERMANENT changes to an individual in personlaity, world view, etc, by changing the brain physically.
“Very smoothly, he is passing for a fact the claim that we don’t find those anomalies”
Because we haven’t. I don’t understand why you guys can’t seem to understand this. Almost a thousand posts and not one ounce of evidence there’s anything but what we’ve discovered and Dr. Novella describes going on.
Listen Bernardo, I’m going to give you the same challenge we’ve given Ian Ward and some of the other crackpots here. It’s two -fold, the first part is to provide direct evidence for your claims. The evidence must be robust, it must be scientifically sound and it must be in a repeatable state. You should have an idea of wat I’m asking. The second part is to attempt to not support your claim using philosophy, period. Philisophical arguments are not scientific evidence. Something Ian Ward has failed to understand.
No links to your crappy blog or invitations to buy your book. You came here, present your argument here.
M_Morgan believes that reality is a vagina and your brain is a penis sliding into it. There’s something about your testicles and quantum wave/particleness but I can’t remember exactly.
As someone pointed out he’s the only literal crackpot we have here so far. He’s singlehandedly re-written ‘science’ as we know it. No experimentation, all alone in his crackpot galactic particle/wave vagina.
@M_Morgan
Midnightrunner posted:
““I am a lawyer who converts jargon to real language for clients, or to read facts on Sundays. No scientists at all have exchanged views despite attempts over decades. The Philosophy Department Chair at Lehman College, New York, evaluated my work as “utter nonsense” and “shit”.”
This cracks me up everytime someone posts it. Not only is Morgans book hard to follow but he assembles language together like a 12 year old who just got his first dictionary. I’m betting he’s failed miserable at ‘converting jargon’ and had to fall back on fixing science lol.
On a more serious note, the thing that kills me about true believers is that they have a hard time getting accepted in scientific circles and they can’t seem to figure out what the common denominator is…
Grabula —
Ian is arguing philosophy trumps science. Thus, we first need to win the philosophical battle before we can start the scientific inquiry. We’ll see who gets farther…
@Bill Openthalt
Exactly. I think the problem with Ian Ward is ego. I believe he fell into the trap of being able to ‘understand’ some basic philosophical arguments before those around him. We all know people like that, I had friends like that in high school, and science came easier to me earlier than most of my peers. In the right circles that feeds the flames and I believe Ian has been fanning those flames for so long he can’t really see the difference. In fact, he doesn’t show even a basic understanding of the science.
Grabula —
I read enough philosophy at varsity to understand the limitations of its cosmological arguments. Some keep saying you first have to read what they think is required, which gives them the power to control the discourse. In that sense, Ian is like most crackpots.
Bill Openthalt
“Some keep saying you first have to read what they think is required, which gives them the power to control the discourse”
that certainly seems to be the case wit these guys.
Dr.N.-
You assert what is arguable.
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/full/jse-25-4.pdf
The article starts on page 639.
I’d think someone who thought esp plausible to begin with would find those results convincing.
steve12-
The paper I linked to is written by an expert in the QM interpretations.
You misrepresent the paper.
It seems- You don’t know if other physicists have taken an interest, so you won’t.
Every echo chamber needs walls I guess. 😉
mumadadd-
I have a number of questions about your list–
I’m not sure how that definition applies to a paper about the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Also, if I don’t want there to be esp, then if I say “Quantum mechanics proves there is esp,” that isn’t woo because I don’t want that??
So was the guy with the plate techtonics a woo master, or were the guys arguing against him woo masters?
I’m not sure your list is correct.
Sonic,
I would say woo is about the process and not the actual beliefs. Ie. it would be possible to coincidentally believe some true things through a wooful system of forming beliefs.
I’m not sure if my list was comprehensive, but it seems like a fair approximation of a lot of what what Leo, Alisina and Ian were spouting.
Marcus Morgan —
This is total gibberish. “Using an anatomy as a junction” makes absolutely no sense. The rest is equally devoid of meaning.
For the vast majority of people, being told that others do not understand what they say leads one to question oneself — have I expressed myself clearly, have I got the right information, is my reasoning correct etc.
With you, it leads to an off-hand dismissal of all the others as stupid. This is a serious psychological condition, and you would benefit from discussing this with your therapist.
mumadadd —
Humans think in stories. The story is more important than the facts, so if the story makes sense, the facts don’t matter all that much. We wonder how people can continue to ignore the facts, but ours is a minority position — the other side is truly astonished at our inability to grasp the power of their story.
Narrativium indeed.
Sonic —
But ESP is not plausible based on our knowledge of physics. While it is possible current knowledge is wrong, it has found so many applications in everyday technology it is extremely unlikely. Hence it is not reasonable to assume ESP is plausible — it’s wishful thinking.
Trivia: 999 is a lot better than 1000!
@mumadadd
“I would say woo is about the process and not the actual beliefs”
I’d say ‘woo’ begins after the process of discovery takes, or begins to take place. True or Woo believers in my opinion show a common trait in that once they form a belief about something, no amount of evidence can sway them. Once you go beyond the boundaries of what’s plausible and what is or isn’t supported by the evidence you cross over into woo. This is evinced in a couple of ways by the woo believers on this thread for example.
One thousand! …and one…balls.
lol, did I score 1000 on a thread I was supposed to quit?
Haha, indeed you did. More surprising still is that Leo appears to have followed through on his threats to jump ship.
He’ll be back on the next ‘what is consciousness’ thread I’m sure. I came back for M_Morgan, this guy is out there lol
Steve,
I don’t know if yahouda is a crank, but he didn’t sound like a crank in his comments here on this blog. And I wouldn’t say that Bernardo is a crank. He, like Ian, is just misguided.
Perhaps our definitions differ…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hermits-and-cranks-lesson/
(altered slightly)
(1) “First and most important of these traits is that cranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues.” Cranks typically do not understand how the scientific process operates—that they need to try out their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to accept.
(2) “A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia,” which manifests itself in several ways:
(3) He considers himself a genius.
(4) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads.
(5) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to “enemies” for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work.
(6) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein….
(7) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.
I give you Marcus Morgan!
In answer to your other question, Marcus Morgan is not only not famous in Australia, he is totally unknown. He is a legend only in his own mind. Typical crank.
Sorry, Marcus, but that is so obviously true, it’s not funny.
I think it’s sorta funny.
Well, yeah. (:
I am legend…
Cranks are quite reluctant to engage in introspection or self-doubt. It’s much like a common meme about insanity: A madman seems incapable of asking himself, “Am I crazy?”
We did it! 1000 Posts! Woo hoo!
First off, big round of applause for the Ghost Hunters – Ian, Leo, Bernardo, M_Morgan, Hardnose, etc. Without their bizarre reasoning and complete lack of scientific knowledge, none of this would be possible.
But there can only be 1 MVP, and I have no choice but to give it to Leo. While the others came and went, Leo pasted on like a clockwork clock. At some point I think he was just pasting in random Shakespeare sonnets. To me, this is the thread that Leo built.
So congrats Leo – you earned it!
“I don’t know if yahouda is a crank, but he didn’t sound like a crank in his comments here on this blog. ”
True – but yahouda denies all systems level neuroscience in favor of a pet theory. He fits all the criteria – he was just careful on this blog.
That said, I don’t think he holds a candle to Morgan. I put Morgan in Gene Ray territory, just to show you how much I respect him as a crank. World class. As an Aussie, I hope you appreciate have you have there.
Re: Bernard – you’re right, I jumped the gun. Bernardo is not a crank lest we use the term sufficiently premiscuously as to make it meaningless.
over 1000- and so easily done.
Bill Openthalt-
What about physics do you think precludes esp?
I ask because some of the promoters of esp are well known physicists with track records of success in physics (including a nobel prize winner).
I’m not suggesting that these physicists are necessarily correct about esp– but I wonder what specifically about physics you thinks makes esp implausible.
mumadadd- grabula-
I give you a quote– I believe it is an example of ‘woo’ as you have defined it– am I right (starting with something they want to believe)?
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin from a book review of Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World…”
So a researcher with an absolute commitment to a philosophy–
Sounds like it fits with your defintion of ‘woo’ to me.
Does it?
Sonic:
“So a researcher with an absolute commitment to a philosophy–
Sounds like it fits with your defintion of ‘woo’ to me.
Does it?”
I have personally explained to you why we assume materialism in science. Steve has done so several times. Others have as well, ad nauseam.
So how about I ask you a question:
Can you summarize why we claim that materialism is a necessary axiom of science, and if you disagree can you tell me why?
This might save us the EXCRUCIATING exercise of going through this all again.
2000 comments here we come! thanks sonic
Sonic —
At the level the brain operates, there are no unknown mechanisms that could be vectors for ESP. If you want to have information transfer between two brains, or from something to a brain over a non-trivial distance, it has to go through electromagnetism, which we can detect quite easily. End of story.
Congratulations. Gentlemen (lifts glass), to woo.
More M_Morgan please.
Sonic,
I don’t want materialism to be true. I want to have a soul. I want there to be a God (not the twat from the old testament though). I want reiki to work. And yet, all the evidence points towards materialism; and the rest being useless junk, to say the least.
As to your quote.. yes, wootastic. The quoted person, in this passage, isn’t explicit about his conclusion but is clear in his denial of methodological naturalism as a valid assumption.
Sonic, if reality isn’t made of physical stuff, what is it? If reality is affected by something outside of itself, what’s that? Have you even skimmed the this thread?
“I don’t want materialism to be true. I want to have a soul. I want there to be a God (not the twat from the old testament though). I want reiki to work. And yet, all the evidence points towards materialism; and the rest being useless junk, to say the least.”
Several of us have said this before and it keeps getting missed by the true believers. At one point I’m sure a lot of us wanted to, or did believe in things we later found to have no basis in science. I freely admit to being a huge UFO/Cryptozoo fan in my childhood, later buying into some religion and eastern mysticism (related to the garbage some refer to as traditional martial arts). I dedicated serious time to some of these but as more and more evidence piled up pointing me in another direction I had to make a choice. I could leave the blinders on, cherry pick my sources for support, or I could take a serious look at my beliefs and stop being afraid to challenge them. That choice freed me from wasting a lot of time and some amount of money.
The difference between us and ‘them’ is that when we got to that decision point we made a decision to follow science, and evidence, instead of our desires.
@Sonic
“What about physics do you think precludes esp?”
what about physics SUPPORTS it? The gaps in our knowledge when it comes to physics/quantum phsyics and so on certainly does not.
mumadadd-
I have mixed feelings about being a soul or not.
I have thought about what god (that which created this universe) is like… it seems the only trait I can grasp is :
god (if such exists at all) is enigmatic.
That pretty well covers my understanding, my most and only stable thought on that. I do have other thoughts about: Do I want there to be one? I’m afraid that question really isn’t going to produce a meaningful answer.
The quote I gave is from a well known biologist- a person who co-wrote with Gould, for example.
I think he is talking about an attitude he shares with Sagan, the author of the book he is reviewing.
Are you thinking Sagan was ‘wootastic’?
If schrondinger’s equation is relevant to the universe (quantum cosmology), then what is schrodinger’s equation about?
grabula-
I don’t think any part of current physics predicts esp.
I just don’t know that any part precludes it. (That’s why some physicists think it possible, I’m guessing).
Who made what claim?
BillOpenthalt-
I think it is clear that if there is esp, it is not electromagnetic.
I hadn’t realized that was one of the claims.
Is that one of the claims– that esp travels over electromagnetic waves?
steve12-
Usually people say science has to assume ‘methodological naturalism’ to go forward.
So the scientist says that galaxies are under the influence of ‘dark matter’ instead of ‘the hand of god’, because he has some hope of being able to find and measure ‘dark matter’- and the method requires he posit measurable effects from measurable causes and off he goes looking for what this ‘dark matter’ might be.
But we don’t know what he will find– he might find that matter is subject to ‘nonlocal’ influences, for example.
Einstein seemed to think nature could not be that way– and certainly the earlier ideas about ‘nature’ made it impossible for such ‘magic’… but Bell’s theorem and Aspects experiments and the others that have gone on since show the earlier ideas about nature were wrong…
We don’t know what ‘dark matter’ will turn out to be– is it part of the current ‘standard model’?
That’s why they say that naturalism includes anything that science finds– not that science is what naturalism says exists, so the scientist is beholden to the observations, not the philosophy.
How am I doing?
@sonic
“I don’t think any part of current physics predicts esp.
I just don’t know that any part precludes it. (That’s why some physicists think it possible, I’m guessing).
Who made what claim?”
As I said, a gap in our knowledge doesn’t support it. You could argue it doesn’t preclude a lot. The people who do make these claims make them from ignorance. They believe because there’s a gap in our knowledge they can plug in whatever belief they want into that gap and say ‘we just don’t know’. It’s why it’s important when making outrageous claims, one must provide some pretty convincing evidence.
As a skeptic I don’t exclude anything 100%. I can only follow the evidence. I don’t believe ESP to be a thing because there is no evidence for it. Should some be provided down the road I’ll adapt my outlook to the evidence.
Sonic,
I definitely sympathise with a bit of mystical thinking. What I was in my early 20s I took a lot of acid, and felt like I was reaching some sort deap understanding of reality. Then I met god in a k-hole – the best description I can give you is that it was a parasitic slug type thing that looked something like a neuron and simply craved conscious experience, and was indifferent to the nature of this experience; pain, suffering, pleasure, joy, all craved equally. So life had to be the way it is, with seemingly pointless suffering for many, so this god could fulfil its purpose. This was a pretty powerful experience and I really thought I’d cracked it, understood the nature and purpose of reality…
We don’t know everything, but we have a very successful method for incrementally adding to a robust model of nature, and that’s underpinned by a few basic assumptions; that reality follows rules, that we can observe and test these rules, that there isn’t something outside of reality intervening in ways we can’t detect.
There might be magic. There might be a God. But when you examine the basis for these kinds of beliefs they consist of nothing more than ‘well we don’t know everything’ and a set of cognitive biases combined with motivated reasoning. So you may or may not be right but you either have no reliable way of testing your claims or they contradict what we have already established as reliably true.
“There might be magic. There might be a God. But when you examine the basis for these kinds of beliefs they consist of nothing more than ‘well we don’t know everything’ and a set of cognitive biases combined with motivated reasoning. So you may or may not be right but you either have no reliable way of testing your claims or they contradict what we have already established as reliably true.”
I think you would need to add that the evidence is overwhelmingly against mogic or a god of any sort existing. This is not a 50/50 thing, people have been trying to prove these for centuries and all we have is very unreliable “evidence” that does not stand up to any kind of real testing.They now fall very firmly in the “extra-ordinary claim” category.
Sonic —
Of course not, but there is no other way to transmit information over a non-trivial distance. If ESP exists (for which there is no good evidence), and if it doesn’t use electromagnetic waves (which we know it doesn’t, or we would be able to observe them), how would it work? We can “read” the patterns in the brain to the point we can construct an approximation of what a person sees, hence if a person would see something through remote viewing, it would cause measurable physical activity — information has to be transferred somehow for a person to see something.
It is extremely unlikely we will discover something in the realm of physics that would be the vector for ESP — we simply know enough about matter to rule out undiscovered waves or forces. For ESP to exist, you need to go supernatural — something outside the realm of physics, but capable of interacting with it. So we’re back to the fact there simply is no good evidence for remote viewing, or any ESP for that matter :).
Sonic
“Usually people say science has to assume ‘methodological naturalism’ to go forward.
So the scientist says that galaxies are under the influence of ‘dark matter’ instead of ‘the hand of god’, because he has some hope of being able to find and measure ‘dark matter’- and the method requires he posit measurable effects from measurable causes and off he goes looking for what this ‘dark matter’ might be.
But we don’t know what he will find– he might find that matter is subject to ‘nonlocal’ influences, for example.
Einstein seemed to think nature could not be that way– and certainly the earlier ideas about ‘nature’ made it impossible for such ‘magic’… but Bell’s theorem and Aspects experiments and the others that have gone on since show the earlier ideas about nature were wrong…
We don’t know what ‘dark matter’ will turn out to be– is it part of the current ‘standard model’?
That’s why they say that naturalism includes anything that science finds– not that science is what naturalism says exists, so the scientist is beholden to the observations, not the philosophy.
How am I doing?”
I would say that you’re missing the key piece:
We cannot interpret our observations w/o methodological naturalism. Science is not a valid way to find knowledge if we can’t interpret our observations.
grabula-
A gap in our knowledge doesn’t lend to any claim other than “we don’t know yet”.
I don’t know if esp exists or not.
If it exists, then a theory that explains what goes on in this universe would have to include that.
If esp doesn’t exist, then the theory need not explain it or include it.
But the theory doesn’t determine the existence- the observations do.
mumadadd-
While I find the talk of god and such is interesting, we were trying to define ‘woo’.
So was Sagan ‘wootastic’ or not?
BillOpenthalt-
“We know enough about matter to rule out undiscovered waves and forces”…
Who is the ‘we’ in that statement?
steve12-
I’m not sure what your point is. I believe I covered what you are talking about in the scientists choice of ‘dark matter’ over ‘the hand of god’.
He is using methodological naturalism to interpret the observations about the motions of the galaxies- right?
Perhaps there is a bigger point I’m missing– I’m not understanding your criticism at this point, however.
Sonic wrote:
“I don’t think any part of current physics predicts esp. I just don’t know that any part precludes it.”
Your claim about no part of physics precluding it is false because it’s well known that the magical claim of ESP (psychokinesis, telepathy etc) contradicts well established physical laws.
As the physicist Mario Bunge has written:
“Precognition violates the principle of antecedence (“causality”), according to which the effect does not happen before the cause. Psychokinesis violates the principle of conservation of energy as well as the postulate that mind cannot act directly on matter. (If it did no experimenter could trust his own readings of his instruments.) Telepathy and precognition are incompatible with the epistemological principle according to which the gaining of factual knowledge requires sense perception at some point.
Parapsychology makes no use of any knowledge gained in other fields, such as physics and physiological psychology. Moreover, its hypotheses are inconsistent with some basic assumptions of factual science. In particular, the very idea of a disembodied mental entity is incompatible with physiological psychology; and the claim that signals can be transmitted across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics.”
Source: Mario Bunge. (1983). Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II: Understanding the World. Springer. pp. 225-226.
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology
“Perhaps there is a bigger point I’m missing– I’m not understanding your criticism at this point, however.”
Let’s look at a simple experiment. How can I interpret the results of an experiment in a universe with non-material or non-natural forces?
Maybe the effect I’m seeing is because of what I’ve manipulated, maybe it’s because some non-natural force or entity interfered with my manipulation.
Take away assumption of methodological naturalism and all such explanations are possible.
Just so I’m clear Sonic: I asked you WHY you think we have to assume methodological naturalism.
@sonic
“I don’t know if esp exists or not.
If it exists, then a theory that explains what goes on in this universe would have to include that.
If esp doesn’t exist, then the theory need not explain it or include it.
But the theory doesn’t determine the existence- the observations do.”
That’s exactly right. Since we don’t observe anything to support ESP we can only assume at this point it does not exist…until evidence is provided to refute that. I feel like your arguing both sides of the argument. You started out by saying :
“I just don’t know that any part precludes it.” which is fallacious thinking IF you use this gap in knowledge to support it yes?
Sonic,
Your quote doesn’t say anything about sagan’s wootasticness other than the author’s own opinion. Unless you’re trying to pass this off as representative of sagans views?
I’ve only heard the “just so stories” allegation seriously levelled at evolutionary psychology, and those in that field will acknowledge that there’s no way to test some of their hypotheses, but even then they do have a good basis for speculation; we know that evolution happens, and we know it shapes behaviour. Speculation about the evolution of particular behaviours is way more reasonable than positing something new, for which we have no reliable evidence at all. Do you disagree?
Science by definition has no choice but to work within the framework of methodological naturalism. I know this is old hat and has been said a thousand times already, but do you not see that , sonic? Adding something else would require observation, observation requires an effect, an effect requires interaction with reality, so at that point the supernatural just becomes part of the natural.
Psi phenomena, like homeopathy, has failed to as yet even demonstrate an effect that requires an explanation.
Add to this the the fact that science is gradually unravelling more and more of what were once mysteries, and every time one of these mysteries is explained, it’s as the result of natural phenomena–not once anything else–then we have good reason to be confident that confining investigation to a materialistic framework is the right approach. That we have not made some expected gains , or that progress in some fields is slower than we’d like, or that some fields require some (probably sensible) speculation, is no reason to start looking for magic.
midnightrunner2014-
Nice try but–
There is a difference between a ‘law’ and a ‘principle’.
For example– Scientists assume ’cause and effect’, but physics formula are time symmetric- they go either way.
Some physicists even question that time is real at all (in fact most physicists think the passage of time is an illusion- making ’cause and effect’ illusionary as well)–
http://www.livescience.com/29081-time-real-illusion-smolin.html
“Smolin said he hadn’t come to this concept lightly. He started out thinking, as most physicists do, that time is subjective and illusory. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity time is just another dimension in space,traversable in either direction, and our human perception of moments passing steadily and sequentially is all in our heads.”
So esp might not fit that principle, but that principle isn’t law.
grabula-
Exactly. Saying that because ‘we’ don’t know that the moon doesn’t have a carmel nugget center is not proof the moon has a carmel nugget center– as nice as that might sound.
My original point was that I think the evidence for ‘psi’ is as good as one’s priors allow it.
So, if one thinks esp impossible, then it looks like the data is bad- poorly run experiments that don’t amount to much in the first place.
If one doesn’t think esp implausible, then one sees replicated experiments (with problems- what experiments don’t have problems) and a long history of seeing the effect (albeit small and uncontrollable- exactly how most people who think it exists would describe it.)
I gave the Hyman, Utts papers as examples of this situation.
I have not taken a position on which perspective is correct.
mumadadd-
I mentioned I am assuming the author is not using the ‘royal’ we, but rather talking about the people he worked with over his long and illustrious career, including sagan.
Perhaps you know the author was referring to somebody else in his review of sagan’s book.
I think my conclusion more likely…
The rest of what you say isn’t really relevant to the question of defining ‘woo’ and I think your definition of ‘woo’ needs restructuring, which is what we were trying to pin down in the first place– a definition for ‘woo’.
You said it would be hard, it seems we are having trouble getting past the first line in a rather long list…
Ouch!
sonic,
“My original point was that I think the evidence for ‘psi’ is as good as one’s priors allow it.
So, if one thinks esp impossible, then it looks like the data is bad- poorly run experiments that don’t amount to much in the first place.
If one doesn’t think esp implausible, then one sees replicated experiments (with problems- what experiments don’t have problems) and a long history of seeing the effect (albeit small and uncontrollable- exactly how most people who think it exists would describe it.)”
You keep repeating this prior’s argument that multiple people have already commented on. People are capable of evaluating strength of evidence and identifying flaws in methodology and statistical analysis for experiments regardless of their personal beliefs. Your whole point is based on the fallacy that people are incapable of doing this and that the quality of the evidence and experiments themselves are not the main deciding factor – just people’s prior convictions. I don’t think most commenters here are saying that ESP is impossible anyway – just that the evidence so far is most closely aligned with statistical noise and that there is no known method or mechanism for communication like this. Personally I’ve had numerous experiences that have seemed ESP-like where I’ve known what someone is going to say or what they are thinking and vice-versa, often in non-mundane and uncanny ways, but they are also easily explained by non-verbal cues, context, and personal knowledge.
Sonic:
Can you answer this?
” How can I interpret the results of an experiment in a universe with non-material or non-natural forces?”
Sonic,
ESP contradicts the law of conservation of energy and the inverse square law. If you know about the latter law you would know that physical signals decrease in intensity over distance but according to ESP proponents this does not happen with ESP, they claim that distance has nothing to do with it and it doesn’t matter how far two subjects are from each other. Of course there’s no scientific evidence for ESP but even their claims are completely at odds with science.
ESP is true then the entire basis of physics is wrong. There’s four forces of nature: strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic, and gravitational – if ESP was real it could only be one of these because anything else would be far too weak to transmit any kind of signal. Early psychical researchers claimed ESP may work by electromagnetism but we know now know this isn’t the case.
See: Taylor, J. G and Balanovski, E. (1979). Is There Any Scientific Explanation of the Paranormal?. Nature, 279: 631-633.
The brain is incapable of transmitting enough electromagnetic energy to affect distant bodies. So ESP proponents have no scientific evidence for their claims and no theory either. What they also usually do is quote-mine a load of quantum woo from cranks.
Regarding the Ray Hyman quote you cherry picked, you actually missed something important he said later on which backs up what I have been saying:
“When we examine the basis of Utts’s strong claim for the existence of psi, we find that it relies on a handful of experiments that have been shown to have serious weaknesses after undergoing careful scrutiny, and another handful of experiments that have yet to undergo scrutiny or be successfully replicated. What seems clear is that the scientific community is not going to abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles on the basis of a handful of experiments whose findings have yet to be shown to be replicable and lawful.”
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/evidence_for_psychic_functioning_claims_vs._reality
“My original point was that I think the evidence for ‘psi’ is as good as one’s priors allow it.”
If you believe there is genuine evidence for psi – name a genuine psychic from the past. This is an entirely fair challenge, you should easily be able to do this if psi was real but you won’t be able to. Every psychic investigated has either failed the tests when scientists investigated their claims or exposed as a fraud.
If you scroll up on this blog we have already discussed the fraud of Daniel Dunglas Home, Eusapia Palladino and Leonora Piper. These are apparently considered to be three of the greatest “psychics” of all time by the parapsychological community but the skeptics know differently
“There is a difference between a ‘law’ and a ‘principle”
You ignored what Mario Bunge wrote, you had no response to the fact ESP violates physical laws so replied with a silly comment like that trying to play some sort of semantics game but you have not done your homework. Well at least I don’t think you are trolling sonic, you are for real? This is basic stuff you must know what a physical law is. C’mon man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_(principle)
Sonic —
Not you, I gather.
@MidnightRunner2014:
You wrote:
“ESP contradicts the law of conservation of energy and the inverse square law. If you know about the latter law you would know that physical signals decrease in intensity over distance.”
My comment:
Yes, it is indeed true that a *physical* signal decreases in intensity over distance.
However, it is not true that an *informational* “signal” necessarily decreases in intensity over distance.
I presume that you are aware of the faster-than-light transfer of information on the quantum level. This faster-than-light transferred information has not been observed to decrease in intensity. Following is a link about this from the Nature.com website.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080813/full/news.2008.1038.html
Since ESP is about the transfer of information, and since information can be transferred across distances without losing intensity, it seems scientifically plausible to me that the door remains open for the existence of ESP.
What do you think?
Regards,
James
@Sonic
” a definition for ‘woo’.”
We could dither all day about details and semantics. I think in general the useage applies to any belief that there exists no, or no good evidence for. Atleast for me this works. Homeopathy, UFO’s, Bigfoot, Reiki, energy healing, angels, god etc… it’s all woo – magical thinking not supported by the evidence at hand.
Ekko sez: “Your whole point is based on the fallacy that people are incapable of doing this and that the quality of the evidence and experiments themselves are not the main deciding factor – just people’s prior convictions.”
This is often an angle taken by those who do believe in woo. Mumadadd, myself and a few others have already addressed tat we would be elated to have evidence for many of the magical beliefs that exist. I was a huge UFO/crypto fan for years. Psychic abilities would be AWESOME! Life after death, as most humans do, I wish there were some evidence. The problem is I can’t lie to myself in order to satisfy what I WANT to believe, I have to follow the evidence. Show me the evidence and I will buy into it.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool”
– Obligatory famous quote.
James Oeming —
Ah, the all-enabling, all-explaining quantum.
The brain doesn’t operate at quantum level. Quantum mechanics / physics offers an explanation for the behaviour of atoms, why they bond the way they bond, etc. The brain functions at the chemistry level – using the properties of components made of atoms. It simply doesn’t have the wherewithal to operate at the quantum level.
James thanks for the paper, it is actually here online:
“Testing spooky action at a distance”
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.3316v1.pdf
I had read this about a year ago, it’s described on the Wikipedia page for faster than light travel:
“A 2008 quantum physics experiment also performed by Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues in Geneva, Switzerland has determined that in any hypothetical non-local hidden-variables theory the speed of the quantum non-local connection (what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance”) is at least 10,000 times the speed of light.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light#EPR_Paradox
The paper describes a Bell test that was carried out between two separated villages. The paper was written in 2008 and it was a single experiment. There should be some follow up experiments or replication etc but it hasn’t happened. I have looked but cannot find anything, I am unconvinced.
Victor Stenger back in 1997 has written:
“Nowhere does quantum mechanics imply that real matter or signals travel faster than light. In fact, superluminal signal propagation has been proven to be impossible in any theory consistent with conventional relativity and quantum mechanics.”
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/quantum_quackery/
Which seems to still be the view of most scientists today.
And on the Wikipedia there is some various information which contradicts the study you mentioned:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light#Quantum_mechanics
Even if the single experiment in the paper you mentioned is confirmed by other studies, I don’t see how this has anything to do with the paranormal claims of ESP. I also described above how quantum physics doesn’t help ESP because it would be too weak to transmit anything. It could only be the four forces from the standard model but we know none of these have anything to do with ESP. There are other problems with ESP as well for example information can not be transmitted from one mind to another by any means without being first translated into a code. There is no known physical mechanism for this in the human brain. I have seen some proponents of ESP or telepathy talk about the brain being some sort of mental radio but this is stupid. When you look at the claims of ESP they just get more magical and magical and more and more unrealistic. Parapsychologists have had 150 years to demonstrate ESP but they have failed. They have no data and no theory. There’s no reason to consider it a possibility.
Ekko-
Of course people might overcome their priors. I used the example of the Utts /Hyman papers because in this case two experts came to different conclusions based on priors (at least that’s how it looks to me.)
Obviously other people can react differently.
In your case:
Did you decide your experience was esp or do you think ‘other explanations’ will work?
Let’s see- esp is falsifiable, ‘some other explanation’ is not.
Isn’t that odd? Hummm
You are wielding an unfalsifiable weapon there– use it carefully.
steve12-
You ask-
” How can I interpret the results of an experiment in a universe with non-material or non-natural forces?”
I can do it with imagination, flights of fancy, love, sloppy thinking and all the while wearing rose colored glasses shaped like monkeys toking on a hookah shaped train car traveling over the rainbow in the mist.
How can you do it?
midnightrunner2014-
If esp exists, that doesn’t invalidate everything we know. Gravity, the strong force, weak force, electromagnetism need not change, Beethoven’s 5th need not be rewritten, beer need not suddenly taste bad, and your lover could still look good to you. I’m not sure how esp would work if it existed, so it’s possible nothing at all would have to change.
Thinking like that creates a false dichotomy in your mind.
Please remove this false dichotomy from the discussion as it places too much emotional strain in a situation where none need exist. OK? (We can talk about ‘causality’ in a situation where the passage of time is an illusion if you want, I’d prefer that, and certainly if esp is carried by electromagnetism there are problems… )
BillOpenthalt-
I don’t know if ‘gravity waves’ are real or not– as an example of a wave that has yet to be discovered.
Have you ruled out gravity waves as possible?
James Oeming-
Good example!
I’ll let you deal with Bill’s mistake about physics and the brain if you will.
grabula-
Your definition of ‘woo’ sounds somewhat reasonable.
Would you say the notion there is life on other planets is ‘woo’?
“You ask-
” How can I interpret the results of an experiment in a universe with non-material or non-natural forces?”
I can do it with imagination, flights of fancy, love, sloppy thinking and all the while wearing rose colored glasses shaped like monkeys toking on a hookah shaped train car traveling over the rainbow in the mist.
How can you do it?”
Hey look, Sonic is dodging a question and playing games again.
Sonic – YOU are the one who said this:
“So a researcher with an absolute commitment to a philosophy–
Sounds like it fits with your defintion of ‘woo’ to me.”
THIS IS BULLSHIT. There is a good reason why we assume materialism / naturalism. I have personally tried to explain to you why many times, so now I’m attempting to see if you can at least summarize our position.
That is, why WE ARE saying assumption if materialsm/ naturalism is required for science, whether you agree or not.
Can you do this w/o the bullshit – yes or no?
James Oeming,
I’m afraid you don’t understand what you have linked to. That article simply references an experiment that illustrates quantum entanglement. That’s all. It’s not about transferring information at greater than light speed. That is not what happens with quantum entanglement. The heading of that article is misleading if not actually false. Information transfer faster than the speed of light is not possible according to Einstein’s special theory of relativity and no one has ever been able to demonstrate otherwise.
Sonic —
I guess you mean “as possible vectors for ESP”. Gravity waves ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave )? Most definitely 😉
Gravitational waves (as predicted by Einstein)? Look, dear Sonic, I know there is nothing as utterly dense as a stupid human, but even the densest human — and we have a few serious contenders in this thread — doesn’t have the mass to generate gravitational waves. Maybe the triple star Ian-Leo-Marcus, but if their gravitational waves would carry information it would be such nonsense they would cause the universe to shrink back into a pre-big-bang cosmic egg.
The most dense objects in the known universe are not black holes, they are the wilfully ignorant and most arrogant members of our species who detest and despise science because it interferes with their fantasises and/or their ability to market abject bullshit.
Sonic,
I’m finding it difficult to work out what your point is, or if you’re even attempting to make one. You seem to be trying on the one hand to pick holes in materialism but on the other hand always have ‘I don’t know what the truth is’ to hide behind. Exactly what is your opinion on PSI phenomena and on what basis do you hold that opinion?
My definition of woo was off the cuff and only semi-serious. It ended up focusing mostly on confirmation bias, which is important in how erroneous beliefs are reinforced but definitely not the whole picture, so before you try to cherry pick any more examples of science you think hits my any of my criteria for woo, let’s just agree to work with Grabula’s definition instead:
Grabula:
You’re main tactic seems to be trying to suggest that materialism is a conclusion scientists and skeptics want to be true, and this is why they aren’t pursuing alternatives.
This is simply flat out wrong. Methodological naturalism is definitionally essential to science to. Starting with a base assumption that reality comprises physical stuff interacting according to physical laws is not borne of wishful thinking (and I defy you to tell me why somebody would be ideologically motivated to start with this assumption, as it pretty much rules out really cool stuff like life after death and super powers); it’s the result of countless successes built on this assumption and the lack of any credible evidence for anything that contradicts it.
This is in comparison to belief in phenomena like ESP. I think the big motivating factor in this kind of belief is that it can be easily extrapolated to the existence of souls (or life energy or whatever), and therefore life after death (in whatever particular form is consistent with your beliefs). In fact I’d go so far as to say that the reasoning works in reverse from this conclusion – I want to believe in god & life after death, so off I go to look for any effects consistent with this. If I can’t find them through science then there must be something wrong with the scientific method so I’ll try to undermine its core assumption.
Your quote from Richard Lewontin demonstrates his ideological objection to materialism here:
And you’ve demonstrated it throughout your posts too. You aren’t reasoning; you’re rationalising.
Grabula,
It might look like I addressed part of that post to you, but it was all addressed to Sonic.
Bill O –
“The brain doesn’t operate at quantum level.”
Discovery of quantum vibrations in ‘microtubules’ inside brain neurons supports controversial theory of consciousness
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
Too bad you missed the skeptics debate on the topic in January!
steve12-
A researcher with an absolute commitment to a philosophy would fit the definition of ‘woo’ that mumadadd was trying out.
He now says his definition was ‘semi-serious’ and we are now onto a definition grabula has offered.
How would you define ‘woo’?
BTW: You seem to have confused ‘methodological naturalism’ with ‘materialism’.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
I’m not sure when I was saying that scientists should abandon ‘methodological naturalism’, but as I understand it, that shouldn’t be necessary because ‘natural’ is ‘what science finds’, so if esp is real and scientists find it, then esp will be ‘natural’ by definition.
It’s like objects that can move through walls– used to be thought that would require ‘magic’. Now it’s called ‘quantum tunneling’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunneling
BillOpenthalt-
So you’re saying that the dark side of the moon is the nexus of all correct thought and that Einstein was reincarnated as a chocolate easter bunny in 1988. Can I quote you on that?
No?, Oh shoot, and here I was thinking you were misunderstanding what I was saying.
Never mind.
mumadadd-
I noted that one’s ‘priors’ seem to have a lot to do with how he views the evidence regarding esp.
It appears one such ‘prior’ has to do with esp being ‘woo’.
I wonder what ‘woo’ is.
I have attempted to discuss the definition of ‘woo’ that you gave.
When looking at a definition like that, I try to find examples and counter-examples… in this case it seems your definition would make sagan a ‘woo master’ of something like that, so I questioned the definition on that basis.
I’m thinking according to grabula’s definition, the notion there is life on other planets would be ‘woo’, yet I don’t think that’s how the word is usually applied so I’m questioning it on that basis.
It appears you might now be arguing a scientist should have an absolute dedication to a philosophy– one such that no observation or discovery should shake it.
Is that your position now– that a dedication to a philosophy is not ‘woo’, but rather good science?
BillyJoe7-
You make a good point- entanglement can apparently create effects faster than light– but can information be transfered?
There are those working on such schemes…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Cramer
If esp (assuming it exists) doesn’t transfer faster than light information… no issue. If it does our friends like Cramer will have it under control.
Of course it might be that the transfer is occurring in ways and in dimensions that we are currently unable to measure– string theory anyone?
Maybe esp is really ‘leaks’ in the multiverse…
If esp is real and uses gravity waves to instantaneously without any reduction in strength over distance, transfer spoken words from people long dead it will forever be impossible spot a ‘Poe’.
Reality would be that weird after all.
sonic:
“BJ You make a good point- entanglement can apparently create effects faster than light– but can information be transfered?”
NO. NOOO. that was his whole point. No information cannot be transferred faster than light, even via entanglement. No information transfer possible.
This is YET AGAIN special pleading to quantum mechanics just because quantum effects are weird. This gambit seems to never get old.
Sonic,
“I’m thinking according to grabula’s definition, the notion there is life on other planets would be ‘woo’, yet I don’t think that’s how the word is usually applied so I’m questioning it on that basis.”
Part of what constitutes woo is how the beliefs are formed and maintained. So if someone were firmly convinced that there was life on other planets, and this belief was based on, say, the face on mars and other such pareidolia, then yes that would be woo.
You’re still not getting this distinction when it comes to materialism. Materialism is backed by a vast amount of evidence and successful predictions, so is a well justified assumption.
ESP is a really good example of woo as there hasn’t even been a reliable effect demonstrated to exist, there’s no known mechanism for it to occur, and proponents trick themselves into their belief through self deception, confirmation bias & magical thinking.
“A researcher with an absolute commitment to a philosophy would fit the definition of ‘woo’ that mumadadd was trying out.”
You’re acting like a child Sonic. You refuse to engage in a conversation, and instead jump over what the other people in the conversation are saying to get to your semantic runaround. Sorry, but this is simply true. It is a completely one-sided affair where you want to ask questions but will not answer them, or answer them in an obfuscating manner.
Do you want to have a conversation or behave like a child? You need to make that decision.
Becasue I’ve explained this to you many times, I think it’s fair for me to ask you to summarize my position. You don’t have to agree. But how can adults converse if one side doesn’t know what the other side is asserting?
“He now says his definition was ‘semi-serious’ and we are now onto a definition grabula has offered.
How would you define ‘woo’?”
We cannot move on to this until we get passed the previous point. You don’t understand why we must assume materialism and methodological naturalism (or worse, refuse to say!), so how can we have this discussion?
“BTW: You seem to have confused ‘methodological naturalism’ with ‘materialism’.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism”
While they might not be exactly the same for philosophers, both have to be assumed for technical reasons that I’m trying to get to, but you WILL NOT ALLOW THAT. The differences between the two are not even relevant to science, IMO.
Sonic,
“I’m not sure when I was saying that scientists should abandon ‘methodological naturalism’, but as I understand it, that shouldn’t be necessary because ‘natural’ is ‘what science finds’, so if esp is real and scientists find it, then esp will be ‘natural’ by definition.”
I agree with this for the most part. But scientists are forced, whether they’ve consciously articulated it as such or not, to look for physical effects caused by physical forces. Hence the commitment to methodological naturalism. Hence the implicit acceptance of materialism.
Maybe we’ve been talking past each other but I’m still not sure what your point is. Do you think that there is something other than physical stuff interacting according to physical laws? If so, what? Do you think science should be somehow incorporating this into its methodology? If so, how? Do you think esp is a real phenomenon? What’s the basis for your opinion on this?
sonic,
“entanglement can apparently create effects faster than light– but can information be transfered? There are those working on such schemes…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Cramer”
Cramer is a fringe dweller aa far as information transfer is concerned, so I guess he’s right up your alley. (;
A quote from your link:
“He is currently engaged in experiments at the University of Washington to test retrocausality by using a version of the delayed choice quantum eraser without coincidence counting. This experiment, if successful, would imply that entanglement can be used to send a signal instantaneously between two distant locations (or a message backwards in time from the apparatus to itself). Such “spooky communication” experiments have never been successfully conducted, and only attempted a limited number of times, since most physicists believe that they would violate the no-communication theorem. However, a small number of scientists (Cramer among them) believe that there is no physical law prohibiting such communication”
As I have advised you before, please understand the mainstream view on a subject before listening to fringe views, otherwise you will have no sense about anything on that subject. I’m wondering if you even understand the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment and that, while it looks like retrocausality, it very definitely is not. Quantum physics is weird, but it’s not stupid.
“Of course it might be that the transfer is occurring in ways and in dimensions that we are currently unable to measure”
There is nothing to explain. There are no mechanisms. ESP does not exist. Period.
That is the state of ESP in rerlation to science. Suck on it.
“If esp is real and uses gravity waves to instantaneously without any reduction in strength over distance, transfer spoken words…”
Smileys at the end of this quote so, no doubt, you have an escape clause, but I’ll say it anyway>
Gravity waves travel at the speed of light.
The Other John Mc-
I’ll let you argue the point with Cramer.
I do think if communication happens faster than light, then that would require a new phenomena that isn’t part of physics today.
But I’m not going to argue the point with Cramer– and I don’t know that esp communications (assuming they exist) are faster than light.
mumadadd-
Materialism is a philosophy- Physicists like Paul Davies and Gribbin might argue that science has proved it wrong (The book “The Matter Myth”).
I don’t think these scientists argue against methodological naturalism, however.
Just because I know the difference between what the words mean and you don’t doesn’t make me wrong– BTW.
steve12-
Read my reply-
12 jun 2014 2:02 am.
I state exactly why ‘methodological naturalism’ is the assumption of science. I further suggested on 16 jun 2014 at 10:01 am that this assumption need not change.
You seem to have some idea that I’m arguing against methodological naturalism– but that is not what I’ve said.
You have confused ‘methodological naturalism’ with ‘materialism’ and rather than accept that, you accuse me of being a child!
Wow… kinda embarrassing.
BillyJoe7-
Cramer’s ‘transactional analysis’ is a quantum mechanical interpretation that some physicists like.
It’s wild– have you checked it out before?
If gravity waves exist, then they probably travel at the speed of light. I’m just not sure they exist.
@sonic
“Would you say the notion there is life on other planets is ‘woo’?”
Only if it’s unreasonable considering the evidence. For example, I believe there is life on other planets – whether it’s intelligent or not who knows. I’d like to think it’s out there. right now it’s plausible enough, but I can’t provide evidence for it. I won’t say with 100% probability there is, just that if I had to put money down, I’d put it ‘for’ life existing on other planets. The only evidence I can offer is that it exists here on this planet and there are millions of stars out there with millions of planets circling them so chances are good. Should we find some evidence to indicate that what happened here has such a small chance of happening that the probability drops down to almost nill then I’ll be disappointed but will work with it from there.
I don’t believe life has visited this planet in space ships (UFO’s). There’s been no reliable or robust evidence for it. Should that change, then I’ll reconsider my stance. That’s just solid skepticism. It’s woo when you’ll swallow anything credulously to confirm your own beliefs.
@Sonic
““I’m thinking according to grabula’s definition, the notion there is life on other planets would be ‘woo’, yet I don’t think that’s how the word is usually applied so I’m questioning it on that basis.””
Then you’re not understanding me properly. It’s plausible that life exist on other planets. We have no proof for or against it so I can have a reasonable belief that there might be life on other planets because we observe it on one for sure. I’m not assuming that to be true and I only hope the evidence bares this out over time. Until then it’s up in the air and I can only work on what’s plausible.
Let’s again take my example of UFO’s for woo. There’s been no credibile evidence for visitors from another planet. There are tons of anecdotes, some blurry pictures and some anomalies that sometimes seem hard to explain. I was a HUGE UFO fan as a kid, however as time passed I realized there was no good evidence for it, and there still isn’t. I had to let go of the idea that we were being visited by beings from another planet. I was naive to the realities. Once I discovered where the evidence went I had to make a choice – 1. I could choose to continue to believe we were being visited, regardless of the evidence or 2. I could decide that so far there is no evidence to support that belief. If I’d chose 1 I would be guilty of believing in woo.
Take homeopathy as woo – We know for homeopathy to work as describe by its practitioners, the laws of physics would have to drastically change, or atleast our understanding of it. Right now our understanding of it is held up by mounds of robust evidence supporting it. Homeopathy on the other hand continues to fail to show any efficacy or evidence that it’s principles are possible, or even plausible, therefore, woo.
grabula-
I think I’m beginning to understand what you mean better, but I have questions-
Suppose a person is thinking the evidence for UFO’s is actually pretty good, would his belief in UFO’s constitute woo or would he just be mistaken?
If a homeopath actually thinks the stuff works, is it woo?
If Chopra believes what he is saying is accurate, then is he not woo, but what he is saying is woo?
Confusion…
As to life on other planets-
It certainly seems possible there could be life on other planets.
I’m not sure how likely it is that life will start anywhere, so the calculation of how probable it would be to find life elsewhere is somewhat meaningless.
So while I would think many could agree that it is possible that life would exist on other planets, I don’t think there is any way to judge if it is plausible or not given we have no idea how to judge one of the most important components of the calculation.
Perhaps that would fit in a semi-woo category. I’ve never seen that designation- semi-woo.
Is there such a thing– something that may or may not be woo- it is yet to be decided?
Confusion…
BillyJoe7-
Anyone could tell you the brain isn’t a receiver- it’s a running back– sheesh!
@Sonic
I think you’re over thinking it. ‘Woo’ it’s a word I use to generally describe magical thinking, that’s it. I’m comfortable with my definition. You can certainly try to find examples that may or may not be exceptions but it’s unimportant in the grander scheme f things. Over examine any word, especially ‘slang’ and you make it nearly meaningless. That’s the ultimate failing of language. Used generally it is pretty effective but using for example, english to describe to you a tree in my yard, isn’t going to paint you a picture of the exact tree I’m describing…
If someone thinks or believes they have real evidence, it doesn’t ‘excuse’ them from believing in woo. For me if it’s woo, it’s woo.
As for life on other planets, it’s plausible because we know it’s happened once already. The question is whether it happens frequently enough to create life elsewhere. Consider the numbers involved and it’s reasonable to think there may be other life out there. What seperates this concept from woo is that we don’t have any evidence against the idea, and until we do, what we observe makes it plausible. That word is key…plausible. homeopathy isn’t plausible, and it hasn’t stood up to the test of science. It is woo.
sonic.
“If esp is real and uses gravity waves to instantaneously…”
“If gravity waves exist, then they probably travel at the speed of light”
Sonic,
I haven’t read this book but my guess is you’re talking about m- or string-theory. It doesn’t matter whether the fundamental building blocks of material are point particles or one dimensional vibrating strings, it’s still material. You might as well argue against materialism on the basis that the vast majority of an atom is empty space – these arguments both fail to hold water for the same reason: you’re using a (I suspect deliberately) restrictive definition of ‘material’.
I suspect that you’re viewing these topics through the lens of some ideologically motivated beliefs (whilst being coy about what these actually are), which is why you’re so focused on picking apart definitions rather than building a case for your own position, whatever that may be.
Yes, woo. There’s no good evidence for the belief.
Yes, woo. There’s no good evidence for the belief.
Chopra is a woomeister, spouting woo. I can’t imagine that anyone posting here is restricting their definition of woo to positions that the proponent knows or believes to be false. It’s perplexing that you’d even ask.
In the interests of moving the discussion forwards, and away from semantics, can you please just try to simply spell out your own position?
Here’s the questions from my last post again, with a couple one addition:
Do you think that there is something other than physical stuff interacting according to physical laws? If so, what?
Are you a dualist?
Do you think science should be somehow incorporating this into its methodology?
If so, how?
Do you think esp is a real phenomenon?
What’s the basis for your opinion on this?
PS – On the ‘Preaching Against Skepticism’ thread I mentioned a reverse correlation between the religiosity of a society and the well-being of it’s citizens and said I’d dig out the references for you. This was part of an online course I did and the course material has now been taken off-line, and I haven’t been able to find what I was after through Google. You might have forgotten but it’s bugged me slightly that I referred to evidence and then failed to produce it–apologies.
mumadadd,
You will never get a clear answer out of sonic.
His problem is that he reads what all the fringe dwellers are saying without first understandiong the real science. For example, he has a very poor understanding of modern evolutionary theory, relativity, and quantum theory as I’ve illustrated on many occasions over the past few years.
What he likes to do is link to, quote from, and regurgitate nonsense from the fringe against real science without actually acknowleging any agreement or disagreement with either view.
His motto regarding real science is along the lines of “it aint necessarily so” because look at what this fringe dweller says. Which would be fine if he actually knew what the fringe dwellers are arguing against. But he doesn’t.
His ultimate refuge is usually to say something incomprehensible with a few added smilies.
Mlema —
Scoop! Atoms discovered in human brains! Maybe Atomic Power Allows Brain Cells To Broadcast Radio Waves! Your Neighbour Can Read Your Mind!
Of course quantum physics underlies the atoms in the cells in the brain — it’s our best explanation of how energy and matter are structured. That doesn’t mean the brain has any influence on, or control over, the quantum realm. It doesn’t mean quantum physics makes everything possible.
Now crawl back under your rock.
“Now crawl back under your rock.”
Bill, I wish I could crawl under a rock today. It is very warm here.
“The brain doesn’t operate at quantum level.”
Apparently it does
“Of course quantum physics underlies the atoms in the cells in the brain..”
That’s not how
“It doesn’t mean quantum physics makes everything possible.”
Not sure what you mean by that. or what you think I said that had anything to do with that.
“I suspect that you’re viewing these topics through the lens of some ideologically motivated beliefs (whilst being coy about what these actually are), which is why you’re so focused on picking apart definitions rather than building a case for your own position, whatever that may be. ”
I’m getting this impression as well. Sonic seems ultra focused on the definition of woo for example and the more we get into it the more I feel he’s being coy about something – asking his questions with a wink and a smile.
“In the interests of moving the discussion forwards, and away from semantics, can you please just try to simply spell out your own position? ”
I’m pretty sure sonic is a woo proponent to some extant. Maybe I’m mis-remembering but I’m pretty sure he’s held that stance on a few topics here in the past.
@Mlema
“Apparently it does”
You can’t jump from one initial theory – in this case the one you linked to – and make a huge assumption. You’re basing that on one paper about a controversial topic.
THAT right there is the difference between a good skeptic and those that aren’t. We don’t jump to conclusions based on spotty, or a limited amount of data. A good skeptic would say ‘this article seems to indicate something else might be going on, but we’ll have to see where the research goes from here.’ We look for robust data.
grabula, Bill said “The brain doesn’t operate at quantum level.”
“The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group…suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations.”
You’re right. The research only suggests that it does. Is that satisfactory? What assumption am I making?
ps – again, I think you may think I’m saying something more than I am. Operating at the quantum level means just that. It doesn’t mean anything more. Where is your skepticism?
“You’re right. The research only suggests that it does. Is that satisfactory? What assumption am I making?”
I only say that it suggests it might, you’re statement was: “Apparently it does”. I read the article you linked yesterday, and then followed up by reading a little on Orch OR. Ultimately the research is interesting but doesn’t say a whole lot on it’s own until it expands to identify more about what is going on.
I wasn’t talking about Orch OR. I was talking about the quantum vibrations in the microtubules.
Sure, but that still doesn’t show much except that there is something possibly operating at the quantum level. It’s way too early to jump to any conclusions such as the brain operating on that level in any meaningful way to consciousness. I’m not saying it’s not possible, it just needs to go a lot further in the research.
“You have confused ‘methodological naturalism’ with ‘materialism’ and rather than accept that, you accuse me of being a child!”
I said:
“While they might not be exactly the same for philosophers, both have to be assumed for technical reasons that I’m trying to get to, but you WILL NOT ALLOW THAT. The differences between the two are not even relevant to science, IMO.”
Of course, rather than engage this, you ignored it. Because you’re Sonic.
So, from the viewpoint of science, explain how they’re different. What would it mean to have non-material forces? You can’t even say non-material matter, because it ain’t matter. Non-material stuff? Just semantics. Can I interpret an experiment in a universe where there is something other than matter? What would something other than matter even be?
If matter/non-matter is starting to sound like natural/non-natural, there’s a good reason. Because as far as science goes, they’re essentially the same thing. Hence my words above.
And I’m saying that you’re a child because you’re purposefully obfuscating the conversation with semantic fillibustering, and do so often.
“semantic fillibustering”
Perfect, I love it.
That’s the thing that irritates me with dualism. As far as I’m concerned, there’s only stuff. Science is the best method we have for studying stuff.
Dualists wreck the directness and simplicity by creating two unnecessary categories of stuff for reasons that are vague at best, or ideologically self-serving at worst. They lump everything science knows about under “physical” and everything they want to believe in but the scientific community rejects as imaginary, illusory, or incoherent as “non-physical.” They then use those arbitrary categories as a basis for special pleading against scientific inquiry in “their” territory, or to accuse scientifically minded people of dismissively rejecting an entire category when that category is only lumped together because we’ve had a basis for rejecting each member on a case-by-case basis. It’s an excuse to talk past us.
grabula-
I have been over thinking it– Now it seems ‘woo’ is a catch all type term that means ‘anti- skeptic’ and has more emotional content than intellectual.
Sort of a ‘I’m one of us’ against ‘them’ type term- ‘woo’- holding outdated ideas, promoting failed ideas, failure to apply logic where it applies… bad.
Is that about right?
mumadadd-
You haven’t read the book.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/298254.The_Matter_Myth
“In this sweeping survey, acclaimed science writers Paul Davies and John Gribbin provide a complete overview of advances in the study of physics that have revolutionized modern science. From the weird world of quarks and the theory of relativity to the latest ideas about the birth of the cosmos, the authors find evidence for a massive paradigm shift.”
I haven’t read the book either, but as I understand it they compare the ‘materialism’ of the post Newtonian age (d’Holbach, eg.) with what scientists actually found (Einstein, Bohr, Planck, et al.) and I believe they think the materialism is wrong.
They are both physicists, so it’s possible they are right about that.
I’ve read that elsewhere too, the eternal ‘clockwork universe’ of materialism didn’t quite work out.
I think that’s why the terms ‘physicalism’ and ‘naturalism’ are now in use and have recieved the type of endorsement they have.
You ask if I am a dualist, materialist…
If ‘dualism’ is correct, then it has to be some form of ‘inter-active’ dualism. I know such formulations exist, but I can’t endorse anyone– try Bing ‘inter-active dualism’ and choose whichever version you want to try- I don’t know.
I think the ‘materialists’ use the term ‘naturalism’ now (or ‘physicalism’).
http://naturalism.org/
I think the current form of naturalism makes claims that go beyond what ‘science has found’ (even though they say they don’t) and have written to Tom Clark about this– we had a good discussion via numerous e-mails, but failed to come to an agreement, so I can’t say I’m one of them.
So I don’t know of an ‘interactive dualism’ that I can agree with and I don’t agree with ‘naturalism’ as it now stands– I’m supposed to know what about what?
I’m supposed to choose what- how?
Re. esp: I don’t know if it is a real phenomena or not.
The reason I think it might be has to do with a few personal experiences and various reports and what others have said.
The reason I question it has to do with the experimental evidence being so weak.
But, if what i have experienced is accurate, then I would think the type of tests they do would show little or no effect.
I have no idea how to test for something that might happen once or twice without warning over a lifetime.
So, I don’t know if it is real (haven’t seen convincing proof) or not (the reports might be explained otherwise, but that isn’t a falsifiable hypothesis and I can’t know that every case can be ‘explained away’).
What do you think?
Bill Openthalt-
Every object in the universe (including the entire universe– see quantum cosmology) can be described as a quantum mechanical object (schodinger’s equation)– including a brain.
You seem to think physics doesn’t apply to physical objects or that quantum mechanics isn’t physics– where does this idea come from?
It isn’t the case.
Mlema-
Check out photosynthesis and quantum effects, or this new one-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140616151509.htm
(BTW- schodinger’s equation applies to all physical objects regardless of size (quantum cosmology), it’s just a question as to if coherence is part of the picture–quantum mechanics becomes very similar to Newtonian at a certain size and Newtonian can be applied for practical purposes–but QM is still the actual science.)
steve12-
So you haven’t figured out the difference between ‘materialism’ and ‘methodological naturalism’ yet.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism
or here-
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Materialism
“Both forms of materialism (ontological and methodological) are very closely related to philosophical and methodological naturalism and at first glance seem almost identical. Materialism and naturalism differ only in that while naturalism assumes or studies the observable, materialism assumes or studies the observable and material.”
If you want to continue to talk as a person who has taken a ‘first glance’ at the subject, that’s up to you.
Just don’t fault me for trying to correct your obvious errors.
BillyJoe7-
If esp is real and uses gravity waves that move faster than light, then the probability that the moon has a creamy nugat center moves from .00001 to .00003 (+/- .000005).
Sorry I couldn’t get the figures more accurate– the math on that calculation is difficult as I’m sure you are well aware, no doubt you have tried to do the exact same calculation numerous times before.
I’ll out you if you aren’t careful– let’s face it you know what I think better than I do– you psychic you.
You could change the plot of what is being viewed on a television by altering the circuitry. Just rewire it to flip through multiple channels so that scenes from different shows line up in a new way, or play the audio from one station over the video of another. I Think the main point that the television analogy lacks, and what makes the examples of an imposter family member or phantom limb seem conclusive, is that it doesn’t have the feedback element that a human body has. If you call the body a receiver and transmitter of stimuli then it becomes easy to explain altered experiences. A better analogy might be a mars rover controlled by a human operator on Earth. A martian discovering the robot may believe that it is an independent organism that thinks for itself. It may dissect the robot and find out that it can alter its behavior by changing the way its cameras and other sensors are wired, but what is really happening is the data that the operator is receiving has been altered and so the operator changes the way the robot is being controlled.
Sonic:
I know the difference. But they have the same effect as far as science is concerned. That is the assertion I make here:
# steve12on 16 Jun 2014 at 12:11 pm
But instead of take the assertion on, you ignore my words and pretend that I’m claiming the two tantamount in all things. I never said this.
That is the second time that I’ve acknowledged that they are different as far as philosophy is concerned.
Two times, both ignored:
# steve12on 18 Jun 2014 at 12:54 am
# steve12on 16 Jun 2014 at 12:11 pm
This is why I my conversations with you always end badly Sonic. You don’t engage; you selectively respond to peoples’ posts such that every discussion turns into a semantic game allowing you to uphold the role of the brave intellectual contrarian. But dialectic parlor tricks are not truth.
Sonic —
You are grasping at straws, aren’t you?
The fact that an object can be described using QM equations doesn’t mean the object can influence its QM components. It is not because a brain is made of atoms that it can split them.
And even if a part of the brain could create entangled photons (and there is no indication it can), these would not enable ESP, or TK, or any other woo. There is no way these things can be shoehorned into physics, quantum or other.
If you want these things to be true, you’ll have to use magic. Good luck and good bye, Mr Potter.
steve12-
What you say is the difference is of no relevance.
But you are sorely mistaken as a reading of a ‘materialist’ philosophy book circa 1900 would prove to you.
I responded to your error by pointing out there is a difference.
That’s not ignoring your error, that’s my attempt to correct it.
Perhaps Heisenberg would be helpful-
“In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans… The elementary particles in Plato’s Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms….”
(From “physics and Philosophy” 1958)
Schodinger’s equation is not about a ‘substance’, but it is a mathematical form– as predicted by the non-materialist philosopher Plato.
So if the scientists had demanded everyone stick to the ‘materialist’ philosophy, we would not have quantum mechanics.
Gee, it’s a good thing the physicists didn’t think ‘there is no difference’.
http://www.rationalskepticism.org/philosophy/methodological-naturalism-vs-metaphysical-naturalism-t15274.html
Perhaps you should go talk to those guys.
BillOpenthalt-
When did I say esp has anything to do with QM?
You made the false claim that brains aren’t described by QM– an anti-science claim if there ever was one.
And now you compound the error– QM is physics– you are saying the things of physics can’t influence the things of physics…?
When did I say I want esp to be real? You make unsubstantiated claims about me rather than correct your error about physics.
We can do better.
Sonic,
If you haven’t read the book then you really shouldn’t be citing it. I Googled (other search engines are available) it myself and read the same blurb you quoted. My guess is that they:
a) Aren’t saying what they think you’re saying
b) Have used some sweeping claim along the lines of ‘what we think we know isn’t true’ to drum up press for the book, when in fact they are talking about the same physics and drawing the same conclusions as the rest of the physics community
c) Are using the counter-intuitive weirdness of theoretical/quantum physics to illustrate that the way we perceive reality is false
d) Are over extrapolating to some very speculative conclusions
Or some combination of the above. None of this is necessarily a criticism of the authors; they have a book to sell. It is in fact quite likely, to my mind, that they would love to imply ‘a massive paradigm shift’ (from your quoted blurb); people will buy their book. But when push comes to shove, I sincerely doubt they’ve actually proven that the universe comprises something other than material, interacting according to physical laws. Anyway, neither of us have read it so it’s a moot point really, other than to serve as an illustration of how you’re more generally, I think, fooling yourself in order to prop up your beliefs.
I think in this instance you have confused materialism for the flavour of mechanistic determinism that posits that if we know the exact state of the universe at any given point we could predict its future. Quantum wave functions undermine this notion, but they don’t undermine materialism.
I know you didn’t address this to me, but… it seems you’re trying to semantically trick your way to a false equivalence for all beliefs (based on your comments so far, not this one in isolation). The only thing you’re really demonstrating is that people don’t always have iron-clad, perfectly thought out definitions for colloquial terms. The fact remains that there are good ways to form and test beliefs, and there are bad ways. Yes, people will tend to identify with others who share common viewpoints and goals, and part of that will include adoption of common terminology and formation of an in-group/out-group, but this in no way undermines the utility of skeptism as a toolkit for assigning belief.
Okay, so you do believe that there’s something to mind other than matter, but you’re undecided as to the specifics. Fair enough. I’m not going to attempt to challenge you on this specifically, as it’s been covered extensively over nearly 1100 posts, but thanks for the clarification.
I (obviously) don’t know what your personal experiences were, but I’d put money on the fact that they’re similar to mine, all the other posters’; Steven Novella’s even. When I was around 13, I drifted apart from my closest friend, hadn’t seen or heard from him in around 6 months (which is a while at that age). One afternoon, my dad asked me what had happened, why don’t you see Max anymore? I pondered it for a second and the phone rang…can you guess who it was? It seemed pretty spooky to me at the time, and I thought there must be something deeper than coincidence going on. After that I noticed that quite often people would call me just when I’d been thinking about them. Then I noticed that on a several occasions, I’d mistake a stranger for someone I knew but hadn’t seen in ages, then sure enough, would bump into the person I thought I’d seen shortly after that.
What I’d failed to notice was all the times I’d thought about Max before he called; all the times I think about people and they don’t call me; all the times I thought I saw somebody I knew and they turned out to be a stranger. If we take the amount of people in the world, multiplied by the amount of thoughts/events/friends/family/connections they each have, we end up with a staggering number of opportunities for coincidences. It would be more perverse if bizarre coincidences didn’t happen on a regular basis, to the degree of about one per person per 5 years (just a guess…). If it hasn’t already happened, one day somebody will have a dream about winning the Lotto, and then they will. It’s a natural product of large numbers in a chaotic system.
I do appreciate that the coincidences I’ve recounted may seem trivial in comparison to some, especially when you take emotive and stressful events like death of a loved one into account, but they’re illustrative of the same human tendency to seek patterns, meaning, and confirmation of our own narratives. This, Sonic, is confirmation bias: reinforce your narrative conclusions by remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, or rationalising away disconfirming evidence. I’m pretty sure you know this definition, and I’m pretty sure it’s what you’re doing here.
I think this is a dodge and a rationalisation. Dodge: the effect is real but can’t be scientifically detected. Rationalisation: I’ll bet you didn’t start off thinking this, but have slowly convinced yourself of it.
What do you think?
sonic,
There a BIG difference between “instantaneous” and “the speed of light”.
@Sonic
“Is that about right?”
You tell me Sonic? I think mumadadd has it right, you’re trying to maneuver someone into defining woo in such a way that you can apply it to anyone who has a certain kind of belief, whether the belief is valid or not. I’m telling you it doesn’t matter that much since when we here use the term woo, we know to what we are referring.
I had a thought about this problem this afternoon as some thunderstorms moved through. My wife made a comment about ‘seeing blue through the clouds in the sky’ then she corrected herself by saying something like ‘sorry, I see blue sky through the clouds.’. In either case she was fine whether semantically correct or not. how do you define the sky per se? I know the dictionary has something to say about it but if you think about it too hard it can get confusing. Is the sky just ‘up’? In that case if you’re in a cave do you still have a sky to reference visually? Is the sky something going on up to a certain altitude where sky ends and space begins?
These kinds of conversations are interesting when your high, or in high school but digging around until you find the definition you want is part of the same reason you defend so much woo-ful thinking. You do some mental gymnastics in order to get to the conclusion you want instead of the conclusion you should get to.
And once again I bow out with Sonic due to his preternatural ability to ignore what I have said.
@Mumadadd
“I do appreciate that the coincidences I’ve recounted may seem trivial in comparison to some”
I don’t think they’re trivial in that they elegantly show as you explained, confirmation bias – something that leads a lot of people down the wrong road. We all have these stories, some of us have chosen to look for real answers, some of us continue to play make believe.
There was a moment in time, related specifically to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, that crystalized my skepticism as an active concept for me. Years ago I had a series of experiences – I would wake up with feelings of dread or ‘oppression’, and I would feel, and in one case believed I saw another presence in the room. For years, decades really, I couldn’t explain it. I had found no rational explanation for what I experienced though I knew deep down there was most likely a good explanation for it. In the first year or two of the SGU podcast they discussed this phenomena of sleep paralysis which sometimes includes Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations. I did some more research into it and discovered this perfectly described my experiences.
To me these moments are important regardless of how trivial they may appear. They tend to separate real skeptics. As we’ve discussed a tone recently, it’s never that I didn’t want to believe in things like UFO’s, bigfoot or the afterlife, it’s that as the evidence mounted against these things, I had no choice but to move on.
mumadadd-
I have read books by both the authors– just not that particular one.
Your analysis is probably inaccurate.
We are having a terminology problem–
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/
“Some philosophers suggest that ‘physicalism’ is distinct from ‘materialism’ … As the name suggests, materialists historically held that everything was matter — where matter was conceived as “an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist” (Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge, par. 9). But physics itself has shown that not everything is matter in this sense; for example, forces such as gravity are physical but it is not clear that they are material in the traditional sense (Lange 1865, Dijksterhuis 1961, Yolton 1983). So it is tempting to use ‘physicalism’ to distance oneself from what seems a historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism, and related to this, to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences.”
There is some disagreement about this situation as I understand it. But the claim that science is the same as materialism isn’t historically accurate at all.
You describe one kind of esp type experience. It sounds like you have concluded that co-incidence is a workable explanation in those cases and that you have extrapolated that explanation to all other cases of esp type experiences.
I think grabula has done similarly.
BillyJoe7-
The word ‘if’ before a phrase can be used to indicate what follows is a hypothetical.
If the passage of time is an illusion, then wouldn’t the speed of light just be part of that illusion?
steve12-
Sorry if I missed something there…
I don’t think you advocate a scientist has to believe in the ‘historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism’, but what you wrote seems to indicate you do.
That’s my confusion on the matter.
grabula-
Exactly. You know what it means.
Sorry if my interest in clearly understanding what is being said got misplaced.
I’ve had all sorts of ‘falling asleep’ experiences. I think some ghosts, and out of body experiences, and strange people showing up in the room and…all sorts of wild things happen at those times– no doubt.
Pretty cool…
Another one is lack of sleep. Do you know about that?
Sonic,
Okay. What other types are you referring to?
@Sonic
“You describe one kind of esp type experience. It sounds like you have concluded that co-incidence is a workable explanation in those cases and that you have extrapolated that explanation to all other cases of esp type experiences.
I think grabula has done similarly.”
ESP is lacking in so much real evidence I’ve never even looked at it seriously beyond my initial research a few years back. Subjects like these tend to become uninteresting to me if evidence is stacked pretty high against them, or is so severely lacking as to make it implausible. I’m sure ‘ESP’ covers all sorts of woo to some people, I myself don’t really have it categorized very specifically.
In all honesty I don’t tend towards labels when it comes to a lot of this. The materialism/naturalism divide is fairly new to me though I’ve heard it in passing for years. I find labels tend to pigeon hole peoples’ thinking. It’s why I’m not that interested in analyzing ‘woo’ too deeply.
“I’ve had all sorts of ‘falling asleep’ experiences. I think some ghosts, and out of body experiences, and strange people showing up in the room and…all sorts of wild things happen at those times– no doubt.”
I’m not clear on what your statement is here – are you saying they literally happen at these times or that this is an explanation for some of them? I think it’s certainly an explanation for all events fitting into this description, my experience as an example. There isn’t any evidence to point to anything else.
“Another one is lack of sleep. Do you know about that?”
Hallucination induced by exhaustion? I’ve experienced it while deployed but that was under extreme circumstances. I’m sure it to goes some distance to explaining certain experiences people have.
I never belittle the experiences people say they have. My coworker swears by her grandfathers word that he saw a UFO. I explained to her that it’s definitely plausible he saw something he couldn’t explain. I part ways however when people ignore real evidence for say anecdotal evidence – in this case her grandfathers word is good enough regardless of the fact that he didn’t see any real detail to confirm it was something from another world. Once you take those steps you’ve stepped into the world of woo
sonic,
Let me remind you what you said:
“If esp is real and uses gravity waves to instantaneously…”
“If gravity waves exist, then they probably travel at the speed of light”
You can’t have it both ways.
You can have ESP communicating instantaneously AND gravity waves travelling at the speed of light as the medium.
…and how about materialism/physicalism/naturalism v spiritualism/non-physicalism/supernaturalism.
BTW, anyone else having trouble loading this thread?
Maybe we need a page 2.
Sonic,
How about a tricky exercise in defining the differences between soup, sauce and gravy?
BJ7,
Yeah, particularly on a smart phone – have to scroll through all comments every time you reload, and sometimes it only partially loads, but you don’t know that until you get to the bottom. Nightmare.
1100!!!
Sonic,
“We are having a terminology problem–”
I believe that there is only “material” or “stuff” interacting according to physical laws, and nothing else. I don’t know whether that best fits the formal definition of materialism, physicalism or naturalism best, but that’s my position and I think I’ve been clear on that from the get go.
If you’re proposing that there’s something other than this, what is it? This position is where the evidence leads and I’ll stick with it until this ceases to be the case.
Like I said before, it’s like you’re obsessing over the differences between soup, sauce and gravy and refusing to accept a definition of “it’s a tasty liquid that you put on food” as valid.
BillyJoe7-
Thank you for these questions– I think some of our communications have gummed up on this point needlessly.
If I use the ‘if’ in front of a proposition, then I’m using it to mean ‘”in case that, granting or supposing that; on condition that.”
So it could be I’m making a joke– “IF gravity waves are instantaneous (obviously they can’t be, this is a joke coming)… or I might say “If pigs could fly…”
So I can have it both ways– that’s called testing a premise and is valuable in learning how a certain premise might lead to obviously incorrect conclusions.
“If this guy can read my mind, then he knows I’m thinking…, but he doesn’t know I’m thinking… so he isn’t reading my mind… so…”
I guess my rundown of philosophies wasn’t really an endorsement of any. What did you expect?
mumadadd-
I think there are other experiences called esp-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrasensory_perception
(I never use the term esp except here recently– I do know it is used for a variety of phenomena though).
One of the problems with your description of your philosophy is leaves the question- what is ‘material’ or ‘stuff’?
And then the question would be what is physics about– right?
As Heisenberg said-
I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.
You know Plato?
For more on the physics try schrodinger’s equation-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation
grabula-
If a UFO is an ‘unidentified flying object’, then I think there are lots of them– why I just saw something flying– I’m not sure what just now.
If ‘ufo’ means ‘visitors from another planet’– well, that’s a whole different story. 😉
Modern physics really has thrown things for a loop.
Bell’s theorem and Aspect experiments are a good place to start.
It turns out that ‘matter’ is either ‘non-real’ or ‘non-local’ or both. (I think the most recent experiments indicate ‘matter’ is both ‘non-real’ and ‘non-local’.
Hint: In a nutshell, quantum theory tells us that two entangled particles behave as a single physical object, no matter how far apart they are. If a measurement is performed on one of these particles, the state of its distant twin is instantaneously modified.
Sonic,
I missed off a crucial sentence:
When the argument is about whether food exists or not.
No, I don’t know Plato. I’ve heard of him, many times, but I couldn’t tell you anything about him, other than that he was a Greek philosopher of some note. But I’ve been exposed to many modern philosophical positions that were built upon his work, and incorporated that modern synthesis into my worldview, so there probably aren’t any of his good ideas I haven’t heard in some form or other.
Nor do I know much about quantum physics. But I do have the sense to defer to the common scientific interpretation of this stuff as distilled by science communicators I’ve come to trust.
Doesn’t mean there’s something other than material (and please do refer back to my stated position). And I also notice that I had you pegged several posts ago in that You’re now quibbling the definition of material (adressed to grabula).
sonic — You have more than adequately convinced me that your brain is a very good receiver of woo. However, your astonishing ability to perform this feat has a well established explanation that is far beneath your ability to comprehend. In summary: You are looking in all the wrong places to find rational explanations for your personal experiences. The places you are looking are limited to those that confirm your belief in mysticism and science fiction.
Holding personal beliefs that lack evidence is perfectly acceptable. Acting on your personal beliefs is pretending to know things that you don’t know. It isn’t funny and it isn’t clever; it is demonstrating only wilful ignorance of science plus a refusal to learn critical thinking skills.
sonic,
My point is that with “if” you can everything you want – even mutually exclusive propositions.
I’m pretty sure that that is a pretty useless exercise.
If ESP is true it is a form of instantaneous communication.
If gravity waves are instantaneous, then they could be the medium of ESP.
See how this gets you nowhere.
The best scientific evidence is that gravity waves travel at the speed of light.
It is also what the pretty successful special theory of relativity tells us.
Our starting point is therefore that gravity waves travel at the speed of light.
Therefore you still have no medium for ESP.
“IF gravity waves are instantaneous (obviously they can’t be, this is a joke coming)”
So it was a joke now!
Excuse me if I find that hard to believe.
It actually isn’t obvious that gravity waves are not instantaneous.
In fact, until Einstein, everyone assumed gravity waves were instantaneous.
sonic,
“I think the most recent experiments indicate ‘matter’ is both ‘non-real’ and ‘non-local’”
“In a nutshell, quantum theory tells us that two entangled particles behave as a single physical object, no matter how far apart they are. If a measurement is performed on one of these particles, the state of its distant twin is instantaneously modified”
(:
In any case…
The most predictable experiments in all of science are those involving quantum physics.
The most UNpredictable experiments are those involving the paranormal.
That should give you pause in invoking quantum physics to explain the paranormal.
In fact, it should stop you dead in your tracks (;
BillyJoe7 —
Fat chance that ever occurring. Would be a good thing, though.
Sonic —
This zinger
is the single dumbest thing ever said about QM.
No, the state is undetermined. It does not change. And it only works once. Second dumbest thing ever.
I solemnly promise this is my last post in this thread. We don’t need a second page, we need to stop.
sonic – thanks for the link
@Sonic
I’m pretty much done like steve12, with semantic related arguments. You are tripped up too easily on these, and you use them too much as a crutch to slip away from making a solid point. It’s an extremely uninteresting way to have a discussion when one must define very specifically every key word necessary to communicate – it’s why we formed the ability to generally express ourselves verbally without having to literally beam thoughts into each others heads- which there’s never been any evidence for regardless.
“Modern physics really has thrown things for a loop.”
Only at a certain very specific level. I suspect you also use quantum physics as a crutch like many other woo proponents do to prop up belief in something else using the argument of the gaps method. I’m sure a few, if not most of us have atleast an equal understanding of quantum physics as you and it too is tiresome to have to discuss why it doesn’t fill every void in our understanding of woo. I certainly understand that quantum ‘weirdness’ in no way allows anything and everything to exist…because.
“If I use the ‘if’ in front of a proposition, then I’m using it to mean ‘”in case that, granting or supposing that; on condition that.”
So it could be I’m making a joke– “IF gravity waves are instantaneous (obviously they can’t be, this is a joke coming)… or I might say “If pigs could fly…””
So in essence you’ll put together the language as you see fit then interpret it to your convenience after the fact? This is disingenuous and I’m starting to understand steve12’s frustration. It’s as f you’re not really sure how to communicate effectively using written/spoken language. I think you’ve made the mistake of convincing yourself that if you can confuse the issue enough, you’ve somehow established intellectual dominance over your opponent. It’s disappointing to see it since it in no way helps you make any of your cases or advance an understanding for yourself or those who commune with you. Just look at how confusing it’s been for anyone to even nail down a particular stance with you on
this thread. What is that getting you but dismissed for being unable to communicate effectively?
The remarkable staying power of this thread proves the power of motivated reasoning. I fear not many outsiders will have the patience to learn from it.
Sonic,
Thanks for continuing to respond in the face of what must seem like an angry mob…I assure you they have the best of intentions in trying to help you think more critically. In doing so, they have continued to hone their debating skills to a point where it will be easy for them to help others who are truly unsure of how to best examine which claims should be accepted as true – and you have served as the most shining example of someone who is unwilling to truly engage in rational discourse. Your extreme pedantry, semantic filibustering, posting of links of fringe science and anything else you think supports your position is not only misguided, but typical. Same for your unwillingness to respond to key questions that would certainly initiate cognitive dissonance in your mind. I do commend you for refraining from ad hom attacks and you do seem like a generally good natured person – however, the current filter you employ to weigh evidence is severely lacking and this has led you to believe in all sorts of claims not supported by science and the scientific community.
You will be forever relegated to the margins, and that is OK because you do not truly value knowledge. For if you were truly willing to examine the mountains of negative evidence against esp/psi for example, you would reach the same conclusions as the smartest people on earth – the ones who have no time for such nonsense until it can be demonstrated. Make no mistake, it has NOT been demonstrated under controlled conditions in the history of mankind. Your ploy of ‘asking questions’ is not novel, and will not lead you to truth. A good start would be to look at the general consensus of the scientific community, they have dedicated their lives to figuring out reality – what is true and what is not. Can they be wrong? Of course, but listen, these things matter when it comes to how you live your life and teach your children what to believe. The survival of our species is on the line, and you are betting with your life rather than challenge your views – it takes real courage. This is not the 1800’s anymore, and we as a species should be proud of the understanding we have gained of reality, nature and the universe. No one can stop you from believing in magic, just know that it is outside the purview of science. You have declined the opportunity to understand why that is so.
The remarkable staying power of this thread proves that the issue is interminably unsettled (and that at one point it became more important to get 1000+ comments than to really say anything). What could anybody learn from this thread? Nothing. There’s nothing here to learn except that everybody’s got an opinion and people like to argue.
“What could anybody learn from this thread?”
A lot about logical fallacies, motivated reasoning, standards of evidence, current neuroscience, and old philosophical debates. With a heavy sprinkling of batshit crazy just for entertainment value.
Ekko, I completely agree on the entertainment value. I enjoyed participating in this thread and reading many of the comments. But observing logical fallacies, motivated reasoning, standards of evidence, current neuroscience, and old philosophical debates doesn’t really help us learn anything about them. I think we need to go back to established teachings to really learn. A person would have to already know about these things in order to sort out anything of value from the batshit crazy.
Bill Openthalt–
Here is where I took that line from-
http://phys.org/news/2012-01-quantum-physicists-entanglement-nonlocality.html
(It’s the third paragraph)– I’m sorry I forgot to put the link with the quote.
mumadadd-
Of course everything could be called ‘matter’, if we define it that way.
Just like ‘god is love’… works the same way–
You do know what a tautology is– right?
PeteA-
What did I say that made you think I’m a believer in mysticism and science fiction?
Exactly what belief am I holding without evidence?– I don’t know what you are talking about.
Please be more specific.
BillyJoe7-
‘If’ is used to introduce a conditional clause– ‘If pigs could fly,…’ or ‘If 6 turns out to be 9– I don’t mind…’
When I use the word ‘if’ I am introducing a possibility– not arguing for a fact.
You find it hard to believe I’m making a joke.
”
I said-
“If esp is real and uses gravity waves to instantaneously without any reduction in strength over distance, transfer spoken words from people long dead it will forever be impossible spot a ‘Poe’. Reality would be that weird after all.
Hard to see I’m joking there?
When did I invoke quantum mechanics to explain the paranormal?
I did no such thing (I’m not joking– I did no such thing).
I have no position on if esp is real or not. I don’t know.
It is clear (and has been for sometime) that I don’t communicate well with you.
For example– you don’t know that when I use the word ‘if’ I’m making a hypothetical statement, not a statement of belief.
I can imagine that would be confusing beyond…
Mlema-
You are welcome.
grabula-
I don’t know if esp is real or not.
I understand it would be very frustrating to try to ‘nail down’ my position- what I have argued is that I think one’s evaluation of the experimental evidence depends on one’s priors in this case (Perhaps more so than in others).
I gave the Utts/Hyman papers as examples.
So my position is clearly stated and easily understood– it’s just you seem to think I have some other position.
But I don’t.
The Street Epistemologist-
Huh?
My position is that one’s priors effects one’s reading of the experimental evidence re: esp
It is also my position that I don’t know if esp is real or not.
It is also my position that quantum mechanics applies to all physical objects.
It is also my position that: “In a nutshell, quantum theory tells us that two entangled particles behave as a single physical object, no matter how far apart they are.”
Could you tell me specifically what claim I have been making on this thread that isn’t supported by ‘science’?
Would you tell me what ‘magic’ I have advocated?
Please be more specific as I really don’t know what you are talking about.
Thanks…
Ekko-
And let’s not forget one might learn the meaning and use of the word ‘if’.
If one wanted to…
When logic and critical thinking fails…..time to call in Dr Robotnik!!
The issue is no less settled than evolution being a fact is settled. There are denialists out there, and perhaps always will be, but that doesn’t make evolution any less true. The denialists are no less committed to an ideology or willing to happily use logical fallacies and accept low standards of evidence than some folks here are.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with someone from New Zealand some time back. NZ has far more atheists per capita than the US, and it’s more socially acceptable, even trendy, to be an atheist, but many of those people also are fervent anti-vaxxers and woo proponents. I think humans will always be subject to this kind of thinking, and in a way perhaps thinking critically and skeptically is contrary to our natural predispositions.
@sonic
“So my position is clearly stated and easily understood– it’s just you seem to think I have some other position”
You’ve made your position pretty clear in the past sonic. I think you believe making it vague as you have here makes it more defensible but what it actually does is make it hard to communicate with you, as evinced by the ongoing frustration. Don’t mistake that frustration for a an inability on our part to keep up, you just really need to work on effective communication
Sonic,
You’ve been told that the “priors” gambit is tired yet you keep using it.
“When did I invoke quantum mechanics to explain the paranormal?”
Paranormal phenomena include ESP, ghosts, telekinesis, UFOs, and cryptids.
Yep, I class paranormal phenomena as mysticism and science fiction. You put a lot of effort into promoting, justifying, and trying to explain the paranormal — which is something only a believer would do.
Whatever it is that you are trying to explain by invoking quantum mechanics is irrelevant because you have not understood quantum mechanics. You’ve been looking in the wrong places and clutching at straws: your quotes from the PhysOrg article of Jan 2012 are a good example. Here’s one that you’ve used…
“It is also my position that: ‘In a nutshell, quantum theory tells us that two entangled particles behave as a single physical object, no matter how far apart they are.'”
Then your position is in error, as has been pointed out to you by BillyJoe7. You are confusing correlation for causation because you do not understand quantum mechanics. Believers in the paranormal (and other woo) wave QM around in the hope that it’s a magic wand — it isn’t; it just makes the person waving it appear as scientifically illiterate.
“It is also my position that quantum mechanics applies to all physical objects.”
I don’t think that means what you think it means.
You are indeed pretending to know things that you don’t know. When challenged, you reply evasively.
uh oh… another post. it just won’t stop. won’t stop. won’t stop. won’t stop.
no it won’t. it will go on. teasing out this flaw and that. forcing you into more fronts you must defend. stretching you thin. like not enough butter for one piece of toast. truth seeping in every crack. dripping until drowned. soaking you to the bone. you can climb if you wish. adding just a few more blocks. just gotta keep your head above water. you end up with a monument. it might have been a sight to behold if the waters did not rise to consume it. building so high so fast, scrambling between the corners, determined to leave a great work. you will look to find nothing but the water. calm as glass. content with its form. occupying its new place so naturally one might begin to wonder if it hadn’t been there all along. so majestic it… uh… why was I doing this again? I know I had a point or something. got a little carried away with the colorful metaphors there.
I was following it, but it just rambled so far. like some rambling fission reaction. before I knew what was what I was just rambling along with it. it just spread to my generalized rambling centers or something. I feel violated. hold me.
Sonic’s style of argument is pretty much encapsulated in the lyric:
‘All lies and jest, till the man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.’
Sonic,
I actually agree here, and deliberately refrained from certain phrasing to try to avoid exposing myself to this objection. If we say reality is made of material, and material is whatever reality is made of, that’s definitely circular. To be honest I saw this problem when you first showed up on this thread and thought about saying this then, but didn’t really expect to get called on it. I’ll rephrase my position.
I think materialists/dualists/idealists all start at the same place, ‘I think therefore I am’, and would agree that this is the only axiom we can prove to be true. From there we diverge: the materialists believe that external reality exists, and that we are part of it, with nothing added; the idealists believe that external reality does not exist, only perceptions (I know this is very simplistic); dualists believe that external reality exists but that consciousness requires something other this. And still, the only thing we can be sure of is that we (the individual) exist.
Does that clarify my position, Sonic? When talking to you, I should probably restate my position as BronzeDog’s version of ‘monist’ (don’t know if you tracked this thread before you appeared but it’s there in black and white), to avoid falling into the trap of defending definitions for material, but for the most part I think people will recognise materialism/naturalism/physicalism for what I stated above. The important point, for me, is the exclusion of something other/extra to what we can theoretically investigate through the scientific method. And to spell that out again: physical (whatever the ultimate nature of the physical may be) effects and physical forces; methodological naturalism.
So, I suppose I don’t have much of an objection to idealism–I don’t believe it myself, of course–but theoretically it’s compatible with reality as defined in scientific terms–but dualism of any kind seems, to me, intellectually void. I say this because if dualism were true, there should be effects in consciousness that have no discernible physical (or neuro-anatomical) correlate. Are there any? Meanwhile the positive correlations are building steadily.
grabula-
I was asked what I thought about esp. by mumadadd.
I said what I think- (I don’t know if it is real or not.)
Apparently some people think I shouldn’t think that.
That’s my world– welcome to it.
It’s funny– you might imagine that lots of people have told me I think things I shouldn’t. Well, you would be right, people have told me that before quite a bit. Apparently my mind has some rather odd things going on in it.
So you are thinking I want people to be able to read my mind?
Ummm- maybe not.
Pete A-
Thank-you for the comment.
I’m tired of talking about priors too.
I don’t think quantum mechanics proves esp is real (I would have confidence esp is real if I thought qm proved it was real.)
I asked what law of physics would be violated if esp were real, and I’m not sure how that went… it just seems a weak argument and not necessary– the whole ‘it would change everything we know’ stuff is silly, for example.
I really don’t want to give the impression that QM has proved esp is real or that ghosts exist– can you tell me what I said that would give that impression? I’m confused. Did I say QM proves esp is real? I don’t want to say that, I don’t remember saying that… I’m confused…
It would be a big help to me if I knew what I said.
Are you saying the article from phys.org is incorrect?
Does this have anything to do with it?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
Are you thinking this last loophole will save locality?
Maybe it will. I’m not sure… apparently we might get results in a few years.
mumadadd-
I understand what you are saying- although I think you mean that dualism includes something that we can’t investigate scientifically… Perhaps?
Anyway, I get the clarification and I’m glad to know you know what a tautology is.
I’d guess part of the NDE thing is about a possible conscious state without neural correlates. No doubt part of the reason it is so contentious.
I think the difficulty for ‘materialism’ and ‘consciousness’ is this– it is hard to imagine how adding something that isn’t conscious to something that isn’t conscious would bring about consciousness. Doesn’t matter how many rocks I add to the pile– no consciousness there, for example.
There are problems with the other philosophies as you have pointed out.
We are well over 1000 now…
sonic,
“Apparently my mind has some rather odd things going on in it.”
Apparently.
If the topic is evolution you post links to the scientific fringe.
If the topic is QM you post links to the scientific fringe.
If the topic is climate change you post links to the scientific fringe.
If the topic is GMO you post links to the scientific fringe.
So what do you expect?
For me, you have become a litmus test for any subject that I know little about – follow your links to see the wrong way to think about these subjects!
“Did I say QM proves ESP is real?”
It seemed to be implied in what you said about and linked to regarding QM and ESP.
If you don’t want to give that impression, then maybe you should be clear what you think.
After all, we really cannot read your mind.
“Are you thinking this last loophole will save locality? Maybe it will. I’m not sure…”
You’re not sure?
Okay, but…on the balance of probabilities…what do you think will be the outcome?
Hint: physicists do not expect this experiment to disprove “non-locality”. They are merely suggesting a way to close the last possible loophole for “hidden variables”. It remains to be seen whether any of them are interested enough to spend the time and effort to do the experiment.
“Non-locality” is a pretty well established part of QM.
What it means is another question which may or may not have an interesting answer (see below)
“it is hard to imagine how adding something that isn’t conscious to something that isn’t conscious would bring about consciousness”
It might be hard to imagine HOW it happens, but the fact is that it DOES happen all the time…
A zygote is not conscious but, as it grows and develops, gradually consciousness appears.
Do you think that something that is *conscious* must be added to the zygote as it grows and develops in order to bring about consciousness?
Does it even make sense to propose the existence of consciouness in order to produce consciousness?
Do you think the idea encapsulated by the phrase “The Universal Mind” has some traction?
(Or do you agree with me that that explains exactly nothing!…wherefrom the universal mind?)
Or do you think that a zygote is conscious?
Atoms?
“I’d guess part of the NDE thing is about a possible conscious state without neural correlates”
Yep, a conscious state floating around in a soup of “Cosmic Consciousness” does not sound like much of peg to hang your hat on.
BJ: “What it means is another question which may or may not not have an interesting answer”
How does mass attract mass?
By curving spacetime.
How does mass curve spacetime?
By gravity waves.
What are gravity waves?
A force produced by mass.
How does mass produce this force?
Or does the force produce the mass?
What is this force?
How does this force curve spacetime?
What is spacetime?
How does space convert to time and time to space?
Scientists may not know what all this means, but any answers so far have been the result of the materialist assumption of science, so what it does NOT mean is that dualism or idealism (or ESP or the paranormal) is correct.
This page no longer loads onto my ipad.
Here’s a Sonic highlight reel. I’ve tried not to take comments out of context, and have also included non-controversial stuff and things I agree with so as not to distort the overall picture. Also, it’s incomplete as I got bored. (And….sorry, Sonic).
-I agree with this!
BillOpenthalt-
I don’t know if ‘gravity waves’ are real or not– as an example of a wave that has yet to be discovered.
Have you ruled out gravity waves as possible?
Sonic,
Me:
You:
Did you miss something? Or did I?
Sonic — Thanks for your reply to me and others, hopefully, I now better understand your comments.
During our early childhood we know little about science. We use our curiosity, creativity, and unbounded imagination to learn about the world. During this time it’s perfectly acceptable to have imaginary friends and to be anthropomorphic e.g. having a teddy bear as our best friend and confidante. During our adult life it’s perfectly acceptable, even beneficial to our health, to have a pet as a companion: the only thing that would be considered odd about this is if we didn’t talk to our pet
Learning science and mathematics teaches us about reality, which is good; it also sets bounds on our curiosity, creativity, and previously-unbounded imagination, which is perhaps rather sad — it spoils some of the fun that humans so enjoy having. To illustrate my point, which category of movie would rake in the most revenue: science or science fiction? We all know the answer to this question!
There is no doubt over the fact that some people have paranormal experiences. Each experience has one of three possible explanations: rational; irrational; or no explanation. Human nature strongly prefers the irrational explanation because it’s more fun; it’s the only one out of the three that fuels our curiosity and imagination.
Science is two things: the most accurate accumulation of human knowledge that we’ve ever possessed; a vast toolbox of finely-crafted tools and analytical methods. However, it is the duty of each user to treat the tools with utmost care and respect; to use them only for their intended purposes. If I ask “Can science show that ESP would defy the laws of physics?” I would be demonstrating my gross misuse of the tools in the toolbox. The burden of proof is upon me to demonstrate, beyond a shadow of doubt, that ESP exists. Then, and only then, could I reasonably ask: “Is ESP explainable using existing knowledge or do we need to generate a testable hypothesis that will lead to the expansion of our knowledge?” The overwhelming evidence we have for ESP is that it does not exist. It isn’t a yet-to-be-discovered phenomenon that needs more research. It’s done and dusted and long overdue for being relegated to history as a shining example of terrible research methods.
You asked if the PhysOrg article is incorrect: yes, it is hopelessly incorrect yet the meme on which it is based is still being tiresomely regurgitated on many science reporting media outlets. The ScienceDaily article to which you linked is intriguing, but we must remind ourselves to resist making paranormal (or any other) speculations until the results of this future experiment have been fully analysed and understood. This will most probably close the loophole rather than open the door to unbridled imagination and having fun. It’s a pity that we’ll have to wait a few years to discover the outcome.
The erroneous QM meme is a conjuring trick based on a gap in our early learning about the world in which we live. We learnt to interact with the world using primarily space-time experiences, which severely constricted our thinking to only this domain. E.g. we use “If A then B” logic and, most unfortunately, we frequently draw the fallacious conclusion “B occurred therefore A caused it”, which is the primary driver for us being highly superstitious animals. The QM meme trick relies on the listener being unable to understand that a pair of entangled photons are NOT like two tennis balls travelling through space-time; and it also relies on the listener failing to understand the wave-particle duality of microscopic matter.
Most listeners, including many scientists, succumb to this conjuring trick then combine it with a statement such as your “It is also my position that quantum mechanics applies to all physical objects.” to draw untestable bizarre conclusions — the multiverse hypothesis springs to mind
It is vaguely true that quantum mechanics applies to all physical objects, but most inferences drawn from this fall foul of the two fallacies: the fallacy of composition; the fallacy of hasty generalization.
I apologise for misunderstanding/misinterpreting your comments. I’ve really enjoyed reading your comments because they make me think deeply about what I believe and why I’ve arrived at my current ways of thinking. I’ll end this comment with something that I hope you find amusing: Nobody can accurately read our mind; the least accurate reader is always ourself
BillyJoe7-
glad to be of service. 😉
mumadadd-
I missed something. (But not the main thing– right?) I misread the first time.
I don’t have a problem with what you put in your rendition. Let’s include this:
Apparently the ‘matter’ in this universe has nonlocal properties.
That’s not from a philosophy.
This discovery killed both ‘cartisian dualism’ and ‘materialism’– hence we have ‘interactive dualism’ and ‘physicalism’.
Pete A
My goal is to present something to think about (not something ‘right’) and if you understand that, we should get on quite well. And thank you for noticing.
We may have to get further into physics at some point– (as evidenced by my comment to mumadadd).
Perhaps we should begin by agreeing the ‘multiverse is a bit perverse’… fighting memes with memes!!
Yes, I’ve often wondered how anyone else could read my mind given that I can’t.
Well over 1000 comments now.
Hasta la vista.
I’m afraid even my computer is having trouble loading this page now – and I mostly like to use my ipad (which won’t load it at all) because I can use it wherever I want. So I think this will be my last post here.
Sonic,
Okay, sorry if I was needlessly pedantic.
What steps are you taking in your reasoning from ‘non-local properties’ to dualism? Do you disagree with my position external that ‘external reality exists, and that we are part of it, with nothing added’?
Sonic — I’m not good at writing poetry, but here goes anyway…
The idea of a multiverse
Is a bit too perverse.
In my way thinking
My brain is not linking
Outside of this universe.
Having synchronous locks
Is something that mocks.
Quantumly entangled?
My brain must be mangled
Or linked to a big pile of rocks.
Dualism, physicalism
Which one is realism?
It’s easy to decide
Which horse to ride
By the motives behind the schism.
Brain a receiver?
It’s just a deceiver!
It has to be tamed
Taught, and retrained
To become a half-good perceiver.
It has to be said
That the length of this thread
Is a bit of a mystery
That might go down in history,
But Steven may close it instead.
I’ll be back!
Pete – nice!
Sonic,
Just reread my last post and see that I might have slightly misunderstood you (very early in the morning). I just looked up ‘interactive dualism’, and the idea was proposed by Descartes, so my guess is it’s the same thing as ‘cartesian dualism’. I checked three sites to make sure I wasn’t just looking at an incorrect definition.
But anyway, my question still stands: what steps are you taking from ‘non local properties’ to there being something additional to material reality in consciousness?
Pete A-
Very nice.
mumadadd-
Your right- I made a mistake about Descartes.
Quantum mechanics wiped out any ‘non-interactive’ dualism.
In order to know how the physical universe will act, one must take into account the choices the experimenter makes… So light might act as a particle, or it might act like a wave– we can’t know unless we know which aspect the experimenter is going to measure. (A ‘choice’ or thought impacts the actions of the physical…)
(I think the non-local properties are tied to the ‘wave-particle’ properties… Do you agree?)
Regarding physics and consciousness–
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse
“In order to know how the physical universe will act, one must take into account the choices the experimenter makes… ”
Obviously.
If the lad chose not to drop the rock off the overpass, the driver below would not have been killed.
If the physicist chose not to activate the sensors, an interference pattern would have appeared.
“So light might act as a particle, or it might act like a wave”
Quantum entities travel as waves and interact as particles.
“we can’t know unless we know which aspect the experimenter is going to measure”
Obviously.
If he activates the sensors, a scatter pattern typical of particles will be seen.
If he does not activate the sensors, an interference pattern typical of waves wil be seen
“A ‘choice’ or thought impacts the actions of the physical…”
Sonic,
I don’t know much at all about quantum physics. I know bits and pieces of really quirky sounding stuff by rote, without actually understanding the basics of it even slightly. Now you know where my response is coming from, here it is.
I’ve heard of the observer effect, but generally only in the context of it being ‘debunked’, at least as it’s described in your linked article. It’s interaction that causes the wave function to collapse, right? No consciousness required. I notice that the article was from 2002 – was that around the first time this notion was put forward? What’s the current consensus on this in the physics community? What proportion of physicists would have to dismiss the observer effect for you to dismiss it?
And, I still don’t understand how you get to this to any form of dualism, so you’ll need to spell that out, and please, in your own words. Something like this:
I think the brain causes the mind because:
-tight correlations between affecting brain and affecting mind, in specific and predictable ways
-the fact that changing the brain reliably changes the mind later
-lack of evidence for any proposed mechanism for receiving a signal from elsewhere
-lack of evidence of any disembodied consciousness
If you need to add citations or links you can do so, either along with a stripped down argument or later, but I need to be able to understand what your actual point is.
I don’t know, Sonic, I really don’t – see above.
mumadadd-
I don’t understand quantum mechanics either.
I have read about the various interpretations that work–
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
Take your pick.
BTW– The ‘observer effect’ can’t be ‘debunked’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
If you look at the ‘consciousness causes collapse’ view, then ‘consciousness’ becomes a fundamental (like in the article), and ‘consciousness’ isn’t physical– therefore the possibility of dualism.
I don’t know which of the interpretations is correct– if I had to put money– ‘none of the above’.
Sonic,
Just from a purely logical perspective, the observer effect is easily disproved by the fact that quantum experimental effects are not directly observed by a consciousness, but instead ‘dumb’ non-sentient sensors, with a lag between the recording of the result and concious observation of that recorded result.
This could be better emphasised by adding a more meaningful gap between the recording and the conscious observation, say 3 hours, 3 days, whatever; unless you’re somehow proposing that the act of conscious observation of the recorded result somehow changes the digital encoding of the information on whatever device recorded it, then reaches back through time to align the collapse the wave function in the original experiment with that result… but I doubt you believe that. Or do you?
And, I’ll ask you again, how do you get from this, even if the observer effect is real, to any kind of dualism?
Sonic,
Argh, this is from your own link:
If you trace the sources back this comes from the Weizmann Institute of Science:
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/
I don’t know how credible they are, and I’ve not dug out the cited experiments, but perhaps you can if you’re interested…
I swear I didn’t read that before my previous post!
sonic: “Regarding physics and consciousness–http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse”
Straight to the fringe dwellers. (:
From your link:
“Wheeler is the first to admit that this is a mind-stretching idea. It’s not even really a theory but more of an intuition about what a final theory of everything might be like”
And I’ll just change the following quote a little to take the magical mystery out of it:
“The experiment can be run two ways: with photon detectors right beside each slit that allow physicists to
observeDETECT the photons as they pass, or with detectors removed, which allows the photons to travelunobservedUNDETECTED”Sounds pretty mundane now, doesn’t it?
“Does this mean humans are necessary to the existence of the universe? While conscious observers certainly partake in the creation of the participatory universe envisioned by Wheeler, they are not the only, or even primary, way by which quantum potentials become real. Ordinary matter and radiation play the dominant roles”
So, in fact, even Wheeler admits that consciousness is not essential.
And most modern day quantum physicists deny any role at all for consciousness.
“The particle and the cat now form a quantum system consisting of all possible outcomes of the experiment. One outcome includes a dead cat; another, a live one. Neither becomes real until someone opens the box and looks inside. With that observation, an entire consistent sequence of events— the particle jettisoned from the uranium, the release of the poison gas, the cat’s death— at once becomes real, giving the appearance of something that has taken weeks to transpire”
The purpose of Schroedinger’s thought experiment was to show the ridiculousness of this idea. A cat cannot be both alive and dead. It is either alive or dead. It can clearly never be in a superposition of alive and dead, whatever that can possibly mean.
“my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When you open the cat’s box after a week, you’re going to find either a live cat or a smelly piece of meat. You can say that the cat looks as if it were dead or as if it were alive during the whole week. Likewise, when we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago”
There was a brief phase in the development of quantum physics that quantum physicist entertained these crazy ideas. Most quickly moved on and most now shrug off any role of consciousness in “collapse of the wave function”.
Quantum physics is weird, but it’s not crazy!
mumadadd, you’re on the money.
mumadadd,
“Sonic,
Argh, this is from your own link:
“An important aspect of the concept of measurement has been clarified in some QM experiments where a small, complex, and non-sentient sensor proved sufficient as an “observer”—there is no need for a conscious “observer””
That’s not the first time that one of sonic’s link has come back to bite him on the bum.
BJ7,
Good to know, and thanks for the expansion on the point.
Sonic,
I want to say, “well then you shouldn’t argue from QM”, but I’m unsure as to whether you’re even attempting to argue a point. It really seems to me that you’re doing something close to anomaly hunting here. Your posts have degenerated into a series of links that point to either something contentious on the fringe or something that you’ve (wilfully?) misunderstood, with no explanation as to what you think the implications of these things are or why you brought them up. You’re also skipping most of my questions.
Can you expand on this? What does this mean? Also you stated that you’d had personal experiences different to the kind I related; I asked you to elaborate but you just posted a link to the Wikipedia page for ‘ESP’…
I don’t mean this unkindly, Sonic, but this is becoming counter productive. You need to be clearer in what you’re saying and stop being so coy.
Sonic,
Sorry, just spotted this:
More of this sort of stuff, please! At least I know what you were getting at.
Sonic,
I’ll stop and give you chance to respond after this, I promise.
This has been covered ad infinitum in this thread already, but consciousness is physical, but it’s a process, not an object. Also, what is the collapse of the wave function if not a process? So what you really have, even given your skewed interpretation, is one physical process affecting another physical process. No dualism required.
I should add – you were begging the question. Can’t believe I just noticed that…
mumadadd-
You don’t understand the ‘observer effect’.
Here is the article that you seem to think ‘debunks’ it–
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-02/WI-QTDO-260298.php
“In a study reported in the February 26 issue of Nature (Vol. 391, pp. 871-874), researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.”
That’s debunked?
My point is there are a number of interpretations of quantum mechanics that work. There are interesting aspects to the different ones – perhaps this is but one of many universes- for example. Or, that consciousness is an irreducible aspect of nature… or that objects go back and forth in time…
I’m interested in the variety. I don’t know which is correct. If I had to guess I’d say they are all wrong.
Do you know which is correct?
Sonic, your understanding of the observer effect is dime-store.
Sonic,
Maybe not, but right now I’m willing to bet I understand it better than you do.
First you posted this link:
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse
Which does not say what you think it says. BJ7 has quite handily taken this apart, but I do want to include this little extract (my bold):
This is entirely consistent with what I said: that the wave function collapses due to interaction, not consciousness. In fact, never mind consistent, how about explicitly aligned? And that’s from the link you posted in support of the observer effect. Did you read it before you cited it, Sonic?
Then you said:
And in support of that you posted this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_%28physics%29
Which again, does not say what you think it says (My bold):
Again, direct quotation from your citation. The reference at the end of that paragraph leads to your last citation.
Notice the words ‘conscious’ and ‘consciousness’ are never mentioned? Not once… And the words ‘observer’, ‘observe’ are nearly always in scare quotes? That’s because they’re talking about non-sentientdetectors, Sonic, not direct conscious observation.
You have to be willfully misinterpreting this stuff, Sonic. Or maybe just seeing how much work you can get people to do to dismantle what you’re saying.
And, I might add, in response to this:
No, Sonic, I never said anything of the sort. I thought about it logically and applied the little bit of knowledge I do have about QM and came to this conclusion:
Which is eerily in alignment with what your Wikipedia citation states. When I dug through to the original source for Wikipedia’s reference, I found the Weizmann Institute of Science. I linked to their homepage, not the press release you found, and even said:
You should be ashamed…
And let me ask you this, Sonic. Let’s take a real world case like the photons from a distant galaxy discussed in one of your links. At what stage during the observation by a human, do you think the wave function collapses?
1.) When the photon hits (interacts with) the retina?
2.) The point the observer becomes aware of it, after the 200-500 milliseconds of processing the brain does before this happens?
If you agree that it happens at point 1, you simply have to acknowledge that consciousness has nothin at all to do with it.
sonic,
We’ve discussed quantum physics on and off for years and you’ve read numerous articles on it, but your understanding never seems to progress. In the last few days mumadadd has gone from knowing almost nothing about QM to understanding it better than you ever have. That should give you pause for thought. As somone said above, you really do have a “dime store” understanding of the observer effect. The reason, in my opinion, is that you read too much fringe science before trying to understand the real science.
May I make a couple of suggestions. Whenever you come across the words “observe” and “observer” substitute the words “detect” and “detector” respectively. Your reading will make a lot more sense if you do. And, whenever you analyse an experiment in QM, look only at the cold hard facts revealed to you by that experiment, before you get seduced into trying to interpret what it means. Whenever you try to interpret QM, what you are essentially doing is forcing your everyday experience of the macroscopic world onto quantum entities. It doesn’t work.
Quantum entities have characteristics of the waves and particles that we find in our everday experience, but they are neither. Quantum entities travel like waves and interact like particles, but waves on a pond never “collapse” into a particle and a tennis ball never becomes a wave of probability.
As one example of where you let philosophical interpretation triumph over cold hard scientific fact, let me tell you again that there has never been a quantum experiment that has unequivocally demonstrated retrocausation. Retrocausation is an interpretation of QM. Retrocausality has never actually been scientifically validated in any quantum experiment ever performed. It remains a crazy unjustified interpretation of QM.
sonic,
Oh, I can’t resist!
“http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-02/WI-QTDO-260298.php”
This is your quote from the above link:
“…researchers…conducted a highly controlled experiment demonstrating how a beam of electrons is affected by the act of being observed. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place”
But you must have been struck blind, deaf, and dumb when you came across the following sentence from the same link:
“The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons”
Oh dear!
watch = detect
observe = detect
observer = detector
Please, sonic, let that one simple but vitally important fact consolidate in your mind.
(Oh, I know it won’t, becasaue I’ve pointed it out so many times before)
BJ7:
You mean Sonic google cherry-picked until he found something that he thought supported an unsupportable idea, but he was wrong? I don’t believe it.
Next you’ll tell me he purposefully chooses to argue in terms of semantics rather than engage in good faith discussion.
BillyJoe7-
When did I say I thought the ‘observer effect’ was about humans?
I never did.
Please take a moment to reflect.
We have gotten on better in the past- -I’m not sure when things changed– but somewhere in the past few months you have taken to attacking me by making up lies about what I think and say.
I have complained about you attacking a ‘straw man’ before, but things have just gotten worse–
You do realize that you are consistently lying about what I think– right?
This is strange behavior and I really don’t understand it.
steve12-
No, what I linked to makes the point I intended to make perfectly.
The ‘observer effect’ hasn’t been ‘debunked’.
@sonic
“We have gotten on better in the past- -I’m not sure when things changed– but somewhere in the past few months you have taken to attacking me by making up lies about what I think and say.”
I realize a couple of these guys have been patting you on the back for your conversation, however some of us are well aware of your patterns – arguing from semantics as steve12 points out is your favorite, you’re doing it again to BJ7 above. You have a history of supporting all the woo, whenever you appear you argue for, never against. You’ve built your own track record here my friend, now take your medicine.
sonic,
“You do realize that you are consistently lying about what I think– right?”
If my representations of your positions are incorrect, if would be better for you to correct them than to call them lies.
Whatever I try to do to get you to state clearly your point of view always fails. In the present case, it seems to me that you are arguing for a possible role for consciousness in quantum physics. If you don’t say clearly what you mean I have to make up my own mind based on links you provide and how I interpret the comments you make about these links and about what others have said. I then feel the need to correct the (to my mind) false impressions you have left here regarding quantum physics.
Sorry if you feel these are attacks. I don’t see them as attacks. When I have offered advice in some of my posts, I have meant them as advice.
@BJ7
– Sonic made his point pretty clear – he’s not sayin’, he’s just sayin’
Sonic, I may have been a bit harsh in my last post, but it’s borne of genuine frustration.
Stuff like this:
When this was the ‘point’ you were making:
BJ7 and I used direct quotes from your own citations to show that this notion has no merit, and that your citations do not support your point in the slightest. But you won’t acknowledge it or concede the point.
You called me out for using a circular definition for ‘material’. I acknowledged this and restated my position, attempting to clarify what I meant – I consider this to be playing fair. I called you out for begging the question in your above statement, on top the fact that your own citations completely refute your point and support exactly what I said in the first place, and you still won’t concede this point?
Now it looks like your trying to retreat to a definition of the observer effect that you were not using before. That is not playing fair.
I’m sure that there are three main types of error occurring in some of the comments:
1.) Category mistakes (category errors). As the philosopher Gilbert Ryle pointed out, one cannot see a university because it is an institution not a physical object. Similarly, the mind is something the brain produces: it is not an object made of an immaterial substance (dualism, religion); the mind is a collection of dispositions and capacities (science). This is basic semantics and epistemology.
2.) A conceptual metaphor (cognitive metaphor) is the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another. Quantum mechanics is one of many complex and counter-intuitive subjects that is frequently explained using conceptual metaphors. However, most readers will not realize, or not remember, that they’ve been reading metaphors rather than the actual explanation of the subject in its original and proper domain. Speculation and/or extrapolation using this incorrect metaphorical domain quickly leads to false, even bizarre, conclusions. Fringe science writers and its readers are the worst offenders.
3.) Analysing and considering reality by misuse of the time domain, which leads to invalid logic in the premises of inductive and deductive arguments.
From the above it should be obvious that dualism and science use different a priori tenets and incompatible inferences in their arguments. QM does not bridge this gap, however, it is often invoked to hide these fundamental differences because the vast majority of people believe that QM is deeply mysterious. The conjuror uses QM to distract the audience away from the sleight of hand being used, which is the bastardization of semantics, epistemology, and the space-time domain. Such trickery is unethical.
A game of chess may help to illustrate these errors… Chess is not a physical object, it belongs to the category “games”. Each type of game is a set of possibilities bound by rules; it has a defined starting position and a final outcome e.g. win/lose/draw. The number of possible position in a chess game is around 1E46 and the game-tree complexity is at least 1E123. This complexity is greater than one hundred orders of magnitude beyond the complexity of the human brain therefore no human, and certainly no machine, can possibly see, visualize, or comprehend chess. We have to enact games by using space-time domain cognitive metaphors — the games would be very boring and totally pointless if we didn’t
A game of chess that takes 50 moves to complete has played out only 50 of the 1E46 possible positions on the board to arrive at the 1 of 3 possible outcomes. This isn’t rocket science and it doesn’t require the invocation of a “god of the gaps” or QM to explain what took place in the game.
Apologists for dualism, intelligent design, religion, and quack medicine [excuse my tautology] misdirect their marks (both potential and existing clients) by bombarding them with well-rehearsed thought-terminating statements and questions. In equivalence, they ask their marks to fully justify why none of the other 1E46 possible positions on the chess board occurred instead of the 50 that did occur — because the chances of only that particular sequence occurring is so incredibly small that it would be wholly irrational to believe that it happened without being guided by intelligent overseer.
Those who haven’t learnt critical thinking skills (i.e. the majority of the public) are the gullible prey who fuel the many empires built on exploitation.
It doesn’t much concern me whether Sonic is a perpetrator or a victim of exploitation because victims soon become perpetrators via their apologetics. Providing URLs to fringe science, pseudoscience, anti-science, and outdated philosophy is one of the many bright red warning flags of quackery.
References include, but are not limited to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_mistake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor
http://sci-ence.org/red-flags2/
http://www.skepdic.com/dualism.html
http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html
Pete A,
Awesome… slightly poetic too. Will check out a couple of your refs too.
Thanks.
Ah f*ck it, I’ve become emotionally attached to this thread, but I can see it’s on its last legs. The glory days of AliSina, Ian Wardell and leo100 are well gone. Even the second wind of Sonic is fading fast. Time to do good ol’ Thready a favour and take it out into the woods; put it out of its misery with a 12 gauge shotgun…
But, for posterity’s sake, let this be the epitaph:
“On the weight of the evidence, and arguments presented here, the brain is most definitely f*cking not a receiver”
FIN………………..
sonic,
Pete: “It doesn’t much concern me whether Sonic is a perpetrator or a victim of exploitation because victims soon become perpetrators via their apologetics. Providing URLs to fringe science, pseudoscience, anti-science, and outdated philosophy is one of the many bright red warning flags of quackery”
Sorry, sonic, this is roughly how I view your activities here and why I feel compelled to provide explanations for why your views on various aspects of science are incorrect. Of course, you never actually tell us what your own views are, but whenever the real science is presented here, you are never fail to inform us what the fringe views are. I guess, in the end, what I’m trying to point out is that there is no equivalence between real science and fringe science and, moreover, why most of these fringe views are demonstrably incorrect. There is no substitute for evidence and, if your philosophical meanderings or interpretations of the evidence go beyond or counter to this evidence then so much the worse for you. You may see this as a personal attack, but I see it as correcting the misinformation you present here.
This is a science blog after all.
BillyJoe7-
Let’s take QM as an example– other topics have similar problems–
You are mistaken about what I am saying about quantum mechanics and what I think about the subject.
For example- The fact is that ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is a perfectly valid interpretation of quantum mechanics given the Born interpretation of schodinger’s equation as evidenced by its inclusion in any listing of interpretations. It is also true that some people use this as a means of introducing dualism into physics.
So? Notice that what I say in the previous paragraph is true regardless of what I think. And it really has nothing to do with what I think, either.
I might say– “if the many worlds is correct, then…” but that doesn’t mean I think the many worlds is correct, I’m making a hypothetical.
I think it possible, perhaps likely, that most of your wrong opinions about what I think come from taking statements I have made as hypotheticals and confusing them with statements of belief.
(I also find it rather odd to call people like this ‘fringe’ but I’m not a true skeptic I guess…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler)
mumadadd-
The observer effect is just an acknowledgement that we must sometimes alter a system in order to measure it.
‘Consciousness causes collapse’ is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that is based on the Born interpretation of schodinger’s equation.
You have confused two statements that are not necessarily related to each other.
If you think the experiment has invalidated ‘consciousness causes collapse’, then why is it still listed as a valid interpretation?
(Hint: Because it still is valid).
I could explain that to you– it requires some knowledge of the Born interpretation of schodinger’s equation (What is it and what actually ‘collapses’ are the key points).
I have noted that I have had a number of communications recently (about statistical analysis and happiness, for example) where somewhat contentious arguments ended in understanding.
I don’t think that is possible with a steady stream of false statements being mixed in with the conversation and I am acting to try to end that aspect of the conversation.
Pete A-
I get the first two…
But how does misuse of the time domain enter in?
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in…
Sonic,
This took me all of 20 minutes of Google-fu.
Wave functions and the Born Interpretation:
http://www.everyscience.com/Chemistry/Physical/Introduction_to_Quantum_Mechanics/f.1288.php
The word consciousness appears…. zero times. Nada, zip, zilch. And this was the first link I found, I did not cherry pick it.
All interpretations are not equally valid, Sonic. I can’t prove that I’m not a brain in a vat, for example, but believing that I am a brain in a vat is not equally valid to believing that I have hands.
“Why the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is the most widely accepted one?”:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/81656/why-the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-quantum-physics-is-the-most-widely-accepted
Definition: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
Consciousness count: Zero again.
Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation – consciousness causes collapse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation#Objections_to_the_interpretation
This interpretation is from 1932. Do you think the field of QM has progressed since then?
Objections to this interpretation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation#Objections_to_the_interpretation
You will notice that I’ve quoted long enough passages to ensure that context is maintained.
I really don’t want to argue QM with you, Sonic. As I said before my understanding is exceedingly limited. All my objections to your points prior to this were based almost exclusively on your own sources.
Now, can we try to get this train back on the tracks? Why not elaborate on some of the ESP experiences you’ve had?
I posted a long comment with lots of links so it’s in moderation. Here it is in chunks:
Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in…
Sonic,
This took me all of 20 minutes of Google-fu.
Wave functions and the Born Interpretation:
http://www.everyscience.com/Chemistry/Physical/Introduction_to_Quantum_Mechanics/f.1288.php
The word consciousness appears…. zero times. Nada, zip, zilch. And this was the first link I found, I did not cherry pick it.
All interpretations are not equally valid, Sonic. I can’t prove that I’m not a brain in a vat, for example, but believing that I am a brain in a vat is not equally valid to believing that I have hands.
“Why the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics is the most widely accepted one?”:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/81656/why-the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-quantum-physics-is-the-most-widely-accepted
Definition: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/
Consciousness count: Zero again.
Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation – consciousness causes collapse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation#Objections_to_the_interpretation
This interpretation is from 1932. Do you think the field of QM has progressed since then?
Objections to this interpretation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation#Objections_to_the_interpretation
You will notice that I’ve quoted long enough passages to ensure that context is maintained.
I really don’t want to argue QM with you, Sonic. As I said before my understanding is exceedingly limited at best. All my objections to your points prior to this were based almost exclusively on your own sources.
Now, can we try to get this train back on the tracks? Why not elaborate on some of the ESP experiences you’ve had?
Quantum collapse, consciousness interpretation: “Postulates that the observer obeys different physical laws than the non-observer, which is a return to vitalism.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_collapse#Consciousness_interpretation
“Non-materialist neuroscience is one of the latest fronts in the war on science.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Non-materialist_neuroscience
“Quantum woo is the justification of irrational beliefs by an obfuscatory reference to quantum physics.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quantum_woo
sonic,
“The fact is that ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is a perfectly valid interpretation of quantum mechanics…as evidenced by its inclusion in any listing of interpretations”
No and no.
It will, of course, get on any exhaustive list.
But that ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is not supported by the vast majority of modern day quantum physicists. It is without doubt a fringe view, and a largely discredited one. I will once again issue my challenge: link to just one experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that cosciousness causes collapse.
“So? Notice that what I say in the previous paragraph is true regardless of what I think. And it really has nothing to do with what I think, either”
But, when you link to nothing but the views of fringe dwellers or well known quantum physicists espousing fringe views, I think we can all be excused for being suspicious that you might just lean, at least a little, in that direction.
“(I also find it rather odd to call people like this ‘fringe’ but I’m not a true skeptic I guess…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Archibald_Wheeler)”
He is clearly a well known and respected quantum physicist.
He is also clearly a well known and respected quantum physicist expressing a fringe view in the link you provided, and I quote:
“Wheeler is the first to admit that this is a mind-stretching idea. It’s not even really a theory but more of an intuition about what a final theory of everything might be like”
mumadadd-
Special relativity was published in 1905, general relativity was published in 1916.
No, I don’t think anything that has been learned has changed that. 😉
About 1932– it’s funny but when I first heard about the Copenhagen stuff I thought– “Well, that’s wrong and I can prove it!” I couldn’t at that time, I was just a kid.
Later I saw the movie ‘what the bleep…’ and became re-invigorated to prove that BS wrong (especially ‘consciousness causes collapse’).
I talked to a number of physicists about this…
Many years later I can explain why the interpretation is the way it is, and also how it doesn’t mean what most people (including the ‘woo’ people) think it means and how a proper understanding doesn’t necessarily support dualism and how most analysis miss the point entirely.
I also understand why a dualist would look at the interpretation as conforming to his beliefs– and perhaps he would be right about that.
I suppose this understanding makes me the devil incarnate and the source of all evil on earth today.
So while I offer the continued conversation on the basis that we can get into why the interpretation doesn’t mean what many seem to think and how Born’s interpretation is involved and how the ‘collapse’ is about ‘our knowledge’ and so forth — I guess I should include the warning that I am in fact the source of all evil on earth today and you should be forewarned.
BTW- There is some chance string theory will put an end to this mess– I’m not sure.
Shall we continue?
BillyJoe7-
The various interpretations all have problems… no doubt you can do better.
I don’t understand– Why are you withholding your proof from the world that this particular interpretation is wrong? The peer reviewed journals await.
PeteA-
The articles you linked to are pretty good- I wouldn’t mind getting into some of the points…
But, you lied to me at the beginning of this conversation and now you are lying about me.
I get the impression your concept of a ‘rational discussion’ consists of a series of personal attacks based on lies.
I seriously don’t think I’m right about that– these impressions can be misleading– perhaps we can do better.
We shall see…
sonic,
“The various interpretations all have problems…”
But “consciousness causes collapse” is all but dead.
“I don’t understand– Why are you withholding your proof from the world that this particular interpretation is wrong? The peer reviewed journals await”
The burden of proof.
I guess you can’t find that one experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that “consciousness causes collapse”.
The claim is extraordinary, sonic, and there’s not a single shred of evidence for it, which is why it is a fringe claim rejected by the vast majority of modern day practising quantum physicists. The few who do entertain the interpretation accept that it is a fringe view unsupported by evidence, but crazy town latches on to their unsupported and extraordinary “mind stretching…not even a theory…intuitive” off the planet wild speculations to create their own version of crazy.
sonic,
“Many years later I can explain why the interpretation is the way it is, and also how it doesn’t mean what most people (including the ‘woo’ people) think it means and how a proper understanding doesn’t necessarily support dualism and how most analysis miss the point entirely”
But you never do.
All you ever do is link to the fringe.
“So while I offer the continued conversation on the basis that we can get into why the interpretation doesn’t mean what many seem to think and how Born’s interpretation is involved…”
Since when have you offered this conversation?
“and how the ‘collapse’ is about ‘our knowledge’ and so forth…”
OMG!
Here we go. Don’t tell me. Let me guess…
You are now going to save your position by reducing “consciousness cause collapse” to “knowledge of paths”.
Have I got you pinned, sonic?
This reminds me about our disagreements about epigenetics and the word “direction” where what that word meant to you ended up not meaning what all the fringe dwellers to whom you linked meant by that word. Direction ended up NOT meaning direction to you like it did to all those to whom you linked. It was an extraordinary display.
It seemed to me at the time that you acted like a cornered rat who avoided the fatal stomp of the booted foot by turning into a kitten.
Are we going to see a replay?
Or are you going to complain that I have been misinterpreting you all along?
Sonic,
I should probably listen to that quiet little nagging voice in my head more. But you you got me dead bang here, so I’ll just admit that this was ill thought out:
I don’t get it. Why would you say this? I think for some reason you’re bristling with pride because I said something a bit silly.
No offence, but if I want somebody to explain the merits of different interpretations of of QM to me, you’re quite close to the bottom of the list. You’ve already both explicitly admitted, then repeatedly demonstrated, that you don’t understand it. And, like I said before:
It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, Sonic. It’s just that the QM conversation is a pointless one; you can’t explain it to me because you don’t understand it, and because it doesn’t bear explaining in prose to somebody (me) who hasn’t the first clue about any of the underlying maths. For all these reasons and more, you really should drop it.
Sonic —
It seems that you mistake “rational conversation” to mean an opportunity for you to indoctrinate your audience. First, you have to find an audience that has less knowledge of science than yourself. You are peddling anti-science BS on a science blog: I am simply pointing this out, as some other commentators have painstakingly pointed out.
If you were to stop playing silly games with semantics, being irrational, and peddling BS you would still be incapable of having a conversation, let alone a rational conversation. Conversation: a talk, especially an informal one, between two or more people, in which news and ideas are exchanged. You do not *exchange* news and ideas, you push your agenda and reject anything and everything not in agreement with it. You even reject solid evidence that is in any way contrary to your beliefs[1].
You admit that you do not understand QM yet you continue to use it as a magic wand. You also use out-dated philosophy and science to justify your alternative to reality. When asked to back your extraordinary claims using solid evidence, you provide none[2].
As I’ve said before, you are pretending to know things that you don’t know. Despite this, you continue with your charade.
The universe doesn’t care that you are wrong; it is only you who deeply cares that you are wrong. Science is slowly but surely closing the gaps in which woo can reside therefore woomeisters hate science with increasing vengeance — Deepak Chopra, for example.
Sonic, you are fishing in the wrong pond. You are like a creationist who insists that the universe is less than ten thousand years old; carbon dating is defective science; blah, blah, f’ing blah. Such tactics are deliberate deceit.
“But, you lied to me at the beginning of this conversation and now you are lying about me.”
An expected response from a promotor of anti-science after they’ve dug themself into a deep hole. Hint: When in a hole, it’s best to stop digging.
Each time you have been asked to state your beliefs, or your agenda has been challenged, you have been deceitful. Deceit: the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth.
The Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense:
http://crispian-jago.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-venn-diagram-of-irrational-nonsense.html
Having a rational conversation with someone promoting irrational nonsense is epistemologically impossible.
Footnotes:
[1] “You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep-seated need to believe.” — [often attributed to] Carl Sagan.
[2] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence
BillyJoe7-
What makes you think I’m talking about ‘knowledge of paths’?
Have I ever used that phrase? No?
This does remind me of previous conversations– I say one thing, you claim I’m saying something else and then you attack something that I never said. This turns into a discussion between you and you about how wrong the things I didn’t say or mean are.
Thank-you for the demonstration of this once again.
mummadadd-
I agree- the physics is math, which is an analogy for the actual– and our English is an analogy for the math…
Lot’s of room for ‘stretching’ the analogy too far.
No question– if you really want to understand it, you should study the math- and since nobody really understands QM, I can only wish you the best on your journey toward (but apparently never reaching) complete understanding.
I hope you did learn that Schrodinger’s equation is used to describe objects of any size and that quantum mechanics (physics) applies to the brain as well as everything else in the universe.
It is strange to have people claim that QM (physics) doesn’t apply to the brain. It is even stranger when the people making the claim are ‘anti-woo’.
After all, I’m pretty sure if anyone is going to claim that physics doesn’t apply to brains, it would be a ‘woo’ thing.
Right?
Please tell me what about QM that I said that you think is wrong.
I have no desire or intention to say anything wrong about it– it would be helpful if you could be specific.
Pete A-
Can you give me a specific example of where I have been deceitful about my beliefs?
Please– I can’t think of one. Really, I’m trying to remember and I can’t. I’d like to correct any false statement about my beliefs that I have made here– I really would.
Please give me the specifics.
Sonic,
I have never claimed that you are ‘wrong’ about QM. But I did some cursory checks on the inferences you drew by checking the sources you cited, and concluded, and attempted to demonstrate that:
A) you don’t understand QM.
B) you shouldn’t attempt to argue from QM
C) you aren’t in a position to educate me about QM.
Neither I, nor anybody else responding to you has either asserted or implied that the brain is not a physical system subject to the laws of physics. But there is currently no scientifically valid or accepted model of the brain or human behaviour that’s based on QM, nor is there anything from our current understanding based on neuroscience and psychology that suggests we should even be focusing our efforts on this line of enquiry.
And I want to hammer this last point home yet again, as it appears to have missed its mark the last five times I’ve said it: your citations do not say what you think they say, in fact they directly contradict your position. If you need the blow by blow just reread my previous (recent) posts.
Word is born!
sonic,
“What makes you think I’m talking about ‘knowledge of paths’?
Have I ever used that phrase? No?”
I was extrapolating from your ‘collapse’ is about ‘our knowledge’.
I cannot imagine what else you could have meant except “knowledge of paths” (ie as in the double slit experiment)
But notice how you haven’t enlightened us about what you did mean.
Why is that, sonic?
What are you always at pains to remain obscure in everything you say?
“This does remind me of previous conversations– I say one thing, you claim I’m saying something else and then you attack something that I never said”
Well, when you use the word “direct” without qualification and link to authors who are using the common straight forward definition of that word, then I think I am entitled to assume you are using the common straight forward defintion of that word. When, after lot of arguments back and forth that you are clearly losing you come up with your own idiosyncratic defintion of that word which appears in no dictionary and is clearly not the common definition of that word and that misses the essential meaning of that word, what else am I to think but that you have found a convenient escape.
“Thank-you for the demonstration of this once again”
Well, you have yet to demonstrate that I was wrong in my assumption of what you meant.
So, untill you state clearly what you meant, I am going to continue to assume that you meant “knowledge of paths”.
Up to you, sonic. Do want to be understood or not?
sonic,
mumadadd: “And I want to hammer this last point home yet again, as it appears to have missed its mark the last five times I’ve said it: your citations do not say what you think they say, in fact they directly contradict your position”
Well, sonic, does that ring a bell?
How many times over the past few years have I come to this exact same conclusion about your links?
And me and mumadadd are not the only ones.
Either we are right, or are you right and just not communicating all that well.
Either way, I don’t think it is us who have the problem.
sonic,
“Please tell me what about QM that I said that you think is wrong”
The problem is that you haven’t said anything meaningful about QM.
What do mean by “cosciousness causes collapse”?
What do you mean by “collapse is about our knowledge”?
What do you mean by “retrocausality”?
What do you mean by QM applies to the brain?
So…
Please tell us clearly what exactly you mean and we will explain clearly why you are wrong (:
mumadadd-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation
“In the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system. Solutions to Schrödinger’s equation describe not only molecular, atomic, and subatomic systems, but also macroscopic systems, possibly even the whole universe.”
I believe ‘macroscopic systems’ includes brains. Right? So Schrodinger’s equation (QM) does apply to brains… it’s just an incorrect understanding to say otherwise.
I hope the fact you came to the wrong conclusion about that will give you pause to reconsider.
I think my only actual claims have been that schrodinger’s equation (QM AKA physics) applies to a brain and the ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is a valid interpretation, both of which are accurate.
The fact there are objections to the interpretation- I know– I’m a major objector… but the objection is philosophic, not scientific or mathematic, and I believe the philosophic objection is overblown because the interpretation doesn’t necessarily imply dualism.
It might– as I pointed out– but it doesn’t necessarily, and that’s one of the things I’ve learned.
Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if you spent some time looking at the issues from the math perspective–
I think this is a good link to get started on the math.
http://plus.maths.org/content/schrodinger-1
I pick this link because I am familiar enough with the math (partial differential equations and probability densities specifically) that it doesn’t bother me, but I don’t really know it at the level of derivation– something I would want to know before I really considered that I understood the math… but I can understand the English with the math…
If that is not an appropriate site, there are others with varying degrees of math and so forth.
Good luck!
BillyJoe7-
You can’t imagine I mean something else when I say ‘our knowledge’ and so you will now explain what I mean.
And when I say I don’t mean that– you will complain I am ‘repeating myself’ and say what I never did and go off on your hobby horse flogging some straw man of your own devise.
I do need to communicate better– I will learn.
I have answered your question about what I mean when I say QM applies to the brain (see the link to schrodinger’s equation above).
QM is about all physical objects, the brain is a physical object, therefor QM is about brains– that’s the logical construct.
Clear enough? Let’s deal with that before moving on, shall we?
Sonic, I didn’t say QM doesn’t apply to brains, just that it’s not a meaningful way to describe brain function or behaviour. But okay, maybe I misunderstood your point.
I don’t dispute that there are interpretations of QM that say consciousness causes collapse, but these are, as BJ7 has pointed out, fringe. Pointing me to a more detailed explanation for one of these interpretations isn’t going to persuade me that it’s not fringe.
QM is way down the list of topics I’m willing to invest time in trying to understand, and to be honest it doesn’t really interested me right now. I have said repeatedly that I don’t want to argue it with you, and that I don’t understand it. Based on your inferences from your own citations, it seems pretty evident that you don’t understand it either. But I’m repeating myself…
Sonic, I’m probably going to stop responding if you have nothing to add beyond some vague argument from QM that you can’t make in a coherent enough way for the people you’re communicating with to understand. We’re going round in circles here…do you have something else to say? This is surely not the entirety of your case against materialism?
sonic,
“Clear enough? ”
…about as clear as mud, sonic..
But I didn’t expect anything different.
“‘collapse’ is about ‘our knowledge’”
I mean, you’ve made absolutely no attempt to clarifiy what you mean by this and explaining why this does not relate to to “knowledge of paths” in those QM experiments.
“I do need to communicate better– I will learn”
Well, it’s been a few years without any progress so, no, I don’t you’re capable of learning how to communicate. You are vague to the point of obscurity and evasive to the point of…well, perhaps I’ll just leave it there.
mumadadd-
If you don’t want to read the math link I sent (or one like it) about schrodinger’s equation, then we should not discuss this matter further.
My case about materialism being falsified by QM is mainly contained in the links I supplied earlier to the philosophers. The only other things I know about that are from the philosophy books of around 1900 where they say things that are clearly false. Perhaps you could read one of those.
‘Consciousness causes collapse’ has nothing to do with that, they have no relationship to each other in any way. It doesn’t matter what version of QM you pick– it’s problem for 1900 materialism…
My bad for the confusion– please note that I have decided to do better and I think you will see the change in the next entry.
BillyJoe7-
I have answered one of your questions- What I mean that QM applies to the brain.
I pointed out that schrodinger’s equation applies to all physical objects and that a brain is a physical object.
That is all I meant by that comment.
Do you understand that?
If not, let’s clear that up. If so- please indicate that and we might be able to move to your next question which I have not yet attempted to answer.
That’s why you think my answer on some other question isn’t clear– I have not attempted to answer it.
sonic.
“I pointed out that schrodinger’s equation applies to all physical objects and that a brain is a physical object. That is all I meant by that comment”
It that’s all you meant, then it was an irrelevant response.
Schroedinger’s equation applies to all physical objects including the brain but that doesn’t mean that it’s relevant to brain function. All macroscopic objects are, obviously, composed of quantum entities, but you can do chemistry (and physiology and biology) without reference to quantum physics (a couple of unproven exceptions notwithstanding).
Electrons with insufficent energy can be found on the other side of impenetrable barriers, but you will never be able to throw a soccer ball through a solid brick wall (apparently you can in theory, but, if you try every second for a trillion trillion trillion years, you will still have only a vanishingly small chance of doing so).
Even in the double slit experiment, interference will fail to be observed when, instead of electrons or photons, objects exceeding 60 atoms are used.
BJ – exactly right. Sonic, do you have a *point* or some *argument* that is relevant to the observation that the brain is a physical object? I’m going to pre-emptively block a few of your possible avenues of famous sonic-style wiggle:
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/news/koch-hepp-06.pdf
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9907009
You know what also effects the brain, sonic? That’s right, gravity from Pluto. We know Pluto has mass, and that the theory of gravity applies to all physical things in the universe. So Pluto’s gravity effects our brains, it’s undeniable. Like your quantum observation, this observation is also irrelevant.
Sonic,
Somewhere along the line you’ve shifted from consciousness causes collapse to Scrhodinger’s equation applies to brains. So what if it does? I already made the point that it’s not meaningful to talk about brains in terms of QM. What are you implying by bringing this up?
I have an aspirational reading list longer than both my arms combined; I’m not going to add outdated metaphysics to it.
Then you aren’t arguing against my position, which I clarified several posts ago:
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-brain-is-not-a-receiver/comment-page-24/#coment-78818
Regarding your link to the maths of Schrodinger’s equation: it’s not possible or necessary for me to interpret this myself; I don’t have the background, nor the time or inclination. I’m not a scientist so I feel I have no choice but to go with the scientific consensus as distilled by science communicators I’ve come to trust. You seem to be highly motivated to accept any weird aspect or interpretation of QM as support for your position, with no regard how widely accepted it is among the experts in that field.
You’re also failing to look at this in the context of what we already know to be reliably true through the other sciences. Something as speculative and unverified as a fringe interpretation of QM doesn’t come close to trumping all the evidence we have, derived through neuroscience, that the mind is what the brain does, or the predictive power of that hypothesis.
Sonic,
I very rarely recommend books to read, but if you sincerely wish to improve your communication skills, particularly when discussing science subjects, then I thoroughly recommend Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp (the 4th edition seems to be the latest as of June 2014). It’s both fun to read and very informative — definitely worth using as a go-to reference guide rather than a read-once-only type of book. I’ve read many critical thinking skills books and online tutorials; in my opinion, none of them manage to inspire the reader as much as Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp manage to achieve.
Rational dialogue is impossible without firstly acquiring critical thinking skills, and secondly, acquiring a foundation in *modern* science and mathematics. Without these skills, all dialogues are just opinions based on wild speculation plus a plethora of formal and informal fallacies[1].
As we construct each of our online comments we make implicit assumptions and implicit implications that readers may or may not understand. When asked to clarify our assumptions and/or implications, then we repeatedly fail to do so, we are being deceitful: i.e. keeping our true meaning hidden from our audience; aka having a hidden agenda. Deceit is far more about what someone has not said, and refuses to say, than it is about incorrect statements they have made. Deceit by omission is different from telling lies. You have accused me and others of lying about you: you do this by invoking the fallacy of the excluded middle[2] to hide the tristate logic underpinning it: truth; omission for deception; falsehood. You lump “truth” together with “omission for deception” for only yourself and you lump together “omission for deception” with “falsehood” in order to accuse others of lying about your motives and statements. Here is a perfect example written by you, Sonic:
“Can you give me a specific example of where I have been deceitful about my beliefs?”
This isn’t funny and it most certainly isn’t a clever response. You have left a long trail of refusing to state your beliefs and hidden agenda(s) after various commentators have challenged you to clarify that which you persist in omitting. Your response was as daft as a works manager who asks a data entry clerk: “Show me the list of items that you didn’t enter into the database.” This request is, very sadly, far too common because critical thinking skills are not a prerequisite for managerial positions.
Another very important point to fully understand is the profound difference between the messenger and the message itself. If I write 3×3=10 it is impossible for the reader to know if I’m ignorant or if I made a simple mistake. However, if readers point out my mistake then I refuse to address it and keep repeating this and similar mistakes I would be demonstrating, at the very least, wilful ignorance rather than clumsiness and poor communication skills. Belligerence would be a far more logical conclusion to draw from such behaviour. If I went on to accuse my readers of lying about me then what would you expect them to conclude?
References:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies (especially each linked article).
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
BillyJoe7-
I’m not sure you have understood what I’ve said.
You seem to agree that the brain is a physical object, but then apparently you want to claim that physics doesn’t deal with the way the brain functions. Huh?
I’m not sure where that comes from.
I have given my statement as two premises and a conclusion below.
Perhaps if you address it in that form it will become more clear what you mean or what your objection is- at this point it appears you are arguing that physics doesn’t deal with brain function.
The Other John Mc-
Your links both deal with a proposal by Penrose and the degree coherence effects are required to describe brain function. This is an interesting topic, but rather tangential to what I’m saying on the subject.
My point:
Premise–Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to all physical objects.
Premise– The brain is a physical object.
Conclusion- Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to brains.
Do you think the logic is faulty or do you have a question about one of the premises?
mumadadd-
If you don’t want to read about the maths, then we shouldn’t discuss this further.
I’m not trying to be dismissive — it’s just if you aren’t interested enough to do that, then your time would probably be better spent on something of more interest to you.
You are right about that IMHO.
Pete A-
I asked you for a specific thing I was being deceitful about so that I could clarify whatever confusion there might be.
Perhaps if you could give me an example of when you think I’ve avoided a question or refused to answer… One example so that we can clarify what I think on that topic, so that I can understand in what manner I’m being deceitful, a specific to start from.
Does the book you suggest recommend avoiding specific examples when making general statements?
sonic,
“I’m not sure you have understood what I’ve said”
But I’m sure you have not understood what I’ve said.
“You seem to agree that the brain is a physical object”
Did you really think there would be disagreement about this point???
“but then apparently you want to claim that physics doesn’t deal with the way the brain functions”
And apparently you want to claim that physics is necessary to explain digestion!
“I’m not sure where that comes from”
Yeah, bizarre.
“I have given my statement as two premises and a conclusion below”
I understood it the first time….you just haven’t understood the my response.
“Perhaps if you address it in that form it will become more clear what you mean”
Brains and tennis balls aren’t electrons…pretty well says it all.
“it appears you are arguing that physics doesn’t deal with brain function”
And it appears there is no evidence that physics is necessary to explain digestion either.
Sonic,
I do not have to read the maths to understand that this:
is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, unless you have a further point to make based on us accepting this as true. If you have, get on with it. If not, why bring this up? It’s completely uncontentious and completely besides the point.
Goddamnit, Sonic,
When you try to make a point, and it’s countered, you either have to rebut the counter or concede and move on, not just restate the ‘point’.
Here:
# mumadadd on 28 Jun 2014 at 2:39 pm
Sonic, brain science doesn’t deny physics, it just deals in models on a different descriptive level: chemistry and biology. There’s nothing to be added at this stage by modelling brains in terms of physics, and until there is some effect discovered that requires this, it’s unnecessary and unproductive.
So come on, Sonic, what is it that follows from the brain being a physical object that you think in some way either supports your position (whatever the hell that may be), adds weight to the notion of dualism, or is even in some sense meaningful in the context of this discussion.
This is why you’ve been rightly accused of deceit. You’ve taken several days to make this point, which is irrelevant, without adding anything else of substance to the discussion. You’ve been asked repeatedly to state or clarify your position or make some kind of argument, and all to no avail. It’s also been demonstrated to you that your citations contradict the point your using them to make, and that your logic is faulty, and you’ve not acknowledged once, but silently moved on to another poorly defined and ill conceived argument.
sonic,
mumadadd: “When you try to make a point, and it’s countered, you either have to rebut the counter or concede and move on, not just restate the ‘point’”
Sound familar, sonic?
My version:
A denier is a person who, instead of addressing the counter-argument, completely ignores it and simply re-presents the countered argument.
P1: Semiconductors operate at the quantum level.
C1: Computers operate at the quantum level.
P2: Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to all physical objects.
P3: The brain is a physical object.
C2: Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to brains.
P4: Computers are physical objects that operate at the quantum level.
C3: Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to computers.
P5: Computers are deterministic (they’d be useless if they weren’t).
C4: Dualism plays no role in computers.
C5: Dualism plays no role in brains.
C6: The brain is not a receiver.
C7: Dualism is outdated philosophical and religious anti-science.
Sonic, you have left a trail of unanswered questions in this thread (and you continue to add more) therefore there’s no need for anyone to pick just one example. Evasion and obfuscation is your modus operandi. And, yes, the book I recommended mentions this; as do the online critical thinking skills tutorials.
I totally agree with the summaries of Mumadadd and BillyJoe7:
“When you try to make a point, and it’s countered, you either have to rebut the counter or concede and move on, not just restate the ‘point'”
“A denier is a person who, instead of addressing the counter-argument, completely ignores it and simply re-presents the countered argument.”
mumadadd-
When you pointed to my error about Cartesian dualism and interactive dualism, what did I do? I admitted the error immediately and we moved on- remember?
Do you think Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to brains? (it does).
When will some of those claiming otherwise admit the error?
I feel your frustration–
I was asked what I meant when I said quantum mechanics applies to brains. My answer is that schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to all physical objects.
Simple– correct, no need to argue.
So what happens– rather than a simple agreement (or disagreement– whichever) about what I actually said there is some argument about coherence effects and brain function.
But I haven’t said coherence effects are required to describe brain function.
I feel your frustration– I would love to discuss my position further (whatever the hell that may be). But it’s odd to read my citations don’t support ‘my point’ when in fact they do support what I’m trying to say.
Apparently ‘my point’ has little to do with what I’m trying to say or actually say.
And here we have a fine example– I’m trying to say QM applies to brains (which it does) and I’m being told coherence isn’t required to explain brain function.
But that has nothing to do with what I said or what I’m trying to say.
Yeah– I feel your frustration.
BillyJoe7-
I don’t think you have understood what I said.
You have given no indication that you have understood what I’ve said, instead bringing up points that are far removed from anything that I did say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger_equation
“In the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system. Solutions to Schrödinger’s equation describe not only molecular, atomic, and subatomic systems, but also macroscopic systems, possibly even the whole universe.”
Is that what you think you’ve rebutted?- that Schrodinger’s equation applies to macroscopic systems?
Because that’s really all I’ve said.
You understand- I don’t think you are claiming to have rebutted modern physics, I think it more likely you have rebutted some point that I did not make and has nothing to do with what I said because you haven’t understood what I said.
Just giving you the benefit of the doubt on that…
PeteA-
C4, C5, C6, and C7 do not follow from P5– they might be true, but they do not logically follow from P5 (which may or may not be true as well).
For example– C4– dualism doesn’t necessarily imply non-determinism so even if computers are deterministic, that doesn’t negate the possibility dualism plays a role in their operation.
Please note– I have no desire, or interest in arguing that dualism plays a role in the working of a computer… I am merely noting an error in your construction.
Actually, I have no interest in arguing that dualism plays a role in anything.
I am hoping to explain why the dualist who thinks ‘consciousness causes collapse’ proves dualism is mistaken– it doesn’t even necessarily suggest dualism. (I think it is also wrong to say it precludes dualism… but that’s hardly controversial.)
At this point I can’t even get agreement on a simple factual statement that QM applies to brains. Yes, I am a dreamer.
Re: my ‘MO’.
I hope you understand that since you can’t give a specific, I can’t either as I really don’t know what you are talking about.
If you have a question that I have left unanswered, feel free to ask it.
Apparently none of us are unable to interpret what the hell it is that you are trying to say.
That should give you pause.
*able*
[Against my better judgement] Sonic —
Then what are you trying to say?
None of your arguments offer any support for dualism. Brains are –like all things– QM objects because everything is, when going down low enough, a QM object. There is no reason to mention QM and brains in the same sentence, and when this is done, it is solely by woo-meisters who pretend that QM enables their unproved fantasy para-abilities.
So why are you amazed that when you bring QM to the discussion (for which, as stated often, there is no reason because it doesn’t offer any explanation not offered by EM and chemistry) you are amazed we think you’re into woo?
You haven’t stated once what you think is proved/explained/made possible by going the QM route. It is my considered impression you are yanking our chain, to see how long you can keep the “discussion” going. In the good old days of USENET, you would have been called a troll, ignored by everyone but the September intake, and that would have been a Good Thing (TM).
Yes Sonic, I give you that. But that was a minor quibble over terminology and not a substantive criticism of your reasoning. I suppose, given your apparent obsession with definitions, that might be a big deal to you, but it’s trivial to me.
What you’ve failed to acknowledge is:
1.) That you were begging the question here:
You’re trying to argue that consciousness isn’t physical, yet this is one of your premises. Begging the question. This is the third time I’ve pointed this out.
2.) That your citations directly contradicted your stated position that (maybe, ish, of course, implying but not saying) that consciousness causes collapse of the wave function. BJ7 and I totally and incontrovertibly demolished you on this front, using direct quotations from your own citations. I’m not going to rehash the whole sorry saga here but it’s all there in black and white for you to peruse at your leisure. How, how can you possibly not see our point here?
3.) That you then silently dropped this point and claimed you were talking about Schrodinger’s equation, when those words are nowhere in any of your posts up until the point you tried to pull this fast one.
Now it seems you claim you’re talking about ‘coherence’, when again, the word is contained nowhere in any of your prior posts up until you yet again tried to silently shift your argument without acknowledging any of the prior criticism.
What? WHAT? BJ7, Pete A and I have all agreed this point. Who else were you talking to?
What this all feels like, Sonic, is evasion and obfuscation, ie. deceit.
Sonic,
I just reread you post more carefully, and I want to retract this:
Everything else still stands. The frustration on my part, aside from the above, is that you aren’t laying out anything approaching a point or argument, leaving us to extrapolate and infer what it is you’re trying to say.
And for clarity, here’s me agreeing that Scrodinger’s equation applies to brains:
Pretty please, just try something like this:
-This is what I think
-This is why I think this
-This is how it’s relevant to the discussion at hand
-Here’s some links (if really necessary) to back up my point
Not, ‘here’s some links about QM, infer what you want, I’m not saying anything just implying. I haven’t said I think this so why are you arguing?’
Just…make your case yourself, clearly and as concisely as you can. Lay it all out, don’t focus on one point within a chain of reasoning while keeping the rest hidden. Don’t keep vaguely tap dancing around ever committing yourself to an opinion or stance. This is not how conversations are supposed to proceed. And for the love of god, please read anything you cite before posting it to ensure that it doesn’t blatantly contradict what your trying to say.
Come on, man….try harder.
—
PS: here’s me agreeing that Scrodinger’s equation applies to brains:
I didn’t quote the rest of the post because it’s mostly just me quoting you, but if you want to see it’s on 01 Jul 2014 at 8:26 am.
PPS: Here’s BJ7 agreeing that Scrodinger’s equation applies to brains:
Test.
PPPS: Here’s Pete A agreeing that Scrodinger’s equation applies to brains:
“P2: Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to all physical objects.
P3: The brain is a physical object.
C2: Schrodinger’s equation (quantum mechanics) applies to brains.”
My previous four posts were supposed to be combined into one, but for some reason I couldn’t submit the comment. This thread may break before we abandon it, which might also be a Good Thing (TM).
At least the researchers who are investigating quantum vibrations within the microtubules of neurons, and how those are related to brain waves and global brain function are trying to come up with a physical basis for consciousness. People want to dismiss their work – – why? We seem to be fond of saying that consciousness is what the brain does. Aren’t we supposed to be finding out how? Are we clinging to emergence like religious people cling to a God of the Gaps? i would think that monists of every variety would be glad that these various levels of function are being accounted for. Emergence should be a place-marker, not the end of our research. There is, after all, a borderline between quantum and classical mechanics. It may seem “woo-ish” – but that doesn’t mean it’s not scientific. I’m sure electricity seemed woo-ish at first. Relax, if consciousness works at the quantum level, it’s not the end of the skeptical world.
Mlema
“We seem to be fond of saying that consciousness is what the brain does. Aren’t we supposed to be finding out how? Are we clinging to emergence like religious people cling to a God of the Gaps?”
Scientist don’t like gaining a deeper understanding of nature. Didn’t you know?
Something tells me you’ve misunderstood at least some(possibly a lot) of the conversation at hand.
As far as I can tell, there isn’t an expert consensus of quantum mechanics describing any brain function. Does that mean there isn’t part of brain function that could be described by QM? No, it doesn’t.
Does that mean researchers shouldn’t investigate QM in the brain? No, it doesn’t.
“Emergence should be a place-marker, not the end of our research.”
W(ho)TF here said that emergence is the end of consciousness research? No one, that’s who.
I agree with many of the things you said, but it is completely misplaced. You’re arguing against your own phantoms.
Mlema,
” Relax, if consciousness works at the quantum level, it’s not the end of the skeptical world.”
I agree, it wouldn’t. But as I’ve said, I’m not a scientist, so I have to get my information from the expert consensus as related by good (hopefully) science communicators, and quantum effects have never figure into any of the brain science stuff I’ve read or listened to (which is quite a lot).
I’ve heard of Penrose and his quantum theory of conscious many times, and always in the context of it being described as ultimately flawed, a dead end. But yeah, it could be that there’s research going on right now on the bleeding edge of neuroscience that’s finding some sort of quantum effects in the brain, and it just hasn’t worked it way through the process of peer review, replication and dissemination through my sources of information. I doubt that, because I try to stay somewhat up to date on this, but it’s possible.
I know you linked to the press release for this a while back – I did read it. Has there been any follow up since? Any replication? I also Googled it and hit on a skeptical website with some fairly in depth analysis of this research, and the overall tone was pretty disparaging.
My beef with Sonic isn’t born of any ideological opposition to quantum effects in consciousness, or unwillingness to accept good evidence for this if it arises; but put simply, the evidence isn’t there yet.
Also, Sonic isn’t able to make a coherent point and appears not to have any real understanding of QM – my objections to his spiel have largely been focused on what he’s written himself. If he’d brought up this research, whilst acknowledging that it’s preliminary at best, I might have been more polite in my response to that specific post.
Bill Openthalt-
Thank-you for taking the risk–
If none of my arguments offer any support for dualism, then why do you think that I’m making arguments in favor of dualism?
Because I’m not.
I can’t convince myself that physicalism or dualism or idealism is correct (perhaps there is a false dilemma involved). I’m more sure that no current philosophy is correct…
I do understand why someone might think QM supports dualism (and he might be right), but I also think that the use of ‘consciousness causes collapse’ as some way of saying dualism is correct is wrong and that the interpretation gets abuse when we should just understand it and then we can see how it really doesn’t even necessarily imply dualism (although it might).
You see my problem– my position is more subtle than ‘this is right and this is wrong’ because I don’t know.
Mlema-
Good point.
I notice that photosynthesis involves coherent effects and now I see another example (I linked to).
I’m thinking more discoveries are likely and perhaps we will find coherence does play a role in brain function– I don’t really know about that.
What I do know is that it has almost nothing to do with what I was saying about QM and brains, though.
mumadadd-
Thank you. Your comments are illuminating…
You say my ‘stated position’ (maybe, ish, of course implying but not saying)…
Exactly– you think I’m implying some position when in fact I’m not.
The ‘extrapolations’ about ‘what I’m trying to say’ get into trouble, I’m not trying to say the things that you might guess and then I don’t understand why some ‘rebuttal’ that is completely non sequitur to what I was saying needs to be dealt with…
This can be a mess.
If my statements seem uncertain, it is probably due to my being uncertain, all though I must say it might be due to a misuse of the language or some other thing.
I guess there is some uncertainty about why I would appear uncertain– I’m just saying that often I really am uncertain– at least it seems that way to me.
I don’t think I’m trying to hide anything– at least I’m not aware of that all though apparently my brain can do all sorts of things I’m not aware of, so I guess there could be some uncertainty that I wouldn’t even know what I really was thinking about the subject in which case it would be uncertain that asking me what i think would be of any value since there is uncertainty that i know what i think.
Anyway– next time it appears I’m uncertain please consider that i am uncertain rather than trying to hide something.
I guess I could explain my uncertainties each time I make a statement so that nobody gets confused that I’m trying to hide something.
I’m reasonably certain that isn’t a good idea. What do you think?
BillyJoe7-
What I meant when I said QM applies to brains is that QM applies to brains and I gave the link to schrodinger’s equation where it says it applies to macroscopic objects as well as other objects as my reason for thinking that.
Let’s move on—
Q–What do I mean ‘consciousness causes collapse’?
A–I am referring to a valid interpretation of QM, often referred to as the orthodox interpretation.
You can read about it here-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
That’s what I mean.
Q–What do you mean by ‘collapse is about our knowledge’?
A–To do justice to this question requires some background– let’s start with the notion that schrodinger’s equation is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system, and that it therefore represents ‘what we can say’ about the system, or ‘our knowledge’ of the system.
There’s more to it– good so far?
Q–What do you mean by ‘retrocausality’-
A–I don’t know that I have used that word– but I believe it means the effect coming before the cause.
OK?
sonic,
“What I meant when I said QM applies to brains is that QM applies to brains and I gave the link to schrodinger’s equation where it says it applies to macroscopic objects as well as other objects as my reason for thinking that”
But have you understood what that means and, more importantly what it doesn’t mean?
Tennis balls cannot “borrow” energy to find themselves on the other side of inpenetrable barriers.
You can plot the momentum versus position of soccer balls.
QM is not necessary to explain digestion.
etc etc etc
“Q–What do I mean ‘consciousness causes collapse’?
A–I am referring to a valid interpretation of QM, often referred to as the orthodox interpretation.
You can read about it here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
That’s what I mean.”
Nice try.
You should know by now that you can’t send me on wild goose chases.
Now here’s a novel idea: Let’s hear what YOU mean by “consciousness cause collapse”.
“Q–What do you mean by ‘collapse is about our knowledge’?
A–To do justice to this question requires some background– let’s start with the notion that schrodinger’s equation is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system”
Fine.
“…and that it therefore represents ‘what we can say’ about the system, or ‘our knowledge’ of the system…There’s more to it– good so far?”
Depends what you mean by “what we can say” about the system and what you mean by “our knowledge” of the system.
“Q–What do you mean by ‘retrocausality’-
A–I don’t know that I have used that word– but I believe it means the effect coming before the cause…OK?”
Obviously I’m talking about the retrocausality supposedly seen in the quantum delayed choice eraser experiment
Anyway, sonic, it is clear that you’re never going to get around to explaining what you mean by “consciouness causes collapse”, so let’s just stop the pretence.
Or prove me wrong.
Whatever.
“I can’t convince myself that physicalism or dualism or idealism is correct (perhaps there is a false dilemma involved). I’m more sure that no current philosophy is correct…”
No, these are mutually exclusive.
“This can be a mess.”
Yes, it is.
“Anyway– next time it appears I’m uncertain please consider that i am uncertain rather than trying to hide something.
I guess I could explain my uncertainties each time I make a statement so that nobody gets confused that I’m trying to hide something.
I’m reasonably certain that isn’t a good idea. What do you think?”
Okay.
“What I meant when I said QM applies to brains is that QM applies to brains and I gave the link to schrodinger’s equation where it says it applies to macroscopic objects as well as other objects as my reason for thinking that.
Let’s move on—”
Yes, let’s; we all agreed this point days ago.
“To do justice to this question requires some background–”
“There’s more to it– good so far?”
Have at it. But why not just lay it out all at once? Let’s see the whole thing Sonic, then we’ll all be happier; we’ll know what your trying to say and you won’t get picked apart for being vague.
How about that?
Sonic,
My conclusions were also based on current science, especially neuroscience. As Dr. Novella concluded in this article:
“The brain-as-receiver hypothesis is nothing more than a convenient way for dualists to dismiss evidence for the correlation between brain function and mental function. The hypothesis, however, is dependent upon a gross misunderstanding of the state of our knowledge about brain function, and the intimate connection that has been documented in countless ways between brain function and mental function.
The simplest explanation for the tight correlation between brain and mental function is that the mind is what the brain does. There is no more reason to hypothesize a mind separate from brain than there is to hypothesize that there is a computer fairy that performs all the necessary calculations and then feeds the results to specific circuits in your computer.”
You wrote: “Actually, I have no interest in arguing that dualism plays a role in anything.”
Then why do you keep posting comments about dualism and QM on Dr. Novella’s article (using links to philosophy, fringe science, and anti-science)? Why not start learning some neuroscience from this article then move on instead of being a persistent troll?
You wrote: “For example– C4– dualism doesn’t necessarily imply non-determinism so even if computers are deterministic, that doesn’t negate the possibility dualism plays a role in their operation.”
You are correct, furthermore, it doesn’t negate the possibility that the Greek god Zeus and the tooth fairy both play roles in the operation of computers and brains.
Deterministic computers…
I had a computer that wasn’t deterministic: the motherboard couldn’t reliably access the RAM, which resulted in the machine having a mind of its own, especially after a few days of continuous operation
Mission-critical computer-based systems use, at the very least, triple-redundancy — with each machine in the triplet having a different architecture hence different software — combined with an arbitrator, an alarm system, and comprehensive logging of errors and diagnostics. Rest assured that these systems are indeed fully deterministic. Your home computing devices are nowhere near this level of being fully deterministic machines! However, it would be nothing other than abjectly stupid to suggest that dualism, Zeus, and/or the tooth fairy might be messing around with these devices or messing around with our brains.
I had written this about two weeks ago, but got so busy I never had a chance to post it. Here it is:
Quantum teleportation: A hypothetical pathway of non-material ESP information transmission.
*****************************
Quantum teleportation may be a pathway for ESP.
To understand how this could occur, let us first describe quantum teleportation.
Quantum teleportation:
1) transfers information that describes Object A
2) applies it to a Object B
3) causes object B to subsequently take on the identity of Object A
4) has been achieved many times in laboratory settings
5) has been demonstrated in objects as large as cesium atoms
One laboratory demonstration of quantum teleportation is discussed in a 2012 article from “MIT Technology Review” entitled “Chinese Physicists Smash Distance Record For Teleportation.”
Here’s a quote from the article:
“The idea is not that the physical object is teleported but the information that describes it. This can then be applied to a similar object in a new location which effectively takes on the new identity.”
Here’s is a link to the article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427910/chinese-physicists-smash-distance-record-for-teleportation/
And here is a link to the scientific paper that the article refers to:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2024
*************************
Quantum teleportation is being achieved in the laboratory with objects large enough to hypothetically affect mental processes.
In 2013, quantum teleportation was demonstrated with cesium atoms.
This was discussed in a PhysicsWorld magazine article (June 2013), entitled, “Quantum teleportation done between distant large objects.”
Here is a link to the article:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/jun/11/quantum-teleportation-done-between-distant-large-objects
*******************************
So, what does quantum teleportation with cesium atoms have to do with ESP?
Quantum teleportation with cesium atoms demonstrates that non-physical information can be transferred to, and imparted to, objects at least as large as an atom.
This could be a mechanism, via the brain’s atoms, by which non-physical ESP information could be transferred from brain to brain.
Since atoms and electrons are the “stuff” of electrical and chemical activity in the brain, if they can be affected by quantum teleportation, they could hypothetically affect the mental activity of the receiver.
Some may say that mental and neurological processes have nothing to with the quantum level of the physical brain — that quantum activity has nothing to do with brain processes.
I am disinclined to embrace this supposition. My thinking:
1) The “bottom layer” of the ascending hierarchy of the physical structure of the brain is on the quantum level.
2) I cannot reasonably suppose that the “bottom layer” of quantum activity is, a priori, “fenced off” from brain activity, and mental activity.
It appears to me that, as ever-increasing resolutions of brain activity are achieved, the layer of quantum activity will eventually have to be addressed, if a complete survey of brain function vis-a-vis mental states is to be accomplished.
Quantum teleportation of brain activity from one brain to another would be an area logically warranting examination. Even if such teleportation might prove to be infinitesimally insignificant to the “receiving” brain’s mental activity, at minimum, the pathway appears at least hypothetically possible, or so it appears to me. It could be, in fact, that quantum teleportation has a measurable effect on the mental processes of neighboring brains. I cannot exclude this possibility.
What do you think?
The big issue: You’re putting the cart before the horse. First, we need a convincing demonstration of ESP. So far, we haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Part of the problem is that psi proponents have a much narrower conception of what is possible with ordinary means.
There’s no need for a priori. QM essentially fences itself off as its natural conclusion. Yeah, a lot of weird stuff can happen under extreme circumstances. Under everyday circumstances, however, QM naturally averages out to more familiar physics.
Bronze Dog, and whomever else:
It is my understanding that there has been many laboratory demonstrations of ESP, both recently, as well as decades ago.
For example, Carl Sagan, in his writings, made mention of such studies suggestive of ESP.
Although Sagan took a very doubtful stance, the experimental evidence compelled him to leave the door open to the existence of ESP.
Following is an excerpt Sagan’s book “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark” (published in 1995). This excerpt is from the chapter. “The Marriage of Skepticism and Wonder.”
Sagan:
“Perhaps one percent of the time, someone who has an idea that smells, feels, and looks indistinguishable from the usual run of pseudoscience will turn out to be right. Maybe some undiscovered reptile left over from the Cretaceous period will indeed be found in Loch Ness or the Congo Republic; or we will find artifacts of an advanced, non-human species elsewhere in the Solar System. At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study:
(1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers;
(2) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation;
(3) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “projected” at them.
I pick these claims not because I think they’re likely to be valid (I don’t), but as examples of contentions that might be true. The last three have at least some, although still dubious, experimental support. Of course, I could be wrong.”
******************
Ok, that’s a start. Unfortunately, I am at work right now, and cannot quickly post more examples of sound laboratory studies suggestive of the existence of ESP.
I will provide examples of such studies after I get off work tonight. I have a collection of such studies.
James Oeming
When being observed, the quantum state the particle collapses into is random and cannot be directed. The entangled twin collapses into the opposite quantum state, but due to the inability to direct the state the observed particle collapses into, communication using the entangled particles is not possible. The type of information transfer you suggest (ESP) is not possible with our current understanding of nature.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-communication_theorem
“I will provide examples of such studies after I get off work tonight. I have a collection of such studies.”
Please don’t.
You’ll notice this thread has long run its course with 1200+ comments and studies on ESP have already been covered in the comments. At least read the comments thread first to make sure you aren’t wasting time re-hashing something that has already been covered. Most people did not find any of the ESP studies especially compelling – they’re of very poor quality.
I’m pretty sure you’re taking Sagan out of context. Argument from authority won’t get you anywhere, though.
1) I don’t think the research is as robust as you think. From what I’ve seen, it’s usually an artifact produced by choosing the time frame arbitrarily after the event and other sneaky stuff.
2) What’s weird about children claiming they’ve had former lives? Children are very impressionable, and parents and other authority figures who believe in past lives can reinterpret dreams and such into past lives. Children will play along because it gets them attention and praise.
3) There are numerous problems with the telepathy experiments we’ve been over with previous commentators. For one thing, why a complex message like an image when you should first establish the ability to ‘ping’ another mind? Part of the point is to control for the possibility it’s some other psi power giving the same results. It cuts down the variables. As I see it, the fact confounding possibilities like that aren’t brought up or addressed by proponents says they have an inherent problem with their philosophy.
Its a shame PSI isn’t real, otherwise I could receive PSI-fellatio at my desk with my coworkers none the wiser.
Come to think of it, we should start investing in PSI-fellatio research….because who knows……maybe….just maybe…it’s possible.
Weren’t the boys in Ghosbusters getting ghost blowjobs?
DGB
lol If memory servers, I think it was just a dream Ray Stantz(Dan Aykroyd) was having.
If memory serves, all the boys were having spectral night visitations. Or maybe Ray was dreaming.
mumadadd – I’ve tried to find some things for you to read. The orch OR theory isn’t new (20 years old), but recent research on the characteristics of the molecular structure and physiology of microtubules shows that the theory may have more potential than it has previously been granted by some.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/apl/102/12/10.1063/1.4793995
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23567633
also, more specifically as it applies to the brain:
https://sbs.arizona.edu/project/consciousness/report_poster_detail.php?abs=2027
and back to orch OR
https://sbs.arizona.edu/project/consciousness/report_poster_detail.php?abs=2263
“According to Orch OR, superpositioned states of microtubule ‘tubulin’ subunits entangle to perform quantum computations according to the Schrodinger equation during neuronal integration phases, these computations terminating by Penrose ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) at time t=h/E (h is the Planck-Dirac constant, and E is the gravitational self-energy of superpositioned tubulins).”
And this may be the most recent review of the theory by the authors:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
Why these ideas may be better than the “connectome” ideas for consciousness (which billions of dollars are being spent to model – and which I’m user will yield useful results, but I don’t think those will be on consciousness)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451300153X
“Hameroff and Penrose have rightly argued here…that the wireless communication of axons via resonant vibrations around a hundred micrometers diameter domain alleviates the biggest criticism of the Orch-OR proposal. The orchestration of resonant vibrations can occur globally between all neurons across the entire brain. For that communication, an axon inside a neuron does not require sending incredibly powerful signal wirelessly throughout the brain, by crossing the fatty myelin sheath. Conical radiation/absorption only in its vicinity via dual polar ends of a neuron would be enough to trigger a cascade communication globally throughout the entire brain. This article therefore closes the series of historical argument/counterargument on the “gap junction” forever…”
Basically, these guys are saying that the microtubules provide ability as a quantum computer to store and respond to data from the environment. They even explain how the theory “rescues” free will, which will be interesting for skeptical discussion, since we’ve before discussed that consciousness comes after sense and response (decision making)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3470100/
and if you’re interested in spending LOTS of time on this general topic:
http://www.martinshaven.com/Resources/Tuszynski%20-%20Emerging%20Physics%20of%20Consciousness.pdf
Please don’t expect me to defend the orch OT theory of consciousness – but I think at this point it’s beyond dispute that brain function does occur (in part of course) at the quantum level.
OR
I had previously written:
“I will provide examples of such [ESP] studies after I get off work tonight. I have a collection of such studies.”
Ekko replied:
“Please don’t. You’ll notice this thread has long run its course with 1200+ comments and studies on ESP have already been covered in the comments. At least read the comments thread first to make sure you aren’t wasting time re-hashing something that has already been covered. Most people did not find any of the ESP studies especially compelling – they’re of very poor quality.”
Ekko, I think you are making a very good suggestion.
I can see from reading this thread that the thinking of the pro-materialism posters is pretty close to inflexible, regardless of the quality of the counter-information presented. Minds are made up.
Regards, James
James:
I can see from reading this thread that the thinking of the pro-materialism posters is pretty close to inflexible, regardless of the quality of the counter-information presented. Minds are made up.
Maybe some context will help you actually understand your reading here: http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2006/06/pretty_soon.html
“I’m pretty sure you’re taking Sagan out of context”
He is, it’s so common I’ve heard the SGU crew address it multiple times.
“Ekko, I think you are making a very good suggestion.
I can see from reading this thread that the thinking of the pro-materialism posters is pretty close to inflexible, regardless of the quality of the counter-information presented. Minds are made up.”
@ James O the issue isn’t of course the usual claims of narrow mindedness though thanks for showing us a great example. Ekkos imply pointed out that not only has this thread run it’s course but that all of this has already been covered over and over ad nauseum.
James
“I can see from reading this thread that the thinking of the pro-materialism posters is pretty close to inflexible, regardless of the quality of the counter-information presented. Minds are made up.”
I’m inflexible with having valid methods for knowledge, science, beliefs, ect. This makes everything I believe conditional and potentially wrong. As long as the methods are valid, none of my beliefs are safe.
I even think something similar to some of the claims for ESP and PSI is possible through controlling machines electromagnetically with machine-brain interfaces. I’m using known mechanisms to explain how using your mind to control things is possible.
On a side note, if you believe ESP is real then you should write your senator or congressman asking them to protect the privacy rights of individuals from unapproved intrusion of their thoughts from the magic ESP people. Personally, I’d like to see all the freaks with ESP rounded up and executed(I’m thinking sharks with freaking lazers attached to their head, or a sharknado…ohh a hobo with a shotgun would be a good way to purge the filth)to protect the good, honest, freedom loving people(like myself), but I understand if you’d prefer the privacy legislation route.
Most of the posters on this board, Dr. Novella included, have not adequately researched the subject of ESP.
What the ESP-rejectors need to do:
1) Read the book “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics”, by Chris Carter.
2) In a few paragraphs, in your own words, cogently summarize the main points of the book. Do not regurgitate second hand opinions and hearsay about the book or the author. Do not reflexively recite materialist party line positions, such as, “ESP is not possible by the known laws of physics” etc.
When you have done that, and you have satisfied me that you have comprehended the material, I will be happy to participate in a dialogue with you all, Dr. Novella included.
With sincere, generative intent,
James
@James O
“When you have done that, and you have satisfied me that you have comprehended the material, I will be happy to participate in a dialogue with you all, Dr. Novella included. ”
I see, so all WE have to do is satisfy YOU. Primarily because YOU don’t think WE have done enough research on our own.
1 – I’m not going to pay for a book, just to satisfy you’re feelings that I haven’t done enough research into Psi to make my own informed decision.
2 – All the evidence you have exists in one book?
I love the hubris you true believers come to places like this with. You come with the same old story time after time, same sources, same tired claims. You link to the same weak studies and misquote the same people. Yet you always insist we have no idea what angle you’re coming from.
How about this James, you read through this 1200 post discussion, break down what everyone’s cogent points are, indicate which arguments for dualism, psi and all the other crap that has been made, and how they’ve been refuted. Once YOU’VE satisfied me that you understand all the ground we’ve already covered, just in this one single thread we can have a dialogue. Costs you nothing but effort.
@James O
I’m going to give you a freebee, look for posts by midnight runner on your buddy Carter.
lol
from: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chris_Carter
“… studied economics and philosophy at Exeter College in Oxford, England.[1] He has no scientific education or qualifications. ”
” Carter is not honest enough to admit that what he is advocating is metaphysical-in the woo sense of the word. ”
“Benjamin Radford who has reviewed Carter’s book Science and Psychic Phenomena has written it is “populated with mistakes; ad hominem attacks; recycled, long-refuted criticisms of skeptics; and straw man arguments.”
“Carter’s evidence consists of old Victorian reports of spirits being invoked in seances, cases of reincarnation, and near death experiences…He has never observed any of these things himself or carried out any experiments…Most of the data he reports on is highly contradictory … Carter ignores any evidence contrary to his beliefs”
and finally:
“He has made his agenda clear by defining any skeptic of the paranormal as a “militant atheist””
Oh man, Chris Carter was one of Leo100’s citations too.
@Mlema
“Please don’t expect me to defend the orch OT theory of consciousness – but I think at this point it’s beyond dispute that brain function does occur (in part of course) at the quantum level.”
One weak study that has yet to be replicated and you’re ready to make those pronouncements eh?
@mumadadd
“Oh man, Chris Carter was one of Leo100′s citations too.”
Yep, but good ole James strolls into the thread about 3 posts from the end and starts spouting his garbage off as if he’s got some revelation to drop on us. Sorry James but this has all been discussed.
When Leo100 linked to one of his articles, I did some Googling and wasn’t able to satisfy myself that this isn’t the same Chris Carter that created the X-Files; loved that show, but the article was a fetid pile of dingo’s kidneys, to paraphrase a plexiglass box of diodes and flashing lights.
haha, I’m almost positive they’re two different people. they deal with the same kinds of fictions but one is much more entertaining than the other.
Mlema,
Thanks for the links – the first few were way too technical for me but I’m having a look at the last one as it’s more user-friendly.
I’m quite turned off by the Sciencedirect links as Deepak Chopra appears to have contributed to it. BIG red flag.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064513001188
I’ve actually added this to comment suggestions as, given that I’m a lay-person, I don’t think I’ll be able to put this stuff in proper context. I’d be very interested to hear what Steve Novella has to say on the issue.
“the article was a fetid pile of dingo’s kidneys”
What I should have said was:
“a steaming pile of fetid dingos’ kidneys”
I think that’s it…
James,
“1) Read the book “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics”, by Chris Carter”
That is not how it works.
YOU need to convince us that we it would be worth our while reading that book.
“2) In a few paragraphs, in your own words, cogently summarize the main points of the book”
Back on YOU.
And when you have done that, WE will decide if it would be worth our while reading that book.
“When you have done that, and you have satisfied me that you have comprehended the material, I will be happy to participate in a dialogue with you all, Dr. Novella included”
:):):)
Except for laughing you away, I can’t beat grabula’s retort:
“How about this James, you read through this 1200 post discussion, break down what everyone’s cogent points are, indicate which arguments for dualism, psi and all the other crap that has been made, and how they’ve been refuted. Once YOU’VE satisfied me that you understand all the ground we’ve already covered, just in this one single thread we can have a dialogue”
“With sincere, generative intent”
Oh yeah!
…goddamn smily fail in the middle there.
James,
“When you have done that, and you have satisfied me that you have comprehended the material, I will be happy to participate in a dialogue with you all, Dr. Novella included.”
The tone of this comment perplexes me. Why is that you think we want to engage you in a dialogue? Did Steve Novella contact you to beg that you contribute? What specialist knowledge do you have that justifies that we meet this demand before you deign to talk to us?
James,
Regarding Chris Carter I already discussed some of his views with a spiritualist Leo already on this blog in the comments section but last week I created a thread on Chris Carter on the skeptic forum. You can find my thread here:
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23744
The thread title is called “Chris Carter and his errors about skeptics”. I have found errors in Carter’s book about his comments about J. B. Rhine, George Price and Donald Hebb. As you can see from my post which took a long time to dig up all the original references, I am well read in the field of parapsychology. Feel free to sign up over there if you want to engage me on this.
I have indeed read Carter’s book “Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics” and I have debated Carter personally over this subject. I will be documenting some of the errors he has made over the next few weeks. Check the thread if you are interested. Thanks.
BillyJoe7-
I understand what it means that the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system.
Your answer indicates you do not.
mumadadd-
A ‘mutually exclusive’ might indicate a ‘false dilemma’.
I think ‘schrodinger’s cat’ could be an example–
Perhaps if you read the math link I gave…
Pete A-
Yes, you made an error in your statements.
And of course I am really wrong for pointing that out.
@James,
“regardless of the quality of the counter-information presented. Minds are made up.”
This is where you are wrong. It is 100% about the quality , or rather lack of it. Most people would be thrilled for telepathy or other ESP to be real.
@Sonic,
What point is it you are still trying to make here? I read your recent posts and it all reads like vague, wishy-washy obfuscation.
Sonic,
Whaaaaaaaaaaat? You’re freaking my melon, man. They are three metaphysical positions that are definitely mutually exclusive.
1.) All matter
2.) No matter, just consciousness
3.) Matter and consciousness
You can see that each is in direct conflict with the other two.
Did you ever use that term before Pete A said that’s what you were doing? I’m pretty sure it had nothing to do with QM. If you have another definition please link to it.
———
A QM question for anyone who can, and feels like, answering: If Scrodinger’s equation applies to all ‘objects’; and a brain, a tennis ball, and the universe are all objects, how are we defining objects in this context? It seems a bit arbitrary. Are there any criteria for what defines an object in this context beyond standard human intuition?
———
In spite of myself I’ve spent a couple of hours reading about QM (Wikipedia articles mind you, nothing too highbrow) and I definitely do not understand it. Is there an idiots’ guide to QM? Can anyone point me to something I can read with no maths or physics background that will give me the basics?
———
Pete A,
I’ve ordered ‘Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide by Tracy Bowell and Gary Kemp’. Thanks for the recommendation (intended for Sonic but I want to learn how to do this properly).
Sonic,
The wavefunction has nothing to do with consciousness. There is no scientific evidence for anything beyond matter. There is no ESP or magic. You made find this hard to accept but this is the reality that we live in. Nothing in quantum physics (QM) needs a magical woo-woo paranormal explanation. Nothing in QM has overturned materialism. The universe is material. I will quote from the physicist Victor Stenger, this not appear anywhere on the internet I have just spent 20 minutes typing this out so even if you disagree at least appreciate this:
“If the act of measurement causes collapse of the wavefunction, this still need have nothing to do with human consciousness. The collapse of the wavefunction happens with impersonal automatic detecting equipment just as assuredly as when a person is watching.
The collapse of the wavefunction expressed nothing more than the fact, well known from probability theory, that the mathematical probability of an event abruptly switches to unity once that event occurs.
For example, suppose you have brought a ticket for a state lottery for which twenty million tickets were sold. Prior to the selection of the winning number, the probability for winning was one in twenty million.
The moment that the winning number is announced, however, the probability for the winner instantaneously switches to unity, while the probability for the remaining ticket holders instantaneously switches to zero. So, when the winner is announced, every player’s wavefunction instantaneously collapses.
If some of the twenty million ticket holders are located at geographically distant points, it will take several microseconds or more for the news to reach them via telephone, radio, or TV. Does a violation of Einstein’s theory of relativity occur, with information traveling faster than the speed of light? Of course not.
Suppose you are 300 kilometres away from where the drawing takes place, but you are watching it on TV. While your purely mathematical probability of winning- if you lose- will go to zero at the instant the number is called, you actually will not know about it until at least a thousandth of a second later, when the TV signal reaches you (even longer if it is beamed up to a satellite and back down).
In other words, the information flow from the TV camera to your set still moved no faster than the speed of light, consistent with relativity. Your mathematical probability may previously have gone to zero, but the useful knowledge of that fact- the actual physical signal transmission that contained the information-occurred in a manner totally consistent with the known principles of physics.
The confusion here is similar to that with the EPR paradox. As we have seen, the wavefunction in the EPR experiment only affects statistical distribution of observed photon polarizations. This can carry no new information and so cannot be used for signal transmission. Even when the wavefunction collapses faster than the speed of light , signals containing knowledge of that fact can move no faster than the speed of light.
So no evidence exists that human consciousness is connected in any way to an all-pervading cosmic fluid, through electromagnetic aural waves or quantum mechanical particle waves. To the best of our knowledge, the universe is composed of discrete chunks of matter that interact locally.
The seeming nonlocal action of quantum mechanics occurs only for abstract quantities, such as the wavefunction, which are figments of the physicist’s imagination. The wavefunction does not correspond to any directly measureable entity, so its nonlocality cannot be interpreted as a force that acts at a distance in violation of relativity.
After more than a half century, the conventional interpretations of relativity and quantum mechanics remain completely consistent with every observation we have made about the universe. None of these observations or the theoretical constructs that so beautifully describe the observations provides any signal of world beyond matter.”
Source: Victor Stenger. (1990). Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses. Prometheus Books. pp. 250-251.
I recommend that you buy Stenger’s book it debunks all the nonsense you have been typing. Regards.
Goddammit,
Quantum woo is the tastiest woo there is.
1.) Take something you don’t understand but applies to the whole of reality
2.) Fear of finite existence
3.) Add your own imagination
This stuff is appealing to me. It’s a little bit of mystery left to hide in. I could quite comfortably sit in this little corner of doubt and uncertainty and explore no further, with 99.5% certainty that death is final, but with the thinnest sliver of hope that my consciousness will survive, that time and causation are mutable, or that there are infinite versions of me still in existence. And that might just be enough to rationalise away the certainty of non-existence.
Fuck Deepak Chopra, I’m inventing my own woo right now in my head.
Goddammit,
Quantum woo is the tastiest woo there is.
1.) Take something you don’t understand but applies to the whole of reality
2.) Fear of finite existence
3.) Add your own imagination
This stuff is appealing to me. It’s a little bit of mystery left to hide in. I could quite comfortably sit in this little corner of doubt and uncertainty and explore no further, with 99.5% certainty that death is final, but with the thinnest sliver of hope that my consciousness will survive, that time and causation are mutable, or that there are infinite versions of me still in existence. And that might just be enough to rationalise away the certainty of non-existence.
Sod Deepak Chopra, I’m inventing my own woo right now in my head.
“Most people would be thrilled for telepathy or other ESP to be real.”
Not me and I am glad ESP/telepathy are not real. Imagine all those good-looking women getting access to male thoughts when we walk by them. We would get slapped
@midnightrunner2014,
Most men make their thoughts all too transparent as it is, no ESP required!
sonic,
I hope you understand that you are a great disappointment.
“I understand what it means that the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system”
Thanks for the irrelevant parrotting of something you read.
But I asked what you meant by “consciousness causes collapse”.
I also said:
“Anyway, sonic, it is clear that you’re never going to get around to explaining what you mean by consciouness causes collapse, so let’s just stop the pretence”
So, please, just drop the pretense.
There’s no way you ever are going to explain what you mean because you have no idea what you mean, and that is very clear.
“Your answer indicates you do not”
Exactly.
Because there is no way in which consciousness causes collapse means anything.
Prove me wrong.
Explain IN YOUR OWN WORDS WITHOUT LINKS OR QUOTES what YOU mean by consciousness causes collapse.
You never know, you might have some great insight!
Dazzle me with your superior knowledge!
Really, I want to be enlightened.
You’ve been bandying this phrase around for years and never once explained what you mean.
I’ve always assumed you meant: Consciousness. Causes. Collapse.
Like all those fringe dwellers you keep quoting and linking to.
Apparently not.
Apparently you don’t mean what those three words actually mean.
Apparently, after all these years, you think you have discovered a Wriggle Room in which those three words means something else entirely.
But, apparently, you are completely unable to communicate this discovery!
So please, sonic, do not bring up this phrase again unless and until you can explain what they mean.
Mumadadd
This stuff is appealing to me. It’s a little bit of mystery left to hide in. I could quite comfortably sit in this little corner of doubt and uncertainty and explore no further, with 99.5% certainty that death is final, but with the thinnest sliver of hope that my consciousness will survive, that time and causation are mutable, or that there are infinite versions of me still in existence. And that might just be enough to rationalise away the certainty of non-existence.
How do you explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe?. There are only two options one it was fine tuned by an intelligent designer or there are parallel universes and this one isn’t so special as it seems to be. Also, I should point out what does non-existence really mean?. “Does it mean, I will cease to be for a million years or a billion years and then in some part of the universe have a body and consciousness like the one I have now?”.
Nikola Tesla said it best, “the day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. To understand the true nature of the universe, one must think it terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
So to you the skeptics here John Wheeler and others that think that consciousness collapses the wave function are all wrong?. Ever heard of the quantum eraser experiment it seems to demonstrate that locality maybe false.
Surely you must be familiar with Wheeler’s views that he had the courage to share in his later years. The classical Universe is set into motion by the quantum mechanical nature of reality and that being so, consciousness may very well play a role. Retrocausality goes against conventional cosmological thinking; perhaps we are participants in the creation of the Universe, past as well as present and future.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser
This is a awesome statement by physicist Andrei Linde
..The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It’s not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It’s necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead ‘ – Andrei-Linde
@leo
“How do you explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe?.”
Explain this, in detail. FYI, be prepared to have this argument torn to pieces in about 3 seconds flat.
@leo
It seems you need to be reminded…John Wheeler, along with Chris Carter have already been dealt with. Don’t try to just restate the same crap over again.
LEO! 😀
Leo,
“This is a awesome statement by physicist Andrei Linde”
Please fill in the blank Leo. This statement is awesome because ________.
“It’s not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It’s necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead ‘ – Andrei-Linde”
Why is it not enough? Why is it necessary? The universe does not in any way need an observer. By “need” and “necessary” I mean, the universe does not, and did not, for its billions of years prior to our existence, require us as observers in any way, shape or form. Sorry. The universe is dead part I would agree with though, up until life appeared of course. The appearance of life is awesome. The necessity of an observer or consciousness for the existence of the universe is ridiculous unsupported hubris though.
leo,
My first grandchild born just 17 days ago and my son and his wife called him Leo (it was going to be Steven, but that came out Stiven in Albanian, so sorry Steve, no go), so, don’t worry, I’m not going to harm you, little fella.
“How do you explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe?.
There are only two options:
1) it was fine tuned by an intelligent designer
2) there are parallel universes”
Or…
3) the apparent fine tuning is not real.
(the values are what they have to be for reasons we have yet to discover).
In any case the “intelligent designer” is both…
1) a ‘god of the gaps’ argument.
2) no explanation at all.
(But I repeat myself!)
Because now you need to explain where the “intelligent designer” came from.
“Also, I should point out what does non-existence really mean?. “Does it mean, I will cease to be for a million years or a billion years and then in some part of the universe have a body and consciousness like the one I have now?”.
I really don’t see the appeal of this argument.
You have no memory of any past lives that you may have had and, similarly, if you are reincarnated in the future you will have no memory of this life.
That effectively means this is the only life you have.
(So please stop wasting it)
This is going to be worse than useless. Leo not only started out AGAIN with one of the most popular creationist arguments but he’s rehashing everything he already tried to play in this thread before.
Well, at least it’s leo. We’ve got worse things have been coming out of Canada lately.
Leo!
How the devil are you?
A request – please don’t quote me without putting quotation marks around what I said, lest my words be me mistaken for yours.
Thanks
Oh no, his typing is infectious…
*Worse things have been coming out of Canada lately.
Leo would still believe in Santa if nobody had told him he wasn’t real. I imagine it was a tough couple of years in the 100 household while he came to terms with that one…
Yyyup. And leo, I’m just going on the general consensus of experts in the field – something you might want to consider.
“How do you explain the apparent fine tuning of the universe?. There are only two options one it was fine tuned by an intelligent designer or there are parallel universes and this one isn’t so special as it seems to be. ”
Leo, we have no way of knowing if the physical constants of the universe could have been different to what they are. It might be that there was only very slim chance they would be what they are, but it might be a fundamental law of reality that they could only ever be as they are.
The anthropic principle (the ‘weak’ version is correct):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle
“Also, I should point out what does non-existence really mean?.”
It means that your experience of the reality will be exactly the same as it was for the entire history of time before you were born.
“Also, I should point out what does non-existence really mean?. “Does it mean, I will cease to be for a million years or a billion years and then in some part of the universe have a body and consciousness like the one I have now?”
It means eternal and total unconsciousness, leo. Your very existence – “what is it like to be”, and your only way of knowing (being aware) about the universe – is through consciousness itself. When consciousness ceases, the “what is it like to be” and you as a subject or self ceases with it, because you are it. And with that, because there is no one to be aware of anything, the awareness (knowing) of spacetime disappears, and with that the awareness of it’s contents too disappears. It is phenomenologically existence itself that stops.
But don’t try to visualize nothingness, it’s like trying to visualize unconsciousness in your consciousness. It’s not possible.
mumadadd,
I hope you really enjoy reading the book.
Arguments for a finely-tuned universe are silly on many levels, but they all boil down to only special pleading to support the pleader’s belief system. To me, they are just as silly as trowing a six-sided die that lands on, say, 6 then claiming that the die was finely-tuned to produce this result on this particular occasion.
Well, duh!, the universe had to produce something. What we currently have is what it produced. The almost infinite number of other things it could’ve produced, but didn’t, is irrelevant to scientific enquiry and critical thinking. Conversely, woomeisters pretend that the other possibilities were/are crucially relevant — how else could they hope to sell their anti-science woo.
Woomeisters rely on casting enough doubt on science to prise open the minds of their audience wide enough for their brains to fall out. Woomeisters also use a plethora of other psychological techniques, but I shan’t mention what they are because I refuse to write anything that could assist the insidious creep of quackery.
Thank you, mumadadd, for your perseverance on this very long thread: you have inspired me to remain strong in my support of science and critical thinking rather than to give in and give up.
Best wishes,
Pete
Leo100 is nothing more than a spammer/troll who copies peoples posts and pretends they are his.
There is nothing wrong with quoting scientists or other people but at least admit when you do this Leo and give the full source! You never do. You copy people’s posts from other websites and pretend they are your own, this is dishonest.
Leo100 above wrote:
“Surely you must be familiar with Wheeler’s views that he had the courage to share in his later years. The classical Universe is set into motion by the quantum mechanical nature of reality and that being so, consciousness may very well play a role. Retrocausality goes against conventional cosmological thinking; perhaps we are participants in the creation of the Universe, past as well as present and future.”
Type some of this in Google. This quote is an EXACT word for word copy from a user called Oppenheisenberg on the reddit cosmology forum, not Leo.
https://redditjs.com/r/cosmology/comments/253a32/does_consciousness_come_into_consideration_in_the/
You can see from the writing style and good grammar that Oppenheisenberg is NOT leo100, further proof can be found here that Leo is not Oppenheisenberg:
https://redditjs.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/1z7nvh/L/cfrpps1
He links to a nutty essay about drugs, the NDE and God he has written on his website:
http://wedietoremember.com/files/We_Die_to_Remember_What_We_Live_to_Forget.pdf
Oppenheisenberg’s real name is Al Hicks he a fringe proponent of NDE which he attempts to link to quantum woo and other paranormal topics and even claims to have met God though the use of DMT.
You have been caught out Leo again taking people posts and claiming they are your own. Dishonesty at it’s finest, keep it up because every time you do it you will just get exposed.
BTW thanks for writing about me on your blog Leo
http://paranormalandlifeafterdeath.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/user-named-midnighrunner-silly-argument.html
midnightrunner2014,
Your wrong, I have linked to the source before where I copied that information from. Unlike you I will admit that I should of gave the link to the source first before copying that bit of information.
Pete A,
Many would disagree with you and they are scientists that would. I quote from here:
Physicist Paul Davies says: “There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the Universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned’ for life”
Mumadadd,
There is no evidence for Santa Claus. It’s a fairy tale.
Midnightrunner2014,
Yes, we know your an attention seeker “good for you”.
Nomen Nescio,
Does that make sense in our view of the universe?. I don’t think it does knowing for example the fact that particles can be in more than place at a time. Yes that is what we are made up of is particles.
leo100,
I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think that many think because you propagate only anti-science BS, as has been more than adequately demonstrated.
You wrote: “There is no evidence for Santa Claus. It’s a fairy tale.”
Indeed, there is also no evidence for dualism. It’s a fairy tale. This fairy tale was fabricated in the absence of 20th and 21st Century physics, psychology, and neuroscience.
Furthermore, this and similar fairy tales are still being propagated for the sole purpose of selling quackery: Marketing 101, nothing else.
Pete A,
If dualism is such a faily tale why is there so much in favor of it?. Also, there is no evidence for the Easter Bunny either, the same goes for the tooth fairy. I realize you haven’t been here since the beginning of this thread you may want to look at the evidence that was presented here for dualism. The only marketing ploys I have see are the infomercials that are on tv a lot. Pushing a product that usually doesn’t do what it’s claimed to do.
Sorry that was “fairy”.
“There is no evidence for Santa Claus. It’s a fairy tale.”
“Also, there is no evidence for the Easter Bunny either, the same goes for the tooth fairy.”
“Yes that is what we are made up of is particles.”
Is this original copy, leo? Did you work all this out for yourself, or did you have to pirate this from the dark recesses of the Interwebs you inhabit.
Well, either way, it’s nice to hear you get something right for a change.
Is this what it’s come to?
leo100,
“I realize you haven’t been here since the beginning of this thread…”
Your ineptitude is beyond contempt.
Your anti-science BS is neither a product nor a service, it is simply trolling. If you clearly define the product or service that you are promoting, and give details of its costs, I shall duly consider whether or not to purchase it.
I have absolutely no desire to further engage with you or any other anti-science time-wasting troll.
Leo has been gone for quite some time, but it’s clear he’s not been idle. Oh no, he’s been furiously beavering away in his woo lab of doom, and now he’s back; this is leo 2.0, new, improved, and even dumber than before.
EKko,
You should watch the closer to truth video where Andrei Linde, explains it seems that though, as if the universe really was there before life began.
http://www.closertotruth.com/series/why-explore-cosmos-and-consciousness#video-2613
Mumadadd,
This has been demonstrated by the double slit experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment
No, I know that we are made up of particles.
There is no new version of me and if you want to scoop that low to call me dumb with a personal attack because you simply cannot actually engage in my discussion with you. I am afraid your making a fool out of yourself.
I have no desire Pete A to engage with you either.
Leo, Leo, Leo… No one here cares about your beliefs, why are you so insistent with trying to convince others that there is some sort of science* that supports your belief?
*there isn’t, and what’s more- you have made it very clear that you think materialists/naturalists/scientists are dumb-dumbs who know nothing.
I never said materialist’s/naturalists are dumb-dumbs I just don’t think there view of reality is correct based on the evidence that has convinced me that there is an afterlife/psi. I really don’t know to be honest it seems like a lost cause for sure.
Evidence for materialism/naturalism/science-“ism”: the science machine Leo uses to share his innermost thoughts with the world, and the science backbone of the internet and the science platform of the web. Also, rockets and medicine and automobiles and flying science machines and freakin’ lasers and astronomy and every single thing within arm reach of Leo Macdonald at this very second in time.
Evidence for afterlife/psi: nothing at all
Well Leo, it’s been nice catching up. Get back to us when you have a PC that runs on ghosts or something cool like that.
Lates.
DGB,
I am talking about when it comes to consciousness, “materialism/naturalism” hits a major roadblock. I have addressed this before. Don’t get me wrong it’s awesome that we have some of the things from naturalism that we do. But not all for example weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons.
He said on the neurologist’s blog…
Kind of a non-sequitar, because you would really rather very much like to live in 21st century Canada then a hold, dying of malaria or diarrhea or something.
Bet on the winning horse buddy, the one that wins every single race. Science gives you the bang for the buck. There’s no point in believing in magic/ghosts. Save your money, because the ones peddling ghost-magic shit are either charlatans or lunatics. It’s all crap.
When your aeroplane is powered by ghost beams or magic beans, then we’ll talk brass tacks. Till then, you’re just going to embarrass yourself while giving everyone else a headache. We’ve been through all this a thousand comments ago, buddy.
Now that Leo’s back, 2,000 seems inevitable.
leo,
Wellll…maybe you have ‘addressed’ it, but you haven’t leveled any valid or substantive criticism of materialism/naturalism. You aren’t doing a very good job of defending your beliefs or countering the null hypothesis. Maybe you could try to summarise your position in bullet points?
eg. (this is my position, obviously…)
-ESP can’t be reliably shown to exist
-There is no plausible mechanism for ESP
-Subjective experiences of so-called ESP have known explanations that don’t invoke phenomena that have never been shown to exist
-Rigorous studies testing for ESP are dead negative
You have one shot, leo, so make it a good one.
TGD,
“Now that Leo’s back, 2,000 seems inevitable.”
Meh… the novelty will wear off pretty soon. Arguing with leo becomes futile very quickly.
Mumadadd,
I would disagree, strongly the evidence that strongly shows ESP are:
-The Ganzfeld Experiment
-The Autoganzfeld
– You can’t say that the criticisms of the experiments have not been refuted they have been. Take for example this:
– Pear lab showed significant results for ESP
http://www.parapsy.nl/uploads/w1/GFsoundleakage_PA95.pdf
I am sure, I have failed miserably in you guy’s eyes. I should leave for good, but you can’t say that I didn’t at least didn’t have the guts not to come on here and take on the “materialists”. Now it is on to move on to other parts of the internet universe.
Yeah, it takes “guts” to take on the big baddies who don’t believe in baseless (evidence-free) garbage.
leo,
“Surely you must be familiar with Wheeler’s views that he had the courage to share in his later years”
Courage?
He was just wildly speculating beyond the evidence; by “intuition” and “without a theory” (these are direct quotes from him on the subject -posted earlier). Great scientists have a tendency to do this in their later years.
But, until there is EVIDENCE leading to a THEORY rather than WILD SPECULATION based on INTUITION, I won’t be getting too excited. I prefer to keep my feet firmly on the ground.
Wheeler: “The classical Universe is set into motion by the quantum mechanical nature of reality and that being so, consciousness may very well play a role. Retrocausality goes against conventional cosmological thinking; but perhaps we are participants in the creation of the Universe, past as well as present and future.
I have highlighted some important words for you, leo.
He has intuition and wildly speculation. He has no evidence and no theory.
(He is saying that, not me)
“http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser”
Well, have a go leo at interpreting the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment.
Show sonic how it’s done, leo. Come on now, don’t be shy.
Stuffed up the tags.
Here it is again:
leo,
“Surely you must be familiar with Wheeler’s views that he had the courage to share in his later years”
Courage?
He was just wildly speculating beyond the evidence; by “intuition” and “without a theory” (these are direct quotes from him on the subject -posted earlier). Great scientists have a tendency to do this in their later years.
But, until there is EVIDENCE leading to a THEORY rather than WILD SPECULATION based on INTUITION, I won’t be getting too excited. I prefer to keep my feet firmly on the ground.
Wheeler: “The classical Universe is set into motion by the quantum mechanical nature of reality and that being so, consciousness may very well play a role. Retrocausality goes against conventional cosmological thinking; but perhaps we are participants in the creation of the Universe, past as well as present and future.
I have highlighted some important words for you, leo.
He has intuition and wildly speculation. He has no evidence and no theory.
(He is saying that, not me)
“http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser”
Well, have a go leo at interpreting the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment.
Show sonic how it’s done, leo. Come on now, don’t be shy.
*wild speculation*
Leo,
“Does that make sense in our view of the universe?. I don’t think it does knowing for example the fact that particles can be in more than place at a time. Yes that is what we are made up of is particles.”
Does oblivion (unconsciousness) after death make sense? Well, let’s see…
Premise 1 – In order for the cerebral cortex to give rise to a certain state awareness it needs to be constantly activated by some subcortical structures in the brain – like the reticular activating system in the brainstem, damage this area or block the functioning of this structure and people fall into a coma. The same can happen if you damage some other structures which are involved in this arousal function – like the thalamus. Damages to certain parts of the cortex can damage certain pieces of the contents of your awareness of the world (see hemispatial neglect for example). In other words, the functioning of certain parts of the brain contributes to consciousness (causes it) and we know that this contribution is necessary for consciousness.
Premise 2 – At death (which is defined as the cessation of all biological functions) the functioning of this structure (RAS), along with other necessary structures for consciousness – stops, which causes a low (if any) state of functionality of the cortex which is then as a result unable to give rise to any awareness whatsoever.
Conclusion – Therefore, at death we lose consciousness.
There is, on the other hand, a problem with my argument. And that problem is this;
1. Are all those factors which are necessary for consciousness also, when working together, sufficient for consciousness?
2. Is the causation of consciousness by the brain generative/productive?
Leo100 writes:
“I would disagree, strongly the evidence that strongly shows ESP are:
-The Ganzfeld Experiment
-The Autoganzfeld
– You can’t say that the criticisms of the experiments have not been refuted they have been. Take for example this:
– Pear lab showed significant results for ESP”
Nope, you are wrong Leo. A whole page here with over 40 references demonstrating how the ganzfeld experiments failed to be evidence for ESP. The experiments were never replicated and they contained all kinds of errors, confirmation bias, sensory leakage, procedural flaws such as inadequate documentation and randomization, statistical errors etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganzfeld_experiment
As for the autoganzfeld they contained sensory leakage problems as pointed out by Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman. The psychologist Nicholas Humphrey writes:
“Richard Wiseman, a friend and former colleague of Honorton, has subsequently reanalysed the raw data trial by trial and shown that all the positive results can be attributed to those trials in which one or other of these sources of ‘sensory leakage’ was at least a possibility. In fact, in the relatively few trials (100 in all) where such leakage of information would not have been possible the receivers did no better than chance (26 per cent correct).”
Source: Nicholas Humphrey. (1996). Soul Searching: Human Nature and Supernatural Belief. Vintage. p. 136
The autoganzfeld have never been replicated outside of the parapsychology community Leo. They are not evidence for ESP.
As for the PEAR lab ESP experiments similar to the ganzfeld they were never replicated and contained errors. They have been shot down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_G._Jahn#Reception
“PEAR’s activities have also been criticized for their lack of scientific rigor, poor methodology, and misuse of statistics”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_Engineering_Anomalies_Research_Lab
This information is a click away on the internet all sourced to countless publications. You only show your ignorance when you ignore all of this evidence. There is not a shred of evidence for ESP. If you read some of the skeptical literature you would realise this Leo but you never do.
BillyJoe7
There is no wild speculation about it but actual strong evidence in favor of retrocasuality. Phillippe Eberhard proved his therom of course because it goes against the theory of relativity so it should be rejected.
Goodbye
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329762.700-consciousness-onoff-switch-discovered-deep-in-brain.html?full=true#.U7lq-bEkTTr
So, where is the light-fairy? 😀
The trouble is this has been known before with general anesthesia. Thanks for demonstrating dualism you showed in the article that you can deactivate consciousness from the brain and then reactivate it.
The reason why I said that is take the tv analogy for example. When a television breaks, then the image is gone. Does that mean that the television generates the image?.
This issue was mentioned here: http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=23547
I have personally seen many not very functional TVs in my life and the biggest problem with that analogy is that the affects that manipulations or damages to the brain have on the mind are not at all similar to how the picture on a TV can me changed by altering or damaging the TV. And that is only the beginning of the problems for that analogy.
And this topic was already discussed in the comment section for this blog post, so there’s no point in discussing it again.
can be changed*
Hi Nomen Nescio,
The TV Analogy is talked about more here:
http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/article/viewFile/269/301
It’s explained in greater detail here
http://paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com/uploads/7/7/5/3/7753171/paranthropology_vol_3_no_3.pdf
“Interesting”
http://physicsbyumer.blogspot.ca/2014/06/physicists-discover-clearest-evidence.html#.U7mHU7FQu6s
Leo, look at the case of Charles Whitman, for example. That guy had a tumor in his brain, in his suicide note he wrote: “..I do not really understand myself these days. I am supposed to be an average reasonable and intelligent young man. However, lately (I cannot recall when it started) I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.“ – he killed 16 people and wounded 32 others in a mass shooting rampage.
So are you really telling me that you can, by altering the function of a TV, not only change the quality of the picture, but also change the meaning and the contents of a television reporter’s thoughts and intentions, to the level where he puts out a gun and starts killing people on the scene?
@ Nomen Nescio – thanks for that link. Very interesting.
mumadadd – you’re welcome.
Oh, and i forgot, leo – “The psychiatric reviewers contributing to the Connally report concluded that “the relationship between the brain tumor and … Whitman’s actions … cannot be established with clarity. However, the … tumor conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions”, while the neurologists/neuropathologists concluded that “the application of existing knowledge of organic brain function does not enable us to explain the actions of Whitman on August first.”
Forensic investigators have theorized that the tumor may have been pressed against the nearby amygdalae regions of his brain. The amygdalae are known to affect fight/flight responses. Some neurologists have since speculated that his medical condition was in some way responsible for the attacks, in addition to his personal and social frames of reference.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman#Connally_Commission
My question still stands, leo. Can you do things like this while altering the function of a TV? there are many other documented cases of the various effects that damages to the brain have on the mind.
Another example: “Place your fingertips on your forehead. A few centimeters beneath your skull, the
frontal lobes serve as the brain’s executive center—essentially the CEO of your mind. These lobes are crucial for many human feats: our capacities to plan for the future, think abstractly, and control impulses. Right up front in your skull, they are especially vulnerable to impact. What can damage here do? Phillipa, a 35-year-old teacher living near Auckland, New Zealand, suffered a terrible transformation after a burglar broke into her home and, while attacking her, bludgeoned her head. Once a calm professional and devoted mother, Phillipa became wild and unpredictable—undressing in front of strangers, swearing at passersby, and sobbing at the slightest provocation. Heartbroken, Phillipa’s husband eventually placed her in an institution. These days, she is usually happy to see her family but never seems to miss them. In fact, she curses and yells at them when they stay too long.” – from Psychology 8th – Gleitman, Gross, Reisberg –
Seriously, there are thousand of such examples. We are here talking about changes which cannot be caused to a picture of a person on a TV screen by altering it’s function. Or at least i haven’t seen it happen.
BillyJoe7-
What ‘consciousness causes collapse’ refers to is a valid interpretation of modern physics.
What that means is that every known phenomena– every scientific discovery ever made in physics (or any other field of science) agrees 100% with the interpretation- or the interpretation agrees 100% with all known phenomena– either way.
It that weren’t true, then the interpretation would no longer be valid.
My guess is that you don’t really understand it– but I can’t explain it to you until you realize that the interpretation agrees with every single experiment, and every single phenomena known to science.
Of course I could be wrong– you seem to think there are a number of experiments and phenomena that show the interpretation is wrong.
If that’s the case, then how is it still a valid interpretation, I wonder.
How is that?
I think the transmission theory adequately explains this, because its never a permanent change in personality but a temporary change. For example recently, an advertisement for a previously-unknown public appearance by Gage has been discovered, as have a report of his behavior during his time in Chile and a description of what may have been his daily work routine there as a long-distance coach driver. This new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited number of years after the accident—that in later life Phineas may have been far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought. If this is so then (along with theoretical implications) it “would add to current evidence that rehabilitation can be effective even in difficult and long-standing cases,” according to Macmillan.[36].
I have discussed cases like this on my blog back in 2009.
http://paranormalandlifeafterdeath.blogspot.ca/2009/04/can-dualism-account-for-changes-in.html
I should point out that the title of finding consciousness off and on switch is a misleading title. This woman wasn’t in a coma instead she was having epileptic seizures. This work is similar to Dr. Wilder Penfield’s work where he sided with dualism as the better explanation.
Holy crap….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzB12h-BiM8&feature=youtu.be&t=25s
Leo – do you, or someone you know have a TV to sacrifice? please make a video where you alter the functioning of a TV when there are various films or actors being displayed and post that video on youtube or somewhere similar where everybody can watch it. You can also do the same thing to a radio and post a video with the same experiment.
And then let’s examine the effects of these manipulations to the effects of brain damage or stimulation. I swear to God, if the effects will be the same i will personally make a live-stream video where i will eat my own shit with ketchup.
Oh and..
„I should point out that the title of finding consciousness off and on switch is a misleading title. This woman wasn’t in a coma instead she was having epileptic seizures. This work is similar to Dr. Wilder Penfield’s work where he sided with dualism as the better explanation.“
You are wrong: “To confirm that they were affecting the woman’s consciousness rather than just her ability to speak or move, the team asked her to repeat the word “house” or snap her fingers before the stimulation began. If the stimulation was disrupting a brain region responsible for movement or language she would have stopped moving or talking almost immediately. Instead, she gradually spoke more quietly or moved less and less until she drifted into unconsciousness. Since there was no sign of epileptic brain activity during or after the stimulation, the team is sure that it wasn’t a side effect of a seizure.”
And it’s not just personality change that we are talking about here. You haven’t really explained anything with the TV analogy.
He doesn’t understand the analogy. The ROI is very low with Leo, FYI. He is analogy-proof.
Nomen,
She wasn’t in a coma its rather’s easy to turn on and off consciousness with anesthesia we knew this before. Maybe someday they will be able to release someone from a coma therefore breaking the control the body has on the body while in a coma. The personhood (soul) of a person is trapped when they have a coma. What materialists fail to understand is I am not talking about consciousness with the electro magnetic field no I am talking about consciousness’s origin actually coming from a spiritual realm. There are numerous theories of how the filter theory may work one of them is Dr. Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance.
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/science/sheldrake-morphogenic-field-memory-lashley-collective-unconscious-3486.html
We know exactly what you’re talking about Leo. There is no “fail to understand”. We know…
sonic,
“What ‘consciousness causes collapse’ refers to is a valid interpretation of modern physics.
What that means is that every known phenomena– every scientific discovery ever made in physics (or any other field of science) agrees 100% with the interpretation- or the interpretation agrees 100% with all known phenomena– either way.”
That depends on what exactly you mean by “consciousness causes collapse”.
That’s whay I’m asking you now for the about the sixth time: what do you mean by “consciousness causes collapse”?
You seem completely unable to answer this question.
“It that weren’t true, then the interpretation would no longer be valid”
It coud be considered valid only if “consciousness causes collapse” does not actually mean Consciousness. Causes. Collapse. But, even in that case, it is not valid because it deosn’t actually mean that “consciousness causes collapse”.
If you actually believe that experiments in quantum physics demonstrate that “consciousness causes collapse” (as in Consciousness. Causes. Collapse.) then link to one that does. I offered this challenge way back in this thread – and I have done so in other threads – but it seems you are completely unable to answer this challenge.
“My guess is that you don’t really understand it– but I can’t explain it to you until you realize that the interpretation agrees with every single experiment, and every single phenomena known to science”
I’ve alread said I don’t understand it. I don’t understand how “consciousness causes collapse”. I don’t understand how any quantum mechanical experiment demonstrates that “consciousness causes collapse”. And no one seems to be able to link me to an experiment that demonstrates that “consciousness causes collapse”.
The fact that you can’t explain it or link to an experiment that demonstrates it means that you don’t understsand it either.
So join the club.
“Of course I could be wrong– you seem to think there are a number of experiments and phenomena that show the interpretation is wrong”
I’m saying that there are none that prove that it is correct.
In other words, there is no need for that hypothesis.
“If that’s the case, then how is it still a valid interpretation, I wonder”
As I said, it always seems to be included on exhaustive lists, but only a handfull of wildly speculating quantum physicists still believe that maybe it could still be true.
It has no traction in the real world of quantum physics.
leo,
“There is no wild speculation about it but actual strong evidence in favor of retrocasuality…Goodbye”
:):):)
This was in asnwer to my challenge:
“Well, have a go leo at interpreting the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment.
Show sonic how it’s done, leo. Come on now, don’t be shy”
In other words, leo, you have no idea do you?
Goodbye indeed.
BillyJoe7
A lot of quantum physicists think that consciousness collapses the wave function. I can name of them here.
– John Bell
– Andrei Linde
– Frank Wilczek
– Fred Kuttner
– Bruce Rosenblum
– Henry Stapp
– Eugene Wigner
– John Von Neumann
– Rudolf Peierls
If you dispute consciousness collapses the wave function for real. You can always contact one of the authors of the book of the Quantum Enigma his name is Fred Kuttner. Of course the consensus is that retrocausality is not necessary to explain the delayed choice experiment. Retrocausality is ignored here because it violates our human conception of causality.
http://quantumenigma.com/about-the-authors/
The Conscious Observer in the Quantum Experiment from the Journal of Cosmology.
http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness135.html
-No
-One
-Cares
-Leo,
-You
-Are
-A
-Crackpot
A guy on facebook said it best:
“Just because there is a switch in the brain, it doesn’t qualify as proof for the brain creating consciousness. There is a switch on my radio too. But that doesn’t mean that the radio creates the voice of the guy spreading the news. Nor that turning off that switch stops the voice entirely. It only stops the voice in my radio, nothing more nothing less.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/humanconciousnessgroup/10152574360137433/?notif_t=group_comment_reply
Of course you guys dismiss the radio analogy. Your probably more in favor of the computer analogy. That the mind is the software and the brain is the hardware.
-I
-Do
-Enjoy
-When
-Leo
-Stops
-By
Leo 2.0, now with Radio-Analogy (no more analogies, mmmkay. You’ve abused too many; you’ve lost your analogy privileges)
leo,
“A lot of quantum physicists think that consciousness collapses the wave function.”
But what do these physicists actualy mean by that phrase. leo?.
Come on, in your own words. No copy and pastes. No links or quotes. No name dropping. What do YOU understand by the phrase “consciousness causes collapse”.
And please link to a quantum mechanical experiment that demonstrates this.
Well according to Andrei Linde someone I trust as he’s very intelligent it means that it’s possible that consciousness may have an independent existence from matter. Have its own degree of freedom. I linked to an experiment called the Archetypal Quantum Experiment.
Rupert Sheldrake’s “morphic resonance”:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
http://www.skepdic.com/morphicres.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
Dr. Harriet Hall, MD, coined the phrase “Tooth Fairy science”:
http://www.skepdic.com/toothfairyscience.html
I so enjoy the a priori tenets that sonic and leo100 use:
Dualism is a fact.
Humans have a soul.
Tooth Fairy science trumps science.
Anti-science must be proselytized to heathens at any cost; especially to the heathens who actually understand science and critical thinking.
The comedy in this thread is priceless. However, those unfortunate enough to require the services of a clinical neurologist are extremely grateful to their neurologist for using scientific knowledge instead of Tooth Fairy science, such as morphic resonance, in the diagnosis and treatment of their condition.
Leo100 wrote: “I think the transmission theory adequately explains this, because its never a permanent change in personality but a temporary change…”
Let me make something crystal clear to all readers of this blog: Statements such as leo’s are nothing less than hideously insulting to those who’ve suffered acute-onset brain damage then struggled through each and every waking moment during decades of slowly-progressing further degeneration, yet they are still able to remember the person whom they were before the original damage occurred. They can remember whom they were, but are unable to *be* anything resembling the intact human being that they were.
leo100 —
I had a gander at your reference. It proposes a generalisation of the two slot experiment by”reflecting” their “wavefunction” (sic) through a “mirror”:
Did you spot the teeny-weeny little problem? A mirror to reflect a wave function? Do you know what the wave function is? It’s the object itself. Have you tried to construct a mirror for anything else but elementary particles?
The authors stop at viruses when they introduce their “objects”, but even a “mirror” for a virus is impossible. Granted, one can send large molecules through a suitable dual-slit apparatus (for all I care, one can fire tennis balls at such a device), but the equivalent of a beam splitter (as they suggest) for anything else but photons is, as far as I know, utterly impossible.
By the way, the largest molecule that has “passed” the dual-slit test has 114 atoms. The smallest virus is the porcine circovirus type 1, a single-stranded DNA virus with a genome of only 1759 nucleotides and capsid diameter of 17 nm. That still makes it much, much larger than a 114 atom molecule.
Bill Openthalt —
Furthermore, the wave function of a prion, let alone a virus, cannot be transmitted through a lens or a mirror to materialize as a pathogen.
PeteA,
You don’t get what I am saying, I am saying the evidence is temporary in the sense that our physical lives are temporary. I don’t think these personality changes continue on in the afterlife. I never, said dualism is a fact and if I thought materialism was the answer I still wouldn’t say it’s a fact, either as facts don’t exist only probabilities of evidence for example I can say that 95.5 percent, that dualism is true but never completely 100 percent commit too it. Skeptics, often misrepresent what the believers they call us say. In fact, a lot of materialist’s who proclaim that neuroscience shows dualism is false have no idea really what dualism really entails. Dualism, is not the view that their is a little man in the brain that pulls the strings. Dualism, is the view that there is a duplicate body that is similar to our physical body we call it the etheric body.
Bill,
You should kindly email the author at Quantum Enigma and ask him why he thinks that this shows consciousness is independent from matter.
Wow… After Pete and Bill’s comments, I think… I finally see where Leo is coming from. And I actually don’t take issue with it. If I were in Leo’s shoes, I think I’d chose to believe something similar. And that’s the thing, Leo… No one takes issue with your belief, something I’ve been saying to you; you are are welcome to believe these things. The trouble you are having is arguing bad science to scientists.
2000? Is that what we’re going for here?
I’ll say this: Leo is FOS, but maybe not quite enough-so for this Herculean task. We need to get the band back together: Leo on the copypaste, Ian on the Dunning-Kruger, Sonic on the semantics, M_morgan on the batshit crazy and Hardnose on drums.
Like a 70s-era Supergroup, we will capture 2000 and beyond!
I can think of actually two evidences, that would deliver strong evidence and cast serious doubt that consciousness could survive biological death. One would be strong artificial intelligent, as weak AI would show the opposite. The other one would be split brain experiments if the only correct explanation is you cut the corpus callosum and get two separate streams of consciousness an exotic theory at best. However, there is no need to explain the interpretation this way was we know a lot about subconscious processing that theory can explain easily the split brain experiments without jumping to an entirely new exotic theory just for the sake of debunking radical substance dualism.
The devils gummy bear,
I used to believe in similar things to Leo and Sonic: such beliefs were very comforting at the time. Leo perhaps doesn’t understand that I fully appreciate the promise of an afterlife that will render suffering in this life as only a short-term hardship. I would like nothing better than to meet Leo and Sonic in the afterlife so that we could have wonderful conversations about science, pseudoscience, and anti-science while seated at a table adorned with our favourite foods and drinks
Sadly, after nearly 5 billions years of life on planet Earth, there is still zero credible evidence that my wish will come true. Psychologists, neurologists, general practitioners (MDs), many other medical specialists, and the unpaid yet very hard-working skeptics all strive to make life better, while it lasts, for humans and other animals living on this planet.
Believers in an afterlife have a huge advantage over the disbelievers: believers can never be proved to be wrong. If there is no afterlife then they cannot possibly suffer any disappointment or retribution for being wrong.
I honestly don’t find the afterlife too be that comforting knowing, I will have to come back to earth eventually to learn more life’s lessons (reincarnation). Also the fact, that I will have to go through a life review of mistakes I have made. But that is how it stands it seems there is no way around it. I can understand the hostility to the idea of an afterlife especially knowing it’s been thrown into world religions for a very long time. Atheists a lot of them had to grow up in a christian religious upbringing where they were told if they don’t believe in this religion they will burn in hell (eternal hellfire) as it’s called. So there hostility towards an afterlife view based on scientific reasoning they rather just toss aside. They are too far gone to look at this with a open mind.
(the Mormons, man… There’s this veil thing, with secret handshakes and super duper secret passwords, and you go through, and you get a whole planet, man… It’s all Celestial Kingdom planetary up in that snizzz-it… Why limit yourself to endless repetition in this mortal coil, man? You could have it all! F’ reincarnation, Leo, go deep into Mormondumb)
Sonic,
I’m trying to parse what you’re saying and I think you’re hiding some implied premises in your vagueness. Are you saying that consciousness, and consciousness alone, collapses the wave function, or are you saying that it in some cases it can?
I would think the former position is easily falsified by the fact that quantum experimental effects are not directly observed by a consciousness, but instead ‘dumb’ non-sentient sensors, with a lag between the recording of the result and conscious observation of that recorded result (and this lag can be increased to whatever you want to make it more meaningful).
If this were true, it would also necessary imply that that there has been some consciousness present in the universe for an extremely long time, as the universe appears to be prodigiously old. Is this what you are trying to sneak in, either knowingly or not? ie. god?
The second scenario also has problems. If you’re acknowledging that interaction with non-conscious matter is sufficient to collapse the wave function most of the time (as the universe appears to be mostly devoid of consciousness), then why do you need to add something beyond interaction?
Think of the chain of events that leads to your conscious perception of say, a bunch of photons.
1.) They hit the film of your eye (interaction with matter)
2.) They hit the retina (interaction with matter)
3.) Processing by the visual cortex
4.) You consciously perceive the photons
At which stage are you proposing that the wave function collapses? Any stage beyond number one would require that the wave function interacts with matter, a process normally sufficient to cause it to collapse, without collapsing.
If this is not what you are implying, then you have the exact same falsification as the first scenario; in this case the ‘detector’ is your eye and the recording device is your consciousness, but there is still a lag between detection and conscious perception.
Leo,
I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I’m an atheist. I was raised secular and I consider myself lucky not to be have indoctrinated into any faith based belief system. Belief in god and/or an afterlife is intricately wrapped up with religion but it can be treated as a separate question, which is I guess is part of what you’re saying.
Most of us have a hard wired inclination to believe in something transcendent, and to feel as if we ‘inhabit’ our bodies rather than that we are our bodies. Your problem is that you’ve taken this conclusion, and instead of trying to examine it critically, or try to understand physchological/evolutionary/neurological bases for these inclinations, have set out to find supporting evidence. What you’ve ended up with is a set of seemingly (to me at least) mutually exclusive and contradictory beliefs, with the only unifying factor being support for your cherished conclusions.
I have a suggestion for you: read ‘The Believing Brain’ by Michael Shermer, or listen to Steve Novella’s lecture series, ‘Your Deceptive Brain’.
So your saying I just wanted to find it?. You have no idea man the first time I looked at anything that you would called crank evidence I look at it and laughed at it. Many of us don’t consider anything transcendent until we had a direct experience with it actually. I have actually looked at what a lot of the information that Steve Novella, Michael Shermer, Susan Blackmore, Keith Augustine, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker and so on. Because I have sided with what you coin pseudoscientists I know have to suffer the labels such as crank, crackpot, loon, pseudoscientist as well as cargo cult science.
leo,
“Well according to Andrei Linde someone I trust as he’s very intelligent”
No doubt he is very intelligent, but experience should tell you that even very intelligent people are capabe of saying stupid things at times. I know a number of really intelligent people who sound completely sensible and rational – until they start talking about their religious beliefs. Then they sound completely bonkers. In any case, Andrei Linde is on the fringe on this issue….one of a handful of quantum physicists wildly speculating beyond the evidence.
But I’m interested in YOUR view, leo.
“it means that it’s possible that consciousness may have an independent existence from matter”
I don’t get it. “Consciousness cause collapse” means that “it’s possible that consciousness may have an independent existence from matter”???
What on earth do you mean by that???
How is that even an answer to the question I asked?
I’m asking you to explain what you mean by “consciousness cause collapse” and you give an answer that doesn’t even include the vital word “collapse” or any reference to that word. All you have is a totally unsupported non sequitur…a completely unsupported assertion that “consciousness may have an independent existence from matter”!!!
Sonic hasn’t been able to answer that question either, but at least he hasn’t resorted to &v||$#!+ non-answers.
“I linked to an experiment called the Archetypal Quantum Experiment”
Where?
And where have you shown how this experiment demonstrates that “consciousness cause collapse”?
(which, in any case, would be pretty difficult when you can’t even explain what you mean by “consciousness causes collapse”).
How long are you and sonic going to keep repeating this phrase without being able to explain what on earth you mean by that phrase let alone link to a quantum mechanical experiment and explain how that experiment demonstrates that the phrase (that you can’t even explain the meaning of) is true.
What don’t the two of you just admit that you have NOTHING.
BillyJ7
What I mean by that is the act of observation and observation is my consciousness. As Andrei Linde mentioned it takes more than just a recording device locked in a room to collapse the wave function it takes the act of observation. Please tell you have watched this video and actually understand it. You can’t cut “me” out of the equations. He explained with scientific reasoning why he thinks consciousness may actually have an independent existence apart from matter. Of course, he was ridiculed for this by his editor of a book he came out with.
http://www.closertotruth.com/series/consciousness-fundamental#video-2613
leo,
It’s already been pointed out and discussed to death. Consciousness is not required. The wavefunction collapses when the measurement is taken. Not when a scientist looks at the result of that measurement. But but but Andrei Linde!!! you might say…science is littered with fringe dwellers and pet theories and pet interpretations. I hate to break it to you but 99.9% of them are not Galileo. Especially when we live in a time when peer review takes place at lightning speed compared to past eras.
Leo100, Sonic —
The problem is you cannot even define what consciousness is. Is it human consciousness? Or does the consciousness of my cat suffice to collapse the wave function? Can you see the problem at least?
If a cat’s consciousness is enough, what about a fly, or an amoeba? Or are you back at postulating Consciousness as some kind of deus ex machine, something undetectable, barely definable, and magically causing everything to happen?
*machina*
Stupid autocorrect.
Leo what the heck are you doing back? Great to hear from you!
Bill O – great point regarding gradations of consciousness. We can make your sticking point even thornier by adding demented human minds (disease, drug abuse, etc.), the very old, or children. Can 2 year old’s collapse that wave function, or 3 month olds?
You know we could merge a couple of these threads, and hypothesize that a controlled demolition causes the consciousness wavefunction to collapse. Symmetrically of course.
A measurement taken who takes that measurement?. If you tell me a tape recorder or some other measuring device, I am sorry but as Andrei Linde, clearly states, that has been done to separate the observer from the measurement but it doesn’t work. The observer and reality work as a pair, I don’t mean that consciousness creates reality. Here’s an excellent summary here by Andrei Linde.
“The universe and the observer exist as a pair,” Linde says. “You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words — it looks like it was here— for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It’s not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It’s necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead.
http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featuniverse
Bill,
It’s our consciousness that collapses the wave function as far as a cat goes collapses it I don’t know as apparently a cat as a cat can’t talk.
leo,
I’m not sure why you are bothering to throw more quotes out at us. What Andrei Linde is saying there is exactly the same philosophical nonsense that was discussed ad absurdium up thread already. It is exactly the same as the tired old “If a tree falls in a forest….” It is completely illogical to think that the universe cannot exist without an observer. What do you make of the entire history of the cosmos from the Big Bang until life appeared leo? It’s not even clear what Linde is trying to say there – “in the absence of observers, our universe is dead”. Is he saying there is no life in the universe then or is he saying the universe ceases to exist. Extending this outwards – the belief is that if all life ceased, then the universe – planets, suns, rocks, asteroids, minerals, etc. would suddenly vanish too? That there existence, their solidity, depends on someone observing them and without that they go poof? What about some rocks on a distant island where there is no life at the moment – do those rocks blink in and out of existence whenever a seagull flies over them and then leaves? This is loony-tunes leo…
I ain’t saying that the universe pops out of existence if I die but if all observers died be that all living things then the universe would apparently cease to exist. These are what the equations suggest that the observer and the universe are a pair. Of course, it may turn out that the many world’s interpretation is correct we will see.
Interesting…
Oh wait, no it’s not. Okay, I have nothing to contribute (and neither does Leo). What if, instead of suffering this, we exchange enchilada recipes? We could totally turn this trek into derp around into awesome. Who’s on board? Cocktail recipes?
MARGARITAS!!!
(shakes maracas suggestively)
Just had some amazing burritos – spicy chorizo, refried beans, 2 types of cheese, with guacamole, salsa, and Greek yogurt on the side – along with a nice Argentinian malbec – mmm-mmm….now I’m going to take the dog for a walk and do our part in observing the local lake to make sure it doesn’t vanish out of existence!
leo,
“What I mean by that is the act of observation and observation is my consciousness”
Okay, unlike sonic, you have the straight forward interpretation of “consciousness causes collapse”.
But, unlike sonic who retreats into obscurity, you retreat into someone else’s mind…
“As Andrei Linde mentioned it takes more than just a recording device locked in a room to collapse the wave function it takes the act of observation”
So let me get this straight. You set up the experiment with videos and other recording devices like the screen recording the hits of photons fired at the double slit, and then you come back one year later to see what’s happened. In your opinion there is nothing on that video, and nothing on that screen, untill you actually look? Is that what you’re trying to say?
If so, you do realise don’t you that this is non-falsifiable. You think that the moon is not there until at least one conscious observer looks? I could say that the moon is green until at least on of the worlds inhabitants looks at it. Does that sound reasonable? Of course not. You need EVIDENCE!
So, please leo, link me to that one quantum mechanical experiment that demonstrates that “consciouness causes collapse”. I’ve been asking sonic for years now..and nothing…yet he keeps on keeping on bringing out that same tired old phrase without variation time and time and time again.
Please don’t disappoint me like my old friend sonic, leo, I am counting on you.
“Please tell you have watched this video and actually understand it. You can’t cut “me” out of the equations. He explained with scientific reasoning why he thinks consciousness may actually have an independent existence apart from matter”
Really, leo, I would rather you explain it to me in your own words, otherwise I’ll never know if YOU have understood it.
“Of course, he was ridiculed for this by his editor of a book he came out with”
Serves him right for being such a d!(|<
“I ain’t saying that the universe pops out of existence if I die but if all observers died be that all living things then the universe would apparently cease to exist.”
Bill Openthalt-
That we can update our knowledge through conscious measurement is all we really have to know about consciousness as I understand it.
We can update our knowledge of the object under study by using schrodinger’s equation, which gives us a ‘smear’ of possibilities, or we can take a conscious measurement, which will give us a more precise ‘collapsed’ version of the smear we get from the equation.
What do I know about the object?
I can use the equation to tell me what I know– (gives ‘smeared out’ answer) or
I can take a conscious measurement– (gives more specific ‘collapsed’ answer).
Almost tautological (the equation is defined as a ‘complete description’– how could I know more than what it tells me without a measurement?)–
Turns out anything beyond that gets metaphysical though…
mumadadd-
My hidden message to you is to read the math from the math website, if I’m not mistaken.
One problem with QM is that often times questions like the ones you ask aren’t completely determined.
So the answer is– the equation doesn’t specify.
Q–Where was the object before the measurement?
A–The equation gives a probability distribution…
Q–So was the object in one of those locations, or was it ‘spread out’…
A–The equation doesn’t specify- – and that’s the complete answer–
When I see the list of valid interpretations I get the distinct impression that what the equation doesn’t specify allows for a great deal of leeway in the possible metaphysical ramifications.
Your interest is greater than you realized–
http://plus.maths.org/content/schrodinger-1
Sonic —
What is knowledge? If an amoeba retracts from a hostile environment, arguably it has acquired knowledge. A virus has “knowledge” about the cells it uses for its own reproduction. Mutation “updates” that knowledge, so does that mean a virus provides enough “consciousness” for the purpose of collapsing wave functions?
In fact, any interaction with the “object” will collapse the wave function. For consciousness to be germane in this exercise, you would need to show that only interaction by a conscious observer (which brings us back to what the required level of consciousness is) will cause the collapse.
The obvious objective of the slogan “consciousness collapses the wave function” is to introduce something we could recognise as human into the fabric of the Universe. Religions created god in humanity’s image, and now you guys are creating the Universe in humanity’s image. Would you be happy with a global consciousness at the level of a virus or an amoeba?
Sonic,
You’ve reminded me of this old question: When a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Maybe at one point this was a legitimate question, but now we have devices that can record events absent any human observation, and these events can be verified to have taken place after the fact.
You still haven’t responded to my objection that this is also the case for quantum effects; neither the detector nor the recording device is conscious, and an arbitrary gap can be added between measurement and conscious perception of the result. If consciousness causes collapse, then not only the wave function of the measured effect would have to remain in superposition until consciously observed, but all those of the digital encoding of the recorded result in its storage medium.
The fact is, Sonic, the classical world does emerge from the quantum world, and appears to out-date consciousness by a huge margin. We’d need to be significantly wrong in our current understanding of cosmology and astrology for ‘consciousness causes collapse’ to be correct.
What do you mean by ‘a valid interpretation’ of QM? I’ll take a guess at what this does mean: an interpretation that can be correctly derived mathematically. This doesn’t equate to experimentally verified, or even plausible. I watched a recent debate by Sean Carroll, and he discussed several mathematical models of the universe, pointing out some of the strengths and weaknesses of the various models. All of these models were ‘valid’, but some of them have been mostly discarded by physicists.
I think you’re taking all ‘valid interpretations’ as equal and disregarding the consensus of expert opinion, which has largely dismissed this notion.
“I think you’re taking all ‘valid interpretations’ as equal and disregarding the consensus of expert opinion, which has largely dismissed this notion.” Good point, I think you are spot on here.
BillyJ7
The double slit experiment seems to clearly show consciousness collapsing the wave function. You can say it’s a recording device that does it instead but where is the evidence for that?. It’s all interpretation. Some others, would say this supports the many world’s interpretation, don’t you see this is a very heated topic?.
“If so, you do realise don’t you that this is non-falsifiable. You think that the moon is not there until at least one conscious observer looks? I could say that the moon is green until at least on of the worlds inhabitants looks at it. Does that sound reasonable? Of course not. You need EVIDENCE!”
Nothing in quantum mechanics is normal its very weird to say the least. We may not like what it’s saying but that doesn’t mean its not true. Your putting up a strawman, by saying its non-falsifiable there’s nothing about it that is non-falsfiable especially when it’s demonstrated in the double slit experiment for example as well as in the equations themselves.
“The double slit experiment seems to clearly show consciousness collapsing the wave function.”
It doesn’t.
“It’s all interpretation.”
It isn’t.
Leo, think about how the effects are measured in this experiment, what is used to detect these effects. Is that detector conscious? Is the device that stores that result conscious? What happens if nobody looks at the detected result for a year, does the wave function stay uncollapsed (don’t know if this is the right term) for a year?
Just think these questions through, then Google ‘Most commonly accepted interpretation of quantum menchanics’.
When you’ve satisfied yourself that this is the Copenhagen interpretation, Google this, visit some reputable sites for definitions of this interpretation, press CTRL & F to bring up a search box and search for the word ‘consciousness’.
Leo,
Seriously, just a cursory attempt at finding this stuff out is all it takes.
You say: “I have actually looked at what a lot of the information that Steve Novella, Michael Shermer, Susan Blackmore, Keith Augustine, PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, Patricia Churchland and Paul Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker and so on.”
But you haven’t learned the importance of scientific consensus? Because it goes against this notion, leo.
Leo,
“The double slit experiment seems to clearly show consciousness collapsing the wave function. You can say it’s a recording device that does it instead but where is the evidence for that?. It’s all interpretation.”
Your first sentence is contradicted by the third. If this is all interpretation and both interpretations are equally valid (not likely, but valid) then it can’t be evidence for your preferred interpretation. That QM is true is verified by experimentation. What it implies is not verified or described in the maths. If it were verified then it wouldn’t be an implication. I choose to reject your preferred interpretation as it seems to lead to effective solipsism whereby you can’t know that the universe exists when you close your eyes.
Mumadadd
Where is the scientific consensus that their is no afterlife?. Naming a bunch of internet scientists who makes up blogs doesn’t equal scientific consensus.
Leo,
Wow. Just…wow. I did not drop a single name in my last responses to you — in fact, it was you who tried to make your point by listing scientists you think agree with you — and I even gave you suggested search terms to help you find out for yourself why what you’re saying is wrong. And what does QM have to do with the afterlife?
And for those reasons, leo, I’m out.
(The question above was rhetorical, btw, so don’t bother responding, as you won’t get one back).
Oh FFS, I just scrolled up a bit – I was quoting leo when I listed the ‘of internet scientists who makes up blogs’. He failed to recognise those two tiny parallel lines in superscript either side of a portion of my post as quotation marks.
Here’s leo making the argument from authority:
“A lot of quantum physicists think that consciousness collapses the wave function. I can name of them here.
– John Bell
– Andrei Linde
– Frank Wilczek
– Fred Kuttner
– Bruce Rosenblum
– Henry Stapp
– Eugene Wigner
– John Von Neumann
– Rudolf Peierls”
What a buffoon.
*’bunch of internet scientists who makes up blogs…”
Bill Openthalt-
If one wants to know ‘where is the object?’, he has 2 choices.
1- use past information about the object and schrodinger’s equation to tell ‘where’ the object is-
or
2- Take a measurement
(Interrogating an ameba regarding what it has observed might work as a measurement technique, but I am unaware of that technique as part of standard physics today).
In order to understand the interpretation is correct (by definition), you have to get past the idea the equation represents the object– and get that the equation is about ‘our knowledge’ of the system.
A somewhat subtle but big difference.
mumadadd-
Yes- it does have the ‘tree in the forest’ aspect.
An interpretation is valid because 100% of all experiments and 100% of all known phenomena agree with it.
Your analysis– that there is some experiment or observation or detector or some such that falsifies this shows you haven’t understood the interpretation– not the the interpretation is wrong.
The correct statement of the interpretation– that ‘our knowledge’ of the system ‘collapses’ is correct by definition and when you understand that, you will have understood the interpretation.
If you want to know why the interpretation doesn’t go beyond ‘our knowledge’, I’m suggesting you spend a bit of time reading about the math at the site I linked to earlier.
Oh–
These interpretations can get the emotions going–
http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/07/many-worlds-pseudoscience-again.html#more
(The link is to a guy who really understands the physics well– his opinions on politics and climate and such— not so sure…)
Sonic,
Please define ‘our knowledge’. Use a quote if you have to, but can you please give me a concise definition so I know what you mean by this?
Mumadadd
I am not actually you told me that the scientific consensus shows that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function. I simply asked you if you could give me a poll or something to demonstrate that the consensus is indeed there. Some of the scientists that I mentioned are not mere fringe scientists some are actually in the mainstream.
Mumadadd
That is not what I met again taken my words out of context. What I met was there is a lot of skeptical scientists on the internet it’s easy to compile a list of ones that would say consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function.
I love this guy. You’re a sight for sore eyes, Leo. You’re a nice person, unreasonable in your faith, but nice about it nonetheless.
We have one of your compatriots in the 9/11 comments rubbing shit in his hair and calling everyone in the right thinking world a shite driveling moron. The stupid, it hurts, it burns…
I like you Leo. This may be the scotch talking (as I’ve been playing the Fullerton drinking game), but I love this guy. This guy…
Impossible, but lovable…
Leo
Here is a small poll that should give you a rough idea of physicists opinions of quantum mechanics.
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069v1.pdf
Well, usually nice. You and midnightrunner need to be seperated, by which I mean- the corner for you.
According to sonic,
consciousness causes collapse
is interpreted as:
‘our knowledge’ of the system ‘collapses’
He places the key words in scare quotes so I guess they don’t actually mean what you might think they might mean. Meaning that we now need an interpretation of what his interpretation means.
Round and round the mulberry bush as always.
leo,
Please describe in you own words, without links or quotations, how the double slit experiment demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse.
BillyJoe7
Because the inference pattern goes away when a observation is taken. That observation can be an observer but many would rather opt with a material object doing it instead as the fact that if an observer really collapses the wave function we might as well say all the evidence we have for the universe can’t be relied on. I have no respect for this Fullerton guy as there is zero zilch nada evidence that 9/11 was some inside job.
Hoss,
Thanks for the link to the poll of physicists’ opinions of quantum mechanics. Do you have a link to a poll of engineers’ opinions of quantum mechanics? I ain’t no physicist, but I know a thing or two about engineering that actually works 100%, not just 99.999%.
Dr Novella, pity you couldn’t comment on your erroneous view of neural plasticity. As I have stated above, manual functions interfacing an environment are responsible for the reconditioning of neural networks that merely automatically facilitate that interface. The brain is passive – it get reworked and improved, or it avoids damaged areas, by full anatomical reconditioning. It appears you are just another impediment to progress Dr Novella. what a shame.
I briefly scanned some of the idiotic smears about my post and my book. I do not see any comment about my posts (the role of neurons as automatic facilitators of an entire anatomy interfacing a world) and I only see smear about my book. Anyone with a genuine interest into serious gaps to current knowledge and how to fill them can read my work at http://sdrv.ms/1a4HBbk My posts are above (M_Morgan).
You vultures are obviously afraid to deal with the comments, and haven’t bothered to read the book beyond the conclusion. Get jobs, and do something useful. Surely you see how pathetic it is to gang up and avoid the issues? If you don’t want to know about my work, don’t comment. If you do want to know, read it and comment beyond “he dares to say current science has got it wrong, must be a crank!”
You are conformists, followers, and obviously fools. I suspect from the desperation and length of time spent smearing and not reading the book or responding to any of my specific comments here that you might be a little jealous. Desperately hoping I might be wrong? Stay desperate. Others can read the book and be educated. See you in a few weeks for another scan of your flabbergasting ignorance. Its pathetic reading, but its good to know the general level of “education” “out there”.
Yay! Morgan! The band is getting back together! The Cuckoo Clocks? I do love it when they nail declarations to the door.
Hoss,
Thanks for the link to the poll. I will admit I was wrong when I said that most physicists think that consciousness collapses the wave function I was wrong. I will say though that just because there is a consensus doesn’t mean that the consensus is right.
Leo, you can chose to believe in whatever you want to believe in. You can believe in whatever you want, even if it becomes a nuisance or a problem for others. You’re just not going to accomplish anything arguing junk-science to scientists, or to people who know science stuff, and so on. I keep telling you this, but you keep coming back with more of this stuff. Live and let live/die, guy.
I should also mention it’s a measurement problem no one really seems to have a solution to it. It’s still highly debated today.
That poll was done in 2011. Check this study done in 2013 where physicists take a peep in the quantum paradox.
http://www.nature.com/news/physicists-snatch-a-peep-into-quantum-paradox-1.13899
This is rather interesting Fred Alan Wolf I am aware he’s quack however in his detailed information about the double slit experiment about the observer I though it would be interesting to post it here. It’s from a forum where I will paste the link below. Perhaps some of the physicists here can dissect what he is saying. When it comes to all that math.
I am happy to explain the 2-slit experiment very thoroughly to you. Here is the complete double slit explanation with some simple math concepts but no actual math calculations. If you understand this it will clear up the observer effect in quantum physics and what physicists actually compute in their theories when doing quantum physics. For more in quantum physics read my books Taking the Quantum Leap and Parallel Universes and soon to be released in the Spring 2011, Time-loops and Space-twists: How God created the universe.
You need one outstanding quantum physics math fact. Possibilities in quantum physics are complex numbers. To determine the probability of an event with possibility A, you need to multiply this possibility A by its complex conjugate A*. Together you get |A|^2 which makes up the probability for the event. For more on this see any of my latest books.
Most explanations of the 2-slit experiment fail to go into the interaction of a measuring device with the particle before it arrives at the screen. Suppose a camera is positioned outside of the slits.
Let me try to explain this according to quantum physics.
Although it appears to not make sense, it is ultimately not the camera that makes the big change–it is the observer that does it. However having the camera in the experiment does make a change. Let me use a shorthand to describe this. Let E be the electron, (so E1 means electron at slit 1, and so on), S1 slit 1, S2 slit 2, and C the camera. Now when the camera is off or not interacting with the slits we have the following situation.
The quantum physics state of the whole system S is (E1×S1 + E2×S2)×C. The two possibilities E1×S1 and E2×S2 interfere with each other–they add up their states. This is known as the superposition principle of quantum physics.
The camera C does not affect each possibility separately even though it multiplies their sum. This is just like classical physics where you compute the probability of throwing a dice to get a six and flipping a coin to get heads. You simply multiply the probabilities 1/6 x 1/2 = 1/12. What happens to the die is independent of the coin.
When the observer comes into the picture he sees the whole quantum physics (E1×S1 + E2×S2)×C state and hence sees the interference pattern after many electrons hit the screen. Since C didn’t interact with either slit that pattern is the same as if the camera were not there at all.
Now turn the camera on. If the camera captures a picture, its state will change according to either possibility C1 or C2 where C1 means it went through slit-1 and C2 means it went through slit-2. The whole system is now (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2).
Now there are two possibilities (I) and (II):
(I) The observer doesn’t look at the picture in the camera. The interference has been affected by the camera being in place and the camera’s state has changed. If the observer were to observe this whole state (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2), and not look to see what the camera recorded, he still wouldn’t know which slit the electron went through and yet the whole pattern on the screen would change due to the presence of the active camera. He would only know that something changed in the experiment if he was capable of knowing anything at all about this..
According to quantum physics the probability for having the camera on and the observer not looking at its result is
(E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2) x (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2)* [* means complex-conjugate]. This gives the probability to be
|(E1×S1×C1)|^2 + |(E2×S2×C2)|^2 + rapid interference terms. The interference terms are nearly zero due to the complexity of having many particles in the film of the camera and the result seems just about random. This would appear on the screen as a jiggle of overlapping single slit possibilities with little interference.
(II) The observer does look at the picture in the camera. Since he looks at the camera he will see either E1×S1×C1 or E2×S2×C2 and depending on which camera state he observes, he will “see” a slightly different result on the screen for where the electron went. If he would see C1, it went through slit-1, if he would see C2 it went through slit-2 and there is no interference any more. The observed pattern, either E1×S1×C1 or E2×S2×C2, would be slightly different than the whole state (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2) although this would be very hard to detect.
Here is the reason it is hard to detect. In (II) while the camera is recording the result yielding (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2) over and over again and he looks at the camera each time and then waits for a lot of looked at electrons to arrive on the screen, he would find an overlap of probabilities for each result. It’s like asking for the total probability of finding a single die with either the number 2 or the number 3 showing. You add the separate probabilities of 1/6 + 1/6.= 1/3. So if you were to look at each camera after the camera took its picture each time you would get the probability to be
|(E1×S1×C1)|^2 + |(E2×S2×C2)|^2 without the interference terms. This is very much like the result in (I) where the result is the same except for the rapid interference terms that are there from not looking at the camera. Since they are rapid they average out to a fuzzy result.
So ultimately the observer causes the change in the pattern although in this case the human observer plays a small role. This doesn’t necessarily mean that putting the camera in place and turning it on doesn’t change things–it does. This state (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2×C2) (camera on) is not the same as (E1×S1 + E2×S2)×C (camera off).
It makes little difference to do it this way or use two cameras or even just one camera. If the single camera is on behind slit 1, e.g., and nothing is recorded, the electron did not go through that slit and the observation that it did not also destroys the interference pattern because we then know it went through slit 2 since we don’t see it go through slit 1. That is (E1×S1×C1 + E2×S2) becomes either E1×S1×C1 or E2×S2 thus also destroying the pattern. For more you might enjoy reading about quantum physics in several books listed on my website such as Taking the Quantum Leap, Parallel Universes, The Yoga of Time Travel, and others. I would also suggest you read the Feynman lectures vol. 3.
In summary the observer destroys the interference between the possibilities. The camera doesn’t. Note in particular even the observation that an electron did not go thorugh a slit produces the same result as observing that it did.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=3962037
Hmm… Why?
Leo100,
“That poll was done in 2011. Check this study done in 2013 where physicists take a peep in the quantum paradox”
Um… Are these two sentences related? The Nature piece is very interesting, but contributes nothing to the debate. It does nothing to differentiate consciousness from measurement.
leo,
“Because the inference pattern goes away when a observation is taken”
No.
The interference pattern goes away when the detectors are switched on.
That’s it.
“That observation can be an observer”
No.
It is the detectors at the slits.
These detectors at the slits detect the photons passing the slits by interacting wth them.
“observer” = detector
“but many would rather opt with a material object doing it instead…”
And they would be correct.
Read the details of that experiment carefully, leo.
Please confirm that “observer” = detector.
“…as the fact that if an observer really collapses the wave function we might as well say all the evidence we have for the universe can’t be relied on”
I don’t clearly understand what you are trying to say here but, no, the observer or the observation does not collapse the wave function.
It really is very simple, leo.
Please read the details of the experiment and substitute “detector” for “observer”.
I promise you it will all make complete sense.
(Note: don’t rely on sonic because he is making a different error which, in any case, he is finding impossible to enunciate, in which case he is not going to make sense to you anyway)
Sonic —
You don’t get it. If an amoeba is struck by (i.e. “observes”, “measures”, “interacts with”) one of a pair of entangled photons, does the pair decohere? Or does it require a human retina?
What is the difference between a cell (amoeba) and a cell (rod/cone)? How would a photon “know” it has interacted with an amoeba rather than with a cell in a human retina?
Your consciousness seems to be an all-pervasive agent that interacts with the basic building blocks of the universe in a personalised way — “the photon struck a detector but the human experimenter wasn’t watching (“increasing his knowledge”) so I’ll hold off decoherence until she watches the video”.
And I was thinking QM is weird. This beats it by a light-year.
TDGB: “Yay! Morgan! The band is getting back together! The Cuckoo Clocks?”
No it was the Clockwork Clocks, playing in their favorite venue: real reality. I can’t wait to hear so many of my favorite songs, including “Strong Emergence”, “Reductionism Died, My Thought Experiment Killed It”, “The Lawyer Who Was Secretly A Brilliant Scientist and Philosopher”, “Consciousness is Immaterial, so Suck It”, and perhaps even my all-time favorite “My Ideas Are Weird, Quantum Mechanics is Weird, Quantum Mechanics is True, Therefore My Ideas are True Too!”
The Other,
You forgot about their seminal hits ‘Consider a Clockwork Clock’, ‘Paradigm Shift’ and ‘Fall of the House of Skeptics’.
TDGB: “Yay! Morgan! The band is getting back together! The Cuckoo Clocks?”
TOJM: “No it was the Clockwork Clocks”
Yeah, but it was Ian Wardell, not Marcus Morgan.
BO: “And I was thinking QM is weird”
Well, it’s sort of weird. It just aint crazy.
“Yeah, but it was Ian Wardell, not Marcus Morgan.”
If they aren’t interested in accuracy or clarity, neither am I!
I also forgot these classic hits:
“My Love, You Have Caused a Silent, Invisible, Untraceable Controlled Demolition of my Heart”
“Where’s the Jolt?”
“It’s Not an Insult, it’s an Accurate Negative Characterization, You Dip$hits”
“Fallacy fallacy fallacy fallacy, la la la la….”
BillyJ7
I will say i am not sure if consciousness collapses the wave function or not. Unlike you who is dead sure that material objects can do this. That is why its called the measurement problem no solution has ever been found.
The Other John Mc
I can’t wait to hear some of these absolute classic songs. “Near-death experiences exposed: Surge of brain activity after the heart stops may trigger paranormal visions”. “Dualism is dead”, Another nail in the coffin of Dualism”, “Is ESP Real? Harvard Scientists Say They Have Settled The Debate”. They will be playing at a outdoor concert near you. Tickets are on sale.
“the Clockwork Clocks, playing in their favorite venue: real reality.”
Nearly spit up coffee.
I can’t say why, but I see Ian as the lead singer. I gave them all reasoning error-based instruments, but I think each of their personalities lends itself to a rock instrument.
Ian: singer (unflinching ego)
Leo: guitar (way too much to say, most people don’t want to hear any it)
Sonic: bass (he just IS a bass player – hard to explain)
Berardo: keys (for some reason I can see it in my head)
M_Morgan: drums (he’s like a cross between Animal and Keith Moon late in the evening – just absolutely out of his gourd)
And there are your Clockwork Clocks with their new single ‘Real Reality’ off their debut album ‘Consider a Clockwork Clock’.
I would would quit my job to become their Brian Epstein in about 2 seconds.
Follow-up ballad: My Brain is a Receiver – for you, Baby
How about ‘Consider a Table’ – it was a rare B-side on ‘Consider a Clockwork Clock’.
By the way you all forgot about AliSina, but I suppose that’s fair enough as some purists do dispute his position as an actual band member, likening him to Bez of The Happy Mondays.
AliSina and Hardnose can be a little horn section, I guess. Nothing strikes me there.
Maybe we do a cross-over deal and bring in Fullerton as a rapper a la Zach De la Rocha? He could spit fire about 9/11 with wmmalo on tables? on “The Official Explanation about 911 is a Joke in Your Town”.
Where is an object located at a specific instant in time? Well, if the object is a wave function then it doesn’t have a precise position. Here’s a plot of the real part of a wave function in a dispersive medium:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wave_packet_(dispersion).gif
Such an object has the properties: phase velocity[1]; group velocity [which reduces in non-empty space e.g. wave refraction]; energy[1]; it may also possess a set of states; it may also possess other properties. Some/most properties maybe quantized rather than linear, such as finite energy states.
[1] which reduces as it travels through light years of our expanding universe. Doppler red-shift being an exemplar.
As I’ve commented previously, misuse of the time domain is a frequently made error in this thread (Sonic asked me what I meant by this, but I couldn’t think of a suitable example at the time). Here’s a good example: Asking where a photon is located at a specific instant in time is a silly question because a photon is not a tiny solid atomic particle [atomic meaning a single irreducible unit].
Wave–particle duality does NOT imply that the two models are interchangeable according to the whim of the person trying to construct a reasoned argument. E.g. To fully explain how a digital camera works requires the use of the wave model for the optics and the particle model for the sensor. Try to explain a camera using reversed models then you will quickly conclude that digital cameras cannot possibly produce the images that they deliver! Digital cameras are the ultimate proof that quantum physics is very well understood by specialist and not understood by Tooth Fairy scientists and philosophers.
The Schrödinger equation is a partial solution; not a full solution nor a nearly adequate explanation of QM. It’s a partial bridge between the wave function domain and classical mechanics in the space-time domain. A far better domain for QM is the Hilbert space:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_space#Quantum_mechanics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamiltonian_(quantum_mechanics)
Furthermore: 1) The Schrödinger equation becomes decreasingly meaningful as the number of particles in the system increases beyond one; 2) The equation does not apply to photons because they have zero mass.
Using the Hilbert space instead of the space-time domain reveals the error made by those who claim that experiments have demonstrated retrocausality. Retrocausality is typical philosophical mental masturbation by those who’s thinking is severely limited to only the domains of classical mechanics and space-time.
Any mathematics (e.g. as presented by Leo) that indicate a conscious observer changes the probability mass function of an experiment retrospectively is obviously fundamentally flawed. Such trickery is usually based on semantic filibustering: if one defines the word information to mean data that is personally interpreted by a living organism, then knowledge must mean personal knowledge, etc. etc., therefore the universe doesn’t exist without an observer. Such tricksters conceal the fact that they’ve used this and/or other epistemologically valid, but not scientifically valid, redefinitions of scientific terms to construct their anti-science arguments.
On 30th May 2014, The Other John Mc mentioned the quantum eraser experiment. On 16th June 2014, BillyJoe7 mentioned the delayed choice quantum eraser. I find it absurd that Sonic and Leo100 have been too damned lazy to read the Wikipedia pages and follow the reference to the explanation. Here it is (freely available for download):
Demystifying the Delayed Choice Experiments by Bram Gaasbeek
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser#cite_note-25
(Note that Wikipedia may change the cite_note number when the article is updated.)
You made my day lol.
Leo, I love that you love it too. That makes me love you.
And I mean no offense, Leo. I’ve been a guitar player for a long time, and I know. Guitar players always go on and on – it’s in out nature.
That, and we always need to be turned up in the monitors….
BillOpenthalt-
The answer to your question about the amoeba–
The math is unclear.
You have to understand– I’m making statements about what we know about the objects — not about the objects themselves.
This is what the people who use the ‘collapse’ idea often do– it really isn’t fair to say they are wrong because you refuse to understand what is being said.
If you stop asserting the wrong assumption and realize I’m only talking about ‘our knowledge’ and not the object itself, then you will see what I’m saying is correct by definition and is what the math says.
Please understand\- what I’m say is ‘our knowledge’ goes from a ‘fuzzy answer’ (given by the equation) to a ‘specific answer’ when we take a measurement- nothing more– NOTHING more. I’m not saying what the electron or what ever is doing– I’m only saying what we can say about the electron.
You say– but what about this part?– and I say– the math isn’t clear.
What is clear is that we can know what the equation says, and we can know what our measurements say.
We can’t currently know the answers to your questions about amoeba and so forth which is why the interpretations get so wildly speculative– nobody can say for sure– so they can say pretty much whatever they want.
What we can say is that the equation gives us possible answers and measurement gives us actual answers.
And that’s what ‘consciousness causes collapse’ acknowledges.
What happens when the object does ‘x’?, you ask.
The answer– the math is unclear. The math tells us how ‘our knowledge’ of the system evolves– it is not clear what it is saying about the system itself.
If you use Einstein’s general relativity and you put the ‘perfect’ information about the object into the equation, it is possible the equation can give you the future location of the object exactly for all future times.
General relativity can give us a deterministic universe.
Quantum mechanics doesn’t give us the same type of answer… we can’t say what the exact location of an object will be at the future time– the equation gives possible outcomes given that we take a measurement.
It can’t be used to determine which outcome we’ll get, and it can’t be used to determine if we will take a measurement, two ‘wild cards’ that general relativity doesn’t have.
Problem– Schrodinger’s equation is a mathematical equation– a number of partial difference equations that describe how certain measureable quantities evolve over time. A decription in normal english is at best an analogy for the actual math.
Problem–
The math doesn’t say what the ‘particle’ is doing between measurements– it gives probable outcomes assuming we take a measurement.
And when you ask ‘what is the ‘particle’ doing?– the correct answer is likely ‘the math doesn’t say.’
I think many physicists suggest it’s best not to ask how it could be that way- just accept it is that way and move on. And perhaps that’s right-
If you want to demand that the equation has physical meaning– that’s when you get into things going back and forth in time and the ‘multiverse’ and all that sort of thing- I’m not sure the equation needs to have a physical meaning…
“Consciousness causes collapse”–
What we know about an object becomes less certain as the time between conscious measurements increases. (The universe has an indeterministic aspect).
A sudden increase in certainty (knowledge) can be accomplished when a conscious measurement is taken- a ‘cloud’ of possibilities becomes an actual measurement… our estimate of location, for example, collapses to a point from a ‘cloud’ of possibilities.
No other activity can produce the ‘collapse’ in knowledge that a conscious measurement does.
I think that’s all pretty much obviously true.
Is it bothersome that it doesn’t say more?
Sonic
What is your main position in this thread?
Sonic,
It’s clear that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about and struggle to write anything even semi-coherent on the topic.
“What we can say is that the equation gives us possible answers and measurement gives us actual answers.
And that’s what ‘consciousness causes collapse’ acknowledges.”
No, that is not what “consciousness causes collapse” means or “acknowledges”.
“We can’t currently know the answers to your questions about amoeba and so forth which is why the interpretations get so wildly speculative– nobody can say for sure”
The amoeba was used as an example to show how stupid the whole notion of consciousness having any influence over the outcome is.
Your second post is more vague meanderings confusing “consciousness” with “measurement” repeatedly, when you have, repeatedly, been given multiple explanations by many people that consciousness is IRRELEVANT to the outcome of the measurement. If you really do find this confusing, then I apologize, but it seems that you are almost intentionally, coyly, being obtuse and trolly in your persistent misunderstanding and ignoring of any attempts to clarify for you. Go back and read some of the very basic comments and links about quantum mechanics. You are still at step 0 of your understanding of it.
Sonic:
Have you ever played bass?
leo,
“I will say i am not sure if consciousness collapses the wave function or not”
It is not difficult, leo.
Here it is in a nutshell:
Set up the experiment with both sensors turned off and you will get an interference pattern every time.
Set up the experiment with one or both sensors turned on and you will get a scatter pattern every time.
That’s it!
If you disagree, please explain where consciousness is involved.
You cannot just say that I am wrong and leave it at that.
You owe your self an explanation.
leo,
Please read sonic’s last two contributions.
Did you learn anything?
Please tell me you know enough about qunatum physics to say “no”.
All he does is explain what the wave function is and what collapse is.
Introductory level quantum physics.
But nowhere in his long meandering explanation (of something we all learned in grade school) does he mention consciousness…
…except at the end where he simply proclaims “And that’s what ‘consciousness causes collapse’ acknowledges”
I mean, laugh out loud!
There is no mention anywhere in his two long posts on introductory level quantum physics of consciousness, let alone an explanation of how it is involved!
Sonic, leo,
You flip a coin. In the air it is in a heads-tails state. It lands on the back of your hand and you quickly cover it up without seeing the result. Is it still in an indeterminate heads-tails state while resting on the back of your hand? Does it only collapse to being either just heads or just tails when you remove your hand and look at it? If you answer “yes”, then you believe “consciousness causes collapse”.
This isn’t a perfect analogy in terms of wave function collapse in general (coin flips aren’t truly random) but it is a good analogy in understanding what is meant by “CCC”.
Sonic —
I am very much aware of the difference between reality and our mathematical representation of it. I am acutely aware of the problems of transposing solutions to physics equations to reality, and don’t for a moment believe there are multiple universes because the maths can be interpreted thusly. But we do know that quite often advances in maths allow us to reach beyond the current understanding in physics because we have gained a rigorous language to express and guide our thinking.
Back to consciousness. I was asking rhetorical questions to show how inane it is to link consciousness (which no-one can define rigorously) to quantum decoherence. It is mystical abuse of QM, perpetrated by the likes of Deepak Chopra. There is no scientific merit to the idea. End of story.
BillyJoe7
Have you looked at the Quantum Enigma site http://quantumenigma.com/nutshell/. If your a physicist yourself you should have no problem having a little email exchange with one of the physicist’s that wrote this book.
Fred Kuttner
fred.kuttner@gmail.com
Ekko,
I ain’t saying that consciousness creates reality that would lead to idealism. What I am saying is that consciousness (observation) works as a pair with measurement. The evidence seems to suggest some independent existence of consciousness but not to the point where you wish for something it will come true.
These physicists think they maybe onto something after 7 decades of heated debate on the measurement problem.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0509/0509042.pdf
Leo
You didn’t read what you linked to again.
“That the brain, mind or consciousness play no subjective role in the collapse of the wave function, with this event taking place naturally in an objective and stochastic discontinuous nonlinear fashion within the complex architecture of the eye. This means that only non-superposed states or final, measured information reaches the brain, mind or consciousness.”
The paper you linked to does a decent job demonstrating how consciousness doesn’t…well, I think you get the point. I think it’s hilarious how your gargantuan(you know, I always liked that word…”gargantuan”…so rarely get an opportunity to use it in a sentence) confirmation bias was sidestepped because you failed to read any of the paper.
Hoss,
You can mistaken what I said they think they can explain it without consciousness. A lot of materialist’s are trying everything they can to avoid the interpretation that consciousness collapses the wave function. Of course because of fear of interaction dualism or solipsism.
mumadadd,
Deepak Chopra didn’t contribute to the article I linked to, or to the theory. If you look a little more closely, you’ll see he was asked to comment on the recent review of the orch OR theory in relation to Eastern religion’s ideas about consciousness – undoubtedly because the theory is about consciousness. Therefore he “referred to” the article in his review. And if you read his review, you’ll see that he’s not really on board with orch OR (apparently because he is an idealist) Perhaps now you’ll find the theory more tenable, since whenever we feel we need to have an opinion about something we can’t assess first-hand, we must make our judgements second-hand. I do that all the time.
I think I made a mistake by referencing the orch OR theory in order to show that the brain does operate at the quantum level, as well as the classic level. I apparently made the separate issues into one somehow, and thereby made what I was saying somewhat confusing. Sorry!
Dr. Novella has dismissed Penrose in the past, and this is very likely due to the demand that Penrose’s theory places on how we conceptualize consciousness. Amongst skeptics in general (therefore, beware: I am generalizing) there’s a prickliness about consciousness being something that requires a new interpretation of matter if it’s shown that quantum operations in the brain play a role. If one can get past this antipathy, one might grok that nothing’s changed re: material, physicality, etc. We have the same amount of “proof” for the soul as we’ve always had. However, it was never my intention to create another area for debate about consciousness. I should have just linked to the studies on microtubule function instead of the article about orch OR. So, again – these are two separate things.
The brain does operate at the quantum level. I don’t know what this implies for consciousness. The orch OR theory is about consciousness, and has recently gained more viability due to new findings about the microtubule. The authors of orch OR have answered their critics. And of course, there will be further criticism. And, again, I’m not going to defend it beyond what I just did.
“A lot of materialist’s are trying everything they can to avoid the interpretation that consciousness collapses the wave function. Of course because of fear of interaction dualism or solipsism.”
No.
#1 No one refers to themself as a “materialist” (except maybe Madonna)
#2 There is nothing to avoid. There is no evidence for consciousness being involved at all.
#3 No one is afraid of solipsism. Sometimes people are embarrassed when they realize their philosophy leads to solipsism though.
@mlema
“Amongst skeptics in general (therefore, beware: I am generalizing) there’s a prickliness about consciousness being something that requires a new interpretation of matter if it’s shown that quantum operations in the brain play a role”
I think this has been pointed out a couple of times already but you seem stuck on this point. I don’t think many, if any skeptics care whether there IS a quantum component to the brain or not. It would be interesting for sure. The problem is that with your first couple of links way back up the thread somewhere you imply that the quantum aspect has been confirmed – it hasn’t. There’s a lot of work to do in that direction.
The other issue is that the implication is that if there is a quantum level to how the brain/mind operate, that somehow provides proof for something other than what we’re already observing and it doesn’t. It only adds to the understanding of the model. It doesn’t change the fact that we know a deliberate change to the physical brain provides observable and predictable changes to the mind.
The underlying ridiculousness of the argument FOR a mind separate from the body is that it requires a lot of serious loops to be jumped through in order to explain it. Literally everyone here supporting it has shown that time and time again.
grabula –
Sorry if I seem stuck on a point. I simply made a comment in response to those who kept saying that the brain doesn’t operate at the quantum level. I don’t really care either.
And yes, this is more than one issue – so I’ve tried to clarify that. And everything else you said doesn’t apply to anything I’ve said, so I think you’re probably just trying to make a separate point for the benefit of someone other than me. So I hope whoever it is gets the point.
cheers
Grabula
The nice thing you can say is that ORCH model goes with the receiver/filter/blocker theory of the brain. It also says that consciousness separates from the brain and moves to the plank scale a dream like consciousness, proto-consciousness. This also has a lot of importance as well in quantum computing.
@leo
Sure, if it meant anything but so far it’s at best controversial, and unsupported.
leo,
“Have you looked at the Quantum Enigma site http://quantumenigma.com/nutshell/. If your a physicist yourself you should have no problem having a little email exchange with one of the physicist’s that wrote this book.”
In other words, you’re not even going to try to understand the double slit experiment?
You’re not even going to try to show me where consciousness enters the experiment?
You’re going to fob me off to someone else?
How disappointing. ):
The double slit experiment is the starting point – and some say the end point – of QM.
So, if you don’t understand the double slit experiment…
And the clear message from that experiment is that consciousness is NOT involved.
Really, leo, take another look. It really is worth it.
Mlema,
“Deepak Chopra didn’t contribute to the article I linked to, or to the theory.”
I know that – my fault for confusing phrasing. But his name anywhere near that sort of thing sets alarm bells ringing for me.
“If one can get past this antipathy, one might grok that nothing’s changed re: material, physicality, etc. We have the same amount of “proof” for the soul as we’ve always had.”
I agree.
“The brain does operate at the quantum level.”
I’m not with you on this though, unless you mean that the brain operates on the quantum level in the same way all objects do, because ultimately they are made of quantum stuff. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just reserving judgement until there is better evidence.
I haven’t made much progress reading the stuff you linked to as I got distracted by other reading, but I will revisit it at some point soon.
Mlema,
Let me elaborate on my last comment. I have no problem with the notion that some fine scale functioning of neurons can be explained by quantum effects; this would just add a finer resolution to our current understanding. But I am skeptical of any claims that consciousness or any kind of global level brain functioning can be explained as a quantum phenomenon, which seems to be what Penrose is reaching to with Orch OR.
To be honest, I’d be pleased if this turned out to be accurate, and our brains in effect are quantum computers. This might just give me the thinnest sliver of hope that death is not the end – don’t ask me how, I can’t logically connect the dots, but the notion is appealing to me on a gut level for that reason.
I think this is the trap a lot of the various woo proponents posting here fall into; they don’t properly understand QM but they know it’s weird and counter-intuitive, and the misunderstanding creates enough confusion to allow for wild extrapolation.
“Let me elaborate on my last comment. I have no problem with the notion that some fine scale functioning of neurons can be explained by quantum effects; this would just add a finer resolution to our current understanding. But I am skeptical of any claims that consciousness or any kind of global level brain functioning can be explained as a quantum phenomenon, which seems to be what Penrose is reaching to with Orch OR.”
This is well said, much better than my attempt.
Mlema —
To amplify what mumadadd said: there is no evidence yet that neurons are operating directly at the quantum level (unlike certain aspects of modern microprocessors) — chemistry and electricity is what neurons use to transfer information internally and between themselves. At this stage, there are no brain functions that use processes at the atomic, let alone the quantum levels. This does not mean that there are no quantum-level processes at work (like, for instance, in chlorophyll) in the cells, or the cell components.
What matters is whether the brain processes and functions themselves are directly dependent on quantum-level interactions, e.g. through the manipulation of qubit-like quantum devices. As as far as we know, there are no such dependencies. It’s all done a couple of levels higher, using chemical compounds and electricity.
But “consciousness” you might object. Again, consciousness as a brain process doesn’t need QM. And QM doesn’t have the “power” to support the functionality of the hypothetical and ill-defined “consciousness” the dualists are bandying around.
So either the sentence The brain does operate at the quantum level. is trite, because all matter “operates at the quantum level”, or misleading, because it suggests that the brain is capable of acting on matter and energy at the quantum level, for which there is no proof whatsoever.
Sonic,
What are you trying to say here?
On the face of it, this seems okay if you just remove the word ‘conscious’, but it looks to me like you might have been trying to pull another fast one. Look at the last bit I’ve highlighted in bold. Are you trying to imply that all along you were talking about the collapse of the wave function in the pattern of neurons in our brains when we observe something?
I apologise if I’ve misunderstood you, but I’m 75% sure you were again silently shifting your argument so that you can wriggle out of the criticism of what you were previously saying.
Bill,
Out of interest, did you read the articles Mlema linked to? I couldn’t put it into context properly or work out how valid the (Orch OR) study was. I’d be interested in other opinions on this, especially from anyone working in related fields.
Thanks.
Grabula,
I guess you haven’t seen this
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm.
You can’t say it’s not supported by evidence.
BillyJ7
I am not a physicist so if you are you would have no problem exchanging your view with his. That is if your open to changing your mind.
We’ve all seen that, leo. It’s what the past 8 or so posts are about.
If Orch OR explains consciousness then why are we completely unaware of our neural oscillation (especially our brain waves)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation
I suggest that the obvious reason is that which science has already established: consciousness results from the macroscopic level time-integral of multiple channels of information.
The Self Illusion: Why There is No ‘You’ Inside Your Head by Professor Bruce M. Hood.
I asked this a while back but the thread moves pretty fast:
A QM question for anyone who can, and feels like, answering: If Scrodinger’s equation applies to all ‘objects’; and a brain, a tennis ball, and the universe are all objects, how are we defining objects in this context? It seems a bit arbitrary. Are there any criteria for what defines an object in this context beyond standard human intuition?
Peta A,
I don’t think it presents a problem for Orch OR theory. There is a lot of information on Orch theory here.
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/orchor.html
So how is the weather where you are? its rather rather hot here. The sun is poking through at times.
mumadadd,
Schrödinger’s equations do not apply to all objects, examples: photons because they have zero mass; an electron in a magnetic field.
A photon is a wave function that often behaves as if it were a particle — this defies Schrödinger’s original concept, which was that particles can often exhibit behaviour attributable to waves.
“However, the Schrödinger equation does not directly say what, exactly, the wave function is… An important aspect is the relationship between the Schrödinger equation and wavefunction collapse. In the oldest Copenhagen interpretation, particles follow the Schrödinger equation except during wavefunction collapse, during which they behave entirely differently.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schrödinger%27s_equation#Interpretation_of_the_wave_function
As the number of particles in an object increases beyond one, I suggest that the equations become increasingly meaningless.
“The team’s measurements imply that this molecule has a wavelength of about 500 femtometres, which is about four orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of a molecule by itself.”
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/physicists-smash-record-for-wave-particle-duality-462c39db8e7b
So what? Some seem to think [hope] that this implies a human brain (or perhaps just its consciousness) can be fired through a minuscule double-slit and somehow remain intact. I don’t think this is likely outcome.
The Quantum Consciousness article to which leo linked avoids mentioning the two essential words contained in the ScienceDaily article to which leo previously linked: megahertz [sic] and anharmonic. If consciousness is operating in the Megahertz region then its sampling frequency is 4 to 6 orders of magnitude faster than brainwaves therefore it would easily detect our brainwaves and the anharmonic beat frequencies that are claimed to be produced. This is basic Nyquist–Shannon sampling theory.
“Let me elaborate on my last comment. I have no problem with the notion that some fine scale functioning of neurons can be explained by quantum effects; this would just add a finer resolution to our current understanding. But I am skeptical of any claims that consciousness or any kind of global level brain functioning can be explained as a quantum phenomenon, which seems to be what Penrose is reaching to with Orch OR.”
Exactly. Lt’s say the Bandyopadhyay lab findings are replicated and reliable. And let’s say that we can find some reflection of this quantum activity in EEG (though this is problematic for reasons that Pete A has pointed out).
It’s still a leap to conclude that consciousness is a QM level phenomena. Why would a finding about the micro-workings of single neurons be important? We already know that we need many neurons for consciousness to be achieved, and we already know that oscillations on the order already studied are crucial indicators of the state of consciousness and cognition generally. Why would this be if this model is true? They’re just co-incident epiphenomena?
Why is there modularity in the brain – is this also epiphenomenal to consciousness and cognition? And seeing the reflection of cellular processes, even quantum ones, in EEG (even though, as a user of EEG I don’t understand this at all) does not mean that these processes are reflecting consciousness.
The problem for all of this is, no one has tied these quantum phenomena, even if true, to consciousness. Or any cognition. Finding out that A exists with no information re: it’s relationship to B cannot be construed as A causes B.
Steve12 wrote: “The problem for all of this is, no one has tied these quantum phenomena, even if true, to consciousness. Or any cognition. Finding out that A exists with no information re: it’s relationship to B cannot be construed as A causes B.”
Indeed. Washing machine motors, much like our neurology, rely on pulse width modulation or pulse rate modulation controllers. The controller uses semiconductor devices that operate at the quantum level, but QM-level phenomena have nothing whatsoever to do with the washing machine motor speed at any moment during the washing and spin cycles.
@leo
You’re not really following this conversation thread very well are you? As I’ve already pointed out to Mlema – and hence my statement to you – It’s one article on a questionable concept that still needs a lot of work to verify. A single article does not make a confirmation of anything and as I pointed out to mlema, just because something quantum MIGHT be happening in the brain doesn’t in anayway provide any evidence whatsoever for anything we havent’ already observed in the way the brain and the mind are inseperable.
leo,
“I am not a physicist so if you are you would have no problem exchanging your view with his. That is if your open to changing your mind”
I’ve seen all the arguments, leo, and they are all unconvincing.
I’m trying to show you why I have come to that conclusion, but it seems that either you are not interested or you feel you don’t have the capacity to understand – which makes me wonder why you are even arguing for consciousness causing collapse.
You’ve read sonic’s comments haven’t you?
What do think of them?
I mean read them…they are completely content free. He offers no explanations at all!
Look at his latest contribution.
Here he introduces for the first time his ridiculous phrase “conscious measurement”.
What he means is anyone’s guess, but let me dissect it for you in relation to the double slit experiment:
How do you make a measurement in the double slit experiment? The answer is that you turn on the detectors at the slits. In sonic’s language you CONSCIOUSLY turn on the detectors at the slits! This causes “collapse of the wave function” and you get a scatter pattern instead of an interference pattern. So is consciousness relevant? No, because you can then CONSCIOUSLY turn off the detectors and you get an interference pattern indicating that “collapse of the wave function” has not occurred.
In other words the same CONSCIOUSNESS that is involved in getting a scatter pattern indicating “collapse of the wave function”, is also involved in getting the interference pattern indicating that “collapse of the wave function” has not occurred! This means that CONSCIOUSNESS is noT the deciding factor between getting and not getting “collapse of the wave function”.
Tell me you understand this, leo.
The only difference between the two situations is whether or not you are making a measurement. To make a measurement you simply turn the detectors on, in which case you will get a scatter pattern indicating “collapse of the wave function”. To get the interference pattern back again, you simply turn the detectors off.
Please respond to this, leo.
“Tell me you understand this, leo.”
He doesn’t, it’s why he’s continuously going over old ground.
Pete A,
Thanks for your response. This is how I have it in my head at the moment, based on the small understanding I have so far:
There is something about objects, in the sense that humans would intuitively recognise them, that prevents them from ever being in a state of superposition. I don’t know whether this might be some sort of cascade effect of waveforms being constantly collapsed due to interaction with all the other ‘stuff’ close by? That’s my intuitive sense of it at the moment, based largely on the fact that all quantum physicists aren’t running around screaming about the fact that reality is in fact anthropocentric; and this:
Another way to put it might be that the maths works out for describing single particles, but we haven’t managed to make it align to reality on a larger scale.
I might be reaching here, and I’m wary of winding up sounding like Sonic. I’m happy to be corrected or shot down if I have this all wrong, as long as I can get some kind of rudimentary understanding of the basics. Actually, TBH, I’m not too fussed about really understanding QM, I just want to be able to tell when I’m being fed quantum nonsense. I’m basically okay with filing it in the ‘don’t understand’ category for now whilst I get to grips with other stuff I’m really interested in.
PS: I now have the critical thinking guide you recommended. I’m a couple of chapters in and very much liking it so far. Still on the basics, and it’s stuff I’m familiar with, but it’s good to have all the little bits you know put together into a structured and comprehensive whole. Thanks for the recommendation.
And I probably did, because I missed this:
Which would seem to invalidate my intuitive grasp so far. Back to the drawing board then.
@mumadadd
“Which would seem to invalidate my intuitive grasp so far. Back to the drawing board then.”
The problem in general is that often people mistake applying QM to the macro world. QM applies often times to a limited scope or in very specific circumstances. This is where woo believers get lost. They read about how weird QM is and mistake it for effects on a macro scale, that somehow invalidate the things we observe day to day.
grabula,
Happily though, my intuitive grasp was that QM doesn’t apply at the macroscopic level, though I think I’ve got the mechanism wrong.
Yyyyyyup. And I can totally see the appeal. My journey into skepticism was in large part due to wanting to believe in woo and suffering disappointment after disappointment. QM is the last refuge – barely anyone really understands it, and the fragments of rote knowledge that are out there in the public consciousness are little soundbites of counterintuitive gold that anyone with a healthy dose of confirmation bias can coopt to whatever their fancy.
@mumadadd
I understand how you feel mine was a similar path. I enjoy QM from a layman’s angle but I’ve always had the impression that QM doesn’t contribute much to a ‘practical’ world – meaning it has interesting properties, effects and can be useful from a scientific term in developing new technologies, but the vast majority of it occurs under so specialized conditions that for the most part it can’t be invoked to helped explain much we can observe naturally.
That’s it! That’s what I want to understand: when does it apply/when does it not; when is it meaningful to describe via QM/when is it not; when are QM effects meaningful/when are they not. Under what criteria is QM relevant to human scope objects?
Steve12, first of all I hope you’ll note that I have tried to refrain from defending orch OR. But I think it ends up seeming that I’m defending it because I’ve tried to explain that the brain does function at the quantum level – and that’s what Penrose uses to construct his ideas about consciousness.
But I thought you might find the following interesting:
“The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair’s theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.” -(from the press release on the recent orch OR review)
I think this does tend to support that there is SOME role in consciousness. And in as much as “..Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG “beat frequencies.” – it may be that through their role in communication between neurons, microtubules can influence the brain modularly.
“The orchestration of resonant vibrations can occur globally between all neurons across the entire brain. For that communication, an axon inside a neuron does not require sending incredibly powerful signal wirelessly throughout the brain, by crossing the fatty myelin sheath. Conical radiation/absorption only in its vicinity via dual polar ends of a neuron would be enough to trigger a cascade communication globally throughout the entire brain.”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451300153X
Pete, we’re able to control oscillations through feedback mechanisms, so, indirectly, we are aware of them. This is the basis of the brain-machine interface.
Volitional Control of Cortical Oscillations and Synchrony
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627313000354
Yep, and that’s what can be hard to understand about QM – obviously since we have all sorts of woo believers who want to invoke it to explain away how their magic works. It takes time. I’ve been reading on and off about QM for years but I can only really discuss the basics. The people who really get it are either really smart or really dedicated.
mumadadd —
I’ve read the Penrose/Hamerhoff articles and find them highly speculative. My main problem with the “consciousness as a separate entity” approaches is that they never accurately define consciousness.
The Hamerhoff/Penrose review paper [Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory, Elsevier Physics of Life Reviews] lists 3 approaches to consciousness:
This is how they introduce their take on consciousness:
This is potent stuff, so let’s take the skeptic axe to it.
The “non-cognitive, proto-conscious events” (this kind of word-salad always makes me grin; it means nothing more than “event”, and of course, the universe is full of events, which is a pretty generic word) are “moments of quantum state reduction” (our old friend the wave function collapse), brought on by quantum “self-measurement” (I’m having a “mine is bigger than yours” moment).
Result of axing the fluff: “The universe exists, and it’s based on QM.”
“Biology evolved a mechanism to orchestrate such events and to couple them to neuronal activity,…”. I just love the verb “orchestrate”; so much more impressive than “use”, “arrange” or “direct”, and it has that dash of cloak-and-daggery to make it irresistible. I guess “biology” doesn’t mean the science, but the critters. It’s a lot classier. Without the padding, it seems to mean: “Neurons can use QM…”
“… resulting in meaningful, cognitive, conscious moments and thence also to causal control of behavior.” Aha! The. Magic. Moment. Neurons + QM == consciousness. Probably because “the events” are “non-cognitive and proto-conscious”, so the only thing “biology” has to do is to remove the “non-” and the “proto-“. A piece of cake when using “evolution”. In layman’s terms: “… to make consciousness.”
Let’s soldier on to “In the Orch OR theory, these conscious events are terminations of quantum computations in brain microtubules reducing by Diósi–Penrose ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’), and having experiential qualities.”
So, the (cells in the) brain have microtubules, which perform quantum computations that result in (subjective) experiences. We’re not told why quantum computations can deliver qualia (if that is what “experiential qualities” refer to).
Finally: “In this view consciousness is an intrinsic feature of the action of the universe.”Why? How? It’s certainly not evident from what was stated previously.
OK, this is a very harsh treatment of an introductory paragraph, but in my opinion it illustrates how muddled the reasoning is. It is not impossible that the brain is (in part) a quantum computing device, but if so, consciousness remains an emergent property of the brain, whether it’s done through QM or not. QM per se does not consciousness make.
This is the perennial problem with the QM peddlers — they give it unwarranted magical properties.
Bill,
Your are forcing a quantum mechanical explanations of the mind body problem as still emergence. In fact according to Orch theory (proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity).
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/fundamentality.html
leo100 —
proto-conscious non-cognitive is fluff. It means nothing. Define “proto-conscious experience” in relation to it being a basic property of reality. Give it a try.
It’s word salad.
Proto-consciousness is theorized to be a fundamental property of the universe according to Stuart Hameroff, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang. “In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity.”
It’s one possibility out of other theories that the soul may exist.
– ORCH Theory
– Morphic Resonance Theory
– Many World’s Interpretation
Plus numerous others.
leo,
“Proto-consciousness is theorized to be a fundamental property of the universe according to Stuart Hameroff, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang”
Define the word “theory” as used by scientists.
Hint: I think you meant “hypothesis”.
But even then you’d be wrong, because even an hypothesis needs to be based on existing knowledge.
Penrose and Hameroff are speculating wildly beyond the evidence.
I had a link to Chopra interviewing Hameroff which gives a bit of insight but I’ve lost it, but his willingness to be interviewed by Chopra should give you pause.
Anyway, it seems you don’t want to challenge yourself with an examination of the quantum slit experiment that you yourself offered up as demonstrating that “consciousness causes collapse”.
Seems your mind is not open enough, hey?
Oh well…
leo,
“Morphic Reasonance Theory”
Oh dear, you are pretty far gone aren’t you, leo.
I guess that comes from not examining your ideas too closely.
leo100 —
Proto-consciousness. Mr Hamerhoff and Penrose haven’t managed to define consciousness other than through a vague circumlocution:
[From Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory, Elsevier Physics of Life Reviews, emphasis mine].
Nowhere in their articles they get any further than this anthropocentric view of how we perceive ourselves. Prefixing something you haven’t defined with “proto-” doesn’t result in a better definition. Something “before-something-unknown” is something unknown. To me, the most bothersome aspect of their approach is the anthropocentrism, as if they can’t let go of the religious conviction humans are the raison-d’être of the Universe.
I fear the biggest obstacle to understanding the mechanisms behind behind awareness and self-awareness in humans and other living creatures is this neo-religious, pompous and overbearing approach to studying it. Actually, Penrose and Hamerhoff aren’t contributing anything to our understanding of awareness — they are wasting our time with pungent bovine excreta.
Upon waking this morning I immediately realized that megahertz was correct and my Megaherz was wrong. 100 lines for Pete: “I must stop posting comments when I’m tired.”
Actually, my error reminded me of a Joe Hanson video that is “all about how our hyperactive order-generating brains can lead to us to incorrect assumptions, and how those assumptions can lead to widespread, social phenomena causing millions of people to do completely ridiculous and futile things, sometimes for generations.” — David McRaney.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/07/09/yanss-podcast-027-the-new-science-communicators-with-joe-hanson/
Humans make far more errors than any other species so if consciousness is an inherent part of the universe (Penrose/Hamerhoff) then it is a very faulty part of the universe.
Bill,
It seems to me that their starting point is property dualism. I can see how that would colour their interpretation of their results.
Mlema:
The finding I was referring to is Bandyopadhyay’s, which I do find interesting. I read all of the stuff you pasted in – I’ll address some more. I’d like you to think about some of the questions I posed in my previous post as well.
“I think this does tend to support that there is SOME role in consciousness.”
Not at all, fo all of the reasons I see above. I see 0 relationship to consciousness beyond some people saying that consciousness might be mediated at the QM level without evidence, and another finding that there are observable quantum phenomena in individual neurons (if replicated). I address why above.
” in as much as “..Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG “beat frequencies.” – it may be that through their role in communication between neurons, microtubules can influence the brain modularly.”
Bit of a stab in the dark, though no less likely or more vague than any of the rest of this. Little Aquamen that are too small to observe may like to socialize in my FFA, allowing me to see faces. That we can see a reflection of cellular processes in the EEG that we know exist is 0 evidence that those processes are mediating consciousness.
“The orchestration of resonant vibrations can occur globally between all neurons across the entire brain.”
CAN, but has not been shown
“For that communication, an axon inside a neuron does not require sending incredibly powerful signal wirelessly throughout the brain, by crossing the fatty myelin sheath.”
Than why does it! The brain is the most energy consumptive organ, and it spends precious energy sending signals over these networks to distal brain areas. (And as I’ve pointed out – we KNOW that these macro systems are accurate reflections of conscious states and cognition generally.) Why do we need a whole other system? Especially one for with there’s no evidence is functioning in this way. Make no mistake – they’re positing TWO neural networks, one classical and one quantum.
This finding is much more likely to involve simple low-level cellular functions than consciousness. That said, I would love to be proven wrong. It would be one of the biggest findings in the history of science.
“Conical radiation/absorption only in its vicinity via dual polar ends of a neuron would be enough to trigger a cascade communication globally throughout the entire brain.”
Would be. No evidence of any communication whatsoever.
Bill Openthalt,
I totally agree with everything in your reply to leo100. In my opinion, anthropocentrism is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of the fallacy of composition. I often call this fallacy the “is a” approach to complex compound objects. E.g. an automobile *is a* collection of various ensembles of quantum entities yet this would be the most inept description that anyone could think of to explain the function and form of an automobile. It won’t start if the battery is flat after the driver left the vehicle for too long with its lights on — an understanding of QM is not required to figure out that the driver made a cognitive error. Perhaps the battery was old and in need of replacement: notwithstanding, the driver is expected to know various warning signs of ageing vehicle components.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the neo-religious, pompous, and overbearing approach to studying the human mind [the anti-science approach aka science denialism] is driven by two main factors: 1) To satisfy an aching desire to believe that humans are somehow much better than just animals resulting of evolution; 2) Making reasonable-sounding excuses for personal failures to exercise due diligence and to accept culpability.
The great part about the evidence for survival after bodily death is humans are not greater than other animals. We are all one in the same.
steve12 —
I am pleased to see I am not the only one who finds the Hamerhoff/Penrose papers way below par. They had me scream in frustration about every second paragraph (cf. my critique of one of the opening paragraphs in their overview paper). It’s a litany of unsubstantiated assertions, wild speculations and egregious non-sequiturs. At moments, I get the distinct impression they are out-sokalling Sokal.
Bill
Yeah – you said this above and I was nodding:
“Penrose and Hameroff are speculating wildly beyond the evidence.”
This really does sum the problem up. Talking beyond the data happens a lot in psych and neuroscience, but this is REALLY beyond. And I don’t mind speculative models is they’re regarded as such and generate falsifiable predictions. But this is not that!
As with most people in their position, they should stop trying to convince us with meager evidence and do more work first.
leo,
“The great part about the evidence for survival after bodily death is humans are not greater than other animals. We are all one in the same”
It’s okay to be cute, leo, but you have to grow a little too.
You offered up the double slit expeiment as demonstrating that consciousness causes collapse. It is cute that you think there is an afterlife and that your kitten will be going there with you, but as you grow to adulthood maybe you shoould face up to the challenges that reality provides. I offered to show you this reality but it seems you are not yet ready to accept the challenge.
All the best, leo…to you and your kitten.
But, hey, even kittens grow up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ469tpqoQw
Hoss-
My main position is that ‘consciousness causes collapse’ refers to ‘our knowledge’ of the system– not the system itself.
Before a measurement, schrodinger’s equation might give us a number of possibilities as to where the electron under study might be. This is what we can say– the equation has given more than one answer to ‘where’ the electron is and it has given a probability of finding it. ‘Our knowledge’ of the electrons location could be said to be ‘spread out’ amongst the possibilities. We can ‘collapse’ this knowledge to one actual location by doing a measurement.
The electron itself may or may not be in more than one location, the electron may or may not ‘snap’ into place at the time of the measurement– the math is not clear and neither are the experiments.
That is my position and I bring it up because that interpretation gets lots of abuse– “It must mean the electron responds to consciousness”… No it doesn’t.
Also it doesn’t mean that the electron does not respond to consciousness in some way– it doesn’t say either of those things.
What it does say is true– as long as we are talking about ‘our knowledge’ of the object, and not the object itself.
OK?
Bill Openthalt-
I agree- some people abuse this interpretation when they demand that it says that consciousness has a special role in the behavior of the object under study.
That’s what I’m trying to say–
the actual interpretation need not have anything to do with that.
The original idea was that he ‘collapse’ has to do with our knowledge and we can’t really say what is going on with the object itself…
It is an abuse to say the math (or the physics) show that ‘consciousness alters the object in a special way’.
And now you know– the interpretation is true about ‘our knowledge’ but it may or may not be true about the actual object…
I’m sorry I can’t say that consciousness has nothing to do with the objects behavior– that too goes beyond the math and I don’t know more then schrodinger’s equation about the actual situation.
What I do know is that if applied to ‘our knowledge’ it is an accurate statement about the situation. And this is what Heisenberg was talking about, for example.
mumadadd-
I don’t know that an ‘unconscious measurement’ would do much to upgrade one’s knowledge… sleep learning would probably be very popular, but if it would, then your complaint about my statement is accepted– otherwise, I’m sticking with the need to be conscious to learn something…
I do think you are understanding me– I’m not trying to wiggle out of anything– if I’ve said something wrong– please give me the specific. I can eat crow all day– no problem.
Anyway– what I’m saying is true by definition (assuming one must be conscious to learn)–
To update ‘our knowledge’ quantum mechanics gives us two options…
I think you know the rest and I hope you can understand why I think the people claiming the ‘collapse’ is about the object are getting into metaphysics– not physics.
Follow?
(BTW- I did link to the definition of schrodinger’s equation which says that in physics today it applies to all objects regardless of size. There are some who think that is wrong– they are not physicists and have an obvious misunderstanding if they are saying things that directly violate the basic definitions of the subject.)
Ekko-
I make these statements-
If you want to update your knowledge of the system under study (say the location of an electron)
Quantum mechanics gives two options-
1- use schrodinger’s equation. That will give you a ‘probability density’ for possible locations
or
2- Take a conscious measurement. This can give you a specific location.
Your coin example is perfect–
Our knowledge of the coin is in suspension– we don’t know.
Notice– I have not said the coin is in suspension.
I have not said the coin is not in suspension.
If you study the experiments (double slit, delayed choice quantum eraser…) you will find that it is not always so easy to know if the ‘coin’ is in suspension or not (you have read how the electron seems to be in more than one place at a time– I’m guessing).
But notice– I don’t have to know what is happening with the object– I’m only talking about ‘our knowledge’ of the object– which says it’s a 50% chance of tails and I don’t know beyond that.
I can know the state of our knowledge– but the actual state of the electron is not so obvious– check the experiments– you’ll see why they say the electron is ‘everywhere at once’ and other such constructs.
I don’t know what the electron is really doing– and based on the ‘interpretations’ neither does anyone else– I mean you don’t think they come up with the ‘multiverse’ because they know what’s happening to the electron– do you?
Think about it.
leo100-
I hope you are aware that what you are saying about consciousness effecting objects is not a given from the maths or the experiments.
You are talking a true statement about what the situation is (when applied to ‘our knowledge’) and using analogy to produce an offshoot that goes well beyond the math.
That said, I have to admit that the math (if it is about the object instead of our knowledge) can be viewed that way logically (as Wigner and Wheeler pointed out).
I am not advocating consciousness having a special role by admitting the current formulation of physics allows for the possibility— I don’t know and the science isn’t clear.
But please– understand the physics doesn’t say that consciousness is special– and tell your friends about how ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is really about ‘our knowledge’ and not the objects themselves (necessarily).
OK?
sonic,
My apologies. You were (and still are) apparently confused about what the rest of the world means by “consciousness causes collapse” and were using your own private definition of that phrase. I can see how this must make communication difficult for you.
Hi Sonic,
I will admit we don’t know for sure either we will have to see what happens in future experiments.
Sonic have you heard of Andrei Linde before?.
Steve12 – this is about finding out how “the brain does consciousness”.
“Why would a finding about the micro-workings of single neurons be important?”
because those workings can be tied to whole brain activity related to consciousness
“We already know that we need many neurons for consciousness to be achieved, and we already know that oscillations on the order already studied are crucial indicators of the state of consciousness and cognition generally. Why would this be if this model is true? They’re just co-incident epiphenomena?”
exactly – we don’t know how to get from the activity of individual neurons to oscillations which in turn are associated with conscious state. How do we learn how an epiphenomenon happens if we don’t examine the contributing phenomena? I don’t think consciousness is so simple that we can say “it’s all about the connectome” or “it’s all about the microtubules” – and these aren’t opposing ideas anyway. But we don’t have any theories based on connectomes which explain oscillation. The superconductivity of the microtubule can contribute to the theory, and therefore to furthering our understanding of how “the brain does consciousness”. ,
We’re trying to get from the activity of many individual neurons to temporally coherent functional electrical activity. And all this in response to stimuli. What theory do you support? It seems that synchronized oscillations play a role in both coordinating and responding to neuron firing. How does that happen? (really – I don’t know)
I don’t think we should overlook the role of interneuronal communication apart from the synapse or the intraneuronal physiology that contributes to both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephaptic_coupling
How does anesthesia physiologically cause us to lose consciousness while all other functions continue normally? Why can’t microtubules (a more primitive structure) play a role as superconductors able to affect whole brain activity, which also influences and is influenced by neuronal activity? Wouldn’t this go towards explaining this area of whole brain vs neuron or even “connectome” that we’re currently working on (from other directions)?
Like I said, I can’t defend orch OR – but I don’t see these varying phenomena as competing for an explanation of consciousness. What do you think is a better theory at this time? From what reading I’ve done it seems like orch OR accounts for what’s going on at each level. We still only have characteristics of consciousness. We learn more and more about what’s going on and we say it all depends on everything at once – emergence. I see the recent research as contributing to how the “all at once” happens, and I see orch OR as what (I think) it is: a theory as to how the all at once causes emergence. For me to be more critical, I would have to know what the opposing theories are. The best I can find at this point is: neural networks (“connectome”). But scientists express doubt that even if we map every connection and pathway that we’ll understand how it generates consciousness, which involves more than patterns of interconnectivity. That’s why we characterize consciousness as “global synchronized emergent, etc” (the label Dr. Novella uses, which I can’t recall at the moment)
“Make no mistake – they’re positing TWO neural networks, one classical and one quantum.”
I don’t think so. They’re saying that consciousness is mediated at both levels. The activity at the microtubule doesn’t preclude all other brain function which correlates to/contributes to consciousness.
“That said, I would love to be proven wrong.”
But what is your hope as to what is right? What theory of how consciousness comes about, emerges, do you feel currently accounts for what we know about brain physiology and also the elements of consciousness?. Orch OR may be one site of overlap in the research.
What if we can’t explain emergence of consciousness without the quantum activity at the microtubule?
So far scientists criticisms of orch OR have been directed against possible physiological contradictions. however, it appears those have been answered. So unless anybody here has got something new to offer in that area, I don’t think Penrose or Hameroff will be too concerned about our objections.
Bill O – why do you say that orch OR is anthropocentric? I would think that the belief that consciousness exists in a Platonic fashion would make human experience of consciousness irrelevant. As long as something was conscious, there could be a similar theory as to how that would be. or, in another question: how do we study consciousness without being anthropocentric? Human consciousness is the only consciousness we experience. Since the authors don’t claim to know how to characterize consciousness as separate from human (or other) experience, even though they propose that it does exist that way, then they leave us nothing to oppose except for the philosophy itself.
Which is why I said straight off that many reject orch OR for philosophical, reactionary reasons. I’m just trying to remain agnostic and see what happens as research progresses. So far, there’s been no falsification. And since in the case of tubulin in microtubules, we have a mechanism whereby this ?whatever you want to call consciousness? relates to brain function (and therefore be physical, or property-like) this is falsifiable. And it explains a number of aspects of consciousness that I don’t see explained elsewhere at this time. So, I’m not on board at this point, but not for the same reasons that Chopra’s not on board. I’m not on board for the same reasons I THINK you’re not on board. However, instead of attempting to “axe” it (which I think neither you nor I have the scientific background to do), I reserve judgement and try not to be reactionary. I just try to understand. I think you need to explain how the theory is anthropocentric if you want to use that to dismiss it. And I’m saying this from my point of view truly, because I haven’t read tons on it, so I could be wrong. But I’m questioning your characterization of the theory as “anthropocentric”.
Of course many people will dismiss orch OR despite the science, because it threatens their belief system. When they see “quantum” or “Chopra” (even when he’s not a fan) – they take offense.
Bill: “They had me scream in frustration…It’s a litany of unsubstantiated assertions, wild speculations and egregious non-sequiturs”
Watch this and weep:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erSd5xep30w
(Deepak Chopra interviewing Stuart Hameroff).
Here’s a better interview with Stuart Hameroff which will give you some insight into where the way-out-there, over-the-top, quantum physical ideas (that we have been hearing from all and sundry these days) have probably come from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEATDhaZyVA
The guy obviously has an in-depth knowledge about quantum physics, but what’s annoying is that he doesn’t draw a line between where he is talking real science and where he is speculating and (after about the 53 minute mark) where he is talking science fiction and where (the last ten minutes) he off to fantasy land.
As he himself says in the interview (perhaps inadvertantly), he is man with a pre-conceived conclusion seeking the necessary evidence. For two decades, he has been searching and getting – at least in his own mind – the necessary evidence for that pre-conceived conclusion ( a “gut feel”) that the cell’s microtubules are the seat of consciousness.
Roger Penrose was a godsend for him.
Sorry to sum up the whole argument here but it feels to me one mahooosive and complicated god of the gaps fallacy. I fear that the more we discover the further back consciousness will be pushed.
The problem for me reading most of this thread is that consciousness is never really defined and therefor the existence and how it is derived can be changed at will.
Like I said, really simplistic, but I really come away from this thread knowing a few more things but still not convinced that there is anything beyond the material brain.
Bruce: “I fear that the more we discover the further back consciousness will be pushed”
Stuart Hameroff pushes it back to the big bang. (:
Mlema —
I said Messrs. Hamerhoff and Penrose don’t manage to define what they are purporting to study (consciousness). They give a very anthropocentric enumeration of what they consider to be aspects of consciousness. To re-quote:
If you cannot define what you want to study, you cannot study it. And if the only attributes you can enumerate apply to humans, you’re anthropocentric, hence my describing their understanding of consciousness as anthropocentric. If you want to conclude that Orch OR is anthropocentric, be my guest.
How do we study life without being anthropocentric? Human life is the only life we experience.
In case you didn’t guess the answer, by seeing how other animals process information, make choices, feel pain, show emotions, communicate, recognise themselves (or not) etc. Certainly not by positing a totally human-oriented “proto-consciousness” as building block of the universe. By leaving quantum flapdoodle out of it. By being intellectually honest. That’s how.
The only thing you know is that the brain cells contain these structures, and that it would be interesting to know what their function is. How could you know they have anything to do with something you haven’t even managed to define (remember Hamerhoff, by his own admission, has no idea what consciousness is).
Bill,
I don’t know how that would imply anthropocentric their definition of consciousness. Afterall, isn’t that was consciousness is?. How is it anthropocentric when its obvious that we have all of those things mentioned in their definition of consciousness. Hi Bruce.
I think a big part of the problem we have with explaining consciousness is that people want an intuitively satisfying answer. Even if consciousness turns out to be a quantum phenomenon, I don’t think it will give us that, save for the mystical connotations it holds for people who don’t understand QM.
Mumadadd,
“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Richard_Feynman
Leo,
I wasn’t meaning to imply that I do understand it – in fact I’ve explicitly stated that I don’t. What I see though is people such as yourself using QM as a crutch to support fanciful beliefs about life after death or dualism.
That is a good, pithy quote though.
Mumadadd,
I wouldn’t say I am using QM as a crutch to support an afterlife or dualism. Quantum Superposition demonstrates for example that quantum particles can be two places at once. Such as electrons and photons as well. We are are obviously made up of electrons its conceivable we are also in two such states at once as well.
I remember watching years ago a documentary on youtube about parallel universes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a_ZcJUNKgM
There are other theories too that can explained life after death as well such as Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance and ORCH Or theory as well
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/Compatibility.pdf
I think many of them don’t want an answer of any sort. The souls of dualism aren’t an answer, they just masquerade as one. Being stated as beyond science, they’re a brick wall against further inquiry and with it, understanding. Given that they commonly posit free will of a sort that’s supposed to defy prediction, having a means of understanding consciousness can be seen as threatening. It means we’d in principle be able to predict a person’s actions, thus disproving free will.
leo100 —
They don’t offer a definition, just a list of attributes and faculties (such as language). But I am glad to know you have a definition for consciousness: that what makes us human.
Given that anthropocentric means putting humans in the centre of the universe, claiming that what makes us human (or at least a proto-version of it) is up there with the quarks, is über-anthropocentric.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but we’re not special – just another ape on just another planet orbiting just another sun in just another galaxy. We know many animals (chimps to begin with, but probably rooks, dolphins, parrots etc.) have a form of self-awareness, and some ability to communicate. Isn’t that what humans have? We have knowledge of ourselves as actors in the world, we communicate (aspects of) our internal state to others, and reflect on our position (time & space) in the world and in our group. From a functional viewpoint, a lot of other animals show similar behavioural patterns. My cat behaves in a way that communicates quite clearly she prefers one brand of cat food over another — so to all intents and purposes, her favourite brand tastes better. Can you say “qualia”?
This is how I would define consciousness: the ability to gather information on ourselves and our model of reality, communicate it to others to build a network of social knowledge leading to arguably the largest and most intricate form of cooperation between individuals this planet has ever seen. Understanding how it came about, how it is implemented in our brains, and what the similarities and differences between us and other animals are — that’s something that can be studied, that is being studied, and is leading to results.
BillyJoe7 —
Even if that would be the case (and we are all interested in how the brain “does consciousness”, so if he’s found the mechanism, more power to him), it doesn’t support his idea “consciousness is an intrinsic feature of the action of the universe.” Where on earth did he and Penrose get this cockamamie notion?
Mlema:
>Steve12 – this is about finding out how “the brain does consciousness”.
>“Why would a finding about the micro-workings of single neurons be important?”
>
>because those workings can be tied to whole brain activity related to consciousness
The fact is, there is not one shred of evidence doing ANY TYING WHATSOEVER. You have to make that link explicitly, you can’t just assume it.
The fact is, the lower level cellular functions of the neuron are not directly related to consciousness. They’re processes involved in all cells (as are microtubules). We don’t know a lot about consciousness, but we know that it requires the interplay of many neurons. So the cellular machinery IS required to make the neuron work, but many of them are required for consciousness. So making a direct line between a subcellular process and consciousness in the way that they are doing requires it to be shown directly.
They are very, very, very far from showing that.
Mlema,
I’m trying to respond to the rest of your posts, but really they’re making the same error
QM of the gaps.
YOu keep pointing out that we’re not sure how electrical oscillations begin, or how they control different mental functions, etc. (though it’s clear they do, and at the MACRO level). THere is a lot of useful work, though I agree that most of this is unknown.
But this not evidence for any other specific thing, including quantum phenomena being responsible. “Why can’t it be X” is not evidence for X. It’s fun, it’s a jumping off point for science, but it’s evidence for anything. If they feel strongly they can continue their research and show us.
But the fact is they have not.
“So far scientists criticisms of orch OR have been directed against possible physiological contradictions. however, it appears those have been answered.”
This is simply false. The major criticism is that they haven’t shown any evidence for their model, and the microtubule evidence isn’t linked to consciousness explicitly.
“So unless anybody here has got something new to offer in that area, I don’t think Penrose or Hameroff will be too concerned about our objections.”
Well they should be! They’re misrepresenting the state of the evidence to further a pet theory.
Steve12,
Wouldn’t you say memory is for example associated with consciousness. Well it’s been shown that Microtubule loss from axons and dendrites is a key contributor to nervous system degeneration during Alzheimer disease
http://emboj.embopress.org/content/32/22/2900
Bill,
“Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state.
The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large”. This would fit nicely with the evidence from near death experiences and out of body experiences.
http://www.ghosttheory.com/2014/02/11/proof-of-life-after-death
Leo:
“Wouldn’t you say memory is for example associated with consciousness. Well it’s been shown that Microtubule loss from axons and dendrites is a key contributor to nervous system degeneration during Alzheimer disease”
ANY breakdown of ANY cellular machinery within a neuron will impair if not preclude consciousness and cognition.
But that (a) neurons are necessary for consciousness, and (b) cellular machinery X is necessary for neurons, does not mean that (c) cellular machinery X is the primary level at which consciousness happens.
Sloppy reasoning. After all of this, Leo, you seem like a nice guy. But you need to be more rigorous in your reasoning. Breakdown your reasoning – play a serious Devil’s advocate with yourself and you’ll catch more of these small errors. When they add up, you’ll reach more reasonable conclusions.
mumadadd:
“I think a big part of the problem we have with explaining consciousness is that people want an intuitively satisfying answer. Even if consciousness turns out to be a quantum phenomenon, I don’t think it will give us that, save for the mystical connotations it holds for people who don’t understand QM.”
Steve talks about Dennett’s idea that there is no hard problem and I agree with that. There’s not going to be a scientific answer that makes us go “Right! That’s why qualia feels as though it does!”.
1500!!!!!!!
Steve12,
Yeah there is no hard problem that means mind isn’t an emergent property of the brain because it can’t solve the hard problem with resorting to epiphenomenalism. Consciousness is just an illusion generated by brain activity. I just knew that all along. LMAO.
Leo, you don’t even know what any of those words mean.
Cut out the nonsense and get going on learning guitar, goddamnit! You guys are forming that band, and I’m going to make MILLIONS!!!!!
Steve12,
It also could mean that cellular machinery X is the primary level at which consciousness happens.
The problems with a lot of materialists is
1). They think that woo woo believers they call us cannot think rationally
2). That we have no idea how to use critical thinking
3). That we just jump to a paranormal explanation without first looking at natural explanations
4). That we are the ones that are closed minded because we defer from their view of the world.
5). Pseudoscientists are using the scientific method to validate their woo woo beliefs but they don’t care about the data against their view.
6). There false understanding of what dualism really is but instead create a strawman of what dualism entails.
7. Jump to the laws of physics stating that paranormal phenomena violate them however the laws of physics themselves don’t cover all of reality. For example in the Quantum world.
That pretty much sums it up.
No Steve I want the Millions lol.
leao100 —
Oh my. Leo, this is painful. It is not because the English words quantum, information and dissipate can be used in one sentence that the result is meaningful. Quantum information is a concept from the quantum computing domain, and it doesn’t mean what you think it means. It involves qubits, and binary bits, and one of the challenges of quantum computing systems is to store qubits for significant amounts of time. We manage up to three hours at cryogenic temperatures.
Why do you believe “quantum information” cannot be destroyed? Because you’ve picked up the line “matter cannot be created or destroyed”? But information is in the arrangement of electrons, photons, magnetisation, holes in paper, lines in the sand, etc, and a device to use that information. Information (however stored) can most definitely be destroyed.
And information doesn’t dissipate into the universe at large. The carrier might do so, becoming weaker with the distance from the source, but still carrying enough information to reconstruct the message (that’s how we get information from Voyager, unless the signal is so weak the losses are too high for the available redundancy). There is no dissipation, but there is dispersion. But why (and how) do you think your brain will broadcast its contents when you kick the bucket?
Or is it the quantum information starts to leak out when life is ebbing away, only to be pulled back when the subject recovers?
leo100 —
We have a saying in Yiddish:
which means “if my grandmother had balls she’d be my grandfather.”
As far as your little list is concerned, like with everything we look at, we try and go with the evidence. So let me rewrite it for you:
1). When woo woo believers, as we call you, engage in logical fallacies, we point them out to you, which you dislike
2). When we notice you use sloppy reasoning, we try and help you, which you resent
3). When you just jump to a paranormal explanation without first looking at natural explanations, we point this out to you, which annoys you
4). We really feel you are too open minded because you believe in stuff for which there isn’t even a shred of evidence
5). We would be very happy to get “data” for your views, but it has to be real evidence (which is never forthcoming), because we actually change our minds when given evidence.
6). We actually have a definition for dualism, whereas most of you make it mean whatever it has to mean at this moment, and want others to take your lead
7. We haven’t been given reliable evidence for paranormal phenomena, and we don’t believe (against all evidence) QM makes all paranormal phenomena possible. Woo folk resent us telling them they have no clue about QM, and calling their appeal to QM Quantum flapdoodle.
There, that reads a lot better.
leo,
The problems with a lot of materialists is
Back on you, leo, as I will demonstrate…
1). They think that woo woo believers they call us cannot think rationally
I invited you to a rational discussion on the double slit experiment and you weren’t up to it.
2). That we have no idea how to use critical thinking
You have amply demonstated that to the point of embarrassment.
3). That we just jump to a paranormal explanation without first looking at natural explanations
Your views are based “gut feel” and you are unwilling to examine them when invited to do so.
4). That we are the ones that are closed minded because we defer from their view of the world.
You declined to open you mind by examining the double slit experiment you offered up as evidence.
5). Pseudoscientists are using the scientific method to validate their woo woo beliefs but they don’t care about the data against their view.
You didn’t care to examine the details of the double slit experiment you offered up as evidence for your view, but which is evidence against your view.
6). There false understanding of what dualism really is but instead create a strawman of what dualism entails.
Your dualism entails mind separate from body, but please enlighten us if this is a strawman.
7. Jump to the laws of physics stating that paranormal phenomena violate them however the laws of physics themselves don’t cover all of reality. For example in the Quantum world.
Physics – and that includes quantum physics! – does not support your view. You know this because you go to great lengths to avoid facing this fact (ie by refusing to discus the double slit experiment)
The irony!
Bill,
I think leo is channeling Stuart Hameroff.
“Yeah there is no hard problem that means mind isn’t an emergent property of the brain because it can’t solve the hard problem with resorting to epiphenomenalism…Consciousness [according to materialists]is just an illusion generated by brain activity…Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large”
Straight out of the Stuart Hameroff interview I linked to yesterday.
Bill: “Or is it the quantum information starts to leak out when life is ebbing away, only to be pulled back when the subject recovers?”
Now even you are channelling Hameroff!
(I kid you not – straight out of the Hameroff interview!)
Billy Joe 7 —
I tried to come up with the stupidest mechanism. Seems Hamerton beat me to it.
*Hamerhoff* Blasted autocorrect.
BillyJoe7
Do you know why its called a measurement problem?. Because there is no solution to this problem. Rather or not consciousness collapses wave function is up for debate. I mentioned a lot of evidence before for dualism withstanding the controversial double slit experiment. Such as the cross correspondences, near death experiences and so on. Why don’t I use critical thinking because I don’t think the same way as you?. I guess it stirs the pot when someone uses critical thinking and thinks that there is very strong evidence for the existence of an afterlife and psi.
Bill,
How do you know I don’t look for natural explanations first?. You have no idea how much I have researched this area both pro and con. Also, Bill have you ever heard of information theory?. The universe itself may actually be made up of information.
Steve, where is my millions at?.
“Or is it the quantum information starts to leak out when life is ebbing away, only to be pulled back when the subject recovers?”
Yes that is correct if the person survives cardiac arrest.
Everyone here should get a million dollars for achieving 1500 posts!!!. That has to be a world record.
leo,
Every time you seem to make a coherent and grammatically correct point, I Google the text and find it elsewhere and otherwise attributed. Strange.
Steve12,
A while back there was some chatter on this thread about the whole endeavor being pointless. Personally, I’ve learned an absolute sh1tload through following this and the ‘after the afterlife’ thread. I read Dennet’s ‘Consciousness Explained’ a few years ago but it was a bit dense for me at the time. I certainly didn’t come away feeling like the hard problem wasn’t a real problem. I’m absolutely with you on this now though – it’s not intuitively satisfying, and it shuts the door on a lot of beliefs a lot of people are very invested in, but subjective experience – qualia – is not a big deal.
Mumadadd,
That was me!!!. Daniel Dennett looks like Santa Claus lol. But its a real problem a dead end for materialism.
leo,
What was you? What’s ‘a real problem a dead end for materialism’?
This?
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-brain-is-not-a-receiver/comment-page-31/#comment-82071
steve12on 12 Jul 2014 at 3:34 pm
mumadadd:
“I think a big part of the problem we have with explaining consciousness is that people want an intuitively satisfying answer. Even if consciousness turns out to be a quantum phenomenon, I don’t think it will give us that, save for the mystical connotations it holds for people who don’t understand QM.”
Steve talks about Dennett’s idea that there is no hard problem and I agree with that. There’s not going to be a scientific answer that makes us go “Right! That’s why qualia feels as though it does!”.
leo,
He defo does look like Santa!
leo,
I asked for a link to the quantum mechanical experiment that demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse. You offered up the double slit experiment. I asked you to explain how that experiment demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse. You didn’t have a clue how to go about doing that (hint: because it’s impossible) so you fobbed me off with a link to someone else.
Just because I didn’t drag your face through it doesn’t mean that wasn’t a massive fail for you, leo
…hmmm the comic link didn’t post.
Here it is, leo…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QScxSMWOT-c
Well, at least those cats are actually trying.
Those cats in the video realized they’d made a mistake and learnt something from it. Leo keeps repeating mistakes in the belief that, eventually, they’ll work. They might work on an audience that is scientifically illiterate.
Dan Dennett is very Santa-like: he’s given many wonderful gifts of wisdom to the world. The hard problem of consciousness isn’t trying to explain what it is, the hard problem is getting people to accept what it is.
Consciousness isn’t nearly as mysterious as most people desperately need to believe. It is, of course, the most thoroughly entertaining and convincing conjuring trick that humans can ever experience. For many, revealing the secrets of their personal conjuror would spoil the show. For a few, discovering the secrets of the conjuror is even more enthralling than the show itself. Obviously, cognitive neuroscience is under constant attack because it’s seen as a chainsaw pruning away so many branches of the lucrative and revered tree of nonsense.
leo100 —
Honestly Leo, I don’t know how you proceed, and I am perfectly happy to believe you research the paranormal. The second point in my list was a paraphrase of the second point in your list, and “you” was used as the generic pronoun.
I would never doubt your sincerity when you say that you earnestly try and find a satisfying solution to the problems you perceive. I don’t doubt you when you say the naturalistic solutions do not feel satisfactory, leading you to continue searching until you find something that does satisfy you.
Many people (probably most, but I haven’t researched this) at either side of any fence are profoundly convinced the other side knows they are wrong, but maliciously refuse to acknowledge it. This is why, for example, people distribute bibles and korans. They honestly believe their holy books to be so utterly, limpidly, slap-in-the-face divine and true anyone who doesn’t believe them after reading them must be malicious. It’s something I learned when discussing, as an earnest you man who’d read the bible from front to back, struggled through the koran, Das Kapital, Mein Kampf, Mao Zedong’s Little red book, most of Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant, Aquinas etc — it’s amazing how much you can read when there’s no TV — with a group of just as earnest young muslims. Most of them didn’t appreciate my reading their holy book and still remaining a committed communist (that was the last ideology I dumped). One of them told me very earnestly I must be possessed by the devil.
I am trying to be as ideology-free as humanly possible, but I do realise humans, as a species, have a hard time not being ideologically motivated. It is part of our cognitive make-up, and we have to fight our nature every inch of the way, if it is at all possible. I am convinced you are honestly looking for answers, but the simple fact remains you are looking in all the wrong places.
Start with this: there is no credible evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena, life after death, or consciousness as a substance. There is no credible evidence for anything else but the material universe. And evidence is that what, when I give it to you, does not require you to believe or trust me. It stands by its own virtue, and you cannot knock it down. That is evidence.
I earned my living in IT (towards the end specializing in Knowledge Management), so yes, I am very familiar with the power of information. But I also know information is an arrangement of a carrier, not something that exists as such (in the sense of being able to build a cell, for example). It is obvious the building blocks of this universe can combine, resulting in larger blocks that can combine, etc., leading to individual humans who combine to form societies, using implicit or explicit rules (i.e. information). We even have information on the most basic of the building blocks. But that doesn’t mean information is a physical component of the universe. As a matter of fact, until we get to life, there isn’t much we would call information — quarks and atoms and molecules combine using their intrinsic characteristics without the need for anything else.
So yes, without the ability to form ordered arrangements, and store information on how to achieve these arrangements, the universe would be an amorphous mess, and we wouldn’t be sitting here having this interminable discussion. But no, that doesn’t mean information is physical.
Mumadadd,
Yeah your saying there is no hard problem of consciousness when there obviously is. This is why materialism cannot explain consciousness.
Pete A,
Oh but it is mysterious how can something non physical be an emergent property of the brain?. Maybe just maybe it isn’t an emergent property of the brain. Saying that dualism doesn’t explain consciousness is laughable, at least we can acknowledge that it exists and isn’t some grand illusion. That is one thing dualism has going for it among other things. Another is psychical reseachers can gather scientific evidence for the existence of a soul that explains the hard problem of consciousness. Something materialist’s can’t do they can’t give a real solution to the hard problem of consciousness.
http://www.nature.com/news/simulations-back-up-theory-that-universe-is-a-hologram-1.14328
leo100 —
But of course consciousness can be explained. The problem is you dualists cannot even provide a definition of what you think consciousness is. There is a lot of speculation about p-zombies (who don’t exist), about something that pervades the universe (invisible, undetectable, but storing everyone’s memories), hypothetical features of QM (conveniently not observable), leaky quantum information (again something no-one bothers to define), and other crazy notions.
Consciousness is how we describe the functioning of our brain, gathering information about ourselves as well as the world, exchanging that information with other humans, and using it to model ourselves within our society and the world at large. Think of it for a moment: social animals need a working model of how they are situated in society. This means they have to provide a concept of the “self” in relationship to “others”. The more complex the society, and the more different its members, the more information needs to be exchanged between them to make communal living possible. This means each individual has to provide a lot of information about themselves to the others. If that information on the self is available to the modules that process the information provided by others, self-awareness follows. Exactly how it is done (implemented) is not easy to discover, because our ability to access the functional modules in the brain is currently very limited. I am making no predictions on if and when this might become possible, but that doesn’t mean my functional model is not a usable hypothesis.
Given that even solitary but moving animals need a working map/model of themselves in relationship to the outside world, it is likely they have a form of awareness, even though the absence of a need to communicate this information to others limits its development. It is the societies humans have been able to build that drove the development of consciousness. I am in no doubt that the requirements of a world-encompassing, diverse, multicultural society is at this moment driving the further development of human consciousness to enable us to cope with requirements for cooperation at a scale never seen before.
leo100 —
Of course it can — the information in DNA is “not physical” in itself, although coded in the proteins of the DNA. Information on a hard disk is “not physical” but coded in the magnetic domains on the disk. Whenever there is something “not physical”, it needs to be supported by a physical object.
Without energy, the information in our brains would disappear, like it disappears from dynamic RAM chips that are not refreshed. The manifestations of our consciousness use energy – when we think, when we speak, when we write, we are using energy to convert information into patterns (inside the brain, in the air, on paper or on displays). Energy is very physical, if not immediately tangible.
Your consciousness is very physical — it’s patterns in your brain, connections being maintained by synapses firing, cells using energy, blood flowing through your arteries and veins, etc. It’s just not tangible, but that is a limitation of our cognitive abilities that mistake physical for tangible.
BTW, your link is about mathematics, and “holographic” doesn’t mean the universe is projected by aliens or gods. Sometimes I wish mathematicians and other scientists would not “abuse” the existing words they select to label their insights – yes, it’s neat to use analogies, but they lead to confusion in the minds of the scientifically illiterate.
You guys just mentioned that the hard problem is a non problem however you can have all your eggs in one basket. Just because you can account for the easy problems you think your work is done. It’s not. But that is not all what consciousness is it’s that inner experience to be someone, self awareness.
I guess Bill you haven’t heard of the holographic principle before. “The physical universe is widely seen to be composed of “matter” and “energy”. In his 2003 article published in Scientific American magazine, Jacob Bekenstein summarized a current trend started by John Archibald Wheeler, which suggests scientists may “regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals.” Bekenstein asks “Could we, as William Blake memorably penned, ‘see a world in a grain of sand,’ or is that idea no more than ‘poetic license,'”[14] referring to the holographic principle”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
That leaky quantum information would be called quantum entanglement a well established fact in quantum mechanics.
http://news.sciencemag.org/2013/05/physicists-create-quantum-link-between-photons-dont-exist-same-time
Ekko-
I am using the term in the way I learned from the physicists who use it.
Perhaps you will understand these Heisenberg quotes-
“The conception of objective reality … has thus evaporated … into the transparent clarity of mathematics that represents no longer the behavior of particles but rather our knowledge of this behavior.”
and-
“The partition of the world into observing and observed system prevents a sharp formulation of the law of cause and effect. (The observing system need not always be a human being; it may also be an inanimate apparatus, such as a photographic plate.)”
You do know who Heisenberg was– right?
leo100-
I don’t know what the future discoveries will be either.
I have heard of Linde- he’s the ‘inflation’ guy- right?
Bruce-
A normal complaint about ‘materialism’ is that ‘material’ isn’t clearly defined.
Do you have a clear definition for ‘material’?
Mlema- leo 100-
Try here for a different take on the ‘quantum brain’-
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/PTRS.pdf
Sonic,
You do have a point here, but that point is quite trite. The fact that we intuitively perceive matter to be be a solid, unbroken mass, and that when you get down to a very small scale it turns out to be otherwise, doesn’t invalidate the usefulness of the normal definition. You get too hung up on definitions. There isn’t really anything I can think of for which there aren’t multiple descriptive layers of definition, but provided the given term is commonly understood by all parties in the discussion, why nitpick?
My position again (and I’m finding myself shifting increasingly towards Brozedog’s ‘monism’): there is a reality, independent of our subjective experience, of which we are part; there is no ‘other’, mystical substance or property special to consciousness or qualia that is not part of this reality, and is not understandable though the laws that operate within this reality.
Whether reality turns out to be made of point particles, vibrating strings, or smeared probability densities, ‘stuff’ is still all there is. Consciousness, or to be more specific, subjective experience, is part of what that three pound, grey, jelly like structure in your head does in order to enable you to function as a complex social animal; nothing more, nothing less.
Ekko-
Leo 100 posted 3 things I didn’t see while I was writing that response.
It seems to me that a good way to proceed would be to
1)- understand the interpretation that way I have explained it (it is about ‘our knowledge’ as that is how the physicists generally mean it)
2) acknowledge that the other (it is about the ‘objects’) as a possibility– one that some physicists have considered out loud, but not what the interpretation or data necessarily mean.
Anyway- Apparently the notion that QM is about ‘our knowledge’ has similar difficulties as the notion that ‘the hard problem’ of consciousness isn’t hard.
Of course it might be that these things are hard to accept because they are both wrong.
I really don’t know.
I’ve found it very tedious during the course this thread to back many of comments with science- and evidence-based references. I’m so glad that the more recent comments from Sonic and Leo100 provide such a wealth of irrefutable evidence for my assertions that I no longer need to bother adding references — the two of them provide a far greater than adequate quod erat demonstrandum.
Leo100 still believes his/her comments totally refute Dr. Novella’s assertion that the brain is not a receiver. Sonic and Leo100 persist on this thread despite having clearly demonstrated their wilful obscurantism, wilful ignorance, scientific illiteracy, and stalwart advocacy of anti-science.
I can only assume that one of them is determined to have the last comment in order to make it appear to a casual reader that their knowledge is somehow vastly superior to that of Dr. Novella.
I’m contemplating writing simple mathematics to highlight some of their abject BS so please excuse me for testing here so see if curly braces work as expected: {1,false}
Quoting myself:
That was a bit circular (again). To clarify: consciousness is a process or ‘meta-process’ occurring in a physical medium. It could be, and is, argued that there is some as yet unknown phenomenon occurring in physical reality that is essential to consciousness. There is no impossible gap in our current understanding that requires this though. Occam’s razor slices this away.
mumadadd,
Qualia and dualism are outdated untestable philosophical hand-waving exercises that add complications to, rather than simplify, the question of consciousness. Occam’s razor should indeed be applied.
leo,
“You do know who Heisenberg was– right?”
Yeah, he was a quantum physicist who died in 1976.
Apparently, unlike other fields of science, no progress has been made in quantum physics since 1976.
What Heisenberg said is gospel and will remain true forevermore.
Heisenberg is God.
But I see you continue to avoid that pesky double slit experiment you offered up as evidence that consciousness causes collapse.
Embarrassing isn’t it, to offer up the best evidence for your point of view and be completely unable explain how the evidence supports your view.
Sonic —
I don’t think you need to define “material” to define materialism. This is how our friendly Wikipedia defines materialism:
Of course, you could ask for a definition of matter, and that’s evolving based on our knowledge of the infinitesimally small. Again, it doesn’t matter all that much, because the core of the definition is the absence of anything else. The upshot of course is that one cannot use QM to go beyond materialism. You need to have something other than matter, whatever that turns out to be. But if it interacts with matter, it is material, and if it doesn’t, how is it supposed to have an effect on us?
Your first Heisenberg quote means exactly what it says — the mathematics tell us we cannot know everything about a particle. This isn’t really earth-shattering because it applies whenever the measuring apparatus is similar in dimensions to the measured object. Photons have a negligible influence on a billiard ball, but imagine you would only have a football to determine a billiard ball’s direction and speed. Even another billiard ball would disturb its trajectory and absorb at least some of its energy. Obviously, once one is looking at the smallest building blocks, there isn’t anything smaller to be found… At this level, you can no longer have the same information as you can have about billiard balls, or planets. I’m not sure that makes it less objective — it is influenced by the observation, but the observer cannot determine the outcome (so it isn’t exactly subjective either). Sometimes accuracy suffers at the hands of the search for a pithy quote.
The second quote quote isn’t all that controversial either, as long as one stays within the quantum realm. It becomes problematical if applied to larger systems, which is what people are wont to do. Within the quantum realm, we cannot observe a system without disturbing it, and hence cannot determine cause and effect for a specific occurrence — we can only provide statistical information on the population. This isn’t a problem unless we are interested in a specific occurrence (usually because we’re doing science). The more particles you observe together (and at the macroscopic level, there are incredibly huge numbers of particles), the more “objective” your information becomes [so you can’t use this quote to cast doubt on your hitting your neighbour’s car] because the number of particles you disturb to acquire your information is irrelevant as far as the object is concerned.
Now to your idea the “collapse of the wave function” is about our knowledge more than about the particle. It would be if the particle would remain undisturbed, but it doesn’t. Acquiring the information on the particle changes its properties, so the effect is double — the observer acquires information, and the particle is disturbed (cf. the double slit experiment).
Pete A —
Hear! Hear!
BillyJoe7 —
That was Sonic channeling Leo, actually.
Peta A,
Actually, one of you skeptics can have the last comment as your “all knowing”. Your knowledge is so so vast and grand no one should ever question that would be intellectual suicide. Pete A, its obvious there is qualia unless you truly believe of course totally up to you (personal belief) your entitled to those lol. That qualia doesn’t exist aka being able to see the color red where is there is no such color in the brain, subjective consciousness, self awareness, inner feeling for its like to be someone). Ever consider the possibility that Heisenberg was onto something?. Just did some yard work racking and did some mowing earlier on as well.
Leo: “…that qualia doesn’t exist aka being able to see the color red where there is no such color in the brain…”
We can easily create a computer program such that when it is hooked up to a video monitor, it can perform color discriminations, color-matching, and color-naming. We can literally recreate human-like color perception in a machine. But where is the color red in that machine (computer)? When we look inside, at the deepest level, all we can find are zeros and ones. Where is the color red?!?
The answer, in both the computer and in our brains, is that color perception lies in the information-processing patterns of both systems. Also, we are all glad to hear you are keeping up with your yardwork and mowing, bravo!
Heisenberg: “The observing system need not always be a human being; it may also be an inanimate apparatus, such as a photographic plate”
I think it’s about time, we stopped using the word “observer”.
It’s too confusing to people like leo* who are busy constructing gods and afterlives on this faulty foundation.
(*who is still not opening his mind to explaining the double slit experiment)
“The concept of qualia has been rejected by some philosophers and neuroscientists as not even wrong, or simply untestable and therefore useless.”
“Daniel Dennett, like many in the cognitive sciences, characterizes qualia as a useless and unfalsifiable concept, saying that it must be possible to know if a change in qualia occurs and that there is a difference in having a qualia as opposed to not having one.”
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Qualia
BillyJoe7
Heisenberg: “The observing system need not always be a human being; it may also be an inanimate apparatus, such as a photographic plate”
Physicist Andrei Linde would disagree I think he maybe onto something.
Leo stop ignoring BJ’s question. Just stop it. Explain in your own words/interpretation how the double-slit experiment has anything to do with consciousness. For god’s sakes, no links. Why are you making us beg?
The Other John MC
Because the electron is compelled to assume a definite position. We produce the results of the measurement. Now a common response to this is “It’s not us who is measuring the electron, it’s the machine that is doing the observation”. A machine is simply an extension of our consciousness. This is like saying “It’s not me who is observing the boat way across the lake, it is the binoculars”. The machine does not itself observe anything any more than a computer that interprets sound waves can “listen” to a song. Of course, there is no way we can establish this that “consciousness collapses the wave function” however we need to use a measurement device to observe the position a electron goes through the slits.
I wasn’t ignoring his question I already stated many times before that consciousness collapses the wave function that consciousness and the measurement exist as a pair. I wouldn’t go as far as saying consciousness creates reality. But I would say it suggests a dualist approach where consciousness has some independent existence from matter.
“A machine is simply an extension of our consciousness.”
You need to clarify this one for me. How can a physical object (machine) be an extension of a non-physical entity (which you claim consciousness to be)?
“It’s not me who is observing the boat way across the lake, its the binoculars.”
You need to define the “me” and “observing” in this sentence. Break it down. Reductionism works, you’ll see…
I’ll add annotation as Leo in parens:
“I already stated many times before that consciousness (which I can’t really define) collapses the wave function (that I don’t really understand) that consciousness and the measurement exist as a pair (though this description is sufficiently vague as to be meaningless). I wouldn’t go as far as saying consciousness creates reality (even though that is necessarily true given *literally* the last thing that I said). But I would say it suggests (even though I don’t know what any of ‘it’ means) a dualist approach where consciousness has some independent existence from matter (which is simply what I want to be true because I’m happier in a world made of magic (MAGIC!), and I won’t have to die).
Leo’s copypasta, hardly worth mentioning: http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/the-illusion-of-matter-does-consciousness-create-reality/
He mentioned he adores this site, but this just keeps dragging on and on… Leo, please go away. You can believe whatever you wish to believe. Don’t you have any hobbies or friends? Things to do? You should populate your days with productive and positive activities that are rewarding. Why are you pestering strangers on the interblags?
mumadadd-
If “you don’t have a definition”, is a knock-out argument, then ‘materialism’ loses.
Therefore “you don’t have a definition'” is not a knock-out argument (although it is a good point– right?)
I don’t know about monism or dualism or tribalism or whatever… (a false dilemma or trilemma or quadlemma or ??)
I do find it interesting that the way modern physics is currently formulated it could support any number of ‘isms’ though.
You are beginning to sound like these guys-
http://www.naturalism.org/
(Or maybe they are too militant for you– check it out).
Bill Openthalt-
The interpretation ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is about ‘our knowledge’ as originally formulated by Heisenberg et al– That’s why the quote. (Copenhagen Interpretation is subjective).
If you want to make it about the object itself- as Schrodinger hinted at with his ‘cats’, then it becomes a real possibility that consciousness has a special and unique effect on matter.
You can argue either way- but the ‘our knowledge’ way of dealing with the problem is the more historical method, I believe.
(You can check out what I’m saying by visiting the math site I linked to earlier).
leo100-
Linde might be on to something– like here?
http://philosophicaugustine.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/andrei-linde-on-consciousness-as-basic-to-reality/
It’s true– the physics can support these notions as it is currently formulated.
It’s a wonderful situation actually.
You did get what I’m saying about the original idea about the ‘collapse’ being about ‘our knowledge’– right?
sonic: “You can argue either way- but the ‘our knowledge’ way of dealing with the problem is the more historical method, I believe.”
Yes, it is the more historical (read: out-dated) way of thinking about QM.
Hi Sonic exactly. Yeah I do.
DGB,
I can ask the same thing about you. Do you have any friends? why debate with believers as you and others call us?.
Steve12,
There is nothing magical about it that is the way it seems.
Well Leo, I just flew back from Vancouver late last night, and today I’m back in front of the computer working. My hobbies include bicycle touring and marathons and triathlons, reading science fiction, travel (hence the BC trip), carpentry, and I have a day job and I also have my higher ed work which occupies almost all of waking life. My other R&R stuff includes science and anti-science blags (hence, here). Many of the commenters here are a riot, and also very edumacational.
You’re still here trying to convince “materialists” that dualism, qualla, and magic dimensions are “things”. Which is really really weird, which is why I keep telling you to get out more.
leo,
(Attempting to explain how the double slit experiment demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse)
“Because the electron is compelled to assume a definite position”
What do you mean by “is compelled to”?
What is doing the compelling?
Here is what happens:
1) The scientist turns the detector off and this results in an interference pattern on the screen.
2) The scientist turns the detector on and this results in a scatter pattern on the screen.
Where’s the “compelling”?
It’s like saying that an apple “is compelled to” fall to earth if you release it.
And compelled to stay where it is if you hold on to it.
And the scientist is not even doing quantum physical experiments in this case!
Moreover, where is consciousness involved?
Do you mean:
1) The experimenter consciousnessly turns the detector off to get an interference pattern.
If so, then the following are also true:
2) The experimenter consciously turns the detector on to get an scatter pattern.
3) The experimenter consciously releases the apple so that it falls to earth.
4) The experimenter consciously holds on to the apple so that it stays in his hand.
In other words, consciousness is involved in all four scenarios.
In other words, there is nothing special about conscious and the scatter pattern (collapse), because the same consciousness that is involved in generating the interference pattern (non collapse); and the same consciousness is involved in non quantum physical experiments like dropping or not dropping an apple.
“We produce the results of the measurement. Now a common response to this is “It’s not us who is measuring the electron, it’s the machine that is doing the observation”. A machine is simply an extension of our consciousness. This is like saying “It’s not me who is observing the boat way across the lake, it is the binoculars”. The machine does not itself observe anything any more than a computer that interprets sound waves can “listen” to a song.”
You have just blown away your own argument.
You have just agreed that the role of consciousness in quantum physical experiments is no different from its role in non quantum physical experiments. There is nothing special about cconsciousness and generating the scatter pattern (collapse). It is also involved in generating the interference pattern (non collapse). And it is also involved in generating the results of non quantum physical experiments!
“Of course, there is no way we can establish this that “consciousness collapses the wave function” ”
Thank you for conceding defeat.
sonic —
I give up. Either we talk mathematics (and this site isn’t the place to try and write symbols), or we attempt to find a reasonable English approximation of what it says (which is almost as difficult to do as getting WordPress to reproduce equations).
The problem is all our models and analogies are more of a hindrance than a help when talking about the atomic and sub-atomic realms, unless they are backed by a solid grasp of the mathematics (and after 30 years of pursuing different interests, I am no longer sure I have the required fluency even though I hope I still grok it). It is easy to string important-sounding words together, it’s another matter to cut through the crap and get one’s ideas clearly across.
The problem is I don’t know if you really know this stuff, or are working based on quotes and popular misunderstandings. In any case, you keep bringing up embryos of ideas, which you repeat but never elaborate. If you’re conversant with the matter, please try and be sufficiently didactic instead of trollish. State clearly what your position is, instead of meandering from woo to fringe to old-fashioned to downright obtuse.
Steve12
“Kandel et al. (1991) remarked that neurons connected by gap junctions fire synchronously, behaving like `one giant neuron’, and E.R. John (2001) has suggested that gap junction-connected neurons (`hyper-neurons’) mediate zero phase lag coherence. Dendritic lamellar bodies are associated with synchronously firing neurons ( De Zeeuw et al., 1997) and several studies ( Galarreta; Gibson and Velasquez) implicate gap junction-connected interneurons in the mediation of coherent (`40 Hz’) oscillations. These gap junction-connected interneurons form `dual’ connections (gap junctions and GABAergic chemical synapses) with pyramidal cells and other cortical neurons. GABA inhibition could quiet membrane activities, avoiding decoherence to enable quantum states in neuronal cytoplasmic interiors to develop and spread among many gap junction-linked cells across wide areas of the brain. Thus gap junction-connected coherent 40 Hz neurons may support spatially extended quantum states.”
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/BioSystemsElsevier.htm#sec14
Read from section3.3 – or, the rest of the page is an introduction to the ideas/science of orch OR. I found the diagrams especially helpful.
Also, the “host of new possibilities at simpler levels of theory” suggested in the conclusions have been advanced by more recent research.. For example, GABA inhibition isn’t necessary to avoid decoherence. And of course the even more recent work on microtubule conductivity lends further credibility.
(the rudimentary explanation of the theory I linked to here is from 2002)
The authors admit they have no proof this theory explains how consciousness happens.
I did ask you what you thought – so thank you for sharing your opinions on it.
Should you ever find you need to defend your dismissal on a more informed level, this paper provides a list of legitimate objections and Hameroff’s replies.
http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/2007v31/6/HCOG_A_270292_O_NLM/HCOG_A_270292_O.pdf
Bill O.-
Hameroff defines consciousness in the same way that every other scientist does. We don’t know what it is, but we define it by describing its attributes.
We don’t have a completely scientific definition yet, which would be something like: what is happening /what is the state of the body/brain when someone is conscious that is not happening/is happening differently when not conscious. And how do these relate to what we experience and how we behave. We are continually learning more about those differences but as I’m sure you know it’s a gigantic area of research. And it keeps growing. And it’s possible that we could learn the answer to every question about the brain state of consciousness vs unconsciousness, and still not answer: what is it? We might as well say: what’s the difference between alive and dead. All we have are attributes.
You’ve given a teleological theory of consciousness. We don’t understand how consciousness came about (beyond evolution, or perhaps the first appearance of life, depending on your beliefs about the nature of consciousness), how it’s “implemented” (as you say) in our brains (Implementing something would imply that it’s purposefully applied to the brain, and might even suggest an external existence to begin with, so there might be a better word to use if you wish to avoid those consequences) Orch OR seems to suggest a form of panpsychism – definitely NOT anthropocentric. Hameroff uses the example of the paramecium to illustrate that even one-celled animals with no neurons display a sort of consciousness – awareness, ability to respond to environment, find mates, etc. They’re even able to learn. He points out that microtubules may be involved in mediating these abilities, which of course he uses to advance his theory. Although he points out that “It was Sherrington (1953) who suggested first that paramecium utilizes intelligent organizational functions of cytoskeletal lattice polymers called microtubules.”
Of course we can say that your cat is conscious, but we can only guess what the experience of her consciousness is. We can deduce that she prefers a particular cat food, but we don’t know what it tastes like to her beyond “good” or “bad”, and we know that through inference. Since there are foods that taste bad to us which some animals seem to like to eat – obviously we know that things taste different to different animals. They feel differently about the way a particular thing tastes than you do. And no matter what we infer about it, we can’t KNOW what something tastes like to a cat. That’s just the way it is. And I can’t know what it’s like to be you and you can’t know what it’s like to be me. That’s not anthropocentrism – it’s just epistemological reality. We have to rely on reporting to know what it’s like to be someone else. Your cat reports to you what it’s like to be her through her behavior. You’ve just become so accustomed to feeling that you know what she feels like that you’re not being objective about how you know that. I’m the exact same way with my pets (until they surprise me by doing something I really don’t get
Pete, I don’t like rational wiki for this sort of stuff. There are better sites.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
Read#5 – the explanatory gap
Leo100
A man can’t know what it’s like for a woman to have sex with a man, and a woman can’t know what it’s like for a man to have sex with a woman. There are just some areas of knowledge that are unbroachable by virtue of the nature of the way they exist in the universe. This applies to a number of things. Sometimes we don’t know where to draw the line, but that’s ok because we always find out eventually.
Sonic, thanks for the paper. I don’t see disharmony between the ideas there and the mechanisms of orch OR. They only briefly touch on the physiology of the synapse, and in fact, the doubts about the physiological possibility of orch OR mentioned in the conclusions (Tegmark) have been satisfied – decoherence can be maintained “hundreds of milliseconds or longer” in the protein structure of the microtubule.
Maybe, just maybe, they’re on to something. But frankly, I’m not qualified to judge. And of course, I’ve now lost interest.
BillyJoe7
Do you know if scientists have been able to yet resolve the measurement problem because I have looked at papers back from 2005 where the measurement problem is still there. I found this part rather interesting in this paper. Why do you think by the way you have resolved the measurement problem?. No one has done it yet.
It is to be hoped that the theory proposed
in this paper will help
to finally begin to lay
the measurement problem to rest after these many decades of controversy, thereby
enabling us to address certain unresolved issues
1. That the brain, mind or consciousness play
no subjective role in the collapse of the
wave function, with this event taking place
naturally in an objective and stochastic
discontinuous nonlinear fashion within the co
mplex architecture of the eye. This
means that only non-superposed states or
final, measured information reaches the
brain, mind or consciousness.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0509/0509042.pdf
leo,
Please don’t provide any more links.
I am interested in you response to my actual post.
In your own words.
If you had trouble reading my post, let me summarise:
Consciousness is involved in producing the scatter pattern of “collapse” AND in producing the interference pattern of “non collapse” AND in producing results in non quantum physical experiments.
So, my question:
What is special about producing the scatter pattern of “collapse” that demonstrates to you that “consciousness causes collapse”?
Leo,
Reading your link, I don’t see how it supports your argument. The author appears to be proposing an experiment to validate the hypothesis that consciousness isn’t required. Why did you post it?
Sonic,.
I don’t know if you’re mixing me up with somebody else, but I never said “you don’t have a definition, is a knock-out argument”. Having said that, I do think it’s important, for clarity, to define terms, but I think materialism can be defined without an ultimate knowledge of what comprises material at it tiniest, irreducible scale. This is what I said a while back:
This is what Bill O said more recently:
For good measure, Wikipedia:
Leo has attracted legitimate requests to define some of his terms. My expectation is that once these terms are broken down it will either be easier to demonstrate to him where his reasoning is faulty, or the fact that he doesn’t have good working definitions for the terms he’s using. Can you make the same claim about your requests for definitions of ‘material’?
It would be worthwhile quibbling the definition of material if you could demonstrate that this in some way undermines materialism or supports alternative positions such as dualism, or somehow feeds into your case that consciousness causes collapse, but in this case it doesn’t, and you aren’t adding clarity but sowing confusion.
This is reality… An unbiased coin being flipped possesses a set of two states:
Sf = {heads,tails}
The probabilities are:
Pheads = 0.5
Ptails = 0.5
When the coin lands it possesses only one of those states (the outcome):
So = {heads}
Pheads = unity
Ptails = zero
or
So = {tails}
Ptails = unity
Pheads = zero
This is the quantum flapdoodle “consciousness causes collapse” approach…
Sf = {
heads,
tails,
observer will not become aware of the outcome,
observer will interpret the outcome differently yet this is a valid interpretation
}
Yes, this is the utter nonsense of things such as dualism, retrocausality, and the wilful misuse of information theory — some of the “magic wands” used in denialism.
Philosophy is based on logic in the absence of data; science is based on data. This is why we don’t have our automobiles designed, serviced, and repaired by philosophers. When it comes to understanding the brain, out-dated philosophy is nothing but a hindrance to scientific progress.
Niche Greek,
It doesn’t but the point is that the measurement problem still exists today.
BillyJoe7,
So, my question:
What is special about producing the scatter pattern of “collapse” that demonstrates to you that “consciousness causes collapse”?
Because it seems to show an effect that the observer has on the scatter pattern.
Well you’ve convinced me Leo. I now believe due to quantum mechanics that we have souls, and that assuming dualistic souls exist that are immaterial but somehow interact with material can explain both consciousness and subatomic physics in one fell swoop. It makes perfect sense now that you’ve linked to so many different sources which say the exact opposite of what you are saying. Combined with the fact that you have explained yourself so well without being repetitive or unclear, PLUS you have kept up with your yardwork, I’m sold. Count me in. Whatever you are selling, I’m buying.
Leo,
“It doesn’t but the point is that the measurement problem still exists today.”
“Because it seems to show an effect that the observer has on the scatter pattern.”
These two sentences are contradictory. If the measurement problem is another way of saying “Nobody knows how the wavefunction collapses” then you can’t, three minutes later, say “I know how the wavefunction collapses”.
Mlema:
The authors admit they have no proof this theory explains how consciousness happens.
“Should you ever find you need to defend your dismissal on a more informed level, this paper provides a list of legitimate objections and Hameroff’s replies.
http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/2007v31/6/HCOG_A_270292_O_NLM/HCOG_A_270292_O.pdf”
a. It’s not a dismissal. I’m simply pointing out that they haven’t made their case. How is that a dismissal? I read the same stuff you provided. And I understand the established neuroscience work that they’re citing.
And the fact is they haven’t made their case.
Dismissing means rejecting without entertaining. That’s not what happened here. The notion that I should accept models absent evidence, lest I’m illogically ‘dismissing’ it, is absurd.
b. More informed level? Frankly, Hammeroff should come talk to me or other neuroscientists about where HE is going wrong interpreting the literature to fit around his ideas. He needs to operate at a “more informed level” about how science works.
I have no problem with the line of work itself. I think we need to take more chances in science so that we can make some bigger leaps. But they over interpret their data in misleading ways, and that I do not support.
Scientist shouldn’t hype a model that has satisfied 0 unique predictions (e.g., not simply saying that their model is consistent with existing models re: neural population behavior, as in your link above) . Hammeroff and Penrose need to step away from popular science promotion and get back to work finding support for their ideas. That’s how science actually gets done.
Bill Openthalt-
I’m trying to be as clear as I can—
1- In modern physics Schrodinger’s equation is used to predict the future.
2- If one wants to know about an object, one can
a) use schrodinger’s equation with the previous measurements as inputs
b) take a measurement.
If you use schrodinger’s equation, you will likely get an answer that involves probabilities– ‘the cat has a 20% chance of being dead.’
If you take a measurement, you are likely to get a more specific result– cat alive…
If schrodinger’s equation is about ‘our knowledge’, then there is no problem– I can say the chance the cat is dead is 20% without any paradox or misunderstanding.
On the other hand- If schrodinger’s equation is about the object– then I have to explain what it means that the cat is 20% dead.
Schrodinger’s equation is certainly about our knowledge.
Schrodinger’s equation might be about the object- in which case we end up with the multiverse or consciousness having special properties or the objects going back and forth in time or one of the other interpretations that assume the equation is about the object and try to explain what a 20% dead cat looks like…
That’s what I’ve been trying to convey although I get the impression you are asking a different question…
What exactly do you want to know?
Mlema-
‘Quantum zeno effect’– that describes a certain aspect of my thought process and life very well– what about you?
leo100-
“The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you accept Nature as She is — absurd.” Richard Feynman
mumadadd-
I didn’t mean to confuse you with someone else.
I agree one can get carried away with definitions– but
We can say the universe is made of oobleck– and define ‘oobleck is what the universe is made of.’
If we want to say something more, then we have to define ‘oobleck’ in a way that is more meaningful…
I’m not sure ‘physical matter’ has been defined in a way that makes the statement ‘the universe is made of physical matter’ meaningful.
That makes the question of definition meaningful.
Kapeesh?
Niche Geek,
When I say it seems I mean it’s possible of course I could be wrong, Andrei Linde could be wrong and other proponents of consciousness collapses the wave function could be wrong.
leo100-
Schrodinger’s equation never ‘collapses’ to a point using the math.
It gives answers that can be understood in terms of probabilities, it does not supply definitive answers.
A conscious observation does produce definitive answers.
If the equation is the object– nothing but a conscious observation can produce a definitive answer… and a conscious observation can produce a definitive answer- a ‘collapsing’ of the possibilities the equation provides…
Infer away…
Hi Sonic I agree many scientists think the double slit experiments shows that the many world’s interpretation is correct. What is your position Sonic on the mind body problem?. Do you accept some form of monism?, dualism?, idealism?.
Sonic,
(*when I say ‘materialism’ please feel free to substitute physicalism or naturalism. It’s all the same to me*)
And we have, on multiple levels of scale. Any uncertainty or contention about what material actually is at the irreducible level doesn’t undermine the fact that there is only material, ‘oobleck’, or whatever we choose to label it as.
I think you’re equivocating; exploiting a difference between two definitions of material in order to sow doubt about materialism. Sure, matter at the tiniest scale does not look or behave how we’d intuitively expect from our everyday experiences. It’s quite neat and quite mind boggling to find out when you’re a kid that atoms are 99.9999… (don’t know the exact percentage) empty space, but this does not invalidate the fact that objects at the macro-scale are solid, or any of the body of knowledge built up through science that operates at this scale.
To get anywhere with anything but materialism you’d first need some observation that was inconsistent with reality as we understand it with this assumption in place. In the case of dualism, consciousness does not give you this. All the predictions that have been generated by the hypothesis that the mind is brain function only have been met; none of the predictions from the hypothesis that there is something other in play have failed (at least, all the ones that aren’t also compatible with brain causes mind).
“none of the predictions from the hypothesis that there is something other in play have failed (at least, all the ones that aren’t also compatible with brain causes mind).”
Oops, sorry – all of the predictions
`leo,
“Because it seems to show an effect that the observer has on the scatter pattern”
But then you’re not saying anything special when you say “consciousness cause collapse”.
That is the point I am making.
The “observer” is having the exact same effect on the experiment when an interference pattern is seen (ie when collapse does not occur!) as he does when a scatter patttern is seen (ie when collapse occurs)
In both cases the observer is consciously turning the switch.
If he turns the switch on -> scatter pattern
If he turns the switch off -> interference pattern
By your definition of “consciousness cause collapse”, it is also true that “consciousness causes non collapse” and “consciousness causes the apple to fall to earth” and “consciousness causes the apple not to fall to earth”.
In other words, you are not saying anything special about consciousness and quantum physics.
It really is as simply as that, leo.
There is nothing special about consciousness and quantum physics.
There is no special role for consciousness in quantum physics.
I don’t know how many more ways I can say this for you to understand this simple point.
mumadadd-
I have made no claim about which metaphysical view is correct- I have stated that the way physics is currently formulated any number of ‘isms’ can find support.
And they do.
If you are finding a philosophy to your liking, good for you.
If you are demanding that your metaphysics is correct and I have to agree or be wrong– LOL
leo100-
My take on many worlds is more like this guy-
http://motls.blogspot.com/2014/07/many-worlds-pseudoscience-again.html?m=1
How is it put??– Either I’m a material being having spiritual experiences, or I’m a spiritual being having material experiences– of course there is the third option which involves that being a false dichotomy and I’m just completely clueless.
Well, the I’m completely clueless part is certainly true…
BillyJoe7,
Then why is it controversial among physicists?. Why is there still a measurement problem?.
leo,
“Then why is it controversial among physicists?”
It isn’t.
Only a hand full of quantum physicists think consciousness is involved.
Most quantum physicists can see pretty clearly that consciousness is not involved.
I hope my explanations have helped you see why.
“Why is there still a measurement problem?”
The measurement problem is really just the problem of how “collapse” occurs – how probabilities collapse to one specific value – when a “measurement” is made (ie when the detectors are turned on). There are various interpretations of how collapse occurs (some deny that collapse actually occurs) but consciousness is clearly not involved, as I have demonstrated.
BJ7,
I am going to quote this one more time from this paper it appears that these physicist’s don’t agree with you. They can easily see how it suggests from experiments that consciousness is involved. However, there trying to do away with this by introducing their solution to the measurement problem.
It is to be hoped that the theory proposed
in this paper will help
to finally begin to lay
the measurement problem to rest after these many decades of controversy, thereby
enabling us to address certain unresolve
d issues, with emphasis on the following:
1. That the brain, mind or consciousness play
no subjective role in the collapse of the
wave function, with this event taking place
naturally in an objective and stochastic
discontinuous nonlinear fashion within the co
mplex architecture of the eye. This
means that only non-superposed states or
final, measured information reaches the
brain, mind or consciousness.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/quant-ph/papers/0509/0509042.pdf
leo,
Please read these words from BJ7’s post again carefully:
“Only a hand full of quantum physicists think consciousness is involved.
Most quantum physicists can see pretty clearly that consciousness is not involved.”
The paper you linked was written by one person. His conclusions are not shared by most quantum physicists. If you search hard enough and believe strongly enough, I am sure you could also find a paper somewhere on the internet where a geographer is arguing the earth is flat as well.
“His conclusions are not shared by most quantum physicists”
How do you know that because of the small poll earlier posted. There are thousands of physicists out there.
Also take a look at the reviews on the book called the Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness.
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Physics-Encounters-Consciousness/dp/019517559X
If you Ekko or BJ7 are a physicist have talked to physicists about this and they think the same way you do then end of discussion.
As far as the idea of consciousness collapses the wave function goes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WXTX0IUaOg
Sir Roger Penrose — The quantum nature of consciousness
“Is there any evidence for the relevance of quantum states/processes to consciousness? Well, general anesthetic gases selectively erase consciousness while nonconscious brain activities continue (e.g. evoked potentials, control of autonomic function, EEG). The anesthetic gases act in the same intra-protein non-polar pockets in which quantum London forces control protein conformation. This occurs in a class of receptors, channels and other brain proteins including cytoskeletal structures. And the anesthetics do so by forming only quantum mechanical interactions, presumably interfering only with physiological quantum effects. It is logical to conclude that consciousness occurs in quantum pockets within proteins throughout the brain.” – Hameroff
I don’t know exactly how general anesthesia works, so I don’t know how “logical” this conclusion really is. But if it does work as exclusively as Hameroff suggests, then I think this is a valid avenue of exploration, and it would be wrong to dismiss the orch OR theory out of hand. Especially when valid physiological criticisms have already been answered. My question would be – given the indefinable nature of consciousness – how do you know when you’re right? How would you design an experiment to test this theory? How do you tease it out of everything else?
sonic, hmmmmm…….wait…what was I going to say? Oh well. What’s for dinner? 😉
Here is a different take on the measurement problem–
http://physics.about.com/od/physicsmtop/fl/Measurement-Problem.htm
“Regardless of the approach invoked, nearly a century after it first came up in the development of quantum physics, there is still no clear and satisfactory resolution to the measurement problem. The need to explain this foundational problem of quantum physics remains one of the greatest difficulties within science and made Lee Smolin’s list of the five great problems in theoretical physics.”
mlema-
I’m having crow for dinner. Nothing from what’s going on here– it’s just I’ve made an error elsewhere and– well now I get to eat crow.
I think it is one of those things you develop a taste for over time- a little cumin seems to help…
Was I being too mean earlier?
Mlema,
I don’t know how anesthetics work either. But if what he’s saying is true (and I don’t know, I’m not completely trusting of Penrose on the topic), then the next question would be “Is there an anesthetic that does not use this mechanism, but produces the same end?”.
Of course, if he’s speculating about the mechanism, then this wouldn’t tell us much. Or if it turns out that literally every interaction at that level requires QM to describe, then the fact is also meaningless toward parsing the bigger Q.
If I have time, I’m going to do some reading on what’s known about the mechanism behind anesthetics – I’ve just always read that no one knows why they work.
Seems everyone can find quotes that they think support their position but no one seems to be to link to any experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates a role for conscionsness.
leo,
I don’t know what the rest of that paper says, but your quote from it does not seem to support a role for consciousness. I read a few pages and all it says is that some scientists “feel” that consciousness is involved, one even admitting that there is no evidence for this view. Maybe I’ll read all 36 pages when I get time, but I get the distinct impression that I am being sent on a wild goose chase. In any case, I’m still waiting for your own account of the double slit experiment demonstrating how consciousness is involved. Or your criticism of my account demonstrating that it doesn’t.
Mlema,
If you have watched any of the Hameroff interviews available on the internet, you should be aware of how way out his views actually are. Even Roger Penrose is embarrassed. And he makes Deepak Chopra proud. That doesn’t mean his views on consciousness and quantum physics is wrong, but it should give pause. He is an object case in way out, over the top, wild speculation beyond the evidence. He desperately wants his pet theory that he spawned a few decades ago (and that he has been working on ever since) to be true.
sonic,
Nobody is saying there is no measurement problem. What we’re sayng is that there is no evidence for a role for consciousness, and that only a hand full of quantum physicists still “feel” (without evidence) that there is. Maybe you can help out your friend, leo, with his double slit experiment. You know…sometimes you have to put up or shut up…or eat some crow. (;
Anyway, unless there is some meaningful response from one you (meaning no links or quotes, please, just your own clearly stated arguments), I guess this overlong thread will slowly grind to a halt.
BJ7,
When I said this: “Because it seems to show an effect that the observer has on the scatter pattern”. What I met was the observer effects the interference pattern. I should point out as well Dean Radin a parapsychologist has performed new experiments on the double slit experiment using a double slit optical system. I don’t know how Roger Penrose could be embarrassed, after all he was the one that brought the idea of proto consciousness coming from the planck scale in his book the Emperor’s New Mind. The paper doesn’t support a role in consciousness. I posted the link once again because you are claiming that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function. However, this one scientist as well agrees with the small number of physicists as you say.
“They appear to have been correct in one respect, and that is that measured information finally does get received by the brain and enters into consciousness and the mind”
.
A double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double-slit spectral power to its single-slit spectral power was predicted to decrease Double-slit interference patternwhen attention was focused toward the double slit as compared to away from it. Each test session consisted of 40 counterbalanced attention-toward and attention-away epochs, where each epoch lasted between 15 and 30 s. Data contributed by 137 people in six experiments, involving a total of 250 test sessions, indicate that on average the spectral ratio decreased as predicted (z=-4:36, p=6·10-6). Another 250 control sessions conducted without observers present tested hardware, software, and analytical procedures for potential artifacts; none were identified (z=0:43, p=0:67). Variables including temperature, vibration, and signal drift were also tested, and no spurious influences were identified. By contrast, factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.
http://dailygrail.com/Mind-Mysteries/2012/5/Consciousness-and-the-Double-Slit-Experiment
Interesting video of a study showing slime ( a single cell organism) without a brain found to have memory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjII2ciAmGw
@mlema
“I don’t know exactly how general anesthesia works, so I don’t know how “logical” this conclusion really is. But if it does work as exclusively as Hameroff suggests, then I think this is a valid avenue of exploration, and it would be wrong to dismiss the orch OR theory out of hand.”
1 – I don’t think anyone really understands how anesthesia works honestly. We know it works due to experimentation but from what I understand, we’re not exactly sure yet what’s going on.
2 – I don’t think anyone is dismissing out of hand Orch OR. The problem is that it’s been posted as evidence for something going on at the quantum level in the brain and we don’t know if that’s true yet or if it is, what’s it doing. That’s why I’ve been saying it’s going to require a lot more work than so far has been done.
I don’t think anyone here is disallowing potential quantum effects in the brain, however, we know right now that there is no need to invoke quantum anything to show that an effect on the brain has a direct and predictable effect on the mind. This means that regardless of quantum effects or no, it’s obvious there’s no ‘other’ that’s not completely tied to the function of the brain at the macroscopic level. Understanding quantum effects only deepens our understanding of what’s going on, it doesn’t suddenly change the game.
leo,
“When I said this: “Because it seems to show an effect that the observer has on the scatter pattern”. What I met was the observer effects the interference pattern”
You get an interference pattern when there is no collapse.
You get a scatter pattern when there is collapse.
So you need to show how consciousness is involved in generating the scatter pattern.
leo,
“I should point out as well Dean Radin a parapsychologist has performed new experiments on the double slit experiment using a double slit optical system”
Oh please.
Dean Radin?
But let’s sort out the simple double slit experiment first shall we.
In your own words.
No links or quotes.
In the Double Slit experiment there is NO need for a living observer. It can be even a device:
“To demonstrate this, Weizmann Institute researchers built a tiny device measuring less than one micron in size, which had a barrier with two openings. They then sent a current of electrons towards the barrier. The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.”
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm
So the double slit is proof of what now exactly???
“Interesting video of a study showing slime ( a single cell organism) without a brain found to have memory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjII2ciAmGw”
This is old news. Even some plants have memories and your point? It is a living organism and I think that almost every organism has some sort of “memory” to begin with in their genetic code or can learn from the environment. Also that a single cell organism has some form memory of memory is not destroying the materialistic model. Also it does not point out that there is some ethereal soul involved or anything like that. Every organism in some sense can “learn” and adapt to the environment.
Luke: “In the Double Slit experiment there is NO need for a living observer”
Yeah, the “observer”…sorry…the “CONSCIOUS observer” if you don’t mind.
(BTW, is there an “unconscious observer”?
…actually…yes!…YES…those detectors!…those goddamn pesky detectors!)
But the goalposts are shifting…
Now it’s about “knowledge”…sorry…”OUR knowledge”!
(Who else’s?)
And still the ubiquitous “scare” quotes…meaning that it doesn’t actually mean what the words say.
Any explanation will involve yet another pair of scare quotes.
And on and on and on and on…
Anything but a clear unambiguous straight forward honest response.
Oh well…
Sonic,
No, you’ve studiously avoided that, all the while heavily implying a dualist position. You make vague assertions and appear to try to defend them by:
-linking to fringe science
-linking to mainstream stuff that contradicts you your point
-trying to lose your detractors in the mire of semantics
eg.
-ESP > gravity waves
-Dualism > consciousness causes collapse
-Dualism again > Scrodinger’s equation
In all these instances, you refuse to properly define your own terms but obsessively nit pick everyone else’s.
Pretty much everything I’ve addressed to you has been a direct response to either your own words or citations. I’ll admit now though that I’ve stopped reading your links, but here’s an example from a single post:
You:
Then:
So – dualism, dualism, or ‘don’t know’ Hmmm. Well, maybe you meant something else by ‘spiritual’.
Can you please also define this ‘false dichotomy’ you keep referencing. I recall three separate uses of the term, but in different contexts so it’s hard to get a grasp on. If you’re arguing that there’s a false dichotomy between materialsm/dualism/idealism, please elaborate. Again, in simple terms, here’s those three propositions:
1.) All physical* stuff, nothing else
2.) Physical stuff and mental stuff
3.) No physical stuff, just mental stuff
*what we know and describe through physics.
If any one of those is true then the other two must be false. There isn’t any middle ground between these positions. Maybe you are proposing that they are all wrong? In which case, what other options are there (and please, no minute details about the differences between materialism, naturalism and
If you are finding a philosophy to your liking, good for you.
If you are demanding that your metaphysics is correct and I have to agree or be wrong– LOL
No demands, Sonic. I’m arguing against what I perceive to be your position, and I am trying to be clear and specific. I’d be grateful if you could respond in kind. Actually, I sincerely want you to be correct; I want to have a soul, I want my consciousness to survive death, and I’m sincerely terrified of non-existence.
Stuffed up one of the tags. Try again:
Sonic,
No, you’ve studiously avoided that, all the while heavily implying a dualist position. You make vague assertions and appear to try to defend them by:
-linking to fringe science
-linking to mainstream stuff that contradicts you your point
-trying to lose your detractors in the mire of semantics
eg.
-ESP > gravity waves
-Dualism > consciousness causes collapse
-Dualism again > Scrodinger’s equation
In all these instances, you refuse to properly define your own terms but obsessively nit pick everyone else’s.
Pretty much everything I’ve addressed to you has been a direct response to either your own words or citations. I’ll admit now though that I’ve stopped reading your links, but here’s an example from a single post:
You:
Then:
So – dualism, dualism, or ‘don’t know’ Hmmm. Well, maybe you meant something else by ‘spiritual’.
Can you please also define this ‘false dichotomy’ you keep referencing. I recall three separate uses of the term, but in different contexts so it’s hard to get a grasp on. If you’re arguing that there’s a false dichotomy between materialsm/dualism/idealism, please elaborate. Again, in simple terms, here’s those three propositions:
1.) All physical* stuff, nothing else
2.) Physical stuff and mental stuff
3.) No physical stuff, just mental stuff
*what we know and describe through physics.
If any one of those is true then the other two must be false. There isn’t any middle ground between these positions. Maybe you are proposing that they are all wrong? In which case, what other options are there (and please, no minute details about the differences between materialism, naturalism and
No demands, Sonic. I’m arguing against what I perceive to be your position, and I am trying to be clear and specific. I’d be grateful if you could respond in kind. Actually, I sincerely want you to be correct; I want to have a soul, I want my consciousness to survive death, and I’m sincerely terrified of non-existence.
BillyJoe7,
Our difference of opinion on the double slit experiment is that you think it’s the detectors causing the collapse of the wave function. I think it’s primarily an conscious observer doing it. Lukas, you quoted a part of the article, where the main point wasn’t there. Here’s the part that was intriguing.
The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.
Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it’s clear it didn’t go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being “forced” to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings.
Apart from “observing,” or detecting, the electrons, the detector had no effect on the current. Yet the scientists found that the very presence of the detector-“observer” near one of the openings caused changes in the interference pattern of the electron waves passing through the openings of the barrier. In fact, this effect was dependent on the “amount” of the observation: when the “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons increased, in other words, when the level of the observation went up, the interference weakened; in contrast, when its capacity to detect electrons was reduced, in other words, when the observation slackened, the interference increased.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/02/980227055013.htm
Leo,
We’ve been through this with Sonic already. In fact, it sounds like you’re quoting from one of the articles Sonic also linked to.
What happens to the wave function if the detectors are activated but no consciousness ever observes the result, leo?
Scroll back up to somewhere around 3-4 weeks ago, when there was only Sonic, BJ7 and me posting on this thread, and you’ll find a more detailed exchange on this topic.
Basically, it’s interaction that causes collapse; consciousness is not necessary.
BillyJoe7,
“BTW, is there an ‘unconscious observer’?”
The “Deepak Chopra and Stuart Hameroff on Consciousness” discussion demonstrates that woo woo is a much more powerful mind-changing intoxicant than booze. Increasing consumption of booze eventually causes unconsciousness, which is an innate protection mechanism. Unfortunately, many humans have no similar mechanism to protect them from their ever increasing consumption of woo woo.
Critical thinking skills are a valuable protection mechanism, but this has to be acquired through hard work and dedication because it isn’t innate.
mumadadd,
“Actually, I sincerely want you to be correct; I want to have a soul, I want my consciousness to survive death, and I’m sincerely terrified of non-existence.”
Of course, we all think the same way. Humans are the only species that fears death to such a degree that we’ve built pyramids and temples, and created a plethora of unfathomable (and deliberately untestable) belief systems to pacify us.
Infants are given a baby’s dummy to pacify them. When children gain the cognitive awareness to realize that life is not permanent, often through the death of a family member or a family pet, many are told that the person/pet has gone to heaven, which pacifies them. Adults seem to have only two choices that I can think of:
1) Adopt a pacifying belief system then vehemently defend it.
2) Accept that the universe came from nothing; will decay to nothing; and the only purpose of any biological entity is to reproduce its species. This is by far the hardest path to tread yet it enables the followers to be realistic and to fully appreciate each joyous moment as a bonus rather than just an expected preordained right.
Those who claim to be open-minded agnostics while presenting endless references to anti-science, fringe science, and pseudoscience to back their claims are being intellectually dishonest — mainly to themselves because the non-believers in unsubstantiated belief systems are simply being rational. E.g. my not believing in Santa does not logically lead to me being labelled as an anti-Santerist. However, if I were to deny the scientific method, evidence, and/or critical thinking then I would indeed be correctly labelled as a denialist (and quite likely as a persistent troll on a science blog) — which would not be a personal insult, it would be just an epistemic fact.
“Lukas, you quoted a part of the article, where the main point wasn’t there. Here’s the part that was intriguing.”
I do not agree. IT is fascinating even when you put it that way that there is NO need for human consciousness or animal consciousness to begin with. So NO need for woo or New Age but again this is a typical look of a believer. You throw evidence on them they look for something to still believe. I am getting really tired of this lately. Also for your information leo I read the whole article and I know what I am posting and that what you posted is not interesting for me in any way. The biggest thing in the article for me was that there is NO need for a consciousness to play a part in it. It can be a detector and that it is it.
Mumadadd,
Interaction still takes a conscious observer aka consciousness appears to be necessary. Let’s agree to disagree.
Pete A
2) Accept that the universe came from nothing; will decay to nothing; and the only purpose of any biological entity is to reproduce its species. This is by far the hardest path to tread yet it enables the followers to be realistic and to fully appreciate each joyous moment as a bonus rather than just an expected preordained right.
How could the universe come from nothing?. That is why there is postulations now of two branes colliding explaining how the big bang happened. I love science Pete A, its awesome way to explore things. I personally don’t see this as a science blog but more of a pushing an agenda blog. There is no difference between Steven Novella and Deepak Chopra. This is why one another go in debates against one another. The pot calling the kettle black.
Lukas
It’s not interesting to you because of your cognitive dissonance. You don’t like what I am posting about the article because it leads to solipsism and rather takes the materialist route well go ahead.
leo it sounds like you enjoy science fiction more than actual science; there is absolutely no experimental evidence for branes at present.
Even if there were, then where did branes comes from? we could ask such questions endlessly, but that does not mean Deepak Chopra is right, it just means we humans are both blessed in our ability to ask creative questions and sometimes cursed with the inability to answer them.
But some questions do have answers. Like does consciousness cause wave function collapse? Hell nah. Is the brain a receiver? Hell to the no. Is 9/11 a CD?…you see what I mean.
“It’s not interesting to you because of your cognitive dissonance. You don’t like what I am posting about the article because it leads to solipsism and rather takes the materialist route well go ahead.”
Do you know what is at least cognitive dissonance??
Can you at least read??
The article states that there the observer was NO human therefore he had NO consciousness.
” The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.””
However ignorant people are foolish. Even the wikipedia article claims the same which I do:
“An important aspect of the concept of measurement has been clarified in some QM experiments where a small, complex, and non-sentient sensor proved sufficient as an “observer”—there is no need for a conscious “observer”.[7]”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)
However we are all wrong and believers are right.
What I am actually discussing with you is a mystery to me now because you showed your bias here and made up your mind:
“There is no difference between Steven Novella and Deepak Chopra. This is why one another go in debates against one another. The pot calling the kettle black.”
I did not know that Dr. Steven Novella made a living out of woo and is selling snake oil like Chopra did.
Lukas,
Apparently you didn’t read this part of my post. The experiment revealed that the greater the amount of “watching,” the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place. The reason why the conscious observer effect is ignored by mainstream science is because all of the history of science would be illusion generated by our consciousness. No he doesn’t sell through books but he uses his word of opinion as it’s something that the majority think. When in fact there are many scientists that would love to study psi and life after death evidence and do there own experiments in it but there isn’t no money in that. You got to put food on the table you know and pay your bills.
The Other John Mc,
I am not sure that consciousness collapses the wave function as I would like to see some future experiments on this issue to resolve the measurement problem once and for all. That way I can know for sure that consciousness does or doesn’t collapse the wave function, the second one I am very sure of, but still open to the slight possibly that the brain isn’t a receiver and the third I would say I agree with you
leo
You’ve convinced me to start life after death experiments.
I just tried to apply for a research grant from NSF. From one pseudo-scientist to a believer, I’m sure their response wouldn’t surprise you. The response was extremely…vulgar.
The experiment was simple enough. I was going to use a chucking stool(with a 20 minute submersion…just to make sure) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool) on test subject, revive them, and the record what they experienced while “dead”.
Considering that I did not receive any funding, I was wondering if you would volunteer to be my first test subject.
If instead you’d like to help me test if consciousness causes the wave function to collapse, that would be great too. The experiment is a variation of the double slit experiment. I need an observer to sit in a room with a vacuum right in front of the double slits while I fire high energy particles at the observers face.
If there isn’t an interference pattern, then we can infer that consciousness causes the wave function to collapse!!!
On the behalf of everyone here(and yes, I do in fact speak for everyone…as I can read minds), thank you for wasting our time.
And in the spirit of Leo, I will repost this 5 time but slightly varied.
mumadadd
Let’s try this–
You have said that ESP> gravity waves. You said so in your last comment. You have mentioned this numerous times.
Would you please explain your hypothesis how gravity waves cause ESP?
You must believe that the sun is the source of all thought in this solar system and that the gravity waves it sends out control all human (and inhuman) thought on earth. Right?
Since it is clear from what you have said that you believe the sun is controlling all thought in this solar system by using gravity waves to induce ESP and that is where all the ‘new’ ideas come from— do sunspots have anything to do with this?
You are saying that sun spots are the cause of all musical invention? So Beethoven was in attuned to a sun spot when he wrote the 5th… and a different sun spot for the 9th?
Why your theory is getting more interesting all the time.
Tell me, is it possible to write a piece of music without getting the messages in the form of ESP from the gravity waves produced by sun spot activity?
That seems a testable hypothesis… do you know of any experiment that shows that it is required that one be receiving ESP in the form of gravity waves in order to write music? I bet not…
BTW– Does this have anything to do with your theory that consciousness comes from a supernatural being who lives in the clouds and eats only USDA certified organic foods? Does he also get his thought from the gravity waves produced by the sun? That is your belief– I know. But it seems contradictory that a supernatural being would need the sun to get his thoughts.
Your claims don’t even back your hypothesis!!!
**** at this point you might be wondering who I’m talking to.
But I’m wondering the same thing about your comment directed to me – as you have claimed things about what I’ve said and what I believe that are far from reality.
————————————-
Let me ask you these questions-
Why would you want to live past body death? Why would you think I do?
Do you want to be punished for your sins? If there is any possibility that this punishment for sins is involved, please explain why I would want that.
Please explain using the exact sins I have committed with the exact punishment I can look forward to.
If we live more than one life– why would you want to do that? What if each life is worse than the previous– why would I want to continue? Can you assure me that if I’m going to live again it will be a good life? How?
Please be specific about exactly what I like about life and how you know any future life I have will be something i would want.
Otherwise– I’m not so sure I would want to come back here– for example…
Do you think there are 17 virgins awaiting you?
How long would it take being in a room with 17 virgins before it seemed like an eternity had past? 😉
If heaven is for the ‘good’ people, and hell for the ‘bad’, where are you going and which would you prefer? Where do you think I’m going?
Please explain why I would want these things using specific examples of the sins I have committed and the punishments I would get and using the exact reasons i enjoy life and how you can assure me that my continued existence will be a pleasurable one.
Tell me exactly how you know.
—————————————————–
Anyway— On a more serious note–
If you look at physics, you see that nobody understands how or why it works the way it does. For example- The objects are not particles, they are not waves, they can act like either to some extent– but they are not either and the best we can do is fairly poor analogy.
We can’t even say what the math that we use to represent the stuff means for sure.
(It is possible that string theory or some other will answer these questions– but not yet…)
In this situation I find it hard to believe my intuition (or anyone else’s) is going to be of value in the metaphysical questions.
I am a skeptic in that I entertain doubt. And in these areas it seems there is plenty of room for doubt.
leo100-
I have demonstrated that ‘consciousness causes collapse’ is correct if Schrodinger’s equation represents our knowledge of the system– not the object itself.
It is also clear that if the equation does represent the system then-
multi-universe, consciousness has special properties, objects move back-and-forth in time…
Before we get carried away with those–
Has anyone actually demonstrated that the equation is about the object itself and not just our knowledge of it?
No… you might think that all the problems with this unproven assumption would give one pause…
I’m pretty sure the hope is string theory will clarify all this… I doubt it will… probably just confuse things more.
I guess I’m an optimist about that…:-)
Sonic,
I’ll skip the questions as clearly they were in jest. But one serious one for you – if you’re not saying (or implying) what I think you are saying, what on earth are you actually saying? “I don’t know but here’s a load of links and some heavy implication. If I say ‘if’ I’m being hypothetical; here’s a dictionary definition of ‘if.'”? What was all that business posting links about ‘consciousness causes collapse’? Are you just meandering around your own stream of consciousness, not responding to, agreeing with, or disagreeing with any other posts?
But fine, if I’ve got you all wrong – my apologies. I’m really not convinced though. You have some position or belief that you’re being coy about but it’s leaking through into your posts, whether you mean to advance an actual point or not.
This ^^: laudable sentiment. I agree wholeheartedly. This is what the scientific method is for – generate and test predictions, apportion belief to evidence. Do you agree that it’s possible to establish things to varying degrees of truth?
Doubt is one thing, and a good one at that. I question the things I want to believe in the most. Your doubt, as far as I can ascertain, seems to be focused in the direction of the things that are contrary to what you want to believe.
Sonic,
I don’t know why, but I really want to nail you down to some sort of coherent argument or position. I’m reading the critical thinking guide that Pete A recommended to you. I’ll double down on that recommendation – you really should give it a go. Right now I’m reading a section on vagueness, so maybe this is the Baader Meinhof effect in action, or I’ve been primed to see vagueness in what I’m reading.
Anyway, give it a read, and you might get some understanding as to why people get frustrated with you.
Sonic,
Here:
This is the crux – what is that you believe? Why won’t you say?
leo,
“Our difference of opinion on the double slit experiment is that you think it’s the detectors causing the collapse of the wave function”
It is not an opinion, it is an obvious fact.
“I think it’s primarily an conscious observer doing it”
You can “think” what you like.
If the facts are against you, you are…wrong!
I have explained from many different angles why you are wrong.
You have not attempted to back up what you think is true with an explanation of why you think it is true.
And you have not attempted to explain why you think my explanation of why you are wrong is wrong.
Our positions are not equal.
“Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it’s clear it didn’t go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being “forced” to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings”
Why do you continue to ignore the fact that the “observer” is a detector?
You haven’t yet responded to this quote provided by Lucas and provided previously in this thread:
“The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it”
Please respond.
As I said, you can “think” what you like but, if the facts are against you – as they CLEARLY are in this case – then you are clearly…WRONG!
Please explain mine then it’s only fair.
“Strange as it may sound, interference can only occur when no one is watching. Once an observer begins to watch the particles going through the openings, the picture changes dramatically: if a particle can be seen going through one opening, then it’s clear it didn’t go through another. In other words, when under observation, electrons are being “forced” to behave like particles and not like waves. Thus the mere act of observation affects the experimental findings”
“The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it”
See in that sentence “could” they didn’t say it “is”.
Sonic,
I’ve been unfair. I had a legitimate beef with some specific things you said quite a while ago but I think now I’m just shadow boxing. You are vague, but you don’t owe me an argument. You may well be here just to chit chat about how weird QM is. I’ll just let you crack on unmolested.
Sorry about that.
mumadadd
In my opinion, Sonic is vague and shifty. To me it appears as if he throws out garbage at first and the retreats to more solid ground. I find most commenters discussion with him to be quite tedious.
In this thread he started out talking about the evidence for psi being convincing or not convincing based on prior belief, then retreated to meta-physical interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Based on his ambiguity, I’m not sure he has given his opinion on anything except psi research and that he’s agnostic about most of what is being discussed.
He has a mind like a bear trap – nothing escapes it.
Leo:
“See in that sentence “could” they didn’t say it “is”.”
Oh, Jesus Christ I hope you’re joking.
I haven’t commented on the QM interp debate because it’s the double threat: vague and stupid. But BJ7 et al. have shown you guys over and over that ‘observer’ can be completely replaced by ‘detector’ , and this ABSOLUTELY FALSIFIES the consciousness causes collapse hypothesis.
But THIS semantic horseshit would make Sonic blush.
Leo,
“See in that sentence “could” they didn’t say it “is”.”
You don’t need to do much more than read the article again to correct yourself here…
Mumadadd,
That is what it said in the article.
“Some physicists are uncomfortable with the idea that all individual quantum events are innately random. This is why many have proposed more complete theories, which suggest that events are at least partially governed by extra “hidden variables”. Now physicists from Austria claim to have performed an experiment that rules out a broad class of hidden-variables theories that focus on realism — giving the uneasy consequence that reality does not exist when we are not observing it (Nature 446 871).”
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantum-physics-says-goodbye-to-reality
No matter however I learn more towards the many world’s interpretation which is gaining popularity among physicists. I think the double slit experiment can probably be explained better by saying that their is an infinite number of universes.
Ok I agree that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function after doing more research on this. You got me. I admit defeat.
Just joking I am just going to say I really “don’t know”. An Agnostic position.
@leo
“No matter however I learn more towards the many world’s interpretation which is gaining popularity among physicists”
this is not true Leo, it’s contentious at best. It’s these sorts of statements that hurt your argument more than anything.
mumadadd-
You are actually way ahead of most people– you have nothing to apologize for.
I’m not trying to be vague-
I’ve given you the link to the math site that explains the schrodinger’s equation and I’ve talked about the Copenhagen Interpretation-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation
(That is what I’m talking about– check it out).
None of that is ‘fringe’ or anything but consensus.
I agree that I do question the ‘consensus’ regularly- but that’s what I am -a skeptic and I question what others purport as fact (look in a dictionary under ‘skeptic’ probably definition #1 depending on the dictionary).
Anyway—
I will state my position on metaphysics as clearly and succinctly as I can— I don’t know.
I didn’t arrive at that due to ‘consensus’ or popularity (it is a very unpopular position apparently) or because it makes me comfortable.
It is the best answer I have thus far and it is not for lack of trying the alternatives. OK?
Hoss-
one man’s garbage…
leo100-
Bell’s theorem and the Aspect experiments give us either non-real or non-local or both. (At least that’s the consensus).
I think ‘both’ seems to be winning at this point. 😉
I wonder- are there physicists who can find out the results of experiments without being conscious?
P-zombies exist!
Of course as soon as I see the result– oh shoot… how could I know my consciousness didn’t cause the collapse???
I’m currently liking the notion the equation is about our knowledge and is only a poor analogy for the actual object- maybe that makes more sense to you now…
To take a quote out of context–
“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” Heisenberg
@sonic and Leo
You guys have a habit of making statements that has turned this thread into more of an effort in defining words more precisely. You’re also making sweeping statements that are not helpful to your stance, for example:
Leos says “The reason why the conscious observer effect is ignored by mainstream science is because all of the history of science would be illusion generated by our consciousness.”
It’s BEEN studied for a reason Leo, not because anyone was afraid of what they would find. It’s as ridiculous as claiming no one would have tried to refute a geocentric universe because it would have proved the church wrong. This science happens regardless, the problem you have is that when science hits a dead end, they move along another path. nothing you are claiming jibes with what science is finding. This is a consistent accusation you’ve made of us here as well as science, that somehow we’re afraid of what science might find. I’m personally FASCINATED by what science can find and I’m not even a scientist. I don’t care what it finds, I only care that whatever claims are made are supported with evidence. You’re accusation above is not only inaccurate but it’s not helpful to your argument.
Sonic says “If you look at physics, you see that nobody understands how or why it works the way it does”
Physicist understand some of what’s going on and we’re learning more everyday. It’s a huge mistake to think we don’t understand it. There’s a lot of ground still to cover but the assumption that we don’t udnerstand leads too many people to conclusions like those in this thread – that since we don’t understand physics (which we do to some degree, this is a false assumption) that it can and will explain anything we want it to. Physics for woo believers has become the god to fill in the gaps in our lack of understanding.
@mumadadd
“I don’t know why, but I really want to nail you down to some sort of coherent argument or position.”
we’ve been trying ad nauseum on this thread and some others in the past. Sonic won’t commit, and you guys are just going around in circles and circles and circles. hoss said it best – “I find most commenters discussion with him to be quite tedious”. I’m not attacking you but you and BJ7 engaging Sonic is what killed this thread for me only because it becomes an effort in semantics and the arguments goes round and round. I’m not attacking you, I’m just trying to get you to see you won’t get anywhere. It hasn’t happened before, it won’t happen here.
It’s the same with Leo, this conversation has gone on for so long you guys have forgotten what you went over previously and a lot of it is getting rehashed but in excruciating detail.
Hi Mumadadd,
Let’s end that debate shall we?. Nobody understands quantum physics I think that was what Sonic was saying.
leo,
“Nobody understands quantum physics I think that was what Sonic was saying”
Nobody understands QM completely.
Some understand parts of QM.
Others don’t have a clue.
Unfortunately, leo, you are one of those who don’t have a clue.
You can’t even get past the detectors in the double slit experiment!
That is a starting point!
What sonic understands is anyone’s guess but, looking between the lines, I think he has at least grasped the simple bit about those detectors, not that he is about to hit you over the head with them.
“Let’s end that debate shall we?”
There has been no debate, leo.
We are tryng to teach you.
And you are refusing to learn – even the really simply bits!
“Nobody understands quantum physics I think that was what Sonic was saying.”
This is infuriating for me… for how many posts have you been trying to argue the existence of dualism with QM mumbo jumbo and you KNOW QM is still not fully known. How could you ever expect to explain something as nebulous as consciousness on a scientific blog using a tool which no one really understands?
Learn the basics of science my friend, learn to read what others are writing.
Leo:
“When in fact there are many scientists that would love to study psi and life after death evidence and do there own experiments in it but there isn’t no money in that. You got to put food on the table you know and pay your bills.”
There is no money in it? What about Eben Alexander who became a millionaire thanks to his book? How about IANDS which has so many fonds and looking for money. No money really?? The whole religious business is about money and to suck money out of people..
““The “observer” in this experiment wasn’t human. Institute scientists used for this purpose a tiny but sophisticated electronic detector that can spot passing electrons. The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it”
See in that sentence “could” they didn’t say it “is”.”
You did not get anything out of this.. They are saying this. You are just gasping on words:
“The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it”
The main point is that they had the same results as if there was a conscious observer. Nothing more. This is the main point of the whole experiment.
Leo,
“When in fact there are many scientists that would love to study psi and life after death evidence and do there own experiments in it but there isn’t no money in that. You got to put food on the table you know and pay your bills.”
Funding tends to follow results. If the psi research that does take place were able to demonstrate a reliable effect that could be replicated, the money would follow in floods, I would think. This would really be the ‘paradigm shift’ woo proponents love to proclaim is just round the corner.
Think about it – how much public interest would there be in this stuff if it turned out to be true?
Your quote above is just another hand waving excuse to explain the lack of any real results. The simpler explanation for this is that psi phenomena are not real.
Try again..
Leo,
“When in fact there are many scientists that would love to study psi and life after death evidence and do there own experiments in it but there isn’t no money in that. You got to put food on the table you know and pay your bills.”
Funding tends to follow results. If the psi research that does take place were able to demonstrate a reliable effect that could be replicated, the money would follow in floods, I would think. This would really be the ‘paradigm shift’ woo proponents love to proclaim is just round the corner.
Think about it – how much public interest would there be in this stuff if it turned out to be true?
Your quote above is just another hand waving excuse to explain the lack of any real results. The simpler explanation for this is that psi phenomena are not real.
“The quantum “observer’s” capacity to detect electrons could be altered by changing its electrical conductivity, or the strength of the current passing through it.”
That’s just sloppy grammar. Replace “could be” with “was” [the past tense of is]. In this context “could be altered by” obviously does not mean “was perhaps altered by”. FFS, Leo!
This is what the quote actually means: The capacity of the quantum “observer” to detect electrons was altered by changing its electrical conductivity and/or the strength of the current passing through it.
Call me a pedant, but I was taught that scientific reports must not contain possessives for inanimate objects. E.g. “The resistor’s value was 10 ohms.” must be written: “The value of the resistor was 10 ohms.”
“Ok I agree that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function after doing more research on this. You got me. I admit defeat.”
I think this was a genuine admission of defeat by leo.
“Just joking I am just going to say I really “don’t know”. An Agnostic position.”
The 14 minute delay between posts gave him enough time to read Hoss’s comment containing the word ‘agnostic’, and he realised there was a way he could get away with only a partial concession. Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit…
mumadadd,
I think the authors of the book you are reading had met many instances of sonic and leo before they published the first edition, let alone the latest edition
You aren’t the only one to have spotted the timings and implications of that change in stance.
“I wonder- are there physicists who can find out the results of experiments without being conscious?
P-zombies exist!”
OMG, really? So if the physicist waits a week…. forget it. Why Am I bothering.
Steve12,
Sorry I have responded to everyone on here today. I have been enjoying the nice weather we have here in my area. P-zombies can be easily imagined to exist for example why did evolution bring about consciousness?, why are we not just zombies. I mean evolution could of made us flesh eating zombies instead of humans with behavior.
Mumadadd,
The 14 minute delay between posts gave him enough time to read Hoss’s comment containing the word ‘agnostic’, and he realised there was a way he could get away with only a partial concession. Or maybe I’m giving him too much credit…
Actually I didn’t read Hoss’s comment instead I think its a honest approach to take on this matter as its very confusing.
Mumadadd,
Funding tends to follow results. If the psi research that does take place were able to demonstrate a reliable effect that could be replicated, the money would follow in floods, I would think. This would really be the ‘paradigm shift’ woo proponents love to proclaim is just round the corner.
Think about it – how much public interest would there be in this stuff if it turned out to be true?
Your quote above is just another hand waving excuse to explain the lack of any real results. The simpler explanation for this is that psi phenomena are not real.
This is infuriating for me… for how many posts have you been trying to argue the existence of dualism with QM mumbo jumbo and you KNOW QM is still not fully known. How could you ever expect to explain something as nebulous as consciousness on a scientific blog using a tool which no one really understands?
Learn the basics of science my friend, learn to read what others are writing.
There are people that do understand its just that I am not a physicist. Even physicist Andrei Linde admitted that he wasn’t sure that consciousness collapses the wave function it only seems to suggest it. I have read what skeptics have said on here which makes many feel like me that they know the answer to the double slit experiment.
Mumadadd,
Yes it does but not in the case of something that is usually deemed to be “paranormal”.
leo
“I have read what skeptics have said on here which makes many feel like me that they know the answer to the double slit experiment.”
Most quantum mechanics being discussed with you was about a specific aspect of the double slit experiment design – the detector.
The poll I linked to shows there isn’t a consensus among physicist on the interpretation of quantum mechanics, which includes the wave function, decoherence, etc.
“Ok I agree that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function after doing more research on this. You got me. I admit defeat.
Just joking I am just going to say I really “don’t know”. An Agnostic position.”
In my opinion, that’s almost an ok position. I’m agnostic about consciousness causing the wave function to collapse the same way I’m agnostic about Santa Claus, Posiden, or Gordon Freeman causing it to collapse.
We know from experimentation that a detector, which isn’t conscious, is enough to collapse(or in the least appears to) the wave function. So while you may be agnostic about consciousness not causing collapse, perhaps you would be ok with accepting that consciousness isn’t a necessary element in the collapse of the wave function.
If I remember correctly, we are discussing QM because you were trying to use it(or the weirdness of it) to justify other beliefs you have about reality. You’ve been leading the “evidence” where you’ve wanted it to go rather than following the evidence. I hope you can get out of that bad habit.
I think leo had a copy/paste stroke. (or at least a neurological event of some kind).
leo,
Why did you meld mine and Hoss’s comments together? Are you okay?
Mumadadd,
Whoops I forgot to put Hoss in there.
Here’s an important quote from physicist Andrei Linde which you cannot dismiss out of the blue. Based on the fact
1). He is well kept on the evidence from quantum physics
2). He isn’t a fringe scientist
3] He has won the nobel prize before
This is not simply an argument from authority because he does make good points.
“Most of the time, when discussing quantum cosmology, one can remain entirely within the bounds set by purely physical categories, regarding an observer simply as an automaton, and not dealing with question whether he/she/it has consciousness or feels anything during the process of observation. This limitation is harmless for many practical purposes. But we cannot rule out the possibility that carefully avoiding the concept of consciousness in quantum cosmology may lead to an artificial narrowing of our outlook”.
Do you think a camera can collapse the wave function?. If so then who’s the say the camera exists?. As another camera is necessary to observe the first camera and to also collapse its wave function. Also then a second camera is neccessary to observe the first camera, also a third camera is needed to observe the second camera, ad infinitum. So introducing cameras themselves it does not answer the question of how wave function collapses.
However according to Michio Kaku Decohorence is now gaining popularity among physicists as it resolves the wave function collapse without any consciousness involved but instead by random interactions with the outside world.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=cKULZJpcJBwC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=andrei+linde+consciousness+collapses+wave+function&source=bl&ots=IerBNhfySE&sig=XJAlKhz9hAkEIwIqs0x-hfJOXj4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=66vJU-nIBI6vyAS6r4KYDQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=andrei%20linde%20consciousness%20collapses%20wave%20function&f=false
leo,
Let’s change the subject. In your opinion, any of the current TV mediums for real?
I think John Edwards might be for real. There was an apparent expose of John Edwards back in 2003. There is an excellent rebuttal to this here by Michael Prescott.
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/2020-blindside-john-edward.html
I would say that Sylvia Browne was an obvious fraud who used cold reading techniques. There is a lot of interesting work being done at the windbridge institute with experiments on mediums by Dr. Julie Beischel.
@Leo
If Michael Prescott doesn’t understand how cold reading works, do you think he’s a reasonable source for anything?
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/john_edward_hustling_the_bereaved/
@mumadadd
You realize this too has been gone over. Look for Leo and Midnights discussion about 1500 posts north of this for everything you’re about to go over with Leo here now.
Grabula
Yes I do he knows what a cold reading is
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/11/i_feel_a_cold_r.html.
I don’t find csicop however a reliable source for example I seen how they conduct their work when there was a television show with them on it as they were testing Natasha Demkina.
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Demkinafile/Barrington_scientists.html
My question is what do you think of Christof Koch’s change in thinking from being a materialist to a property dualist?.
Some juicy quotes from Leo’s article:
“”More rational,” in this context, seems to mean “more in agreement with the materialist-rationalist philosophy that I subscribe to.”
…sound familiar?
“Suffice it to say that anyone who feels Rand’s angry, militant worldview “in [his] stomach” or anywhere else in his anatomy may be a paragon of Objectivism but hardly of objectivity.”
nice red herring / ad hominem
“Naturally, with one reporter hungry to bag his second psychic, and another who comes to the table with a full-fledged rationalist-materialist ideology already in place, there was no hope for Edward to come out on top.”
Just because Shermer and Stossel do not support claims of spiritualism doesn’t provide an argument for anything other than Edwards was confronted by skeptics.
So the article is basically about Edwards being “ambushed” by Shermer and Stossel. His only argument to support Edwards is a random post by some guy claiming to be in the crowd telling everyone 20/20 edited out all of Edwards misses.
@Leo
“Yes I do he knows what a cold reading is”
He doesn’t since he insists on a difference between what spiritualists do and what mentalists do.
Skeptical Investigations is useless as a source. It’s been explained before but using credulous sources to support an argument doesn’t do any good.
But you and midnight runner have already been through all of this Leo.
Grabula,
There is a big difference in what some mediums can do compared to what mentalists. I ain’t saying that all mediums are real in fact many are real but there are many frauds as well.
“When mentalists can duplicate what mediums do under controlled conditions, skeptics will have a point. So far that day hasn’t come”. I agree.
That was quoted from Michael Prescott’s blog the above quote.
Yes Midnight the guy that used secondary sources as evidence for his view. Also, lied about not being HonestSkeptic, Ivy, Forrest, Trees he used for other sites that are pro woo woo sites as you would say.
By the way Grabula Michael was talking about Ayn Rand’s worldview there not James Randi.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-ayn-rands-idiotic-worldview-makes-wealthy-feel-good-about-themselves
We can beg to disagree there I think skeptical investigations is very good at exposing the flaws in materialists.
Ugh, I started to break down where it’s all wrong Leo but I think that’s been addressed to you enough to satisfy anyone that you won’t be budged no matter where the actual evidence lies.
As for the Ayn Rand reference, Prescott uses it to malign Stossels credibility, can you tell me why it’s not appropriate for the argument he’s very badly trying to make?
Beware the Metaphor.
I know I shouldn’t bring this up, but I can’t help myself:
(because it has gone both unexplained and unchallenged)
sonic: “our knowledge”
This phrase was originally used in “scare” quotes to indicate that it’s actually a sort of metaphor. Then the scare quotes disappeared and, with it, the metaphor. This is a common error in thinking about QM. Metaphor becomes reality! But, actually, discarding the scare quotes was unecessary because the “our” bit in “our knowledge” already destroyed the metaphor, as I will explain.
What is meant by “knowledge” (in scare quotes) in QM, is a metaphorical “knowledge in the system”. Systems do contain a sort of “knowledge” in a metaphorical sense – certainly in a different sense than we contain knowledge. Systems have a sort of “knowledge” inherent within them. We also contain this type of inherent “knowledge” (ie genetic code), but we also contain knowledge that is obtained through meticulous research and experimentation.
So Schroedinger’s equation is about the the sort of metaphorical “knowledge” that is inherent in a quantum mechanical system. Which is quite different from the knowledge that we obtain as a result of meticulous research and experimentation. In other words, to say the Schroedinger’s equation is about “our knowledge” is both incorrect and an equivocation about the word knowledge. Sort of like the “observer” in the double slit experiment.
I just thought I’d clear that up.
(For example, in the double slit experiment, “knowledge in the system” about *which path* causes a scatter pattern to appear on the screen. The absence of this “knowledge in the system”, causes an interference pattern to appear on the screen. We don’t need to know about *which path* at all. We are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether we know about it or not. All that is required is that the system “knows” or doesn’t “know”. A simple variation of the double slit experiment using a computer to randomly turn the detectors on or off, and a person ignorant about the setup who simply watches to see what comes up on the screen, can demonstrate unequivocally that this is true.)
Leo100 writes:
“When mentalists can duplicate what mediums do under controlled conditions, skeptics will have a point. So far that day hasn’t come”.
This quote is nonsensical, but he has said this because he is not familiar with books on conjuring or magic so perhaps he can be forgiven. I can list twenty or so examples of mentalists duplicating mediumship phenomena under controlled conditions. If you dig up old books on magic like “Behind the Scenes with the Mediums” (1907) by the magician David Abbott, “Spirit Mediums Exposed” (1930) by the magician Fulton Oursler, John Nevil Maskelyne’s old books on mediumship tricks or the more notable “A Magician Among the Spirits” (1924) by Harry Houdini they are packed with how the mediums do their tricks and describe various cases how they duplicated their phenomena by naturalistic methods. Houdini’s book is online, as is Abbott’s – there are many others.
For example Harry Houdini replicated the feats of the fraudulent medium Mina Crandon in the same conditions that she held her séances. The mentalist William Marriott replicated all the feats of early physical mediums like Eusapia Palladino, or spirit photographers like William Hope. He even replicated in controlled conditions the levitation feats of the medium Stanisława Tomczyk. The psychic James Hydrick who was famous for “psychokinetically” moving pencils and other objects was exposed by the magician Dan Korem who replicated the same phenomena through trickery (Hydrick would blow on the objects) which he confessed to.
The mentalist Joseph Dunninger replicated the feats of the medium Frank Decker in the exact same conditions he produced his phenomena. After Dunninger had replicated Decker’s feats by entirely natural methods – Decker had no response but claimed that Dunninger had genuine psychic powers himself… There are many other cases like this, this is not even scratching the surface.
There is an entire history of magicians and mentalists replicating what the mediums do in the exact same conditions. The problem is that credulous paranormal writers like Michael Prescott have no interest in looking at any of this evidence.
MNR,
If leo can’t even understand the simple double slit experiment, he would be little boy lost in the world of the magician. It’s always a little annoying when some one, who can’t take even the first step in coming to grips with a subject, is so confident about what they think they know. Dunning Kruger would be proud.
Midnightrunner,
I am well aware of that I am talking about under controlled Laboratory conditions. Not just at some house. Michael is well aware of this as you read the king of all books on this the psychic mafia by Lamar Keene. All the stuff your mentioning is physical mediumship not mental mediumship. It’s obvious there has been a lot of fraud of physical mediumship but I ain’t talking about that but mental mediumship.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2006/10/the_psychic_maf.html
I should mention as well its the view from skeptics that the Houdini code has never been cracked true. What do you make of this last seance done by Bessie, Harry Houdini’s wife who at the end of the seance gave up and all of a sudden a lightening storm with heavy rain hit that seance the only area it hit.
“Bess continued to hold séances to contact her husband, but the last official séance was held on October 31, 1936. This final séance was covered by radio and broadcast all over the world. The medium called out to Harry to make himself known. However, after over an hour, nothing had occurred and Mrs. Houdini decided to “turn out the light” on her attempts to contact Harry. As the séance came to an end, a violent storm broke out full of thunder and lightening and drenching everyone involved. The participants would later learn that the storm did not occur anywhere else in the area; only above the séance location”.
http://www.thegreatharryhoudini.com/occult.html
BillyJoe7
May I ask are you a physicist?. If so why is it that physicist Michio Kaku, physicist Andrei Linde can’t shut out the possibly that consciousness collapses the wave function. Have you ever heard of quantum decoherence before?. With that view their is no wave function collapse.
leo,
I don’t know what motivates those physicists to speculate wildly beyond the evidence (and even against the evidence), but I am not concerned with their wild speculations here.
What I’ve been trying to do here is to get you to confront the double slit experiment.
Remember, you offered it up as an example of a quantum physical experiment that demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse. Despite offering it up, you have been unable to explain how it demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse.
On the other hand, I have explained clearly why it does not demonstrates that consciousness causes collapse. And you have been unable to explain where my explanations are wrong.
I won’t wait for you to concede defeat (because you won’t), but that is exactly what has happened.
leo,
I’m not getting involved in this debate but:
“I should mention as well its the view from skeptics that the Houdini code has never been cracked true. What do you make of this last seance done by Bessie, Harry Houdini’s wife who at the end of the seance gave up and all of a sudden a lightening storm with heavy rain hit that seance the only area it hit”
Seems to me it would have been simpler to offer up the damn code than to brew up a storm.
Ethan has just posted a really good explanation of double-slit experiments, which even Leo should be able to understand.
Those who believe that a conscious observer is required, or somehow affects the outcome, are clearly wrong.
https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-46-what-is-a-quantum-observation-57d2940175e1
Leo,
You are referring to the séances of Arthur Ford with Bess. Ford was a fraud. Before he died, Ford told his close friends to burn all the files in his house. After he died instead of burning them they found that he had personal information about all of his séance sitters.
The last séance that you refer to was conducted in 1936 and Bess concluded from the séance “I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me or to anyone. After faithfully following through for then years the compact, using every type of medium and séance, it is now my personal and positive belief that spirit communication in any form is impossible.”
As for the code. Massimo Polidoro has covered this in detail.
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_day_houdini_almost_came_back_from_the_dead
There is evidence that the “secret” code was never actually secret. Only Bess and Houdini were supposed to have known what it was, but other magicians new about it and it is likely that Ford did as he was close to Bess.
“Magician, mentalist, and friend of Houdini Joseph Dunninger went to Bess’s house and reminded her that the “secret code” had not been secret since its publication, the previous year, on page 105 of Houdini, His Life Story, the authorized biography written by Harold Kellock and based on Bess’s “recollections and documents.”
Ford would later mess around with some of Bess’s statements in newspaper advertisements leading Bess to respond “I don’t and never did believe the message genuine nor did I believe in spiritualism.”
In short there is no evidence for spirit communication in this case or any other case. There is a rational naturalistic explanation for everything.
Pete: “https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-46-what-is-a-quantum-observation-57d2940175e1”
Neat explanation.
Summary:
“Contrary to what you may believe…it has nothing to do with you, the observer…It has nothing to do with you or the “act of observing”…an observation is a quantum interaction [the photon interacting with sufficient energy with the electron]”
PetaA,
That is quantum decoherence.
The theory of decoherence reconciles the Copenhagen interpretation with quantum superpositions in the absence of measurement or conscious observation. Any interaction, or loss of isolation, of a quantum superposition with a classical system (e.g. through heat, direct interaction or information exchange) would “decohere” the quantum system to classical states. But decoherence theory doesn’t define isolation (no quantum system is truly isolated from its classical surroundings) nor deal with superpositions which are isolated.
MNR,
Arthur Ford has a interesting testimony on how he broke the Houdini Code
http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/ford/houdini.htm
leo,
YOU ARE COPYPASTING AGAIN!
(Hint: when you post something without grammatical errors we immediately know you are copypasting)
You copypasted that entire post from here:
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/overview.html
You are a thoroughly dishonest person, leo.
And only an idiot would answer Pete’s link with that completely irrelevant copypaste.
Put on your dunces hat and sit in the corner.
And please do not post here again.
The lack of grammatical errors is always a dead giveaway. Every time leo’s posted something coherent I’ve Googled the text and found it elsewhere.
leo, I’m not sure if you were actually trying to pass that off as your own words but you should use quotation marks to avoid giving that impression.
BillyJoe7,
I forgot to add the link as I was trying to add a quick reply back. Unless I asked for a poll and will once again that demonstrates that most physicist’s think that consciousness doesn’t collapse the wave function. You couldn’t come up with one. The only thing you came up with is a poll consisting of a small number of physicists back in 2011. You know there is thousands of physicists out there right?. Plus, Pete posted a link to an Astrophysicist’s opinion on the double slit experiment on how he would interpret the experiment.
Leo,
A survey from a physics conference has been presented in this discussion. We’ve all seen that it shows that consciousness is not commonly considered key to collapse. Your beliefs don’t coincide with these data – do you have any evidence to support your position? Do you have a bigger survey? Do you have a more recent survey? How can you assume that this quiet mass of physicist agrees with you?
Leo:
Michael Prescott? Here you can see how Prescott ignores the evidence even from its own kind:
http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=22035
Common Leo what a New Age believer will you post next? Alex Tsakiris? Dean Radin? These people ignore the evidence presented to them on the contrary. Please if you do not have a relevant source to back up your claim then please do not post it here.
Leo:
As for mediums. It is quite strange that in the past there were mediums and psychics that had many claims and even legends but today? Where are those mediums today? Where are those psychics who are so great like in the past? If it was not all lies then we would have even in these days super psychics and mediums. However we do not. Many of them face jail. Just one of many examples:
http://www.dreamindemon.com/2013/09/30/florida-psychic-rose-marks-faces-20-years-prison-jury-finds-guilty-fraud/
Google for more and you will see..
Niche Geek,
Because its career suicide to admit consciousness has something to do with physics.
Lukas,
Its the modern world now back then there wasn’t any electricity of course now you have television, computers, cell phones and other things to keep you busy. There is an interesting discussion by Ian Stevenson on the magic decline of major paranormal phenomena.
http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/stevenson/decline.htm
Lukas,
Michael admits the case is strong that the parapsychologist was right.
“The case involving the doctor who flapped his arms seems pretty strong to me, but it would be even stronger if it had been investigated sooner and if the doctor had been sure he really did flap his arms on that occasion. Lester’s objection strikes me as overstated, but it does raise relevant questions”.
“It’s interesting to get this new info on the case, but I wish you wouldn’t couch it in personal terms”.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2010/01/better-late-than-never.html
Dr. Bruce Greyson’s view on this is different however as he was there in the case of Al Sullivan’s nde.
Thanks for your -email. I was actually the member of Cook’s team who interviewed Al Sullivan, his cardiologist, and the cardiac surgeon. The surgeon was not “known” for regularly flapping his arms, as far as I could ascertain. That is, surgical nurses and residents who had not worked with him were not aware of this idiosyncratic habit. However, he did acknowledge to me that he typically did that in all his surgeries when Al had his operation, although he couldn’t swear that he had done so for Al’s.
As for the suggestion that no NDE had been captured on audio or videotape immediately after recovery, I am not aware of any hospital that has ever permitted research of that kind. Certainly my hospital is much too concerned about patient confidentiality to permit recording without extensive prior permissions, which of course would be impossible to obtain immediately after a cardiac carrest. This strikes me as another illustration that no evidence, no matter how good, will ever satisfy the debunkers.
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2010/01/better-late-than-never.html
Leo:
“Michael admits the case is strong that the parapsychologist was right. ”
The parapsychologist debunked this case. You did not read it did you?:
“Comment: Mr. Sullivan’s medical records indicate that in the operating
room he was first given a local anesthetic so that an intraaortic balloon could
be inserted, and he was then given a general anesthetic so that the surgery itself
could begin. It occurred to us that Mr. Sullivan might have seen Dr. Takata
ª flappingº his elbows when the balloon was being inserted but before he was
given general anesthesia and lost consciousness, and that he had later confused
the order of events. B.G. therefore asked Mr. Sullivan for further details about
what he had seen at the time he saw Dr. Takata flapping his arms. Mr. Sullivan
said that he saw Dr. Takata standing alone over his opened chest, which was
being held open by metal clamps, and he also saw two other surgeons working
over his leg. He recalls being puzzled at the time about why they were working
on his leg when the problem was with his heart, but he now knows that at this
point in the surgery the surgeons were stripping the vein out of his leg to create
the bypass graft for his heart. These details seem clearly to confirm that Mr.
Sullivan’ s observation of Dr. Takata flapping his arms occurred when he was
under general anesthesia and, at least to observers, unconscious.”
Source: http://sedna.no.sapo.pt/death_scresearch/pdf_docs/12.3_cook_greyson_stevenson.pdf
Pages: 400-401
It this paper: Do Any Near-Death Experiences Provide Evidence for
the Survival of Human Personality after Death?
Relevant Features and Illustrative Case Reports
EMILY WILLIAMS COOK, BRUCE GREYSON, AND IAN STEVENSON
So what is Prescott right? That it was debunked or not? From his comments he does not believe it was debunked and you did not read the paper. Even Greyson and Stevenson does not believe this and found other explanations.
Leo:
“As for the suggestion that no NDE had been captured on audio or videotape immediately after recovery, I am not aware of any hospital that has ever permitted research of that kind. Certainly my hospital is much too concerned about patient confidentiality to permit recording without extensive prior permissions, which of course would be impossible to obtain immediately after a cardiac carrest. This strikes me as another illustration that no evidence, no matter how good, will ever satisfy the debunkers.”
So why is he claiming that it is debunked in the paper and gave even a rational explanation for it?? Keep in mind leo that the paper came from Bruce Greyson and Ian Stevenson themselves. Prescott did not read it full and so you did not. If you would at least the skeptical society forum comment on it you would see that it is debunked by GREYSON and STEVENSON themselves.
Leo:
Really??: http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/stevenson/decline.htm
Some quotes from the article:
“Abstract: Major paranormal phenomena, defined as phenomena detectable by the senses alone without a need for statistics, have diminished in the contemporary publications of the Society compared with the publications of its first several decades. The lack of reports of such major phenomena may reflect diminished interest in them on the part of investigators, most of whom have turned their attention to laboratory experiments that elicit marginal results requiring statistical analysis. However, it seems likely that the major phenomena occur less frequently in the West today than they did formerly. Skepticism derived from philosophical materialism may inhibit normally the occurrence of major paranormal phenomena. It may also inhibit them through paranormal processes. The most promising sources of major paranormal phenomena today may be in industrially undeveloped countries, among a few specially gifted individuals, and in certain unusual experiences, such as those of persons who come close to death and recover.”
This is a great line more underdeveloped the more stupid people are, no wonder that they believe in paranormal phenomena:
“Skepticism derived from philosophical materialism may inhibit normally the occurrence of major paranormal phenomena. It may also inhibit them through paranormal processes. The most promising sources of major paranormal phenomena today may be in industrially undeveloped countries, among a few specially gifted individuals, and in certain unusual experiences, such as those of persons who come close to death and recover.”
Underdeveloped countries even believe in exorcism or that a child born with a deformity is a sign of grave danger and are killed etc. Just google some news in Africa. The abstract shows his bias and foolishness.
That article is full of nonsense. More here yeah psychics in the past were genuine really??:
” Our predecessors had the good fortune to work with Eileen Garrett, Olga Kahl, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Stefan Ossowiecki, Eusapia Palladino, Leonora Piper, and a few others of their quality. Their like will surely be seen again; some may even be among us now, if we would just look for them. There will be no quick results in this endeavor. It may take years of sifting before an investigator finds an outstanding subject and perhaps some further years before investigations with the subject can warrant a publication. Still, the rewards from this effort in gains of knowledge might be immense.”
All is from your source. There is more but I am too lazy to read the repeated claims over and over again.
Lukas1986,
To your disbelief, I actually did read the post. One of two things must of happened either his account of what happened what taken out of context. Number two, Bruce changed his mind about the case.
Lukas1986,
Are you saying that people brought up on technology are smarter than others who are in undeveloped countries with no such technology?.
Any of you guys watching Wwe wrestling if so there is a pay per view on tonight called Battleground. I am going to watch it tonight.
Leo,
“Because its career suicide to admit consciousness has something to do with physics.”
Are you admitting you have no evidence, only belief? You didn’t answer my question: How can you assume that this quiet mass of physicist agrees with you?
Because physicists and other scientists before have believed in the evidence for psi and afterlife but had to shut up about it if they wanted to keep food on the table. The same applies here as it would have a suggestion that their maybe an afterlife.
Leo,
“Because physicists and other scientists before have believed in the evidence for psi and afterlife but had to shut up about it if they wanted to keep food on the table.”
1. That isn’t evidence that a significant number believe this now. We do have a survey, you need better evidence than conjecture to overcome the survey.
2. Where is your evidence that a belief in the afterlife precludes a pay check in physics?
Niche Geek,
1. We need an updated survey to see where things are at now.
2. It doesn’t if you keep it to yourself but if you speak out it can preclude a pay check. If that doesn’t happen then it can cause damage to your career as many of your colleagues will see you as a crackpot.
“Because physicists and other scientists before have believed in the evidence for psi and afterlife but had to shut up about it if they wanted to keep food on the table.”
If they actually had groundbreaking evidence of “psi” and the “afterlife” (these are air quotes because they’re not real things), they would be up for Nobel prizes and probably wouldn’t have to worry about food on the table.
Physicists, scientists and [insert other authority here] have believed in tons of crazy sh*t in the past and will continue to do so. Fortunately for the scientific method, this is irrelevant.
Leo,
For a scientist, it isn’t about what you believe, it’s about your evidence. What do you think will have changed since the last survey? What do you think that survey did wrong?
Leo:
“To your disbelief, I actually did read the post. One of two things must of happened either his account of what happened what taken out of context. Number two, Bruce changed his mind about the case.”
I do not care what Bruce Greyson did. He first debunked it with Ian Stevenson. This is against him. Second in the comment was written that it seems according to the MEDICAL records:
“Mr. Sullivan’s medical records indicate that in the operating
room he was first given a local anesthetic so that an intraaortic balloon could
be inserted, and he was then given a general anesthetic so that the surgery itself
could begin.”
So I do not care. Even if Bruce Greyson changed his mind. This case is pathetic like it was written in the skeptical society forum. Prescott also ignored this and other weaknesses of the case and claims it is not debunked WHEN even Bruce Greyson first claimed it is first.
“Are you saying that people brought up on technology are smarter than others who are in undeveloped countries with no such technology?.”
Yup and its not only about technology it is also about schools. Here is a good site:
“98 percent of all non-literates live in developing countries.”
From: http://www-01.sil.org/literacy/LitFacts.htm
So people like this see paranormal in everything. Ian Stevenson once again showed his bias and he is not behaving like a scientist but as a strong believer and the article is not good for your side.
Leo:
Here is more:
“In the least developed countries, the overall illiteracy rate is 49 percent.
52 percent of all non-literates live in India and China.
Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60 percent.
In Sub-Saharan Africa since 1980, primary school enrollment has declined, going from 58 percent to 50 percent.
In all developing countries, the percentage of children aged 6-11 not attending school is 15 percent. In the least developed countries, it is 45 percent.(UNESCO 1998)”
From: http://www-01.sil.org/literacy/LitFacts.htm
So people there are not the smartest and Ian Stevenson says that in these countries there is more paranormal phenomena? No wonder. Even the Catholic Church does not like education too much and no religion organization likes education because a un-educated person is easier to manipulate and claim strange things which he will believe.
Lukas1986,
When he says paranormal phenomena he’s talking about mainly physical mediums, seance room. He’s not talking about apparitions, mental mediumship and so on.
Leo:
Wrong. Stevenson is talking about paranormal phenomena in general. Examples:
“Abstract: Major paranormal phenomena, defined as phenomena detectable by the senses alone without a need for statistics, have diminished in the contemporary publications of the Society compared with the publications of its first several decades.”
Also here he claims he has only experience with his reincarnation studies in those countries but thinks there are more things there then just this:
“I have myself no personal experience with any form of paranormal phenomena in Asia and Africa other than that of the children who claim to remember previous lives, but I do have much experience of these cases. I have often asked myself why we find such children so much more easily in those parts of the world than elsewhere. An obvious first answer to this question is that the people of these regions nearly all believe in reincarnation, and this belief somehow facilitates and even promotes the children’s narrations about previous lives. This is certainly true, but I think it is insufficient as an explanation of what we are trying to understand. There must be other factors contributing to the occurrence of these and other cases of apparent paranormal phenomena in Asia and Africa. I suggest that one cause is that the peoples of these regions still take as normal what we in the West have come to call paranormal. If I were advising a young scientist entering psychical research today, I would reverse Horace Greeley’s[5] advice to young Americans of the mid-nineteenth century and say “Go East, young man.”[6]”
Source: http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/stevenson/decline.htm
Lukas,
I don’t know what he’s talking about then as in the developed world there is still a lot of paranormal phenomenon happening.
Leo:
The article is about the fact that THERE IS A DECLINE in the paranormal phenomena in the “West”.
Stevenson also claims that little people are interested in the paranormal studies like parapsychology and they get less and less members and it is dying out:
“Our inability to persuade larger numbers of educated persons, especially scientists, to take seriously our endeavors and accomplishments seems more than a disappointment; it may now be a fatal weakness. Until the present generation new recruits in psychical research always seemed available to fill the places of investigators who died; and for a time it looked as if the study of paranormal phenomena was taking root in universities. However, we must admit that today psychical research has almost gone from the universities, at least on the continent of Europe and in North America. Even in the United Kingdom, psychical research is almost extinct in universities south of the Tweed. We are not gaining the interest of well-qualified younger investigators with new ideas in sufficient numbers to succeed those of us whose ideas need to be replaced by other insights and better methods.”
Why? The answer is simple because there is NOTHING paranormal and parapsychology over 100 of years of it existence is not even able to produce REAL evidence to this day. They do not even have a theory for PSI and cannot even agree among themselves what is PSI or if there is life after death even Stevenson points this out:
“Some persons can segregate beliefs about different aspects of non-material existences and events. This would be particularly likely to be true of persons who have made a special study of psychical phenomena. We know that at least two (and probably more) former Presidents of our Society have believed in paranormal cognition but not in the survival of human personality after death (Dodds, 1934; Richet, 1922).”
His essay really shows his bias towards the paranormal and that he is a dualist, he even admits it there:
“I recognize in myself a bias against physical theories of extrasensory perception, because I believe that we can understand it better by a dualist concept of brain and mind that permits minds, under certain circumstances, to communicate directly with each other (outside known physical means of communication).”
All quotes from this source: http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/stevenson/decline.htm
So the whole article is nothing more then just weeping that parapsychology is dying out and the only remedy is to go to places where people cannot read and are extremely superstitious to the point that they even sacrifice their children to gods or do strange things etc..
So where does it lead us? That its all woo.
Lukas,
Well, Ian Stevenson isn’t living anymore. If you look actually paranormal phenomenon remain persistent that is why there is the windbridge institute as well the persisting psychical research.
Why? The answer is simple because there is NOTHING paranormal and parapsychology over 100 of years of it existence is not even able to produce REAL evidence to this day. They do not even have a theory for PSI and cannot even agree among themselves what is PSI or if there is life after death even Stevenson points this out:
Well, I would disagree even the effects are statistically small they are persistent and cannot be explained by the file drawer effect among other skeptical objections to psi evidence. The reason for that is that super psi may explain life after death but don’t think we have to worry about that knowing that psi is weak in nature.
Leo100
“Well, Ian Stevenson isn’t living anymore. If you look actually paranormal phenomenon remain persistent that is why there is the windbridge institute as well the persisting psychical research.”
It really hurts does it to be ignorant?? Ian Stevenson was hailed as one of the biggest paranormal researchers by his believer colleagues to this day. Second your argument is stupid. There is even the Catholic Church to this day. There are even racists to this day and even people who claim that Earth was created by god/gods. There are even people who believe in Cthullu to this day. Your argument here is so ignorant and weak it makes me laugh.
“Well, I would disagree even the effects are statistically small they are persistent and cannot be explained by the file drawer effect among other skeptical objections to psi evidence. The reason for that is that super psi may explain life after death but don’t think we have to worry about that knowing that psi is weak in nature.”
Small?? Just look on the research they done it is so weak it makes me laugh. There is actually NO evidence so far for PSI. This whole stupid PSI war is just about to resurrect believe because it started as the evolution theory began making rounds and people started to look down on religion. This did not change. The whole PSI wars is about to bring religion back and to make humans once again the center of the Universe. So far they have no evidence to back it up and the more science is progressing it is dying out. Even Stevenson said it and went to underdeveloped countries to find PSI because people there are not smart.
Education and reason was always the enemy of religion.
Leo, take some advice from the words of Carl Sagan:
“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
Go ahead put people who are racists, people who go to the catholic church as well as paranormal phenomena and put them all in one package. It doesn’t work that way as there is very strong evidence for the paranormal. You just confirmed what I have been thinking for a long time now that materialists are afraid of going back to superstition that we are the center of the universe.
Here is a counter quote from the words of William Barrett
“I am absolutely convinced of the fact that those who once lived on earth can and do communicate with us. It is hardly possible to convey to the inexperienced an adequate idea of the strength and cumulative force of the evidence.” William Barrett
This William Barrett:
Wikipedia
“Sir William Fletcher Barrett (10 February 1844 in Kingston, Jamaica – 26 May 1925) was an English physicist and parapsychologist”
Dead now for 88 years.
Perhaps he has some posthumous writings to update us?
leo,
Think of the survival/reproductive advantages afforded by psychic abilities. If there had ever, in our evolutionary milieu, been the smallest trace of these abilities, natural selection would have amplified it massively over time.*
How do you account for the fact that these abilities are not now both obvious and ubiquitous? Let’s hear it. I think you’ll need to do some major hand waving to explain that one.
*Not my own argument – I lifted this from Dara O’Briain.
I’ve heard a variation of that evolutionary argument: “Why don’t we see animals that hunt exclusively by ESP?”
I think it’s an interesting question to ask, though I expect many psi promoters would claim that human-level intelligence is necessary. To that, I ask “why?” and “how do you know that?” To me, that’s an unexamined assumption among many others.
“Think of the survival/reproductive advantages afforded by psychic abilities. If there had ever, in our evolutionary milieu, been the smallest trace of these abilities, natural selection would have amplified it massively over time.”
I see special pleading in our future.
(also this thread breaks my browser)
Mumadadd,
It depends on what you think psi abilities are. Are they physical in nature where we get strong results for their existence? or an extension of another physical like reality out there in the universe where the results would be weak?. I think its the latter.
Bruce,
That lovely that is breaks your browser LMAO.
There is an interesting post talking about evolution and psi here.
http://rhineonline.blogspot.ca/2010/10/what-is-evolutionary-advantage-of-psi.html
Bruce,
It’s lovely that it breaks your browser poor thing.
Leo: it is a HUGE advantage evolutionarily hat our skin cannot not be pierced, that we can see what’s behind us, and that we donn’t need to sleep. So that’s why we evolved those features!
Oh wait….
1700! Slowly making our way to 2000…
Well leo, I read your link. The author assumes psi is real, then tortures a very poor analogy, then admits that he has never heard a good counter argument to the point I raised, waffles something incoherent purporting to explain why consciously accessible psi abilities would be selected and then redefines psi to dodge the argument.
This fails to address the point though. The type of psi ability described above would still represent a huge selective advantage. My bottom line – special pleading. And the simplest explanation is still that psi is the product of hyperactive pattern recognition and confirmation bias.
Try again, and this time in your own words.
“waffles something incoherent purporting to explain why consciously accessible psi abilities would be selected and then redefines psi to dodge the argument. ”
Oops – selected *out
Mumadadd,
I am one that doesn’t think psi can be explained by brain function like many parapsychologists think it can be explained possibly that way. I think psi phenomenon is actually an extension of physical reality.
Surely dualists don’t really deny a correspondence between certain experiences and tinkering with certain brain regions, say?
The point is that there is an experience of “what it is like to be me” that is separate from the content – analogous to watching a programme on TV. Nobody would deny that the electronics of the device and the images on the screen are connected to and correspond to the ‘content’ experienced by the viewer. However, neither the electronics nor the content is the viewer himself.
This is not to say that there is a “little homunculus” watching as screen inside out heads, of course. That’s a sort of half-physicalism. The reason consciousness is so problematic is because there just is no direct physical structure or pattern that corresponds to our experience as it is experienced.
3rd-person description just can’t capture 1st-person experience, which can only be investigated by the individual. The jump from 3rd>1st is the gap which makes ‘explaining consciousness’ – “that which is aware and experiences content” – problematic, perhaps insurmountable.
Let’s see if there is someone left who wants to reply to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ7GKXo3dss
Ribozyme,
Nobody’s going to watch your video unless they’re given reason to do so…meaning that you need to summarise what the video is about and how it is relevant to this thread.
“Brain works like a radio receiver”
Date: January 22, 2014
Source: Radboud University Nijmegen
Summary:
Initial evidence is found that the brain has a ‘tuning knob’ that is actually influencing behavior. Brain circuits can tune into the frequency of other brain parts relevant at the time.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140122133713.htm