Searching for GOD...

[Sriram]

That's not an established fact - that's an assertion.

Or, the alien could be absolutely correct.

Our consciousness could be, but there's no evidence to suggest that it is, and nothing missing from the model that it isn't that matches the available evidence.  We could all be worms in a jar imagining this, but the fact that we could be doesn't lend any weight to the argument that we are, for that you actually need something that supports your contention.

Now you've offered NDE, but there are a wealth of explanations within the current model of brain activity that explain the subjective feelings and sensations undergone at these times which don't require the addition to the evidence-support model of unsupported additional external factors.

We have a model that is supported by the evidence, which strongly correlates with other observable phenomena, and 'spirits' aren't required to make it work... why add unfounded additional elements to a model that doesn't need them?

O.

How will something be established as a fact unless it is a hypothesis first? 

The 'wealth of explanations' for NDE's has no basis... and all researchers know that.  I have already linked Sam Parnia's videos in another thread.

I see these repeated arguments only as evidence that the memes you people host are very strong and do not allow for changes. 

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

How will something be established as a fact unless it is a hypothesis first?

It can’t be. You don’t assert your claim as hypotheses though – you assert them as facts, but without bothering with the hard yards that would take you from hypothesis to fact. You attempt to hide this failure by complaining that other people can’t imagine your various claims to be facts, which is both not true and misleading because it implies that imagining something and that something being true are the same thing. They’re not though. Not by a very, very long way.   

The 'wealth of explanations' for NDE's has no basis... and all researchers know that.  I have already linked Sam Parnia's videos in another thread.

Of course there are explanations, and naturalistic ones too. If you want to argue for NDEs being evidence for life after death or similar though (rather than just assert it) then you’d have to construct first a vast body of establishing facts for this life to occupy.

I see these repeated arguments only as evidence that the memes you people host are very strong and do not allow for changes.

No, you see these repeated arguments as falsifying your attempts at argument but you’re too dishonest or too frightened ever to engage with them. 2 + 2 ≠ 5 doesn’t cease to be true because it’s said repeatedly.

Why not for example finally have the decency to address your problem of implying that possibility and probability are the same thing (though only presumably for the possible things in which happen to believe)?

[torridon]

Your constant attempts to try to compare human consciousness with that of animals does nothing to aid your presumption that we are entirely driven by material reactions.  There is no evidence of animals having the conscious freedom to contemplate the reality of their own existence, or to profess belief or unbelief in a Creator,  If there was such evidence, it would be evidence of God's supernatural gift - not a natural consequence of material reactions.

This makes no sense.

We don't define 'supernatural' by the ability to contemplate certain classes of conjecture, and neither does the act of contemplation make the contemplated real. I can try to get my head round string theory, that does not mean that string theory is correct nor does my pondering require supernatural powers.  If I had supernatural powers I probably wouldn't have to struggle with difficult concepts at all, my magic powers would simply enable to me to know the truth without any calorie expenditure or mistakes arising out of the limitations of my cognitive abilities.

I really don't know what planet you are on.

[Stranger]

How will something be established as a fact unless it is a hypothesis first? 

Hypotheses don't become facts. Hypotheses are testable (falsifiable) proposed explanations of facts. You have neither facts nor a hypothesis.

The 'wealth of explanations' for NDE's has no basis... and all researchers know that.

This is flatly false. Plenty of researchers disagree and none of them know.

I see these repeated arguments only as evidence that the memes you people host are very strong and do not allow for changes.

The memes of rational thought and requirement for solid evidence in order to accept something as true about the real world, are indeed strong - for very good reasons.

[torridon]

How will something be established as a fact unless it is a hypothesis first? 

The 'wealth of explanations' for NDE's has no basis... and all researchers know that.  I have already linked Sam Parnia's videos in another thread.

I see these repeated arguments only as evidence that the memes you people host are very strong and do not allow for changes.

All you have with NDEs and OBEs is anecdotal claims of experience, that is not evidence that the claims are true.  You should understand this by now, it has been explained so many times already.  Personal testimony is the weakest form of evidence, and the testimony of someone under severe hypoxic stress is hardly going to be a reliable and balanced reporter.  There have been times when these esoteric claims were investigated, by placing targets in a position that only someone who was really out of body would be able to see, and none of the claimed experiences have ever stood up to this level of testing.  This is how we differentiate between fact and fiction, we do not take someone's word for it at face value, that would be naive. Also, we know the sorts of phenomenology reported can easily be induced, for example by electrical stimulation of the right temporal-parietal junction.

[bluehillside Retd.]

torri,

I really don't know what planet you are on.

I think that’s rather the point – he does have his own “planet”. AB seems to have had some very bad ideas decades ago and since then he’s created an ever-more byzantine ontology to force reality to fit them. That’s his planet, and that’s why he never dare actually engage with the arguments that detonate it. He’d be intellectually homes if he did, or at least he thinks he would be.

[Alan Burns]

Baseless assertion.

It is not a baseless assertion to say that I can't be guilty of personal incredulity if I have no personal control over the events which cause me to post these alleged assertions.  It is simply a logical impossibility.

You accuse me of personal incredulity, but then you also claim that my thoughts are predetermined before I become personally aware of them.  You can't have it both ways.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

It is not a baseless assertion to say that I can't be guilty of personal incredulity if I have no personal control over the events which cause me to post these alleged assertions.  It is simply a logical impossibility.

You accuse me of personal incredulity, but then you also claim that my thoughts are predetermined before I become personally aware of them.  You can't have it both ways.

You claim to understand the arguments that falsify you (even though you never address them) but this repeated nonsense suggests that not only do you not understand them, you haven’t even read them at all.

You can be accused of these things because at one level of reality that makes sense. That’s why people fall in love, commit crimes, get sentenced, vote on Strictly etc - at the experiential level we inhabit this reality functions quite readily. At a deeper, more logically robust level though we (well, some of us) understand that the way we experience life cannot also provide the functional explanation for what’s actually going on.

But then you know that already don’t you, what with it being explained to you countless times even though you act as though it hasn’t been.   

What does this say about you do you think?

[torridon]

It is not a baseless assertion to say that I can't be guilty of personal incredulity if I have no personal control over the events which cause me to post these alleged assertions.  It is simply a logical impossibility.

You accuse me of personal incredulity, but then you also claim that my thoughts are predetermined before I become personally aware of them.  You can't have it both ways.

That's evasive nonsense.  Your opinions are still your opinions even if they aren't currently in your conscious awareness.  Do you think you don't know what the capital of Germany is simply because you have to recall it into conscious working memory in order to say 'Berlin' ?

[Stranger]

It is not a baseless assertion to say that I can't be guilty of personal incredulity if I have no personal control over the events which cause me to post these alleged assertions.  It is simply a logical impossibility.

For there to be such a thing as personal control there must first be a person, and a person is the person they are because of reasons, otherwise everybody would be the same. You do not, and could not possibly, have personal control over all the things that made you the person you are.

In fact, you are who you are because of how you started out (genetics, and whatever initial state you think a soul might have, for the sake or augment) and all your subsequent experiences and choices, and those choices were the result of the person you were when you made them, which in turn was due to previous experiences and choices.

There cannot possibly be anything else unless it is totally random - unrelated to you or your life.

[Alan Burns]

That's evasive nonsense.  Your opinions are still your opinions even if they aren't currently in your conscious awareness.  Do you think you don't know what the capital of Germany is simply because you have to recall it into conscious working memory in order to say 'Berlin' ?

The example of knowing and recalling the capital of Germany just illustrates how illogical it is to presume that this can be done subconsciously without any need for conscious control.  It is all obviously controlled from your conscious awareness.

[Outrider]

How will something be established as a fact unless it is a hypothesis first?

An assertion isn't an hypothesis - in order to be an hypothesis your idea would need to include some means by which it could be evidenced or refuted, and mystic nth-dimension woo-power doesn't have that.

The 'wealth of explanations' for NDE's has no basis... and all researchers know that.

Really? All researchers know that? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but are you actually suggesting that even a majority of neuroscientists don't think there's a mechanistic, in-brain explanation for near-death experiences?

I have already linked Sam Parnia's videos in another thread.

I struggle with video, unfortunately, with a combination of poor hearing and even poorer internet speeds, so I've likely not been able to view it.

I see these repeated arguments only as evidence that the memes you people host are very strong and do not allow for changes.

Which is a convenient explanation for not making an attempt to refute them.  By contrast, I don't see that you have an argument - you have a claim that's been contorted to bypass testability and you'll cleave to it not just in the absence of any evidence to support it, but in the face of the demonstrable evidence supporting the counterclaim.

O.

[Outrider]

No.

Yes.

I am demonstrating my conscious freedom by deliberately composing and sending this reply.  It is not just a feeling - it is a demonstrable reality.

The evidence from observations of brain activity shows that there is identifiable brain activity recognisable as a particular thought element which is consistently identifiable in advance of the conscious awareness of the thought - you become conscious of what your brain has concluded after your brain has done it.  That you might feel that you're consciously controlling it doesn't make it so.

O.

[BeRational]

Wow not been able to get on for a while.

I cannot believe this nonsense is still being peddled by AB

[Sriram]

An assertion isn't an hypothesis - in order to be an hypothesis your idea would need to include some means by which it could be evidenced or refuted, and mystic nth-dimension woo-power doesn't have that.

Really? All researchers know that? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something here, but are you actually suggesting that even a majority of neuroscientists don't think there's a mechanistic, in-brain explanation for near-death experiences?

I struggle with video, unfortunately, with a combination of poor hearing and even poorer internet speeds, so I've likely not been able to view it.

Which is a convenient explanation for not making an attempt to refute them.  By contrast, I don't see that you have an argument - you have a claim that's been contorted to bypass testability and you'll cleave to it not just in the absence of any evidence to support it, but in the face of the demonstrable evidence supporting the counterclaim.

O.

Science doesn't seem to have a problem proposing hypotheses about 11 dimensions, Strings, parallel universes, time travel, Dark Matter  etc. without any evidence what so ever....

Well...you really must try to see the videos  of Sam Parnia on NDE's...and the Nature of Reality etc., that I have lined to other threads.  Without that how would you even know what some researchers and doctors think about such matters?!

[torridon]

The example of knowing and recalling the capital of Germany just illustrates how illogical it is to presume that this can be done subconsciously without any need for conscious control.  It is all obviously controlled from your conscious awareness.

Any desire to recall something from memory must derive from something prior, it is not something that occurs randomly out of the blue.  It is all part of the information flow through a mind.  The subtleties of the neural processing that underpin or give rise to our conscious thoughts are not something we normally need to pay attention to, we don't generally need to.  But our thoughts and intentions must have some derivation otherwise they would be random.

[torridon]

Wow not been able to get on for a while.

I cannot believe this nonsense is still being peddled by AB

July 2058 :

Boris Johnson goes to Brussels to ask for his annual extension to the Brexit deadline

Alan Burns claims that 'it is not possible for a single entity of awareness to exist within discrete material reactions'

[Stranger]

Science doesn't seem to have a problem proposing hypotheses about 11 dimensions, Strings, parallel universes, time travel, Dark Matter  etc. without any evidence what so ever....

Still repeating this scientifically illiterate nonsense, that has been corrected more times than I can recall...       

[Alan Burns]

Any desire to recall something from memory must derive from something prior, it is not something that occurs randomly out of the blue.  It is all part of the information flow through a mind.  The subtleties of the neural processing that underpin or give rise to our conscious thoughts are not something we normally need to pay attention to, we don't generally need to.  But our thoughts and intentions must have some derivation otherwise they would be random.

My thoughts and intentions are derived from my conscious human will.  If this was not the case, I would have no conscious control, because I can't exert control over past events.  This would render such words as control or manipulation to be meaningless.  The gift of human freewill enables us to interact with this world rather than just react.

[Alan Burns]

You can be accused of these things because at one level of reality that makes sense. That’s why people fall in love, commit crimes, get sentenced, vote on Strictly etc - at the experiential level we inhabit this reality functions quite readily. At a deeper, more logically robust level though we (well, some of us) understand that the way we experience life cannot also provide the functional explanation for what’s actually going on.

So your entirely predetermined subconscious brain activity has somehow come up with the concept of having two levels of reality.  Can you please tell me which level was responsible?  If it was predetermined at the deeper, more logically robust level - how do you claim personal credit for this revelation?  Or indeed - how can you claim any credibility without conscious control over what emanates from the predetermined material reactions in your brain?

[Alan Burns]

The evidence from observations of brain activity shows that there is identifiable brain activity recognisable as a particular thought element which is consistently identifiable in advance of the conscious awareness of the thought - you become conscious of what your brain has concluded after your brain has done it.  That you might feel that you're consciously controlling it doesn't make it so.

I gave a link recently which cast some doubt about the validity and accuracy of these investigations.  But no such investigation can identify the ultimate cause of thought processes.  If such causes come from the conscious will of the human soul it would imply that the soul invokes whatever is needed to implement an act of will.

[Stranger]

My thoughts and intentions are derived from my conscious human will.  If this was not the case, I would have no conscious control, because I can't exert control over past events.  This would render such words as control or manipulation to be meaningless.  The gift of human freewill enables us to interact with this world rather than just react.

So your entirely predetermined subconscious brain activity has somehow come up with the concept of having two levels of reality.  Can you please tell me which level was responsible?  If it was predetermined at the deeper, more logically robust level - how do you claim personal credit for this revelation?  Or indeed - how can you claim any credibility without conscious control over what emanates from the predetermined material reactions in your brain?

I gave a link recently which cast some doubt about the validity and accuracy of these investigations.  But no such investigation can identify the ultimate cause of thought processes.  If such causes come from the conscious will of the human soul it would imply that the soul invokes whatever is needed to implement an act of will.

Your endless and pointless repetition of points that have been answered countless times before show very little evidence of conscious control, any sort of free will, or very much sign of any actual thought, for that matter.

How about changing the record and actually attempting to address the answers you already have?

[torridon]

My thoughts and intentions are derived from my conscious human will.  If this was not the case, I would have no conscious control, because I can't exert control over past events.  This would render such words as control or manipulation to be meaningless.  Th. gift of human freewill enables us to interact with this world rather than just react.

And your conscious will must derive from something otherwise is it just meaningless and random.  No way out of this conundrum Alan other than by accepting the determinism in nature and that we and all our doings are part of that

[torridon]

I gave a link recently which cast some doubt about the validity and accuracy of these investigations.  But no such investigation can identify the ultimate cause of thought processes.  If such causes come from the conscious will of the human soul it would imply that the soul invokes whatever is needed to implement an act of will.

And if such causes come from the conscious will of a hedgehog soul then it would imply that the hedgehog soul invokes whatever is needed to implement a hedgehog's act of will.

No way out of this conundrum Alan other than by accepting the shared ancestry we have with other creatures extends to fundamental brain function.  Get over it.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

So your entirely predetermined…

It’s not “predeterrnined” as if there was some sort of deistic town planner that intended things to work out the way they have, it’s just determined (or “deterministic” if your prefer). Not sure why you think continued lying about this helps you, but you ought to stop doing it.
 

…subconscious brain activity has somehow come up with the concept of having two levels of reality.  Can you please tell me which level was responsible?

This is idiotic. At one level of reality my fingers are touching the keys as I type – after all, that’s the way it feels and that belief serves well enough for most practical purposes. Thus I may for example ask someone else to type something by touching the keys with their fingers, and they will know exactly what I mean by that. It’s a functionally useful belief.

Thanks to some understanding of physics though I also know that a deeper, more cogent level of understanding people’s fingers never actually touch the keys because of the repellent forces involved.

Neither “level” was "responsible" as such, but one level gives me a more robust understanding of the facts than the other. Your problem (though admittedly one from a crowded field of problems) is that you cannot or will not process the arguments that demonstrate that your functionally useful belief in an “I” that’s controlling things is undermined by a more robust understanding of what’s actually happening.         

If it was predetermined at the deeper, more logically robust level - how do you claim personal credit for this revelation?

Easily – just as you claim credit for typing by touching the keys. That you’re not actually touching the keys (or pulling the strings) makes no difference to that – the beliefs work well enough even though they fail as meaningful explanations. 

Or indeed - how can you claim any credibility without conscious control over what emanates from the predetermined material reactions in your brain?

See above.

This’ll fall on deaf ears, but try this: when you fell in love with your wife did a separate "you" decide “yes, she’s the one” and then tell “your” body to go ahead and fall in love? Or when your sexual orientation emerged did a separate “you” weigh up the pros and cons of straight vs bi vs gay, pick an option and then tell “you” who to fancy?

Clearly not right? These “choices” weren’t choices at all were they – they emerged unbidden from your subconscious and there was no separate little you at the controls to select from menus of options. What then is so difficult for you about grasping that the same applies to anything else that feels like a choice (and that for most functional purposes is a choice) but that at an explanatory level cannot be a choice in the sense you intend at all?