Author Topic: Chemicals...  (Read 1414 times)

Sriram

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Chemicals...
« on: November 20, 2021, 06:08:33 AM »
Hi everyone,

Some people seem to believe that merely because certain chemicals are associated with certain emotions and mental states...these chemicals are themselves responsible for our mental states. This is not correct.

When you love your baby ...you cannot claim that love to be a Oxytocin rush or something of that sort. There is a real baby and a real feeling of love....but the body/mind has a process through which it gets activated....which is what the chemical generates.

It is a composite process involving many levels. Chemicals make the body and mind respond in certain ways as the situation requires. These chemicals are triggered by mental and emotional states....which are generated by our Consciousness....which responds to a situation. 

IMO...consciousness is an attribute of our soul or Self which is housed in the body/mind....the way a person could be sitting inside a robot. There are probably different levels of consciousness leading up to a Universal Consciousness of which we all are a part.  This basic substratum is possibly what people refer to variously as  Brahman, Paramatman, Allah, Tao, Dharmakaya, the God within and so on....

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Sriram

torridon

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #1 on: November 20, 2021, 08:15:52 AM »
Hi everyone,

Some people seem to believe that merely because certain chemicals are associated with certain emotions and mental states...these chemicals are themselves responsible for our mental states. This is not correct.

When you love your baby ...you cannot claim that love to be a Oxytocin rush or something of that sort. There is a real baby and a real feeling of love....but the body/mind has a process through which it gets activated....which is what the chemical generates.

It is a composite process involving many levels. Chemicals make the body and mind respond in certain ways as the situation requires. These chemicals are triggered by mental and emotional states....which are generated by our Consciousness....which responds to a situation. 

IMO...consciousness is an attribute of our soul or Self which is housed in the body/mind....the way a person could be sitting inside a robot. There are probably different levels of consciousness leading up to a Universal Consciousness of which we all are a part.  This basic substratum is possibly what people refer to variously as  Brahman, Paramatman, Allah, Tao, Dharmakaya, the God within and so on....

Just some thoughts.

Cheers.

Sriram

If I inject you with Propofol, your consciousness will go away.  How does an intravenous drug injection get into your soul ?

Sriram

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2021, 08:31:53 AM »
If I inject you with Propofol, your consciousness will go away.  How does an intravenous drug injection get into your soul ?



It doesn't. It just affects our conscious awareness.

You do know of sleep walking where in-spite of being asleep, a person has consciousness and performs tasks that he does not remember later.  You do know of our unconscious mind guiding and taking decisions before we are consciously aware. 

Our conscious awareness is only one small part of what we call consciousness....like an iceberg where 90% is beneath the surface.

Udayana

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2021, 08:35:25 AM »
...
Just some thoughts
...

I wonder what triggers brain farts?
Ah, but I was so much older then ... I'm younger than that now

torridon

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2021, 08:36:20 AM »


It doesn't. It just affects our conscious awareness.

You do know of sleep walking where in-spite of being asleep, a person has consciousness and performs tasks that he does not remember later.  You do know of our unconscious mind guiding and taking decisions before we are consciously aware. 

Our conscious awareness is only one small part of what we call consciousness....like an iceberg where 90% is beneath the surface.

Your claim is that conscious awareness is an attribute of the soul, so how does the propofol interact with the soul resulting in a change to its attributes ?

Sriram

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #5 on: November 20, 2021, 09:24:08 AM »
Your claim is that conscious awareness is an attribute of the soul, so how does the propofol interact with the soul resulting in a change to its attributes ?



If you are sitting inside a robot and performing some task....if some electrical charge is given to the robot in some way....its computers and its 'brain' would get affected...without you getting affected.

Of course, consciousness and mind are much more complex and all its features cannot be explained through such analogies.

I don't claim to have it all clearly tied up. Not at all. But trying to explain human life and behavior in terms of mere chemicals with no understanding or integration of the mind, consciousness, life and death....is inane.   




« Last Edit: November 20, 2021, 09:31:17 AM by Sriram »

ProfessorDavey

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #6 on: November 20, 2021, 10:01:49 AM »
But trying to explain human life and behavior in terms of mere chemicals with no understanding or integration of the mind, consciousness, life and death....is inane.
Sorry Sriram, it is not inane and I think you are trivialising the exquisite and astonishing complexity of the interactions that occur between molecules, ions etc that generate physiological responses at cellular, tissue, organ and whole organism levels as mere chemicals. Sure one one level we are simply mere chemicals but those mere chemicals interact in astonishingly complex ways to generate what we consider as human life, behaviour, emotions etc.

torridon

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #7 on: November 20, 2021, 10:41:58 AM »


If you are sitting inside a robot and performing some task....if some electrical charge is given to the robot in some way....its computers and its 'brain' would get affected...without you getting affected.
..

You're trying to have your cake and eat it, by defining a soul as something immaterial, ie does not interact with matter, and then go on to describe that is does interact with matter, somehow. If my will resides in my immaterial soul, then how does the will to move my fingers on this keyboard interact with my motor neurons if souls cannot interact with motor neurons ?

You always set yourself up to fail by starting from a belief system, and then trying to crowbar observed reality into it.  We get better results by starting from evidence and observation, and then trying to draw inferences from that without deference to belief systems.

Sriram

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #8 on: November 20, 2021, 10:55:40 AM »
You're trying to have your cake and eat it, by defining a soul as something immaterial, ie does not interact with matter, and then go on to describe that is does interact with matter, somehow. If my will resides in my immaterial soul, then how does the will to move my fingers on this keyboard interact with my motor neurons if souls cannot interact with motor neurons ?

You always set yourself up to fail by starting from a belief system, and then trying to crowbar observed reality into it.  We get better results by starting from evidence and observation, and then trying to draw inferences from that without deference to belief systems.


The soul is immaterial. It interacts with the mind which is the intermediary.  Soul---Consciousness---mind---body.

You expect everyone to be satisfied with the 'everything is just chemicals and chance' story?!

The Accountant, OBE, KC

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #9 on: November 20, 2021, 12:57:31 PM »

The soul is immaterial. It interacts with the mind which is the intermediary.  Soul---Consciousness---mind---body.
But you do realise that if you have no way of explaining how this happens then it is no more plausible than any other random explanation e.g. aliens on another planet are controlling everything because they programmed an invisible, undetectable computer chip and they plant it in our brains in our mothers' wombs.

Quote
You expect everyone to be satisfied with the 'everything is just chemicals and chance' story?!
Everyone likes different stories. Stories about us having souls is just another story as we have no proof of immaterial souls. But on the basis that diversity of beliefs is better than group think I think the different stories, discussing them and seeing other views are of benefit to society.   
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torridon

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #10 on: November 20, 2021, 01:01:07 PM »

The soul is immaterial. It interacts with the mind which is the intermediary.  Soul---Consciousness---mind---body.

You expect everyone to be satisfied with the 'everything is just chemicals and chance' story?!

So, just a hand-waivey vague assertion fits the bill. Souls cannot interact with your body because the former is immaterial and the latter material, so we have to position mind as an intermediary that can talk to immaterial things whilst also talking to material things.  It's another just-so story, something invented, not something discovered.

When an earthworm wriggles up towards the light, is its soul interacting with its semi-immaterial mind ?

Sriram

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #11 on: November 20, 2021, 01:26:00 PM »



Yes...its not 'proved' beyond doubt in an objective sense.

But it is a hypothesis based on many experiences that people have. NDE, OBE, ghosts, reincarnation cases and so on. Most of these have even been investigated and documented in recent decades by researchers from respected universities.   

Many aspects of the mind such as the biofield and chakras can actually be felt and directly experienced with some practice. Yoga can offer many insights.

The scientific community are just not taking these seriously enough. They keep on and on with.....'Give me evidence in material terms......something I can measure and sense (directly or indirectly) and then we will take them seriously'.  Problem is that that is not going to happen because the phenomena are not material in nature. It is just beyond scientific investigation as presently defined.

There is an impasse....but that does not mean the ideas are necessarily false. 

Bramble

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #12 on: November 20, 2021, 01:57:49 PM »
At the risk of sounding a little abstruse, it may be of interest to consider the way in which the mind-body problem is resolved within the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which came to Tibet from India in the 8th century and shares common roots with what we now call Hinduism, from which much of Buddhist tantra derives.

In this tradition, the substance dualism that takes material stuff and mental stuff as ontologically distinct relates to appearances only at the grosser levels of consciousness, although even here the two are not seen as completely independent. Rather, the mind remains embodied within a physical basis. 

However, at the subtlest levels of mind, which act as a basis for normal waking consciousness, mind and body are non dual - a single entity and ontologically indistinguishable. In tantric theory this very subtle mind is likened to a rider on a subtle 'wind', which is the basis of the material body, but this analogy should not be taken as implying that the rider and its mount are actually separate.

Whether one takes such a description literally or metaphorically it is noteworthy that at their root mind and body are regarded as the same reality, only coming to appear divided at the levels of awareness we are used to experiencing in daily life. In other words, a disembodiment-free zone.

All this suggests that elements of Indian religious thought, at least as far back as the 8th century and well before anyone knew much about the workings of the brain, recognised the absurdity of thinking of mind and body as ever being separate and independent (even in states alleged to exist post-mortem) and perhaps also of the very notion of immateriality that substance dualism implies.


« Last Edit: November 20, 2021, 03:12:08 PM by Bramble »

The Accountant, OBE, KC

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #13 on: November 20, 2021, 03:34:47 PM »
At the risk of sounding a little abstruse, it may be of interest to consider the way in which the mind-body problem is resolved within the Vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, which came to Tibet from India in the 8th century and shares common roots with what we now call Hinduism, from which much of Buddhist tantra derives.

In this tradition, the substance dualism that takes material stuff and mental stuff as ontologically distinct relates to appearances only at the grosser levels of consciousness, although even here the two are not seen as completely independent. Rather, the mind remains embodied within a physical basis. 

However, at the subtlest levels of mind, which act as a basis for normal waking consciousness, mind and body are non dual - a single entity and ontologically indistinguishable. In tantric theory this very subtle mind is likened to a rider on a subtle 'wind', which is the basis of the material body, but this analogy should not be taken as implying that the rider and its mount are actually separate.

Whether one takes such a description literally or metaphorically it is noteworthy that at their root mind and body are regarded as the same reality, only coming to appear divided at the levels of awareness we are used to experiencing in daily life. In other words, a disembodiment-free zone.

All this suggests that elements of Indian religious thought, at least as far back as the 8th century and well before anyone knew much about the workings of the brain, recognised the absurdity of thinking of mind and body as ever being separate and independent (even in states alleged to exist post-mortem) and perhaps also of the very notion of immateriality that substance dualism implies.
When you say "relates to appearances only at the grosser levels of consciousness" do you mean when conscious our mind appears to ourselves to be separate from our body but isn't?
I identify as a Sword because I have abstract social constructs e.g. honour and patriotism. My preferred pronouns are "kill/ maim/ dismember"

Quite handy with weapons - available for hire to defeat money laundering crooks around the world.

“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.” Rumi

Bramble

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Re: Chemicals...
« Reply #14 on: November 20, 2021, 04:50:29 PM »
When you say "relates to appearances only at the grosser levels of consciousness" do you mean when conscious our mind appears to ourselves to be separate from our body but isn't?

Grosser levels of consciousness refers to the everyday mind, our normal waking state in which we might philosophise about the nature of mind or wonder if the mind is actually separate from the brain and body because it doesn't appear meaty from the inside, as it were. According to tantric theory we all experience a withdrawal of this consciousness into subtler levels when we go to sleep and again during the process of dying but we are not usually aware of this unless we've trained in certain kinds of meditation.