Conciousness

[11 to 1 0]

In a discussion of the evidence for continuation of personal consciousness after physical death, it needs, IMO, to be reiterated that no one can prove anything. That is, this isn't about anyone proving this one way or the other to anyone else. Science, (the other god) never says a thing doesn't exist - unless it's a diplodicus in modern times, I suppose. So, I am approaching this from the one black dog perspective: If we say "All dogs are white" then we only need one black dog to prove that statement untrue. The kinds of examples here are the ones that have to be viewed with an eye toward the reliability of the witnesses. But we rely on witnesses a great deal for information, so this topic should not be treated as a special exception.The following incident can be found in a fuller form in "Clinical Interventions with near-death Experiencers" Kimberly Clark, in B. Geyson and C.P. Flynn (Eds.) The near-death experience: Problems, Prospects, perspectives (Springfield, ILL. Charles C, Thomas, 1982) pp.242-255.Kimberly Clark was a social worker in a Seattle hospital (Harborview) and skeptical of reports of near-death experiences. She was called to meet with a woman only identified in literature as "Maria" who was a migrant worker who had come to Seattle for the first time a few days earler to visit friends. She'd had a heart attack, was admitted to the hospital, had a cardiac arrest during her stay but was quickly resucitated. Maria related this story to Clark, of having a typical out-of-body experience, watching the medical team from above, all of which Clark listened to with feigned respect, as she reports herself, believing there were plausible explanations for all Maria was telling her.Then Maria said she left the hospital room and found herself outside the building "having been distracted by an object on the ledge of the third floor of the north wing of the building, she 'thought herself up there.' And when she arrived she found herself "eyeball to shoelace" with a tennis show on the ledge of the building. Maria describes the show in minute detail mentioning such things as a worn place over the area wherethe little toe would be, and that one of the laces was tucked under the heel. What Maria wanted, and desperately, was for Clark to locate the shoe so she would know she had "really" seen it. Kenneth Ring asks, when he recounts this incident in Lessons from the Light, "What is the probability that a migrant worker visiting a large city for the first time, who suffers a heart attack and is rushed to the hospital at night would, while having a cardiac arrest, simply "hallucinate" seeing a tennis shoe - with very specific features - on the ledge one floor higher than her physical location in the hospital?" Of course, Clark goes to look for the shoe. She didn't find it until she was in the room with the exact window underneath which is the ledge on which rested the shoe, one lace tucked under the heel. It couldn't be seen from any other vantage point. It was exactly as Maria described. Clark retrieved the shoe (worn spot over the little toe) and took it to Maria to relieve her anxiety. If we by-pass the standard "explain it away" response of some sort of lies for publicity or whatever, the incident brings us to the question: does this mean Maria's consciousness left her body? Her subjective experience seems to be that it did. But then, with remote viewing so well-documented scientifically, could she have just been "in" her body and done that? Does the question actually have any meaning? If consciousness has the property of being nonlocal and nontemporal, then it doesn't. Consciousness then becomes that which is expressed singularly through a body-brain, but exists as part of a universal consciousness wave. And while that sounds pretty new-age-hippy-dippy, it is suggested by a Nobel Laureate, not just by whakos and theoretical physicists (possibly the same thing). I end this with a scientific "truth" if that can be said about anything. We all know light exists as (acts as) both a particle and a wave. But did you know that the only time light manifests as a particle is when we are observing it? Otherwise it is all wave, all the time. They say. Of course, you'd have to have faith in scientists to believe such a claim.

[crowTrobot 2]

If we by-pass the standard "explain it away" response of some sort of lies for publicity or whatever

well yeah, if you bypass objectivity you can pretty much justify belief in anything.

I end this with a scientific "truth" if that can be said about anything. We all know light exists as (acts as) both a particle and a wave. But did you know that the only time light manifests as a particle is when we are observing it? Otherwise it is all wave, all the time. They say. Of course, you'd have to have faith in scientists to believe such a claim.

false - nothing resembling "faith" is going on in QM. this is just an ignorant unscientific reference to the apparent wave/particle duality that shows up in QM experiments that science does not understand nor claim to understand the ontological meaning of yet. and there are very few (if any?) working scientists anymore that think the apparent "collapse" of the wave function (responsible for the apparent duality) in QM has anything to do specifically with human observation. most/all currently consider it more likely either illusionary based on perspective, or due to general environmental "decoherence". also this apparent duality is true for all elementary particles, and in some cases has even been observed on the atomic and molecular level. it's not just a photon/light thing - it seems to simply be the way nature behaves in general on small scales.

[BWToth 0]

Crow-But besides that stuff, what do you make of the story? Someone must be lying right? Who? and Why? Or what other explaination coudl you use (based in science) for this occurence?

[crowTrobot 2]

Someone must be lying right? Who? and Why?

who/why might be lying (or delusional) is irrelevant. stories like that are not evidence for anything. they are just stories.

[11 to 1 0]

well yeah, if you bypass objectivity you can pretty much justify belief in anything.false - nothing resembling "faith" is going on in QM.

I didn't say there was "faith in QM." I said people have "faith" in scientists. I also have a great quote someplace around here to address the rest of your post, I'll see if I can find it later.

[crowTrobot 2]

I didn't say there was "faith in QM." I said people have "faith" in scientists.

maybe lazy people do, but it's not required. scientific (functional) truth does not depend on faith in any way.

[11 to 1 0]

Crow-But besides that stuff, what do you make of the story? Someone must be lying right? Who? and Why? Or what other explaination coudl you use (based in science) for this occurence?

What if they aren't? This is another shoe story, of all things. I don't know why shoes are so popular with the NDE set, maybe because bits of paper and trash blown up onto a roof wouldn't get your attention, but this is another account, also involving a shoe.Cathy Milne was a nurse working at Hartfor Hospital in 1985. (Connecticut.) Unlike our previous witness, she was interested in NDEs and was told of such an experience by a patient who'd been resuscitaed there. The woman said she did the float up over the body business, then felt herself "pulled up" through several floors and out through the roof where she saw, out of the "corner of her eye," a red object, which turned out to be a shoe. Then she went on with a kind of "standard" NDE story.Cathy Milne was relating this story to a resident, the kind of eye-rolling skeptic we all can imagine - science-guy - who smirked at her and left. It seems he got a janitor to unlock the door to the roof so he could disprove Cathy's too ready tendency to believe. Except he found a red shoe up there. There really are a lot of well-documented incidents supporting the idea of consciousness existing outside the confines of the human body. I just like these, they are so prosaic. Because the body of evidence (not "proof") gathered over the years is fairly large, there are some scientists now trying to develop theories to account for how this occurs. It's tough, though, because we haven't a clue, really, what "consciousness" is. If we don't know what it is exactly, but we observe it to exist (I think therefore I am) we are not in a position as rationalists to make rules for it - we are only in a position to observe and gather information and do testing so that we can learn what it does and can do. I think the first thing we have to do is just rid ourselves of the prejudice "That's impossible." We don't know that; we know from history that a lot of things thought impossible ended up being possible.

[BWToth 0]

maybe lazy people do, but it's not required. scientific (functional) truth does not depend on faith in any way.

So you're first thoughts upon reading this 'story' are that it must be false, and someone is either delusional or lying?That doesn't sound very open minded.

[crowTrobot 2]

So you're first thoughts upon reading this 'story' are that it must be false, and someone is either delusional or lying?That doesn't sound very open minded.

it has nothing to do with not being open minded. it's about being practical and objective. despite 11-1's continual delusional ramblings about it, in the history of modern science there has never been one single shred of evidence that would objectively support the notion of consciousness being able to exist apart from the physical body - and there is a MOUNTAIN of evidence creating a *clear* pattern that indicates all aspects of consciousness ARE most likely entirely tied to the physical brain. if/until actual evidence to the contrary is found (not these ho hum after-the-fact NDE accounts or the BS pseudo-science done by people hawking books to ignorant wanna-believers that 11-1 keeps bringing up), the base assumption should *absolutely* be that stories of this sort are lies/delusions/spin/propaganda or whatever. otherwise you might as well believe whatever you want and not worry about science or evidence at all.stories of the sort in this thread are for practical purposes no different than claims of joseph smith, l ron hubbard etc, because they all claim to contradict the pattern of scientific evidence without any actual evidentiary basis of their own. same is of course true for every metaphysical act of god/jesus in the bible or any other metaphysical cultural religious myth/belief. to an objective person aware of how science actually works and what it has actually proven, it's all 99.999999% (for practical purposes 100%) likely to be BS.

[WrongWay 0]

Back to the OP.Strawman.You know we're going to dismiss this as an anicdote. Anicdotes are NOT evidence. Evidence MUST be testable and repeatable to use it to justify belief in something. Your black dog straw man is rediculous on the face. We all know of back dogs, so we'd accept the anicdote of someone saying they saw a black dog.Let's flip this around... I met with the IPU today. (IPU = Invisable Pink Unicorn. She lives on the blackhole at the center of the universe. She created the universe. She's a jokester and she creates silly religions and beliefs as a joke, just to mess with people.) IPU told me that she implanted the false memory of the tenis shoe on the ledge just to mess with the lady's head.Hey, it is one report. The one "black dog" report that you claim is sufficient to justify belief.Therefore, you now believe in IPU, right?Of course NOT!!!!!!One report that is completely contradictory to all scientific data is hogwash. It is an extraordinary claim, and therefore requires extraordinay evidence. It would be like a scientist saying that he was on an expidetion to the north pole, and suddnly a penguin came up to him and started talking to him. (yes, penguins live at the south pole.... I'm going for totally contradictory to all observation, remember) The penguin told him that the earth is neither a sphere nor a flat disk. It is, in fact, a triangular cylendar. There are not 4 corners of the earth, there are only 3. Oh, and the moon is the center of the universe.Is this one observation sufficient to toss out all cosmology?I think not.You are a believer in life after death. As such, any tiny scrap of non-evidence is sufficient to justify that belief, while you continue to ignore the mountain of data that does not support such belief.Become a freethinker. Toss off the blinders of mythology. Open your mind to the mountain of data. Use that to support your beliefs.

[WrongWay 0]

So you're first thoughts upon reading this 'story' are that it must be false, and someone is either delusional or lying?That doesn't sound very open minded.

Open minded does not mean believing everything. It means willing to accpet something if there is sufficient evidence to justify belief in it. One report that is in complete disagreement with all repeatable, testable, verifiable evidence should be weighed, and then open mindedly dismissed as insufficient to support belief in something so extraordinary.In short, open minded means allowing in the one anicdote AND allowing in the bazillions of contradictory studies, then evaluating them on which is more likely, then assigning a degree of belief. In my case, .00000001% in life after death. 99.99999999% belief that consciousness is a manifestation of the electro-chemical computer that we call the brain.You should try being open minded instead of living within a flase belief, letting in only that which fits your belief, ignoring the 99.9999999% probable case that your belief is false.

[WrongWay 0]

Oh.... and the wave/particle light thing.You have it a but backwards. Science doesn't really have a problem with mass-less weight having momentum. Light always travels in a wave. It behaves as a particle because it has momentum. Light/wave duality is simply way of telling the high school science class to just accept it and don't ask any more questions that are too complex for them to understand until they make it to advanced physics in college.So, why does light have momentum? Becuase the folmula for momentum (mass x velocity) that we all learned in high school and first year coillege science class is a simplified case for objects traveling within what we'd consider a normal range for a macroscopic object.. you know thousands of miles an hour vs hundreds of thousands of miles per second... So, for simple people, momentum = mass x velocity is sufficient since they're unlikely to encounter objects traveling fast enough for it to make a difference.Just like Newton's R x T = D is a special case when the object and observer are traveling at "normal" speeds.Momuntum has two components.Rather than going to the effort to explain it, then be accused of copying from a web site, I'll jsut give you a web site...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Mode...ons_of_momentumSo, light has momentum... to explain that to high school kids, they use the term wave\partical duality...which they leave very loosly defined... to avoid the conversation and confusion that would be required to define it. Really, it isn't a mystery.The mystery is particles acting like waves. When we observe them, they appear as packets with fixed location and traveling in straight line velocity. However, when we're not observing them, they behave as a probability waves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_dualityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experimentLight waves act as we expect. It is atoms that don't.

[crowTrobot 2]

Oh.... and the wave/particle light thing.You have it a but backwards. Science doesn't really have a problem with mass-less weight having momentum. Light always travels in a wave. It behaves as a particle because it has momentum. Light/wave duality is simply way of telling the high school science class to just accept it and don't ask any more questions that are too complex for them to understand until they make it to advanced physics in college.So, why does light have momentum? Becuase the folmula for momentum (mass x velocity) that we all learned in high school and first year coillege science class is a simplified case for objects traveling within what we'd consider a normal range for a macroscopic object.. you know thousands of miles an hour vs hundreds of thousands of miles per second... So, for simple people, momentum = mass x velocity is sufficient since they're unlikely to encounter objects traveling fast enough for it to make a difference.Just like Newton's R x T = D is a special case when the object and observer are traveling at "normal" speeds.Momuntum has two components.Rather than going to the effort to explain it, then be accused of copying from a web site, I'll jsut give you a web site...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Mode...ons_of_momentumSo, light has momentum... to explain that to high school kids, they use the term wave\partical duality...which they leave very loosly defined... to avoid the conversation and confusion that would be required to define it. Really, it isn't a mystery.The mystery is particles acting like waves. When we observe them, they appear as packets with fixed location and traveling in straight line velocity. However, when we're not observing them, they behave as a probability waves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave-particle_dualityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experimentLight waves act as we expect. It is atoms that don't.

thread hijack, but i believe you are mistaken here. photon "waves" exhibit particle-like behavior that is not simply a matter that is explained by relativistic physics. scientists do not differentiate the dual wave/particle behavior of photons from that of any other elementary particle or atom. it's all part of the same mystery. in the standard model everything elementary including photons are treated as dimensionless point particles (with wave functions).also, again, recent experimental results involving environmental decoherence have shown that there does not appear to actually be anything specifically relevant about human observation in the collapse (or apparent collapse) of a particle's wave function.

[WrongWay 0]

thread hijack, but i believe you are mistaken here. photon "waves" exhibit particle-like behavior that is not simply a matter that is explained by relativistic physics. scientists do not differentiate the dual wave/particle behavior of photons from that of any other elementary particle or atom. it's all part of the same mystery.

Sure, it is all a big mystery of HOW it works. I like the theory that quarks and bosons are photons... That could REALLY throw cosmology on its head. We know matter is converted to light in suns, but what if light turns back into matter at random times and distances. So much for the throery that all matter precipitated in just a few tiny fractions of a second after the big bang. Would explain why we only find matter in nature with 3 quarks, when in particle accelerators we se 5, 7, 9 etc. condensing. Anyway, the point was that we understand light having momentum WAY better than we understand matter traveling in a wave probability function. They don't say that in high school physical science class cause it would just confuse the hell out of everyone in the class... even me at that point in time.

[myenemy 0]

Open minded does not mean believing everything. It means willing to accpet something if there is sufficient evidence to justify belief in it. One report that is in complete disagreement with all repeatable, testable, verifiable evidence should be weighed, and then open mindedly dismissed as insufficient to support belief in something so extraordinary.In short, open minded means allowing in the one anicdote AND allowing in the bazillions of contradictory studies, then evaluating them on which is more likely, then assigning a degree of belief. In my case, .00000001% in life after death. 99.99999999% belief that consciousness is a manifestation of the electro-chemical computer that we call the brain.You should try being open minded instead of living within a flase belief, letting in only that which fits your belief, ignoring the 99.9999999% probable case that your belief is false.

Isnt one possibilty for there not being "mountains of data" that NDE's are so rare? Not to mention I dont quite know that there are "brazillions of contradictory studies" to disapprove conciousness outside of the mind. What would those studies be? Is it the same study over and over a brazillion times? Just running a little devil's advocate here.

[crowTrobot 2]

I like the theory that quarks and bosons are photons...

a boson is any paricle (or construct) with integral spin. a photon (spin 1) is a boson by definition. quarks have fractional spin and are certainly not photons or bosons.

We know matter is converted to light in suns, but what if light turns back into matter at random times and distances. So much for the throery that all matter precipitated in just a few tiny fractions of a second after the big bang. Would explain why we only find matter in nature with 3 quarks, when in particle accelerators we se 5, 7, 9 etc. condensing.

not sure what theory you're talking about, but i don't see how an energy into matter theory would explain the 3 quark families. if i remember right that's more of a very technical symmetry issue. we don't see constructs made of the heaviest quarks in nature because they decay almost instantly.

[crowTrobot 2]

I dont quite know that there are "brazillions of contradictory studies" to disapprove conciousness outside of the mind. What would those studies be? Is it the same study over and over a brazillion times?

the subject is so broad nobody is going to do it justice here. if you are really interested why don't you start researching it yourself?

[11 to 1 0]

**oops

[11 to 1 0]

Oh.... and the wave/particle light thing.You have it a but backwards.

Not me. those whom I quote, according to you.. Here is the quote: "Light only acts as a particle when we are observing it." Find me a reputable source that contradicts this statement. I fear the one who does not understand the literalness of this statement is you.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

Not me. those whom I quote, according to you.. Here is the quote: "Light only acts as a particle when we are observing it." Find me a reputable source that contradicts this statement. I fear the one who does not understand the literalness of this statement is you.

This is kind of a difficult statement to comment on since no one really knows what it means. The idea of something acting like "a particle" is not well defined. No one really understands all that well the concept of a wave function collapsing due to the process of observation. But what people do understand very well is this: all particles are governed by certain quantum mechanical equations, all of which fall into the category of "wave equations." But it's also difficult to describe what it means to behave like a wave. The best way to define it is that the particle obeys an equation that contains two spacial derivatives and one time derivative (eg the Schrödinger equation). But again, this is all semantics.All scientists agree on how everything works. The equations are all written down and understandable. No one really has a great way to describe or interpret in layman's terms what it means. Most people who understand it well enough don't really care, though.

[crowTrobot 2]

Here is the quote: "Light only acts as a particle when we are observing it." Find me a reputable source that contradicts this statement.

a reputable source would say light (photons) act as both a particle and a wave at the same time, and which behavior we find depends on how we measure it.

[crowTrobot 2]

All scientists agree on how everything works. The equations are all written down and understandable. No one really has a great way to describe or interpret in layman's terms what it means.

well nobody knows what it means ontologically. the mathematical formalism describing and predicting the behavior of objects/wave functions in QM is well understood. but how the formalism actually relates to physical reality is still a huge mystery - and considering how it ties everything together, perhaps the biggest and most critical mystery in all of science.

[11 to 1 0]

This is kind of a difficult statement to comment on since no one really knows what it means. The idea of something acting like "a particle" is not well defined. No one really understands all that well the concept of a wave function collapsing due to the process of observation. But what people do understand very well is this: all particles are governed by certain quantum mechanical equations, all of which fall into the category of "wave equations." But it's also difficult to describe what it means to behave like a wave. The best way to define it is that the particle obeys an equation that contains two spacial derivatives and one time derivative (eg the Schrödinger equation). But again, this is all semantics.All scientists agree on how everything works. The equations are all written down and understandable. No one really has a great way to describe or interpret in layman's terms what it means. Most people who understand it well enough don't really care, though.

I agree with everthing you say here except this: All scientists agree on how everything works. Do you know who Seth Lloyd is? In the April issue of Discover he writes a piece on the information overload in science. Part of that article refers to him refereeing papers "claiming to invalidate the laws of quatum mechanics. I've even written one or two of them myself. All these papers are wrong." Which might be right. (Or not.) I am by no means any sort of expert on QM, far from it, but I never sat down with three scientists, even all in the same narrow field and had them agree on much of anything. Unless they were explaining the very basics to non-scientists. Quantum physicists (that I have met and that's only a few) barely understand what they are seeing much less why they observe it. Problem is, the stuff keeps changing. Particles without mass, end up having mass. Or, they argue about whether there is any mass or not. This is my experience of QM and the physicists who work in that area. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

[LongLiveYorke 38]

I take it back. I didn't mean to imply that all scientists agree with all processes. What I meant was that there are many processes that scientists agree on what happens, but differ on interpretations or meanings of what happened. All physicists will tell you the probabilities of obtaining certain values when making a particular measurement, but some will differ on what it really means to make a measurement or what the collapse of the wave function really is.

[crowTrobot 2]

I agree with everthing you say here except this: All scientists agree on how everything works.

when it comes to QM virtually all scientists DO agree on how everything works. there is wide disagreement on *why* it works, but from a purely technical standpoint QM is the most precisely verified theory in the history of science.