Hi

[Baruch]

You can't see a dead consciousness. The whole reason it's so hard to convince people a consciousness remains after you die is because there's no particles to make it up out of, so definitely it can't be something visible, audible, or otherwise perceptible to the still living.

Correct.  It might be electromagnetic, but I doubt it.  Studies have show that out-of-body isn't able to see things hidden to the awake person.  There may be more than one explanation for that.  The connection between mind and brain was an unsolved problem for Descartes.  We know more now after 400 years of medical and psychological science.  This devolves from the natural into the supernatural, and therefore not amenable to scientific confirmation.

[Baruch]

It doesn't matter how many times someone says something, although you seem to be the one under the impression you can ignore the facts and say whatever you want. I don't care if you think "my idea" is a failure or not. Unlike you, I have research on my side. Brainwaves have been observed in people at the point of medically declared "death." On the medical table, you are declared "dead" when your heart stops, not when your brain stops. These people are not braindead, as you claim. That has been debunked. And no, I'm not going to do the Google search to find the articles. I'm wasting any more effort on you than I have to.

There is a whole spectrum to dying.  Declaration of death is a legal concept not a medical one.  But definitely not anybody coming back from complete death.  Hence the Jesus resurrection is symbolic/mythical, as described.  If it was otherwise, then it was a coma recovery.  This ambiguity is why it used to be that very cold drowning victims could have been saved, but weren't because they were considered unrecoverable, but were recoverable.  Of course they weren't totally dead.

[Cavebear]

Well obviously. It just ceases to exist in the now-dead-person. There's still plenty of other love left to go around.

Correct.  It might be electromagnetic, but I doubt it.  Studies have show that out-of-body isn't able to see things hidden to the awake person.  There may be more than one explanation for that.  The connection between mind and brain was an unsolved problem for Descartes.  We know more now after 400 years of medical and psychological science.  This devolves from the natural into the supernatural, and therefore not amenable to scientific confirmation.

Applauds...

[Blackleaf]

Correct.  It might be electromagnetic, but I doubt it.  Studies have show that out-of-body isn't able to see things hidden to the awake person.  There may be more than one explanation for that.  The connection between mind and brain was an unsolved problem for Descartes.  We know more now after 400 years of medical and psychological science.  This devolves from the natural into the supernatural, and therefore not amenable to scientific confirmation.

This is the most sensible post I've seen from you in a long while. Answer me this. If the brain accounts for our ability to function, and we know the specific areas responsible for communication, interpretation, sleep, memories (of several different types), the senses, etc, what is left for the soul to account for? What does the soul do that the brain doesn't? How is the very idea of a soul not completely obsolete?

[Baruch]

Yes, there are overlap where reasonable people can agree ;-)  Ideology though isn't susceptible to reason.

[Unbeliever]

Where does the consciousness reside before birth? Is it in another body? Is it just floating around not doing anything? Is it still enmeshed in the greater consciousness of the universe?

And how does it know when to inhabit a body, and which body to inhabit?

[Baruch]

This is the most sensible post I've seen from you in a long while. Answer me this. If the brain accounts for our ability to function, and we know the specific areas responsible for communication, interpretation, sleep, memories (of several different types), the senses, etc, what is left for the soul to account for? What does the soul do that the brain doesn't? How is the very idea of a soul not completely obsolete?

When we are talking medicine, technology etc ... there is more grounds for agreement.  Politics, religion and sex ... no agreement possible.

The "soul" was made obsolete in philosophy by Descartes, 400 years ago.  That is when "mind" became the preferred meme over "soul".

The brain is certainly required for the body to function (except for brain dead people supported by artificial means), and necessary for consciousness etc in the ordinary sense.  As far as we know, in terms of deep sleep, there is nothing more.  Dead people don't dream.  That is the modern view.  We can "see" consciousness, deep sleep and dreaming (REM) externally.  Now what else there may be, is speculative.  No NDE has been demonstrated, externally, to have been anything other than a hallucination.  Ah, but what is a dream, what is a hallucination?  Ordinary science still is working on that, and consciousness itself.

Like I have been moved here to change, to a purely psychological view, not a philosophical view, on all these issues.  And psychology isn't perfect, but it has more empirical basis than philosophy.

What does the "soul" account for?  That is an epistemological question.  So it isn't psychology, so there is no need to answer that, scientificly.

Arik is coming from a pre-modern psychology (of introspection) that comes from India.  Back in the day, they were more scientific than the West.  But that ended about 100 years ago.  Master yogis of course, still master introspection than Westerners do, but that isn't the main technique for psychology today.

So "soul" doesn't apply to science anymore, because of the advance of medical/psych research.  Not that "mind" is completely understood at this time (in the limited sense).

Science from the beginning, in Greece, not India, involved the restriction of data to external quantified evidence.  Internal or qualified evidence is not admitted.  That doesn't mean that doesn't exist, but that science originally admitted that its aims were modest.  It is with scientism which is an ideology, that hubris has come into play.  And reductionism in physical science has greatly aided this trend.  Reductionism itself, analysis itself ... however is not free of problems when looked at philosophically.  But then ... that takes us past the boundaries of psychology again ;-)

[Baruch]

Where does the consciousness reside before birth? Is it in another body? Is it just floating around not doing anything? Is it still enmeshed in the greater consciousness of the universe?

And how does it know when to inhabit a body, and which body to inhabit?

Don't ask a science question, that requires a philosophical or theological answer  In the scope of science, consciousness comes out of nowhere, and returned to nowhere.  This happens multiple times, every night, not just at conception and death.  Conception/birth is the first consciousness more or less (hence abortion questions).  Death is the final unconsciousness.

So ask me, which Romantic painter would I choose to change my car tire?

Your notions of philosophy and theology are simple, and there is no problem with that, it is simply who you are now.  Nobody, including you, know who or what you will be tomorrow.  Both atheists and theists violate that humility.  Monkeys throw poo without shame.

[Blackleaf]

Where does the consciousness reside before birth? Is it in another body? Is it just floating around not doing anything? Is it still enmeshed in the greater consciousness of the universe?

And how does it know when to inhabit a body, and which body to inhabit?

What happens if a consciousness is bad with directions and gets lost trying to find its body? Does the body live as a soulless husk? Does the consciousness pull out its spiritual smartphone and use the spiritual Google Maps app to find its way? And how does this consciousness get anywhere if it's not affected by the forces of gravity? The earth is moving 67,000 miles per hour. Imagine trying to dock with your body when it's on an object moving that fast, as it is also spinning in a circle at 1,000 miles per hour.

[Plu]

Correct.  It might be electromagnetic, but I doubt it.  Studies have show that out-of-body isn't able to see things hidden to the awake person.  There may be more than one explanation for that.  The connection between mind and brain was an unsolved problem for Descartes.  We know more now after 400 years of medical and psychological science.  This devolves from the natural into the supernatural, and therefore not amenable to scientific confirmation.

So... pointless to think or talk about. Got it.

[Baruch]

So... pointless to think or talk about. Got it.

If you limit your thinking to physicalism ... then there is no point in talking about art, music, love or ideas in general.  You do need to limit yourself to that if you are talking about physics or chemistry.  Psychology isn't limited to physicalism, neurology is ... and that is made up of biology, chemistry and physics.

Neurology can help you getting a limited amount of quantitative objectivity on something that tends to be both qualitative and subjective.  EEG, PET, MRI and CT scans for instance have important uses.  PET detailed brain activity.  EEG shows general brain activity.  MRI and CT show the static structure.

[trdsf]

Michael Shermer states that, in reality, all experience is mediated and produced by the brain, and that so-called paranormal phenomena like out-of body experiences are nothing more than neuronal events. The study of patients with NDE, however, clearly shows us that consciousness with memories, cognition, with emotion, self-identity, and perception out and above a life-less body is experienced during a period of a non-functioning brain (transient pancerebral anoxia). And focal functional loss by inhibition of local cortical regions happens by “stimulation” of those regions with electricity (photons) or with magnetic fields (photons), resulting sometimes in out-of-body states.



http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Mediaskeptics/vanLommel.html

And it's still not a refereed paper in a scientific journal.  Unlike several of the ones referenced here that explain what NDEs are.  Spoiler alert: [spoiler]They're perfectly explainable without resorting to made-up bullshit and wishful thinking.[/spoiler]

By the bye, author of your link?  Cardiologist.  Not neurologist, not even a psychologist.  WRONG FIELD OF EXPERTISE.  Would I see him professionally if I had heart trouble?  Maybe.  Brain tumor?  Fuck no.

You are now at the point where you need to just admit, no, you do not have any actual scientific evidence to support your opinion, just the desire for it to be true as some sort of psychological security blanket.  At least have the honesty to do that.

[Baruch]

Correct, to be a proper refereed paper (and we aren't talking cuck social science) .. it has to be objective, external, quantitative.  NDE by nature don't meet that on any level.  But then consciousness barely meets that criteria anyway.  For a materialist, it has to always be a "ghost in the machine".

[Plu]

If you limit your thinking to physicalism ... then there is no point in talking about art, music, love or ideas in general. 

All of these things have a pretty clear effect on the physical part of my brain, so they are not at all pointless to talk about.

[Baruch]

All of these things have a pretty clear effect on the physical part of my brain, so they are not at all pointless to talk about.

Except, if you are a physicalist/materialist, you have no explanation for it.  I agree, the non-physical and the physical are in a dialectic.  My original avatar was Baruch Spinoza, who overcame Descartes' dualism with his monism.  Physical and metaphysical are two sides of an unknown.  Spinoza thought he could create a deductive system that would illuminate that unknown.  Structurally similar to Euclid's Elements.

We only know things by categorizing them ... which is two or more sides of some other thing.  If the simplest number system is binary, can there be a unary system?  Not with placeholders.  Without categorizing we can only point in a random direction and say Ugh like our caveman ancestors.  It is not for nothing, that in the Eden mythology, Adam's first job is to name the animals aka Linneaus.