Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[dlorde]

A person with no brain activity is medically and legally dead, but if all the brain is, is a group of cells dependent on it's oxygen content and nutrients supplied through artificial means then life support should be adequate to maintain the brain whether it has electrical activity or not.

Not necessarily. Many cell types will die if they don't receive appropriate stimulation. Cell physiology is a complex business.

 

[Jodie]

Electrical jolt to the muscle also animate the body. You may want to add "directed" animation of the body to that.



Doctor can chime on that opne , but there are processes which simply make it so that the rest of the body will start dying and decaying. Among other bed sores. I do not remember the list of it, but some stuff simply start shutting down no matter how much mechanical help we have.

Now we may find solutions to those, it is just that the solution might not be worth it.

Bedsores can form on the conscious as well as the unconscious. The bodies of people are in a constant state of regeneration and decay because the individual cells have a set life span.

As long as the body is maintained via respiration, food, etc... that process continues until the telomeres shorten, replication of the cells becomes corrupted, resulting in the natural aging process.

I don't think electrical impulses applied to muscle tissue can be compared to the self awareness that results from the electrical activity of the brain.

Restating my point again, our brain function is much more complicated than we presently understand. Therefore the source of NDE's, how to interpret what the NDE represents, and why some people have them and other's don't will remain a mystery until we solve the question of what consciousness is and where it originates from.

 

[Jodie]

Not necessarily. Many cell types will die if they don't receive appropriate stimulation. Cell physiology is a complex business.

Yes it is which reinforces what I just said in the above post.

 

[Donn]

There has to be something more to life since those that live on that are "brain dead" can't live indefinitely on artificial life support.

All you've said here is: dying people eventually die. This is your support for "there has to be something more to life?"

Let me fetch my smallest violin.

 

[John Jones]

Your sore point is showing. That was quite an emotional response.

Convincing the 'us' you speak of is not an agenda of mine. If the 'us' want to believe whatever they will, then they will. That is the power of belief.

Navigator,

You have a long-time habit of errant pedantry regarding the discipline of science. I can't recall a single time you demonstrated an understanding of a scientific topic.

Has something changed? Can you at long last speak knowledgeably about some field within the discipline of science?

I can't wait.

 

[Navigator]

Are you among them?
There are many, myself included, who have experienced vivid hallucinations, many who have experienced "sensed presence", or autoscopy. Everything I have encountered which people experience can be explained as the function of the brain, indeed requires the brain and its appendages to be experienced.
Could you describe what it is you have experienced which leads you to reject the brain as its source?

First off I am not rejecting the notion that the brain has something to do with the process. I accept that it is part of the process.

What I find hardest to believe is that the brain is the source and creator of complex experiences which are over and above those normally experienced through the five senses.

In order for the brain to do this it has to be conscious and have intention.

The only thing conscious about the brain is consciousness itself. Therefore consciousness has to be the thing creating the experiences.

However, since I am the consciousness of the brain, I am the only thing which can create the experiences.

Since I had never thought about any of the imagery which I subsequently consciously experienced, how could I have created the experiences?

Also, how could I have hidden that information from myself and thus been able to create the imagery AND at some later point, project the imagery into my consciousness as an experience?

 

[SusanB-M1]

This bears repeating over and over. These ideas might make sense if we didn't know what we know, but we DO know what we know. The problem is that the people proposing the ideas do NOT know, and do not WANT to know because logic and reason and evidence aren't the source of their believe. They WANT it to be true.

Heartily seconded!

 

[dlorde]

Yes it is which reinforces what I just said in the above post.

What you said was, "life support should be adequate to maintain the brain whether it has electrical activity or not", which, as I just pointed out, is not necessarily the case.

 

[Donn]

What I find hardest to believe is that the brain is the source and creator of complex experiences which are over and above those normally experienced through the five senses.

Your strained belief is leading you down errant paths. Try asking yourself this one question, "What if I'm wrong?"

The only thing conscious about the brain is consciousness itself. Therefore consciousness has to be the thing creating the experiences.

Consciousness is the result of a brain that is running. It is not also the fuel.

However, since I am the consciousness of the brain, I am the only thing which can create the experiences.

The "I" is not as simple as it feels to us. Your mind is manufacturing experiences all the time, tweaking the inputs and matching them to the expectation stored in your head.

Since I had never thought about any of the imagery which I subsequently consciously experienced, how could I have created the experiences?

You do not have to. Do you prepare all your thoughts before you think them? Do you script your dreams?

These experiences you had come from the brain - simulated inputs that it processes as if they came from the actual senses.

Also, how could I have hidden that information from myself and thus been able to create the imagery AND at some later point, project the imagery into my consciousness as an experience?

These knots you tie yourself in are all a result of the errant path of duality you are walking.

Mind is brain running on atoms for fuel. Fin.

 

[Aepervius]

Navigator,

You have a long-time habit of errant pedantry regarding the discipline of science. I can't recall a single time you demonstrated an understanding of a scientific topic.

Has something changed? Can you at long last speak knowledgeably about some field within the discipline of science?

I can't wait.

Pretty much why i stopped presenting argument, i remember a similar discussion in the past which was as fruitless (ETA: might actually have been a thread on brain and consciousness too). Once somebody start to say "belief" is the most important and ignore all science, there is pretty much nothing anymore to be done.

 

[steenkh]

What I find hardest to believe is that the brain is the source and creator of complex experiences which are over and above those normally experienced through the five senses.

In order for the brain to do this it has to be conscious and have intention.

Why? Synapses running loose and generating random experiences do not need a consciousness or intention to do so.

The only thing conscious about the brain is consciousness itself. Therefore consciousness has to be the thing creating the experiences.

How did you arrive at this conclusion? In what way can consciousness itself be conscious but a brain cannot?

Your conclusions are based on fallacies.

 

[dlorde]

Pretty much why i stopped presenting argument, i remember a similar discussion in the past which was as fruitless (ETA: might actually have been a thread on brain and consciousness too). Once somebody start to say "belief" is the most important and ignore all science, there is pretty much nothing anymore to be done.

Yes, I've been here before too. It seems the best one can do is just correct errors for the benefit of any lurkers.

 

[dlorde]

Your conclusions are based on fallacies.

Themselves based on the argument from incredulity / ignorance.

 

[Wolrab]

Well color me totally convinced by Navigator's responses.
My favorites boils down to "How do you know?" followed closely by, "Science can't observe the unobservable." , and lastly,"Your sore point is showing. That was quite an emotional response".
Who can argue with such impeccable logic.

 

[Nonpareil]

The only thing conscious about the brain is consciousness itself. Therefore consciousness has to be the thing creating the experiences.

The only thing running about the legs is running itself. Therefore, muscles have no part in creating motion.

 

[Navigator]

Perhaps MuDPhuD may be able to answer.

 

[Belz...]

Restating my point again, our brain function is much more complicated than we presently understand. Therefore the source of NDE's, how to interpret what the NDE represents, and why some people have them and other's don't will remain a mystery until we solve the question of what consciousness is and where it originates from.

Your conclusion does not follow from the premise. Just because we don't understand everything doesn't mean we can't conclude some things from what we _do_ know. And we know enough about the brain to conclude that NDEs are most probably due to oxygen deprivation or similar brain processes. Literally _nothing_ takes us in the direction of souls or spirits.

You are trying to mount a god-of-the-gaps argument, but it fails.

 

[Navigator]

Why? Synapses running loose and generating random experiences do not need a consciousness or intention to do so.

Complex experiences. The content of the experiences are not random bits of disassociate data.

How did you arrive at this conclusion? In what way can consciousness itself be conscious but a brain cannot?

Is not consciousness the consciousness of the brain?

 

[Belz...]

What I find hardest to believe is that the brain is the source and creator of complex experiences which are over and above those normally experienced through the five senses.

No, they're not. This has been amply demonstrated.

Also, how could I have hidden that information from myself and thus been able to create the imagery AND at some later point, project the imagery into my consciousness as an experience?

The brain is not a recorder.

 

[Belz...]

The "I" is not as simple as it feels to us. Your mind is manufacturing experiences all the time, tweaking the inputs and matching them to the expectation stored in your head.

In fact, we are not the person we were a second ago. Consciousness may not be an illusion, but it sure is a con.