Gord_in_Toronto
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2006
- Messages
- 26,495
Last edited:
Near Death and Out of Body Experiences
- Thread starter zengirl
- Start date
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
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.
Call it programming, consciousness, or what have you....if we were just living blobs of flesh we would all be the same, but we aren't.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
Want the brain to be more than just a piece of meat? I think we do know that.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
Then what is the genesis for the electrical activity within the brain? It seems that as long as the tissue is viable then theoretically you should be able to revive it just as you do when you use a defibrillator.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
I don't think we have a separate soul or spirit, but something more like a group mind with consciousness residing somewhere outside of the body. The NDE doesn't represent this belief but if it's a hallucination then I'm hoping the hybridized neural networks can at least explain why people see what they claim to see.
Donn
Philosopher
We are all the same. Our personalities are hardly unique, over billions of humans. We are all robots responding to a variety of landscapes.
Under that group mind is your skull.
dlorde
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2007
- Messages
- 6,864
The electrical activity detectable with, say, an ECG, is the summed electrical field disturbances produced by the membrane depolarisations of millions of brain cells as they stimulate one-another.
Brain cells are not heart cells; although if they are firing abnormally, as in an epileptic seizure, you can break them out of that abnormal pattern with a gentle stimulus, e.g. from an implanted electrode (perhaps even via transcranial magnetic stimulation, I'm not sure).
If they are inactive due to anaesthesia, anoxia, or cooling to low temperatures, they will resume activity when the anaesthetic has 'worn off', when oxygen is restored, or when they warm up, respectively - assuming they remain viable.
Last edited:
dlorde
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 20, 2007
- Messages
- 6,864
There are already a number of plausible neurophysiological explanations for the specific features of NDEs.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
I'm thinking back to when my mother had her catastrophic brain aneurysm when she was 52. We had to wait a week before her brain was "wave free" so that she could be taken off the ventilator. She slowly bled out from a brain stem bleed and we elected not to operate since she would have been in a vegetative state, if she survived the surgery at all. In that case, I can see how anoxia played a part because the circulation to the brain was compromised.
In my aunt's case, she had a bleed that wasn't discovered until several months after a fall. The entire back of her brain was clotted but because of where it was, and her personal wishes, we allowed them to operate to evacuate the blood clot. At 86, she made a complete recovery.
I guess it depends on what happens, where it happens, and luck of the draw as to whether anyone survives unscathed from those kinds of injuries.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
If it was wrapped up,tied with a bow in a neat little package, with a "That's all settled then" tag on it then research investigating the issue wouldn't continue.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
Slow is slow on the draw here, you've made it obvious that you aren't bothering to read the research linked that you asked for.....
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
Interesting approach to reality, there...
Let's review the bidding:
You claimed that
I asked for links to those projects, intrigued by the concept of "cultivating" neurons onto microchips.
Of the links you provided:
leads to a "this webpage is not available" notice
...turns out to be the discussion of a set of procedures to build an organic interface for "...stimulation, manipulation and recording of cell bioelectrical activity in vitro and in vivo..."
...does not open a page or a document; searching the title generated, ("Photolithographic generation of protein micropatterns for neuron culture applications" ) led to a paywalled article about using photoresist etching of protein-based substances to (again) simulate neuronal function.
...links to an article about mimicking the structures of the human brain to build small chips. Although labeled you may hve been misled by the titl (did you read the whole paper?) and by the frequent use of the "neurosynaptic" buzzword, but the article is about simulation of neuronal function, not about "cultivating" neurons.
Your "superstar",
...led to another "webpage not available" page.
Typically, your argumentum ad catarractum did not address what you claimed; at that point, I chose not to play your treasure hunt game any more.
None of which addresses the fact that your snide assertion (with your oh-so-clever-and-original-play-on-my-nym (did you come up with that yourself? I had never heard it before...
) had nothing to do wiith the post to which you pretended to be responding. In response to Navigator's post:
...dlorde posted this:
...which I found both skillfully crafted and amusing, but which has nothing to do with the "sources" that do not in fact, provide support for your other claim; nor can it honestly be said to indicate whether I did, in fact, look at your "sources" in good faith.
Interesting that that is the thing, out of all the questions you have been asked, to which you chose to respond.
Navigator
Philosopher
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2004
- Messages
- 7,324
I do not understand what you are saying. Please clarify.
Jodie
Philosopher
- Joined
- May 7, 2012
- Messages
- 6,231
When I looked, those articles were accessible, otherwise I wouldn't have linked them. There are many applications for organic AI, if you care enough to do your own search.
http://http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038110108001354
http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2050500/Biological-computers-soon-reality-scientists-build-basic-components-bacteria-DNA.html
https://intelligence.org/2014/09/09/hayworth/
http://http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038110108001354
http://http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2050500/Biological-computers-soon-reality-scientists-build-basic-components-bacteria-DNA.html
https://intelligence.org/2014/09/09/hayworth/
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
I am not sure how I can "clarify" the remark I addressed to Jodie.
Read it in context, and, if it is still unclear to you, point out what it is that you do not understand.
Daylightstar
Philosopher
The first two links have a double http protocol, in the actual link text as well, whereby the second http lacks the colon right after the "p", in the actual link text as well.
The first two links work only when the double http protocol is removed entirely from the actual link text, or .... when the "http//" without colon, is removed from the actual link text.
That's the problem with your first two links.
Slowvehicle
Membership Drive , Co-Ordinator,, Russell's Antin
The first two still link to a "This website is not available" message.
The third is an interview, in which Dr. Ken Hayworth holds that "the functioning of the brain can be understood at a fully mechanistic level". Dr. Haywoth discusses how to emulate cognition, but does not appear to put forth the idea of any "self" independent of a neural (be it organic, constructed, of some combination) system.
The only point at which "artificial AI" is mentioned is in the context of abstract artificail architectures, which is a long way from conscripting Dr. Hayward as support for the idea that the "soul" exists.
It is interesting stuff, but it is far from your implication of "cultivating" neurons on microchips.
But thanks for the readings.
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
That is an assuming the consequence fallacy. It is also a non sequitur logical fallacy. You have not demonstrated that living blobs of flesh would all be "the same". Furthermore, It's an equivocation fallacy for using the very vague term 'same' without explicitly defining how you mean the term.
Last edited:
John Jones
Penultimate Amazing
If you can successfully use a defibrillator (on the heart - its intended purpose) before the brain dies, then yes.
I don't know what point you thought you were making. It reads like you think a defibrillator could be used successfully on the brain of those near death if the current scientific model were correct. Science says no such thing.
Last edited:
