Interaction between body and soul

[JayUtah]

According to Wikipedia, French says that NDEs appear to the experiencers as a soul leaving the body. So either he is right or he is wrong, but that's what he says.

Really? Those are the only possible alternatives? It's not even remotely possible that you, not having read the original source, have drawn the wrong conclusion from Wikipedia's summary?

 

[Belz...]

Nonsense. I suggested a reason to explain why only 10% of survivors report NDEs.

Fact: Only 10% of survivors report NDEs.
Possible reason: Other survivors may have forgotten their NDEs, as one would forget a dream or because of amnesia commonly caused by anesthetics.

Before you fit a theory to the facts, you might want to establish that theory.

The problem is that you're still stuck in the circularity. Allow me to demonstrate:

Why do you believe that there is such a thing as a soul?

 

[litewave]

Before you fit a theory to the facts, you might want to establish that theory.

The problem is that you're still stuck in the circularity. Allow me to demonstrate:

Why do you believe that there is such a thing as a soul?

I don't believe it. I said repeatedly that I don't have enough data to make a conclusion about the existence of the soul. I explore possibilities in the context of our knowledge from physics and neuroscience.

 

[JayUtah]

How would these NDEs know it was their soul?

Narrator: They don't.

The experience reported is a perspective not associated with the known body location. It varies from a vague sense of detachment to a perception of various forms of juxtaposition. In litewave's hasty reading of Wikipedia's summary, he has missed where French goes from summarizing what the patents actually recount to what the spiritualist theories say is going on. He's trying to attribute what the theorists propose as if it were what the patients believe. The starting point of the theory is the proposition, "We should take the floating-perspective reports at face value." There is another part of the theory that proposes, "This is the spirit leaving the body and journeying into the afterlife." The source absolutely does not support the notion that this latter conclusion is what any of the patients believe.

 

[JayUtah]

I don't believe it. I said repeatedly that I don't have enough data to make a conclusion about the existence of the soul.

And then you go on to presume it does, as a premise to all your further ramblings. How many times must people point out the circularity of your reasoning before you consider the possibility they may be right?

 

[Belz...]

I don't believe it.

I don't believe you.

 

[JayUtah]

...in the context of our knowledge ... [of] neuroscience.

Funny then that you havne't yet cited a single neurologist. All your life-science authorities come from other fields, and do not even necessarily represent the prevailing views in those fields.

 

[Darat]

And I explained in OP how the effect of significant interaction with the soul can be produced without being differentiated in neurological observations from familiar influences: the neuroscientist can see measurable activity of the brain and be unable to tell whether it is entirely caused by known physical particles.

Jay accurately summed up my previous responses. But you are still not understanding what we now know (and not theoretically but from evidence). The scales the brain works at and right the way down to the quarks and other exotic beasts and there is no "spare" or "excess" energy at all those scales so we know there is nothing else hiding away. This is not to claim we know everything or there aren't things to still be discovered but we know there isn't anything that interacts at the scales the brain works at (and magnitudes "lower"). If something interacts with the brain it is doing so via the known forces/fields/dragons we already know about.

 

[P.J. Denyer]

"Oldest soul?" It's been about an hour and a half since I woke up this morning. That's as far back as this current soul goes, if even that far.

East Asian Buddhism has six places the soul can be cranked through:
The Human Realm
The Animal Realm
The Heavenly Realm
The Hell Realm
The Realm of Hungry GhostsThe Realm of Fighting Demigods
(Plus in many tales: Rebirth as a household utensil.)
So been there and done all of them.

As for "Intarnation," tarnations there be a plenty without count.

Buddhism inherited Reincarnation from the Hindu Milieu. It's never been a fit with the assertion of "No-Self." Over the centuries Buddhist thinkers have tried to fudge it in, but contemporary Secular Buddhists are all too happy to chuck the notion in the trash.

That's the one in Pac-Man, right?

 

[Darat]

^Wins Thread^



I've been dead twice, brought back twice. No bright lights, dead relatives or heavenly harps.



When you're gone, you're gone.



My best friend and drummer died last July. Between he, I and our guitarist we have a secret word for him to give us if he's on the other side.



Tony and I are still waiting to hear or see that word.

You're expecting a drummer to remember a special word? That would be supernatural!

 

[Darat]

Nonsense. I suggested a reason to explain why only 10% of survivors report NDEs.



Fact: Only 10% of survivors report NDEs.

Possible reason: Other survivors may have forgotten their NDEs, as one would forget a dream or because of amnesia commonly caused by anesthetics.

Is there some official register that you have to update if you have a NDE? Otherwise you have no idea of the percentage of people who have been at death's door and had a NDE.

 

[JesseCuster]

NDErs often mention out of body experiences and that it felt very real, even hyper-real, vivid and with heightened empathy toward other people.

That's not what I asked.

I asked how vivid and empathetic NDEs could be considered evidence that, or makes it apparent that, souls are detaching from brains during the NDE.

How do you get from vivid and empathetic NDEs to souls detaching from brains?

It's easy to imagine a fantastical scenario that matches some real world facts and then conclude that it's apparent that the fantastical scenario is true. Logic does not work that way. You can't just assume the existence of a soul and assume it works in a way that is consistent with some NDEs and then suggest it's apparent that NDEs are caused by souls doing something. That's circular reasoning.

 

[litewave]

In litewave's hasty reading of Wikipedia's summary, he has missed where French goes from summarizing what the patents actually recount to what the spiritualist theories say is going on. He's trying to attribute what the theorists propose as if it were what the patients believe. The starting point of the theory is the proposition, "We should take the floating-perspective reports at face value."

So do you acknowledge that patients feel as if they are floating outside of their body? If so, what could such a patient think about it? "Hm, I am outside of my body, which makes sense because I am just my body."

 

[JayUtah]

The scales the brain works at and right the way down to the quarks and other exotic beasts...

I think the bit of information that may not be readily apparent is that the effect of communication has to be visible, in the brain, at those energy levels, in order to say that communication has occurred by any means. It does no good to speculate about different means by which some communication might occur at very tiny energy levels. If the end result is not the observation of the communicative effect, then no dice.

We can draw the parallel perhaps to structural resonance. Yes, a very small amount of energy can be used to excite a structure to a seemingly disproportionate degree if it is applied at the right frequency. But the effect of that resonance is still observable. It does no good to argue that nobody can hear me banging on the bridge with a hammer at its resonant frequency. The evidence of the effect is still visible at the broad scale in the form of a flopping bridge. And if my goal is to use resonance to destroy the bridge, it has to flop a lot regardless of what tiny thing is making it flop.

You can't simply keep shoving the problem of observation farther down the causal chain and announce that you've fixed it.

 

[Darat]

That's not what I asked.



I asked how vivid and empathetic NDEs could be considered evidence that, or makes it apparent that, souls are detaching from brains during the NDE.



How do you get from vivid and empathetic NDEs to souls detaching from brains?

And has been previously alluded to by what means was the soul "seeing" these events? We know it can't be using any senses that the body uses, so how come this is then translated into a memory movie?

 

[JayUtah]

So do you acknowledge that patients feel as if they are floating outside of their body?

No, I acknowledge that they describe a subjective experience using variations on such terms. What you're trying to get me to accept is that a majority of them interpret that experience according to how one school of researchers does -- specifically that they argue it's what was literally happening to them.

I've read your source. You haven't. I've summarized the gist of the source for you, so that you can see the error in your interpretation without having to go pay to read the source. Yet for some reason you want to avoid all that and simply try to keep shoving words in my mouth.

Pathetic.

 

[Belz...]

So do you acknowledge that patients feel as if they are floating outside of their body?

People feel all sorts of untrue stuff. A friend of mine took some acid one day and saw people as polygons like in an old video game. That doesn't mean that people were actually polygonal.

If so, what could such a patient think about it? "Hm, I am outside of my body, which makes sense because I am just my body."

Don't assume that you know what others think.

 

[JayUtah]

If so, what could such a patient think about it?

Begging the question. You're the one who claimed the majority of patients who described some form of locality dissociation interpreted it as the soul leaving the body. It's your burden to prove the patients are thinking what you say they're thinking.

When asked for the evidence, you gave me a summary of how different commentators approach OBE reports and then latched onto one of those approaches to the full exclusion of all others. That one school says, "We take the patient's description at face value, as a factual report of what actually was occurring." That says absolutely zilch about whether the patient took it at face value. In fact, French didn't even have that information available to him. Other approaches say, "We grasp that that's what it seemed like, and here is how that might have been merely an illusion produced by this or that phenomenon." That too says absolutely zilch about whether the patient thought it was an illusion. You're conflating how various researchers interpret the data with how the patients interpret the data.

If I describe my experience of sleeping on a memory foam mattress as, "It's like I was floating on a cloud," does that mean I literally believe was I was floating on a cloud?

 

[JesseCuster]

In my OP I had the general scenario in mind, that the soul interacts with the body anytime and in a significant way. Then Scorpion mentioned that the soul may be dormant during life and it reminded me of the doctrine of the spiritual fall of man in religious literature. So there seems to be a possibility that the soul interacts with the body only sometimes, or anytime but not much.

I have no idea how the sentence in italics follows from the preceding sentences. Someone said something that reminded you of something in a religious book, therefore something something souls interacts body something something?

 

[litewave]

We can draw the parallel perhaps to structural resonance. Yes, a very small amount of energy can be used to excite a structure to a seemingly disproportionate degree if it is applied at the right frequency. But the effect of that resonance is still observable.

And I don't dispute that the effect is observable. You keep attacking a strawman.