Interaction between body and soul

[JayUtah]

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

But the observed effect without observed cause is the observation you don't have. All you have is a circular ball of speculation in search of something to explain.

 

[litewave]

But the observed effect without observed cause is the observation you don't have. All you have is a circular ball of speculation in search of something to explain.

The observed effect is the brain activity on fMRI or EEG. But you can't tell whether the observed brain activity is caused entirely by known particles inside and outside a messy system of billions of neurons and synapsies.

 

[JayUtah]

The observed effect is the brain activity on fMRI or EEG.

No that's not the scale we're operating at in addressing your theory. I've hijacked Darat's line of questioning, which was impolite. Let's wait until he weighs in.

 

[JesseCuster]

Yes, but I guess it is also apparent to you that you are reading words on a screen. I will let you make your own conclusion from that appearance.

What conclusion do you think he should draw?

 

[JesseCuster]

You seem to be saying whatever you think will help your case at any given moment.

I'm getting a lot of that from litewave's posts.

 

[litewave]

No that's not the scale we're operating at in addressing your theory.

On what scale are you operating then and how do you observe brain activity on that scale?

 

[Belz...]

The observed effect is the brain activity on fMRI or EEG. But you can't tell whether the observed brain activity is caused entirely by known particles inside and outside a messy system of billions of neurons and synapsies.

That's true of everything. For all we know, atoms move about because tiny fairies are pushing them.

 

[The Greater Fool]

That's true of everything. For all we know, atoms move about because tiny fairies are pushing them.

I KNEW it!

 

[JesseCuster]

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."

[emphasis mine]

What is being asked of you is what did the patient actually think about it, not what could the patient have though about it?

The former is what is actually being asked and for which there might be some evidence available, the latter is just inviting idle speculation not based on any evidence. It sounds like you're making conclusions on what OBE experiencers think, based on what you imagine they would or should think, instead of what they say they actually think. That's not a very reliable methodology.

 

[JayUtah]

I'm getting a lot of that from litewave's posts.

What I'm seeing is a lot of hasty assertions and generalizations, followed by ineffective backfill attempts at post-justification. For example, he's trying really hard to make the Wikipedia summary of French sound like what he intended all along, even though it patently isn't if you actually read the chapter.

But in all fairness, how can patients describe what they experienced except in experiential terms? Try, for example, to describe the smell of something -- anything -- without comparing it to another thing.

What we describe informally as an "out-of-body experience" (OBE) is a collection of reported phenomena that sometimes get called things like contextual dissociation in the neurology literature. There is no one agreed-upon term, either in the technical or in the popular vocabulary. As far as the spectrum of actual reports goes, some report a simple feeling of being nowhere, or a general feeling of detachment. Certainly the spectrum includes people who say, "It seemed like I was floating above my body." But it's important not to preferentially sever these specific reports from all the dissociation reports and give them special significance.

Another thing neuroscience reminds us is that we have no metasensation properties in the brain. Fans of The Simpsons may recall the episode where Dr. Nick asks, "When you were in that coma, did you feel your brain getting damaged?" Hilarious, yes, but that's pretty much what critics of the neuropathological explanation for NDEs want us to expect. Instead neurologists remind us that when things go wrong in the brain, it's always perceived in terms of sensory inputs because that's the only way the brain can present information to the cognitive layers. It's not like people suddenly grab their heads and say, "Ow! My amgydala!"

If something goes wrong with, say, the central vestibular system, it's not like there's a light that flashes in the cognitive layer saying, "GIMBAL LOCK." No, you might just have the sensation of being off balance, even when your body is balanced -- or of being perfectly balanced when you're about to fall over. Trauma or dysfunction in the sensory conditioning areas of the brain have no out-of-band method of reporting to the conscious perception. Similarly there are areas of the brain that keep track of where the various parts of our body are. When those areas are affected abnormally, the result is a sensation of not knowing where your body is, not some special indication that we consciously interpret as something wrong elsewhere in the brain.

"It seemed like I was floating above my body" doesn't necessarily translate to, "I literally believed my soul had left my body and was floating above it." People report their NDE observations as sensations because at the cognitive level they are indistinguishable from actual sensations. That certain researchers choose to take the reports literally is no indication that the patients themselves did.

 

[The Norseman]

Not to me. NDErs see whatever cultural deity is appropriate.

Strawman. NDEs are not random they are the result of notions ALREADY IN THE BRAIN. Thus christians see jesus, muslims see little mo and so forth. The point is that these myths were already in the brain in the first place.

Been there, done that. Your answer is No.

I've been musing about posting, once again, the story of my then-girl friend who had her own NDE. And possibly mine as well, though I don't think I've ever talked about it here before.

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.

And yet, so far, you've quoted from cardiologists who have spent years specializing in, and pardon me for the use of formal technical medical jargon, study of the 'not-brain' right? Something which is about 20 centimeters below the thingy that we're interested in?

 

[The Norseman]

The observed effect is the brain activity on fMRI or EEG. But you can't tell whether the observed brain activity is caused entirely by known particles inside and outside a messy system of billions of neurons and synapsies.

I missed this post earlier:

Yes, we can tell whether the observed brain activity is caused entirely by known particles. That was the whole point in my posting the link to Sean Carroll's blog -- physicists have discovered all the forces which could interact at the scales which affect the brain. That there are blanks in theories which describe forces which are far, far (far) smaller is irrelevant.

From what I've gathered, your resonance idea is based upon the concept that these incredibly tiny forces can somehow grow and magnify to the levels which are capable of interacting with the human brain, yes? Do you think that is a fair understanding?

If so, then what I and others are saying, once this tiny, tiny, tiny force grew or resonated with other stronger [larger] forces enough to interact with the brain then, at that point, we can measure them.

If there were some sort of force that is strong enough to interact with the brain that had no other explanation, then I think you could have some validity in theorizing a possible cause. But there isn't.

 

[Robin]

But we would still be able to detect the location of the moved particle, which means we would know something had moved them.

Do you keep track of all the particles in your brain?

 

[Robin]

What variables? Wouldn't we notice if a variable was changed by a supposed simulator?

How?

Say I have a simulation of a hundred particles, all moving around according to a physical law, say moving at delta t * v and colliding with momentum conserved.

I take ten of those particles and I nudge them a little to get an outcome I want.

Do you think you could tell which ones were nudged and which were just behaving according to physics? I can post a video of an example if you like and you tell me which are moving according to the general law and which ones have been nudged. You can't, or only if I make the movement really obvious.

And that is only one hundred particles that you can keep track of on screen and run the video back and forth as much as you like.

So you are telling me that if you were a simulation you could tell which particles in your brain the programmers had nudged?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

If something interacts with the brain it is doing so via the known forces/fields/dragons we already know about.

I agree. There is no unknown energy input causing the observed synapse activity

In addition, if the consciousness was leaving the body, we should see a significant reduction in synapse activity.....but no such reduction has been observed.

 

[I Am The Scum]

It depends on what you mean by "physical". My hypothesis is that the soul consists of yet unknown particle-fields that can under certain conditions interact with known particle-fields and could potentially be added to the Standard Model of particle physics.

Oh you can do this with anything. Watch:

I think there might be an alien civilization on the moon.
The surface of the moon has been thoroughly observed. There's no alien civilization there.
Yes, but what about the ineterior of the moon? If the moon were hollow...
The moon isn't hollow. The formation of astral bodies doesn't work like that.
Perhaps the moon is made of a special material that would allow it to form as a hollow shape.
We have moon rock samples. They've been studied. It isn't possible.
But what if the scientists weren't performing the right test?

And so on, and so on...

This thread has more to do with creative writing and imagination than it does with science or evidence.

 

[Loss Leader]

This thread has more to do with creative writing and imagination than it does with science or evidence.

Yeah, I missed two pages and none of this has gone anywhere. Litewave just keeps asserting, "But what if ..."

And the thing that kills me - absolutely slays me dead - is this argument that since scientists haven't figured out the exact movement of every subparticle everywhere, their theories are incomplete and thus just as valid as anything anyone could fancifully dream up.

 

[litewave]

From what I've gathered, your resonance idea is based upon the concept that these incredibly tiny forces can somehow grow and magnify to the levels which are capable of interacting with the human brain, yes? Do you think that is a fair understanding?

If so, then what I and others are saying, once this tiny, tiny, tiny force grew or resonated with other stronger [larger] forces enough to interact with the brain then, at that point, we can measure them.

Yes, you can measure the effect but the problem is how to trace its origins. fMRI has spatial resoultion on the scale of millimeters, EEG even worse. That was my point.

 

[litewave]

I agree. There is no unknown energy input causing the observed synapse activity

It's true that scientists are able to dissect an individual nerve cell but the problem is on a larger scale where the observation of individual neurons becomes intractable.

He explains the current dilemma in brain studies: On the one hand, neuroscientists have a great deal of knowledge of how one neuron works and have observed a handful of neurons interacting in the lab. Scientists studying human behavior, on the other hand, have set up MRI experiments mapping areas of the brain that react to certain stimuli. For instance, they’ve shown photos of babies to adults and recorded which part of the brain responded. These areas identified through MRIs are typically about a million neurons in size. “But what happens between a handful of neurons and a million neurons?” Xu asks. “We don’t know. We don’t have the tools we need to study the phenomenon in between.”

https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/observing-brains-activities-and-more

In addition, if the consciousness was leaving the body, we should see a significant reduction in synapse activity.....but no such reduction has been observed.

That depends on how much synapse activity there would be without a soul's meddling in the brain.

 

[litewave]

How?

Say I have a simulation of a hundred particles, all moving around according to a physical law, say moving at delta t * v and colliding with momentum conserved.

I take ten of those particles and I nudge them a little to get an outcome I want.

Do you think you could tell which ones were nudged and which were just behaving according to physics? I can post a video of an example if you like and you tell me which are moving according to the general law and which ones have been nudged. You can't, or only if I make the movement really obvious.

And that is only one hundred particles that you can keep track of on screen and run the video back and forth as much as you like.

So you are telling me that if you were a simulation you could tell which particles in your brain the programmers had nudged?

Physicists can measure particle movements with great precision in particle accelerators, but I agree that the measurements would become intractable in the brain.