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Consciousness

Scorpion said:
I am a survivor of chemical imbalance of the brain, and I can assure you I had the last word in my mind, and not my chemicals.
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You are your chemicals Scorpion. Your chemicals and electricity. That's it.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
Now you're just assuming that because you don't know about it noone does. Yes, they do Scorpion. When someone has their brain spilt each half of their body acts like a different person, not only down to how they may reach for things but down to preferences in clothing.

In fact just to show up your appeal to personal incredulity for exactly what it is and just how shallow it is, here is a result I got after googling "split brain research". It is the first google result.

Here is the abstract:
For several decades, split-brain research has provided valuable insight into the fields of psychology and neuroscience. These studies have progressed our knowledge of hemispheric specialization, language processing, the role of the corpus callosum, cognition, and even human consciousness. Following a recent empirical paper by Pinto et al. (2017a) and review by Volz and Gazzaniga (2017), a debate has ensued about the nature of conscious perception of visual stimuli in split-brain patients. This exchange is an ideal platform for generating discussion about both the implications of recent findings and the interpretation of results from split-brain studies in general.
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Decades Scorpion. They've been studying this for decades.


How do you explain that with the concept of a soul?

Further, when does the soul (for want of a better word) attach to the body it is inhabiting? During conception? Well what about monozygotic twins then? Does the sould somehow split in two?

At birth? Does that mean that the foetus isn't complete? What about premature babies that survive?

At some point during gestation? Ok, when? At what point is the foetus ensouled? Do the reactions of the foetus prior to this point not matter?
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I don't want this to get missed so I'm bumping it to the new page.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
I don't want this to get missed so I'm bumping it to the new page.
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I attended lectures by the late spiritualist medium 'Ursula Roberts' who said the soul is attached to the egg at conception. Funnily enough I believe the Catholic church teaches the same thing. I cannot say how twins from a divide egg could be two people. Maybe two souls incarnated at the same time. Ursula Roberts did say that in some cases of the possessed, two souls might have incarnated together.
 
1. That's not evidence Scorpion, that's an assertion.

2. That only "answers" one part of my post which contained several points. Yet again you are snipping out all but one section of a post you are replying to that you think you can answer and ignoring the rest. Why do you do this? Why must you persist in these tactics?

3. Why have there been absolutely no studies over the decades we have been investigating this that support the idea of a soul?

4. How weak must souls be if they can be altered completely by damage to the brain? How weak must they be when magnets can cause changes to the personality expressed by said soul?

You seem like a nice guy Scorpion, but you continually use tactics that make you look intellectually dishonest. Why must you continue to do this?
 
Scorpion said:
I know nothing about split brains and I doubt any on else does either. It must be a very rare event therefore it cannot have had much study done on it.
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You are completely wrong. You are projecting your ignorance onto other people.

I do however know something about split personalities
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There's serious doubt that those exist as well.

How do you manage to be so completely wrong?

I am a survivor of chemical imbalance of the brain
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I'm a survivor of a broken toe.

Everything I have learned after 75 years tells me your statement is entirely wrong.
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And everything I've learned tells me he's right. Gee, maybe personal experience isn't worth very much.
 
Scorpion said:
I attended lectures by the late spiritualist medium 'Ursula Roberts' who said the soul is attached to the egg at conception. Funnily enough I believe the Catholic church teaches the same thing. I cannot say how twins from a divide egg could be two people. Maybe two souls incarnated at the same time. Ursula Roberts did say that in some cases of the possessed, two souls might have incarnated together.
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We aren’t talking about souls. - this thread is about counciousness.
 
Chanakya said:
Hold on, hold on. You've spoken about this before, but it now occurs to me:

There's this commonly asked question, What is/are qualia? (What's the singular, qualium? Whatever.) You condition might suggest an answer, isn't it?

You apparently don't have qualia. Most people do. So if the exact cranio-neurological process that is different in you (and in others with your condition) than it is in most others, can be isolated, then what we'll have right there is an exact precise answer, we'll know exactly what leads to qualia.
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I am of course being ever so slightly facetious.

In the apple case it is meant to be the “experience” of redness. I was told for many years (here) that because folk could imagine a red apple the experience of “redness” was something other than simply the chemical actions caused from light reflecting from a surface and entering my eye. However I have no qualia of redness unless my eye (and then whole cascade of reactions) is seeing redness. I have no qualia of redness as I was told I had.
 
"Qualia" is a made-up, B.S. term where people add mystical, made-up qualities that don't exist to something so they can shove a Soul into our experience.

CALL IT A SOUL! It's a soul. Soul soul souely soul soul. Soul soul soul.

Someone without a soul could taste an apple, but you need a soul to... *Pause* EXPERIENCE the apple.

That's what people are saying and I wish they would own it.
 
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Darat said:
I am of course being ever so slightly facetious.
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No, I get that. But still, as far as this:


In the apple case it is meant to be the “experience” of redness. I was told for many years (here) that because folk could imagine a red apple the experience of “redness” was something other than simply the chemical actions caused from light reflecting from a surface and entering my eye. However I have no qualia of redness unless my eye (and then whole cascade of reactions) is seeing redness. I have no qualia of redness as I was told I had.
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This aphantasia thing is something I myself came across only here, from your accounts of it in past threads. But no doubt there are others also, who have this condition.

Of course, it could just be that this is simply a memory thing. Like some people are bad at recalling faces, as I am; maybe you're just very bad at recalling experiences?

But if not, that is, if aphantasia is somehow tied up with how one experiences things (or, as in your case, does not experience them), then, it occurs to me, that might close some loops in terms of providing a precise neurobiological explanation of how qualia are created.

I mean, sure, that qualia are an artifact of our brains and our nerves et cetera seems kind of self-evident, but if we could arrive at the precise mechanism that triggers these qualia things, then that might bring the qualia question to a very clear and entirely unambiguous conclusion. And, it seems to me, your condition might help provide a route to doing just that. Unless, like I said, it turns out it is no more than simply a memory thing.
 
Chanakya said:
…snip…

Unless, like I said, it turns out it is no more than simply a memory thing.
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Nope it’s not a memory thing, apparently people can “imagine” things like a red cube or a blue ball even if they can’t recall the exact look of a blue ball they had when they were younger.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
You are your chemicals Scorpion. Your chemicals and electricity. That's it.
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It is my experience that I can over ride the chemical imbalance of my brain by refusing to give in to it and refusing medication. I also know for a fact that memory is not just stored electrically in the brain, because I had a course of ECT (Electro convulsive therapy) and I could not remember anything for a week, but then my memory returned. Since the brain and nervous system work on less than half a volt, and an ECT shock is over a hundred volts, the brain must store memories by other means than electricity. Otherwise such a shock would wipe it.
 
That isn't how it works at all Scorpion.

Just because you think that something should be one way does not mean it is.
 
Darat said:
Nope it’s not a memory thing, apparently people can “imagine” things like a red cube or a blue ball even if they can’t recall the exact look of a blue ball they had when they were younger.
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Of course, it would be for a neuroscientist to actually decide if this kind of thing is doable, and if it is doable then to actually do it, but in that case, might studying aphantasia (that is, the specific differences in neurobiological processes between people with this condition, and the rest who don't have this condition) provide some clue to how qualia are actually formed/experienced?

(Because clearly there must be some difference, somewhere. And you're saying that difference isn't a matter merely of memory.)

Doing that might settle once and for all the qualia question, I was thinking. Clearly explain the neurobiological processes that come into play.
 
JoeMorgue said:
"Soul." Call it a soul you intellectually dishonest cowards. Don't hide the word behind "consciousness."
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Both terms have baggage.

Whatever it is, the self referential feeling is the mystery.

For me personally, I decide some things then disagree with myself and then there's two of me debating about it until I finally decide, for example.

Does everyone do that? Or is the machinery different?
 
Chanakya said:
Of course, it would be for a neuroscientist to actually decide if this kind of thing is doable, and if it is doable then to actually do it, but in that case, might studying aphantasia (that is, the specific differences in neurobiological processes between people with this condition, and the rest who don't have this condition) provide some clue to how qualia are actually formed/experienced?

(Because clearly there must be some difference, somewhere. And you're saying that difference isn't a matter merely of memory.)

Doing that might settle once and for all the qualia question, I was thinking. Clearly explain the neurobiological processes that come into play.
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There is research into it. I only found out my lack because a news report on research to it. It was quite a revelation for me, for all my life I’d assumed people were being poetic talking about what they saw with their mind’s eye. There were clues - techniques like a “memory palace” for how to remember things never made sense to me but I suspect like most people do I assumed everyone was like me.
 
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