Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Stops Here

[Arcade22]

You're assuming that consciousness exists as a result of brain activity. Without that assumption, it's not self-evident why the experience of being should cease.

Just about everything in neuroscience so far indicates that the brain DOES give rise to what is called "consciousness" and "mind". You are of course free to deny that and believe whatever you want but that's your problem.

The funny thing is that it's perfectly reasonable to believe that "my" or perhaps "the" consciousness that is create by "my" brain could be "reincarnated" in some other brain or equivalent object at some other point in space-time. Just don't expect that you are going to remember anything or be judged by your actions or anything like that cause it's the "consciousness", not the memories and such, that is "reincarnated".

 

[turingtest]

So sadly the title of this thread should be "Quantum Field Theory: The Woo Doesn't Even Slow Down Here."

Woo is the original perpetual motion machine; it has always been an example of simple inertia that needs no external energy source (like "evidence") to maintain its own directionless motion. Woo can spin nonsensical wheels for as long as it takes to satisfy nonsensical natures; the demand for it is the supply for it.

 

[Old man]

Originally Posted by Slowvehicle
How does the fact that your "past lives" or "previous recycles" are not accessible to you support your hopes in any way?

How does not remembering support it? That's a weird question. I don't get it. In case you mean "doesn't not remembering squash those expectations", I would say it doesn't help to not remember. It would be better to remember. That's why so many care so much about some little kid talking about having been a pilot, and things like that. It would be better to remember, of course.

My dad is 87. He has just started to 'remember' being a pilot in WW II. Does this support "past lives"?

 

[NotEvenWrong]

Sean Carroll notes in his presentation that consciousness is not understood. When people refer to an 'afterlife' they are referring to an extension of some kind of conscious experience beyond biological death. Lack of afterlife implies a permanent and irreversible end to conscious experience.

If consciousness is not understood and we cannot categorize what is required to be conscious vs. not conscious, it makes little sense to say we can definitively say consciousness becomes not conscious at a specific time or under specific conditions. Physics does not even deal with things that are not measurable (like consciousness). They may deal with the physical correlates of consciousness, but not the experience itself.

The afterlife may not exist, but quantum field theory has nothing to do with explaining the experience of being conscious, other than describing the interactions occurring in the brain. Which does next to nothing to explain consciousness, as Carroll noted in his own presentation. It certainly doesn't prove, on its own, that there is no afterlife. It doesn't even address the question.

 

[tsig]

Sean Carroll notes in his presentation that consciousness is not understood. When people refer to an 'afterlife' they are referring to an extension of some kind of conscious experience beyond biological death. Lack of afterlife implies a permanent and irreversible end to conscious experience.

If consciousness is not understood and we cannot categorize what is required to be conscious vs. not conscious, it makes little sense to say we can definitively say consciousness becomes not conscious at a specific time or under specific conditions. Physics does not even deal with things that are not measurable (like consciousness). They may deal with the physical correlates of consciousness, but not the experience itself.

The afterlife may not exist, but quantum field theory has nothing to do with explaining the experience of being conscious, other than describing the interactions occurring in the brain. Which does next to nothing to explain consciousness, as Carroll noted in his own presentation. It certainly doesn't prove, on its own, that there is no afterlife. It doesn't even address the question.

Consciousness is an emergent property of electro-chemical reactions in the brain.


ETA: Welcome to JREF (Just noticed your post #)

 

[PixyMisa]

Sean Carroll notes in his presentation that consciousness is not understood. When people refer to an 'afterlife' they are referring to an extension of some kind of conscious experience beyond biological death. Lack of afterlife implies a permanent and irreversible end to conscious experience.

The human mind is not fully understood. But it is brain function; that's not in question. It is physical and measurable; that's not in question. And QFT does indeed slam shut the door on any possibility of an afterlife.

Welcome to JREF. You are wrong in every possible way. Have a nice day.

 

[NotEvenWrong]

Thanks for the welcome tsig.

Are all groups of electro-chemical reactions conscious, or exclusively the ones in the brain? Can things that are not composed of electro-chemical reactions be conscious? What about computers?

And even if we grant that consciousness is exclusively an emergent property of electro-chemical reactions, QFT has little to nothing to do with it (apart from describing the electrodynamics of these interactions at a quantum level. Which isn't even necessary as you can describe it classically). That would be the realm of neuroscience and/or chemistry. Carroll is reaching here, and it doesn't make any sense. It seems like he is trying to lend credence to an idea by just throwing technical jargon at his audience, without explicitly noting the connection, and hoping that it sticks.

 

[NotEvenWrong]

The human mind is not fully understood. But it is brain function; that's not in question. It is physical and measurable; that's not in question. And QFT does indeed slam shut the door on any possibility of an afterlife.

Welcome to JREF. You are wrong in every possible way. Have a nice day.

Thanks for the warm welcome PixyMisa. How does one "measure" subjective experiences? Note that this is a completely different question than "measure the electrical and chemical signals in the brain".

QFT has nothing to do, at all, with the question of an afterlife. If you want to start with the assumption that consciousness is due to neurons, it is a neuroscience question. Interactions between neurons can be described classically. It doesn't make any sense to invoke QFT.

Sorry you made a bunch of unwarranted assumptions and got called out on it. Didn't mean to ruin your day.

 

[Donn]

Consciousness is ephemeral, a pattern in fog. When the fog goes away so does the pattern. I think QFT is saying that after death, there is no way for the effect of a physical brain (the pattern) to carry on somewhere else. There is no transport agent for the consciousness to some other realm. No fields, no subtle particles, nada.


Anything sufficiently brain-like can be conscious, but that is an assumption. Beyond human brains, and some animals, we have no data. Yet.

 

[ferd burfle]

I looked at the second paper in the list of links http://deanradin.com/evidence/Leibovici2001.pdf which claims that retroactive prayer had a positive effect on outcomes for hospital patients with blood infections. I couldn't see any flaw in how the group members (prayer/no prayer) were selected and compared for possible complicating factors.

But from the experimental design:

"Three primary outcomes were compared: the number of deaths in hospital, length of stay in hospital from the day of the first positive blood culture to discharge or death, and duration of fever."​

How in world do you lump together days until death and days until discharge to get a meaningful measure of outcome? You don't have to be a clinician to see the flaw; the paper fails based on logic right here.

They summarize their results as:

"Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was associated with a shorter stay in hospital and a shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection. Mortality was lower in the intervention group, but the difference between the groups was not significant."​

Stated as the conclusion in a sidebar:

"Remote intercessory prayer said for a group of patients is associated with a shorter hospital stay and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection, even when the intervention is performed 4-10 years after the infection"​

So are we to conclude that prayer causes those who die to die sooner? That prayers can reach back 4-10 years and change clinical outcomes? Do the prayers climb into little prayer time machines to go back where and when they're needed?

Ed Glosser, their methodology appears to have a fatal flaw and their conclusions contradict QFT. Do you stand by this paper or not? You presented it as evidence.

For those who choose to read the linked paper, at the end of it you'll be treated to a photomicrograph of a clump of cells from a Pap smear that does indeed, as claimed, look very much like the profile of a reindeer. Serious scientists add a totally unrelated example of pareidolia to the ends of their papers?

ferd

 

[Slowvehicle]

I looked at the second paper in the list of links http://deanradin.com/evidence/Leibovici2001.pdf which claims that retroactive prayer had a positive effect on outcomes for hospital patients with blood infections. I couldn't see any flaw in how the group members (prayer/no prayer) were selected and compared for possible complicating factors.

But from the experimental design:

"Three primary outcomes were compared: the number of deaths in hospital, length of stay in hospital from the day of the first positive blood culture to discharge or death, and duration of fever."​

How in world do you lump together days until death and days until discharge to get a meaningful measure of outcome? You don't have to be a clinician to see the flaw; the paper fails based on logic right here.

They summarize their results as:

"Remote, retroactive intercessory prayer was associated with a shorter stay in hospital and a shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection. Mortality was lower in the intervention group, but the difference between the groups was not significant."​

Stated as the conclusion in a sidebar:

"Remote intercessory prayer said for a group of patients is associated with a shorter hospital stay and shorter duration of fever in patients with a bloodstream infection, even when the intervention is performed 4-10 years after the infection"​

So are we to conclude that prayer causes those who die to die sooner? That prayers can reach back 4-10 years and change clinical outcomes? Do the prayers climb into little prayer time machines to go back where and when they're needed?

Ed Glosser, their methodology appears to have a fatal flaw and their conclusions contradict QFT. Do you stand by this paper or not? You presented it as evidence.

For those who choose to read the linked paper, at the end of it you'll be treated to a photomicrograph of a clump of cells from a Pap smear that does indeed, as claimed, look very much like the profile of a reindeer. Serious scientists add a totally unrelated example of pareidolia to the ends of their papers?

ferd

If I am counting correctly, out of three randomly selected papers in the wall o' list, in round numbers, um...three of them are fatally flawed. 100%.

 

[PixyMisa]

Thanks for the welcome tsig.

Are all groups of electro-chemical reactions conscious, or exclusively the ones in the brain?

False dichotomy.

Can things that are not composed of electro-chemical reactions be conscious? What about computers?

Yes, and yes.

And even if we grant that consciousness is exclusively an emergent property of electro-chemical reactions, QFT has little to nothing to do with it (apart from describing the electrodynamics of these interactions at a quantum level. Which isn't even necessary as you can describe it classically). That would be the realm of neuroscience and/or chemistry. Carroll is reaching here, and it doesn't make any sense. It seems like he is trying to lend credence to an idea by just throwing technical jargon at his audience, without explicitly noting the connection, and hoping that it sticks.

No. You missed the entire point of the lecture. In fact, it seems that you missed the entire lecture.

Mind is brain function. When the brain dies, the mind dies with it.

If you want to assert that there is some sort of afterlife, the mind must be conveyed to it somehow, and that somehow must be a field interaction, because everything that happens is a field interaction.

That field interaction can't be any of the known fields, because (a) they don't do that, and (b) if it were, we would have detected it already. And Dr Carroll's point, it can't be an unknown field, because if it were, we would have already detected the corresponding particle, even if we didn't know what it did.

So there is no afterlife.

 

[PixyMisa]

Thanks for the warm welcome PixyMisa. How does one "measure" subjective experiences?

Self-reporting, behaviour, physiological statistics (vital signs), and neuroimaging, in combination.

Note that this is a completely different question than "measure the electrical and chemical signals in the brain".

No it isn't. Subjective experiences are the result of electrochemical signals in the brain. The connection between the two is complex, but it is direct.

QFT has nothing to do, at all, with the question of an afterlife. If you want to start with the assumption that consciousness is due to neurons, it is a neuroscience question. Interactions between neurons can be described classically. It doesn't make any sense to invoke QFT.

First, it's not an assumption that consciousness is the result of neural activity, it's a conclusion based on more evidence than perhaps any other result in all of science.

Second, as noted above, neuroscience does not allow for any sort of afterlife. QFT comes in when people try to invoke a sort of physics-of-the-gaps argument to claim that an afterlife is still possible. QFT proves that there are no such gaps.

Sorry you made a bunch of unwarranted assumptions and got called out on it. Didn't mean to ruin your day.

You haven't ruined anyone's day; you're just wrong.

 

[Aridas]

If I am counting correctly, out of three randomly selected papers in the wall o' list, in round numbers, um...three of them are fatally flawed. 100%.

I poked at two. The first was apparently deeply flawed. The second concluded that the examined set of somewhat popular tests for telepathy wasn't actually support for telepathy when done without certain flaws.

 

[Aridas]

First, it's not an assumption that consciousness is the result of neural activity, it's a conclusion based on more evidence than perhaps any other result in all of science.

Last I heard, that evolution occurs was based on more.

 

[PixyMisa]

My mountain of evidence can beat up your mountain of evidence!

 

[Slowvehicle]

I poked at two. The first was apparently deeply flawed. The second concluded that the examined set of somewhat popular tests for telepathy wasn't actually support for telepathy when done without certain flaws.

Which leaves us at...5 out of 5?

Awesome use of scientific methodology...

 

[Aridas]

Which leaves us at...5 out of 5?

Awesome use of scientific methodology...

Wicked_ways took a look at one of the same ones I did, if you were counting that one, so 3 out of 4, for the variable that you actually stated. No fatal flaws have been pointed out in the one that concluded that a particular set of testing did not provide support for telepathy, when certain flaws were removed. 4 out of 4 that did not support Ed Glosser's position, yes. 4 out of 5 and 5 out 5 if you were not counting that one, though.

 

[SusanB-M1]

NotEvenWrong

Welcome to the forum.
I get the impression, even from your few posts, that you would really like there to be an explanation for consciousness having some kind of out-of-brain existence. Is this correct? If so, I would really like to know why.

 

[steenkh]

QFT has nothing to do, at all, with the question of an afterlife.

If the afterlife has a connection to physical world, it does have everything to do with QFT, which is a model of the physical world. If your afterlife happens separate from the physical world in a kind of heaven with no interaction with the physical world, then QFT has no bearing on it. But if you claim you can communicate with the dead, or if living people claim they can remember anything about past lives, then QFT is involved, and then we can say with great confidence that these claims are false.

If you want to start with the assumption that consciousness is due to neurons, it is a neuroscience question. Interactions between neurons can be described classically. It doesn't make any sense to invoke QFT.

Neurons are made out of the stuff that QFT describes, so neurons can not do what QFT rules out.

Even if neurons were not subject to QFT because they are intermediate between the "soul" and the body, then QFT still rules the physical body, and we know that physical bodies are not acted upon by any other forces than physical forces.

You can only win by toppling QFT and supplanting it by something better.

Sorry you made a bunch of unwarranted assumptions and got called out on it. Didn't mean to ruin your day.

As PixyMisa said, you have not ruined anybody's day, and the assumptions are not unwarranted. The only assumption here is that QFT is an accurate model of the physical world at our energy levels, and that assumption is extremely well supported by observations, including the successful observation of the Higg's boson.