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So, consciousness is a key component or a key "building block " of the universe :http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/05/01/scientific-study-shows-meditators-collapsing-quantum-systems-at-a-distance/
Just answer the question , please :How can one quantify the subjective information ? How can the quantitative neurophysiology produce the subjective qualitative mental states , memories , inner experiences by "storing them in the brain , via encoding them or computing them " = quantifying them ?
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 03/11/2014 19:44:29Just answer the question , please :How can one quantify the subjective information ? How can the quantitative neurophysiology produce the subjective qualitative mental states , memories , inner experiences by "storing them in the brain , via encoding them or computing them " = quantifying them ?Well, that's not one question, it's several. But "subjective" doesn't mean totally off limits as far as science is concerned. Synthesia is not an important or significant neurological phenomena. But it was once considered totally subjective. Patients came to Ramachandran and said they saw, for example, numbers as colors. He said, do you mean that metaphorically, as in the number 5 seems like it is "yellowish" or because you played with colored, magnetic letters on a board when you were first learning to read and the number 5 was yelllow?No, they said. When I see the number 5, I see the color yellow. You can't prove what someone else says they are experiencing. You don't know if they are lying or imagining something. But he figured out a test. He showed them a field with scattered 5s and 2s and other numbers all in black ink. The fives made a triangle on a background of 2s and other numbers. A normal person would have to look really hard for several minutes to see it. They'd have to hunt really hard for the 5's. But a person with synesthesia would spot the triangle in seconds, just like anyone else would if the 5's were actually a different color. That is an example of an experimental design that can prove a totally subjective experience is real, without someone physically experiencing the same thing themselves. That is how the subjective can be proven, but it is probably of little interest to you since it doesn't involve anything magical or mystical.
When you mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon earlier on , i went to look it up again in Ramachandran's " The tell tale brain " book : I have some books of his , videos , lectures ...The man is a brilliant neuroscientist , but , his main problem is that he , like the rest of materialist scientists , reduces everything , including consciousness and its related phenomena and qualia , to just material processes....
Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where the story was told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head suffered from almost same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's detailed mapping of the damaged regions of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain excercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore overcome her disabilities ...).
The more you think about it, the more this seemingly nutty idea makes perfect sense.
The contention that the human mind can affect matter (unlikely) is quite different from the assertion that all quantum phenomena require consciousness to initiate them (ridiculous).
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443713#msg443713 date=1415128281]Quote from: DonQuichotte link=topic=52526.msg443710#msg443710When you mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon earlier on , i went to look it up again in Ramachandran's " The tell tale brain " book : I have some books of his , videos , lectures ...The man is a brilliant neuroscientist , but , his main problem is that he , like the rest of materialist scientists , reduces everything , including consciousness and its related phenomena and qualia , to just material processes....I'd argue that he's not a reductionist at. But regardless, it's not a "problem" unless you don't get any kind of a solution at all, or completely unexpected results that can't be explained by your theory. If I can figure out how photosynthesis works without somehow incorporating plate tectonics (or angels or God or the possible consciousness of plants) or into my experimental design, why is it necessary for me to do that? What can I reasonably leave out as not relevant to the specific question I am asking?
[Quotequote]Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where the story was told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head suffered from almost same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's detailed mapping of the damaged regions of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain excercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore overcome her disabilities ...).I think those events actually make a lot more sense from a neuroscience perspective than one involving immaterial consciousness. If most or even part of the brain is still functioning adequately, and if neuroplasticity happens (eg cells can form new connections with practice) why shouldn't it be possible for the brain to self diagnosis a problem and do things to try to fix itself or compensate for the damaged area. That's essentially what learning is, even in non-damaged brains.
quote]Furthermore , in his " The brain that changes itself ..." by Norman Doidge (He's a materialist , so, he assumes that the brain changes itself , ironically enough, while he reported many cases of people who changed their brains through informed determined trained efforts of their minds like Barbara Arrowsmith Young , the woman who could change her brain and therefore "fix " and overcome her disabilities ,thanks to the insights she gleaned from the work of the Russian neuroscientist Luria , through his book " The man with a shattered world " mainly , where the story was told of a Russian soldier who was shot in the head suffered from almost same disabilities Barbara was born with ...Luria's detailed mapping of the damaged regions of that soldier's brain and his rigorus work on the subject inspired Barbara to the point that she developed brain excercises that trained her brain to change ,through self-directed neuroplasticity , and therefore overcome her disabilities ...).
But if consciousness is some indivisible entity that just "is," what mechanism would allow it to fix part of itself? Or - why should it matter what percentage of the brain, or which areas are still functioning, if immaterial consciousness can just jump in there and fix and transform whatever it needs to? That only makes sense from an anatomical/physiological perspective.
The examples you give, about rewiring sensory systems, or one part of the brain compensating for another, actually appear to contradict the argument you are making.
I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .
Let's dlorde here try to quantify for us the subjective smell of a flower , the wonder , beauty , ecstacy ....we experience while watching a sunset , while listening to nice music , while watching a breath-taking piece of landscape , while experiencing love , joy , sadness , ....
Tesla was a real genius : he predicted, among many other scientific achievements of his , that neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light , as he believed in the existence of aether through which he tried to explain the laws of physics ,including gravity, and hence disagreed with Einstein. CERN did discover that neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of light , for example : see this and the related short video here below ...
CERN had also discovered that there is 'something " that can travel faster than the speed of light , after all : neutrinos , to mention just that .
II- The double slit experiment , or quantum theory, or just 1 particular interpretation of it , revolutionized our classical or conventional conception of the nature of reality and matter
New Scientist : Time to Turn Cause and Effect on their Heads : :The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis : http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VFpxsWfvZ-w
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 04/11/2014 18:17:21I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .You might be interested to know that there are two areas of the brain (different levels of sensory processing) where colour processing areas are adjacent to the areas processing numbers; in people with number/colour synesthesia, it has been show that in one or other of these areas there is abnormal activity - i.e. when the number area is active, activity can be detected in the adjacent colour area. In other words, there appears to be abnormal crosstalk between these areas. This is thought to be due to connections between them not being pruned as usual during early development (when the vast connectivity of the early brain is massively pruned down as different areas become more specialised).
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443775#msg443775 date=1415225848]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2014 18:53:16New Scientist : Time to Turn Cause and Effect on their Heads : :The reductionist ideas about causality that pervade science misrepresent the way things happen in the real world, argues physicist George Ellis : http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929300.400-time-to-turn-cause-and-effect-on-their-heads.html?full=true#.VFpxsWfvZ-wYes, top-down causation is a very useful way to view the influence of large-scale or emergent effects on the smaller scales in many systems. It can often radically simplify analysis compared to bottom-up approaches. They are complementary views; you choose according to the context. So what?
I hope you don't think the article is somehow questioning causality itself, because it isn't; you'll need to learn a lot more about quantum mechanics before you can get involved in that debate.
Even your beloved Caroll says in one of his videos that it is an embarrassment to science that physicists still can't resolve that interpretation or measurement paradox in QM , while you have been making it sound , together with our alancalverd , that the interpretation dilemma or paradox of quantum theory was already solved.