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Quote from: dlorde on 04/11/2014 23:31:50Quote 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).He goes a step further and explains that just as cross activation in the angular gyrus may be responsible for the sensory experiences like synesthsia, cross activation between other brain areas may be the mechanism behind analogy and metaphors, how we can understand qualitative similarities between very different objects or events. The ability to understand metaphor can be selectively lost in certain neurological disorders, even though other things like memory or vocabulary remain intact, and people become very literal minded. Even if you tell them something is a proverb or saying, they can only give you a literal interpretation of something like "All that glitters is not gold" or "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."Ramachandran sees cross activation as a mechanism behind other kinds of imagination and creativity, which Don claims cannot happen in a deterministic brain. Excessive and uncontrolled cross activation might be the cause of bizarre associations in disorders like schizophrenia.
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).
I have to finish that part of his book about synesthesia , later on then .
Can you name a nonmaterial object that is provably conscious? Quote 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.The so-called "paradox" lies not in nature, which behaves consistently, but only in the fact that we use two different mathematical models to predict what it will do. It isn't a paradox at all, just a statement that neither model is complete. So what? Both are good enough, which is the best you can say of any model. I have no idea what you are going to eat at your next meal, but I am pretty sure that you will eat, and it will contain either meat or vegetable protein. Paradox, or just a statement that I don't know your food preferences?
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.
0- I have just brought that article up , in order to show you that even a mainstream materialist scientist does talk about his own materialist version of top-down causation, since mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation .
Since there is what can be called top-down causation, after all (we don't need that scientist to know that fact ) , why not assume that consciousness must be the one that's been responsible for that top-down causation mainly and not the brain , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false ?
Well,mainstream materialist science says there is only upward causation...
... why not assume that consciousness must be the one that's been responsible for that top-down causation mainly and not the brain... ?
I-It never crossed my mind that causality could be questioned (how can science exist , let alone function ,without causation ? )
There is also what can be called non-mechanical causation , that of consciousness that's a non-physical process.
P.S.: 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.
Physics will be opening its wide doors to a universe or reality way beyond physics .All sciences in fact , all human knowledge , activity and more will never be the same again .Awesome ,mind -blowing and breath-taking ...., beyond imagination , that would be , an understatement , you have no idea .
If you only , once , just once , would try to look at all the above from the non-materialist perspective , in the sense that consciousness , the mind and their related subjective inner lives and experiences , creativity ...are non-physical processes that rely on their related physical neural correlates , you would see all that from a totally different perspective or angle , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related phenomena , but , if you prefer to stick to the materialist false theory of consciousness , no wonder that you would agree with Ramachandran's interpretations on the subject .
Don't shut up and calculate , try to see the far -reaching implications of quantum theory that go way beyond physics to encompass the very nature of the universe itself , including that of yourself, as a human being .
"The End of Materialism ...." By Charles T.Tart :Wake up, guys : materialism is false , and must be thus kicked out of science : http://blog.paradigm-sys.com/about-dr-tart/the-end-of-materialism/
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443826#msg443826 date=1415337327]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 06/11/2014 19:24:49If you only , once , just once , would try to look at all the above from the non-materialist perspective , in the sense that consciousness , the mind and their related subjective inner lives and experiences , creativity ...are non-physical processes that rely on their related physical neural correlates , you would see all that from a totally different perspective or angle , since the materialist theory or model of consciousness is false , thanks mainly to all those consciousness -related phenomena , but , if you prefer to stick to the materialist false theory of consciousness , no wonder that you would agree with Ramachandran's interpretations on the subject . It's not about "sticking" to something, or a preferring it, as in wanting it to be true. And believe me, I really have to tried to view it from your perspective, if only because you seem so totally convinced of it, that I feel compelled to try to figure out why you do.
There's just this huge gaping lack of an explanation for how your immaterial "thing" operates or acts causally, which I find completely pointless, as well as the fact that it adds no insight into any particular detail about consciousness experience or human behavior.
Do you understand what I mean by that? Your immaterial theory doesn't tell me anything specific about perception, optical illusions, hallucinations. It doesn't explain anything about memory or why memories fade, or false memories. It doesn't tell me anything about the origin or acquisition of language. It doesn't tell me anything about the developmental stages of babies. It has nothing to say about attention, why or how we manage to ignore extraneous information, and focus on certain things. It tells me nothing about the reasons for addictions or compulsive behavior, autism or dementia. It tells me nothing about how we sense the passage of time or make judgements about spacial relationships. It tells me nothing about how or why our mental experience or ability is different from other animals. I could go on and on - there are thousands of interesting questions about mental activity, and your theory contributes absolutely nothing concrete or specific to their answers. With your model, all mental activity just inexplicably "happens" in some vague, undetectable way.
Secondly, your dismissal of neural correlates to consciousness as some kind of irrelevant coincidence or epiphenomenon stretches credibility, in my eyes. It's like claiming that the changes in my muscles when I take up weight lifting has nothing to do at all with my increase in strength; the sliding of actin and myosin filaments isn't really contracting the muscles, it just coincidentally happens at the same time, a "by product" of the process.
This month's issue of Scientific American has an article about the effect of meditation on plasticity in the brain, brain mass, and conscious experience. But their findings make no sense with your interpretation. If meditation is just an action of immaterial conscious will, why would it need to cause physical changes in the brain in order to facilitate other changes in immaterial, conscious will? Do you see how that interpretation makes absolutely no sense?
However, many reductionists say that in the end, this is nothing but disguised bottom-up effects, because the physics at the bottom is causally closed: there is nothing but interactions between particles such as protons and electrons at that level, leaving no room for any other causal effect and no causal slack to allow top-down effects to take place.
That hard-core reductionist assumption that the physics at the bottom at the level of sub-atomic elementary particles thus is causally closed , or that the universe is causally closed , has been just the legacy of classical physics upon which materialism was built .
dlorde, Cheryl :You're lousy readers of that New Scientist''s article
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 21:24:16That hard-core reductionist assumption that the physics at the bottom at the level of sub-atomic elementary particles thus is causally closed , or that the universe is causally closed , has been just the legacy of classical physics upon which materialism was built .What you deride as materialism is built on observation. What is your hobbyhorse made of?
And there is nothing intrinsic in the naturalistic scientific methodology that prevents it from going beyond materialism thus.
There can be even what can be called the theistic naturalistic science and its naturalistic theistic methodology , not just the atheistic naturalistic materialistic ones .
author=dlorde link=topic=52526.msg443897#msg443897 date=1415454155]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 07/11/2014 20:42:52dlorde, Cheryl :You're lousy readers of that New Scientist''s articleAd-hominem insults only detract from your assertions. The NS article is a popular-interest piece, and exaggerates accordingly. The hard-core reductionists mentioned in the article are no more representative of the scientific community than the hard-core fringe who believe consciousness collapses the wave function.
Top-down and bottom-up causality are different ways of looking at exactly the same processes. That some people choose to keep one eye shut changes nothing.
Maybe a trivially simple example will help you understand. Consider Conway's Game of Life; if you want to discover whether a particular cell will change state and when that will occur, you can use bottom-up or top-down methods. Using bottom-up methods, you have to iterate through the cycles, potentially indefinitely, until either the state changes or you die of old age. Using top-down methods, you can examine the patterns of cell states on the grid and predict in advance whether a particular cell will change state and when it will do so, just by knowing how the patterns develop.
However, CGL is a perfectly deterministic system about which you have complete knowledge, so bottom-up methods can, in principle, get you the answers, given enough time. Real life isn't usually like that. Many large-scale real-world systems are complex, and may be sensitively dependent on initial conditions (i.e. have chaotic characteristics). It is often impossible to measure all the contributing factors with sufficient precision or resolution to make reliable bottom-up predictions, so top-down analysis is often more productive & predictive.
I refer you to my previous post for a partial list of fields where this is often the case.
author=cheryl j link=topic=52526.msg443910#msg443910 date=1415468990]Quote from: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2014 17:18:49And there is nothing intrinsic in the naturalistic scientific methodology that prevents it from going beyond materialism thus.There's nothing that prevents it all. That's exactly the point. You're free to conduct whatever experiments about telekinesis or consciousness fields or life after death or astrology or homeopathy or angels or ghosts that you like. No one is stopping you, and naturalistic methodology should be completely applicable to any such experiment.
QuoteThere can be even what can be called the theistic naturalistic science and its naturalistic theistic methodology , not just the atheistic naturalistic materialistic ones .Again, absolutely. Just provide proponents of naturalism with incontrovertible evidence of a God, and they'll have no problem with it at all. What could be easier or more straight forward?