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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does consciousness exist after death?

« on: 28/06/2016 23:51:33 »

First of all, Every bit of evidence there is suggests that consciousness could not exist without the brain.  On the other hand, there is ZERO evidence that it could.

There's absolutely no evidence that conscience couldn't exist without a brain, unless perhaps theoretically, which here is a very weak evidence at most. Empirically, to demonstrate it, you had to know what's consciousness in the first instance and then know how to detect and record it's existence. Thus, you could prove that there's no consciousness  remaining after removing or destroying a brain or that part or all of consciousness remained after that. There's no such experiment in the whole history of humanity (at least recorded).

There's only evidence that by losing parts of the brain by disease or accident you lose mental functions, and this is might be as strong a proof that consciousness is a physical substance as observing that by cutting a nerve you lose muscular action or sensitivity.

As I told before, I'm preparing a mental experiment, something like the Chinese box by Searle, to demonstrate it.

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does consciousness exist after death?

« on: 25/06/2016 19:27:22 »

The brain could be equated to the hard drive of a computer memories and consciousness as non-materiel like the software programing?

I think that can be a good analogy. If you have all the hardware and no software and turn the computer on, you'll get nothing from it, even though it works and is functioning.

Software is that something it is lacking and must be delivered to it in some way, not necessarily physically, so that it will work.

I anticipate perfectionist people that I don't think this is the perfect analogy, or the problem of consciousness would be solved now.

Modern embryology considers that an exaggeration; some features of an embryo reflect the embryonic features of its evolutionary antecedents.

I told about an aphorism, and thus it's not supposed to be a precision or scientists wouldn't need to study phylogeny any longer. As an aphorism, it only need to be true enough.

It may be widely believed, but there's no evidence for it. There's some evidence that brain development is affected by experiences in the womb; so, for example, exposure to music or rhythm may enhance development of those areas of the brain. Calling potentiated development of that kind memories is a bit of a stretch. But areas used in memory, such as the hippocampus, are underdeveloped at that point, and it takes some while after birth for perceptions to become organised enough to allow coherent memory storage & retrieval. This doesn't stop people reporting having such memories, but as we now know, autobiographical memories can readily be constructed from second hand information, or imagined events.

This is a "belief", as you say, shared by most, if not all, neuroscientists. That doesn't mean that the brain is functionless until that time. I'm not telling about coherent memories, but about memories in an absolute sense. The brain can indeed work well enough without memories, especially for a baby. Perhaps you should read Antonio Damasio, for instance, who describes children with hydranencephalia, who lack gray matter, and a person who had no [explicit] memory at all and had the greatest amnesia ever remembered, after an herpetic encephalitis.

Children with hydranenchepalia are diagnosed late exactly because in early ages gray matter doesn't make a difference. This doesn't mean that newborns have raw cotton inside their heads, as they can recognize their mother's voice from a lot of voices, something they learned in utero, and have many many more capabilities.

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General Science / Re: "DNA Diets" : Are they junk science?

« on: 25/06/2016 19:07:01 »

I won't vote on a poll that doesn't cover all options, namely the "YES" and thus is flawed as it suffers from the fallacy of false dilemma.

Any analysis of this poll is an autopsy report. 

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General Science / Re: Is science a mechanism for explaining reality?

« on: 25/06/2016 13:38:39 »

To Puppypower:

Even though ancient people had limited tools, scientist don't have much to laugh at them.

Democritus, by observing lyophilized wine mixing slowly in water postulated that matter consisted of small particles surrounded by enormous empty spaces he called atoms.

Also, he said that nothing can be created from nothing and that nothing can result from something however destroyed it is.

Aristarchus of Samos concluded that the Earth rotated every 24 hours around its axis and described a circular orbit around the Sun lasting one year.

Observation doesn't explain all scientific knowledge and Logical Positivism is now abandoned. No one ever saw an electron to the best of my knowledge or the Big Bang for sure.