Well, you brought the discussion up with your own assumptions thrown in. I assumed since you did this you were willing to entertain other's.

-TC

Analogy time again. Agnosognosia is a mental inability to perceive certain realities, usually based on stroke touching upon areas of the parietal lobe. So, for instance, in this science article from the NY Times:

Now, what if I said to you, "let's assume that Dr. Berti has developed a mysterious inability to perceive her own third arm." What do you think we will learn about this patient's condition? The answer is, nothing whatever. Not only that, we will also be led inexorably to a false diagnosis about the Doctor herself.

The problem is, there is no reason to make that assumption. There is no empirical evidence to support it. It makes a mockery of Occam's principle of economy.

So, Dr. Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili, in their book, Why God Won't Go Away, used a SPECT camera (single photon emission computed tomography) on eight Tibetan meditators and several Franciscan nuns to show "accurate freeze-frame of blood flow patterns" at the transcendent peak of mystical experience.

They found an expected increase in the activity of the prefrontal cortex, home to the attention span, of course. But they also saw a decrease in activity of the "orientation association area (OAA)" which orients the individual in physical space. To do that, the OAA generates a clear "distinction between the individual and everything else, to sort out the you from the infinite not-you that makes up the rest of the universe." Specifically, the left orientation area is responsible for creating the borders of the self, while "the right orientation area is associated with generating the ... physical space in which that self can exist."

Now, we can argue this forever, but either the doctor has 3 arms or the patient is misperceiving and unable to tell that she is misperceiving. And either the meditator is actually breaking down barriers between the self and non-self, or is misperceiving.

While I would support the latter view, and I would also say that it may be a most interesting phenonenon, even perhaps a vehicle by which some other aspects of the individual's own self knowledge might be enhanced, that is not the sense that I get from others who post on this subject. The sense that I get is that there is not even an OAA to concern oneself with -- no brain, no nothing except unsupported consciousness (which nobody has ever been able to demonstrate and is therefore a wildly unjustified supposition), and that nonduality is a factual description of an ability to jettison the one reality for this totally spiritual other.

You see, I keep talking about measures, tests, empirical data. I can't contend with "well, I had such-and-such experience that can't be explained to anyone else." Fine. I didn't. We can't discuss it. And if you ask me to explain my third arm, I won't be able to do that, either.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

I'm familiar with the condition of the right arm being neglected. I know someone who had that. In her case she wasn't aware of her left arm. It was called left neglect and was due to brain injury. Her inability to perceive was due to brain injury.

There are a lot of things others have experienced that I haven't and I know that they can never explain them to me in a way I can experience them the way they did. I have a choice to accept that these things happened to them or not accept and ask for empirical evidence.

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InterfaithForums.com-Where your ideas and beliefs count.

EH, you're missing my point. Let me put it in a way for you to answer. If sensation is the result of energy waves touching biological receptors which then send the electrical impulses to the brain where they are collected organized and stored, then how does an internal process give rise to a three-dimensional experience I apprehend as "out there". If, as you said, the "brain creates" experiences, then why do "I" perceive them as "out there" in this panoramic sense. If its all just "in my brain", shouldn't I see my brain? How is this biological function "projected", and once it is projected, who (or what) is watching it?

Now, I have no doubt the experience can be less than accurate, giving us false readings and false mosaics, but even these illusions of the mind are seen as occurring "out there". So, if the brain is receiving mixed or contorted signals, is it really the brain creating an experience since the illusion still is described from a seer perspective, a seer as of yet, unidentified and without location? This is what I mean by your assumptions. Your question frames a proposition so as to limit the possibilities.

Once again, I have read (and still own the copy of) Why God Won't Go Away, and you know as well as I if you have read the book that the author came away from the series of experiments that the brain activity correlations are not "the cause" of the phenomenological apprehensions. Its like limiting outside noises so that you can comprehend what you are reading better. The decreased activity in brain activity associated with audial comprehension does not indicate it is no longer present, only that activity is diverted by eliminating the stimulus that triggers it (sound waves). This is all the monks are doing, they are attempting to eliminate as many of the sensory triggers in order to focus on the bare attention of the background awareness/consciousness. The monks don't lose the sense of where they are, they are simply ignoring it so as to concentrate their focus on something other than sensory input.

I hate to assume your position, but you seem to be saying brain activity is the sole determinant even though it took a conscious act to focus in a manner to bring about the change in brain activity. But, I see no reason to assume that the background awareness/consciousness is an illusion or unimportant simply because we are dazzled and distracted by the senses, which is exactly what Plato is attempting to relate in his allegory of the Cave.

-TC

Think back. Way, way back. As far as you can possibly remember. Then, when you've gone as far back as you can, find a family member who was there and remembers that time, and have them remind you of things that happened even earlier. See if you can actually remember any of them.

If you are like nearly everybody on earth, you can remember pretty much nothing before the age of about 3 1/2. You can almost certainly remember nothing before you were 2. And absolutely nothing in utero -- or before. (We'll discuss reincarnation claims later).

The message? You can remember being conscious of absolutely nothing before important brain structures were completed.

Now, if there is some essential, conscious "you" that is viewing the effects of stimulus upon the brain, then that essential, conscious "you" is not dependent upon the brain for its existence. Why, then, can it not remember anything prior to the existence of your brain?

100 billion people have lived on this planet, yet you will find, if you search really hard in the literature, no more than 100 documented cases of people with respectable claims to memory prior to their own birth. And most of those are disputed vigorously.

On the other hand, the evidence and attestations for both human error and charlatanism is plentiful beyond measure -- a veritable cornucopia of mistakes and misleadings.

Now, it seems to me that the paucity of evidence for such remarkable claims by no means makes them false -- I'm the first to admit that. There are, indeed, some very rare things whose existence I am informed of but which I have never encountered. But any claim that these meagre evidences of reincarnation (or NDEs and OBEs) describe -- well sorry, no. And the reason for my saying "no" is simply this: the claim about how the consciousness works is not for just a few people, not a rare thing that we don't observe merely because of its rarity. It's a claim about how ALL consciousness works.

Thus, to me, it's very much like formulating a theory of gravity on the basis of only one apple in a billion falling down, while the rest remain hovering in the air.

Yet, isn't it amazing that we are, as near as I can tell, completely unwilling to ascribe the reincarnation, Psi-events, NDEs, OBEs and similar stores to anything but reality, in the face of the almost insurmountable balance of evidence for precisely the opposite. We'd rather believe that these events happen than that people are mistaken or misleading.

And is there a reason for that? Well, pehaps it's because it's what we hope for. And given how few such stories there are out of all the billions of poeple who have lived, I contend that hope is at minimum 1 billion times stronger than evidence in the thinking systems of most humans. Which doesn't make it right.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

Wel, maybe that's an indication of an intuition that says the current explanation isn't quite right. We have increasingly complex physical theories showing the previous ones weren't quite right, even if they were adequate for the time.

Don't misunderstand me, I have always maintained the physical aspects re important, in fact, integral to the overall scheme. I'm just saying they are true, but partial descriptions, and attempts to cover up the parts they weren't meant to explain gives us a pseudo-science in the exact same manner as the pseudo-religious claims attempt to explain the physical world.

Once again, you choose an example of recalling sensory information as if that's the only type of knowledge out there as the barometer for all of consciousness. Yet, if you study these forays into consciousness, it is the formless meditation associated with the deep sleep state that is closest to the ever present background awareness. Once again, you take your own biases, almost ignorant of what is actually claimed by the more respectable models (those largely independent of cultural descriptors/influences) to state your case.

Why is it so impossible that studies in the depth of consciousness may have a similar grade to studies in intellectual depth. Everyone doesn't start out a Shakespeare or Einstein, we all have to learn our A,B,C's and 1,2,3's first, and even after years of study, the difference between the highest excellence and the average is quite a bit. But, for some reason, when we have a similar disparity in the awareness of consciousness depths, that's a sign of charlatry? Do people never try to pass themselves off as more intellectually adept than they are to gain advantages? Why does the presence of it in one area not tarnish the whole of the venture? I think your own bias against religious systems (which have traditionally dominated this field) has infected your objectivity in consciousness studies, wanting to condemn it in total less it ruin the intellectual empire. In my view, these two are not at war, but are complimentary.

-TC

You are possibly correct about my biases. I have them, as does everyone.

The problem I find is that, though I've read a great deal on consciousness studies (and understood considerably less than I've read, I grant you), I can't find anybody in mainstream science who makes the sort of suggestions that I find in threads like this one.

I have read, for example, from Bernard Baars, Susan Blackmore, Ned Block, David Chalmers, Pat & Paul Churchland, Francis Crick, Daniel Dennett, Susan Greenfield, Richard Gregory, Stuart Hameroff, Christof Koch, Stephen LaBerge, Thomas Metzinger, Roger Penrose, Kevin O'Regan, Vilayanur Ramachandran, John Searle, Petra Stoerig, Francisco Varela, Max Velmans, Daniel Wegner.

These are all researchers in various aspects of consciousness and neuroscience, and they have all published in peer-reviewed journals.

I tried reading Ken Wilbur (specifically, as an intro, A Theory of Everything), but in the first 20 pages, I found so many egregious errors and wild but citationless statements that I completely lost interest. And in any case, I can't for the life of me figure out why Wilbur, and so many others on the "mystical" side, simply refuse to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Or at least, not that I can find.

In any case, as I said, the people who do publish in such journals all suppose that consciousness is what brain does -- although they do not, of course, agree on how that happens. It is only on the other, non-publishing side, that there is any suggestion that consciousness exists, then along comes brain later.

What's worse is that, as I read it (and I have not read it all, because I quickly lose interest in unattested claims), this addition of brain to the mix apparently only spoils what was otherwise pure and noble.

If anybody would attempt to bridge that gap with science that I can (sort of) understand, I will be happy to read it. I've done reading unattested claims.

And if the only answer is "you have to go and meditate for 20 years in order to 'get it'," then I'm afraid the bad news is I haven't got 20 years left, and if everybody was to try and "get it" this way, then the entire planet would quickly starve to death for want of anybody doing any work. And if that's the case, then it really is some secret meant only for the leisured few.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

All I can say, EH, is that if you limit yourself to a certin standard I can't really say how open you are. Certainly, peer-reviewed is a wonderful route to go, but even if all those authors limited themselves to your standards, they would not hve beenthe pioneers in these fields. I do believe them to be pioneers, but sometimes what people actually experience and what the slow process of scientific investigation can admit to are two very different things. In other words, maybe someone from yor list, say Chalmers, very much would like to get into the headier stuff, but to do that he has to take a slower approach of testing and verification on the base assertions, which is then peeer reviewed, which is then built upon, revised, etc. Surely you know this process takes time, not to mention the methods for continuing such research could be costly, inconclusive and/or uninvented at this time. Take the super collider. The String Theorists are certainly excited that it might provide some physicl evidence for their theory, which at this time, is only a mathematical possibility, and would continue to be so until the technology to adequately test it, itself becomes a reality.

This, however, does not preclude theorists from theorizing, academic stndards or no. With the field of consciusness studies so new, its impossible to sy even what the "right" approach is, or if in fact, the different approaches are simply different ways of looking at the same thing. Now, I know you have already raised your complaints about Wilber, but that book is two levels removed from where his current theory lies. At no point does he claim consciousness is seprate from the brain (or any physical construction). In fact, his main point is that these phenomena arise together, and claiming one is the cause of the other, or a side effect of the other, is the problem. Instead of trying to explain how the brain produces consciousness, the focus should be what biological structures are concurrent with percieved grades in consciousness. The reverse is true for idealism arguments. This is what I mean when I say the argument is biased. If we want to discuss Crick's work as it relates to evolutionary development of vision, that's great. Let's just not reduce that to a hasty conclusion that brain produces consciousness, but rather, what are the brain correlations to conscious perception of senstion, then we have a more accurate and open description of what is being discussed, and I'm certainly open to that conversation on those merits.

-TC