I agree with Ian's comments ..... but would like to add my own personal viewpoint upon these ......
Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos  If I can recall them later, then they are stored somewhere. You don't get to dismiss the problem of memory storage by calling it an "intrinsic property." |
It doesn't mean these are located physically in the brain. Memories could be stored in another dimension i.e. only our 3 dimensions are simply more measurable when functioning through the filter/interface/measuring device called the brain.
Similarly one could view memories as points of time, consciousness could be an individualized, personalized, filtered perspective of past time .... it doesn't mean the past has evaporated from existence, just that time and consciousness has moved on to something new.
Time, as consciously experienced through matter of the brain, is an oddity, in that it seems half a dimension. In a single mono-dimension one can move both direction, to and fro .... but not in time .... we seem stuck moving in one direction, perhaps our brain is just filtering access to the past direction and we perceive it as memory?
Can it be tested? Yes ...... this is one of the reasons why Rupert Sheldrake's 'formative causation' - a 'presence of the past' needs to be tested properly. It is memory system, not stored locally, theoretically affecting generations of people at an 'unconscious' level that bubbles up into the conscious individualized mind and is not passed via genes or other normal physical sense communication.
I would go further than Sheldrake and claim the evolution of filtering of past memory, by the brain causes a new individual consciousness to emerge from a prior one. We simply cannot recall experiences before brain birth. Upon death, we can perhaps meet our former self but we are no longer that person, we just share the same source memories of the past .. we share a more collective (unconscious) group mind at a deeper level which still influences us but we retain a sense of individuality upon brain death as we have memories that relate directly to ourselves.
Can this be tested too Yes, it is already suggested in ....
- Memories of the past before brain birth in young children (the work of Dr Ian Stevenson and others), this would suggest the brain closes down access to past memory and is filtering, evolving the birth of a new consciousness that emerges free from the past at a conscious level but not completely free of the past at unconscious level.
- I would predict, psi is stronger in young children (I quoted you a controlled trial suggestive of this in other topic)
Despite a century, of die-hard skeptics claiming there is no way to link the common paranormal reports in to a single theory .... there are ..... the physicalist paradigm can be theoretically turn upon its head..... and further research may do so... the signs are already there
