Neuroscience is showing there is 'no ghost in the machine'

[Nicov]

Hi this is my first post, I have been lurking around the forum for ages and ages.

I agree that the article ask some very interesting questions,

"By raising questions like this, it seems likely that neuroscience will pose a far more funda-mental challenge than evolutionary biology to many religions. Predictably, then, some theolo-gians and even neuroscientists are resisting the implications of modern cognitive and affectiveneuroscience."

I think the challenge will only be to formal religion where the followers identities is locked into literal interpretations of scripture and dogma. The Western Mystic traditions and most of the Eastern religions have long past duality and physicalism as an model for our reality.

Science are also now catching up to this and some interesting work that I have read in the last two weeks on it was.

1. Riccardo Manzotti ideas on consciousness,

"In order to to understand consciousness, we need to understand reality. To understand reality we need two steps: hypotheses and empirical verifications. The scientific tradition narrowed the field of empirical evidence at only the objective facts. In order to understand what consciousness is, a new ontological standpoint is needed and, in order to verify such ontological premises a new kind of experiments must be envisaged.

To verify a theory of consciousness, empirical experiments are needed. Two possibilities are feasible. The first one is interfering with the conscious subjective experience of human beings. To design an experiment in which it is possible to predict and describe in advance a change in content in a subject's experience. The second option is to build an artificial being with a structure that can be related with the development of a true subject. This second approach is followed by implementing an architecture coherent with the new ontology"

You can find more at

The Mind Outside My Head by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

Riccardo Manzotti's Home page on Consciousness and the like

The Rainbow as a Metaphor for Understanding Consciousness | Brain Pickings

Be sure to check out his cartoons they are brilliant in explaining his thoughts.

2. Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives by Miguel Nicolelis.

“A lot of people thought the sense of self was hard-wired, but it's not at all. It can be changed very quickly, and that's very intriguing,” says Miguel Nicolelis, a neurobiologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina."

He made some interesting comments on NDE's and how reductionist views of our self is about as valid Phrenology as an science it also gives an new perspective of the materialistic paradigm of self.

Phrenology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amazon.com: Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives (9780805090529): Miguel Nicolelis: Books

3. For an remarkable view of new robotics and the views of Riccardo Manzotti see the movie Eva 2011

Eva (2011) - IMDb

""Eva" is far more profound than the trailer or the publicity may suggest. It is a deep reflection on human nature and identity. But, and here comes the surprise, it is not a so-called intellectual film"

Last comment NonDuality is core to most traditions, my opinion is that non mystics are only now starting to understand what the likes of Jesus, Meister Eckhart, Buddhism, Lao Tzu and Vedanta where talking about.

Hope it was not to long for an first post

[radicalpolitik]

Or, if Idealism is correct, the Machine does not exist, the only reality is the ghost

[Interesting Ian]

"There is no ghost in the machine, not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine" - Paul Davies, the Matter Myth

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Interesting Ian

"There is no ghost in the machine, not because there is no ghost, but because there is no machine" - Paul Davies, the Matter Myth

Thanks for that amusing quote Ian .... one to keep on my computer

[DysonSpheres]

However, as neuroscience begins to reveal the mecha-nisms underlying personality, love, morality, and spiritual-ity, the idea of a ghost in the machine becomes strained. Brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physi-cal correlates in brain function.

What do they mean by a ghost in a machine? The fact that brain imaging indicates that all of these traits have physical correlates in the brain is a fact not in conflict with a dualist theory.

Furthermore, pharmaco-logic influences on these traits, as well as the effects of localized stimulation or damage, demonstrate that the brain processes in question are not mere correlates but are the physical bases of these centralaspects of our personhood. If these aspects of the person are all features of the machine, why have a ghost at all?

The article describes these physical mechanism as "correlates", and yet it asks why have a ghost at all? Isn't it obvious? If the physical mechanism is a mere correlate then that interpretation tacitly assumes a "ghost".

Weak-sauce.