76. Yvonne Kason M.D., Transforming Kundalini and Near-Death Experiences (Podcast)

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by craven

You mean you haven't figured out yet that Alex is an unconditional believer with an agenda?

I came upon Alex through his interviews with the SGU, and I had hoped that I had found a believer that was willing to "follow the data" as he so often says. Alas, that doesn't appear to be the case, as his standards of evidence change so violently depending upon what conclusion the data shows.

I am probably not the only disappointed one, either. The SGU was taken by his "follow the data" claims and agreed to set up experiments with him. That collaboration never happened, and I suspect it is because they caught on to his "follow only the positive data" mindset.

[Purple Scissor]

Yes, it is true that Alex does not question critically those he agrees with, but preaches -I hate to use that word, but do so in the spirit of constructive criticism- at those he disagrees with. I think this was a good interview, however in the past there have been times when he should have asked more critical questions of the people he agrees with. This is a major flaw in skeptiko.

In this interview, I do not think that they were doing evidence.

[Open Mind]

sr332603,

You are speaking as if somehow calling something a 'hallucination' means it is brain generated .......there is NO working model on how a brain consciously hallucinates.

You might like to take my challenge

Challenge to debunkers: Can you prove hallucinations are generated inside brain :-)

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

sr332603,

You are speaking as if somehow calling something a 'hallucination' means it is brain generated .......there is NO working model on how a brain consciously hallucinates.

You might like to take my challenge

Challenge to debunkers: Can you prove hallucinations are generated inside brain :-)

I'm sorry Open Mind, but your arguments from ignorance are not convincing.

The brain is a physical object. Psychoactive chemicals are physical objects. When the psychoactive chemicals interact with the brain, hallucinations occur. This is readily demonstrable and repeatable. Why, again, do you feel the need to shove psi into the cracks of what we know about the process?

What exactly do you propose is happening to cause the hallucinations? Something tells me you are going to define a mechanism so vague and indefinable as to be functionally useless, but I anxiously await an answer nonetheless.

[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by sr332603

I'm sorry Open Mind, but your arguments from ignorance are not convincing.

Materialism (matter creates mind) is also an argument from ignorance. No one knows how a brain can create (or evolved) consciousness.

When the psychoactive chemicals interact with the brain, hallucinations occur.

Correlation does not prove causation .... specific psychoactive chemicals are not generating specific content (e.g. bicycles) in the hallucination ... alcohol might make one person happy, another person angry .. arguably it is just disrupting the brain from grounding the conscious mind to a shared material reality. The only difference between normal conscious experiences and hallucinations is that the latter do not model material reality.

What exactly do you propose is happening to cause the hallucinations?

The consciousness when not ground to a shared reality, hallucinates. i.e. has a individual conscious experience. The brain/body/matter is merely holding people's consciousness to a material reality ... if upon brain death telepathic processes increase, virtual realities not following material reality may evolve.

Bodily survival functions have evolved local to brain, perhaps some memory types too ... however currently one is free to speculate certain types of experience/memory are not stored local to brain such as long-term memory, procedural memory, tacit memory, etc. since these can not be traced to specific areas.

Something tells me you are going to define a mechanism so vague and indefinable as to be functionally useless, but I anxiously await an answer nonetheless.

Correct but materialism doesn't have a mechanism for consciousness either ... just a bunch of correlations filled with a materialism of the gaps

Lets move to the thread above .....if you want .... rather than derail this one.

[mr-zero]

I just wanted to say I'm not even slightly impressed with "Open Mind's" reply.
Nor with the moderated nature of this forum.
No point in trying to contribute when your posts are simply not added to the board.
Disappointed.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Materialism (matter creates mind) is also an argument from ignorance. No one knows how a brain can create (or evolved) consciousness.

Are you suggesting that idealism (mind just is) is somehow less of an argument from ignorance?

Correlation does not prove causation .... specific psychoactive chemicals are not generating specific content (e.g. bicycles) in the hallucination ... alcohol might make one person happy, another person angry .. arguably it is just disrupting the brain from grounding the conscious mind to a shared material reality. The only difference between normal conscious experiences and hallucinations is that the latter do not model material reality.

But correlation is a better argument for causation than whatever you're proposing.

The consciousness when not ground to a shared reality, hallucinates. i.e. has a individual conscious experience. The brain/body/matter is merely holding people's consciousness to a material reality ... if upon brain death telepathic processes increase, virtual realities not following material reality may evolve.

Sorry, I don't get it. Is this a description of materialism or a proposal for something else?

Correct but materialism doesn't have a mechanism for consciousness either ... just a bunch of correlations filled with a materialism of the gaps.

How do you propose that we study the brain to discover truths that are not merely correlations?

~~ Paul

[sr332603]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Materialism (matter creates mind) is also an argument from ignorance. No one knows how a brain can create (or evolved) consciousness.


Correlation does not prove causation .... specific psychoactive chemicals are not generating specific content (e.g. bicycles) in the hallucination ... alcohol might make one person happy, another person angry .. arguably it is just disrupting the brain from grounding the conscious mind to a shared material reality. The only difference between normal conscious experiences and hallucinations is that the latter do not model material reality.


The consciousness when not ground to a shared reality, hallucinates. i.e. has a individual conscious experience. The brain/body/matter is merely holding people's consciousness to a material reality ... if upon brain death telepathic processes increase, virtual realities not following material reality may evolve.

Bodily survival functions have evolved local to brain, perhaps some memory types too ... however currently one is free to speculate certain types of experience/memory are not stored local to brain such as long-term memory, procedural memory, tacit memory, etc. since these can not be traced to specific areas.


Correct but materialism doesn't have a mechanism for consciousness either ... just a bunch of correlations filled with a materialism of the gaps

Lets move to the thread above .....if you want .... rather than derail this one.

The two arguments are not symmetrical. You are simply postulating a version of consciousness that fits your preconceived worldview, without the proper level of supporting evidence. It is all based upon an argument from ignorance that questions the commonly-held view that consciousness is a physical process, but does not rely on any evidence that would point towards consciousness being something other than a physical process.

It is not enough to say "we do not have a working model of how the brain produces consciousness." No scientific discovery has ever rested on such an argument from ignorance, and no scientific discovery ever will.

You have severely misrepresented the "symmetry" of the two arguments and their corresponding reliance on arguments from ignorance, given the current state of our understanding of consciousness.

The standard model of the brain producing consciousness is not, in fact, an argument from ignorance. It is a reasonable hypothesis derived from countless observations made in the real world. We have case studies of other species which display upwardly-trending levels of "consciousness," which correlate to relative brain size. How does your "model" account for this?

We have targeted areas of the brain that control portions of our consciousness, and have found that interacting with them can reliably and repeatably alter a person's consciousness in consistent ways (forcing "out of body" experiences, memory loss, increase in temper / bad moods, increase in kindness / happy moods, etc.). If the brain really is just a "receiver," than altering certain portions of the brain should result in different effects - i.e. a "weaker" signal, not a totally different signal. I could not, for example, change my television settings so that all television show soundtracks are replaced with Nintendo sound effects. All I could do is scramble the signal to make it weaker or stronger. This is not our experience with the brain.

You also are being dishonest about your characterization of drug-induced hallucinations. You claim that they are not the same hallucinations as if this is some sort of evidence that the drug / brain combination are not producing the hallucinations, a weak claim at best. In fact, drug-induced hallucinations are as similar as they could conceivably be, given the different body types, doses, surroundings, memories, and experiences of people taking drugs.

Mushrooms affect people differently than LSD, which affects people differently than certain pharmaceuticals, etc. The affects can be broadly categorized across the different drug types and are actually remarkably similar. The differences in specific hallucinations are easily explained away by body type, dose, experience with drugs in the past, different memories, and different surroundings. To claim that just because two different people on the same drug do not see the exact same thing means that consciousness is not produced by the brain is laughable.

It also seems to me that if your model is the correct one, drug-induced hallucinations should be more consistent, regardless of the factors cited above. If we are simply accessing some higher form of consciousness that is unaffected by the drug, shouldn't the experiences be the same? Or, at the very least, shouldn't the same person taking the same drug at different times experience the same hallucinations? This is simply not the case.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Your arguments from ignorance are not compelling.

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by sr332603

We have targeted areas of the brain that control portions of our consciousness, and have found that interacting with them can reliably and repeatably alter a person's consciousness in consistent ways (forcing "out of body" experiences, memory loss, increase in temper / bad moods, increase in kindness / happy moods, etc.). If the brain really is just a "receiver," than altering certain portions of the brain should result in different effects - i.e. a "weaker" signal, not a totally different signal. I could not, for example, change my television settings so that all television show soundtracks are replaced with Nintendo sound effects. All I could do is scramble the signal to make it weaker or stronger. This is not our experience with the brain.

Well put.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Your arguments from ignorance are not compelling.

Well put.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by sr332603

We have targeted areas of the brain that control portions of our consciousness, and have found that interacting with them can reliably and repeatably alter a person's consciousness in consistent ways (forcing "out of body" experiences, memory loss, increase in temper / bad moods, increase in kindness / happy moods, etc.). If the brain really is just a "receiver," than altering certain portions of the brain should result in different effects - i.e. a "weaker" signal, not a totally different signal. I could not, for example, change my television settings so that all television show soundtracks are replaced with Nintendo sound effects. All I could do is scramble the signal to make it weaker or stronger. This is not our experience with the brain.

Ah, but you have to consider my new Neuron As Receiver hypothesis. In this model, each individual neuron has a receiver for precisely the information that materialists would claim is stored directly in that neuron. At this level, alteration of signal strength and accuracy can result in all the effects you describe.

Other than the fact that we haven't discovered any receivers in neurons, I dare the hegemonic scientistic materialists to disprove my hypothesis.

~~ Paul