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

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by paul c. Anagnostopoulos

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

You and your damn irrefutable logic!

(It won't let me capitalize that!)

[jacob]

Originally Posted by mr-zero

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.

I'm sorry, mr-zero. What your message was moderated and not added to the forum?
There's no moderation here for posting. Some posts which are clearly spam or very offensive will be deleted, after they've been posted.

[Open Mind]

Dearie me I will reply to several posts at once ....

Skeptical materialist's common misuse of 'Argument from Ignorance' and 'God of the Gaps' ... which are fallacies when these violate the proper use of Occams Razor.

The proper use of Occams Razor chooses between working hypotheses where both explanations work and fit but one is needlessly complex .... e.g. Special relativity versus Lorentz Ether both theories work, both have the same explaining power however the latter has unnecessary extra entity.

Fallacy 1
In the case of consciousness, there is no materialistic explanation of how it evolves, how it works or why it exists. .... as a result materialists tend to claim 'consciousness' is an illusion or an increasing complexity of processing or material system will cause 'consciousness' to somehow emerge and be understood.

The rule of parsimony does not choose between hypotheses that do currently not work. Claiming materialism is a more parsimonious explanation is merely what Karl Popper called 'Promissary Materialism' ... the belief a materialistic explanation of consciousness will be found without current evidence.

Fallacy 2
I have been accused in this topic above of saying materialism (mind creates matter) is definitely false .. I do not speak in such certainties .... I leave that to 'skeptics' who lack doubt! I am not saying materialism, interactive dualism, idealism or panpsychism are true or false .....all are contenders, all lack sufficient evidence.... but yes I am defending the alternatives.

*If* materialists are claiming alternatives (panpsychism, interactive dualism, idealism) are false ... without evidence of how any local material process can create consciousness ... they become victims of their own political catchphrases like 'argument from ignorance' !

Is local matter fundamental?
Materialism (mind emerges from local material processes alone) may be true, although there is no proper evidence currently it is true ...what is clearer is that non-locality cannot be shoehorned into being an extension of local material realism ... that (currently) doesn't work and Bell's Theorem suggests any such theory will never work unless ....

Unless one adopts the Many World Hypothesis, to escape the alternatives which already violate material realism (e.g. Copenhagen Interpretation) or imply causality is set forwards and back in time (Transactional Interpretation) - hardly compatible with classical causality or material realism.

As a result the materialist is forced to either 'shut up and calculate' (ignore the philosophical consequences) or consider the Many Worlds Theory to take the luck of how life came to exist.... the alternatives such as interactive dualism, idealism etc. are not forced the Many Worlds Interpretation....these speculate in different areas.

Freedom to speculate on the causal gaps between correlations
While those following materialism (local matter creates mind) are often happy to speculate on unproven many world theories, string theories/extra dimensions .... the alternative philosophies are just as free to do similar.

Idealists are free to speculate after brain death consciousness is more fundamental than matter, consciousness surviving death although earthly personality may not survive death

Interactive Dualists are free to speculate for example on 4 extra dimensions of 'mental space' that is filtered by our normal 4 dimensional Einsteinian space until the interlocking interface called the brain dies, yet, mental space survives. This matches the Near Death Experience


The brain influencing mental states to some degree does not falsify interactive dualism

Interactive dualism, doesn't just mean 'the brain is a receiver' (and for materialists to claim any process where the brain affects mind to any extent is evidence of absence of a non-local mind ... interactive means the mind effects brain and the brain effects mind ..... for example is the car moving the driver or is the driver moving the car? The answer being both.

[sr332603]

The basic point at work here is whether or not it makes sense to place faith in the anecdotal testimony of individuals, relying on their ability to determine the exact time that a hallucination or experience took place.

I have not heard an account of an NDE that is even remotely interesting to me, because none of them answer that basic question. Why should I assume that the hallucination or event actually took place while the patient was brain dead? I have no reason to make that assumption. Until that is reliably demonstrated, all NDE accounts are suspect.

Even accounts where the patient correctly identifies things in the room, such as machinery, or surgical processes, are not interesting to me. I have seen a dozen medical television shows that give a relatively accurate view of a surgical operation and would have no problem verbally describing points that have a high hit probability. Before going into surgery, a patient is often given an overview of what is going to happen, they know who the doctor is, in many cases they have met the nursing staff, etc. This, combined with confirmation bias (remembering the hits, forgetting the misses) is what results in all of the seemingly impressive anecdotes.

The only thing that would be compelling, in my view, is if an NDE patient was able to correctly identify a note or symbol specifically left in the room by researchers that was not able to be seen from ground level, and that none of the hospital staff knew about.

I understand David Bailey's point that if NDEs actually occur and the patient is genuinely "crossing over," they are not likely to look around and remember a symbol. But David Bailey also has to concede the weaker points, as noted above, in the current group of NDE experiences and acknowledge that it would take evidence of this caliber to convince a reasonable person that there is something out of the ordinary going on.

Furthermore, if such symbols were placed in operating rooms around the world (double-blinded, of course), you would certainly expect at least a small percentage of NDEs to notice them and report back on them, out of the large amount of NDEs that would be expected to occur.

As a final point, I would require a documented interview with the patient immediately upon waking from the surgery. This would weed out any information leakage that could occur over the recovery period, such as speaking with nurses, doctors, seeing the operating room, having additional hallucinations that the patient misidentifies as having happened during surgery, etc.

Note: I am familiar with the current accounts that tell of patients seeing objects that they couldn't have known about, but am again unimpressed due to their anecdotal nature. In many of the cases, the patient is unable to be found to provide further comment, they rely on a story of a story, they are years old, have no independent documentation, etc. While it may be interesting to believers, it is still just a story, subject to all of the same confirmation bias as any other story.

[fabkebab]

I completely agree with the post below.

I love the "follow the data" mantra, but in this interview there is no data and definately no "following"

There is another podcast that I used to listen to often (it had meaninful interviews with interesting people) : Theater of the mind - It collapsed in a heap of woo woo and I hardly ever listen to it now -

Please dont take the show in that direction (of course its your podcast, you do what you want, but it would be a real shame to lose this show as it is one of my favourite, most anticipated listens!!)

Originally Posted by sr332603

In all, I think this is one of the worst interviews I have heard from Alex.

Alex, where are all of the probing, critical questions that you rightfully throw at people whose positions you disagree with? You gave her a pass on everything she said!

For instance, she claimed that she simply knew that her experiences weren't hallucinations. You asked "how?" Her answer was that nothing positive can come from hallucinations, therefore hers could not have been hallucinations. Your response? Let it slide!

If that is how she is going to define the term hallucination, then it has simply lost all meaning. Hallucination, as a term, implies absolutely nothing about how the person interprets the experience, be it positive or negative. To say that simply because she viewed an experience as profound is enough evidence to believe that it was not a hallucination, but that it was her experience with a magical spirit realm, is utter crap. What is even more embarrassing, for you and for the show, is that you failed to challenge her in the slightest!

Or how about the fact that the majority (if not all) of her NDEs were not actually NDEs! She didn't die in any of the ones that she recounted in great detail. All she did was pass out, or get scared, or hit her head - events that correspond strongly with hallucinations!

To quote a Johns Hopkins study, which took a double-blinded look at the effects of magic mushrooms on a group of participants that had no prior experience with psychoactive drugs:



For one, I don't think anyone is arguing that magic mushrooms cause any actual "spiritual" experience, assuming such a thing even exists. It is a psychoactive chemical that "materially" affects the brain and the way the person views the world while under the influence. And yet, 66% of the people used spiritual language to describe its effects!

A couple of points about this study:

1) 66% of participants listed taking the drug as one of the 5 most meaningful experiences in their lives! Clearly, this utterly materialistic, non-spiritual means of inducing hallucinations can have a meaningful, "spiritual" impact on people. I wonder who Yvonne would interpret their stories if she did not know they were under the influence of a drug? I could fancy a guess...

2) In 30% of the cases, the drug experience was horrible, dominated by fear and paranoia. This represents your and Yvonne's distorted view of what a hallucination is - clearly they can be both positive and harrowing, as shown by this study.

Yvonne demonstrated quite clearly that she has absolutely no self-reflective, critical thinking capabilities. She is 100% certain concerning the nature of her and others' experiences, just so long as they're positive!

And you wonder why nobody takes this seriously?