I don't even trust personal testimonies when it comes to deciding the veracity of the humdrum theories of behavioural psychology, let alone for deciding the veracity of pseudo-scientific mystical hypotheses.
— sime
Most everything you believe has come from the testimony of others, if you doubted most of it you would be reduced to silence. Professors, books, language, science was given to you by others, you probably had little to do with creating the information yourself.
The argument is logical (inductive argument), don't give your opinions, give reasons why the argument fails. — Sam26
In trying to revisit some theories relative to EM fields of consciousness :
"My hypothesis is that consciousness is the experience of information, from the inside. There is a postulate in physics that information is neither created or destroyed – the conservation of information ‘law’. It is however just a postulate, nobody has ever proved it. But, if true, it would suggest that awareness (associated with that information) – in some form – might survive death." JJ McFadden
There have been some new studies (2007) in physics that I'm looking at now, which I'll report back later on to see if there are some other clues... .
In the meantime, we all know William James. He had this feeling that the brain filters our access to a vast consciousness that extends beyond the limits of neural activity.
I guess in both instances, one could analogize to the computer 'cloud server' idea... . — 3017amen
Most everything you believe has come from the testimony of others, if you doubted most of it you would be reduced to silence. Professors, books, language, science was given to you by others, you probably had little to do with creating the information yourself. — Sam26
I'm specifically referring to the trustworthiness and reliability of the verbal reports of experimental subjects in psychological experiments where they are tasked with giving self-reports, possibly including explanations for their own behaviour. A testimony of a subject taken at face value can be terribly misleading when it comes to understanding the actual underlying proximal and distal causes of the subject's verbal behaviour, for there is no reliable mapping between a person's use of sentences and their psychological state, and people don't possess introspective access to the causes of their own behaviour. — sime
However, as a critique, in your subsequent paragraph you mention the nature of truth and reality. The constructs of subjectivity, objectivity, and abstract truth's come to mind here. And you used Einstein as an example. All that said, because we are essentially referring to Metaphysics and Phenomenology in the NDE experience, how have you reconciled those? — 3017amen
I agree.You do need eyes to hallucinate visually otherwise the impulses are very weak, you couldn't compare it to sight — wiyte
Other than that, the last thought is whether you have considered EM field theories of consciousness? The idea there is to theorize consciousness as a direct metaphysical analogy to the NDE, where such phenomena become reality: https://medium.com/@aramis720/is-consciousness-just-a-complex-electromagnetic-field-9d4bf05326f0
You can try to explain metaphysical phenomena that speaks to feelings of Love, euphoria, excitement, intuition, et al. And you can argue that consciousness has not been fully explained by science. — 3017amen
NDE's entail someone being outside their body and observing some things going on around them. How can things be seen and heard without eyes and ears, and the neural networks that process the inputs? If this physical equipment really isn't necessary, why are there people who are blind and deaf? — Relativist
My only goal in the book is to argue that there is strong evidence to suggest that consciousness is not confined to the brain. — Sam26
No quarrel there, however, what is the medium? In other words, the means and methods would be intriguing. Otherwise, the book would be restricted to recordation of NDE accounts. As such, aren't there plenty of those? — 3017amen
I don't see why you need hard evidence to back this up, as it is a rather milquetoast claim. Yes, we have conciousness after we die. It's just that, in such a state, there will 1) be no memory, because the bodily function that before facilitated memory has been destroyed, and as such you cannot compare former states with present states, or rationalize and predict latter states due to advanced prediction functions in the brain being annihilated, and 2) there will be no "you" since the idea of you is itself parallel with some bodily function that has been obliterated. — BraydenS
Other criticisms of NDEs are equally lacking in evidence, such as, a lack of oxygen to the brain, delusions, dreams, or some other brain malfunction. — Sam26
The question we should ask first, is, what is a hallucination? Hallucinations are sensory perceptions that a person experiences without external stimulus. In other words, the experience is purely subjective and only exists in their mind, as opposed to objectively verified experiences. Hallucinations can occur in any sensory modality (hearing, seeing, taste, tactile, or smell). Hallucinations are not veridical, which is why they are called hallucinations. They are distortions of reality, and they are usually associated with illnesses like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. — Sam26
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