Man raised back to life in Jesus' name

Who cares? What are the reasons they disagree is what counts; whatever their expertise.

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Ugh, you're going to make me go try and dig up those "home experiments" where you modify your perception of the extent of your body to include parts of your desk, or a fake rubber hand, and thus are able to FEEL touches to parts of your body as emanating from those inanimate objects.

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I've done the rubber hand one.It works. It's VERY wierd.

Doctors as a group, including neurologists, are pretty notorious among scientists for often being quite unscientific in their thinking. (MD/PhD's excluded)In the same way I would be more apt to pay heed to what a neurologist has to say about brains compared to what a naturopath has to say, I am more interested in what a neuroscientist has to say about brains than a neurologist.

Soul: a human consciousness that can exist independantly of its own brain.This message has been edited by Mr. Ex Nihilo, 01-08-2006 10:19 AM

That wouldn't be my preferred choice of words, but I basically agree with that. I would look to neuroscientists, rather than neurosurgeons. My own view is that you cannot confine consciousness to be due to the brain. I believe it takes a whole person, and a brain by itself (say a brain in a vat) is not sufficient. I'm not sure what conclusions you are drawing from that. The brain is complex, and the way behavior is generated and controlled is complex. I don't see this as giving any evidence against materialism. I think the general view is that belief is not a matter of electrical signal, but has to do with the structural organization of the brain. Electrical stimulation could not easily create beliefs. Changes in neural structure would be needed for that.Decision might be electrical, but it won't be the kind of simple electrical signal that can be generated by probes. Some people have jumped to conclusions as a result of studies of timing differences. But I think those conclusions are premature. They observe and measure that movement.You can see eye movement, even when the eye is closed. In sleep labs, they can use instrumentation to measure more precisely. This is true. Many scientists believe that "mind" is a poor concept to use in scientific discussion. It's a folk theory construct. There are many folk theory constructs that scientists find to be poor concepts. For example, physicists will tell you that "centrifugal force" is a poor term and doesn't actually refer to any real force. That's roughly the view of Cartesian dualism. It's a philosophical position. I don't know of any credible neuro-scientist who believes it.

Hi Mr. Ex,I'm always glad to get constructive, head-on responses. That's why we're here, right? To discuss what we know, ask questions, etc. When people face issues head-on, I feel the opportunity to learn and to be understood. It's a good feeling. I would say it a little differently, but I think you've got it. I haven't seen evidence that forces any view of the mind as being anything more than due to 'matter that has attained a certain degree of organization.' I am certainly open to examining new evidence, or re-examining old evidence. This can be explained physically by saying that motor function is localized in the brain, and that when motion is detected without internal stimulation, that it is interpreted as "not me doing it." This itself doesn't mean there's no physical instantiation of "will to move". Good. This is the kind of argument that is needed to complete the above.Zhimbo is going to be a much better reference for this than me; looks like his work involves frontal lobe function (although maybe not medial frontal lobe). Anyway, I believe the medial frontal lobe, as well as the basal ganglia, have been implicated in what you call "decide".Here's a link to the current behavioral test for "dysexecutive function", and a short quote to introduce it: The problem with excitatory electrical stimulation is that it's useful only in certain situations. It's useful only when a brain function is localized, not distributed. If a function requires the simultaneous or consecutive stimulation of multiple areas of the brain, and you stimulate just one, you're not going to get anything.This is why inhibitory electrical stimulation is much more useful; you can determine the necessity of an area of the brain in a function by inhibiting that area through stimulation, then asking the patient to attempt to do something. This is how, for example, language function is ascertained before resection (removal) of epileptic parts of the brain. You can't simply stimulate one part of the brain and get words out. Does that mean there's no physical instantiation of linguistic behavior? Far from it. It just means it's distributed and contentful (see below about 'contentful').Oh right. One more thing about electrical stimulation. YOu can't stimulate parts of the cortex that aren't at the "surface". The brain has many folds, with lots of functional neurons not exposed when you remove the skull. Electrical stimulation deals only with the surface of the brain that is at the exterior surface. Any convolutions of the brain are not accessible. It means you're not testing a large percentage (I don't know offhand; 40% maybe) of the cereberal cortex (to ignore the other critical but "lower" parts of the brain)And it's not useful for functions which require content. Even if there were a localized "belief" part of the brain, if you stimulated it, what would you believe in? There's no content. It would require 'meaningful' stimulation from other parts of the brain to determine content. "Meaningful stimulation" ... it's hard to explain without some knowledge of how neurons interconnect and work together in networks. Suffice it to say that electrical stimulation cannot stimulate selectively enough to make such "meaningful stimulation".To summarize. The evidence you gave, while useful evidence, is evidence against a localized, contentful expression of "belief" or "decision" in the brain. That's good, because we've got other evidence against such organization of the brain, and that's not how we think these functions are organized. I'm quite certain that their work showed a correlation between conscious perception of will and patterns of neural events. To take that as the acutal conscious expereince "triggering" something is unsupported by any studies that I know. There are studies that suggest the opposite though--that conscious perception of will is often delayed compared to the actual onset of a behavior.I can't comment much more, because I can't read the study... unless you have a link somewhere? Anyway, Zhimbo can tell us about the neural correlates to "willful activity", such as dorsal prefrontal cortex for "willfully" keeping a string of numbers in mind or such the sort. I don't get this at all. Neurons are slow. Long axons take time to transmit information. Transmission of that signal across synaptic connections is slow. Exciting other neurons, involved in the conscous perception of pain is slow. Slow transmission tracing a path from skin to brain is exactly what physical models predict. What's the trouble? With all due respect, it "seems" that way to you because you don't know much about the brain. There's two very basic reasons we can't ascertain these things without asking.The first is that we have a really crude, totally incomplete understanding about, at a macroscopic level, how the brain works. NOw, one of the things that we know about the brain is that individual neurons interconnect in "networks", and it is this interconnectivity and the patterns of which neurons activate in a network over time that determine actual function. To do what you suggest, we would have to observe all neurons over time, and then compute, based on those observations, what is going on. The second problem is that we have neither the tools to observe any of the things I described, nor do we have the computational power to simulate and compute such a thing.I could be a lot more specific and thus be more correct. I don't see the point so I'll just lay it out grossly at this high level.As for autism, ... I'm reluctant to make a comment. Except to note that Tito is EXCEPTIONAL for a person with autism. And to say that without knowing Tito's specific physical deficit, it's impossible to correlate behavior with physical deficit. So.. it's impossible to say anything without more information. Information that I'm sure we don't have.Maybe it sounds like a cop out. Unfortunately, those are the facts of life when it comes to studying the brain. It can be really frustrating. He does tons of work. Don't swallow everything he says whole, but a lot of it is provocative. I was trying to refer you more to his work on phantom limbs, which made him famous and is well-respected and, to a lesser degree, his work on synaesthesia. It's all interesting stuff, having to do with unusual conscious perception and how they may manifest physically.Finally, This says more about us than it says about the facts. It's also easy to view a really simple computer program as human, or a bee as having volition, or patterns as being random. Our relatively uneducated thoughts on things we know relatively little about are amazingly flexible. The key in basing conclusions on facts is to be patient in waiting for them. Human consciousness as separate from the body is seemingly based on no facts. Only a lack of them. To me, that's a real red flag.

My simple comment is that I agree.By the way, thanks for not being bothered by what I perceived to be my crankiness. I was feeeling a bit ... shall we say, "moose-y" last night.

Old enough to know better. What's your excuse?

How this...I basically agree. What it suggests is that the mind is something which can work independently from the brain itself. In other words, the basic observation is that people are quite aware of the fact that they are not "willingly" doing the actions that these electrical signals are producing in them. In fact, they can (and have) resisted these impusles using their own consciousness working independently of their own brain synapses.If one wants to suggest that naturalistic causality is responsible for this, it seems as if they are going against the available data in order to reinforce a conclusion that they already had to begin with.The researchers I've quoted were actively searching for purely naturalistic causalities within the brain to conclude to the brain itself is the sum total of a person's consciousness. Contrary to what they were expecting to find, however, they found convincing data which appeared to contradict their own assumptions in regards to the "seat of consciousness".In their own examples they arrive at conclusions based on the tests they performed -- and concluded the opposite of what they thought was initially going on. Maybe so. But, then again, maybe not. The data susggests that a person's consciousness is something which can work independently of the brain itself. If, on the chance, there is found to be memories and thoughts within other parts of the body outside the brain -- something which more readilly appears to be the seat of one's consciousness -- it must be stressed that this is exactly what was not predicted by purely natural causalities. That's exactly what I said. The point is that nobody knew for sure what was going on until they woke them up and asked them. It seems as though Julia Mossbridge might be working on it.Here's her CV for your perusal.

I don't need an excuse.But, since you seem to be suggesting that your answer (old enough to know better) somehow excused you of something in contrast to my reply, I'll ask what you felt you needed an excuse for?

People have souls, right? And we know that people come about as a result of sex, right?It doesn't seem unreasonable, then, to ask how the process of sex results in a person with a soul. I understand how sex results in a person, but how does the soul become a part of it? I've had sex with my wife a number of times, and other women before that, but never once have I been a part of an act of sex that created some kind of standing-wave time-portal to the initial conditions of the Big Bang. (No pun intended.) You'd think something like that occuring in my partner's vagina would be something she would notice. Like, you'd think it would be a burning sensation, considering that the initial conditions of the Big Bang were ALMOST INFINITE HEAT! No, you haven't. The most fundamental and obvious characteristic of an actual theory is that it answers questions. All you've done is avoid them. There's not a single thing that your idea does besides give you an opportunity to use big words from quantum mechanics.Your theory doesn't answer or explain a thing. Nothing at all. It's the idle, and ridiculous, speculations of someone obsessed with the idea that naturalist explanations of life and consciousness have to be wrong, no matter what.Prove me wrong. What does your theory explain? We know that we can induce areas of space with less virtual particle activity ("vacuumn tension" is the term, I believe) between two charged metal plates. This is what is known as the "Casimir effect." Are you telling me that the Casimir effect generates a human soul?

To completely avoid my questions with an ad hominem attack against my age? You're damn right you need an excuse.How about you answer my questions? How about you address my point?

i figured.

oh go away.

haha no. i was just being funny.