Are thoughts transcendant?

Let me put this another way. If I were ill and some people were willing to do faith healing for me, would I let them? Yes. I think there may be something in it, though I don't believe that "something" necessarily has to involve a deity. There's plenty of power in people themselves. However, if they wanted me to pay for it? I don't think so. I'm willing to admit the possibility that faith healing can work, but I am also unwilling to let myself possibly be scammed.Sometimes I read my horoscope. Maybe there's something in it, maybe not. It's just fun. I wouldn't pay anyone for this though.Does that explain my personal system a little better?

Enlightenment.

Good heavens.Of course there are factors that influence a person's degree of enlightenment. But enlightenment is more than knowledge and even wisdom. You talk about some ways of perceiving a person's degree of enlightenment, but I'm talking about enlightenment itself. It's one thing to say, "I think this person is enlightened and here are my reasons," and another to actually make that connection and share in that person's enlightenment, and gain some yourself.It's the same point I was making with a mother's love. You could try to study it in a concrete way and decide someone does or doesn't love you because of the way they talk, act, behave, etc. Your conclusions may be right or wrong. But in the actual perception and giving and sharing of love, there is nothing quantifiable. Many people down the millennia have described love in a spiritual way and I think they will continue to do so for many years to come.How can I describe spirituality to someone who chooses not to be spiritual? It's impossible. If this is your belief then I doubt if I'm going to be able to say anything to change it. Maybe your own life experiences will give some real food for thought one day.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

It's a pleasure to talk to you here Petro. I'd enjoy hearing more about this when you have the time. I've started to learn some reiki, which apparently uses the sort of energy you are talking about for healing. It feels real enough to me.I agree that science is not the only way of acquiring knowledge. I think we're in the minority here though LOL.

So in order to be a scientist, does that mean you have to reject spirituality? You'd better go explain that to the theistic evolutionists here then.Spirituality isn't logical. You can remind people of this as many times as you like, but don't be surprised if they don't immediately see your point of view and turn ahteist. Logical thinking is entirely appropriate in many situations, but sometimes it can be useful to utilise different parts of the brain too.Yes the universe exists as it is. Do you claim to have a complete understanding of how it works then? You seem to, if you are telling me that the way I perceive it is fantasy. Why not at least grant me the freedom to think that this is just a little narrow-minded, and that there may be more to life than science currently understands, or perhaps can ever adequately explain.

What is there to say? I don't think I have all the answers just because I am of a mystical bent. I simply believe that there are more ways at arriving at Truth that that which science provides. As it's impossible to explain this to anyone who says that this is simply fantasy, wishful thinking, lying to myself, delusion, etc, then there's nothing more for me to add here. I am not a theist but spirituality is a large part of my life. That is valid for me, and for many others.

People have been debating about the nature of truth for thousands of years. The specialty of this forum is scientific truth. I have no trouble accepting that fossils are found in a geologic column containing rocks that can be dated by a number of methods. The truths that a person might learn from life experiences, other people, spiritual experiences, meditation, etc, are of a different nature. To call them nothing more than subjective opinions is to grossly belittle them. They should be questioned and discussed, yes. There will be some who disagree and see things differently maybe. That's fine. But are you willing to throw out the whole of philosophy and religion, which examine the nature of life and existence, because they are not as "true" as a fossil or a rock?

Thanks JavaMan. I was hoping someone else would lend their voice here. All these comments illustrate the very literal-minded approach at this forum, exemplified by Quetzal's latest comment, which is why I'm going to de-register before I'm tempted to comment on anything further and get my ass slapped some more. Thanks for bringing a sensible note to this discussion.

What is consciousness? How do people here define it?Many seem to take the reductionist view that consciousness is nothing more than neurons firing, and any questions we still have will be answered in those terms.So where does the thinking come from? The personality? Likes and dislikes? Resident reductionists, please explain to me how neurons firing can possibly encapsulate everything that is involved with being conscious and self-aware.We can get back to telepathy too. If it is not to be dismissed outright, then it also presents some problems for reductionism.

There have been many of these types of experiments, which look at the areas of the brain that "light up" during certain conditions. They're in the news every other day. The question, however, is this: is the activity within these regions of the brain the cause, or the consequence, of the thought or experience? Chew on that for a while.If consciousness=brain=neurons, then there are some interesting stories that would seem to contradict this. Here are a few I'm aware of. Is Your Brain Really Necessary?Organ Transplants and Cellular MemoriesAccording to this study of patients who have received transplanted organs, particularly hearts, it is not uncommon for memories, behaviours, preferences and habits associated with the donor to be transferred to the recipient. Gosh, I Was Just Thinking About YouRupert Sheldrake talks in the Times about his telephone telepathy experiments, and the possible biological roots of telepathy.How does "firing neurons" adequately explain any of the above?

That's got to be one of the most honest, unassuming answers I've read on this forum so far. Thank you.For my part, I think we've learned some amazing things about the brain. I welcome further research. But I question whether reducing and reducing our scope of study is going to get us there. You mentioned a car engine. The brain (which I'm not sure the evidence completely supports as being the seat of "self") and consciousness, are not human-made automations, but your point is an interesting one. No one has figured out yet how to bridge the gap between the quantum world and the one we see -- how does the one seem to produce the other? Likewise, no scientist has been able to bridge the gap between consciousness, thought, and neurons firing.I think there's a lot of evidence that thought is transcendent. This surely should provide an interesting new piece to the puzzle and hopefully broaden the scope of research on the subject. The links I gave above ought to be part of that study, rather than the subjects of ridicule or dismissal by skeptics.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

I found an article which explains the "no-brainer" more in-depth. The neurologist says the question "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?" is hyperbole -- of course it is necessary. What's interesting is how many of these people function as well as the rest of us, even though some of them have only 5% of what we would consider to be a normal brain. This in itself ought to be the catalyst for some major studies, but instead it seems to have been mostly swept under the carpet. You can read the in-depth article here. Yes I am. I'd expect a skeptic to dismiss anything from it without even bothering to read it first, never mind whether or not it might contain any truth. Maybe someone else here will be willing to have a look. Another typical blanket dismissal of the skeptic. Not every anecdotal account of everything is wrong, though it's dismissed as such because of the "inherent unreliability" of anecdotes. This subject was investigated by a doctor and he spoke to quite a few different people. Taboo anecdote just the same is it? Maybe someone else here will be willing to have a look. I am amazed at the fact that you are au fait with every study that's ever been conducted into psychic research, and how the positive studies have been "debunked." You must have a huge interest in this subject in order to have studied it in such depth.What kind of link about this experiment would satisfy you? Here's one from Pubmed, about testing for telepathy in connection with emails.And this website will give you more info about the telephone telepathy experiments.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.

I couldn't really make heads or tails of your second link, which I looked at earlier today. Sounds good in principle but I think they will have to work on clarification and adding links. I've made a note of your first link here -- I'm always happy to listen to Reith Lectures -- sounds great. I'll let you know when I've listened to them; it's going to be a little while at the moment. Thanks

It seems clear that neurons are vitally important. But attributing to them the cause of consciousness or thought, rather than saying they appear to be part of the process, is really just a guess.There are neurons everywhere in the body, not just in the brain. Presumably this is your idea about why some organ transplant recipients seem to receive memories, likes/dislikes etc from the donee? At least you were (presumably) willing to look at this story, rather than dismissing it outright. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, there's no way of being certain, but I think it raises some intriguing questions.You didn't actually address the telepathy experiment itself. How could neurons have anything to do with thoughts or consciousness that seem capable of existing independently from the body? The easy answer for the skeptic would be to dismiss telepathy and all paranormal phenomena as delusions. I'm not so keen on easy answers myself, I'd rather do some work and dig around. I also think that ghosts are real, though I do not believe that every single account of a ghostly experience is reliable; however if even a single one of them has been true in the whole history of reported experiences, then we have to ask again how some kind of consciousness seems to be able to exist independently from the body.Sheldrake hasn't done any research into ghostly phenomena, but he's done quite a bit with telepathy. As far as I'm aware, he hasn't been "debunked," though a number of skeptics have dismissed his studies out of hand without bothering to read them.

I think the question that arises here, if you are willing to think about these transplant stories in an open-minded way (again, thank you for that), is how the consciousness from the donee still seems to exist to a degree. It wasn't their brain that was donated; in most cases it was their heart. How would some piece of their consciousness reside in their heart if it's all supposed to be due to neurons firing in the brain? This article mentions "cellular memory" in its title. I think this opens some intriguing possibilities. I was discussing telepathy at that point, not the organ donor stories. To refer back to that, though, you could say that the consciousness of the organ donor is now independent of its original body. You could also say that it is now functioning within someone else's body. Either approach would be interesting to take in more studies. It seems to me, though, that there is a question of how firing neurons or a brain shape a personality. And why would that personality change if the brain remains unaltered or undamaged, and the person has been given someone else's heart?The cases of the people with "hardly any brain" seem to add weight to this idea that maybe consciousness has more to do with the body holistically, than it does with the brain alone. We cannot function without a brain, but maybe we give it more credit for certain things than we ought to.Referring back to the topic of this thread, and looking at consciousness as something which can be transcendent, I think it's relevant to look at telepathy experiments, and I picked Sheldrake's because they seem to be good examples. Did you have a look at link I gave you to his telephone telepathy experiments?How would neurons firing, cause people to be able to communicate in this way over any distance? Again, I'll agree that neurons appear to be part of mental processes. But the cause of them? That's a bit of a leap I think. And it leaves you a lot of explaining to do. If you're saying that you want to reduce the idea of consciousness down to physical functions within the body, then you need to be able to reconcile this with the sorts of stories that I presented here. There are many others, including out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, crisis apparitions, bilocation experiences (where a living person's "ghost" is seen in a different place from where the person is physically), and so on. It's perhaps not surprising why these tend to be collectively labelled as delusions, lies, or mistakes by so-called skeptics; to admit that they might contain the slightest bit of truth would mean having to admit there's a lot we still just don't know. Can any of them be studied empirically? Quite possibly. They might teach us a lot. But what if extraneous non-physical explanations are integral parts of explaining thought and consciousness? Why can't these two approaches be considered and studied simultaneously? Surely science is about being open-minded and considering all possible answers to a puzzle. Maybe reductionism will lead to some brilliant insights, but following that path alone might cause us to miss some important information. There have been positive studies on telepathy, including Sheldrake's. Many people accept it as a fact because it happens to them. Isn't it a possibility that before the Enlightenment, people also accepted telepathy as a fact, even quite a common one? And that after the Enlightenment, now that we are supposed to be such rational beings who can see beyond superstition and magic, many people have dismissed telepathy and other so-called paranormal phenomena out of hand as being irrational or impossible?Paranormal phenomena can also be difficult to study in the usual ways because they are not always able to be replicated on demand. Having said that, Sheldrake's experiments have produced results significantly above chance. Plenty of people do actually proclaim the existence of telepathy; presumably you were asking why more scientists don't proclaim its existence. And again, some do. I suspect there are many others who want to be seen as hard-nosed skeptics and who will not admit even the possibility that such a thing could be.I'm sure it does involve neurons in the process somewhere. But I think logically there has to be more to it than that. Again, it's like being asked to study a quantum stew and then being told those are the components of the table in front of me. You may know about A and Z, but there are 24 letters in between to find out about before you can understand how we can get from one to the other.