Are thoughts transcendant?

I would go with "the ability to identify 'self' as seperate from 'us'." I think the basic answer will come down to "because this is all we see happening when one is conscious and self-aware".I mean, people have been placed under brain scans while thinking of many things.Loving their family... neurons fire.
Annoying pet-peeve... neurons fire.
Favourite hobby... neurons fire.
Playing a video game... neurons fire.
Hated enemy... neurons fire.In fact, I don't think there's been any thought that, once monitored, neurons don't fire. Did you have another idea?Is there a particular thought or ability you know of that cannot be explained by neurons firing?

Doesn't take too long to realize that one cannot produce "thoughts or experience" without neurons. Therefore, the neurons are not "a consequence". Otherwise, the functionality would still work without them.I don't know too much about brain activity, really. I'm using your vocabulary of "neurons" to mean "physical things that happen in the brain". Yet, strangely enough, the neurons he did have still fired as usual. I suspect, anyway. Do you have anything that implies otherwise? And, again, their brain neurons still fired whenever they thought of these memories, behaviours, preferences and habits. Or do you have anything that suggests otherwise? Amazingly enough, Rupert also has neurons. Neurons that fire when his telepathy experiments are going on. Neurons that fire even when he's just talking in the Times about his experiments. How is consciousness=brain=neurons even seemingly contradicted by any of the above stories? If you really think these stories contradict such a thing, please explain how. Even "seemingly". I read the stories, see how neurons would fire, see how that would control the effects of the stories, and it seems intuitively obvious to me that these stories are entirely dependant on neurons as much as any other brain activity.What else is there that you think is happening? Are you simply looking for an explanation that we have no idea how to explain? Neurons are that explanation. It's kinda like dark-matter. We know "something" is out there in the universe. We don't know exactly how it works. We call it dark-matter. We know "something" physically happens in our brains that controls every thought we have. We don't know exactly how it works, or why. We call those things neurons, because we see that they do fire when we think. Always.-I am likely grossly simplifying how our brains work here. But the point remains. There are physical processes occuring in our brains that always occur for every thought, every experience. I don't think we know exactly how those physical processes result in our specific thoughts, but it's obvious that they always occur. It's also obvious that no thoughts or experiences (in any way that we normally detect thoughts or experiences) are capable without functioning neurons. How does it not adequately explain any of the above? The firing of neurons occurs in all of your above examples. It occurs in the same way as when any other brain-controlled function occurs.Please, if you have any indication that any of these examples work without the firing of neurons I'd really like to know about it.If you could possibly show how a human is capable of any thought or experience without the need of physical processes in their brain, I'm positive you'd quickly be world-famous.Hmmm... maybe I'm arguing a point you're not trying to make. If what you mean to say is "explain how neurons, only neurons, and nothing but neurons can encapsulate human consciousness" then I don't think I have a problem with such a statement. But, well, I don't think anyone would ever imply otherwise. It's obvious that other things than neurons are involved. There's a lot more in our brains than just neurons (chemicals and such). Plus we need our sensory systems to feed the brain.I took your statement to say something like "explain how physical components can encapsulate human consciousness". That's what I'm arguing with. I have never heard of any evidence anywhere that something "non-physical" is required or used at all in human consciousness. If you have some, please talk about it.If you just want to say "I don't think the physical can encapsulate everything so there must be something more". Well, I can't argue with a mere assertion. I would then simply say "use your imagination better".

I did mean brain-neurons. But again, I meant neurons as in "physical components of the brain". I'm sure there's lots of other chemicals and components that are used when bringing up memories and experiences. Why do you say "seem capable of existing independently from the body"? I thought you said they felt the other memories and experiences after the organ was transplanted into them? That doesn't seem to be "independent from the body" in any way I can comprehend the sentence. What are you trying to say? Did they actually see the organ itself expressing thoughts and experiences before the transplant? Did they put the organ into a brain-dead body and witness the body expressing thoughts and experiences? As far as I could tell, the "thoughts and experiences" were still totally dependant on the physical brain functionality of the person. Is that incorrect?I didn't address the telepathy experiment because it had nothing to do with showing that physical brain components were being used. Everything humans are capable of... hold on, let's think about that for a second... everything... every single thought, every experience, every function, every ability, every purposeful motion... everything humans are capable of comes from their physical brain components. Not a single thing works without the physical brain components. No physical brain, no abilities at all.Therefore, even if telepathy happens, it happens from a physical brain activity. And therefore is described by "neurons firing".If you want to say that neurons firing isn't a part of some human-ability. You need to show a human doing this ability while there is no brain-activity. Do you want to talk about firing neurons and consciousness? Or if telepathy is a part of reality? I was simply saying that telepathy (if anyone is capable of it) would require the same kind of brain activity that any other ability requires. If you want to say differently. Show me someone doing telepathy while not using the physical components of their brain. Personally, I'd pick something simpler since I don't think telepathy has ever really been shown to work. But it's your choice on how to show your ideas. Me neither. Which is why I'd like to try and understand and explain how neurons firing and brain activity actually totally account for even our very simple actions that we know they control. Before we can answer this extremely difficult question, don't you think it's a bit premature to be adding in extraneous "non-physical" explanations that we may not even need? I mean, let's figure out how everything we actually do have works before we move onto explaining things we don't even know exist. I'm pretty sure there's plenty of world-fame reserved for the first person to prove the existance of telepathy. The fact that this fame is yet-unclaimed over hundreds (thousands?) of years of people proclaiming it's existance implies to me that it doesn't exist... or maybe anyone interested in telepathy just cannot fathom the possibilities for human advancement from it? That doesn't seem to make sense though.

Sorry, been out Christmas-vacationing This is great. Still, I doubt any of these "cellular memories" can be recalled without neurons firing in the brain. That was my point. Even if we take this face-value as true, we have a physical heart being transplanted to create more physical memories. This only lends evidence to working of memory-recall being physical in nature. That's my point, that we can explain all these stories through the phsycial processes of the body. Do you have anything that even remotely suggests otherwise? I don't see how that would be very representative of what you've described. The organ has it's own consciousness? Did it take control over the person it was transplanted into? I'm pretty sure the person receiving the organ was still in control of their own body. Even if the stories of memory-from-the-donor are true, it only says that this memory is physically imprinted on the organ somehow... showing even more that memory recall is a physical process. This answer seems obvious... perhaps there's more physical components involved then simply those located in our heads. After all, neurons are connected to every point of our body, aren't they? Why wouldn't the rest of our body have some sort of affect? But it doesn't even matter, this still only shows that the process is physical, limited to the physical components of the physical body, nothing more. I don't know. However, you have yet to show me a person communicating by means of telepathy without firing any neurons. In fact, you have yet to show me any person doing any conceivable action at all without firing neurons. I think that would be an easier start. A lot of explaining for me? Okay, here it is: Whenever people do things (any thing at all) neurons always fire. If we remove or damage those neurons, people are no longer able to do those things (whatever they were, at all). Always. They can sometimes re-learn how to do those same things again, but, well, it's only different neurons in their brains that fire then.If you're saying there's something extra, or that firing neurons isn't needed, I think it's you that has "a lot" of explaining to do. Why don't we try to stick with what we've started with here first? Since, well, there hasn't been any progress yet. Or, if you'd like, we can give up on the brain acting in some non-physical manner and start talking about another process you have more evidence for. Certainly a possibility. We just need an actual reason to think so in the first place. That includes exhausting the possible reasons that are currently at our disposal. Without identifying all those first, how could we possibly know that they aren't fully responsible? It just wouldn't make any sense to jump forward without taking all the steps in between. You'd be left with nonsense answers that don't mean anything since you'd never be sure that the processes aren't previously explained. Logically, why? Why is it impossible that firing neurons (a process we don't yet fully understand) fully explains the functionality of telepathy? Are you saying that you do fully understand how neurons firing result in our consciousness, and how something extra is explicitly needed?Or are you saying that you also don't understand how neurons firing result in our consciousness... and you're then somehow jumping to the conclusion that something extra is therefore required? That doesn't sound very logical to me. That sounds rather illogical. I think the first step would be to understand what we know has an impact. That way we can know if we need to look for anything extra in the first place.