More than flesh and blood?

Welcome to EvC, Recon3rd.No confusion here.If you can point out a spirit or soul there would be some confusion.Untill then were is the problem with working with the observable universe without adding extraneous variables whose existance is not established?Edited by Larni, : Added a welcome: where were my manners?

I'm a good person to ask about this because I'm a cogntive behavioural therapist by trade so I would say with confidence that I have observed many emotions in clients.If you could point to the unobservable part of emotion I would be delighted. I would be able to take this new information and rock the core of cbt. Again I'm a good person for this question because I have participated in studies where my very thoughts were in fact measured.As the energy spikes in areas of the brain (be it by electrochemical exchange or spikes in metabolism) when (say) we engage in directed thought we can conclude that thoughts have an energy component and therfore mass. I think it is fair to say that there is more than flesh and blood, but until you can detect the non-material (directly or indirectly) you can not conclude the non-material exists.

When I ask a patient who is crying in my office "what are you thinking right now?" they would respond with "that I'm never going to get better" we have the actual thoughts of the patient (from the horses mouth so to speak).Then if I get them to list their physical sensations assocaited with the thoughts (this is always a specific constellation of physical reactions) we have the actaul sensations experienced.Then I ask them to appraise physical sensations and speculate on the implications on their thoughts. This is always an increase in negativity and so the thoughts power the physiology that entrench the thoughts and so on and so forth. This is the emotion (simply put).The thoughts are open to observation and the emotional reaction is the interplay of thoughts and physical reactions (mediated by the usual suspects of adrenaline, et al).All of it is observable. Close. TWhen the brain percieves colour and a beautiful image and an appraisal is made. Does it have the features of red? or is it blue? Simple.Or in the case of the beautiful image. Does it have the features that elicit a physical sensation that is non-aversive. If it is non-aversive we will eventually associate that kind of image with that feeling and describe that image as being beautiful (conditioning). I'm kind of putting the cart before the horse in this case however, by not going into too much detail.

Thoughs physical reactions (plus the automatic thoughts associated with the physical reactions) are what are known as emotion. You got me with cognitive but you will find that British English differs somewhat in terms of spelling and pronounciation. For instance I would spell honour, favour, flavour, and behaviour differently to someone raised speaking American English. My very thoughts. The information and meaning of the thoughts were not measured untill they are verbalised. Just as the meaning of a word cannot be measured untill it is read. The activity is the thought and the thought is the activity. It's not even that hard to use this ability to measure thoughts such as 'up' and 'down':Page Not Found | WIRED As I said 'emotion' is a description of physical sensations and thoughts: that's about as complex as it gets.

You do know that sleep paralysis goes hand in hand with hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations?http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P2.html

I remember a time when I was on 'shrooms and I could detect no 'anonalies'. In conversation with a friend who suffered a psychotic episode this person indicated that it was real with no 'anomalies'. 'No anomalies' in not exclusive to OBE. Not so: see here.BBC NEWS | Health | Out-of-body experiences 'probed'
BBC NEWS | Health | Out-of-body experience recreated Yes. Yes it does. Dreams are'nt governed by themes; who told you that? So the Astral travel takes plce in a place other than on Earth? Thats very unverifiable. So the lack of a dream theme is evidence for astral travel? Let me recount the dream I had some time ago:I was having a party round my friends dads' house (although it was in the grounds of a village green I once lived near). Many people arrived, too many. I saw my friend and he had his dad in tow. Knowing I was in trouble I made my appolgies and tried to pass the blame on too my friend (nice friend, me).Then the sky turned red and I knew zombies were comming; we all ran to the village park (a different village) and climbed the 'fort' in the play area.After some hand wringing and the feeling that the world was over I found my self with another set of people (colonial marines from the aliens film)with pulse rifles. We had hold up in museum and had baricaded the zombies out and were pretty sure we were safe.The long voyage home (now I'm in a lonely space ship) was very scary because there was an alien on it and my friends were back (no more pulse rifles for us). We new there was an alien on board but we knew it was a film so we were safe. I remeber thinking I know I'm safe but if it gets me it's going to hurt. I 'die' at this point as the alien 'kills' me.It all gets a bit unpleasent (with the squirmy sensation I get when I think of needles) but before we knew it we were back on earth on what appears to be a university campus. We have pulse rifles again and are having a good time blowing away aliens (I remeber thinking 'this is cool').Then the predators turn up and start killing me and my friends. I remeber 'dieing' again. After some more running and screaming we mangage to kill one of the preds and I get his mask. Now I can see them I kill a few more and spread the masks out and the preds dust.With a feeling of a job well done I wake up thinking it was the coolest dream I've ever had.During the dream I remember feeling happy, scared, disconcerted, appalled, exultant and pissed off. I remeber knowing was a dream in some parts and not in other parts.Can you pick out a theme in that?Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

I'm sorry I went off on a tangent with my dream but I was addressing this: So, is lacking a theme specific to astral progection? Are you saying that if the 'experience' (shall we call it 'experience'?) lacks a theme it is definitly astral progection? Or are there other defining variables?

The thing is, without any positive evidence of (for example) things like souls there is no more reason to beleive that we have (for example) a soul than in beleiving that each of us has an invisible entity holding us down on the surface of the planet.

Gon on then tesla, I defy you to 'prove' it.Your piss poor record up till now allows me to hypothosise that you will respond with a word salad: think of this as H1So the null hypothesis (H0) is tha you will infact make sense with your 'proof'.Help me tesla, help me regect H0 with your nonsense proof.

You said you could prove it.If you can't that makes you a damn liar.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Oh the irony, me (arch materialist that I am) finally being shown that all my years of studying and researching into psychology and thinkin' an fanczy brane woik is actually a matter of Faith and Belief and Opinion.Well I gess I shud stop lerning wright now and start preying no one else seeses throgh my hypocrasy.If that is the best arguement you have you phail.Phail big.

Double post.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

Dude, you have only said that my points were opinion and belief and faith. This is an unsupported assertion.That's what creos say about evolution.What is this great issue about verifiying thoughts you have?Why is it a problem for you?

Why do you think I posted the links? You think 'up' and the machine responds one way, think 'down' and it responds the other way.What's not verified? What is wrong with asking the person having the thought? I do that every day and people seem pretty clued up about what they are thinking; it's their thought, after all. If they say 'I wished him dead', and neural activity was recorded where's the beef. Read this:Simply Ted: As Speech Recognition Software Morphs Into Thought RecognitionIf the person telling you what their thoughts are or a machine that can do the same thing aren't verification, what the hell is? What would make you think such a bizarre thought?What reason do you have for thinking that out thoughts and brain activity are different?I also note that you have forgotten your stance on emotion: do you now concur to my stance on emotion? If not, same question as with thought. There is no reason to believe thoughts are not simply that which we can measure.Unless you have some pursuasive reason to suggest otherwise?The meaning of thoughts (as in meaning of words) is different from the physical manifestation of the thought.

The big problem I have with Qualia is how do you tell a qualia zombie from someone whom can experience qualia?