Rovin'

I posted a long comment on a thread at the blog Ayn Rand Contra Human Nature, and since I liked what I wrote, I'm reproducing it here.

Another commenter had written, in part:

I know you're very interested in parapsychology and that might explain your respect for James' transmission theory. It's not the thing that I can debate seriously without having looked at the evidence for it, but I think that if you find parapsychology convincing, then the evidence for brain states influencing mental states is far stronger and should not be even resisted by yourself.

This is how I replied:

Of course brain states influence mental states. This was well known even in William James' time. (If a guy got a railroad spike through his noggin and lived, his behavior would be affected.)

The point of the transmission theory is that even though brain states influence mental states, it doesn't follow that brain states give rise to consciousness. The TV set analogy is an attempt to explain this.

Perhaps a better analogy is the Mars Rover. If some Martian were watching the Rover move around, he might assume the Rover had a mind of its own. In fact, however, it obeys a signal sent from Earth. If the Rover is damaged, it may not pick up the signal anymore, or it may not pick it up as clearly, or it may have trouble carrying out the signal's instructions. The Rover's "brain states" influence its "mental state" - i.e., its built-in circuitry influences its ability to receive, decode, and utilize the signal.

Moreover, the Rover is also sending back data to Earth, and these data influence the future instructions that are sent. If the Rover beams back a picture of a cactus, you can bet the Earthbound controllers are going to instruct the Rover to mosey on over and take a closer look. On the other hand, if the Rover beams back a picture of a bottomless pit, the Earthbound signalers will tell it, "Stay away from that pit!"

So there is interaction between the two; it's not a one-way street.

Furthermore, the Rover presumably has some sort of firmware built into it that can operate even in the absence of a signal from Earth. I would assume that, like the Roomba vacuum cleaner, it can detect a precipice and automatically back away. So some of the Rover's behavior may be the result of built-in mechanisms not dependent on an external command. Similarly, I wouldn't doubt that some human behavior is the result of reflexes and instincts.

It's a complicated interplay, which we certainly don't understand. Will we ever understand it fully? Maybe not; as [blogger] Greg [Nyquist] suggests, it may be impossible for the mind to fully encompass itself.

In any event, the correlations of neuroscience cannot address the chicken-and-egg question of which came first, mind or brain. (Or did they arise together, as neutral monism would have it?)

You might say there's no point in considering such a complicated theory when it's more parsimonious to assume that the brain generates the mind. This would be true if there were no evidence to the contrary. In my opinion, however, there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary - evidence for ESP, life after death, etc. Obviously this evidence is controversial. But if you believe, as I do, that much of it is legitimate, then the transmission theory or something like it begins to look like the best explanation.

It doesn't matter, incidentally, if the evidence of neuroscience is "stronger" than the evidence of parapsychology. It's not a competition. The evidence of neuroscience can peacefully coexist with the evidence of parapsychology if something like the transmission theory is correct. Conflict comes in only when some neuroscientists start interpreting their evidence in line with materialist presuppositions. Then we don't have a disagreement of evidence, but a disagreement of worldviews.

BTW, I owe the Mars Rover analogy to The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton, though I've expanded it somewhat.

More on the transmission theory and the well-known TV set analogy here. I do think Lipton's analogy is better, though it takes longer to explain.

Comments

[Art]

The transmitter and reciever theory of the brain fits in with my theory that the education of the soul is too important to leave it up to chance. My God is smarter than that. Like Emmanuel Swedenborg said way back in the 18th Century:

""We are constituted by the intersection of two flows—one direct, from the divine, and one indirect, from the divine via our environment. We can view ourselves as interference patterns, because the inflow is a wave phenomenon, and we are where the waves meet."

http://www.soultravel.se/2004/040907-swedenborg/index.shtml

[Michael Prescott]

"Like Emmanuel Swedenborg said way back in the 18th Century ..."

That quote is not from Swedenborg. It's attributed to a contemporary researcher, Dr. George F. Dole, described as "a professor of theology at the Swedenborg School of Religion in Newton, Massachusetts."

The presentation of the quote on the site you linked to is a bit confusing. It could be read as a separate quote from Swedenborg, but it's actually a continuation of a quote from Dole: "If we put these images together, the resemblance to the hologram is striking ..."

Dole is interpreting Swedenborg's ideas in light of modern thinking about wave patterns, etc. Swedenborg's own phrasing was very different and much less modern.

[Jime]

Analogies are useful to illustrate or explain a point but, by themselves, they haven't much evidential value.

Unfortunately, some people think the analogies used to illustrate the transmission theory are equivalent to the theory in itself, or are "exemples", or "proof" of the theory.

For instance, if you use a TV analogy, some people will think that you're saying that the brain is exactly like a TV!.

This basic misunderstanding regarding the use and functions of analogies have, in my opinion, confused many of the debates about the analogies used to illustrate or explain the transmission theory.

I've thought about new and more useful analogies to explain the transmission theory, and I'll post about it in the future.

But I doubt these analogies will work if some people keep thinking that analogies are examples of the theory, instead of being simply means to make the point clearer.

[blog post on transmission theory]

I recently blogged about the transmission theory. I tried to show that it has greater empirical support than the production model. The blog post has a link to my web site where a very clear description of the transmission theory is explained. I don't use the TV analogy I use the filter analogy.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2009/06/scientific-theories-of-psychic_04.html

Frederic Myers compared consciousness to light, likening the conscious mind to the visible spectrum and the unconscious mind to parts of the spectrum that are not visible. The brain may filter faculties from any part of the spectrum conscious or unconscious and those faculties that are passed through the filter are those faculties that are available while we are in the body.

When the mind is released from the filter you get expaneded consciousness like in an NDE. If the filter is damaged as in a stroke, you might get poorer transmission and get reduced mental functioning.

[sonic]

The Mars rover analogy is excellent and well stated. Thank-you for an excellent piece!

[Michael Duggan]

I wonder what the Transmission theory has to say about people who DEVELOP certain artistic and other amazing abilities after or during an accident or disease. I have copied 2 links below; one concerning a young woman who finds new found artistic ability during a brain tumour, and another about a man who likewise, discovers an amazing ability to paint following a stroke. What do these show? Could it be, that as some parts of the brain are lost this liberates latent abilities to the fore?
M.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06022009/news/regionalnews/tumor_turns_everyday_painter_into_an_art_172129.htm

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1190002/Masterstroke-Man-draw-stickmen-wakes-life-saving-brain-surgery--artist.html

[Michael Duggan]

This is the tumour story. Doesn't seem to have posted too well first time!

http://www.nypost.com/seven/06022009/news/re

gionalnews/tumor_turns_everyday_painter_into

_an_art_172129.htm

[Zetetic_chick]

I wonder what the Transmission theory has to say about people who DEVELOP certain artistic and other amazing abilities after or during an accident or disease.

I'd suggest that, in those cases, the "filter" (brain), due to its alteration, begin to transmit an information or ability preexisting as a potentiality in consciousness, but impaired or limited to the normal functioning of the brain.

As an example, several years ago, I was playing videogames, and accidently I struck the nintendo and the game changed in a way that I could finish it because the main characther of the game became immortal.

The accidental strike changed the game is a way that enhanced the abilities of the game.

It was only an accident, actually I tried to do it again (strinking again the nintendo), and I never happend again.

I stopped to do that, because I almost destroyed the nintendo with so many strikes.

LOL.

So, I think Duggan's suggestion "that as some parts of the brain are lost this liberates latent abilities to the fore" is correct.

[Michael Prescott]

I agree with ZC, and would add that some people born with brain-related medical conditions, like autism, can show prodigious talent in a limited area - such as performing mathematical calculations. (This is the so-called "idiot savant" phenomenon, dramatized in the movie "Rain Man.")

Could the malformation of the brain in such cases somehow "open the filter" to a particular talent, even while shutting off access to other aspects of consciousness?

I'm not saying this is true - just throwing it out there.

[transmission theory]

"I wonder what the Transmission theory has to say about people who DEVELOP certain artistic and other amazing abilities after or during an accident or disease."

http://www.geocities.com/chs4o8pt/skeptical_fallacies.html#skeptical_fallacies_brain

This is strong evidence that the brain does not produce consciousness but restricts it. It is extremely unlikely that a brain injury could cause the same changes in the brain that learning a skill would produce. If an injury to the brain can give a person a new talent, that suggests that the talent originally existed in the non-physical consciousness but the brain was restricting that talent from expressing itself in the physical organism. The stroke may have damaged the part of the brain that restricted the talent from emerging. This might then allow the patient to become more fully conscious of his innate abilities.

[transmission theory]

The transmssion theory explains the following phenomena which the production theory does not:

Near death experiences.

Increased psychic abilities after a head injury.

Cosmic consciousness during deep meditation.

Survival of consciousness after death.

Talents arising after brain injury.

There is more empirical support for the transmission theory than the production theory

[Ben]

The Mars Rover analogy is very good. The thing that most interests me about it is the nature of the guidance from planet Earth. Presumably this is the equivalent of the 'higher self' rather than a universal consciousness.

[T.T.]

The rover analogy would be improved if there was a person operating it from earth through a virtual reality interface.

However it doesn't explain how talents can arise as a result of brain damage and it doesn't explain why nde's and obe's start near the body: because the consciousness is co-located with the body.

Also, materialists know the brain filters consciousness. Much more information is percieved through the senses than we are conscious of. The brain does filter sensory input and processes it into a format that is useful to consciousness.

[Zetetic_chick]

Also, materialists know the brain filters consciousness

But not in the sense understood in the transmission theory. In this theory, the brain is a filter of consciousness, but for materialists the brain (using your words) "does filter sensory input and processes it into a format that is useful to consciousness"

So for materialists, what is being filtered and processed is the external information and sensory input, not consciousness itself. Consciousness is a passive receptor the process of filtering.

In the transmission theory, consciousness itself is the object of the filtering process and this explain why changes in the filter (brain) can, sometimes, enable the expression and manifestation of potentialities, skills or talents previously unknown or unmanifested in the person.

[Greg L]

"The rover analogy would be improved if there was a person operating it from earth through a virtual reality interface."

This, in a nutshell, is the virtual reality theory. Works just as well as the transmission theory with the added benefit of expalining quantum mechanics. We are in a virtual reality created by a partitioned super conciousness.

[Barbara]

"This, in a nutshell, is the virtual reality theory. Works just as well as the transmission theory with the added benefit of expalining quantum mechanics."

I don't see how QM gets into this. What's the link Greg?

[Keith Augustine]

I hope I'm not opening up a can of worms by posting here (I'm *not* seeking an endless debate just for pining in), but I thought I'd point out that the rover/tv set analogy doesn't work.

I used the example of a Predator drone, which makes the same point as using the Mars rover analogy.

Some other analogy is needed, IMO. I think C. D. Broad's compound theory is the closest thing to a viable theory, but I don't think that it works, either. Broad's theory fails namely because when the brain dies, the compound is destroyed, leaving just Broad's "psi factor" behind, and that is much less on its own then when it was integrated with a brain that gave it all sorts of information processing abilities that it would evidently lack on its own.

(Note that I'm not looking for a fight. If you think I'm wrong, fine; I'm willing to entertain why, specifically, my analysis of the analogy fails. But I'm not posting this comment here seeking to answer a thousand questions about issues that have nothing to do with the production/transmission issue specifically. I just want to make a point, like anyone else would, and move on.)

See http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2005/06/attention-dualists-physicalist.html

Namely, this:

KA: Perhaps an analogy is appropriate here. Let's say we have two separate, interacting things: A Predator drone and the remote pilot controlling it from a distance. The drone is captured and its captors start fiddling with its transmitter/receiver. What's the worst the captors can do to the remote pilot, miles away? They can destroy the drone's camera, making it blind. The person controlling the drone will no longer be able to see the environment around the drone. They can destroy the microphone, making it deaf, and again, the radio controller will no longer be able to hear what is going on. Ditto if the wires connecting the camera and microphone to the transmitter are severed. Information from the senses has been cut off. Next, suppose that the wires connecting the receiver to the drone's engines are severed. Now the pilot cannot even blindly control the drone. It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism.

[Art]

It's been my experience that all metaphors break down if you try and take them too far. For instance, I'm heavily wedded to the "holographic universe" theory but I doubt that there are gods splitting and crossing laser beams to produce interference patterns that are our Universe. Perhaps "similar to" might be a better way of explaining it.

[Michael Prescott]

"The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain."

I'm afraid I don't quite understand this objection. The point of the analogy, as I use it, is that brain damage, chemical abuse, etc. will affect the way the "signal" of consciousness is received and decoded by the brain. Brain damage etc. does not affect the signal itself.

In terms of the Predator/controller analogy, damage to the Predator adversely affects the Predator, but doesn't affect the controller at all.

(Oh, the controller may be frustrated that the Predator is no longer responding, but the controller himself is not harmed. This is the main reason for using Predators - to keep human pilots out of harm's way.)

The analogy, as I use it, assumes that while we are physically alive, we are the Predator. The controller might be analogized to the "higher self," which we cannot access directly (except perhaps in temporary transcendent experiences).

Brain damage, chemical abuse and so forth can certainly affect the brain and cause changes in personality, behavior, cognition, memory, etc. As you say, "... you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain."

But in the analogy as I intend it, all such effects are limited to the Predator/Rover. The controller/NASA scientist/higher self is not affected; the signal is still being sent, but is no longer being received and decoded correctly. The Predator (i.e., us) is the one who goes into a psychotic rage or loses the ability to add and subtract. The higher self is not compromised and would guide us if it could, but the connection has been impaired and the signal can't get through (or cannot be received clearly).

When the brain fails altogether in death, then and only then do we stop depending on it as a transceiver. At that point we seem to regain our direct connection with our higher self. Exactly how this happens, I have no idea, and I suppose the analogy breaks down at this point. But as Art says, all analogies will break down if pushed too far.

[Art]

Is metaphor the wrong word to use? I guess I don't know the difference between analogy and metaphor? My bachelors degree was in Agriculture/Animal Science and it took me two times to make it through Freshman English!

[Michael Prescott]

"Is metaphor the wrong word to use?"

No, it works either way.

Thinking a little more about Keith Augustine's objection, I believe I now understand it better. If I am interpreting him correctly, he is taking the analogy a bit more literally than I would like. The Rover or Predator is not, of course, conscious; it is a robot; its actions are controlled by a remote human operator. If we take the analogy literally, then we are saying that humans are basically robots controlled by an external consciousness, but not conscious ourselves.

This is not what I intend, though I admit that the analogy can be problematic on this point. For the analogy to really work, I suppose we would have to imagine that we are able to beam a signal into a robot in such a way that it would actually become conscious; if its reception of the signal were disrupted, its consciousness would be affected.

In other words, from my point of view, there are two loci of consciousness - the brain, which is where consciousness is received and decoded; and some external, extracerebral source. After death, and in some mystical experiences, the brain-centered locus of consciousness drops away, and direct access to the higher, extracerebral consciousness is obtained. But for the most part, we experience the brain-centered locus as our only consciousness while we are alive.

I would find support for this idea in various places: some near-death experiencers report dual consciousness, being simultaneously aware of hovering over their body while still "in the body"; purported after-death communicators often seem to have resolved the mental problems and issues that plagued them in life, and to be viewing their lives from a new, wiser perspective; people sometimes obtain inspiration (in art, science, etc.) from what they describe as a higher source; people who've had NDEs, OBEs, and mystical experiences often say that they suddenly saw the purpose and meaning of everything, but are unable to translate this epiphany into words once they have resumed their normal (limited) consciousness; etc.

Basically, the whole literature of mystical and transcendent experiences suggests (to me) that the consciousness we ordinarily know is limited and incomplete, and that a higher consciousness exists, which is connected to us, but from which we are partly cut off.

I agree, however, that the Rover/TV set analogy does not capture this idea, and is defective in that respect.

Thanks, Keith, for an interesting and thought-provoking observation.

[william]

“Basically, the whole literature of mystical and transcendent experiences suggests (to me) that the consciousness we ordinarily know is limited and incomplete, and that a higher consciousness exists, which is connected to us, but from which we are partly cut off.”

My discovery had been that if our consciousness was not limited and incomplete and we were not “partly cut off” we would not exist as perceived separate identities. We are not robots but neither do we have the freedom not to express ourselves. Maybe that is why many call consciousness the hard problem.

We do have choices but those choices have boundaries such as a limited and incomplete intelligence and “we are partly cut off” from this infinite awareness. The concept of free will at least the way most religions teach it is probably the greatest fallacy ever perpetuated on human kind. To believe in free will is to lack knowledge about the origin of our unawareness.

Consciousness is a great mystery but even a greater mystery is awareness. My research indicates that consciousness is an expression of infinite awareness, which of course is perfect awareness. Many call this infinite awareness emptiness or nothingness but the reality is that emptiness or nothingness is everything. I.e. all and all, that that is, Isness, The first cause, the absolute, well you get the picture.

From my point of view infinite awareness is a timeless reality that is a stillness that would indeed appear as emptiness or nothingness. Taken literally emptiness and nothingness would be oblivion, a void, nonexistence, or nonbeing. Look around do you see any nonbeings. Form cannot come from nothingness but from a vitality and an intelligence that is beyond our comprehension at this time.

Can we be aware and not have conscious thoughts roaming through our minds? It appears that we can indeed be aware of reality without the movement of conscious thoughts and a few erroneously call that lack of movement of conscious thoughts emptiness or nothingness.

[Jime]

If we take the analogy literally, then we are saying that humans are basically robots controlled by an external consciousness, but not conscious ourselves. ---- MP

This why, in my first comment, I said "For instance, if you use a TV analogy, some people will think that you're saying that the brain is exactly like a TV!"

We can't take analogies so literally.

But an actual problem with analogies is that the similarity has to be relevant to the point we try to do. Fail to do that will make the analogy weak or irrelevant.

In Keith's analogy, I think the terms of it (a Predator drone and the person with a remote pilot controlling it from a distance) are disanalogous in relevant aspects in regard with the connection between brain and consciousness.

Correctly, Keith's analogy is valid regaridng two points: 1)There are two different substances (or things or "stuffs"); and 2)There is an interaction between them. Something similar applies to the transmission theory (TT). This is out of discussion. But from here, relevant differences begin:

Regarding point 2 (interaction), the TT implies more relevant things than those contained in Keith's analogy:

In TT, consciousness and the brain has a very strong bidirectional influence (they influence each other in strong ways) in a way that a the person controlling the Predator can't be influenced by the Predator.

On example of this is that, in the TT, we can think individual consciousness or part of it is emboided (or located "in" the brain or body, or attached to it). This is the part of consciousness being "decoded" or "trasmitted".

But in Keith's analogy (as used by Keith), the person controlling the predator is not "inside" the latter (or closely attached to it); it explains that a damage or destruction of the predator or part of it doesn't affect the person's ability to " affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces" since that such abilities are not causally influenced by the predator's functioning or malfunctioning.

But if consciousness is ---temporally--- emboided, we'd expect that its functioning (not its existence) is wholly or greatly influenced by the function of brain, especially if consciouness is "inside" the body/brain (or closely attached to it during its emboided physical existence).

If consciousness needs of a physical brain to function and express itself properly in the physical world, then the functiong of the "physical decoder-- brain" of consciousness will be determinant to the proper functioning of the latter in the physical world.

I think Michael's remark is relevant here:

The analogy, as I use it, assumes that while we are physically alive, we are the Predator. (emphasis in black added)

If I don't misunderstand Michael, the "we're the predator" indicates that, somehow, we're in (or closelly attached to) the predator and, hence, strongly influenced by its functioning.

Or more exactly, part of consciousness being "decoded" for its expression in the physical world is, somehow, "in" or "attached" to the decoder. Therefore, the functioning of the decoder is essential for the functioning of the that part of consciousness being decoded.

Another Michael's point:

The point of the analogy, as I use it, is that brain damage, chemical abuse, etc. will affect the way the "signal" of consciousness is received and decoded by the brain. Brain damage etc. does not affect the signal itself

If I understand Michael's point fairly, he's arguing that the affectation ocurrs in the process of decodification of the signal --- and it would explain Keith's point about getting "someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP..."----, but the signal in itself, as far it is not dependent of the "decoder" for its existence, is not neccesarily affected.

The mistake would be to identify the errors in decoding with the errors in the signal in itself.

And in this point is where our metaphysical assumptions play a role: if we assume materialism, we'll "see" the errors of consciousness (e.g. someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP) as evidence of mind-brain identity or ontological dependence (= damage to the brain, damage to consciousness), not as evidence of a decoding error ocurring in the "decoder".

But if we consider, at least as a alternative interpretation of the same facts, the TT, we won't jump to the materialistic conclusion so easily.

We'd realize that the same evidence can be accounted for in terms of a decoding error occuring in the "decoder", not in the signal. Only the decoding of the signal has been affected or impaired.

As I mentioned, analogies shoould be used to make our point clearer and be interpreted like this; not as evidence that our hypotheses, speculations or opinions are correct.

[Ben]

I think Michael's Mars Rover analogy works fine if we give it artificial intelligence. I thought this was assumed in the original post (avoiding chasms etc).

We must remember that so far as life on earth (or Mars) is concerned, much of what we do is robotic or instinctive (certainly so for animals). As humans, when we are very young, our self-awareness is minimal. It grows as our senses take in experience - in other words, what we think of as self-awareness on earth is sensory-built self-awareness. That is (this blog confirms!) well short of the higher self's self-awareness.

[william]

“That is (this blog confirms!) well short of the higher self's self-awareness.”

That is the journey of the soul to grow in self-awareness of their true reality. How else could Infinite express itself without an involution process and then an evolution of consciousness journey for souls to grow in awareness?

Of course it appears for Infinite to express its potential then souls must exist that have limited awareness of their oneness for growth of awareness to occur in individual souls.

Could nature be the very incubator for consciousness to evolve into greater levels of self-awareness? Souls come from somewhere why not nature?

[Jameson]

"Could nature be the very incubator for consciousness to evolve into greater levels of self-awareness? Souls come from somewhere why not nature?"

-............you really have been around too much hindu/buddhist philosophy. Try something else already. Everyone has been reincarnated from plants, insects, and animals.......yes, that's it! I mean, really...why not? An even better question would be.....WHY?

[Barbara]

"An even better question would be.....WHY?"

"Why" is the big question. Do you have any ideas on Why you're here? (I do, but I won't risk your displeasure by recounting them).

[Greg L]

"I don't see how QM gets into this. What's the link Greg?"

Barbara,

In a virtual reality our experience is presented to consciousness as a flow of date interpreted by individualized consciousness, there is no outside universe, no space. Hence quantum entanglement explained, also, by the way the holographic universe theory. In addition as the virtual scene unfolds, all possible "happenings" are created by our choice, presented to us as a broad spectrum of "probable" outcomes, thusly explaining the probable distribution of quantum physics.

In addition, this theory can go on to explain the why of our existance. We are here to further develope our consciousness via the virtual reality experience, and in turn further develope the bigger consciousness of which we are a part.

Greg

[Art]

In the New Testament Jesus tells several stories (Parables) where he says "and the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto...." He uses stories to make analogies to what Heaven is "sort of" like. There is probably no way to explain exactly to earth bound physical beings what the Kingdom of Heaven is exactly like. I'm thinking that the physics of the Spiritual Universe is so different in kind from the Physical Universe that we may not even be able to wrap our minds around it. "It's sort of like....." "grin!

[william]

“"Why" is the big question. Do you have any ideas on Why you're here? (I do, but I won't risk your displeasure by recounting them).”

In that displeasure is doubt not certainty. As far as Hindu and Buddhist teachings I did study the so-called enlightened ones in the nineties. But it appears they did not have the impact on my thoughts as much as when I came to have knowledge of our evolution of consciousness.

But I must give credit where credit is due the Hindu and Buddhist teachings do teach that that origin of most of our suffering is ignorance which lead me to ask what is the origin of our ignorance. But the origin of our suffering did not sink in until I studied Dr Hora’s teachings from his book beyond the dream.

I find that most of the world even *many Buddhist monks do not have knowledge of the origin of suffering. It appears that the concept of free will gets in the way of our connecting the dots between unawareness and suffering.

As far as the question why: I studied Dr Hora’s teachings for over two years and he taught that a better question than why is to ask what is the meaning of what appears to be.

I would have to add something a little different and that would be what is the underlying reality of what appears to be. Jesus statement judge not by appearances was a profound teaching.

“Could nature be the very incubator for consciousness to evolve into greater levels of self-awareness? Souls come from somewhere why not nature?”
Those were two questions not two statements of facts or even beliefs.

“Try something else already.” Ask yourself must this person keep trying until he is able to align his thoughts with my beliefs?

*My research on the Internet appears to show that many of these Buddhist monks confuse symptoms with origins. I.e. attachment, cravings, grasping are symptoms of unawareness not origins.

[Art]

I find that most of the world even *many Buddhist monks do not have knowledge of the origin of suffering. - william

We are here to experience duality and separation, time and space, and imprint memories of life in a 3 dimensional + 1 time universe.

Duality and separation imprint on the soul what it means and how it feels to be separate, something that can't be learned in the Spiritual Universe because of those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness as reported in a plethora of near death experiences.

Why time and space? Because the only thing that exists in Heaven is that which has been conjured up by the soul. Heaven is a place where nothing exists and everything exists; but before it can exist it must first be thought of.

We come here to become unassimilated and resistance is futile.

[william]

“We are here to experience duality”

Duality is only appearance. What the world does give us is a variation of phenomena. Because of that variation there is the appearance of duality. Hot and cold, good and bad, up and down, rich and poor, fast and slow, etc.

All phenomena have variation, no variation no phenomena and indeed no us. The extremes of variation have the appearance of duality. Understanding of variation helps one to see the variation that exists in consciousness. I.e. there appears to be all levels of soul development on this planet not just dualistic old souls/new souls but all levels or phases of soul development.

[Art]

The average person living on $2.00/day doesn't have time to sit around contemplating their navel. They are too busy trying to survive. Only wealthy people, who are in a minority, have the luxury of sitting around trying to figure out "why we are here."

My theory is that the education of the soul is too important to leave it up to chance. I believe the soul's lessons are embedded in our everyday lives and the soul learns what it's supposed to learn whether we want it to or not. And yes, I believe the Creator of the Universe is that smart. You can be a sheepherder in Siberia, or a jungle boy in the Amazon rain forest, or a woman selling fish in Malaysia and you will experience duality and separation, time and space, and make memories of what it was like to live in a 3 dimensional + 1 time Universe whether you want to or not. From the moment we are born and we separate from our mothers and the umbilical cord is cut till the day we die and our deaths become a lesson in separation to the loved ones we leave behind life is a never ending series of lessons in separation. In a hologram separation isn't just about people. It's about everything, rocks, trees, boats, cars, sex, gender, sexual orientation, bees, dogs, cats, birds, money, etc. Religion, politics, race, culture, language, I.Q., education, dialects, ad nauseum. The more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates.

[Keith Augustine]

I don't think presuppositions play a role here at all. If a certain analogy holds, then certain things follow from that analogy, regardless of what you might believe about other things.

As for the issue of taking things too literally--you have to take an analogy at least somewhat literally, or else there is no reason to think that analogy applies to the issue at hand (i.e, is a "weak analogy"). If you are going to qualify an analogy in some way, you have to say in advance how aspects of the analogy don't apply to the issue at hand, and how they do. If you qualify it too much, at some point it's going to look like the analogy do not apply at all. If there are far more relevant dissimilaries than relevant similarities between the two things, the issue and the analogy, than the analogy is a bad one.

I think that the main problem for any sort of filter model of consciousness is that the brain is said to be a restricting/inhibiting device of some sort. So the better the brain, the more filtered one's consciousness is going to be. The natural converse of this is that the more debilitated the brain, the less effective it is going to be at filtering. So the natural extrapolation of "transmission" would be that consciousness would be "freer" or "enhanced" or whatever the more of the brain is destroyed. But we find the exact opposite. The more debilitated one's brain, the more debilitated one's mind.

If you look at Broad's compound theory, you can think of the brain + psi factor model with analogy to a computer. A hard drive + a CPU is much more "enhanced" than the CPU all by itself, or the hard drive all by itself. The combination can do much more together than either could do on its own. This is why I don't think "transmission" models of consciousness work, because they essentially have to maintain that our "embodied minds" now can do what they do because of the union of a "psi factor" with a brain; but once the brain is destroyed, the natural extrapolation is that the psi factor by itself is going to be able to do much less (not much more) than it could with the brain's assistance. It wouldn't be able to process visual input without an occipital lobe, for instance. There are all sorts of things that a brain is necessary for. And brains are incredibly resource intensive: they require a lot of glucose to function correctly, diverting energy that could be used by one's muscles to run away from a threat. So if we could really think clearly without them, it doesn't make a lot of sense that they exist in the first place.

In essence, I think that the empirical facts of neuropsychology pose a dilemma for dualistic survivalists: Either assert the radical independence of mind and brain, in highly implausible contradiction to such facts, or grant intimate dependencies, but at the expense of jettisoning personal survival.

The more dependent ours minds are upon our brains, however you cash out that dependence, the less likely it is that what you take to be distinctive of yourself could be preserved without a brain. So Broad's "psi factor" could, perhaps, survive death, but it would not have your memories, or personality traits, or other characteristics that are distinctive of you. Douglas Stokes realized this when he maintained that some bare tabula rasa of consciousness might still survive--Hornell Hart's "I thinker"--as if erasing all of your mental traits, until only those that you had as an infant remained, would count as the survival of you. The preservation of such a naked "I thinker" is not personal survival by any stretch of the imagination.

Imagine a conscious robot with a lifetime of memories. Erasing those memories would not obliterate the ability of that robot to be aware, so it's self-awareness might survive in some abstract sense, but its personality would not--and the latter is what counts in personal survival.

When most people think of an afterlife, they think of waking up somewhere else as they basically are now, mentally, not absent the contents of the minds they had while alive. But their embodied minds could only do certain mental tasks because their brain's information processing capacities enabled those tasks. So a disembodied mind shouldn't be able to read letters in a sentence, because a certain area of the brain needs to be functioning properly in order for our minds to be able to recognize letters as more than random inkblots. When that area of the brain is damaged or nonfunctional, aphasia results. And, of course, there are other ways certain areas of the brain are needed to do other tasks. The problem is how consciousness could be able to read, or do math, or form sentences to communicate, or see a pallet of colors and shapes as objects, not just a hodgepodge of random visual patterns, without a brain to do the information processing necessary for that.

[sonic]

Keith you ask good questions. Here are some points to consider-

A person can lose the ‘speech center’ of the brain and still learn to talk using other parts of the brain. If a part of the brain were responsible for the ability, this would not happen.

We know from plasticity experiments that seemingly any ability lost to brain damage can be regained with work. (See the work of Edward Taub for example). This invalidates the main evidence that you present. It does fit the transmission model.

Keith, I fear you also overlook this possible objection (a reductio ad absurdum)--I have seen people go into rages because the car wouldn’t start. So we could say that disconnecting the battery could cause this. Therefore the source of the person’s emotional stability is the wires that connect the car battery to the starter. But you don’t really want to say that, do you?

I think that your basic premise (parts of the brain are responsible for abilities) has been shown false by observation and experiment.

[Jameson]

"Do you have any ideas on Why you're here? (I do, but I won't risk your displeasure by recounting them)."

-That's good, Barbara, thank you for not recounting them because after all, you don't know, you only think you do.

"In that displeasure is doubt not certainty."

-Is this absolutely true? Are you absolutely sure of this? Is it an absolute? If you can't answer these questions with absolute certainty (because there are no absolutes) I'll thank you to refrain from passing judgement...something you write about a lot but seem to fall short on practising.

[Michael Prescott]

Keith, I think your argument begs the question. You're assuming the brain is necessary to think, perceive, etc; without the brain there can be no thought, memory, or perception. But that's the whole question at issue: Does consciousness depend on the brain in the first place? Or does consciousness depend on the brain only as a means of operating a physical body in a physical world?

It's true that brains are "resource intensive" and therefore must serve an evolutionary purpose. And clearly they do. No one is saying we don't need the brain to live a physical, bodily life. The circuitry of a TV set or a Mars Rover or a Predator drone is resource intensive too.

"So the natural extrapolation of 'transmission' would be that consciousness would be 'freer' or 'enhanced' or whatever the more of the brain is destroyed. But we find the exact opposite."

Well, not always. Jill Bolte Taylor wrote a book called "My Stroke of Insight," about how having a major stroke (which left her incapacitated in some respects) also opened up her consciousness in new and exciting ways. And there is the idiot savant phenomenon, not to mention NDEs. But I agree that most of the time, brain damage leads to diminished capacity. Again, no one is arguing that the brain isn't necessary to live a physical, embodied life.

But I know you don't want to get into a debate (and I don't blame you - online debates can go on forever). And I can appreciate how my position must seem like special pleading to you. If one doubts the reality of things like NDEs, OBEs, remote viewing, and after-death communication, then naturally the production theory of consciousness will appear far more likely than any other. It's only because I think the above phenomena and others like them are genuine that I have to look for some alternative model.

I do appreciate your sharing your views, which are thought-provoking and challenging as always.

[Kris]

I think this phenomena destroys Augustine arguments about brains being completely necessary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephalus#Symptoms

http://worldofanomaly.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-brain-really-necessary.html

In some cases the people virtually had no brains. Other cases they had greatly diminished brains. However the point remains we had people with normal IQs who had virtually no brains and we had functional people with virtually no brains. What truly controls the body and what creates consciousness. Cannot be the brain for these people.

[Ben]

Sonic & Michael: very well said, indeed.

Kris: this seems valid, and I believe you're right. However, I have heard the argument that the brain tissue may still be present in the case of hydrocephalus, albeit in compressed form!

[Kris]

Hey Ben

Possible but just how much can you compress something.

And how can you compress a cell anyways? If you squash a cell it dies.

So if you cannot compress cells and keep them alive, then how can you compress the rest?

[Leo MacDonald]

Their is another argument for dualism which i have come across from this site

http://www.afterlifedebate.com/for.html

The argument from geometry, this is based on two premises

1. Additional dimensions besides our own
2. A Additional dimension of space and an additional dimension of time would affect our experience, and this conception seems to correlate with dream experience

More about the argument from geometry can
be found here

http://www.afterlifedebate.com/bookshop.html

Keith it depends on what you view mind and consciousness

Mind- Dreams, Thoughts, Memories,
Consciousness- Personality, Inner Subjective experience.

He ever said the better the brain, the better the filter?. If you assume that the main source of consciousness and mind is a medium but not the brain. Your saying that from outside observation that what we observe is damage brain equals damage mind and consciousness. But evidence coming from near death experiences and out of body experiences show that the inner subjective consciousness along with mind[information] is not damaged or destroyed, rather restricted by the brain.

[dmduncan]

"Keith, I think your argument begs the question. You're assuming the brain is necessary to think, perceive, etc; without the brain there can be no thought, memory, or perception. But that's the whole question at issue: Does consciousness depend on the brain in the first place?"

Yup, I think so too.

I would like to see Keith produce a single piece of neuroscientific evidence that does not beg the question, i.e., whose evidence that the brain does not survive is NOT the assumption that it does not survive.

It's also an argument from ignorance to assume that something isn't real if we don't know it's real.

Evidence does NOT = reality, such that no "evidence" (where evidence is defined in an exTREMEly narrow sense) = no reality.

That is false. And it's a staple of materialist thinking.

[william]

“The problem is how consciousness could be able to read, or do math, or form sentences to communicate, or see a pallet of colors and shapes as objects, not just a hodgepodge of random visual patterns, without a brain to do the information processing necessary for that.”

That is why they call it the hard problem. How consciousness is able to individualize itself is a great mystery. It could very well be that consciousness goes through an evolutionary process, which allows it to become more and more individualized then at some point after individualization it may indeed begin to move towards a less individualized consciousness towards a greater oneness.

It appears to me that even a blade of grass has some level of consciousness. We may discover some day that all form has some level of consciousness even a rock. Or not.

Many suggest that the soul always retains some aspect of its individuality and others suggests that the soul attains a level of development that it becomes one with this Absolute. I lean at this time in the direction that the soul reaches a level where it becomes identical with oneness and no longer sees itself as separate from this oneness and maybe even has attained the creative powers of this infinite oneness. Is there ever a time that a soul is not moving in a spiral direction towards perfection?

I don’t base soul evolutionary process on what the Hindus teach but on my research into spiritualism that consciousness continually evolves and is always dynamic and at some point far into the future a soul attains perfect awareness and becomes like its creator.

As one schoolteacher told me once “look around we have old souls and newer souls in this room”. I found this an interesting comment from her as her religion did not teach or advocate reincarnation.

[Leo MacDonald]

Keith,

I seen you mentioned Phineas Gage before where he had a spike go through his
head. You probably see this case as supportive of the production hypothesis. Here is why it isn't consistent with the production hypothesis.

- The uncertainty of Harlow's sources for the changes he describes in Gage, combined with the fact that he waited almost twenty years (between his first and second papers) to communicate those changes, constitute one of the central puzzles of the case.

Current Research

- Recently, an advertisement for a previously-unknown public appearance by Gage has been discovered, as have a report of his behavior during his time in Chile and a description of what may have been his daily work routine there as a long-distance coach driver. This new information suggests that the seriously maladapted Gage described by Harlow may have existed for only a limited time after the accident—that Phineas eventually "figured out how to live"[39] despite his injury, and was in later life far more functional, and socially far better adapted, than has been thought.

If this is so then (along with theoretical implications) it "would add to current evidence that rehabilitation can be effective even in difficult and long-standing cases," according to Macmillan. To better understand the question, Macmillan and collaborators are actively seeking additional evidence on Gage's life and behavior.[40]

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

The case above is usually presented to be one of the best cases if not the best evidence that materialists have used based on.

-Harlow's observation which is very questionable based on him taking almost 20 years to communicate changes he saw in Phineas Gage, between his first and second papers. Possible embellishment, could be. However, materialists insists on taking Harlow's account as a trustworthy source. Now with new evidence which i posted above it's even more likely that the personality changes that Harlow's said occur weren't as dramatic as he said they were.

This case based on these facts show that this case is consistent with the filter or transmission theory. It also shows that the mind brain close link to eachother is not as close as what is assumed.

Another piece of evidence which appears to be consistent with the production hypothesis is the split brain experiments, HOWEVER, it appears that two conscious streams of consciousness didn't happen at all.

Due to its inherent private character, an actual co-consciousness is impossible to prove conclusively, and one self with only temporary functional dissociation is even the best explanation as split-brain patients normally show a remarkable psychological and motoric unity that can hardly be reconciled with the somatogenic creation of a new nonphysical subject by commisurectomy.

More here about split brain experiments

http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/Dualismlives.htm

[dmduncan]

I haven't seen ANY evidence at all that favors the production hypothesis over something else.

The materialist overstates the conclusions that can be drawn from the neuroscientific evidence he cites.

If you destroy a part of my brain and I can no longer move my pinky, all that you have shown is that I cannot move my pinky when that part of my brain has been destroyed.

You may have shown that minds require brains to move the pinkies that are attached to them, but minds may still exist disembodied and incapable of moving pinkies too.

So the brain damage/pinky functionality test is never a comment on the existence or nonexistence of minds independent of bodies.

To assume that it is makes an unwarranted assumption about how the mind body relationship is "supposed" to work, i.e., some materialist has the idea that if mind is capable of separating, then it should still be able to move the body without a brain!

An astonishing assumption to make! Maybe some materialist reading this can explain to me exactly why it logically "has to" work that way?

[Ian Wardell]

In case anyone is interested I've written an essay on whether the fact that brain states influence mind states entails the latter is a product of the former. I also discuss the TV analogy or simile:

http://existenceandreality.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html

[Leo MacDonald]

Hi Ian, did you see my last post? On there i have shown that Phineas Gage appears to not have had a radical personality change. But rather somewhat of one, with new evidence awhile after the accident showing that he functions way better and adapts well. This shows that if their is no self, that comes back then his personality would be changes radically and never come back to the personality he had before his accident.

[Kris]

Hey Leo

What is your email addie? We have bumped into each other a lot, especially arguing with Keith Augustine. Maybe we should exchange pointers.

[Leo MacDonald]

Sure, it's leo2ee710@hotmail.com.

[Keith Augustine]

There are so many things I could comment on, but I'll be selective:

First, Leo, I'd recommend you stop pushing the Houdini Code stuff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Ford#The_Three_Houdini_Messages_and_others

Douglas Stokes also says in one of his parapsychological books that the medium Arthur Ford, who "broke" the Houdini code, "was discovered to have kept elaborate files on prospective sitters." So the Wikipedia entry's explanation of how Ford broke it, by reading the solution off of Houdini's wife's engraved ring when he handled it for "psychometry," certainly seems plausible. (That said, I don't know more about this case than that tidbit; and I'm characterizing it from memory, so see the Wikipedia entry itself for the specifics.)

That Phineas Gage's personality changes might not be as dramatic as previously reported does not show that his brain damage resulted in no dramatic personality changes. The Gage example is commonly used in Introduction to Psychology textbooks, and that is why it is typically cited, but numerous other examples could be mentioned.

I don't suppose that you'd argue that Rosemary Kennedy's mind was hardly affected by her lobotomy: "Instead of producing the hoped-for result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy

The fact is that sometimes people can be rehabilitated after brain damage, but the greater the damage, the less likely it is that they can be helped. When they can be rehabilitated, that's only because some other area of the brain has to take over what the damaged area used to do, which is why it takes several months to years for the old ability to be restored. The brain can't restructure itself overnight. Rehabilitation only comes with new synaptic connections, meaning a different area of the brain takes over. When there is no new brain growth, that's when the mind remains debilitated. That's why brain plasticity is entirely compatible with, and even predicted by, the "productive hypothesis." If the mind doesn't need the brain for more than control of the body, and to get information from the senses (as the Rover analogy implies), then it should not be affected by brain damage in this way. One historian of the Enlightenment summarized the argument this way (paraphrasing): "How can the mind be spiritual if it is thus at the mercy of the body?"

And this is exactly how high functioning autistic/developmentally delayed children can be helped by early intervention. They have to attend school (like EvenStart) as early as three years old to learn how to do things that other people do in a different way. They are using different areas of the brain to do things compared to nonautistic people. That's why they need special attention and teaching styles, and nonautistic children do not need extra attention. High functioning autistics are using a different area of the brain to compensate for what the "normal" speech areas of the brain do in nonautistics, for example. At the end of the day, its still the brain doing all the work--else trying to modify the brain while it is most plastic (early childhood) would not work. That's why they try to do it as soon as possible. If you wait until an autistic child is 11 to get intervention, the brain is not going to be plastic enough anymore for intervention to have much effect.

"If you destroy a part of my brain and I can no longer move my pinky, all that you have shown is that I cannot move my pinky when that part of my brain has been destroyed."

And if you destroy a part of my brain and I can no longer recognize my father, all that you have shown is that I cannot recognize my father when that part of my brain has been destroyed.

And if you destroyed a part of my brain in 1983 and I could form no long-term memories for any event after that brain damage, all that you have shown is that I cannot form long-term memories when that part of my brain has been destroyed.

If you do this enough, all of the mental capabilities that make up you require a brain, and thus there is nothing of you left when the brain is destroyed that could survive death. In other words:

If you destroy 99% of my brain and 99% of my mental functions are destroyed, all that you have shown is that I cannot do 99% of what I could do before that 99% of my brain was destroyed.

What's the next logical step? If you destroy 100% of my brain (death), 100% of my mental functions will be destroyed (I will cease to exist).

If you see my Predator drone analogy, the objection is not merely that the brain can influence the mind. The controller is obviously influenced by the information the drone sends him, and uses it to decide how next to move the drone.

We're not talking about mere influence here. We're talking about radical modification. When you strike a tuning fork against a status, that strike influences the statue in barely noticable ways. When you light some dynamite placed in the middle of it, the dynamite radically modifies the statue. The latter is the sort of brain "influence" on mind we're talking about. And it occurs in contradiction to what dualism predicts: that the mind is one thing, the brain another thing, and the two things interact with each other (hence: interactionist substance dualism). Just as I can't modify my body (get a facelift, say, or make myself grow 3 more feet overnight) merely by "willing it," my brain should not be able to turn my personality into that of a totally different sort of person merely by interacting with it. The PCP example does not fit what one would expect if substance dualism were true. Radical brain changes can result in radical changes of one's mind. There is no evidence that the mind can change the body in so radical a way. You can't think "grow muscles" really hard and make it so. Only physical activity can do that. So clearly the mind is far more more dependent on the brain than any converse claim that the brain depends on the mind. Schizophrenics can't just wish their schizophrenia away. This is why the brain is treated as primary and the mind as secondary. If their powers were reversed, and the brain hardly influenced the mind at all, but one could will changes in the physical world and watch them happen (think: changing the channel without a remote control), the mind would be considered primary and the brain secondary. The reason that this is not the case is because that's now how it works in the real world.

I don't think the argument is that "if mind is capable of separating, then it should still be able to move the body without a brain." The argument is that the mind cannot process information without a brain, and information processing is something pervasive in most, if not all, mental functions. So how could those mental functions survive--like reading, or understanding sentences, or understanding a language, or recognizing faces--once the information processing unit is destroyed?

[Kris]

And what here cannot also be explained by the transmission view? Nothing, duh

Tell me Keith, are Pam Reynolds ear plugs still considered suspect?

Is NDE testimony on what actually happened to them worthless still?

Interestingly enough lets take a look at this:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580392,00.html

A persons whose brain was slowly destroyed by cancer, but managed to recall his family and say goodbye to them. Needless to say this does not work well with Keith's views on things.

So the brain is removed and the body cannot function but consciousness remains. How completely what one would expect of the transmission theory and not expect of the brain creating consciousness. Lets don't let this get in the way of a good how it could have been scenario though....

However perhaps the cancer stored consciousness.....

Maybe the guy with cancer was pulling a fast one on the family, or skeptics....

Maybe the family secretly wanted to confound skeptics, you know how some people are....

Maybe it was a mass hallucination by the family....

Did I miss a skeptical explanation. Oh crap Alien Deception, opps my bad!

I guess I would be just a bit more kind in these cases if all of this hadn't been pointed out to Keith again and again. Of course he skips over cases where people had no brains and were conscious anyways, nothing like avoiding facts that aren't user friendly for your pet beliefs.

No amount of evidence will convince this apologist of materialism he is wrong. Kinda like trying to convince the late Charleton Heston gun control might be a good idea.

[Michael Prescott]

"If you destroy 99% of my brain and 99% of my mental functions are destroyed, all that you have shown is that I cannot do 99% of what I could do before that 99% of my brain was destroyed. What's the next logical step? If you destroy 100% of my brain (death), 100% of my mental functions will be destroyed (I will cease to exist)."

I guess you're not really buyin' into my whole "dual loci of consciousness" idea ...

:-)

But in terms of dual loci of consciousness, your mental faculties while embodied (one locus of consciousness) can be utterly destroyed - you can be insane or comatose or afflicted with Alzheimer's ... but your mind outside the body (the other locus of consciousness) is still fully functional. You just can't access it in your physical, embodied state. You will, however, access it once the body and its brain stop functioning. You will not "cease to exist." You will be reconnected with the higher locus of consciousness from which (through physical ailments) you've been temporarily estranged.

At least, I think this is the most likely possibility, and one that does not require rejecting evidence for NDEs, OBEs, after-death communications, deathbed visions, reincarnation, crisis apparitions, remote viewing, and on and on.

If you want a little more "scientific" way of looking at it, you might check out James Beichler's theory that we live in a five-dimensional universe in which consciousness is extended into the fifth dimension. I wrote about in several recent posts starting here:

http://snipurl.com/jqrbw

Beichler's theory undoubtedly needs some work, but it may offer a way of looking at these things that is not quite so dependent on metaphor and analogy.

[Art]

Perhaps the soul is not our consciousness? That "voice inside our head?" The soul might be something else entirely? Perhaps after death the soul and our consciousness somehow merge to become one? I'm not sure that what we call the soul is exactly the same thing as consciousness. And as far as morality and how we act in this life? I don't think it has a thing to do with "why we are here." We aren't here to "learn how to love" nor to "become one with God." We are here simply to teach the soul what it's like to live in a physical universe and what time and space look and feel like. You don't even have to be conscious to to that, although it might help in the fact that the more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates. You can be a Tyranosaurus Rex and the soul could be experiencing the physical universe. Every living thing could be busy imprinting memories on the collective soul of the physical universe. Bits of information, like pixels on a TV screen.

[dmduncan]

"If you destroy 99% of my brain and 99% of my mental functions are destroyed..."

Who says, and what evidence shows, that destroying 99% of my brain destroys 99% of my mental functions? It may destroy 99% of my OBSERVED and OBSERVABLE mental functions. But if you are saying the observed and observable ones are the only ones that can possibly exist, then you are arguing from ignorance.

If you ASSUME that mind is produced by brain, then destroying one ALWAYS destroys the other, and there then cannot be anything left over. That is true. But as Michael rightly pointed out, you are not logically permitted to make your assumption that that is the case also perform as the evidence. That is arguing in a circle.

Destroying anything from 1 to 100 % of my brain may destroy the equal percentage of OBSERVABLE mental operation connected with my body, but what has that to do with what percentage that might survive my body that is NOT OBSERVABLE and can no longer operate in or through the body?

Exactly what method are you using to establish that nothing is left over?

What you actually should have responded with, if you were aware of such, was a single piece of evidence of non survival versus non observable survival (do you see the difference?) that does not beg the question. Your assumption that mind ONLY exists in the presence of brains does not count as evidence for that assertion, and whatever you think you can use from neuroscience to back you up, won't.

What evidence shows that there is ALSO nothing left of you when you destroy the brain?

Destroying the pinky controlling area of the brain, or the entire brain itself, and then observing the loss of mental function in the body SAYS NOTHING whatsoever about whether or not the mind ALSO survives the destruction of the brain you just caused.

It doesn't touch the question at all. And I for one will not grant you as true the supposition that mind and brain are ALWAYS connected. That is the point in contention, and you cannot prove the point by begging for my or our commitment to the point you are trying to prove. That has to come from the evidence. Problem is, the evidence doesn't support that.

All the evidence says is that if you destroy the brain, then there is no OBSERVABLE consciousness left over in the body. Which is not something we argue against anyway, so that's a straw man. (And if you attempt to argue that the unobservable = the unreal, then you are guilty of an argument from ignorance).

Now WHY we no longer observe consciousness in a body that has a destroyed brain is another question. It MAY be because brain produces consciousness, but it may ALSO be that consciousness no longer has functional machinery to inhabit.

But the evidence you would cite does not tell us at all which one of those is even more likely.

"The argument is that the mind cannot process information without a brain, and information processing is something pervasive in most, if not all, mental functions. So how could those mental functions survive--like reading, or understanding sentences, or understanding a language, or recognizing faces--once the information processing unit is destroyed?"

That may be the argument, but where's the evidence?

The mind may need the brain to process information while in a body. That doesn't mean the mind cannot be cognizant of information without a brain or a body. But if you assume it can ONLY process information with a brain, then you also end up with the conclusion that the two can never be separate, and that there is no way consciousness can know anything without a brain and its senses. I think you are assuming that the ONLY way consciousness can know is through the senses with a brain processing the data stream.

Outside of a body, consciousness may not process information at all, but may itself exist as information and know particular things that may seem seen or heard from a particular point of view or vantage point in the world, floating over a body, for example, but in a way that does not utilize senses.

If, for example, a person dies and has the experience of floating over his own body, and if he "sees" this without eyes or a brain, then the "seeing" is not optical, regardless of how it is described.

I "see" things in my dreams, sometimes very vividly, that are not optically perceived. Yes, I know that some of things I see probably first entered my consciousness through the senses, but that is irrelevant to the point I'm making by mentioning the seeming optical vividness of some dreams.

And if that is the case, then it might be that the spirit or soul is connected or returns to a realm of idea after death that knows things accurately without sensory input, and in ways that make it seem to the disembodied spirit that it is sensing things.

[dmduncan]

And by the way, let's not confuse my conjectures of how it might work with belief or certainty on my part.

I'm saying that in case there is a temptation to address my conjectures over the more substantive criticisms of the materialist's logical violations.

Even if my conjectures are totally wrong, that will not make a single argument from ignorance or petitio principii the materialist makes disappear.

[sonic]

Keith-
The notion that plasticity was predicted by the production hypothesis does not fit with the history at all. Sorry, but revisionist history won’t fly. (Plasticity was a somewhat surprising discovery not many years ago; the production theory has been with us for centuries.)

If I destroy the area of the brain that is responsible for the ability to speak, then what is it that learns to speak? A part of the brain that is not responsible for the ability to speak? How does something that does not have the ability demonstrate the ability?

One thing to note- the transmission theory is an attempt to come up with a model that explains all known phenomena. The production model is a model that fits a pre-existing philosophy and attempts to explain away numerous well-known, well-documented phenomena. I would not be too hasty in confusing the current working hypothesis of a science with the truth. (Think about how Newtonian physics was the final truth of the inviolate laws of nature and how today we know that Newton’s formulae give wrong answers 100% of the time.)

[steve wood]

Just a small point,not sure if it's relevant. When Pam Reynolds recounts her NDE, specifically the part where she's about to re-enter her body(the train wreck as she described it)she often shows visable symptoms of anxiety.But why should she feel anxious about something that never really happened (if she never really left her body.) I have vivid dreams (or neural events as some skeptics like to term them)where I'm being chased by a lion.. or others where I'm falling off a skyscraper..but when I remember them,I don't get a band of perspiration breaking out across my forehead.Might it be because it 'really' did  happen the way she tells it.

[Ian Wardell]

Hello Keith,

I'd like to make a few comments on what you've said. First of all I'd like to say you make many intelligent comments. I do not however believe that you have shown that the production theory is forced upon is.

As a preliminary it seems to me that your comments are really attacking an interactive *non-substance* dualism rather than interactive *substance* dualism.

You state in your fist post:

Keith
"It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."

Substance dualism is committed to the idea that *mental substance* does not change but that its properties do (or the *self* does not change as I refer to mental substance in my essay. I will henceforth refer to self as shorthand for Mental substance. Apart from brevity it seems to me that it is mental substance which most closely corresponds to peoples' commonsensical notion of the self). Now clearly our ability to see or hear is not constitutive of the self. What about flying into a "psychotic rage" or other personality changes? Well as far as I'm concerned arguing that this *literally* changes the self is precisely the position for those who embrace some sort of materialist metaphysic must adopt. Contrariwise mood changes (even flying into a psychotic rage) does not literally change the *self*. But I explain all this in my essay in detail(http://existenceandreality.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html). You'll forgive me if I don't repeat myself here!

So in effect you seem to be presupposing the correctness of the materialists notion of the "self" and since this "self" constantly changes then there is nothing which can survive. But of course presupposing the materialists position from the outset is scarcely convincing to those who reject materialism. Certainly you have not argued against substance dualism. You need a philosophical argument to do this.

A better analogy in my opinion to the Mars Rover is the TV set analogy in the particular way I have argued for it in my essay. Here the mind is analogical to the quality of the picture displayed, but the self is analogical to the programme being shown.

[Leo]

My response to Keith comment

"It seems inescapable to me that any form of substance dualism is committed to predicting that the mind (the controller) is largely independent from the brain (the drone's transmitter/receiver). The worst you can do to the controller by manipulating the drone's transmitter/receiver is make the controller deaf or blind regarding the drone's environment, or unable to move the drone. You cannot affect the the controller's ability to do math, to understand language, or recognize undistorted faces. You cannot get the controller to go into a psychotic rage by manipulating the drone's radio. But you can make someone psychotic by spiking his drink with PCP, or prevent him from being able to do simple addition by lesioning certain areas of his brain. In short, basic neuroscientific facts are simply inexplicable on any variety of substance dualism."

Unless that receiver is very advanced, the maybe a very advanced receiver. Also you seem to be assuming that dualists believe a soul is controlling the physical body, i don't think many dualists hold that view, they hold that this soul is restricted and heavily constrained by the physical body. The brain is a reducing valve to consciousness.

[Leo]

Keith,

So i am suppose to assume that Arthur Ford was a fraud, because of an anecdote says that may of happened?. No doubt Phineas Gage that their was some effect on his personality, any theory that looks to Gage for support faces the difficulty that the nature and extent of the injury's effects on his mental state are highly uncertain. In fact, very little is known about what Phineas was like either before or after his injury (almost none of it first-hand),[22] the mental changes described after his death were far more dramatic than anything reported while he was alive, and even those descriptions which seem credible do not tell us the period of his post-accident life to which they are meant to apply.

He say their is no evidence that shows the mind can radically effect the brain.

That appears not to be so

http://www.springerlink.com/content/g25rl1903611j211/

Experiments on humans (some of the Buddhist monks under the Dalai Lama’s direction) seem to demonstrate that the physical organ of the brain can be shaped and transformed by choices made by the mind.

Without mind though you can't make goals to acheive arm muscle. Then their is introspection studies down that bring further evidence for dualism. Let's also not forget the failure of behaviorism which goal was to provide evidence that the mind was produced by the brain. Also artifical intelligence main goal was to show the mind can be put into an robot another failure.

[Kris]

These were two questions I asked Keith earlier on another website. They show why even under materialist philosophies one can still accept an afterlife etc:

a.) Are you telling us it is IMPOSSIBLE for a soul ( or something similar) to be made of some kind of material?

b.) Are you telling us that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the same forces that naturally created the entire universe, created life, created consciousness , created human level consciousness could not create naturally create something like a soul ( especially if you accept something like multiverses. In such a scenario some kind of God and Soul must exist)

[Leo MacDonald]

Exactly even the multiverse theory doesn't fit into the view that mind is produced by the brain. If parellel universes exist they very well could then consciousness never ceases to exist for example when i die my consciousness [subjective inner life] wake up in another universe. With the same inner subjective being that i had when i was here.

[Michael Prescott]

"So i am suppose to assume that Arthur Ford was a fraud, because of an anecdote ...?"

Arthur Ford definitely did engage in fraudulent activity, at least in his later years. After his death, extensive notes and clippings were found among his personal effects, showing that he had researched his sitters by reading obituaries of their family members. Before his sittings he would typically "read some poetry" to put himself in the right frame of mind. Unfortunately, the "poetry" in question was actually his research notes, which he read to refresh his memory!

Nevertheless, some Ford admirers believe he did have legitimate mediumistic abilities, and point to some cases where the information he provided would arguably have been impossible to obtain through normal means. It's conceivable that he started out with real abilities, which atrophied over the years because of his excessive drinking.

The Houdini code incident remains very controversial, especially since Houdini's widow first endorsed Ford's reading and later changed her mind.

These issues are discussed in detail in "Arthur Ford: The Man who Talked with the Dead," by Allen Spraggett. Amazon sells used copies:

http://snipurl.com/js493

Spraggett is the guy who found the incriminating research notes. Despite this discovery, he still maintained that Ford had genuine psychic talents, supplemented by trickery.

[Kris]

with a multiverse everything happens.

Infinite universes equal infinite outcomes.

[Schaeffer]

"If parellel universes exist they very well could then consciousness never ceases to exist for example when i die my consciousness [subjective inner life] wake up in another universe. With the same inner subjective being that i had when i was here."

What do you mean, Leo? Multiverse theory has no connection to consciousness. It was dreamed up to avoid the embarrassing unlikelihood of a single universe somehow tailored to support matter and life.

[Kris]

in a multiverse, somewhere souls must exist. I think this is what he meant.

[Leo MacDonald]

I am talking about quantum immortality, it states that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that conscious beings are immortal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_suicide

[Jime]

Keith has posited some interesting ideas, and to examine them in detail, we'd need a whole detailed post.

But I'll restrict my comment to one of Keith's substantive and central points:

The natural converse of this is that the more debilitated the brain, the less effective it is going to be at filtering. So the natural extrapolation of "transmission" would be that consciousness would be "freer" or "enhanced" or whatever the more of the brain is destroyed. But we find the exact opposite. The more debilitated one's brain, the more debilitated one's mind.

I think Keith partially misunderstands the filter model of consciousness.

If consciousness is temporally attached to the brain, it depends on the quality of the brain to its manifestation in the physical world. Therefore, if the brain doesn't work properly, the manifestation of consciousness will reflect that limitation.

As a logical consequence of that is Keith's correct remark "The more debilitated one's brain, the more debilitated one's mind". It confirms the temporal functional dependence of consciousness to the level of quality the brain (filter/transmitter)

However, in cases suggestives of an actual separation of consciousness from the brain, we observe precisely Keith's prediction "So the natural extrapolation of "transmission" would be that consciousness would be "freer" or "enhanced" or whatever the more of the brain is destroyed"

This comment is key, because Keith's term "enhanced" has been used by some NDE researchers to describe some cases of NDEs that manifest "enhanced mentation", confirming Keith "natural extrapolation" of the transmission theory (at least, the extrapolation as it applies to some cases of NDEs).

According to this paper by Ian Stevenson at al: "We describe three features of NDEs - enhanced mentation, the experience of seeing the physical body from a different position in space, and paranormal perceptions - that we believe might provide convergent evidence supporting the survival hypothesis."

And enhanced mentation is explicitly commented by them like this: "In two earlier papers, we called attention to the importance of normal or even enhanced mentation accompanying such severe physiological impairment (Owens et al., 1990; Stevenson & Cook, 1995). Persisting or enhanced mentation at a time when one would expect it to be diminishing, or entirely absent, because of diminishing physiological functioning at least suggests that consciousness might not be so dependent on physiological processes as most scientists now assume."

http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_12_3_cook.pdf

In other words, according to Keith's enhanced mentation is a "natural extrapolation" of the transmission theory. And this is exactly what some NDEs researchers and scholar have observed in NDEs! (confirming one prediction of the filter model)

Other afterlife evidence (e.g. in cases of mediumship communications) support the idea that consciousness is "enhanced" when it's freed from the physical brain restrictions. Again, it confirms the natural extrapolation of the transmission theory, mentioned by Keith.

So, part of Keith's argument, far from undermining the filter theory, actually support it.

Keith has made other substantive points, but I'll address them in other moment.

I think this kind of dialogue is useful, because, in my opinion, it exposes the weakness of the productive hypothesis.

[Keith Augustine]

"No amount of evidence will convince this apologist of materialism he is wrong."

If you really believe that, Kris, why address me with questions at all? Do you really think I'm going devote any time and energy to answer your questions when you make it clear at the outset that you're not really interested in what I think to begin with?

Unlike public high school teachers, I don't have to make a Sisyphian attempt to teach the kids who aren't interested in learning. If you're not even going to try to see how someone might rationally think as I do, I'm not going to waste my time explaining it to you. You obviously don't care what I think anyway because you already "know" what's true and false in this domain, and anyone who thinks differently than you is clearly a deluded fool. So who's the real "apologist" here?

dmduncan: I'm aware that dualists will retreat from mental states known to exist and posit, in their place, merely hypothetical "nonobserved and nonobservable mental functions." I'm interested in what happens to the actual mind we know first-hand, not some dreamed-up oversoul I've never met. If you're going to posit "nonobserved and nonobservable" things like souls, why stop at positing one soul per person? For every person, why not posit 100 nested souls--a soul in a soul in a soul ... in a body? Anything goes if one is allowed to merely posit (out of thin air) nonobserved and nonobservable things.

"What you actually should have responded with, if you were aware of such, was a single piece of evidence of non survival versus non observable survival (do you see the difference?)"

Do you have evidence of the nonexistence of Thor (versus the existence of a nonobservable Thor)? Insofar as Thor is supposed to interact with the physical world, by generating lightning bolts for instance, yes, I do have evidence for the nonexistence of Thor: the fact that lightning bolts are generated by the interaction between positive and negative ions.

There is similar evidence against the existence of a soul. Consider: If sparkplugs were invisible, but produced a spark, we would know of their existence because the sparks they produce would be detectable. If souls were invisible but interacted with the brain, we would know of their existence because neurons would function differently with the soul's extra influences than they would function in the absence of that influence. But there is no evidence in active brain states of such extra influences, so dualists like Frank Dilley invoke a soul of the gaps: such influences must exist on the quantum level, where they cannot be seen, making it impossible to ever confirm that they exist at all. How convenient! (Maybe Thor changes the motion of ions through unobservable quantum effects, too, thereby generating lightning! We can all rest easy that Thor-belief is safe for another day--and every other day so long as these ways of saving face are allowed.)

There is abundant evidence that the mental states we know we have are made possible by the brain. If the brain dies, then, they are no longer made possible. But that doesn't mean that committed dualists cannot interject forever more with their latest "...and then a miracle occurs" solution.

The question is what imaginable evidence *could* show that survival probably does not occur. If you think that no evidence can ever do that in principle, that's as bad as the nonbeliever who says that no evidence could ever make survival after death more likely than not. It is essentially a position of faith immune from any potential falsification.

"Exactly what method are you using to establish that nothing is left over?"

Inductive reasoning. That's the problem. Inductive reasoning establishs what's likely to be the case, but you survivalists typically think that showing that survival is merely logically possible is enough to defeat it. It is not, because the argument is about what is most likely given the evidence, not merely what is possible. There are a million different conjectures about what *could* be the case, but none of them changes the *likelihood* that a brain is necessary for consciousness, or at least what is distinct about particular individuals (one's unique memories, dispositions, personality traits, etc).

Ian: You say I presume a materialist model of the self. That's a convenient way for you to characterize it, given your aims. In fact, though, I presume only the sort of self psychologists encounter in observation. You invent some other merely imagined, hypothetical self. I am not interested in dreamt-of selves which may or may not exist, but the selves that we know to exist.

Neuropsychology has established that the mind we know to exist--the mind that you are using right now--is at the mercy of what happens to the brain. If you posit some other oversoul or something like that, you are talking about some alien entity I know nothing of and have no reason to believe is more than your imaginative fancy.

"I think Keith partially misunderstands the filter model of consciousness."

I don't think that I do, in fact, misunderstand it; but if I did misunderstand, that would be because survivalists themselves offer nothing more than vague analogies like this, never attempting to explain what one could expect to observe if the analogy were valid.

Considering that the analogy is the only thing we have to go on as to what theory of the mind-brain relation is being proposed, it's as if survivalists want nothing more than some superficial morsel to throw back at doubters to quiet them, without having any interest in determining what testable predictions follow from the "filter theory." Do most survivalists *want* to show that their actual position is true, or are they satisfied with a lack of indisputable objective evidence which would vindicate them and make the front page of the New York Times (if it existed)? I would think such confidence would breed a desire to demonstrate to the world, instead of being personally satisfied with evidence that is generally deemed to be arguable at best.

It reminds of me of NDE researchers who say that cultural differences in NDEs are no more than different interpretations of the same sorts of experiences, even though NDE reports from India are demonstably nothing like those from America. The differences clearly go beyond interpreting what is encountered; what is encountered itself varies.

"If consciousness is temporally attached to the brain, it depends on the quality of the brain to its manifestation in the physical world."

See, I don't know what the hell this sort of sentence means. I know what you think it means, but I don't think it has been well thought out. The consciousness "manifested here" is the only consciousness we know of. It is the consciousness people are thinking of when they ask the question, "Will *I* be reunited with my loved ones after death." If you want to pretend that "I" am someone other than who I take myself to be right now, fine; but don't expect me to swallow that. I know my "embodied self." The oversoul you imagine is just some fictional character in a story, as far as I know. I've never met my oversoul; and the way you describe him, he's a completely different kind of person than I am. My guess would be, therefore, that his survival after death would not be *my* survival. It would be like telling me that an extraterrestrial has survived death. Good for him; but what has that to do with me?

The "enhanced consciousness" of NDEs is not a prediction of the transmissive hypothesis, as NDEs do not result from brain damage. The brain is only temporarily affected in NDEs. It is altered, undoubtedly, just as the brain is altered in dreams; but it is not in radically modified in the way a lobotomy changes the brain. I know; you will say that NDEs occur when the brain is not functioning. But that is a conjecture, not a fact. We have every reason to think, at this point, that the brain is indeed functioning at the time of NDEs, just as it is functioning during dreams. There is no clear evidence to the contrary, just a lot of hopeful speculation that this is what happens.

(Indeed, the transmissive hypothesis does not predict NDEs, or any kinds of particular experiences. It predicts a relationship between mind and brain, at most. NDEs would not have been surprising to people before Life After Life was published if someone like William James had already predicted them. They would have thought "Looks like James was right!") Saying transmission entails NDEs is like saying extraterrestrial visitation entails cattle mutilations. You could easily have one true while the other is not.

"I think this kind of dialogue is useful, because, in my opinion, it exposes the weakness of the productive hypothesis."

I find comments like this disturbing, FWIW. You guys should be approaching the evidence in a manner that let's you decide between the transmissive and productive hypotheses, rather than seeking confirmation for what you already think.

This isn't about scoring points, or winning for your "side." It's about find out what is the case. I'm sure Kris will laugh at the comment, but a replicable positive result in the AWARE study would be a victory for me, not a defeat, because the "game" is not about bolstering any particular model, but finding out which model best approximates the truth. Think about it: what would be the point of holding on to an Earth-centered model of the solar system once it was made clear that the heliocentric model was closer to the truth? To inhibit space travel?

I'm a pretty pragmatic guy, so I have little sympathy for imagining all of the possible ways that the universe could be arranged, for instance. If the evidence indicates that the expansion of the universe is in fact accelerating due to the influence of dark energy, what's in it for me to pretend that that isn't the case?

Similarly, if the evidence indicates that I have no choice but to die with my brain, why would I feign belief in survival? If I just believe hard enough, that's not going to change my actual fate. And if I'm wrong and I do survive death, I'm going to actually survive whether I believe I will or not.

So contrary to the stock rhetoric about skeptics and "scientism," belief doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Finding out what's true does. Beliefs are mere thoughts. Reality is what it is, and knowing what's real could actually help me prepare for what awaits--whether that's survival or extinction. (Consider the analogy: If aliens are about to abduct me, convincing myself that they're not real isn't going to help me avoid abduction, and would actually hurt me quite a bit by hastening it.) So let's cut the rhetoric and treat those who disagree with you with some respect, please. We're all in the same boat here, after all.

[steve wood]

The brain IS 'altered undoubtedly'...because it now believes it is immortal..but WHY does it believe that, if it isn't? Surely it doesn't fit with evolution. Experiencers become altruistic and loving to others..but this makes them easy prey.What is the benefit if extinction awaits?

[Leo]

Keith,

As you know science deals with probability not fact. We can never be 100 percent certain of anything, the fact that many here are not convinced by your arguments would yes be disturbing to you. Because it seems to me you want some people on here to be convinced by your arguments so they can be converted!.

You said that before in another comment, that if i lose 99 percent of my brain function i will lose 99 percent of my mental function. This isn't true, based on evidence that you appear to ignore.

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm

These are powerful cases! that show that you can have little brain matter but have high intelligence.

[Still Lurking]

Keith,

You should also be aware that while neuroscience does pin point correlation between certain areas of the brain, certain actions and the brain states that arise from these, obviously via fMRI, that it doesn't explain and what it can't explain, something I guess sort of harks back to Cartesian Dualism is what a brain state is. Indeed, a problem with a lot of neurosciencists is that they're so quick to publish what they've found (and occasionally do so even in prilimnary stages of experiments) that they never consider the implications. Where do the brain states come from? What causes them? Correlation is not causation. Just because we can show that certain parts of the brain light up when certain things are done, does not mean that we know what causes those parts of the brain to light up.

There has also been studies that show that the changes in blood flow and oxygen consumption that are used to see the brain "light up", as it were, may actually not be entirely accurate. (I don't have this source to hand, I'll try and dig it out later)

Undoubtedly this comes back to consciousness. As far as I'm concerned, there is not a good biological model for consciousness. We have a few alternate theories, of course. I can't speak for the production theory, however, as I'm afraid I know very little about it.

They don't call it the hard problem for nothing. I pay equal attention to biological causes of consciousness as I do to those who say the cause lies in quantum mechanics.

Just some food for thought.

[Ian Wardell]

Keith stated:
"There is similar evidence against the existence of a soul. Consider: If sparkplugs were invisible, but produced a spark, we would know of their existence because the sparks they produce would be detectable. If souls were invisible but interacted with the brain, we would know of their existence because neurons would function differently with the soul's extra influences than they would function in the absence of that influence".

Remember what I said to you before about presupposing your own position.

You cannot show that a substantial self does not exist by presupposing their non-existence in your argument. If in fact we are non-physical selves, then in the absence of a non-physical self associated with a body the neurons would indeed function differently. You would in fact have a corpse.

So the very fact that neurons are doing anything at all provides proof that we are substantial selves. And yes I am begging the question just as you are doing!

Also I'm afraid I'm not impressed with this logical positivist stance that "nonobserved and nonobservable things" do not exist. The Universe beyond the cosmic horizon can never in principle be observed. The same for parallel Universes. And of course consciousness is not observable. (unless of course you presuppose reductive materialism).

Appreciate you giving your thoughts though even if I don't agree with you about anything.

[Art]

If our brains are actually recievers and transmitters of information, and there is a collective warehouse of memories (Like Netflix for past life memories) - those "memories" that are sometimes reported as evidence for reincarnation might actually be the brain sometimes tuning into the memories of other souls that have lived before on Earth. Like either the brain hasn't developed a strong sense of "self" yet - like children who claim past life memories; or hypnotized adults whose own sense of self has been turned off by hypnosis.

[Leo]

Keith,

What would falsify survival?, if artifical intelligence people could create consciousness artifically yes that would falsify survival. You mentioned before how that could falsify survival?, my answer is it can because if consciousness is immaterial then their should be no way to recreate it in a machine. But of course artifical intelligence has failed like behaviorism!.

Wait a second, the brain isn't damaged during nde are you serious?, you cut blood flow to the brain once how fast the brain gets damaged.

As Dr. Peter Fenwick points out

What is quite clear is that any disorientation of brain function leads to a disorientation of perception and reduced memory. You can't normally get highly-structured and clearly remembered experiences from a highly damaged or disoriented brain (Fenwick 1995: 47).

[dmduncan]

The evidence shows that if you destroy the brain, we cannot observe consciousness in or of the body. That’s it.

Sorry Keith, but that is the most you can logically conclude.

Your assertion that destroying the brain destroys consciousness completely, that is, both inside and outside the body, is an argumentum ad ignorantium: You no longer observe it, therefore it no longer exists. I do not know X exists, therefore X does not exist.

And if you then use that faulty conclusion, reached through the commission of a severe informal fallacy, to inform your decisions about dualism or any other non materialist possibility, then you are begging the question, and committing a second and equally severe informal fallacy:

Since it has not been established in the first place that minds do not separate and do not exist independent of brains, each consequent usage of the same unestablished proposition constitutes a mere assertion of its truth or establishment. A petitio principii: Arguing in a circle. Begging the question.

I am not arguing for the transmission theory, and regardless of how it may seem, I’m not arguing for dualism either. I’m arguing against materialism and the faulty reasoning involved in it.

Dualism might be true, and it might not be. I personally believe that it is untrue, but I don’t really know. More importantly, you do not know either, but between the two of us, it seems I’m the only one who’s being honest about what I know and don’t.

Although I favor a non dualistic variety of panspychism, I’m not burning any bridges, because I don’t know what may develop in the future or if I might need to cross one of those bridges again.

We can only speak of what we can experience. We can’t speak of what is beyond experience. This includes what we can say about what we can infer, since inferences are extensions of experience into areas where our experience cannot be direct.

People claim and believe in an afterlife, and other paranormal phenomenon, for many different reasons. Some of those reasons are experiential: Our individual and collective experience of paranormal events, or other events that we describe as “strange,” and that evade status quo explanation. Our experience of those events constitutes both evidence and some of the reasons for belief in the paranormal.

It is not, in other words, something that we are just making up.

Now we can next have a discussion of what logically constitutes “evidence,” which will no doubt lead us into considering the merits of other staples of skeptical thought such as Occam’s Razor, “the burden of proof rests on he who makes the claim,” and “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” (which last idea, to its credit, at least acknowledges varieties and kinds of evidence, which is a step in the right direction for the skeptic), all of which I would be happy to address if you want to go that far.

But the bottom line is that we speak of life after death, and other paranormal things, because we do have evidence suggesting they are real. Otherwise, this conversation would not be occurring in such a serious and what I hope is an intelligent way.

You may not like that evidence. You may have a philosophical disagreement with us over what constitutes evidence, but I also have a philosophical disagreement with skeptics over the same issue, an issue which I would describe as a self serving raising and lowering of the evidence bar based on a prejudicial feeling against things considered “strange,” which regardless of how “strange” they might seem to this or that individual, is equally real, if it is real at all, as any mundane thing which that same individual does not prejudicially call “strange.”

[dmduncan]

"belief doesn't mean a whole lot to me. Finding out what's true does. Beliefs are mere thoughts."

Oh on the contrary, Keith, belief means a lot to you or you would not persist in the belief that the evidence shows that destroying the brain destroys consciousness period.

"Do you have evidence of the nonexistence of Thor (versus the existence of a nonobservable Thor)? Insofar as Thor is supposed to interact with the physical world, by generating lightning bolts for instance, yes, I do have evidence for the nonexistence of Thor: the fact that lightning bolts are generated by the interaction between positive and negative ions."

Sloppy attempt to show the nonexistence of Thor by disjunction, Keith. If I wanted to be a pain in the ass, I could say that lightning is ALSO generated without Thor by the "interaction between positive and negative ions." Or I could say, what a coincidence: That's also EXACTLY how Thor creates lightning.

I prefer to argue in the positive sense about things that do not exist by tracing them to their origin as constructs of human thought. Thus, while Dracul was a real person, Dracula was not because we can trace his origin directly to the person who created him: Bram Stoker; and that the character did not exist prior to that. Therefore, the character of Count Dracula is PURELY a fiction. This is not always possible, so persuasion that fictitious characters do not exist is not always possible and, ultimately, who knows? Maybe Thor does exist, and I will have a pie in my face. In some cases the origin of fictitious characters is lost to history, and different people will disagree about whether or not such things whose origin is hidden do really exist. Thus, while we can show that Dracula was a fiction (based on a historical person), we cannot convince everyone that vampires themselves are a fiction because their origin is much older than the origin of the character of Dracula. Personally, unless you can show me evidence that vampires are real, I will walk away and happily leave those who believe in them to continue in that wise. And I will keep my fingers crossed that I never meet a real vampire, but I'm not going to hang garlic around my doors and windows, thank you very much.

Knowledge is a slippery thing, and we call lots of things knowledge which yet have various degrees of certainty attached to them. So if you want to get into what constitutes knowledge, that's a whole other mountain to climb. But I've got my gear on if you want to go climbing.

However, the evidence for the paranormal and life after death is actually quite robust compared to the evidence for Thor or Count Dracula. That's why so many people believe in it, people who are rational and who can't be explained away as crazy or dumb or several other unflattering and untrue things, people who also do not believe in Thor, Dracula, or Frankenstein's monster.

I know the paranormal is real from my own experiences. I really don't care what a skeptic thinks at all about my personal experiences or reasons for believing there is something real to the paranormal. I can't prove it to you, but I can't prove to you I ate two tuna fish sandwiches for lunch on Monday either. The events we experience have happened whether we can prove them to Keith Augustine or not, or whether they are stamped "strange" or "mundane" by Keith Augustine, and then filed accordingly in the true and false out boxes.

And that's the way it is.

Now I don't expect Keith Augustine to marry the ideas the paranormal thinkers float. Just respect them. It's way too soon to act like all these questions are settled. They certainly are not settled to me and lots of other people. And we aren't going away any time soon, not as long as we continue having bizarre experiences that evade status quo explanations.

[Ian Wardell]

Keith stated:

" you survivalists typically think that showing that survival is merely logically possible is enough to defeat it. It is not, because the argument is about what is most likely given the evidence, not merely what is possible".

I entirely agree with your sentiments here. But given you hold this I find it curious that you therefore think the extinction hypothesis is so obviously correct.

We have on the one hand mind/brain correlations. These strongly suggest extinction. But I take it that you agree with me that these correlations do not *prove* extinction?

Assuming you agree with this then we should also consider all the other evidence and reasons for either subscribing to extinction or survival.

So we have the evidence from NDEs, apparent memories of previous lives, mediumship, crisis apparitions, deathbed visions.

We have indirect evidence such as ESP and so on.

A curious thing about the brain produces consciousness hypothesis is that consciousness is characteristically different from all other physical phenomena. The reality of physical phenomena can be wholly cashed out in terms of the totality of its causal impact on the environment. In other words its structure and dynamics. But consciousness can't because in addition to what consciousness *does*, there is also inner subjective experience or qualia.

So even if brains do produce consciousness we still cannot escape the conclusion that consciousness is different from all other phenomena i.e. it is special (indeed what justification would there be for calling it "physical" at all?) This is curious.

Moreover if we embrace a materialist metaphysic we have to also accept the notion that the self of commonsense is illusionary. This is staggeringly counterintuitive to say the least.

So what I would say if you look at the TOTALITY of all the evidence and reasons for either subscribing to extinction or survival, I think a fair minded rational person would not conclude that extinction is overwhelmingly the more probable. Especially since the filter hypothesis appears to explain mind-brain correlations as much as the production model (I do not agree with you BTW that a properly functioning brain would filter more. I really have no idea why you think this).

At the very least I think a rational person, in light of all this evidence, wouldn't just assume that extinction must be correct.

[Michael Prescott]

Keith, you wrote, "So let's cut the rhetoric and treat those who disagree with you with some respect, please."

Though some responses to your points have been rather forceful, many commenters have shown you respect. Consider these comments:

"Keith you ask good questions." - sonic

"First of all I'd like to say you make many intelligent comments." - Ian Wardell

"Keith has posited some interesting ideas, and to examine them in detail, we'd need a whole detailed post." - Jime

"Thanks, Keith, for an interesting and thought-provoking observation." - me

"I do appreciate your sharing your views, which are thought-provoking and challenging as always." - me, again

"Mr. Keith Augustine, I think it's wonderful to have you back in Prescott's blog. I think your comments and articles [are] very important. Please, appear more times." - Vitor, on the "Mrs. Piper" thread

Regarding your statement that you've never met your oversoul ... have you ever tried? Meditation, contemplation, prayer, etc. can help people get in touch with their higher self.

I've found that meditative sessions can give me insights that eluded me in my ordinary state of consciousness.

[Kris]

Keith

Let me tell you what annoys me about you. I consider you a fundamentally dishonest person. There is no nice way to say it so I am not going to try.

I have been curiously reading about NDEs for about 10 year and after I read your paper my first reaction was how the hell did he conclude that! It is like concluding Jesus never existed or creationism.

Keith you know vertical evidence has been produced. It was produced by Sabom, Van Lommel and Sartori. If you want I will gladly reference them for you.

You have to know your explanations on Pam Reynolds are impossible. The earplugs didn't work. Come on man. Pam hallucinated a toothbrush that happened to look like the saw used on her. Come on man, who are you kidding!

I've asked you before would you be willing to submit to these conditions and replicate what NDErs have produced. Of course you won't cause you know it is impossible.

You known visual based NDEs have been produced in people born blind or who became blind at a young age.

You misrepresent NDE views on prophecy and you know this. It has been brought to your attention before.

You know the consensus of NDErs is that they experienced the afterlife. Can you name a single NDEr who was convinced by your arguments.

You know NDEs are not dreams, that has been the consensus of people who have NDEs again and again. If they shouldn't know, why shouldn't they!

Why is it that no direct researcher ( Blackmore and Woerlee are more secondary researchers) on this subject has ever reached your conclusions? Doesn't that tell you something?

I can only reach the conclusion you are a dishonest man and I can see an obvious motive for this. You are the Vice President of Infidels.org and you stand to lose a lot if this issue is best explained by the afterlife, which the evidence seems to indicate! So damn the evidence, just create pseudo problems, misrepresent research through omission , and insist only your model of consciousness can explain all the facts, which has been proven false again and again.

[Michael Prescott]

"I consider you a fundamentally dishonest person."

Okay, so not all the comments have been respectful ...

;-)

"You are the Vice President of Infidels.org and you stand to lose a lot if this issue is best explained by the afterlife"

I don't like this kind of argument because it can be used on anyone. Someone could say to me, "You have a Web site about the paranormal so you have a lot to lose if this issue is best explained by materialism."

Truth is, we all have biases and vested interests. There's no way around it.

Anyway, while I admit to somtimes grinding my teeth when I read positions I disagree with, I still think it's valuable to be exposed to all points of view.

And where something as hard to nail down as the afterlife is concerned, reasonable people can (and do) differ.

[dmduncan]

When Keith first posted he wrote:

"Note that I'm not looking for a fight. If you think I'm wrong, fine; I'm willing to entertain why, specifically, my analysis of the analogy fails. But I'm not posting this comment here seeking to answer a thousand questions about issues that have nothing to do with the production/transmission issue specifically. I just want to make a point, like anyone else would, and move on."

He wants to say what he wants and "move on."??? That doesn't sound very conversational to me. Does he view his role here as a guest lecturer, and us students whose job is to sit quietly and take notes?

I for one am being no less respectful of his ideas than I am with my own when I subject them to rigorous scrutiny and find that I sometimes have to let go of something I thought was true, even though it makes a lot of extra work and rewriting for me to do.

So I'm unable to tip toe around Keith's mistakes out of fear of upsetting him.

[Kris]

My position isn't that he is dishonest because he is the vice president of infidels.org. My position is that he is dishonest cause he misrepresents NDE research by ignoring a lot of inconvenient facts. Facts he knows about. I can think of many times Keith has done that.

Michael and I cannot think of one time that you have done something like that, or have continued in that when corrected. ( ie honest mistake)

Keith acts in many ways like Victor Zammit does. He only presents one side of the case. That is why I stopped using Zammit's website. I have never seen you do that Mike.

Ignoring and misrepresenting facts the refute your views is dishonest. What else can you call that?

My explanation for his behavior is that he is a committed materialist, committed enough to be the Vice President of Infidels.org. If that isn't a reasonable conclusion, why isn't it.

I want to note dmduncan has noticed Keith's tendency to whine about things too. See Keith it just ain't me telling you that.

[Michael Prescott]

Kris, I'm not trying get on your case, really. I just prefer to keep accusations of motive out of a debate.

If Keith is a "committed materialist," it's presumably because he sincerely believes the evidence for materialism is strong and the evidence for psi is weak or nonexistent. I disagree with this assessment of the evidence, but that's what makes horse races.

You may feel you've presented facts that refute Keith's views, and I may agree with you, but it doesn't follow that Keith sees it that way. He may find your facts dubious and unproven, or open to a different interpretation, or irrelevant - just as you and I probably feel about the facts he's presented to refute our views.

[dmduncan]

Different people can look at the same evidence and reasonably come to different conclusions about it, making certain reasonable presumptions that take them in opposite directions. But it's not reasonable to be dogmatic about your presumptions. That's off the map.

[Jime]

See, I don't know what the hell this sort of sentence means

It means, simply, that if the brain is not functioning properly, consciousness will be correspondly affected. In other words, if you suffer an alteration in your brain, your consciousness will manifest changes too.

The "filter" is affecting of stuff being filtered.

If you want to pretend that "I" am someone other than who I take myself to be right now, fine; but don't expect me to swallow that. I know my "embodied self."

But you're identifiying the "I" with your body, and this is not certainly what most people think when they ask if they will survive death (since that asking such thing supposes the non-existence of the physical body, and the survival of the conscious self, the personal identity, after the destruction of the body)

The oversoul you imagine is just some fictional character in a story, as far as I know

If you assert that it's fictional, you're assuming it doesn't actually exist. But it's the issue at stake. Such strong belief possibly prevents you of considering alternative interpretations.

I've never met my oversoul; and the way you describe him, he's a completely different kind of person than I am

And you won't meet it, since you can't meet yourself.

It could be argue the "oversoul" is yourself (your inner conscious self), only that seen under different conditions. It doesn't imply he'll be another wholde different person or entity.

My guess would be, therefore, that his survival after death would not be *my* survival. It would be like telling me that an extraterrestrial has survived death. Good for him; but what has that to do with me?

It assumes an essential difference between your disemboided conscius self and you (as an emboided self). But if the conscious self is the essence of YOU, regardless of if it's emboided or not, the difference is not essential nor ontological, only a difference of conditions.

Regarding your extraterrestial analogy, I'd suggest it's a false analogy, since you're not an extraterrestrial being (and hence, not you); therefore, the latter survival after death is certainly not YOUR survival.

In you analogy, the extraterrestial being is an individual and you are another one (there are two entities to begin with); but in the transmission theory, is the SAME INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS that exist in different conditions. What is different are the conditions for the manifestation of consciousness, not the ontological entity or self that is object of the changes of the conditions.

If the conscious self of Keith Augustine, after physical death, continue to exist and be conscious (e.g. having the same memories, etc.), then you have a reason to suppose you are the same consciousness who inhabited in a physical body, only that in a different (discarnated) condition.

The "enhanced consciousness" of NDEs is not a prediction of the transmissive hypothesis, as NDEs do not result from brain damage

But it's irrelevant if the brain is destroyed or not, damaged or not; what is relevant is if consciousness, when separated of and not filtered by the "filter", has a "enhanced state". And this is a prediction of the filter theory, as you has conceded above with you "natural extrapolation" idea.

Therefore, the existence of enhanced mentation in cases of NDEs (when we shouldn't expect for it to occurs) is evidence for an possible separation of consciousness from the brain and, therefore, for the filter theory. (I'm not claiming that NDEs are "proofs" of an afterlife, only that it's evidence for a dualistic conception of the mind-body connection and, by implication, sugestive of an afterlife)

If we have some reason to think that consciousness is separated from the brain, then the filter theory predicts "enhanted mentation", given that it is not restricted by the filter anymore. In your own terms "So the natural extrapolation of "transmission" would be that consciousness would be "freer" or "enhanced""

In other words, your "natural extrapolation" is a correct prediction of the filter theory, but only in the cases where consciousness is not being restricted or filtered by the brain anymore. Only in that case, it's FREED or RELEASED of the limitations of a filtering brain.

If the transmission theory is true, then when consciousness is separated from the filter (e.g. in cases of a destruction of the brain, or in some cases of NDEs), we'd expect that your "natural extrapolation" of it be confirmed because consciousness is not limited/filtered by the brain anymore. But the same could be expected in conditions where the brain is not destroyed, but where we have reason to suppose consciousness is separated from it (like in some NDEs cases with paranormal perceptions).

I know; you will say that NDEs occur when the brain is not functioning. But that is a conjecture, not a fact. We have every reason to think, at this point, that the brain is indeed functioning at the time of NDEs, just as it is functioning during dreams

This is a crude oversimplification. Comparing the functioning of the brain during some cases of NDEs with serious brain impairment or malfunctioning with the normal physiological functioning of the brain during dreams is simply incorrect.

It's correct that during NDEs the brain is not destroyed; but it doesn't mean the brain is functioning properly (or so properly as to explain enhanced mentation).

Fact is that you can't explain enhanced mentation during NDEs as described by Stevenson et al paper; you can only expect that dreams (false) analogy will work.

the transmissive hypothesis does not predict NDEs, or any kinds of particular experiences. It predicts a relationship between mind and brain, at most

The transmissive hypothesis predict that consciousness will continue to exist after death. In this sense, all the evidence for survival confirms such prediction.

It also predict, as a "natural extrapolation" (Keith) enhanced mentation when consciousness is not limited/filtered by the brain, and this is why some cases of NDEs with enhanced mentation suggest consciousness has been temporally separated from it.

I find comments like this disturbing, FWIW. You guys should be approaching the evidence in a manner that let's you decide between the transmissive and productive hypotheses, rather than seeking confirmation for what you already think.

But you're assuming that we have concluded, in advance, what the truth of the matter is and, then, we're looking for evidence for confirmation alone.

But many of us have conclude that survival is a better explanation AFTER of examining the evidence, not before. And this is why I said a dialogue like this is useful, because if give us the opportunity to fully expose the flaws and weaknessses of the arguments in support of the production hypothesis (e.g. when appealing to false comparations with extraterrestial or with dreams).

[Kris]

I am ultimately agnostic on NDEs, even if I few the evidence certainly points to the afterlife view.

NDEs are obviously an important area of research. We need to use facts that have been demonstrated in studies to properly understand it. Also we need to listen to the people who have had the experience. Keith if he doesn't like the facts he will ignore them or misrepresent them, and that is wrong. He will assert testimony is worthless. Then he will cry ( literally I suspect) when anyone goes after him for this. I have seen this guy scream persecution on paranormalia for God sake!

Keith claiming their is no evidence for vertical NDEs is really no different then Kent Hovind claiming that Lucy was nothing but a chimp. Both claims are equally mistaken and both are made by people who should know better and certainly do know better.

Keith simply doesn't have a right to go around and change the facts just cause he doesn't like them. Sorry his attempts at saying no new knowledge has been brought back in NDEs is every bit as goofy as saying Dec 7, 1941 was just another day at Pearl Harbor.

Lets use another example. What if Keith came in here discussing the Holocaust and said the Wannssee council never happened. Or to defend Hitler he argued that concentration camps were work out centers, that's why people were so thin. Would we be praising him for thought provoking ideas if he did this?

His denial of basic established facts with NDEs is just as screwy and it helps no one. It doesn't help serious researchers who have to answer his dribble when their is better things to do with their time. It certainly doesn't help the millions who have had this experience who will get someone shoving Keith's articles at them by some gullible skeptic. His arguments might have been useful twenty years ago but all they are now is smoke and mirrors to defend his pet world view. Who does it help?

I am not amused by this guy at all. He isn't just another skeptic. He is one of the leading figures in putting out misinformation on NDEs and he should be adamantly opposed by us.

[Kris]

Why Keith, why is it a conjuncture to say people haven't had NDEs while flatline?

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/whoswho/vanLommel.htm

Yes Keith, people do have NDEs flatline. We have only known this since 2003.

Next fact denial Keith....

Of course I will bet money that if we taped Keith's eyes shut, and plugged his ears he couldn't tell us what happened around him and what people said.

If he can do this while conscious I will give 1K.

If he can this while unconscious I will give him 5K.

Come on Keith lets put your pet theory to the test!

[Art]

"Keith claiming their is no evidence for vertical NDEs" - Kris
---------------------------------------

I'm sorry but not to being picky, (I'm thinking that English is probably not your first language?) but just for future reference... the word you want is "veridical". It means truthful; veracious, corresponding to facts; not illusory; real; actual; genuine.

Vertical means being in a perpendicular position (up and down).

Please forgive me but I'm just trying to be helpful....

[Kris]

No I meant the word I used. Ie seeing stuff from a vantage point one should not be able to see.

Certainly their have been veridical NDEs too though :)

[Art]

Oh, okay, I understand now what you are saying. Like near death experiencers saying they were up on the ceiling watching and they could see the bald spot on the doctor's head; like one child's NDE that I read. The doctor was like 6'3" tall and the kid (that had cancer and was confined to a bed) said that he could see the doctor's bald spot and he thought it was funny! (grin!)

[Kris]

yeah that is what I meant.

So yes I can speak English :)

Have a link to that NDE

[Art]

Have a link to that NDE? - Kris

No, I think it's one I read in a book? Maybe Dr. Melvin Morse's Closer to the Light? Not sure though. I've read so many books about near death experiences and death bed visions. I would have to say though that Dr. Melvin Morse is one of my favorite near death experience investigator/writers.

[Kris]

How old was the kid?

[Keith Augustine]

Michael wrote: "Though some responses to your points have been rather forceful, many commenters have shown you respect."

That comment was directed to posters like Kris who say things like "[Augustine has] crossed over into the area of deluded and dishonest in the extreme..."

But I agree with you, Michael. In fact, I'm quite pleased with the general avoidance of irrelevant accusations of bias and so on here. That's why I'm still posting now. And that's why I didn't say anything about it until the very end.

But subsequent comments have proven my point that it was a good idea to suggest that rhetoric be avoided, as you've noted yourself since. Unfortunately, the rhetoric seems to have been taken up a notch, largely due to one disruptive poster who still doesn't see that ad hominem attacks and so forth distract from the real issues, accomplishing nothing. They just waste commenters' time.

That said, I'm quite pleased that this ratcheting up of the rhetoric has not been infectious to other posters. I can't realistically expect the usual suspects to stop engaging in their usual behavior--but I am glad that others have not followed that lead.

So I think that acknowledgement of that professional behavior on the part of the majority here is due. That you can tolerate a supposedly "fundamentally dishonest person" like myself for so long is surely a testament to your stoic restraint :)

Kris wrote: "I've asked you before would you be willing to submit to these conditions and replicate what NDErs have produced. Of course you won't cause you know it is impossible."

This is a ridiculous challenge. I obviously don't have my own research lab to test these sorts of things properly myself, anymore than Kris does. Those who do have access to such resources are the ones who should do the testing, as I noted when I responded to Kris on this point on Paranormalia. Kris might as well disparage me for failing to personally launch the AWARE study. That the question of whether something separates during NDEs is being asked in an empirical manner is what matters, not who does the asking. And I do greatly appreciate those who do go to bother of setting up these sorts of experiments, which can be more difficult to set up than you can imagine until you read some of Jan Holden's early attempts to adequately design NDE target identification experiments that might have some chance of being both properly controlled and successful.

Kris wrote: "You misrepresent NDE views on prophecy and you know this. It has been brought to your attention before."

I responded to this accusation of yours on Paranormalia, and if you did not like what I said there, you're not going to like it when I repeat my response here. So I'm not going to copy and paste it for you, and I'm not going to repeat myself.

Funny that when such allegations are responded to, you (and some others here) just repeat them as if I never took the time to respond in the first place. What guarantee do I have that if I did repeat myself now, you would not simply trod out the same accusation next time around?

"Why is it that no direct researcher ( Blackmore and Woerlee are more secondary researchers) on this subject has ever reached your conclusions? Doesn't that tell you something?"

These are issues I've addressed in print. I'm tempted to leave it at that since my answer will only enrage you further. But instead, let me put it this way: Why is it that no direct researcher (instead of the on-and-off again "secondary researcher") on the subject of the purported UFO crash at Roswell has ever concluded that a UFO did NOT crash at Roswell? Could it be that only those trying to prove that something extraterrestrial happened at Roswell choose to make a career out of studying that case, or UFOs more generally? It is really surprising that half-hearted agnostics and skeptics of Roswell would never invest the kind of time and money into a potential boondoggle, whereas a true believer would because he's trying to vindicate his point of view?

"I can only reach the conclusion you are a dishonest man and I can see an obvious motive for this. You are the Vice President of Infidels.org and you stand to lose a lot if this issue is best explained by the afterlife, which the evidence seems to indicate!"

Nope. Again, another recycled allegation I have already responded to on Paranormalia, but which went in one ear and out the other. Shall I copy and paste it here for you?

As I said before, even if naturalism were false, there would plenty of support for the thesis that all religions are man-made inventions that tell us nothing reliable about a spiritual world. The falsification of naturalism, then, would compel the concession of that falsification, of course; but the falsity of religions would still persist and give us plenty to work on. So Internet Infidels doesn't need an afterlife to be nonexistent, as there are plenty of other religious falsehoods out there that should be exposed for what they are. The fact of the matter is, though, that naturalism hasn't been falsified, and that's why it's the central focus of the site now. If it were falsified, a different focus would be adopted. But were not there yet, which is why there are as many conceptions of the afterlife out there as can be imagined. There simply are no facts about what an afterlife is like, just imaginative speculations.

dmduncan wrote: "He wants to say what he wants and 'move on.'??? That doesn't sound very conversational to me. Does he view his role here as a guest lecturer, and us students whose job is to sit quietly and take notes?"

I view my role here as you do: to throw out ideas and let others run with them or not as they see fit; to correct mistakes (the original point of my first post in this entry); and so on. I do think I have some things to teach, though, just as I have some things to learn. Just as all of us do, and always will.

This is a blog, not a forum. Blogs are not meant for extended conversations. The maintainer makes an extended point, and readers add their 2 cents. And that's how far it is supposed to go.

I try to avoid forums because I don't have the time to participate in them day after day, hour after hour. Whenever I make the mistake of posting in forums, I have to stop posting there, even when posting to fellow naturalists. Hence I try to stay clear of all of them. Not everyone can surf the web all day long. It's that simple.

"Ignoring and misrepresenting facts the refute your views is dishonest. What else can you call that?"

Kris, why do you always assume the worst of those who commit the heresy of thinking differently than you? It's not as if an impartial researcher would conclude that the grounds for Kris' view are irrefutable, as Michael himself has acknowledged. Kris would do well to read Ian Stevenson's old Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease article summarizing the evidence for survival. Stevenson concludes that belief in survival is (I don't recall the exact words) permissible given the evidence, but not compelling. So why do you act as if it is compelling?

"I want to note dmduncan has noticed Keith's tendency to whine about things too. See Keith it just ain't me telling you that."

I wasn't whining, I was telling you at the outset that I'm not going to respond to each and every one of dozens of comments. That just leads to dozens more questions, and if you think I'm even going to attempt to answer 12 x 12 x 12... questions, well, it just ain't gonna happen.

"Regarding your extraterrestial analogy, I'd suggest it's a false analogy, since you're not an extraterrestrial being (and hence, not you); therefore, the latter survival after death is certainly not YOUR survival."

I think you missed my point. My point is not the one you take. My point is that I know the self I have now, and don't know any higher self you say I have. I know the former is a reality, but all I have to go on for the latter is a character in a story you tell. I don't know that that character corresponds to any real person. That's the sense in which that character might as well be an extraterrestrial to me. It's not anyone I've "met" in a figurative sense. Sorry if I was not clear enough about that.

"Yes Keith, people do have NDEs flatline. We have only known this since 2003."

Van Lommel's say-so doesn't make it so. Did you read Jason Braithwaite's critique of his conclusions? I imagine not. But suppose you did. Suppose by some miracle you concluded that Braithwaite's analysis was ultimately correct.

Would van Lommel's say-so have indicated the truth, even if no one (such as Braithwaite) had never taken the time to critique him?

"It doesn't help serious researchers who have to answer his dribble when their is better things to do with their time."

Your "agnosticism" just shines through in comments like this, Kris.

[Kris]

More of the same, little bit louder, a little bit worse. Second verse, same as the first.....

Keith, recycling is only meant to be used with garbage. It is not intended to be used with research. NDE researchers should be researching NDEs, not having to respond to arguments that are at least ten years dated. So yes it is a waste of time.

Perhaps researchers could be doing research on the test that I recommended you undertake ( I will note Keith will avoid any such test cause he certainly knows this will falsify his "explanations") but they are perhaps too busy having to deal with pseudo skeptics, just a thought....

Keith I would be prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt on many, many suspects but you are way too versed in this subject to hold your views honestly. You hold them for what is certainly ideological reasons and you are very, very vested in that ideology. Really it is no different then Goebbels with Nazism.

Gee I think refuting naturalism would be how do I say this score one for religion. I highly suspect many many, naturalist would jump ship for some religion, figuring they are closer then skepticism, which just got a major burning anyways. So yeah, you might find yourself very under employed if such a thing was to happen.

Oh where do I begin with that Roswell stuff.

Hum first off if you cannot see the difference between a one off odd event and something that is happening to millions of people and being observed by doctors around the world then whatever university gave you a masters in philosophy owes the public a major apology.

Second, if you cannot see why mainstream doctors researching an event happening to millions of people is like Roswell shows again why your university owes the public a major apology.

No Van Lommels word doesn't make this true, his evidence does.

Critique of Braithwaite-http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2008/10/dying-brain-hypothesis-not-dead.html

I so wish Keith would be consistent. Evidently skepticism of anything is enough to prove the skeptical view of the subject. If he was more consistent then he would be a creationist, Jew( cause people doubt Christianity), who denied the Holocaust. Now that would be a lot more amusing.

[Kris]

more on flatline NDEs

http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/103-nde-research-christian-perspective-podcast-8.html#post983

[Keith Augustine]

"More of the same, little bit louder, a little bit worse. Second verse, same as the first...."

If my comments bother you so much, stop addressing me. I'm quite happy to ignore you and address the substantive points that other people make. Why should you get to dominate the discussion, especially when you are just rabble-rousing instead of sticking to the issues?

Don't complain that I didn't answer your questions if, when I do answer them, you "whine" about my answers not being ones to your liking. If you want to talk to a bunch of dittoheads who will just parrot back what you tell them, there are plenty places on the web to get that sort of self-validation.

"you are way too versed in this subject to hold your views honestly."

I've never been accused of knowing too much about a subject to know what I'm talking about. So thanks!

By your reasoning, BTW, those who've been in near-death research for decades "are way too versed in this subject to hold their views honestly." Funny how that rule only applies to those you disagree with.

"Gee I think refuting naturalism would be how do I say this score one for religion. I highly suspect many many, naturalist would jump ship for some religion"

I don't think settling in favor of the reality of one thing is any reason to open the floodgates and credulously believe in every other fancy that has been imagined before.

If only one supernatural thing were demonstrated, the rational response would be skepticism about the reality of other supernatural things that have not been demonstrated. The relevant distinction is not the natural-supernatural one here. It is the demonstrated-undemonstrated distinction.

Things that have been demonstrated to be true by scientific standards should be at least tentatively accepted, while one should not make a leap of faith to believe in mere maybes that have not been demonstrated to the same degree. That probably sounds like "pseudoskeptical" heresy to you, but it is common practice and common sense within science.

It's why black holes were at one point merely hypothetical, until compelling evidence emerged demonstrating their reality. Skeptics have no obligation to believe in things in the absence of compelling evidence. Perhaps you may forgive us for coming to our own conclusions before consulting you first! (Come to think of it, I'm sure that I've disagreeably come to all manner of conclusions about all manner of things without consulting you first, such as before I knew you even existed. How rude of me! But that's not nearly as rude as those who came to conclusions on their own before you were born, of course.)

There are always certain individuals with pet theories, but the scientific community (or historical community) needs the sort of evidence strong enough to build consensus before accepting X as true. It is those sort of "pseudoskeptical" safeguards against falsehood that make medicine and computers possible, not prayer or shamanism.

So a demonstration that one supernatural thing exists would not be a reason to abandon skepticism in favor of believing whatever you fancy. The strength of the evidence would still be the deciding factor.

"...whatever university gave you a masters in philosophy owes the public a major apology."

Nice. The epitomy of impartiality, of objectivity, wouldn't you say? Your own words betray you in the eyes of others far better than any response by me would.

Instead of all this inuendo, perhaps you should ask religious believers like Darek Barefoot and Paul Herrick how biased I am in considering alternate points of view, considering that I helped them tighten up their arguments *against* naturalism when they submitted them for Secular Web publication.

[Zetetic_chick]

I've read with interest all the above comments; but I suspect that something is avoiding to get us to the core of the matter.

The point of disagreement is if the transmission theory is correct or incorrect; or more correct than other alternatives like the production theory.

Any other comment or references, including labels, speculations about hidden motives, biases, etc are secondaries and a waste of time.

I'd recommend to return to the original problem about the merits of the transmission theory.

As Keith Augustine is explicitly defending the production theory or, perhaps more precisely, arguing against the trasmission theory, I suggest Augustine to do the following:

Enumerate and list your specific objections against the transmission theory. Please, avoid references to man-made religions, God, angels, ufos or aliens. Simply, enumerate with precision what are your objections against the transmission theory.

Once fully and explicitly known and understood your specific objections, we can examine them objectively and give them proper evaluation.

Only like that, we'll know if your objections are good, definitive, irrelevant, strong or weak, and if they pose a serious challenge or not to the transmission theory.

We'll know what are the exact points of agreement and disagreement, and we'll focus in the latter.

This is, in my view, the only way to get a high level, serious exchange about this important problem. Exchanging labels or insults, is infantile, sterile and a waste of time.

Most of us want to know the truth; thus let's to give Keith Augustine the opportunity of give his best shot against the transmission theory.

[Keith Augustine]

ZC: I'll try to get us back on track. Instead of a list of objections, it might be useful just to consider one argument at a time. I think just one argument is likely to lead to all sort of responses, so I think it would be more productive, at this point, to narrow the focus a bit, at least for now. It is so easy to lose focus in this sort of venue that I think we should take baby steps.

So, if you want my first argument, it is already here, the aforementioned dilemma of the last four paragraphs of my June 7th post. Perhaps that needs more explanation; but for now, I'll simply refer back to it and see what you think needs clarification or defense. (It might also help to re-read my comments before the disruptive posts to jog your memory.)

Note: The dilemma isn't an argument against the transmissive hypothesis per se, but an argument that "transmission" would not allow personal survival even if it occurred.