Where is your experience?

[steve s]

This. I once had lunch with a catholic group on campus and after telling them i'm atheist a woman made the comment that the world is such an amazing place, how could there not be a God. I said the world is indeed an amazing wonderful beautiful thing but is it that even without God.

Some people need to attach mystery and spirituality to our beautiful amazing universe. Others just accept it as is.

They're like the new-age woo crowd. The real world is so much more fascinating than any of the nonsense they promote. Where does the bible mention galaxies, pulsars, black holes, or tube worms living next to hydrothermal vents?

Steve S

 

[Jeff Corey]

Never mind. It's no matter.

 

[Weak Kitten]

Oh oh the tube worms! The tube worms are sooo awesome! And all those fish and other things deep underwater that produce their own light!

And have you seen that time-lapse of the pillar of ice forming down from an ice-sheet and freezing everything in its path? The explanation behind how that works is just mind bending!

 

[steve s]

And have you seen that time-lapse of the pillar of ice forming down from an ice-sheet and freezing everything in its path? The explanation behind how that works is just mind bending!

I saw that. I think there was a thread on it a while back. Also, the show Frozen Planet showed how they filmed it.

Steve S

 

[JoeMorgue]

From a certain point of view the single biggest delusion most people operate under is the idea that they as in their sense of self and their brains are seperate things.

From Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God"

When we think of our "self" as our innermost being, we don't think of it as a body function. My brain creates this idea that my "self" is not it "self." We think of our "self" as something separate, looking out from our eyes, listening through our ears, and pulling the strings that make our body move. The brain is not able to perceive it's own functioning. And this is true for all of us, right from childhood.

When children are told that it's their brain that thinks, they don't think their brain is them. They think their brain is a computing, thinking machine, something that is added to their "self" to help them understand things.

And yet the mind is what the brain does, just like pumping blood is what the heart does.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Most people experience consciousness about an inch and a half behind their eyes. I'd say that's where "I" am.

You can actually alter this sense using cameras mirrors and other tricks that create a profound sense of disassociation.

If the mind was not intimately connected with the brain OP, why is it that damaging minute but specific regions of the brain terminate subtle but reliably demonstrable aspects of personality and awareness in multiple test subjects and examples?

Is there some effect the brain has over the soul, effectively cutting off the soul from transmitting it's awareness to the body if the wiring is damage?

Why can we eliminate such subtle and precise concepts from the awareness? Neurons specifically responsible for anything from specific letters to how we recognize the face of a loved one?

 

[Lowpro]

You can actually alter this sense using cameras mirrors and other tricks that create a profound sense of disassociation.

If the mind was not intimately connected with the brain OP, why is it that damaging minute but specific regions of the brain terminate subtle but reliably demonstrable aspects of personality and awareness in multiple test subjects and examples?

Is there some effect the brain has over the soul, effectively cutting off the soul from transmitting it's awareness to the body if the wiring is damage?

Why can we eliminate such subtle and precise concepts from the awareness? Neurons specifically responsible for anything from specific letters to how we recognize the face of a loved one?

Same reason your brain doesn't accurately associate everything you see visually and "fills in" gaps for you...

What'd be REALLY interesting is if those mirror images were startled on their own and NOT the subject...

 

[Stomatopoda]

If your "experience" was separate from your physical brain, then damaging the brain wouldn't cause memory loss, personality changes, etc. Lobotomies wouldn't turn people into drooling vegetables, and psychoactive drugs wouldn't work.

 

[Roboramma]

If your "experience" was separate from your physical brain, then damaging the brain wouldn't cause memory loss, personality changes, etc. Lobotomies wouldn't turn people into drooling vegetables, and psychoactive drugs wouldn't work.

This.

/thread

 

[SezMe]

And have you seen that time-lapse of the pillar of ice forming down from an ice-sheet and freezing everything in its path? The explanation behind how that works is just mind bending!

That sounds really interesting. Do you have a linky?

 

[Roboramma]

That sounds really interesting. Do you have a linky?

Someone posted it here before, but I haven't found the link, I think it's from David Attenborough's Frozen Planet, though: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mfl7n

 

[JoeMorgue]

Some people need to attach mystery and spirituality to our beautiful amazing universe. Others just accept it as is.

I've always wanted to ask a modern religious person if they think a sunrise is any less beautiful to them then it was to a Greek that thought it was Apollo's Chariot.

Are the stars less beautiful because we now know they are giant balls of gas an unimaginable far ways away?

Or as Douglas Adams put it "Can't it be enough to think that a garden is beautiful without having to thinki that they are fairies at the bottom of it as well?"

 

[Roboramma]

I've always wanted to ask a modern religious person if they think a sunrise is any less beautiful to them then it was to a Greek that thought it was Apollo's Chariot.

Are the stars less beautiful because we now know they are giant balls of gas an unimaginable far ways away?

Or as Douglas Adams put it "Can't it be enough to think that a garden is beautiful without having to thinki that they are fairies at the bottom of it as well?"

Feynman had a nice thing about how science can make beautiful things more beautiful because they can be appreciated first on the level of outward beauty that everyone sees and then on further and further levels of beauty that come with a deeper understanding.

A flower is beautiful in it's appearance, but, for instance, an understanding of the co-evolution of flowering plants and pollenating insects adds another layer to that beauty.

I find that to be quite a strong point, but it leads to the view that mythology can also add (false) beauty. There is something beautiful about the idea of Apollo's chariot, and while the sunset may still be beautiful without that (and have another level of beauty when we understand what it really is), it's nevertheless true that there is beauty in ideas.

Personally I think that the universe is, in general, more beautiful that our primitive ideas and stories about it. But those things did (do) have a certain beauty of their own.

 

[Lamuella]

mind, thought, experience, and so forth are names we give to emergent properties of a correctly functioning brain.

 

[BravesFan]

Yes, it is inside my head. What's there to discuss?

You got me...it's penis, it's always been penis......I'm good with that!

 

[PixyMisa]

... so, in a general sense, if I wanted to point out to the "consciousness" of someone.. all I need to do is point right to his/her head. It is right there, inside the brain. In other words, the experiences are located in space/time just like a rock is (as a corollary, they would be a kind of physical object). Is this what (some of you) are saying?

Yes, except that experiences aren't objects, they're processes. But those processes happen in the brain. We know this because, as noted, you can cut away everything else and the mind remains, but cut away parts of the brain and you cut away parts of the mind.

 

[JoeMorgue]

... so, in a general sense, if I wanted to point out to the "consciousness" of someone.. all I need to do is point right to his/her head. It is right there, inside the brain. In other words, the experiences are located in space/time just like a rock is (as a corollary, they would be a kind of physical object). Is this what (some of you) are saying?

Well yeah. If someone asks you where your music collection is you point to your iPod. If someone asks you where your photos are at you point to your photo album.

Where else would your "experiences" be?

 

[JoeMorgue]

It is commonly accepted that the brain, somehow, produces the mind, at least in the JREF of course.

I sorta take issue with the "somehow" there. The brain does produce the mind. It is the mind. While neurology is still a science in its infancy, it has advanced far enough to leave no reasonable doubt as to where the mind comes from.

 

[BravesFan]

Why am I gettin the feeling that this is all designed to begat an evidence for woo?(well aside form the OP's name). Like that it exists in some sort of cosmic place with all the thoughts that can ever exist and we just pull from it and those thoughts that we pull from it create who we are.

I hope that's not what this is all about, cuz yeah, who I am is in my noggin (well and the penis, musn't forget that) lol

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why am I gettin the feeling that this is all designed to begat an evidence for woo?(well aside form the OP's name). Like that it exists in some sort of cosmic place with all the thoughts that can ever exist and we just pull from it and those thoughts that we pull from it create who we are.

I hope we're both wrong, but yeah I'm smelling a "Woo Gotcha" setup as well.