“Descartes’ mind-body problem” makes nonsense of materialism

https://mindmatters.ai/2018/08/ai-that-can-read-minds/ We’ve spoken on this before. I don’t know if your new or not I think you picked that because of the fact that they said it predicts in the other direction as well It used a neural network with semantics to do guesswork pretty much the exact same thing talk text uses to guess what you’re saying That Ai was trained on several peoples brains and it wouldn’t work on your brain and it wouldn’t work on my brain It only be partially accurate and yes there are brain regions that are used When you think of those things still a mind is required to translate them to train the AI and then you can start doing those guess I believe it’s 1/3 of the brain can be used that way across all humans the other 2/3 of the system has to be trained for because it’s unique to the individual There’s a cute ted talk on exactly this, And the paper you cited kind of over states their success AaronS1978

@OLV #68 https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/news/news-stories/2017/june/brain-decoding-complex-thoughts.html Pater Kimbridge

AaronS1978, Thank you for commenting on this. Please note that this topic really intrigued me and I don’t know much (or anything) about it. I wanted to modify my initial message but ran out of time. Here’s the revised version:

Let’s say you’re writing a PowerPoint presentation and later you lay down on a recliner chair taking a break and suddenly you get an idea about something interesting you could add in your PP but after you consider it, you decide not to do it. During all that time you’ve been monitored through the most sophisticated technology fMRI, EEG, you name it. Note that your voluntary and involuntary body movements during that thinking process might have been associated with scratching your itchy ear or going to the restroom or something else, but unrelated to the ideas you’re mulling in your mind. What would the fMRI, EEG, etc. signals reveal that may prove the lack of free will in this case? Have they done any similar experiments?

After seeing your comment on this, does the revised version make you add or change anything you said already? One of the many questions I may ask is if every thought in the simple example above is associated with physical signals in the material brain? I believe my thoughts are in my inmaterial mind. Do all get somehow reflected in the brain ? Can the experiments detect them? Has this kind of experiment been done and published? What did they find? What did they conclude? We’re discussing a difficult-at least to me- topic that may be conducive to what you call “rambling” (which I may do often, at least according to my wife and children*). Hence, join the “rambling” club. There’s room for another member. :) (*) my grandchildren haven’t accused me of rambling yet. :) OLV

Sorry if I rambled, That actually got me thinking thank you AaronS1978

OLV By the way my last message, I just reread that and it sounded terrible and I didn’t mean that to sound that way I was actually thanking you for your response Now in response to your question, I would think that they would say that they were able to predict with some level of accuracy that you were going to decide not to use that paper how they would do that would be very difficult because they would have to know every pattern in your brain to be able to determine that But that’s too simple to say that now that I think about it, they would have to be able to read every single impulse in your mind and actually Know The exact subjective experience that you were having at that time for every notion they would not be able to tell whether you wanted to add, add part of it, not add it all, mention it during the power point etc etc I guess the only reason why they’re even capable of making predictions is because of the fact that they set the experiment up to negate free well entirely. In every single experiment, The participant has asked to wait for an urge to make a choice to flick the wrist, Choose to add or subtract, press the right or the left button, choose between a group of pictures, move your hands. None of them really allow you to have a choice in the first place the choice they give you is an illusion you were to wait for your bodily urge to do something So I suppose they could never really predict whether or not you were going to add something to your PowerPoint or take it out because the only reason they know how to predict the further experiments is because they ask you to wait for an urge to move or make a choice which is never your choice to begin with you’re waiting for an urge And to be frank with you when I act or make a choice I really don’t wait for an urge I don’t even notice a feeling in the first place even when I think about it meaning when I think about making a choice between two options Anytime I feel a particular urge it’s linked to an emotional choice AaronS1978

AaronS1978, Let’s say you’re writing a PowerPoint presentation and later you lay down on a recliner chair taking a break and suddenly you get an idea about something interesting you could add in your PP but after you consider it, you decide not to do it. What would the fMRI and EEG signals reveal the lack of free will in this case? OLV

I just noticed your post it on these OLV But hey thank you I really do appreciate that AaronS1978

Olv I look forward to your response BB 77 and Doubter I actually really do appreciate your posts they were very informative and very helpful actually I didn’t know that Benjamin Libet Wrote that in 2004 I’m actually quite shocked it’s amazing all the articles that I have combed through and I’ve never found that almost irritating to me Because this is something that I’ve been digging through for quite some time and that would’ve been really helpful to of had that article AaronS1978

AaronS1978 @56: Please, note that those experiments seem focused in on body movements, not on thoughts associated with decisions made to change our attitude or behavior in a given context. I'll try to write more when I find more time and get some needed rest. OLV

Doubter @57 & @58: Interesting comments. Thanks. OLV

As to fMRI’s and EEGs, etc.. etc.., this tidbit from Dr. Libet may be of interest:

MIND TIME: The Temporal Factor in Consciousness - Benjamin Libet - 2004 Excerpt: At one pole is the determinist materialist position. In this philosophy, observable matter is the only reality and everything, including thought, will, and feeling, can be explained only in terms of matter and the natural laws that govern matter. The eminent scientist Francis Crick (codiscoverer of the genetic molecular code) states this view elegantly (Crick and Koch, 1998): “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons (nerve cells).’” According to this determinist view, your awareness of yourself and the world around you is simply the by-product or epiphenomenon of neuronal activities, with no independent ability to affect or control neuronal activities. Is this position a “proven” scientific theory? I shall state, straight out, that this determinist materialist view is a belief system; it is not a scientific theory that has been verified by direct tests. It is true that scientific discoveries have increasingly produced powerful evidence for the ways in which mental abilities, and even the nature of one’s personality, are dependent on, and can be controlled by, specific structures and functions of the brain. However, the nonphysical nature of subjective awareness, including the feelings of spirituality, creativity, conscious will, and imagination, is not describable or explainable directly by the physical evidence alone. As a neuroscientist investigating these issues for more than thirty years, I can say that these subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function. This is in contrast to my earlier views as a young scientist, when I believed in the validity of determinist materialism. That was before I began my research on brain processes in conscious experience, at age 40. There is no guarantee that the phenomenon of awareness and its concomitants will be explainable in terms of presently known physics. In fact, conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you would not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena. Only a report by the individual who is experiencing such phenomena could tell you about them. https://zodml.org/sites/default/files/%5BBenjamin_Libet%2C_Professor_Stephen_M._Kosslyn%5D_Min.pdf

bornagain77

AaronS1978 @56: Thank you for responding to my message. you wrote an interesting explanation. I think I see your point. Regarding the first part, I agree that it requires at least two conscious minds to run the mentioned experiments: 1. The mind being investigated 2. The mind doing the investigation Regarding the second part, will try to comment on it later. OLV

AaronS1978@56

Now when it comes to free will, this is something that’s always bothered me. There are people like John Dylan Haynes, and Patrick Haggard, that make an active ever to try to disprove free will and they do so by using fMRIs and neural imaging One, is the intent to read the patterning of neural imaging in the brain to predict what our actions are going to be before we know what our action is going to be

The experiments you describe do on the surface seem to pose a dilemma for believers in free will. It seems to me that this may be resolved and explained by the simple observation that in the interactive dualism filter and receiver/transmitter theories of consciousness, human conscious awareness manifests in the physical through the neuronal structures of the brain. While in the body all experience of self awareness is filtered through the neuronal brain processing. This interface, and all filtering and transduction processes, inherently involve time delays. So there would be expected to be a time delay between immaterial consciousness having a thought, making a decision, and it being experienced by the physically embodied human personality limited to experiencing what the physical brain interface allows it to. This of course posits that the immaterial consciousness self does possess free will. This involves the old philosophical debates about the universality of determinism, and whether we really understand the essence of cause and effect. I think it suffices to say that all of the evidence for and the understandings of spiritual existence of the soul or spirit absolutely require the existence of human free will. doubter

OLV@52 Thanks for the response. It looks like we are on the same page, so to speak, though you appear to adhere to Idealism in philosophy of mind as opposed to my preference for Interactive Dualism. It turns out that Neutral Monism may be another and rather attractive variant of Idealism, that appears to neatly solve the problem Interactive Dualism has in accounting for how the interactions between Mind and Matter necessary for consciousness to manifest in the physical can take place when the two realms are existentially, fundamentally separate. Neutral Monism posits that the basic ultimate substance is neither mind nor matter, but something in between, something "neutral, with the capacity to interact with both. I agree with your thoughts re. evolution and the total inadequacy of Darwinist RM + NS. The usual materialistic assumption is that large complex energy-hungry brains (necessary for advanced consciousness to manifest in the physical) evolved by Darwinian RM + NS to generate consciousness. Both parts of that assumption are invalid - it didn't happen by Darwinian RM + NS, and the brain doesn't generate consciousness: it filters it and receives/transmits it. The much more likely view is that these brains evolved in some process heavily involving introduction of design from outside the natural order to manifest pre-existing consciousness in the physical, where as Dr. Behe has concluded, design introduced from outside rules in the origination of the orders, classes and families in evolution, with RM + NS making the necessary adjustments and fine tuning changes at the genus and species levels of classification. doubter

@OLV It’s something that Raymond Talus talked about in one of his books about the human consciousness When we’re trying to translate the brain and the neural activity of the brain, it first requires a conscious human being (The one that we are doing the neural imaging on) To help translate what the patterns mean in the brain In other words we need someone with that all important subjective experience has to help translate the patterns in their head. They pretty much have to tell us what they’re experiencing Secondly, we need another conscious mind to read and input the data which is still based off of their conscious experience So it requires two conscious minds to try to read and translate what the brain is doing in the first place. Now when it comes to free will, this is something that’s always bothered me. There are people like John Dylan Haynes, and Patrick Haggard, that make an active ever to try to disprove free will and they do so by using fMRIs and neural imaging One, is the intent to read the patterning of neural imaging in the brain to predict what our actions are going to be before we know what our action is going to be They claim if they do that, you have absolutely no free will because everything is pre-determined before that all important subject of self knows about it and it is generated in the brain where they can read it They’ve had some success with this, anywhere from 60% accuracy on the AI, 72% accuracy on certain test subjects, to a little over 80% accuracy with neural electrodes implanted in the brain (Freid, this is result of 80% is debated because it was accomplished with in 700 Milliseconds of point of will, which is a problem, because of the subject being able to report it accurately) A recent experiment in Australia replicated these results with about 54- 65% accuracy But the idea is if they could complete a 100% neural prediction of everything that you do you absolutely have no free will because it can be read on a computer before you know it’s happening And that’s why I think it is the strongest attack on free will, It’s the most direct and it is the hardest to argue against that doesn’t mean you can’t argue against it in fact I’m trying to find ways to argue against it if this ever were to come true AaronS1978

"If you got the impression that I claimed to directly perceive peoples’ minds, then you inferred something that I was not trying to imply. Clear?" Pater, sure. But you should be more careful with 'perceive'. Andrew asauber

AaronS1978 @53, Interesting comment. Thanks. You wrote: “it requires the conscious mind to do this to do the translating from brain patterns to discernible information in fact it takes to conscious minds to do this“ What did you mean by “it takes to conscious minds”? Can you elaborate on that? Thanks. You also wrote: “I find it entirely fascinating I also find it concerning to because this is the realm that particular anti-Theists could to make their most direct attack on free will” Can you explain how they could do it? Thanks. OLV

@OLV and Doubter I’m actually really happy that Doubter looked at your Post. I was looking at it too I really didn’t get a chance to respond to it I was hoping somebody would respond to it so when I saw that Doubter did I was honestly really happy My two cents and this is also involving a post that was made at the very beginning of this Op Is that even despite looking at fMRI’s and EEGs, We see the brain patterns, but we only have a limited level of success at predicting these brain patterns Edward Feser goes into a locked about the limited access we have to reading brain patterns furthermore I’ve been watching a lot of things on how we are trying to decode the brain but decoding their brain completely depends on the person subjective experience and translating that subjective experience to something a computer can read The thing I find fascinating is it requires the conscious mind to do this to do the translating from brain patterns to discernible information in fact it takes to conscious minds to do this I find it entirely fascinating I also find it concerning to because this is the realm that particular anti-Theists could to make their most direct attack on free will AaronS1978

Doubter @36

“I’m curious. How are the various brain studies such as the two you cite supposed to prove that the mind is generated by the brain like bile is generated by the liver?”

Good question. Glad you asked it. Thanks. I believe, that mind is immaterial and primary, and matter/energy derivatives. Each individual consciousness communicates with its assigned brain through an unknown interface. When the material brain is chemically or physically damaged, the implementation of that interface deteriorates. I’m far from ever becoming an authority on the topic, but my opinion is that they don’t prove much, except their discovered observations. They barely describe -sometimes with much speculation- the processes they observe. Many times they don’t understand them well, or at all. I’m interested in seeing more discoveries shedding light on what remains unknown or poorly understood, because most of what they find and describe seems to reveal more functional complexity and complex functionality than they expected. With every discovery they describe, the Darwinian RV+NS trick looses more explanatory power, if it had any left. Their reductionist approach to research looks like desperate reverse engineering. But still it often reveals designed systems. Most serious papers we read lead to the same conclusion. Ironically many authors don’t see it. Perhaps they're busy working on their specific tasks and don’t have time to think about the implications of their discoveries beyond the limited context they’re investigating. We outsiders may see beyond those limits, because we expect complex functionality and functional complexity, though sometimes presented in elegant simplicity. OLV

@Asauber: I see a person. I hear them talking. I speak to them and they respond rationally. I see them go about their daily life, much in the way that I myself do. I infer that they have a mind, much as I consider myself to have a mind. If you got the impression that I claimed to directly perceive peoples' minds, then you inferred something that I was not trying to imply. Clear? Pater Kimbridge

LoL! @ Brother Brian- What, exactly, do you have to support your position? Something besides trolls would be nice. ET

Pater, So please explain to me how you see or hear someone's else's mind. You see their body. You hear their voice. Andrew asauber

You don't have eyes and ears, Andrew? You don't talk and listen to others? You don't watch their actions? How are you perceiving me right now, Andrew? I am starting to think you are just a troll. Pater Kimbridge

How can anyone seriously doubt that the mind is separate from the brain when we have near death experience and the existence of ghosts supporting our view? Brother Brian

"I infer that you don’t know what “perceive” means." perceive "become aware of (something) by the use of one of the senses" You smell brains, Pater? Andrew asauber

If the brain is a receiver, then what of those with Anencephaly? They lack the forebrain and cerebrum, the parts the differentiate us from animals. rhampton7

I infer that you don't know what "perceive" means. Pater Kimbridge

"You don’t? Then how do you know they have one?" Pater, I infer that they have one. What do you do? Andrew asauber

@Asauber #41 said "I don’t perceive anything about another persons mind." You don't? Then how do you know they have one? Pater Kimbridge

"We know how chains are made, and they start off as separate links." Pater, And we don't know how either minds or brains are made, so I think you are jumping to conclusions you shouldn't be jumping to. They may have started as separate things and have been linked together. You can't demonstrate otherwise. "At no point in a person’s life do you perceive their mind in a different location from their brain." I don't perceive anything about another persons mind. It could just as well be they are two different things linked together. Andrew asauber

Quantum Receiver? Give me a break ! Pater Kimbridge

@Asauber You can already see that chain links are separate. Just because they are topologically intertwined does not mean they are a single object. We know how chains are made, and they start off as separate links. At no point in a person's life do you perceive their mind in a different location from their brain. Pater Kimbridge

As well, evidence that quantum mechanisms are at play on the macro level of the human body itself is also revealed in the following article where it is found that a subject perceives a sensory stimulus on the skin at the moment the skin is touched, before the stimulus reaches the brain and before full deliberative consciousness occurs.

Do Perceptions Happen in Your Brain? - Michael Egnor - December 1, 2015 Excerpt: The sensory experiments of Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist at U.C. San Francisco in the mid 20th century, demonstrated that a subject perceives a sensory stimulus on the skin at the moment the skin is touched, before the stimulus reaches the brain and before full deliberative consciousness occurs. Libet was flabbergasted by this result,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/do_perceptions101261.html

As Libet himself remarked, "In spite of the delay for a sensory experience, subjectively there appears to be no delay."

Reflections on the interaction of the mind and brain - Benjamin Libet - 2006 Excerpt: "In spite of the delay for a sensory experience, subjectively there appears to be no delay." - Benjamin_Libet https://web.archive.org/web/20110718052421/http://www.telefonica.net/web2/lupelandia/piramidescerebro/Libet.pdf

Libet, since he had no idea at the time he was conducting his experiments that quantum effects are ubiquitous within molecular biology, erroneously thought that 'backwards in time' causation must be the answer for instantaneous sensory experience. And he even admitted that "no neural mechanism that could be viewed as directly mediating or accounting for the subjective sensory referrals backward in time".

Subjective backward referral or "antedating" of sensory experience Libet's early theory, resting on study of stimuli and sensation,[17] was found bizarre by some commentators, including Patricia Churchland,[18] due to the apparent idea of backward causation. Libet[19] argued that data suggested that we retrospectively "antedate" the beginning of a sensation to the moment of the primary neuronal response. People interpreted Libet's work on stimulus and sensation in a number of different ways. John Eccles[20] presented Libet's work as suggesting a backward step in time made by a non-physical mind. Edoardo Bisiach (1988)[21] described Eccles as tendentious, but commented: This is indeed the conclusion that the authors (Libet, et al.) themselves seem to be willing to force upon the reader. [...] They dispute an alternative explanation, suggested by Mackay in a discussion with Libet (1979, p. 219)[17] to the effect that 'the subjective referral backwards in time may be due to an illusory judgment made by the subject when he reports the timings', and more significant, Libet, et al. (1979, p. 220)[17] hint at 'serious though not insurmountable difficulties' for the identity theory (of mind and matter) caused by their data. Libet later concluded[22] that there appeared to be no neural mechanism that could be viewed as directly mediating or accounting for the subjective sensory referrals backward in time [emphasis Libet's]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Subjective_backward_referral_or_%22antedating%22_of_sensory_experience

Yet, quantum effects that instantaneously traverse the entire material body to the immaterial mind of a person, (if it is even possible to localize the immaterial mind of a subject strictly to the brain), provides a ready explanation for why there is no delay in a subjects sensory experience. Apparently Libet, although he was a dualist himself, was, never-the-less, led astray by his materialistic presuppositions that held that it always took time for a signal to traverse a distance across the material body. In summation, Quantum coherence/entanglement across the entire material body answers the question that was asked at the beginning of this post, i.e. ""the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?" The answer to that question is that quantum coherence/entanglement across the entirety of the human body is the reason "why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death." As Christians have been saying for thousands of years, a 'soul' is what holds the body together for precisely a lifetime. Advances in Quantum Mechanics, that demonstrate 'instantaneous' quantum effects on the macro level of the human body, now validates that ancient 'common sense' observation from the Christian. Verse:

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?

bornagain77

Further notes on the physical reality of the soul: As was previously mentioned in posts 2 and 3, we now have empirical evidence that Quantum coherence/entanglement is ubiquitous throughout molecular biology. As the paper on quantum criticality mentioned, "Quantum criticality (now found) in a wide range of important biomolecules

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

As was also mentioned in posts 2 and 3, quantum coherence/entanglement requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain its existence. As well, the fact that quantum information is physically conserved, i.e. quantum information cannot be created nor destroyed, was also mentioned in posts 2 and 3. And as was also pointed out towards the end of post 3, the 'pleasant implication' of these facts is that we now have very strong physical evidence directly implying that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. What was not touched upon in post 3 was that we now also have empirical evidence for quantum effects playing out on the macro level of our material bodies. Before we touch upon that, it is first important to note that Darwinian materialists have no clue why our material bodies, conservatively estimated to contain at least a billion trillion molecules, should remain unified as single entity for precisely a lifetime. As Stephen Talbott succinctly puts it, "the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer?"

The Unbearable Wholeness of Beings - Stephen L. Talbott - 2010 Excerpt: Virtually the same collection of molecules exists in the canine cells during the moments immediately before and after death. But after the fateful transition no one will any longer think of genes as being regulated, nor will anyone refer to normal or proper chromosome functioning. No molecules will be said to guide other molecules to specific targets, and no molecules will be carrying signals, which is just as well because there will be no structures recognizing signals. Code, information, and communication, in their biological sense, will have disappeared from the scientist’s vocabulary. ,,, the question, rather, is why things don’t fall completely apart — as they do, in fact, at the moment of death. What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? Despite the countless processes going on in the cell, and despite the fact that each process might be expected to “go its own way” according to the myriad factors impinging on it from all directions, the actual result is quite different. Rather than becoming progressively disordered in their mutual relations (as indeed happens after death, when the whole dissolves into separate fragments), the processes hold together in a larger unity. http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-unbearable-wholeness-of-beings

The Christian Theist, of course, has a ready answer for the question of "What power holds off that moment — precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer? ". The answer, of course, being that it is the soul that holds that power off "precisely for a lifetime, and not a moment longer".

James 2:26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

And, as was already mention, besides having empirical evidence that quantum coherence/entanglement is ubiquitous in all the important biomolecules of life, we now also have empirical evidence for quantum effects playing out on the macro level of our material bodies as well. One line of evidence that quantum effects are at play of the macro level of our material bodies is that the brain exhibits 'instantaneous synchronization' between remote cerebral cortical areas.

The Puzzling Role Of Biophotons In The Brain - Dec. 17, 2010 Excerpt: It’s certainly true that electrical activity in the brain is synchronised over distances that cannot be easily explained. Electrical signals travel too slowly to do this job, so something else must be at work.,,, ,,, It’s a big jump to assume that photons do this job. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/422069/the-puzzling-role-of-biophotons-in-the-brain/ ,,, zero time lag neuronal synchrony despite long conduction delays - 2008 Excerpt: Multielectrode recordings have revealed zero time lag synchronization among remote cerebral cortical areas. However, the axonal conduction delays among such distant regions can amount to several tens of milliseconds. It is still unclear which mechanism is giving rise to isochronous discharge of widely distributed neurons, despite such latencies,,, Remarkably, synchrony of neuronal activity is not limited to short-range interactions within a cortical patch. Interareal synchronization across cortical regions including interhemispheric areas has been observed in several tasks (7, 9, 11–14).,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2575223/

Another line of evidence that quantum effects are at play of the macro level of our material bodies is that the human eye can detect a single photon. As the following researcher commented, "Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,,

Study suggests humans can detect even the smallest units of light – July 21, 2016 Excerpt: Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons.,,, it is remarkable: a photon, the smallest physical entity with quantum properties of which light consists, is interacting with a biological system consisting of billions of cells, all in a warm and wet environment,” says Vaziri. “The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,, The gathered data from more than 30,000 trials demonstrated that humans can indeed detect a single photon incident on their eye with a probability significantly above chance. “What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise? http://phys.org/news/2016-07-humans-smallest.html

In fact, because of the ability of the human eye to detect a single photon, researchers in quantum mechanics are now devising experiments to test the theoretical foundations of quantum mechanics, by using human subjects, instead of using mechanical detectors, to make 'observations':

The Human Eye Could Help Test Quantum Mechanics Experiments to confirm we can see single photons offer new ways to probe our understanding of quantum reality By Anil Ananthaswamy on July 10, 2018 Excerpt: Even as he verifies the human eye’s ability to detect single photons, Kwiat, an experimental quantum physicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and his colleagues are setting their sights higher: to use human vision to probe the very foundations of quantum mechanics, according to a paper they submitted to the preprint server arXiv on June 21. Rather than simply sending single photons toward a volunteer’s eye through either the left or the right fiber, the idea is to send photons in a quantum superposition of effectively traversing both fibers at once. Will humans see any difference? According to standard quantum mechanics, they will not—but such a test has never been done. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-human-eye-could-help-test-quantum-mechanics/ Quantum Mechanics and Human Perception Excerpt: Making quantum effects available to direct human perception addresses fundamental questions about how strange quantum rules produce the familiar world around us. We may be able to investigate whether a human observer perceives a difference between a photon in a statistical mixture of two polarization states, and one that is in a quantum superposition of two polarizations. Eventually we might even be able to demonstrate quantum non-locality in a Bell test with human observers instead of single-photon detectors. http://research.physics.illinois.edu/QI/Photonics/research/

bornagain77

OLV@28 I'm curious. How are the various brain studies such as the two you cite supposed to prove that the mind is generated by the brain like bile is generated by the liver? From the abstract and introduction of the first paper you linked:

We conclude that temporal dynamics of neural mechanisms for motor control can be studied noninvasively in humans using high-density EEG and that directional sensitivity of motor and non-motor processing is not limited within the sensorimotor areas but extends to the whole brain areas. .............................. Control of voluntary movements involves a series of computations including coordinate transformation and motor planning, execution, and evaluation.

There is a lot of experimental data like this. How is this supposed to show that human consciousness, the human mind, is generated by the physical brain? This sort of data is merely of correlations experimentally found between voluntary movements and EEGs of certain brain areas - correlations, not evidence of causation. In the receiver/transmitter theory of mind rough analogy of the TV set, this is like saying that the fact that in order to physically display the picture and produce the audio sounds of the program the EM waves carrying the TV program data have to be processed by complicated detection, demodulation, filtering and digital processing modules in the TV set, proves that the displayed TV show was produced by the TV set. And remember the Wilder Penfield brain stimulation studies cited by Dr. Egnor that showed that no electrical stimulations of the brain could control the psyche - but they could do things like cause movements. All in accordance with the interactive dualism theory of mind. And simply consider (if you are willing) the NDE and reincarnation empirical data. If you deny the validity of this data please furnish detailed justification of this position. doubter

Pater Kimbridge August 13, 2019 at 9:01 am @AaronS1978 It’s not an opinion, that when two things cannot be separated, that they are likely to be just one thing. It’s logic. It’s more likely that one of those things is just a property of the other. And that the people who think they see two things are just confused. And here’s why what you just said it’s an opinion I’m simply going to take what you just said reverse that and aim it at you and your perspective, People that don’t see the difference well they’re just confused AaronS1978

"It’s not an opinion, that when two things cannot be separated, that they are likely to be just one thing." Pater Kimbridge, How likely are two chain links "one thing"? They could be totally different in shape, size, material. The thing that holds them together is their design. Methinks you are misusing 'likely'. Andrew asauber

The confusion is with those who think that minds arose from the mindless via blind and mindless processes. ET

@AaronS1978 It's not an opinion, that when two things cannot be separated, that they are likely to be just one thing. It's logic. It's more likely that one of those things is just a property of the other. And that the people who think they see two things are just confused. Pater Kimbridge

There is more evidence for ghosts then there is for a materialistic origin of life and organisms with brains. ET

AS78, looks like 7.7 billion SOULS aboard spaceship earth (hint, hint) right now. KF kairosfocus

BB & PK et al: Again, this is one core point from Reppert that you have never cogently answered:

. . . let us suppose that brain state A [--> notice, state of a wetware, electrochemically operated computational substrate], which is token identical to the thought that all men are mortal, and brain state B, which is token identical to the thought that Socrates is a man, together cause the belief [--> concious, perceptual state or disposition] that Socrates is mortal. It isn’t enough for rational inference that these events be those beliefs, it is also necessary that the causal transaction be in virtue of the content of those thoughts . . . [But] if naturalism is true, then the propositional content is irrelevant to the causal transaction that produces the conclusion, and [so] we do not have a case of rational inference. In rational inference, as Lewis puts it, one thought causes another thought not by being, but by being seen to be, the ground for it. But causal transactions in the brain occur in virtue of the brain’s being in a particular type of state that is relevant to physical causal transactions.

Minds and computational substrates are categorically different. KF kairosfocus

Dynamics of directional tuning and reference frames in humans: A high-density EEG study Electrophysiological Brain Connectivity: Theory and Implementation OLV

I would, but I also don’t see how the piano, the pianist and the music being played or all one of the same, They are all required to make music exist I think my correlation better suits consciousness and the brain then Clark Kent and Superman Clark Kent is just a dude with superpowers dressed up as another dude with the same superpowers I don’t see your correlation actually paralleling with the mind brain problem, Your correlation is more you trying to create a narrative that better suits your personal persuasion then it is that of proof that the mind and the brain or one in the same. This was my problem with your original statement saying a truthful statement which is there are 7.2 billion brains in this world and then you jumping straight to the conclusion the mind and the brain are the same. That’s why I brought up the TV sets and TV shows there is a lot of TV sets out in this world, still doesn’t mean the TV shows that are televised on them are one in the same There are a lot of brains out in this world, more than 7.2 billion, Including animals, But that does not mean that the mind and the brain are one in the same, they do show attributes that seem different I could argue that Iron Man and Tony Stark are one in the same but they aren’t it is the combination of the suit and Tony Stark that makes Iron Man. I can kill Tony Stark And the Iron Man suit will not work (well that depends the original wouldnt) I can get rid of the Iron Man suit and Tony Stark won’t have any of his superpowers This almost sounds like it’s a matter of opinion between you and I, and I honestly don’t agree with your opinion. You obviously don’t agree with mine but I do know I am right that you cannot parallel the mind to the brain because everybody with a brain has a mind and therefore the mind has to be physical There is so much we do not know about the mind to make that assumption, and much like my analogy of the pianist, the piano, and the music all three are not one in the same but the two of them combined make something beautiful, they are together but they are separate And this is simply an example stating that just because you have a bunch of pianos or a bunch of brains, that doesn’t mean that you’re going to produce a mind without the consciousness much like you’re not going to produce music without the pianist AaronS1978

@AaronS1978 If you know Clark Kent and Superman are good friends, but you never see them both in the same room, don't you get suspicious? Pater Kimbridge

August 12, 2019 at 2:03 pm Pater Kimbridge August 12, 2019 at 11:59 am @AaronS1978 The fact that you can play the shows separate from any particular TV set is the evidence that they are separate things. Obviously somebody didn’t get what I was saying Saying that there is a lot of the same thing that’s correlated with it, is not proof of concept that they are one in the same. The brain being a quantum receiver for the consciousness would also explain much of what we see I apologize for the last post, I was using talk to text while driving, which I shouldn’t do anyways, and I honestly deserve how stupid my last post sounded I have re-posted this with the corrections, and this is why AI stinks AaronS1978

Right. Brother Brain cannot be concerned with posts that expose him as an ignorant troll. Those posts best be ignored. But short posts full of nonsense are OK as long as its Brian's type of nonsense. Thumbs high ET

Hazel

Good succinct post, Bob.

As all posts worth reading are. With the exception of ET’s. Brother Brian

Pater Kimbridge August 12, 2019 at 11:59 am @AaronS1978 The fact that you can play the shows separate from any particular TV set is the evidence that they are separate things. Obviously somebody didn’t get what I was saying Saying that there is a lot of the same thing that’s Correlated with it I’d not proof of concept that they are one in the same. The being a quantum receiver for the consciousness would also explain much of what we see AaronS1978

The only problem I see is that some people do not stick to definitions. Science is defined as anything that can be measured, and spirit is defined as anything that can not be measured. Some people ignore those definitions and make pronouncements about spirit based on their training in science. That is a silly thing to do. SmartAZ

(Eben Alexander) - A (Harvard) neurosurgeon confronts the non-material nature of consciousness - December 2011 Excerpted quote: To me one thing that has emerged from my (Near Death) experience and from very rigorous analysis of that experience over several years, talking it over with others that I respect in neuroscience, and really trying to come up with an answer, is that consciousness outside of the brain is a fact. It’s an established fact. And of course, that was a hard place for me to get, coming from being a card-toting reductive materialist over decades. It was very difficult to get to knowing that consciousness, that there’s a soul of us that is not dependent on the brain. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/he-said-it-a-neurosurgeon-confronts-the-non-material-nature-of-consciousness/

further to Dr. Egnor's quote,, "The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception — such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc" The following NDEer witnessed her mother smoke for the first time while in the emergency waiting room which was down the hall from the emergency room

Michaela's Amazing NEAR death experience - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTcHWz6UMZ8

In the following video, Dr. Lloyd Rudy, a pioneer of cardiac surgery, recounts two patients who came back to life after being declared dead, and told him things that they could not have possibly known if they were 'attached' to their brain.

Famous Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Near Death Experiences in Surgery http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1oDuvQR08

Dr. Sam Parnia, perhaps the most skeptical NDE researcher, now considers NDEs to be authentic after a "man described everything that had happened in the room, "

Life after death? Largest-ever study provides evidence that 'out of body' and 'near-death' experiences may be real - October 7, 2014 Excerpt: Dr Sam Parnia, an assistant professor at the State University of New York and a former research fellow at the University of Southampton who led the research, said that he previously (held) that patients who described near-death experiences were only relating hallucinatory events. One man, however, gave a “very credible” account of what was going on while doctors and nurses tried to bring him back to life – and says that he felt he was observing his resuscitation from the corner of the room. Speaking to The Telegraph about the evidence provided by a 57-year-old social worker Southampton, Dr Parnia said: “We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating. “But in this case, conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes. “The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals. So we could time how long the experienced lasted for. “He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-after-death-largestever-study-provides-evidence-that-out-of-body-and-neardeath-experiences-may-actually-be-real-9780195.html Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine By Brandon Keim - 04.24.13 Excerpt: Parnia:,, Not just my study, but four others, all demonstrated the same thing: People have memories and recollections. Combined with anecdotal reports from all over the world, from people who see things accurately and remember them, it suggests this needs to be studied in more detail.,,, The point that goes against the experiences happening afterwards, or before the brain shut down, is that many people describe very specific details of what happened to them during cardiac arrest. They describe conversations people had, clothes people wore, events that went on 10 or 20 minutes into resuscitation. That is not compatible with (having no) brain activity. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/consciousness-after-death/all/

Then there was the famous 'blue tennis shoe', seen by the NDEer as she 'floated' above the hospital, which was found on the ledge of a 3rd floor hospital window by a nurse after the NDEer told the nurse about the blue shoe on the ledge.:

Kim Clark Finds the Tennis Shoe and Proves Near Death Experiences Are Real https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPXK2Ls-xzQ

These are not just a few isolated cases either

"A recent analysis of several hundred cases showed that 48% of near-death experiencers reported seeing their physical bodies from a different visual perspective. Many of them also reported witnessing events going on in the vicinity of their body, such as the attempts of medical personnel to resuscitate them (Kelly et al., 2007)." Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2007). Unusual experiences near death and related phenomena. In E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso, & B. Greyson, Irreducible mind (pp. 367-421). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Another piece of evidence that argues very strongly against any type of materialistic explanation for Near death Experiences is what is termed 'Shared Death Experience'. A 'Shared Death Experience' is an experience in which a loved one, though not terminally ill, is caught up into part of the Near Death Experience as the loved one passes on:

Dr. Raymond Moody on Shared Death Experiences - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-ihzzYjqeE

bornagain77

Pater Kimbridge@17 Like I said, just wasting time. This large body of evidence shows that the mind is not one and the same as the data processing of brain neurons and synapses, or an illusory epiphenomenon of that, or any of the other materialist neuroscience "explanations" of human consciousness. doubter

Pater Kimbridge:

Assuming ET was actually serious, vague sounds and apparitions in a haunted house are not evidence of a mind.

Yes, I am very serious. And there is more than vague sounds and apparitions. You can choose to ignore the evidence. I understand why people do. But that isn't going to make it all go away. ET

@Doubter None of that shows that the mind is separate from, or departed from, the brain at any time. Pater Kimbridge

Pater Kimbridge@10 To avoid what is undoubtedly just wasting more time, I'll just borrow BA77's quote from Michael Egnor at 11:

...about 20 percent of NDE’s are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception — such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE’s have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.

I would add that this extraordinary "realer than real" clarity of consciousness occurs while the brain is only weakly functioning, or entirely nonfunctional, as in cardiac arrest cases. doubter

@AaronS1978 The fact that you can play the shows separate from any particular TV set is the evidence that they are separate things. Assuming ET was actually serious, vague sounds and apparitions in a haunted house are not evidence of a mind. The only minds present belong to walking, talking humans who are letting their pareidolia get out of control. Pater Kimbridge

There billions of TV sets through out the entire world too, this is NOT evidence that the TV generates the shows on it. AaronS1978

Pater Kimbridge:

Can anyone show me a mind that is NOT associated with a physical brain?

It has been done. And you can easily validate the findings. You just have to travel to some of the top rated haunted places and see for yourself. ET

LoL! @ Bob O'H- Of course dualism a non-issue for materialists. The big issue for materialists is the existence of life, brains and minds. We know enough about those three to discount any materialistic explanation- minds from the mindless via blind, mindless and purposeless processes is about as absurd of a claim as there can be. You have to be desperate to consider such a thing. Very desperate. ET

Doubter, there is a blatant hypocrisy in Darwinian materialists not accepting the ample and robust evidence from NDEs. They demand evidence that consciousness can exist apart from the brain, and then when we point to the vast body of evidence supporting the validity of NDEs they resolutely refuse to accept it. Yet, on the other hand, they wholeheartedly believe Darwinian evolution to be true even though they have ZERO substantiating evidence that unguided processes can create gene/proteins, molecular machines, functional information etc.. etc.. (and much evidence indicating that material processes cannot generate functional information as such)

Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or of a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1065301.html

i.e. And as was touched upon in post 2, we have far more observational evidence for the reality of souls than we do for the Darwinian claim that unguided material processes can generate functional information. Moreover, the transcendent nature of 'immaterial' information, which is the one thing that, (as every ID advocate intimately knows), unguided material processes cannot possibly explain the origin of, directly supports the transcendent nature as well as the physical reality of the soul. Further notes: In the following study, materialistic researchers who had a bias against Near Death Experiences being real, set out to prove that they were merely ‘false memories’ by setting up a clever questionnaire that could differentiate which memories a person had were real and which memories a person had were merely imaginary. Simply put, they did not expect the results they got: to quote the headline 'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real”

'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real,' researcher says - Wed April 10, 2013 Excerpt: "If you use this questionnaire ... if the memory is real, it's richer, and if the memory is recent, it's richer," he said. The coma scientists weren't expecting what the tests revealed. "To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors," Laureys reported. The memories of these experiences beat all other memories, hands down, for their vivid sense of reality. "The difference was so vast," he said with a sense of astonishment. Even if the patient had the experience a long time ago, its memory was as rich "as though it was yesterday," Laureys said. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/health/belgium-near-death-experiences/

A few 'more real than real' quotes:

A Doctor's Near Death Experience Inspires a New Life - video Quote: "It's not like a dream. It's like the world we are living in is a dream and it's kind of like waking up from that." Dr. Magrisso http://www.nbcchicago.com/on-air/as-seen-on/A-Doctor--186331791.html Medical Miracles – Dr. Mary Neal’s Near Death Experience – video (More real than real quote at 37:49 minute mark) https://youtu.be/WCNjmWP2JjU?t=2269 "More real than anything I've experienced since. When I came back of course I had 34 operations, and was in the hospital for 13 months. That was real but heaven is more real than that. The emotions and the feelings. The reality of being with people who had preceded me in death." - Don Piper - "90 Minutes in Heaven," 10 Years Later - video (2:54 minute mark) https://youtu.be/3LyZoNlKnMM?t=173 “I was in the spiritual dimension. And this spiritual dimension, this spiritual world, that’s the real world. And this spiritual man that I was seeing and perceiving, that was the real me. And I instantly knew it. The colors are brighter. The thoughts are more intense. The feelings have greater depth. They’re more real. In the spirit world instantly I knew that this is the real world.,,,” – The Near Death Experience of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) https://youtu.be/voak1RM-pXo?t=1655

bornagain77

@Doubter How exactly does one verify the subjective experience of a person whose brain was likely deprived of oxygen? Pater Kimbridge

Pater Kimbridge@8 This simply ignores without any justification a large body of empirical evidence, some of which I pointed out in 7. I guess that is the tactic employed by a lot of materialists - to pretend that all the empirical evidence to the contrary simply must be false since it violates certain deeply set ideological assumptions. With NDEs I am not referring to often anonymous and uninvestigatable self-reported accounts posted on the Internet. A good number of these are probably valid, but I suggest perusal of sources like The Self Does Not Die by Rivas, Dirven and Smit, which contains over 100 reliable often firsthand accounts that were later verified by independent investigators. This book presents what is probably the largest number of confirmed and researched cases of veridical NDEs ever compiled. The authors went back to the original sources, the people involved, whenever possible, rather than second-hand sources. doubter

I've said this before, but I can point to 7.6 billion examples of minds that are associated with physical brains. Can anyone show me a mind that is NOT associated with a physical brain? If you can't separate them, maybe they are not separate things. ETA: question mark on second sentence Pater Kimbridge

In the interactive dualism theory of mind, reality consists of two realms, mind and an objective physical reality. Human consciousness manifests in the physical through the physical brain, where rough analogies would be the filter and the receiver/transmitter theories. Like the TV set receiving and transducing the electromagnetic waves of the TV signal, the brain physically manifests immaterial consciousness which still interacts with matter via the neurons, synapses, etc. of the brain. But the brain is not the producer of human consciousness any more than the TV set really produces the program it is processing and displaying. Sure, there are philosophical objections to dualism, but I think empirical evidence trumps theory every day. There is a large body of empirical evidence that it seems to me can best be explained by this theory of human consciousness. Veridical NDE accounts and reincarnation evidence such as Ian Stevenson's research are foremost in this empirical evidence. Certain features of the experience in many accounts of independently investigated and verified veridical NDEs clearly imply a mobile in physical space center of human consciousness independent of the brain (such as viewing the OR and emergency room doctors from a physical point in space - from the point of view of what is clearly experienced as such a mobile center of consciousness). Sometimes the NDEer views events and people hundreds of feet to many miles from the body, sometime interacting with these people, and experiences a physical space point of view as if the NDEer is physically located at the remote position. The simplest explanation for these phenomena is along the lines of the Interactive Dualism theory of mind, that the experiences are what they seem to be - a mobile center of consciousness moving from place to place in a separately existing physical space-time realm. The reincarnation empirical evidence indicates that when the very young child is able to speak he/she may start to talk about another, immediately previous life (usually where the death was violent and sudden). Sometimes the child will exhibit birthmarks or birth defects that correspond to the death wounds of the previous personality. By far the simplest explanation is again along the lines of Interactive Dualism - at one point in time a mobile in physical space center of consciousness moved in to occupy the fetus or baby. But, the objection is, this evidence you describe can fit under Idealism, or possibly a variety of Panpsychism. For instance, Idealism, defined as "The theory in philosophy that reality essentially consists only of minds, and that the physical world is an illusion, or otherwise the product of minds. Idealism in philosophy of mind is a form of monism, rather than dualism, since it argues that there is only one substance, mind." Technically, yes, but the fit is uncomfortable - there have to be a lot of accessory hypotheses. Explaining some of these features of NDEs and reincarnation evidence along the lines of Idealism or Panpsychism is much more complicated, more contrived. To begin with, you now have to postulate another Mind or Minds producing the strong illusion of separate mental and physical realms, for some reason(s). What Mind(s), and why? Interactive dualism follows as a direct inference from the empirical evidence. The clear implication of and the direct inference that can be made from the accounts of the actual veridical NDE experiences and the empirical evidence of reincarnation research, is that the reality the NDEer and the child with verified past life memories experiences is most probably what it appears to be: dual realms of mind and matter/space that interact. This is the case because of Occam's Razor: the interactive dualism hypothesis is a considerably simpler and more direct explanation for the data. doubter

You tell her Bob. Atheistic Materialists lost their minds (and free will) long ago and have been doing just fine without them! :)

“You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today” Jerry Coyne – No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat (Science Uprising 02) – video https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20 Michael Egnor: The (neuro-scientific) Evidence against Materialism – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHrpBPdtSI (July 2019) Although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/we-are-invited-to-consider-a-simpler-perspective-on-the-laws-of-physics/#comment-680430

bornagain77

Good succinct post, Bob. hazel

Hm, the whole point of that article is that Descartes' mind-body problem is an issue for dualists. It doesn't say anything about materialists,. and indeed for them it's a non-issue because they simply don't accept Descartes' separation of Mind and Body. Of course, we don't understand enough about consciousness to be sure that the materialist account is correct. But if it is, Descartes' problem disappears. If it isn't we should be able to explore the solution, i.e. how the mind communicates with the body. Bob O'H

And this ‘spooky action at a distance’ of ‘non-local’ quantum entanglement, which requires a cause which is beyond space-time, matter-energy, in order to explain its existence, is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology:

“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.” Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176 Classical and Quantum Information Channels in Protein Chain – Dj. Koruga, A. Tomi?, Z. Ratkaj, L. Matija – 2006 Abstract: Investigation of the properties of peptide plane in protein chain from both classical and quantum approach is presented. We calculated interatomic force constants for peptide plane and hydrogen bonds between peptide planes in protein chain. On the basis of force constants, displacements of each atom in peptide plane, and time of action we found that the value of the peptide plane action is close to the Planck constant. This indicates that peptide plane from the energy viewpoint possesses synergetic classical/quantum properties. Consideration of peptide planes in protein chain from information viewpoint also shows that protein chain possesses classical and quantum properties. So, it appears that protein chain behaves as a triple dual system: (1) structural – amino acids and peptide planes, (2) energy – classical and quantum state, and (3) information – classical and quantum coding. Based on experimental facts of protein chain, we proposed from the structure-energy-information viewpoint its synergetic code system. http://www.scientific.net/MSF.518.491 Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552 Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate – video (how quantum information theory and molecular biology correlate – 27 minute mark) https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=1634

Besides providing direct empirical falsification to neo-Darwinian claims in general, claims that say immaterial information does not exist apart from its representation on a material substrate, the implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have very strong physical evidence directly implying that we do indeed have an eternal soul that lives beyond the death of our material bodies. In the following video Stuart Hameroff states ‘it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300

And while Stuart Hameroff's contention that quantum coherence in micro-tubules is responsible for consciousness has received experimental support,

Consciousness Depends on Tubulin Vibrations Inside Neurons, Anesthesia Study Suggests – 5-Sep-2017 Excerpt: The results provide a marked improvement to the Meyer-Overton correlation by discriminating anesthetics from non-anesthetics, and suggest that anesthetics block consciousness by altering terahertz oscillations in tubulin.,,, Senior co-author Jack Tuszynski said: “Scientific luminaries from Erwin Schrödinger to Sir Roger Penrose have proposed that consciousness requires quantum coherent processes, but skeptics have asserted such processes would suffer ‘decoherence’ in the ‘warm, wet and noisy’ biological milieu. Our study supports growing evidence that non-polar, pi resonance regions in microtubules and other biomolecules maintain these coherent states, and that a ‘quantum underground’ pervades the brain’s neurons.” https://www.newswise.com/articles/consciousness-depends-on-tubulin-vibrations-inside-neurons-anesthesia-study-suggests

And while Stuart Hameroff's contention that quantum coherence in micro-tubules is responsible for consciousness has received experimental support, an additional model, besides Hameroff's micro-tubule model, is needed to explain the 'long range' quantum coherence in the brain. A model that explains the 'long range' quantum coherence in the brain that differentiates the sleeping brain from the brain that is awake. When we sleep the ‘long range’ non-local, beyond space and time, coherence displayed by the waking brain disappears. And in the following video, an interesting experiment on the sleeping brain is highlighted in which it is demonstrated that there is a fairly profound difference in the way the brain ‘shares information’ between different parts of the brain in its sleeping state compared to how the brain ‘shares information’ in its waking state. i.e. In the sleeping state, the brain shares much less information with different parts of the brain than the brain does during our waking state.

Through The Wormhole (season 2 episode 1) Is There Life After Death – video (approx. 16:30 minute mark) https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-wormhole/

And here is an article on the preceding video

Researchers: Deep sleep short-circuits brain’s grid of connectivity - September 29, 2005 Excerpt: Tononi and his team observed the disconnect when brief, magnetically generated pulses of electricity were directed to specific regions of the brain. The pulses stimulated an electrochemical response from the targeted cells, which, when the subject was awake, rippled across the brain, traveling along networks of nerve fibers to different cerebral destinations. But when the subject was in deep sleep, the same response was quickly extinguished and did not travel beyond the stimulated cells. When consciousness fades, according to Tononi, “the brain breaks down into little islands that can’t talk to one another.” https://news.wisc.edu/researchers-deep-sleep-short-circuits-brains-grid-of-connectivity/

Verse:

Matthew 22:37 Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'

bornagain77

Of related note: the question of whether we actually have a soul or not plays right into the main debate between ID advocates and Darwinists. The main debate between ID advocates and Darwinists is over the inability of material processes to generate information. Darwinists simply have zero scientific evidence that material processes can generate non-trivial levels of information. Whereas, on the other hand, ID advocates have a veritable infinity of examples that they can point to of intelligent minds generating massive amounts of information information. What is interesting about information, and one of the primary reasons that material processes will never be able explain to origination of information, is the immaterial nature of information. As Dr. Stephen Meyer explains, “information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce.”

“One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Intelligent design: Why can’t biological information originate through a materialistic process? – Stephen Meyer – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqiXNxyoof8

In further establishing the immaterial nature of information, it is interesting to note that immaterial information can be encoded on a virtual endless variety of material substrates, and yet the meaning of the information never changes from one material substrate to the next. i.e. Immaterial information is simply not reducible to a materialistic explanation! George Ellis further elucidates the immaterial nature of information and of mind in the following excellent article,,

Recognising Top-Down Causation – George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf

Moreover, one of the primary presuppositions of Darwinists is that they hold that information to be merely emergent from a material basis. Yet, contrary to that primary presupposition of Darwinists, immaterial information is now shown to be its own distinct physical entity that is separate from matter and energy, A distinct physical entity that has, of all things, a ‘thermodynamic content’.

Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

In fact, researchers have now built “ an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics.”

Information engine operates with nearly perfect efficiency – Lisa Zyga – January 19, 2018 Excerpt: Physicists have experimentally demonstrated an information engine—a device that converts information into work—with an efficiency that exceeds the conventional second law of thermodynamics. Instead, the engine’s efficiency is bounded by a recently proposed generalized second law of thermodynamics, and it is the first information engine to approach this new bound.,,, https://phys.org/news/2018-01-efficiency.html

Although the preceding is certainly very strong empirical evidence for the physical reality of immaterial information, the coup de grace for demonstrating that immaterial information is its own distinct physical entity, separate from matter and energy, is Quantum Teleportation:

Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR

Moreover, this immaterial quantum information that is now shown to be physically real is also found to be ‘conserved’. That is to say, ‘the conservation of quantum information means that quantum information cannot be created nor destroyed.’

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html

Moreover, it is also important to note at this time that Quantum non-locality, i.e. ‘spooky action at a distance’ as Einstein termed it, is one of the most enigmatic, and yet is also one of the most verified, aspects of Quantum Mechanics.

“I cannot seriously believe in it because the theory cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance.” Einstein – (The Born-Einstein Letters, p.155) Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php Einstein vs quantum mechanics, and why he’d be a convert today – June 13, 2014 Excerpt: In a nutshell, experimentalists John Clauser, Alain Aspect, Anton Zeilinger, Paul Kwiat and colleagues have performed the Bell proposal for a test of Einstein’s hidden variable theories. All results so far support quantum mechanics. It seems that when two particles undergo entanglement, whatever happens to one of the particles can instantly affect the other, even if the particles are separated! – per physorg Einstein wouldn’t like it: New test proves universe is “spooky” – Oct 21, 2015 Excerpt: Eighty years after the physicist (Einstein) dismissed as “spooky” the idea that simply observing one particle could instantly change another far-away object, Dutch scientists said on Wednesday they had proved decisively that the effect was real. Writing in the journal Nature, researchers detailed an experiment showing how two electrons at separate locations 1.3 km (0.8 mile) apart on the Delft University of Technology campus demonstrated a clear, invisible and instantaneous connection. Importantly, the new study closed loopholes in earlier tests that had left some doubt as to whether the eerie connection predicted by quantum theory was real or not. Einstein famously insisted in a 1935 scientific paper that what he called “spooky action at a distance” had to be wrong and there must be undiscovered properties of particles to explain such counter-intuitive behavior. The idea certainly confounds our day-to-day experience of the world, where change only appears to occur through local interactions. But in recent decades scientific evidence has been building that particles can indeed become “entangled”, so that no matter how far apart they are, they will always be connected. The Delft experiment is conclusive because, for the first time, scientists have closed two potential loopholes at once. The first suggests that particles could somehow synchronize behavior ahead of time, while the second implies that testing might detect only a subset of prepared entangled pairs. To prove their case, the team led by Delft professor Ronald Hanson used two diamonds containing tiny traps for electrons with a magnetic property called spin and measured all entangled pairs across 1.3 km separating two laboratories. The experiment effectively closes a chapter in an 80-year scientific debate, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/21/us-science-universe-einstein-idUSKCN0SF2GQ20151021

And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated,,,

Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016 Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought. In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as “Spooky action at a distance”. A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt’s Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do. - per physorg Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016 DISCUSSION Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,, Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,, http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600162.full

,,, And while atheistic materialists are at a complete loss to explain how particles can be instantly correlated, on the other hand Christian Theists readily have a beyond space-time, matter-energy, cause that they can appeal to in order to explain quantum non-locality:

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

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Reconstruction of Arm Movement Directions from Human Motor Cortex Using fMRI ...Our results suggest that arm movement directions can be distinguished from the multivoxel patterns of fMRI responses in motor cortex. Furthermore, compared to multivoxel pattern analysis, encoding models were able to also reconstruct unknown movement directions from the predicted brain activity. We conclude for our study that non-invasive fMRI signal can be utilized to predict directional motor movements in human motor cortex. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5529394/ First search result, BTW. rhampton7