How does the mind arise from the brain? Novel idea

#7 Timmy, #9 Axel, Find an example of an atom that is wet. Until then, the evidence points to the wetness of water being fundamentally independent of its physical/chemical composition. If you can find a flaw in this reasoning, you should be able to understand why your own is flawed.Piotr

January 25, 2015

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Beautifully, beautifully expressed, Timmy! Impossibility in very principle has never seemed to strike the ever fanciful atheists - don't mean to be rancorous, Sev - as a remotely plausible obstacle to their research endeavours. Almost as if they were modern-day alchemists. In fact, I suspect a belief in alchemy should be rated more highly on a CV than any form of a priori atheist belief.Axel

January 25, 2015

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hplus Magazine:

As a novel method of understanding the mind, we compared the patterns of neural stem cell activity with the growth patterns of meristematic cells in the cherry tree.

Knowledge in the brain is indeed organized hierarchically, like a tree. This is something that psychologists have known for decades. For example, phonemes are combined to form vowels and consonants and these are combined to form syllables, words, phrases and whole sentences. Neurobiologists have also shown that various regions of the cortex are linked together to form a hierarchy. They've shown that neurons at the lower levels of the hierarchy respond to primitive shapes like edges, lines, etc. At higher levels, they find neurons that fire in the presence of more complex objects such as circles, squares, eyes, noses, etc. We even have the so-called "grandmother cells", i.e., neurons that fire when a person is thinking of another. Those of us who watch TV have Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston cells. That being said, this is where the tree metaphor should end. Examining "the growth patterns of meristematic cells in the cherry tree" to obtain insights into how the brain/mind works is silly to the extreme. Are these people serious or are they taking us for a ride? The hierarchy of the cortex is at the level of neurons, dendrites, synapses, axons and cell assemblies. Not stem cells. This is like saying that one needs to understand the molecular structure of metal pipes in other to understand plumbing. Materialists are destroying science, I swear.Mapou

January 25, 2015

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Seversky:

Find an example of a mind existing independent of any physical substrate like a brain and we have evidence for an immaterial mind. Until then, the evidence points to it being a phenomenon of the physical brain.

Find an example of an atom that has free will or ingenuity. Until then, the evidence points to the mind being a phenomenon fundamentally independent of the physical brain.Timmy

January 25, 2015

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Wrong, Seversky. The evidence from 'out of body' experiences, quite exhaustively monitored in terms of medical technology, is that a)there is a mind/body dualism, and b) that the brain acts as a kind of receiver for the extra-corporeal consciousness (which evidently stays in the proximity of the patient, for a while; NDEs suggest even their returning from non local regions), rather like a receiver for TV or radio waves. 'here is a continuous exchange of objective information by means of electromagnetic fields (real photons) for radio, TV, mobile telephone, or laptop computer. We are unaware of the innumerable amounts of electromagnetic fields that constantly, day and night, exist around us and through us as well as through structures like walls and buildings. We only become aware of these electromagnetic informational fields the moment we use our mobile telephone or by switching on our radio, TV or laptop. What we receive is not inside the instrument, nor in the components, but thanks to the receiver the information from the electromagnetic fields becomes observable to our senses and hence perception occurs in our consciousness. The voice we hear in our telephone is not inside the telephone. The concert we hear in our radio is transmitted to our radio. The images and music we hear and see on TV is transmitted to our TV set. The internet is not located inside our laptop. We can receive at about the same time what is transmitted with the speed of light from a distance of some hundreds or thousands of miles. And if we switch off the TV set, the reception disappears, but the transmission continues. The information transmitted remains present within the electromagnetic fields. The connection has been interrupted, but it has not vanished and can still be received elsewhere by using another TV set. Again, we do not realize us the thousands of telephone calls, the hundreds of radio and TV transmissions, as well as the internet, coded as electromagnetic fields, that exist around us and through us. Could our brain be compared with the TV set that electromagnetic waves (photons) receives and transforms into image and sound, as well as with the TV camera that image and sound transforms into electromagnetic waves (photons)? This electromagnetic radiation holds the essence of all information, but is only conceivable to our senses by suited instruments like camera and TV set. The informational fields of our consciousness and of our memories, both evaluating by our experiences and by the informational imput from our sense organs during our lifetime, are present around us as electrical and/or magnetic fields [possible virtual photons? (18)], and these fields only become available to our waking consciousness through our functioning brain and other cells of our body. So we need a functioning brain to receive our consciousness into our waking consciousness. And as soon as the function of brain has been lost, like in clinical death or in brain death, with iso-electricity on the EEG, memories and consciousness do still exist, but the reception ability is lost. People can experience their consciousness outside their body, with the possibility of perception out and above their body, with identity, and with heightened awareness, attention, well-structured thought processes, memories and emotions. And they also can experience their consciousness in a dimension where past, present and future exist at the same moment, without time and space, and can be experienced as soon as attention has been directed to it (life review and preview), and even sometimes they come in contact with the “fields of consciousness” of deceased relatives. And later they can experience their conscious return into their body. Michael Shermer states that, in reality, all experience is mediated and produced by the brain, and that so-called paranormal phenomena like out-of body experiences are nothing more than neuronal events. The study of patients with NDE, however, clearly shows us that consciousness with memories, cognition, with emotion, self-identity, and perception out and above a life-less body is experienced during a period of a non-functioning brain (transient pancerebral anoxia). .... from : http://science-spirituality.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Mysticism The piece below it is relevant and interesting, too. This man was clinically deeeed for five hours : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOuSGErXqAcAxel

January 25, 2015

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Find an example of a mind existing independent of any physical substrate like a brain and we have evidence for an immaterial mind. Until then, the evidence points to it being a phenomenon of the physical brain.Seversky

January 25, 2015

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The problem here is that almost all nde research is starting to show that the mind can't come from the brain because when the brain is not functioning people still have conscious awareness. Doctor Sam Patnias aware study showed a glimpse of this . Atheist/materialists had their backs to the wall for a long time and received a little hope in late 2013 when a study showed that there was a surge of deep brain electrical activity for 30 seconds after a patients heart stops beating , a deep brain activity that is beyond the detection of EEG's , and they were detected by inserting electrodes deep with the patients brain . Atheists said ""see this explains that Nde's are produced by material causes from the brain. This surge of electrical activity will last for 30 seconds , after which the brain shuts off with no electrical activity . In parnia's aware study a 57 year old social worker had a veridical nde in which he accurately described everything and everyone in the room , but more importantly he described hearing 2 bleeps from a device . This device was setup to bleep once very 3 minutes . The man heard 2 bleeps which tells us that he had his veridical nde for 3 minutes , or 2.5 minutes after the deep brain surge would subside . A non functional brain for 2.5 minutes yet the man was having conscious awareness . This points to the fact that the mind (or soul ) lives on even after the brain shuts down. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11144442/First-hint-of-life-after-death-in-biggest-ever-scientific-study.html One man even recalled leaving his body entirely and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room. Despite being unconscious and ‘dead’ for three minutes, the 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, recounted the actions of the nursing staff in detail and described the sound of the machines. “We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating,” said Dr Sam Parnia, a former research fellow at Southampton University, now at the State University of New York, who led the study. “But in this case, conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped. “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.”wallstreeter43

January 25, 2015

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'.... the mind is not believed to be located at any one spot in the brain, which, if true, suggests that we will remain forever unable to explain the mind completely, regardless of our understanding of the brain’s local functions.' Only materialists in terms solely of matter.Axel

January 25, 2015

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It’s okay, except for one thing: Ask the cherry tree for a comment and see what you get. Get back to us with the answer. World awaits with interest.

Um. The cherry tree was a metaphor - something minds (or brains) use to help them with comprehension.Bob O'H

January 25, 2015

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Short and interesting expose about plants http://www.wired.com/2013/12/secret-language-of-plants/ How Plants Secretly Talk to Each Other By Kat McGowan, Wired Magazine Excerpt: Despite the growing evidence that plants are capable of communication, many plant scientists still question whether this cross talk is biologically meaningful. “Interplant communication through volatiles works well in the lab, but nobody’s convincingly shown it works in the field,” said Farmer. Even though he was one of the first to publish evidence that plants are capable of exchanging information, he calls himself a “skeptic” — he thinks there’s not yet enough evidence that this actually plays a significant role in plant lives. “But I wouldn’t want to stop people working on it,” he added. “I think it’s promising and exciting.”redwave

January 25, 2015

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