Controversies of the Mind
Abookamongstthemany
Posts: 8,209
I just read this and found it pretty interesting so I thought I'd share. 
Controversies of the Mind"
An excerpt from a reseach paper by F. Holmes Atwater of The Monroe Institute
Controversies concerning the brain, mind, and consciousness have existed since the early Greek philosophers argued about the nature of the mind-body relationship, and none of these disputes has been resolved. Modern neurologists have located the mind in the brain and have said that consciousness is the result of electrochemical neurological activity. There are, however, growing observations to the contrary. There is no neurophysiological research which conclusively shows that the higher levels of mind (intuition, insight, creativity, imagination, understanding, thought, reasoning, intent, decision, knowing, will, spirit, or soul) are located in brain tissue (Hunt, 1995). A resolution to the controversies surrounding the higher mind and consciousness and the mind-body problem in general may need to involve an epistemological shift to include extra-rational ways of knowing (de Quincey, 1994) and cannot be comprehended by neurochemical brain studies alone. We are in the midst of a revolution focusing on the study of consciousness (Owens, 1995). Penfield, an eminent contemporary neurophysiologist, found that the human mind continued to work in spite of the brain’s reduced activity under anesthesia. Brain waves were nearly absent while the mind was just as active as in the waking state. The only difference was in the content of the conscious experience. Following Penfield’s work, other researchers have reported awareness in comatose patients (Hunt, 1995) and there is a growing body of evidence which suggests that reduced cortical arousal while maintaining conscious awareness is possible (Fischer, 1971;West 1980; Delmonte, 1984; Goleman 1988; Jevning, Wallace, & Beidenbach, 1992; Wallace, 1986; Mavromatis, 1991). These states are variously referred to as meditative, trance, altered, hypnogogic, hypnotic, and twilight-learning states (Budzynski, 1986). Broadly defined, the various forms of altered states rest on the maintenance of conscious awareness in a physiologically reduced state of arousal marked by parasympathetic dominance (Mavromatis, 1991). Recent physiological studies of highly hypnotizable subjects and adept meditators indicate that maintaining awareness with reduced cortical arousal is indeed possible in selected individuals as a natural ability or as an acquired skill (Sabourin, Cutcomb, Crawford, & Pribram, 1993). More and more scientists are expressing doubts about the neurologists’ brain-mind model because it fails to answer so many questions about our ordinary experiences, as well as evading our mystical and spiritual ones. The scientific evidence supporting the phenomenon of remote viewing alone is sufficient to show that mind-consciousness is not a local phenomenon (McMoneagle, 1993).
If mind-consciousness is not the brain, why then does science relate states of consciousness and mental functioning to brain-wave frequencies? And how is it that audio with embedded binaural beats alters brain waves? The first question can be answered in terms of instrumentation. There is no objective way to measure mind or consciousness with an instrument. Mind-consciousness appears to be a field phenomenon which interfaces with the body and the neurological structures of the brain (Hunt, 1995). One cannot measure this field directly with current instrumentation. On the other hand, the electrical potentials of brain waves can be measured and easily quantified. Contemporary science likes things that can be measured and quantified. The problem here lies in oversimplification of the observations. EEG patterns measured on the cortex are the result of electroneurological activity of the brain. But the brain’s electroneurological activity is not mind-consciousness. EEG measurements then are only an indirect means of assessing the mind-consciousness interface with the neurological structures of the brain. As crude as this may seem, the EEG has been a reliable way for researchers to estimate states of consciousness based on the relative proportions of EEG frequencies. Stated another way, certain EEG patterns have been historically associated with specific states of consciousness. It is reasonable to assume, given the current EEG literature, that if a specific EEG pattern emerges it is probably accompanied by a particular state of consciousness.
As to the second question raised in the above paragraph, audio with embedded binaural beats alters the electrochemical environment of the brain. This allows mind-consciousness to have different experiences. When the brain is entrained to lower frequencies and awareness is maintained, a unique state of consciousness emerges. This state is often referred to as hypnogogia "mind awake/body asleep." Slightly higher-frequency entrainment can lead to hyper suggestive states of consciousness. Still higher-frequency EEG states are associated with alert and focused mental activity needed for the optimal performance of many tasks. Perceived reality changes depending on the state of consciousness of the perceiver (Tart, 1975). Some states of consciousness provide limited views of reality, while others provide an expanded awareness of reality. For the most part, states of consciousness change in response to the ever-changing internal environment and surrounding stimulation. For example, states of consciousness are subject to influences like drugs and circadian and ultradian rhythms (Rossi, 1986; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1991; Webb & Dube, 1981). Specific states of consciousness can also be learned as adaptive behaviors to demanding circumstances (Green and Green, 1986).
Controversies of the Mind"
An excerpt from a reseach paper by F. Holmes Atwater of The Monroe Institute
Controversies concerning the brain, mind, and consciousness have existed since the early Greek philosophers argued about the nature of the mind-body relationship, and none of these disputes has been resolved. Modern neurologists have located the mind in the brain and have said that consciousness is the result of electrochemical neurological activity. There are, however, growing observations to the contrary. There is no neurophysiological research which conclusively shows that the higher levels of mind (intuition, insight, creativity, imagination, understanding, thought, reasoning, intent, decision, knowing, will, spirit, or soul) are located in brain tissue (Hunt, 1995). A resolution to the controversies surrounding the higher mind and consciousness and the mind-body problem in general may need to involve an epistemological shift to include extra-rational ways of knowing (de Quincey, 1994) and cannot be comprehended by neurochemical brain studies alone. We are in the midst of a revolution focusing on the study of consciousness (Owens, 1995). Penfield, an eminent contemporary neurophysiologist, found that the human mind continued to work in spite of the brain’s reduced activity under anesthesia. Brain waves were nearly absent while the mind was just as active as in the waking state. The only difference was in the content of the conscious experience. Following Penfield’s work, other researchers have reported awareness in comatose patients (Hunt, 1995) and there is a growing body of evidence which suggests that reduced cortical arousal while maintaining conscious awareness is possible (Fischer, 1971;West 1980; Delmonte, 1984; Goleman 1988; Jevning, Wallace, & Beidenbach, 1992; Wallace, 1986; Mavromatis, 1991). These states are variously referred to as meditative, trance, altered, hypnogogic, hypnotic, and twilight-learning states (Budzynski, 1986). Broadly defined, the various forms of altered states rest on the maintenance of conscious awareness in a physiologically reduced state of arousal marked by parasympathetic dominance (Mavromatis, 1991). Recent physiological studies of highly hypnotizable subjects and adept meditators indicate that maintaining awareness with reduced cortical arousal is indeed possible in selected individuals as a natural ability or as an acquired skill (Sabourin, Cutcomb, Crawford, & Pribram, 1993). More and more scientists are expressing doubts about the neurologists’ brain-mind model because it fails to answer so many questions about our ordinary experiences, as well as evading our mystical and spiritual ones. The scientific evidence supporting the phenomenon of remote viewing alone is sufficient to show that mind-consciousness is not a local phenomenon (McMoneagle, 1993).
If mind-consciousness is not the brain, why then does science relate states of consciousness and mental functioning to brain-wave frequencies? And how is it that audio with embedded binaural beats alters brain waves? The first question can be answered in terms of instrumentation. There is no objective way to measure mind or consciousness with an instrument. Mind-consciousness appears to be a field phenomenon which interfaces with the body and the neurological structures of the brain (Hunt, 1995). One cannot measure this field directly with current instrumentation. On the other hand, the electrical potentials of brain waves can be measured and easily quantified. Contemporary science likes things that can be measured and quantified. The problem here lies in oversimplification of the observations. EEG patterns measured on the cortex are the result of electroneurological activity of the brain. But the brain’s electroneurological activity is not mind-consciousness. EEG measurements then are only an indirect means of assessing the mind-consciousness interface with the neurological structures of the brain. As crude as this may seem, the EEG has been a reliable way for researchers to estimate states of consciousness based on the relative proportions of EEG frequencies. Stated another way, certain EEG patterns have been historically associated with specific states of consciousness. It is reasonable to assume, given the current EEG literature, that if a specific EEG pattern emerges it is probably accompanied by a particular state of consciousness.
As to the second question raised in the above paragraph, audio with embedded binaural beats alters the electrochemical environment of the brain. This allows mind-consciousness to have different experiences. When the brain is entrained to lower frequencies and awareness is maintained, a unique state of consciousness emerges. This state is often referred to as hypnogogia "mind awake/body asleep." Slightly higher-frequency entrainment can lead to hyper suggestive states of consciousness. Still higher-frequency EEG states are associated with alert and focused mental activity needed for the optimal performance of many tasks. Perceived reality changes depending on the state of consciousness of the perceiver (Tart, 1975). Some states of consciousness provide limited views of reality, while others provide an expanded awareness of reality. For the most part, states of consciousness change in response to the ever-changing internal environment and surrounding stimulation. For example, states of consciousness are subject to influences like drugs and circadian and ultradian rhythms (Rossi, 1986; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1991; Webb & Dube, 1981). Specific states of consciousness can also be learned as adaptive behaviors to demanding circumstances (Green and Green, 1986).
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
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I was going to post this PC game "Society of Mind" (1995)
http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=3873
"First Person: Marvin Minsky - The Society of Mind is a great CD-ROM from Voyager that includes the full text of Marvin Minsky's groundbreaking book The Society of Mind. For anyone who's not familiar with the scientist, Minsky is commonly considered the "father of artificial intelligence," and throughout his long career as a faculty member of MIT, has made numerous contributions to the fields of AI, cognitive psychology, mathematics, robotics, and related fields. Minsky's most famous work The Society of Mind shares with lay audiences key ideas scientists have developed about how minds - both natural and artificial - might work. Minsky's core thesis is that human minds can be thought of as collections of vast numbers of semi-autonomous, intricately connected agents that are themselves mindless. Our brains are essentially complex machines, in other words. The book does an admirable job of explaining how collections of mindless mechanisms could account for phenomena as diverse as memory, learning, jokes, fashions, self-images, intentions, classification, apprehension of analogies and metaphors, the difference between seeing and remembering, motivation, fantasizing, stages of development, common sense versus logical reasoning, the formation of identity in spite of our underlying multiplicity, and the ?necessary illusion? of free will. "
More importantly watch this 2005 Skeptics Society presentation
Brain, Mind, Consciousness
http://www.tsntv.org/Events/2005%20Skeptics%20Society%20Annual%20Conference/
I particularly love this: "Some states of consciousness provide limited views of reality, while others provide an expanded awareness of reality. For the most part, states of consciousness change in response to the ever-changing internal environment and surrounding stimulation. For example, states of consciousness are subject to influences like drugs and circadian and ultradian rhythms (Rossi, 1986; Shannahoff-Khalsa, 1991; Webb & Dube, 1981). Specific states of consciousness can also be learned as adaptive behaviors to demanding circumstances"
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Did you watch it? Obviously not.
Isn't the only real way to negate a theory by finding a solution? Theories, by rule, do not negate theories.
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Camden 5-28-06
Washington, D.C. 6-22-08
Here is your own "evidence" Notice the word "might". These people, in order to remain responsible must tread very carefully to not shut out possibilities when they offer possibilities.
More key words: "Minsky's core thesis...", "The book does an admirable job of explaining how collections of mindless mechanisms could account for..."
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Sorry Ahnimus, my speakers have been out since last night. I really need to get a new set.
But angelica brought up a good point, these are only theories...one does not negate the other.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Angelica isn't reading my posts and neither are you.
The presentation at the bottom by the skeptics society has very little theory or opinion in it. It's all about new scientific discoveries into brain, mind and consciousness. Stuff that is newer than what you posted. The theory comes in at the end when they submit that free-will is an illusion.
I read your post and see nothing claiming to be the 'end all, be all'. I saw 'mights' and 'coulds' As I said, I can't watch the presentation at the bottom right now. I'll try to get back to it this weekend.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
As for me "not reading your posts", I quoted numerous aspects of the post I "did not read" so something is not fitting there. You seem to confuse the theories that tie the facts together with being God-spoken-truths. I do not. Facts can be tied together in innumerable ways to say a multitude of things.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
When I can...I will.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Ok, cool, it's long ass though, like 4 hours.
Also watch Christof Koch's lectures on the Neural Correlates of Concsiousness (NCC).
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~koch/
theories
theses
postulations
hypoetheses
conclusions
and the null...
have a good night...
from my window to yours
"There has been a major surge of interest recently in studying consciousness as more and more people have experiences that cannot be explained by traditional scientific approaches. At some point in history, a split occurred and we ended up with Science and Religion. Science limited its study to the material world and the Church took charge of the metaphysical realms. Now, with science studying consciousness, we are ready to reintegrate Spirituality and Science."
Immediately, this assumes that spirituality is fact. Spirituality is not proven. Consider it this way, if I want to feel spiritual, I can, but if I don't want to, I can't. If I touch a hot element, it doesn't matter what I want, it burns. The way our brains and personalities develop within our ecological system, we are prone to developing these kinds of illusions. We are by no measure perfect beings, if there were such a scale we'd be weak.
We have flaws in our vision, some people can't see at all, flaws in our hearing, speech, memories, etc. Every aspect of our "being" is rendered by some feature of our "body". Simply by causing enough damage to a brain can render a person experientially non-existent. We can manipulate experience by interacting with the brain.
Now there is the argument that experience does not encompass "self". There is another aspect which is personality. This can be attributed to predetermination. The individual mind performs an analysis of the data and generates a percept which is stored in memory. That percept is recalled when applicable. Accessing a percept frequently will cause the cells in the engram to fire frequently and develop stronger connections, strengthening the engram as a whole. Essentially, placing it near the top of the mind's priority stack. So hot topics are easier to access, because they are accessed more frequently. If you ride the train and some asks "What is your take on the middle-east crisis?" you have a predetermined percept which you access and output. It doesn't take much time to access, it's a strong percept. Alternatively, if someone asks a rare question, it takes longer to access and no percept may exist, causing an immediate need to formulate one. Anyway, so I could keep explaining the processes, but based on this alone, we can easily assert that "personality" is a result of "percepts" stored in "engrams" of "neurons" formulated by "computation" with "data". The "data" is anything we detect with our "sensors". It can be referred to as "fuzzy logic" as it builds on it's self, we begin as basic beings with no language, no ideas, no percepts, nothing but the ability to learn, store information and compute.
So, what else do we have, our personalities are determined, our physical selves are definitely determined. What do we have that isn't attributable to physical reality? There is no sign, no evidence anywhere of metaphysics. Any study of metaphysics like religion, doesn't do anything to clarify reality. It's just speculations that never change, or if they do, only to conform to science. It's all bogus and so is the easter bunny, but if you believe in it, it's very real.
The argument has always been "You can't disprove spirituality with science" and you can't prove it either. The reason to argue that it can not be disproved with science, is because it can't be proven with science. That movie "What the BLEEP?" is a perfect example of twisted physics and speculative correlations. Immediately I found it to be enlightening, but skeptic of course. I found that it's interpretations of the science were speculative and blatantly driven by the fact that the creators were all members of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. Ramtha, or Judy Knight claims to have channeled Ramtha into her body while her husband and her were standing in their kitchen. That's basically where she is coming from, some of her "students" are scientists, but most are actors and other wealthy folks. She doesn't teach how to channel ancient warriors into your body though.
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Who defines the mind? You can define the mind? What is it?
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When your information is coming from the "Skeptics Society"..is there really any chance they come to findings that prove....their skeptisism is ever wrong?
I'm assuming not...
I'm not saying it is not true...but...they have a great pre-disposition to find...things that back up their skeptisism
and NO...i didn't watch it. Cause....i'm in the "Believers Society". I believe all findings that point towards a soul, interconnectedness, and things we can not see. I side w/ any research that backs this up...and dis-regard any research that disproves this. And when I run MY Studies...they Always...seem to prove ME right... (wink wink)
-Big Fish
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
I found it to be very interesting, and pretty objective.
It's a scary issue. Terrifying, maybe. To even propose that free will could be driven by neurological impulses is something that, at first, I'd care not even to think about. Anything that challenges the very reality I have built I view agressively.
Anyway, just thought I'd share. It's a fascinating study. A quick search on economist.com would probably locate the article.
Can you copy & paste the article?
QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS
Basically consciousness is attributed to proteins called microtubes, that are found in the brains neurons.(*1) These microtubes behave like a quantum computer, and contain 'subunits' that are affected by quantum processes.
One such quantum process is known as superposition. Superposition occurs when an object has two alternate states simultaneously (this is related to wave functions and probability). These states are only detectable in the quantum world.
So microtubule superpositions evolve during subconscious processing (ie- automatic processes of the brain). The superpositions are seperated causing them to become unstable and they collapse. (*2) Their collapse is influenced by hidden propensities embedded in space time. It is this non random, yet non determined process that is being proposed to result in our 'free will' actions. To quote the author:
"our 'free will'actions could be the net results of deterministic processes acted on by hidden quantum logic"
There is no doubt that quantum consciousness is a very speculative theory, but certainly something to be further researched, especially as it makes testable predictions.
*1- An interesting note is that these microtubules may explain how a unicellular protozoa appears to do things like find food and avoid predators without a single synapse, as the microtubules are found in the cells cytoskeleton.
*2- One of the reasons this theory is not widely accepted is because this wave collapse is related to quantum gravity an entirely theoretical concept and entirely unproven.
Whilst QC is not very widely accepted, I do wonder if consciousness and free will are closely linked to quantum prcesses in the brain. It does appear to be the only hope for free will- unless you invoke a metaphysical brain.
Yea, but that's junk science. There is no quantum superposition. It's quantum theory that has been distorted.
I would hope that most skeptics are not as cynical as that. I am a skeptic, and all it means for me is that when I hear a claim that is proposing to add something to my (admiteddly tiny) understanding of the universe, I do not believe it automatically. Instead I try to understand the claim and make a judgement on it based on the evidence supporting it. I apply my skepticism to all things, including science.