My answers in this thread are rational; no need to insinuate that they are "out of this world"
Sorry, but also many of your posts are based on arguments or conclusions, literally, "out of this world". You conclude on the existence of metaphysical entities with no acceptable basis.
That's merely your opinion and it is not supported by any evidence. I have repeatedly asked you to cast adequate doubt upon my claims by giving a satisfactory reason to doubt the evidence. The fact that other eminent researchers have concluded similarly to me is never addressed by you.
See more:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15352281You try to use abductive reasoning to arrive to your conclusions, but you exclude a much more reasonable solution, a possible basic function of the brain for longer time than is generally accepted.
You cannot say that your solution is more reasonable if there is no evidence to support it. There is more than a century of adequate research into the "basic function" of the brain under anoxia, TO SAY NOTHING ABOUT MORE 'ADVANCED' FUNCTIONS LIKE PERCEPTION! The evidence is certainly in my favor, I have cited the literature numerous times. Your "more reasonable" solution has not been presented to me with an adequate level of evidence, despite my repeated requests. I have no reason to believe that your theory is scientific in the least!
Moreover, your AWARE studies don't support a major part of your believes: you only argued for the existence of an immortal soul. But you can't substantiate your believe in reincarnation on these studies.
Actually, if you check the literature you will see that the survival hypothesis is the most reasonable solution to the evidence presented against physicalism.
P.S. Tu quoque? Another evolution denier...
The fact that many other eminent researchers
have concluded similarly to me is never addressed by you, nor do your arguments come with any observable evidence. So who is actually in denial here?
Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the theory of natural selection at the same time Charles Darwin did. This theory was based on extensive observations of the natural world. Wallace was originally a skeptic about the evidence of mediumistic phenomena but his great powers of observation, the same ones which led him to discover the theory of natural selection, also forced him to accept mediumistic phenomena as genuinely paranormal.
Louis Pasteur believed as did many other scientists on this page that science led to the belief in God. He also did not believe that life arose naturally from matter. He thought it more likely that life existed first and matter arose from life.
...not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events.
New developments in quantum physics show we cannot know phenomena apart from the observer and how the observer plays a supreme role in creating reality. Arlice Davenport has challenged the hallucination theory of NDEs as outmoded because the field theories of physics now suggest new paradigm options available to explain NDEs.
Sociologist Dr. Allan Kellehear states that some scientific theories are often presented as the most logical, factual, objective, credible, and progressive possibilities, as opposed to the allegedly subjective, superstitious, abnormal, or dysfunctional views of mystics. The rhetorical opinions of some NDE theories are presented as if they were scientific. Many skeptical arguments against the survival theory are actually arguments from pseudo-skeptics who often think they have no burden of proof. Such arguments often based on scientism with assumptions that survival is impossible even though survival has not been ruled out. Faulty conclusions are often made such as, "Because NDEs have a brain chemical connection then survival is impossible." Pseudo-skeptical arguments are sometimes made that do not consider the entire body of circumstantial evidence supporting the possibility of survival or do not consider the possibility of new paradigms. Such pseudo-skeptical claims are often made without any scientific evidence.
would machines based on brain mapping actually
be conscious? Would the hard problem fall by the wayside?
I don’t think so.
First, equating neurons with ‘bits’ is an insult to neurons. Single cell organisms like paramecium swim about nimbly, find food and mates, avoid obstacles and predators, learn and remember (when sucked into a capillary tube they escape faster each time), and have sex with a partner (Figure 2). They do so using hair-like sensors and motorized oars called cilia, comprised of protein polymers called microtubules (identical to those within brain neurons). Nobody knows whether paramecium is conscious, but it does perform ‘easy problem’ behaviors. How many bits (or ‘ops’, operations per second) would AI take to simulate a paramecium? If a unicellular organism is so clever, would neurons be so....simple-minded? 2015-06-01-1433200782-2190306-Figure2Iphoto.jpg Figure 2. Left, a unicellular paramecium avoids an obstacle. Right, two paramecia fuse during sex.
Second, while waiting for neuronal maps of mammalian brains to implement in silicon, some AI researchers have simulated the entire, already-mapped nervous system (302 neurons) of the tiny worm C elegans. Like paramecium, we don’t know if they’re conscious, but C elegans clearly exhibits ‘easy problem’ behaviors, e.g. moving in response to stimuli. But even artificial C elegans just sits there, with no functional behavior. AI can’t simulate the ‘easy problems’ in simple brains. Something is missing.
Third, memory is ascribed to synaptic connections within neuronal networks, such that given inputs cause particular activity patterns and outputs. But synaptic proteins are transient, re-cycled over hours to days, and yet memories can last lifetimes. Memory must be stored at a deeper level inside neurons, e.g. microtubules (which disassemble in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients).
Figure 3. Inside brain neurons are microtubules, able to process information by quantum dipole oscillations. Anesthetic gases (red, lower right) disperse quantum dipoles, and prevent consciousness. (Reference 1).
Fourth and final is the ‘hard problem’. Unable to account for awareness, feelings and qualia through computation, prominent neuroscientists Christof Koch, Giulio Tononi and others have resorted to ‘panpsychism’, the notion that consciousness is a property of matter. British physicist Sir Roger Penrose suggests the rudiments of consciousness occur in fine scale quantum events in the very structure of the universe (Chalmers’ ‘psycho-physical bridge’). In panpsychism, or the more refined Penrose approach, consciousness or its precursors would have existed in the universe all along, or at least when life on earth began. And if that’s true, primitive conscious feelings, e.g. pleasure, could have been the ‘spark of life’, a fitness function toward which life formed and evolved to optimize pleasure, to ‘feel good’.
Figure 4. The ‘Origin of life’ in the primordial soup. Organic molecules coalesce with non-polar quantum interiors enabling conscious events (Reference 2).
One needn’t be a creationist to question Darwin’s theory, for example regarding sexual reproduction. Dawkins finds sex ‘counter-productive, throwing away half one’s genes with every reproduction’. In The Cooperative Gene, evolutionary biologist Mark Ridley writes ‘Sex is a puzzle that has not yet been solved; no one knows why it exists’.
Duh! Sex feels good. The Darwinian/Dawkins idea that behavior promotes survival of ‘uncaring’ genes doesn’t add up. And if genes are ‘programmed’ to survive, programmed by whom?
So I think Deepak is correct. Consciousness drives evolution. And as Penrose suggests, conscious quantum events intrinsic to the universe solve other problems like the ‘Anthropic principle’, why the universe is perfectly tuned for life and consciousness (avoiding any need for the silly ‘multiverse’ idea). Problems in evolution, brain science, quantum physics and cosmology all fade away with consciousness as an intrinsic feature of the structure of reality.
