Introducing the brain: where the spiritual happens (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, June 04, 2018, 13:01 (2362 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: "Yale scientists have identified a possible neurobiological home for the spiritual experience -- the sense of connection to something greater than oneself.
Activity in the parietal cortex, an area of the brain involved in awareness of self and others as well as attention processing, seems to be a common element among individuals who have experienced a variety of spiritual experiences […]

dhw: Fits in neatly with my materialistic proposal that the cell communities between them also create something greater than themselves, which we might call the (dualistic) “soul” and which might possibly link up with other consciousnesses, possibly including a God.

DAVID: You are describing an 'emergent' consciousness, which means the immaterial somehow appears from the material. That's the HARD PROBLEM no one can solve.

That is exactly what the materialistic part of my proposal describes, but I am not pretending it solves the “HARD PROBLEM”. I offer it as a reconciliation between materialism and dualism.

DAVID: What 'other consciousnesses' are you referring to in linking? I'm not linked to yours. I can only assume you have one.

The whole of evolution involves the linking up of cell communities, and if these cell communities are intelligent and together create new organs and organisms, they link their conscious intelligences together. My hypothesis does not exclude Sheldrake’s morphic resonance, in which a kind of generic consciousness emerges from that of individuals, and it does not exclude the possibility that there is a universal consciousness (which you call God) to which ours may be linked.