Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 15, 2011, 03:23 (4869 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

dhw,
> I see that more discussion has been devoted to the framework, but something in your dispute of his analogy was lacking. You state that 'no exterior signal has been deemed present. Therefore, we should conclude that consciousness is at best, an extremely local phenomenon." I would ask on what grounds any scientist is able to make such a sweeping statement. 
> 
> 1)First, we are not even able to pin down the nature of consciousness itself, so we are in essence unable to locate the 'receiver', should there in fact be one. 
>
> 2)Secondly, we have no idea in what shape or form these 'transmissions' or 'signals' would take, thus rendering almost any 'empirical' study worthless except in the context of defining what is NOT a signal. Since we fail at step 1, we categorically are destined to fail at step 2 because without knowing where the receiver is or what form it might take, we can not definitively state that the 'receiver' is not receiving. 
>-I just don't understand you here; I mean, I get your analogy and your argument, but here it is:-First, we know that our consciousness is our "inner" self. One of the best (and simplest) definitions for consciousness I've heard was "being aware that you are aware." We can identify thoughts--pictures, abstractions. -I'm a very empirical thinker, and to be direct--I've come across no evidence that suggests that the consciousness isn't in the brain. For each of us, we have only things internal to ourselves, and external to ourselves. To me, you are suggesting that our internal is caused by the external, and that's giving me frostbite!!! You seem to ignore the most advanced thing humans can do...
 
> 3)If a person experiences a NDE/OBE, during a time that the 'receiver' is 'disconnected' from the brain, can you confirm that the 'receiver' is in fact altogether inactive, or can you only infer that there is no data transfer between 'receiver' and brain, and nothing being written to the hard drive of the brain.
> -The problem here, is that our brain is capable of creating worlds for us--worlds that seem absolutely real until we wake up from a dream. In fact, I can deliberately daydream with this machinery, and be utterly severed from what's going on around me--I can basically ignore all external datum and "give myself" my own input. I can make myself smell things. -Just now I imagined walking by a fire hydrant, and being impaled as the pressure explodes at the exact moment I walked by it. I now see myself from the air like in a movie, as I draw my last breath, snowflakes falling upon my forehead.-In the next scene, I play a cartoon version of myself, dance, and jump off a cliff with a "help me!" sign. -In instances of NBE/OBE it's entirely reasonable that your brain's model of the world moves your self away from you and renders images that it pulls together from what bits of input it receives. If we don't know much about consciousness, than its reasonable to also consider that what we think is "conscious brainwaves" on an EEG is a correlation of some other brain activity. -What I'm saying here, is that the internal power of our brain is itself able to explain these events. I may not be able to tell you what my consciousness is, but I can certainly use it! So in this instance, I have alot of evidence that my consciousness is internal to me and myself; and that I will cease to be conscious if I jump off a real cliff and hit my head. -I have no reason to believe that my consciousness is outside of my head, and at least two reasons (one empirical) to believe that my consciousness is within my head. I think I'm within reason here.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"