Re: dhw--Epistemological Framework (Humans)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, January 15, 2011, 07:59 (4869 days ago) @ xeno6696

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.-
You are so very linear here, and (in my humble opinion) mistaken from word go. First off, we do NOT know that consciousness is our inner anything. We do not know what consciousness is, how it is achieved, or how it is maintained, or how our consciousness is different from animals. We know the effects of those differences, but not the ultimate root cause or of them.-Without knowing the precise nature of consciousness, its origins, and its M.O., we can not make any conclusive statements about whether anything is or is not being transmitted or received from an external source. -I find it hard to believe that scientist can sit around and reasonably and rationally debate quantum entanglement yet not understand that there doesn't have to BE a signal(that we can detect with our current technology) in order for something to be affected by an outside source. Nor can I understand, particularly in light of the aforementioned phenomena, that anyone can truly believe that we are not connected to the rest of the universe in a very real and physical sense, and that said connection would have an impact on us.