How Can Molecules Think?

Bradskii · Sep 10, 2022

Mountainmike said:
I simply pointed out that many telepathic and/or OB experiences cannot be subject to controlled trial since they cannot be repeated and do not repeat naturally.

Trying to "force" a "nature" on to telepathy ( or OB) and then demonstrating that "nature" does not apply shows nothing - it demonstrates no more than my postulating "I will only believe in dark matter if my television doubles weight one day". I will be left disappointed. I have certainly not disproven dark matter.

Some aspects of telepathy have shown substantial significance . But that is off topic here.
Conscious experience outside the body is clearly rare, and has no obvious profile. Only one case that is far too unlikely to be coincidence and no fraud mechanism can be found is enough to cause a problem for present belief on consciousness. Greyson accepts that in his conclusions

Greyson thinks that even a dozen or so examples are not enough on which to base a conclusion. And you say one is sufficient? I really don't think you've studied anything that this guy has done, what controlled experiments he's performed or what his conclusions are.

You are completely in the dark.

Landon Caeli · Sep 10, 2022

doubtingmerle said:
I think with my brain. My brain is made of molecules. Therefore, molecules, when arranged in a certain way, can think.

But how can that be? After all, you are alive, and you feel what it is to be alive. You are experiencing conscious awareness. How can this awareness be nothing more than the result of molecules and elementary physical particles?

Your conscious awareness might seem to you to be something immaterial that is telling the molecules of your body what to do. And yet, as I wrote at Is There Life after Death, there is abundant evidence that the physical brain is indeed the thing that thinks. There is no soul inside running the show. The brain is in control.

Your brain does the thinking. And it creates the appearance that there is a person in charge controlling everything. Rather, what you have is a mass of neurons acting in parallel. But within that mass of neurons, some ideas rise to attention and drive the body. They create the story that the attention is in charge, but it is only there for the ride. The many neurons acting in parallel are in charge. I discuss this at How Can Molecules Think?

Universal consciousness?

Mountainmike · Sep 10, 2022

Bradskii said:
Greyson thinks that even a dozen or so examples are not enough on which to base a conclusion. And you say one is sufficient? I really don't think you've studied anything that this guy has done, what controlled experiments he's performed or what his conclusions are.

You are completely in the dark.

Greyson is correct.

You cannot "conclude" because there is no scientific framework on which to make a conclusion. Other than the it does not fit present scientific framework. That is a limit of science. The framework clearly does not fit. Science is stuck. BUT - the patients were conscious of things they cannot have known if consciousness is confined to the brain. Why or how is a mystery.

Greyson says in the book After: "enough evidence to take seriously .. continued functioning of the mind INDEPENDENT of the brain"

He concludes "pretending something did not happen just because we cannot explain it is the exact opposite of science"
(ie what all of you on this forum are doing.... you are the opposite of science.. you clearly are too locked into your beliefs)

Just By way of comparison - like abiogenesis "how "is uknown, except in the case of abiogenesis you can add "when where or whether" to the list of unknown mysteries. But you all believe it none the less. It is called "tramline thinking"

Ive been studying what this guy has done for years. You had never heard of him till I pointed at him so spare me the patronising nonsense.

Landon Caeli · Sep 10, 2022

People say that something needs to be repeatable in order for it to be real. But sometimes we find things that are repeatable, and it's useless... Like the concepts of dark matter and dark energy. Scientifically repeatable evidences for "words" we know nothing about.

How do we explain that repeatable experiments occur, resulting in a proof of nothing? Or of something we're somehow physically incapable of understanding?

doubtingmerle · Sep 10, 2022

Mountainmanmike,

I see you have no response to the compelling evidence of anesthesia. That shows there is no soul. You simply ignore the evidence.

Here is another example. A stroke effects the brain. After the stroke, people often have a hard time creating new memories of events. If the part that thinks is a soul that is distinct from the brain, why does this happen? Will you ignore this also?

Mountainmike said:
Consciousness is the ability to experience.
Experiences are documented as anecdotes - a recording of what took place.
All observation is indeed anecdotal.

An observation is not "3.5" on a meter, or "yes/no" or "red"
All observation is an anecdotal statement of context and outcome.

An observation is
"I sampled such (whatever) and did a southern blot test, on and found a band at a location that corresponds to such and such molecular weight"
Or
"I looked up in the sky on such and such a day and time and saw trails of meteorites shoot across the sky here is a photograph
Or
"I looked up in the sky on such a day and time and saw trails of meteorites shoot across the my camera was not responsive enough to catch a photo"
Or
"At the time specified, I looked up and saw multicoloured streaks emerging from the sun - I have never seen it before or since, but others certainly did - it was reported all over the newspapers at the time even by those far away not expecting anything would happen"
Or
" I saw a lady on top of a building at such a time who appeared progressively and disappeared progressively.. Others saw her too. Millions of them. I do not have a photograph, others did. It cannot have been a projection because the authorities turned all the power off"
Or
" I span a black and white disk but I saw coloured bands"
Or
" We observed the lady for 20 days , she did not eat , drink or go to the toilet. She could not have done so. She was paralysed. We thought it was fraud so we tightened security and all the personnel were changed. Nobody except two new officials were allowed to enter or leave. All interactions were closely watched by other personell.
Yet she still did not eat , drink , defecate or urinate her body weight did not change. Science has no explanation for this."

I wager your willingness to accept any of those is based on prejudice not observation.

You are confusing telling a story about what happened and uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. When scientists speak of anecdotal evidence, they are speaking of a claim with no scientific methodology to prevent bias from influencing the result. Real scientists use studies that are designed to tell the truth regardless of bias. They are not saying you are not allowed to tell the story of what you observed.

Scientific observation is based on getting information that is not the result of the scientist's bias. For instance, when testing new medicines, the medicine is tested in a controlled double-blind trial. Such studies, when properly done, prevent bias from influencing the results. So the studies are valid.

What controls are used in your claim to keep bias out of the twins claim?

There is a difference between a properly done statistical study and anecdotal evidence that has no scientific controls. The table listed at Learn How Anecdotal Evidence Can Trick You! - Statistics By Jim is a good description of the difference. Though the scientist may tell the story of what happened, valid methodology differs as described in that link.

Is the following valid scientific evidence: "I had a cold. I tried snake oil. A week later the cold went away". Do you buy that argument? If all uncontrolled anecdotal evidence is science, do you accept this also?

I asked you about this before. You refused to answer. I think we know why you ignore this question.

If you answer "yes", then you lose, for you have gone back to flimflam medicine. You have gone back to accepting cures based on uncontrolled anecdotal evidence such as this. But we can all see the problem with this. One might have been cured without the snake oil. If one would want to show the snake oil is effective, then one would need to show that it is better than a placebo cure in a controlled study. That is how science does it, as I showed in my link. So if your answer is "yes, you accept the snake oil claim", then you are against science.

But if you answer "no" to the snake oil claim, then you lose also. For that uncontrolled anecdotal claim for snake oil is the same type of claim as your claim for souls transmitting information to a distant soul. One twin dies. One twin reports later that he felt strange when the other twin died far away. Does that prove a soul traveled across the miles and transmitted information? No! For people get all kinds of feelings just by chance. And people will subconsciously rewrite their memories such that they think they remember it one way when it happened another. It is just as invalid to trust this as to trust the snake oil claim. So, if you accept this uncontrolled anecdotal evidence for souls but not the uncontrolled anecdotal evidence for snake oil, you are being inconsistent.

So, "yes" you lose; "No" you lose. Either way, you lose.

Science can only handle it if the events can be repeated or repeat naturally.
That does not invalidate the rest, it makes it harder to test.

No, sir. Just because we cannot do a valid scientific study does not give you the right to ignore scientific methodology and call it science.

Which is only a subset of experience and generally can only apply to inaminate objects. Beings are not nearly so controllable.

Flapdoodle. Psychologists do studies of people all the time. Humans can be studied.

I have little doubt you accept abiogenesis, yet you have no "controlled trial" of what happened for the first living cell. You cannot say when where or how it happened. All you have to coin your phrase is "flim flam".

My opinion on abiogenesis is based on the available scientific evidence. I state it at the section on the origin of life at Is There a God? - The Mind Set Free. If you disagree with what I say there, please leave a comment there.

There is plenty of testimony of how eucharistic miracles happened and pathology evidence of what they are. Cardiac tissue which a pathologist states is "compelling evidence of creation of heart tissue".
So not "flim flam" like your kind of abiogenesis then!

Uh are you saying there is compelling evidence that the bread in a eucharist ceremony actually turns into heart tissues? This should be good. Please point me to the study that shows this.

FYI there are controlled trials of some types of telepathy in peer reviewed journals showing way beyond statistical significance.

Please reference a study that verifies telepathy beyond statistical significance.

Hans Blaster · Sep 10, 2022

Mountainmike said:
A far more pertinent book is "after" by Greyson himself.
Explains the evidence that persuaded him to pursue the phenomena.

"twin telepathy" playfair is an interesting book - in which the author is annoyed by the refusal of academia to investigate because of prejudice.

It has always struck me as fascinating that those with clearly defined negative views never want to take up the challenge to rebut phenomena which should be easy if it is such a slamdunk in their view!

Tesoriero lists at least 3 academic institutions that refused to investigate eucharistic miracle samples (in this case just to do routine DNA or rissue morphology and pathology studies) having told him they "must be fraud"!!!,
one university noted "this department is founded on Darwinian thought, we might have to close if you are right!"

Others tried to gag scientists who had commented positively on them.
I am guessing it is a blight on a career JUST to get involved.
My conclusion is academia is scared of what it might find .

And all of that :whatever: has to do with my comment about a book blurb, how?

Bradskii · Sep 11, 2022

Mountainmike said:
Greyson is correct.

Darn tootin' he's right. And he's also right when he says 'the little evidence we have from these controlled studies points to NDErs being unable to see hidden visual targets.'

Note 'controlled studies'. You think they can't be done. Even the person you are using to push this stuff disagrees with you.

And what reasons can we have for the dozen or so examples he uses?

'...the phenomenon has not been replicated under controlled conditions that eliminate sensory cues, control probabilities, and circumvent memory distortions'.

And this from the guy you want to claim is the expert on this? He's telling you that there could be any number of ordinary, run-of-the-mill reasons for it. He's dismantling every point you make. You should read what he writes. You obviously haven't yet...

Near-Death Experiences - Academic Publications - Division of Perceptual Studies

Mountainmike · Sep 12, 2022

I am not going blow for blow for all that ” flim flam” of yours, to use your word.

Suffice to say your experiments are irrelevant.
They prove nothing at all.

I am blessed or cursed by high IQ. I see through nonsense as is yours.

If the CPU of mars lander was blown up by an unfortunate burst of cosmic rays. One side of the motion might be lost , memory might be lost. It might lose all ability to either communicate or act. It might even become electronically dead.

The consciousness it has is human and I assure you is still alive and well at NASA. You cannot discriminate between a consciousness as a chemical process or consciousness acting through a chemical process by the means you describe.

coming back to what science can say instead of what you think your scientific realism can tell you

All observations are anecdotal. Study the science before science.

For things that repeat or can be repeated eg “ saw a mark on a photo film in my desk” The first observation can be formalised / refined to attempt to model it “ radiation from uranium”

But if it doesn’t repeat naturally or can’t be made to repeat the phenomenon is not of itself invalidated.

Indeed in the case of consciousness of another place, many details can validate it , as being way beyond random chance coincidence. Mechanisms for fraud can then be identified and or discounted.

At the end you are left with unexplained. Not didn’t happen.

Those who adhere to the false philososphy of “ Scientific realism” then argue if it doesn’t adhere to the scientific model, therefore it cannot have happened “ or “ if I can’t repeat it it cannot have happened”
are not echoing a view of science.

Not all phenomena are an act of will or repeatable or repeat naturally.

The scientific model is several stages detached from nature and ever changing with new evidence. It can still only model what it can repeat or repeats. The rest is unknown, not none existent.

Our senses are limited and we cannot know the underlying reality, only what it normally does. The fact it normally does the same is no guarantee the next time it will do the same.

doubtingmerle said:
Mountainmanmike,

I see you have no response to the compelling evidence of anesthesia. That shows there is no soul. You simply ignore the evidence.

Here is another example. A stroke effects the brain. After the stroke, people often have a hard time creating new memories of events. If the part that thinks is a soul that is distinct from the brain, why does this happen? Will you ignore this also?

You are confusing telling a story about what happened and uncontrolled anecdotal evidence. When scientists speak of anecdotal evidence, they are speaking of a claim with no scientific methodology to prevent bias from influencing the result. Real scientists use studies that are designed to tell the truth regardless of bias. They are not saying you are not allowed to tell the story of what you observed.

Scientific observation is based on getting information that is not the result of the scientist's bias. For instance, when testing new medicines, the medicine is tested in a controlled double-blind trial. Such studies, when properly done, prevent bias from influencing the results. So the studies are valid.

What controls are used in your claim to keep bias out of the twins claim?

There is a difference between a properly done statistical study and anecdotal evidence that has no scientific controls. The table listed at Learn How Anecdotal Evidence Can Trick You! - Statistics By Jim is a good description of the difference. Though the scientist may tell the story of what happened, valid methodology differs as described in that link.

Is the following valid scientific evidence: "I had a cold. I tried snake oil. A week later the cold went away". Do you buy that argument? If all uncontrolled anecdotal evidence is science, do you accept this also?

I asked you about this before. You refused to answer. I think we know why you ignore this question.

If you answer "yes", then you lose, for you have gone back to flimflam medicine. You have gone back to accepting cures based on uncontrolled anecdotal evidence such as this. But we can all see the problem with this. One might have been cured without the snake oil. If one would want to show the snake oil is effective, then one would need to show that it is better than a placebo cure in a controlled study. That is how science does it, as I showed in my link. So if your answer is "yes, you accept the snake oil claim", then you are against science.

But if you answer "no" to the snake oil claim, then you lose also. For that uncontrolled anecdotal claim for snake oil is the same type of claim as your claim for souls transmitting information to a distant soul. One twin dies. One twin reports later that he felt strange when the other twin died far away. Does that prove a soul traveled across the miles and transmitted information? No! For people get all kinds of feelings just by chance. And people will subconsciously rewrite their memories such that they think they remember it one way when it happened another. It is just as invalid to trust this as to trust the snake oil claim. So, if you accept this uncontrolled anecdotal evidence for souls but not the uncontrolled anecdotal evidence for snake oil, you are being inconsistent.

So, "yes" you lose; "No" you lose. Either way, you lose.

No, sir. Just because we cannot do a valid scientific study does not give you the right to ignore scientific methodology and call it science.

Flapdoodle. Psychologists do studies of people all the time. Humans can be studied.

My opinion on abiogenesis is based on the available scientific evidence. I state it at the section on the origin of life at Is There a God? - The Mind Set Free. If you disagree with what I say there, please leave a comment there.

Uh are you saying there is compelling evidence that the bread in a eucharist ceremony actually turns into heart tissues? This should be good. Please point me to the study that shows this.

Please reference a study that verifies telepathy beyond statistical significance.

Mountainmike · Sep 12, 2022

Bradskii said:
Darn tootin' he's right. And he's also right when he says 'the little evidence we have from these controlled studies points to NDErs being unable to see hidden visual targets.'

The experiments mean nothing other than that attempt to systematise it failed. Like many ( but not all) attempts to systematise telepathy fail.

Science can only deal with what repeats or can be repeated.
That’s only a subset of the universe.

I am not speaking of generic NDE of which many are inconclusive.
Greyson notes as I just did that some of the events are

“ enough evidence to take seriously .. continued functioning of the mind INDEPENDENT of the brain"

That’s what the guy who researched them thinks.
Your belief of course prefers to deny it. The evidence stands regardless

Anyways. You will all be glad to know I’m abroad for a few weeks, so chances are I will be taking a break from this.

Akita Suggagaki · Sep 12, 2022

doubtingmerle said:
I think with my brain. My brain is made of molecules. Therefore, molecules, when arranged in a certain way, can think.

But how can that be?

Back to the OP, yes, the brain thinks, that is, organizes and processes the aggregate of electronic impulses between neurons.

Scientists estimate the average cell contains 100 trillion atoms.
There are over 100 different molecules which meet the criteria for being a neurotransmitter.

By the time we get down to the molecule atom we are talking about the slightest potential.

Some questions to consider:
Does every atom have this potential to be a building block for thought?
Does every molecule have this potential?
The theological question is: Are we more than our thoughts?

Hans Blaster · Sep 12, 2022

Mountainmike said:
I am blessed or cursed by high IQ. I see through nonsense as is yours.

That's great. If only this problem were a matter of geometric sequences...

Mountainmike said:
If the CPU of mars lander was blown up by an unfortunate burst of cosmic rays. One side of the motion might be lost , memory might be lost. It might lose all ability to either communicate or act. It might even become electronically dead.

The consciousness it has is human and I assure you is still alive and well at NASA. You cannot discriminate between a consciousness as a chemical process or consciousness acting through a chemical process by the means you describe.

Setting aside you odd understanding of gamma ray impacts on electronics, this is still very weird as you claim a Mars lander has consciousness and even weirder that it is human consciousness.

Bradskii · Sep 12, 2022

Hans Blaster said:
That's great. If only this problem were a matter of geometric sequences...

Setting aside you odd understanding of gamma ray impacts on electronics, this is still very weird as you claim a Mars lander has consciousness and even weirder that it is human consciousness.

Please, Hans. Show some respect for someone with a much higher IQ.

Hans Blaster · Sep 12, 2022

Bradskii said:
Please, Hans. Show some respect for someone with a much higher IQ.

Last summer I did click on one of the "IQ test" links someone posted here. I think it was the "Mensa" screening test or something like that. It was some sort of matching/sequence test with various weird shape groupings. I wasted a lot of the time in the beginning trying to sort out the language and probably dwelt too long on puzzles I didn't "get". Not sure how such a test measures "intelligence", but my score of 130 or so seem OK given the circumstance.

Yaaten · Sep 15, 2022

doubtingmerle said:
I think with my brain. My brain is made of molecules. Therefore, molecules, when arranged in a certain way, can think.

But how can that be? After all, you are alive, and you feel what it is to be alive. You are experiencing conscious awareness. How can this awareness be nothing more than the result of molecules and elementary physical particles?

Your conscious awareness might seem to you to be something immaterial that is telling the molecules of your body what to do. And yet, as I wrote at Is There Life after Death, there is abundant evidence that the physical brain is indeed the thing that thinks. There is no soul inside running the show. The brain is in control.

Your brain does the thinking. And it creates the appearance that there is a person in charge controlling everything. Rather, what you have is a mass of neurons acting in parallel. But within that mass of neurons, some ideas rise to attention and drive the body. They create the story that the attention is in charge, but it is only there for the ride. The many neurons acting in parallel are in charge. I discuss this at How Can Molecules Think?

I don't think that I can adequately explain why you are wrong about this, for it would require more space and time than I have at the moment, but there is one point that I would like to make, and that is in response to the paragraph that begins with the words, "Your brain does the thinking".
What hardcore materialists often fail to take into account when they try to explain away consciousness, is the fact that it is so unlike everything else that exists within nature. The "physical brain" is just that; a clump of gooey matter that isn't anything special on its own, and which on its own cannot account for what so many believe it is responsible for giving rise to. What no one has thus far been able to explain is why such an ordinary arrangement of matter should have the capacity to do this at all, but people just assume that it (somehow) does even if they don't know how, and build their other beliefs upon that.
People who don't have a vested interest in this topic tend to differentiate between the mind and the brain, and it is sensible to do this, because although one may correlate with the other, it is quite a leap of faith to suggest that one causes the other (that is, correlation does not equal causation; that is an assumption that doesn't logically follow).

Yaaten · Sep 15, 2022

Estrid said:
Why would a person choose to think that?

Maybe because it's true. That would be one reason.

Kylie · Sep 15, 2022

Yaaten said:
I don't think that I can adequately explain why you are wrong about this, for it would require more space and time than I have at the moment, but there is one point that I would like to make, and that is in response to the paragraph that begins with the words, "Your brain does the thinking".
What hardcore materialists often fail to take into account when they try to explain away consciousness, is the fact that it is so unlike everything else that exists within nature. The "physical brain" is just that; a clump of gooey matter that isn't anything special on its own, and which on its own cannot account for what so many believe it is responsible for giving rise to. What no one has thus far been able to explain is why such an ordinary arrangement of matter should have the capacity to do this at all, but people just assume that it (somehow) does even if they don't know how, and build their other beliefs upon that.
People who don't have a vested interest in this topic tend to differentiate between the mind and the brain, and it is sensible to do this, because although one may correlate with the other, it is quite a leap of faith to suggest that one causes the other (that is, correlation does not equal causation; that is an assumption that doesn't logically follow).

You make it sound like the brain is purely mechanical;. It's not. It's not just how the brain cells are arranged, but how they interact with each other.

It's like saying that a lump of metal can't show videos, so a computer needs some sort of magic. But a computer isn't just mechanical, it's also electrical, and the electrical part of it allows the physical parts to communicate and interact in a way that allows wonderful things to happen.

Hans Blaster · Sep 15, 2022

Yaaten said:
I don't think that I can adequately explain why you are wrong about this, for it would require more space and time than I have at the moment, but there is one point that I would like to make, and that is in response to the paragraph that begins with the words, "Your brain does the thinking".

There is zero evidence that any other part of the body "does the thinking". So that would be quite a response...

Yaaten said:
What hardcore materialists often fail to take into account when they try to explain away consciousness, is the fact that it is so unlike everything else that exists within nature. The "physical brain" is just that; a clump of gooey matter that isn't anything special on its own, and which on its own cannot account for what so many believe it is responsible for giving rise to. What no one has thus far been able to explain is why such an ordinary arrangement of matter should have the capacity to do this at all, but people just assume that it (somehow) does even if they don't know how, and build their other beliefs upon that.

Why shouldn't it be able to think?

Do we not have a continuum of lesser "thinking" neural systems? Simpler brains, etc.

Yaaten said:
People who don't have a vested interest in this topic tend to differentiate between the mind and the brain, and it is sensible to do this, because although one may correlate with the other, it is quite a leap of faith to suggest that one causes the other (that is, correlation does not equal causation; that is an assumption that doesn't logically follow).

What is this "vested interest" you speak of?

Yaaten · Sep 15, 2022

Kylie said:
You make it sound like the brain is purely mechanical;. It's not. It's not just how the brain cells are arranged, but how they interact with each other.

It's like saying that a lump of metal can't show videos, so a computer needs some sort of magic. But a computer isn't just mechanical, it's also electrical, and the electrical part of it allows the physical parts to communicate and interact in a way that allows wonderful things to happen.

The brain isn't purely mechanical, but it certainly is purely physical. The problem with your video analogy is the fact that videos can be examined and analysed using the techniques we have at our disposal when it comes to phenomena (like light and sound) that we all accept can be accounted for via our understanding of nature, and without needing to renounce, or in some way distort, our materialistic metaphysical beliefs.
How does one measure a memory? How is consciousness quantified? Why is our subjective experience of the passage of time in a dream not correlated with the actual passage of time in the "real" world? Why do we even need to dream in the first place?
I'm not claiming here that we'll never find answers to questions like this, but I do seriously question so many people's adherence to the current dogma of atheistic materialism and their embrace of scientism.

Yaaten · Sep 15, 2022

Hans Blaster said:
What is this "vested interest" you speak of?

I meant people who don't have an agenda to push, who aren't biased, who don't base their lives upon philosophical beliefs and propositions, and who wouldn't be devastated if it turned out they were wrong.
When it comes to mind/body dualism, most people seem to take it for granted that their mind is not their brain. Now whether they're right or wrong about this is another thing.

Estrid · Sep 15, 2022

Yaaten said:
Maybe because it's true. That would be one reason.

"It"?

Who knows what you are even talking about
after this long

How Can Molecules Think?

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