The scientific method is itself outside of the material universe

Steve Petersen said:

The thing imagined doesn't exist in the material though until the material is manipulated.

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But it nonetheless has physical underpinnings in the physical brain.
Without your physical brain, you don't have the required physical underpinnings that enables you to imagine anything.

DogmaHunter said:

But it nonetheless has physical underpinnings in the physical brain.
Without your physical brain, you don't have the required physical underpinnings that enables you to imagine anything.

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Quite; there seems to be a strong anthropocentric tendency to treat what goes on in the brain as uniquely separate from the rest of the physical world - non-physical even.

I noticed this first in discussions about free will, where people would say they had free will because, given some choice they'd made, they could have chosen differently in the same circumstances. When asked why they might choose differently in identical circumstances, they'd say it might be because they might feel differently about that choice. In other words, if their state of mind was different, they might make a different choice. I would then point out that if they'd felt differently about it, the circumstances clearly wouldn't have been the same. What they were effectively saying was that if things (i.e. their state of mind) had been different, things (i.e. their choice) might have been different...

It seemed clear that, when considering the circumstances of a choice, they only included external circumstances, not internal circumstances, i.e. their own state of mind.

bhsmte said:

Where do you come up with this stuff??

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It's all in that dreaded Bible that you guys refuse to read.

I think the reality of it is...he is right, it's outside the material universe, but it is within the bigger picture.

Reading the Bible lately has become like watching the news, it's the same. Even Scientific American Magazine ran an article (june 1995?) that said there are up to 11 other dimensions existing parallel to our own. That, our dimension is but a shadow of a larger reality.

That's your guys talking, not anyone religious. Scientific American. I found it, you google it. It's there.

Divide said:

It's all in that dreaded Bible that you guys refuse to read.

I think the reality of it is...he is right, it's outside the material universe, but it is within the bigger picture.

Reading the Bible lately has become like watching the news, it's the same. Even Scientific American Magazine ran an article (june 1995?) that said there are up to 11 other dimensions existing parallel to our own. That, our dimension is but a shadow of a larger reality.

That's your guys talking, not anyone religious. Scientific American. I found it, you google it. It's there.

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And you know that i have never studied the bible how exactly?

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

No, that's quite wrong. Whole fields of science are involved in studying the mind and consciousness - and constantly making new discoveries about them.

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Ok, so why can't they find the location of our consciousness in our brain? They do not now where consciousness is.

Ok, big mystery of God revealed here, ok? They can't find consciousness in the brain because it isn't in the brain. It is in your heart. The heart thinks.

The heart is also 4 times as powerful as the brain as a transmitter! Medical fact. They can measure those wireless waves now. Google this stuff, it is there. I think one site was Heartmath.org...? I *think*.

*Strangely enough...The Bible just by coincidence of coincidences says the same thing. It says, "as a man thinks in his heart, so is he" (Proverbs 23:7)
(so this science lends validity to those words in the Bible)

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

It seemed clear that, when considering the circumstances of a choice, they only included external circumstances, not internal circumstances, i.e. their own state of mind.

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I don't know about the specific wotnot of the specific reference there (if that's true or not), but (if so) then what you say here...is a good point and makes sense.

However, if you're not careful enough to consider that, hey you might be wrong, (much in the same manner, happens to everybody here and there! Lol) then all you're doing is talking to hear yourself talk. There's a lot more to life than biological function.

bhsmte said:

And you know that i have never studied the bible how exactly?

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Well then you should know that they cover that material in there...???

Divide said:

Well then you should know that they cover that material in there...???

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Men can write anything in stories. Determining whether those stories have any historical credibility, is another story.

Don't worry, you can still interpret those stories, however you like. I just wouldn't be shocked, if others disagree with you.

Divide said:

Ok, so why can't they find the location of our consciousness in our brain? They do not now where consciousness is.

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Consciousness is characterised by widescale activity across the whole brain (although not the whole brain is active).

Many experiments have been done that show this; for example, when you give someone a sensory stimulus that is just below the reported threshold of conscious awareness, it causes activation in the brain area(s) that specific to that sense and some areas local to that, but the activation doesn't spread very far. If you increase the strength or duration of the stimulus so it is just consciously detectable, there is a characteristic wave of activation that spreads from the local stimulus processing areas across the brain to numerous remote areas, and which 'echoes' around a while before dying away.

Ok, big mystery of God revealed here, ok? They can't find consciousness in the brain because it isn't in the brain. It is in your heart. The heart thinks.

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Not really, no. The heart has local nerve ganglia that help synchronise its beating and can respond to hormonal stimuli (e.g. adrenaline), and it also has a connection to the brain via the vagus nerve, that provides more specific control and feedback; it's quite a complex control system, but it only 'thinks' in the sense that a computer control system (e.g. a car's ECU) thinks.

If you want something far more complex and sophisticated than the heart's innervation, check out the neural ganglia that manage the gut - they've been called our 'second brain' - although, sophisticated as it is, it too is basically just a dedicated control system for the gut.

Divide said:

I don't know about the specific wotnot of the specific reference there (if that's true or not), but (if so) then what you say here...is a good point and makes sense.

However, if you're not careful enough to consider that, hey you might be wrong, (much in the same manner, happens to everybody here and there! Lol) then all you're doing is talking to hear yourself talk.

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Do you have a particular point about my observation, besides admitting ignorance and suggesting I could be wrong, without saying how?

There's a lot more to life than biological function.

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Perhaps; but life is biological function.

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

Consciousness is characterised by widescale activity across the whole brain (although not the whole brain is active).

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Is that what they're saying now?! The used to admit it, I've read the articles in scientific journals. Huh. That must be the new code talk to try to get people to believe it.

The brain plays a role, but it is not where consciousness arises from. It might act as some sort of external hard drive storage thing or something. I don't know exactly, but what I do know is the Christian perspective also. Which is, anyone can have...a bad or dark thought pop into their head, and it's not necessarily sin at that point. It's what you do with it that decides. (Take every thought captive to Christ) Which means don't dwell on it, cast the thought down, out of your mind.
If you continue to entertain the thought and think about it, it goes...whoosh, down into your heart and becomes sin to you, and becomes part of who you are.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

The entire brain does work too man. They just don't know what it does or how to test it. Just like, a few years back, they was sayin most of DNA was junk DNA...they know better now!!

Personally, I suspect that the other (supposed non working) part of the brain that we don't use...turns on at night when we sleep and does something. That's why they say, let me sleep on it. The info data that you input that day...is processed at night and then becomes wisdom. ?? I think, lol.

FrumiousBandersnatch said:

If you want something far more complex and sophisticated than the heart's innervation, check out the neural ganglia that manage the gut - they've been called our 'second brain' - although, sophisticated as it is, it too is basically just a dedicated control system for the gut.

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I didn't even know that. That's pretty cool. But that would loosen the validity of evolution? All of these highly specialized systems within us...and all happened because a land animal crapped in the lake and a fish ate it. Two billion years later here we are? Man, I couldn't ever buy that one. We are too specialized in our systems for evolution and chemical processes to be solely responsible for who we are. Science says, if an improvement is the goal then new information has to be there. You don't get something from nothing. Where did the new information come from? From intelligent design!

Divide said:

I didn't even know that. That's pretty cool. But that would loosen the validity of evolution? All of these highly specialized systems within us...and all happened because a land animal crapped in the lake and a fish ate it. Two billion years later here we are? Man, I couldn't ever buy that one. We are too specialized in our systems for evolution and chemical processes to be solely responsible for who we are. Science says, if an improvement is the goal then new information has to be there. You don't get something from nothing. Where did the new information come from? From intelligent design!

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Think of it this way: Evolution over huge expanses of time can lead to changes that seem unimaginable. For example, sponges having a sort of cavity, to the gut of higher animals such as humans. But, evolution proceeds by steps. It may be too much to believe that we can go from sponges to humans, but what about sponges to the guts of worms? That's not so much of a change. Then, what about the guts of worms to those of proto-chordates such lancelets? That's not so much of a change. Then, what about lancelet guts to cartilaginous fish guts? Then cartilaginous fish guts to bony fish guts. That's not so much of a change. Then bony fish guts to amphibian guts. Then amphibian guts to reptile guts. Then reptile guts to mammal guts. And here we are. I've just summarised 500 million years of evolution in seven steps. Now imagine that we break those steps down into thousands of sub-steps each. Each change is then very small, and it's easy to see how it could happen. But, put those tens of thousands of steps together, and the chance from the beginning to the end looks huge. But, there was never any one major change that happened. There were just lots of changes.

Divide said:

I didn't even know that. That's pretty cool. But that would loosen the validity of evolution? All of these highly specialized systems within us...and all happened because a land animal crapped in the lake and a fish ate it. Two billion years later here we are? Man, I couldn't ever buy that one.

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Me neither - I don't know where you got that from - do you have a reference?

We are too specialized in our systems for evolution and chemical processes to be solely responsible for who we are. Science says, if an improvement is the goal then new information has to be there.

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Evolution doesn't have a goal. Populations have inheritable traits that vary from individual to individual (e.g. intelligence). If some variations of these traits (e.g. greater than average intelligence) enable individuals to be more successful and have significantly more offspring, then the population average for that trait (e.g. intelligence) will move in that direction over the generations as those individuals contribute a greater than average proportion of offspring who themselves are likely to have more offspring than average. Contrariwise, traits that are a disadvantage to reproductive success will tend to die out as they will result in fewer offspring in future generations.

You don't get something from nothing. Where did the new information come from? From intelligent design!

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Evolution doesn't 'get something from nothing', it changes what was already there, and if that change is an improvement, i.e. it results in more offspring, it is likely to persist and spread over the generations.

Information is simply a matter of the way things are arranged. Whether the information is meaningful or useful depends on the context; e.g. English words have meaning for English speakers, but may not for Italian speakers and vice-versa; they all contain information, but whether it's useful depends who's reading it; even a random collection of letters can sometimes make a meaningful word in some language.

Genes code for the construction of proteins; a mutation in a gene is likely to change the structure of the protein it codes for, i.e. new information producing a novel result; this may or may not improve things, but it's new. Extra information can be added by whole or partial duplication of gene sequences. These may have no effect, or they may result in more of the same protein being produced, or they may result in a completely new protein being produced - additional new information that may or may not be useful.

That's a crude approximation of how it works, but it gives you an idea of where new information can come from in biological creatures.

Divide said:

Is that what they're saying now?! The used to admit it, I've read the articles in scientific journals. Huh. That must be the new code talk to try to get people to believe it.

The brain plays a role, but it is not where consciousness arises from. It might act as some sort of external hard drive storage thing or something. I don't know exactly, but what I do know is the Christian perspective also. Which is, anyone can have...a bad or dark thought pop into their head, and it's not necessarily sin at that point. It's what you do with it that decides. (Take every thought captive to Christ) Which means don't dwell on it, cast the thought down, out of your mind.
If you continue to entertain the thought and think about it, it goes...whoosh, down into your heart and becomes sin to you, and becomes part of who you are.
As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

The entire brain does work too man. They just don't know what it does or how to test it. Just like, a few years back, they was sayin most of DNA was junk DNA...they know better now!!

Personally, I suspect that the other (supposed non working) part of the brain that we don't use...turns on at night when we sleep and does something. That's why they say, let me sleep on it. The info data that you input that day...is processed at night and then becomes wisdom. ?? I think, lol.

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You're right about processing and consolidating information at night - significant short and medium-term memories are encoded into long-term memory, and so-on - many of the areas involved have been identified; but as for the rest of that post - the evidence from neuroscience says it's nonsense. Sorry.