The Brain, The Mind and Neuroscience (& maybe more)

[Journyman16]

This convo developed in a Philosophy and Spirituality thread about God. I figure it is probably way off what the OP wanted so I'm bringing it here.

The posts and quote are my posts responses from over in that thread.

We begin... :D

For neuroscience there's a bit of evidence about how our brains produce the 'god' effect - there's the 'god-helmet' that is being touted as the explanation ofr people having ineffable experiences they call the presence of god.

Unfortunately there is no current explanation for just why a brain might actually HAVE such a function or reaction - one would think pausing for a quick ineffable while running from the sabretooth would tend to limit one's breeding opportunities. :D

The god helmet by Dr. Michael Persinger Lol! I love all of his work. He studies much more than that and has been doing bizarre studies ever since the 1980's.

And there are many more areas of the brain that don't favor the god position. The orbitofrontal cortex, for instance, deals with moral decision making. Areas like the neocortex are believed to deal with the deeper spatial reasoning like how some come to the conclusion on how the universe came to be.

 

[Journyman16]

I look at the brain more as the switching gear - like a phone exchange. I think the mind is like the conversations going on across those physical links. And of course then you have the people doing the conversing who are the 'I' presence for whom it all runs.

Just like the brain, most of the time when you pick up your phone to talk to me, the same equipment responds - also like the brain, on occasion it might be necessary to switch to an alternate circuit to route the conversation.

But the issue I have is looking at MRI's and similar real-time operations of the brain. They tend to point to a location and say things like, "this is where the taste of ice cream is stored and it links to over there where we store cold." The problem is, those same areas light up for (say) the taste of thickened cream and walking in the snow.

It seems to me that when they talk about where memories are, they are pointing at the switching gear that accesses those memories, NOT where the memories are stored. I think the memories are encoded in the hologram that is the mind field - which is why amnesia can happen and also why it can go away...

For amnesia, the shape of the field is altered, so the memory vanishes. It can sometimes return because a hologram tends to have all the information encoded in each part, so if the entire area is not wiped clean, the info can get rebuilt, like a RAID hard drive can be rebuilt from the ones that didn't fail.

You're my favorite person on here so far. That was an impressively well thought out response to my recent post and I am glad you took the time to write it : )

What about the deeper scans; the neuroimaging that is so tightly processed where I can poke a person with a pin in the laboratory and see regions of the brain spike as the pin barely begins to graze them? We can ask questions and see which regions of the brain light up seconds before they even respond. I hate to take the mechanical perspective here, but I really do view the brain like a machine.

 

[Journyman16]

I think we are in agreement about the brain. However the implication of you mentioning it is that we differ about what's going on in there. My impression is (& correct me if I have this wrong) you see the brain as defining us; if we can be defined I would say the Mind defines us.

There's a quote from years back that fits my view... "Minds are what Brains DO"

There's more fascinating stuff about brains. They've done research showing the brain responds BEFORE events happen. The experiment used pictures on a screen. The subject has to do 1 of 2 actions depending on whether a picture is nice or evil; those actions will use different areas of the brain. A computer picks which pictures will be shown.

Consistently across many experiments (mainly because they couldn't believe the initial results) they found the correct area lit up BEFORE the picture appeared. We are not talking simultaneous, as in there was recognition before any conscious awareness, but thousandths of a second before the image appeared, the right part of the brain for the coming picture would start activating.

A quick Google isn't finding the one I am thinking of and I have to go out. But Dean Radin did a similar one where subjects reacted emotionally to loaded subject matter before the images appear. The name Beirman rings a bell for the MRI experiments.

Quantum effects also show a casual disregard of time. Exploring the observer effect came up with some very strange results regarding people who choose whether a particle would be entangled and others who measure whether or not it is.

 

[L2R]

JM16, i agree with nearly everything you said in these posts. i'm just not sure what you mean by hologram.

i'd only add that the mechanics of the brain account for most of our conscious actions. we run predominantly on disposition, which is programmed by experience. the free will only happens when we meditate or have some objection to our own dispositions and question it. meditation includes all artforms, from music, dance, visual arts, conversation, and science. those moments of inspiration, ya know.

our will is only a very small part of consciousness.

imo of course.

 

[Journyman16]

Have a look at this... it isn't meant to be what I use it for but it gives an image...

Edward de Bono suggests a mind is like a vast plain, rolling slopes with an occasional gully built in... at birth. Information is like rain, falling on the plain. Some information is heavily represented and it forms more gullies which become valleys. The more information coming in, the more eroded the vista becomes.

So in this picture, the original 'plain' was purple, with maybe some red creases that represent the pre-defined structures we begin with, such as for shape, for language (any language) and sounds. (any scale)

He also suggests we have funnels.

Imagine a virgin beach, smooth sand with the waves washing up gently. A squall comes in and rains on the beach - not much changes - lots of pockmarks on the beach.

Now put a whole lot of different-sized funnels above the beach and have the same squall come in - the beach is RADICALLY changed because the funnels cause concentrated streams of water to erode the beach, forming valleys and creeks taking the water to the sea.

Funnels are labels that we use. We begin by identifying. We say things like, "I am a Democrat" because we see ourselves that way. And there are many Democrats in our group. There is another funnel we label as Republican and that's where we put the people who identify themselves as that.

But we are human. Some Republicans have ideas like we do, but we leave them over in their funnel because they ain't gonna vote for 'OUR' guy. But some Democrats espouse views that seem very Republican in nature, so we move them over into the Republican funnel. After some time, we find, if we are actually thinking and aware, there are actually very few people who qualify to be Democrats like us, but we only have TWO funnels for this.

"you are with us or against us" - are you seeing where this is going?

Funnels are labels. They gouge holes in the terrain of our hologram. Those holes tend to channel our thoughts in only one way. Those valleys ALWAYS lead in the same direction - if you enter you ALWAYS come down to the same exit.

And there is the problem. Once we, as a human, decide to enter a two-valued universe we cannot (literally) converse with someone we have put through the other funnel - they are in a different valley. So we have the constant bitch-fight between Creationists and Evolutionists - they aren't even talking about the same subject but they will fight it out to the bitter end - BECAUSE THEY HAVE FUNNELS FOR EACH OTHER! And we have (in the USA) Democrats and Republicans who also cannot ever reach rapprochement - FOR THE SAME REASON!

Which leads us to the other problem...

There was a guy by name of Count (not too sure about the title, but he was of nobility) Alfred Korzybski. He wrote about what he called General Semantics, which was, in layman's terms, The Meaning of Meaning. Science and Sanity was his major work I think, and in it he tries to bring us out of the Aristotelian world the Church put us in.

For the Church to work, in fact for almost ANY religion to work, they have to divide us into 2 classes. And in fact every single 'self-help' course I have ever done (& given 20 years in a public service job there were many :D) does the same thing. They propose there is THIS type of person and THAT type of person. In Religion they tell you which type you are, in self-help they ask you to identify with one.

An example is a VERY GOOD book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Even though I recommend the book, he does the same thing - there are Romantic and Classical people.

And there lies the rub. Humans have as many 'types' as there are humans. Even identical twins do not tick all the same boxes.

Korzybski's thesis was that we cannot think of ourselves as truly human until we are CONSCIOUSLY aware of the fact we are making identifications every time we 'decide' anything. An identification means we are abstracting reality. Which we ALWAYS have to do because we have zero independent verification that there is actually a reality at all.

The prime awareness is Korzybski's world is, The Map is NOT the Territory. Sounds fairly innocuous but, (& relating this back to neuroscience) it is basic to everything we do. What Korzybski is saying is we cannot claim to be truly human until (& unless) we include THAT awareness in every thought.

And here is where it matters in Neuroscience... In normal Solid terms, EVERYTHING we can ever know comes in via senses. Which means everything gets 'coloured' with emotion on the way in, and everything gets skewed a little by previous experience, BEFORE WE SEE IT! So we MUST stay aware that THIS experience is NOT the other experience even if it is the same in almost every detail.

But as humans we tend towards reacting as if THIS situation IS that situation. Mostly it goes OK. Guy with knife running towards me, kick in nuts solved it last time, will usually work this time.

UNLESS IT IS THE SAME GUY! In which case the kick in the nuts will probably get you stabbed!

So awareness that THIS incident is not exactly THAT incident may save your life.

And yet our Education, our TV programming, our schooling (a different thing to education) teaches us to use the A=A of Aristotle rather than learning to be aware of all the nuances. We get no training in what it is to be human but lots of training in what it means to obey. We get taught the person with Authority is right and we will be punished if we do not conform... and here's the rub... all this is visited upon us by people who do not want us to be individual - the closer they can make us to identical the easier we are to predict and control.

 

[L2R]

very good post, i thoroughly enjoyed reading it. i think you are essentially saying that we don't get taught creativity, and in many ways i agree. i'm still not sure what is "holographic" about this beach/terrain metaphor. i'm also not sure of the parallels between seemingly dichotomous labels and romantic/classic mind sets, as they appear to me to be quite different scales. I'd say the latter would be higher peaks in the terrain map than the former.

i love pirsig's book. it was a favourite for many years, and i've read it four or five times over the years. the sequel didn't have as much impact but it was still good.

i've done a bit of mind philosophy in uni and am happy to share the resources i have saved. let me know if you're interested.

 

[Journyman16]

While we definitely don't get taught creativity and in fact the Prussian-model used in almost all Western countries is specifically designed to kill creativity, that's not quite what I was saying.

Mind you de Bono is the guy who came up with Lateral Thinking and has several methods for sparking it - LT comes very close to being a way to cause creative impulses or thought. Also, the more funnels one has, the less creative one can be - think of it as the funnels getting in the way of the vista.

I look at it this way - we have to ways to 'know' something. One is to find the appropriate 'valley' in the mind and 'walk' the canyon, dodge around the boulders and pick at the 'bits' sticking out, gathering all the ones we need to reach an answer. We can explain to someone else how we got to that answer and if they follow all the same steps, they will get there too.

But we have almost all had the other way, where we have something we need to know and it just 'appears' and we'd never be able to tell anyone how we got to that answer, even though it is right and we knew it was right as soon as it 'arrived.' The way I see this type of knowledge is it is like lifting up above the landscape of mind and seeing the pattern from above, all at once, without having to walk the canyons.

Funnels obscure the view and I don't think we can be creative UNLESS we can rise above the landscape.

Funnels also create black & white humans, people for whom everything is either right or wrong, good or bad, one of us or one of them, with us or against us and so on - the Aristotelian universe of ultimate opposites. An example of this is the Christian/Atheist dichotomy and like almost every 'opposite' identification we make, it is incorrect - if there IS opposite ends to the belief scale, Christians and Atheists are both at the total belief end and Agnostics are at the other, because disbelief is still a belief! An Atheist has as little proof for his/her stance as does the Christian - both KNOW they are right because of a belief. The opposite to that is someone who doesn't believe, and that is the Agnostic.

Likewise the Creationism/Evolution one - the Big Bang lot are believers in Creation, they just don't have a big bearded grandfather type to do it. The Evolutionists are process people and they can find their compatriots among the Creationists because some of them accept evidence that suggests things change across time, so God might have started things but S/He did it in such a way that Evolution is the process by which the Creation moves towards perfection.

Aristotelian logic - and it has caused more deaths, more pain and loss and greater misdirection in our development than any other cause. The religious use such logic to kill because God loves us. The Jews see everyone as against them, the Arabs see the same thing. Some people hate blacks, as if all 'those' people are the same because of their skin colour... the list is as long as you care to make it.

And we are given our funnels in school. That's where we learn that Authority is a valid source of knowledge, because if we do nmot accept the training in THAT label we get punished and ridiculed by the fellow students.

 

[Journyman16]

There is another component to all of this. The 2 types of knowing kind of verges towards it and it is also the subject of suppression in school and even in life from day 1.

All of us will remember the teacher saying something like, "Look at me!" "pay attention!" "Johnny, stop looking out the window! What is the answer!" and so on. Parents and relatives do it too, making noises or even direct commands to get the attention of the baby. We live in this level of Awareness; I call it Spotlight Awareness, a focus that almost describes our entire society - we could easily be seen in later centuries as the Spotlight Civilisation - all that exists is in the very few pixels right at the centre of our attention.

Look at your screen. While you are kind of aware of the whole thing, in reality all you see is a tiny number of pixels in the centre - we compensate by flicking our centre of attention around, quickly covering all the reading area so we form a complete picture, in focus and containing the data we want from it.

That's the Spotlight in action.

Now imagine driving to a nearby town, say 100kms or so. It's you and some friends and there's an event where you are going. All the way there you are in eager conversation, bantering and joking, fully involved in the conversation. When you arrive you suddenly realise you don't really recall almost anything of the road. You drove, you stopped at lights, you watched for kangaroos, you slowed where needed to avoid accidents and more, yet it is all a bit of a blur.

Your Spotlight Awareness was on the conversation and social interaction. You drove quite safely using the other kind of awareness we all have, Floodlight Awareness. The Floodlight is peripheral, all the parts of vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch that are NOT the immediate focus of the Spotlight.

I think at least some of our dreaming, and why day-to-day events in dreams sometimes have really weird components, is running the record from the Floodlight, doing the association and storage that we couldn't do while we lived in the Spotlight. There are other reasons for dreams I think, but that's a different topic entirely.

The tribal people live much more in the Floodlight and from the ones I have talked to, when they say something like 'wolf spirit' they do NOT refer to some ghostly wolf-apparition wandering in the snow, but being able to enter a floodlight awareness of the wolf. They see the world as a wolf (or bear or eagle etc.) does. In their spirit journeys they tend to talk of 'being' the spirit animal - their floodlight is so strong they see the world as the animal does.

We could learn a hell of a lot from them and our world would be better for it. The focus is killing us.

The best part is, we can learn to be far more aware of the floodlight world and the information can save our life or let us react to things nobody else is aware of before it comes into our spotlight. I think entering floodlight awareness is what brings many of the benefits of meditation for example. Being able to become aware of the world as a whole is what the Zen moment' is about, and you can probably think of many more ways in which floodlight is present in life, even though we are forced out of by our schooling and because our parents have also been programmed to live in the spotlight.

 

[Erikmen]

very good post, i thoroughly enjoyed reading it. i think you are essentially saying that we don't get taught creativity, and in many ways i agree. i'm still not sure what is "holographic" about this beach/terrain metaphor. i'm also not sure of the parallels between seemingly dichotomous labels and romantic/classic mind sets, as they appear to me to be quite different scales. I'd say the latter would be higher peaks in the terrain map than the former.

i love pirsig's book. it was a favourite for many years, and i've read it four or five times over the years. the sequel didn't have as much impact but it was still good.

i've done a bit of mind philosophy in uni and am happy to share the resources i have saved. let me know if you're interested.

Yes it´s quite interesting. I like the ones that are illustrated as well.

 

[L2R]

the terminology you use, funnels, valleys, canyons, spotlight, floodlight, etc, are all jibberish. you seem to bounce from subject to subject, from one half idea to another, in each paragraph. the meandering structure of your posts show no systemic or structured analysis. so, i'm not able to follow what you're trying to say.

also, only small bits of this coheres with what i have studied in philosophy of mind and neuroscience.

 

[Journyman16]

The terms are to create an analogy, a mind picture so people can get what I am talking about. Funnels come from the beach idea - I forget who came up with it - possibly de Bono again.

Take a beach, smooth white sand. A light squall comes in and rains on the beach and after, nothing much has changed. There may be some pockmarks in the sand, soon smoothed again by the wind. Now mount some funnels above the sand, big wide ones. Wait for the same squall to come in.

This time the beach is markedly different. The funnels have caused gullies and valleys to form, washing sand away to the sea. The ebach looks nothing like it was.

The beach is analogous to the mind, smooth and barely rippled in the baby. The rain is information that comes in. The funnels are the values and labels we are given as we grow. e.g. telling someone in the West that a cow tastes great in a roast will trigger pleasure reactions; telling exactly the same thing to an Indian child will bring horror reactions - different funnels have been put in place.

The subject is only one, what and who is a human. If it seems all over the place it is because the Spotlight is not a good place to be holistic and you can't describe a human without being holistic - human is a chaotic state. :D

And don't take this wrong, but I am in no way trying to cohere with your studies. These are my thoughts based on what I have observed and learned and tried out. I keep what works and discard what doesn't.

 

[L2R]

i appreciate the effort you're going to to communicate what is an exceedingly difficult set of subjects. and my offer for materials stands if you are ever up for it. i have both academic readings as well as mp3 lectures saved.

be careful with that analogy. only use it for as long as it takes to get certain points across. anything longer and it becomes a crutch and distraction.

 

[Journyman16]

@L2R - your inbox is full...

 

[L2R]

sorry. fixed now.

 

[Erikmen]

i appreciate the effort you're going to to communicate what is an exceedingly difficult set of subjects. and my offer for materials stands if you are ever up for it. i have both academic readings as well as mp3 lectures saved.

be careful with that analogy. only use it for as long as it takes to get certain points across. anything longer and it becomes a crutch and distraction.

It really seems you know a lot about this..

 

[L2R]

It really seems you know a lot about this..

it's just something i took a bit of an interest in during my studies. not sure if i really know all that much. i'm just familiar with how to talk about this kind of stuff, reducing extraneous stuff and keeping it simple.

 

[Journyman16]

While it may seem I am off on another tangent, this is more just another aspect of being a human.

There are a number of systems in the body that not many people have heard about. One is a system of very fine filament that is present all through the body. It comes near the surface at certain places and can be measured with a simple meter - skin resistance alters markedly at certain spots - interestingly those places correspond to something many people HAVE heard of, the acupressure or acupuncture locations.

Operating MUCH faster than nerves, it is possible they may help explain the batman's paradox. For those not aware, science says a batsman cannot possibly hit the ball with enough precision to remain at the crease. (cricket, but applies to baseball as well)

The pitch in cricket is 22 yards long. A fast bowler can bowl at up to 100mph, with a bounce usually less than half the pitch away from the batsman. The transmission rate of nerves and even the fastest reaction time of an athlete are not quick enough to let the batsman reliably strike the ball. In other words, the game should be very much in favour of the bowlers - as anyone who has watched cricket knows, that just ain't the case. Thus, the batsman's paradox - how can he see, calculate and react fast enough that the bowler has trouble getting him out?

There's another system as well, known about for decades or even centuries, but ignored in almost every model of the body. Every muscle, every organ, the skeleton are all contained - all through the body there are connective and sheathing tissues. Ligaments, tendons, the surface of organs and muscles - the tissues have been pretty much ignored except for structural uses.

But examined very closely it turns out the structure of these tissues looks very much like structures you have right in front of you - they look very much like memory and processing structures, just like in your computer with the CPU and RAM.

This gives a different view to the body than what many of you will accept.

Imagine, a parallel processing system, operating at logic levels based on light transmission, with 3 billion data points per unit, with something over 50 TRILLION units, all connected by a multiplexing system capable of duplex IO operations running simultaneously & preferentially orchestrated by the most complex switching gear we've been able to imagine, all operating at the behest of an energy field in simultaneous contact via a hologramatic field that has no known limit.


times 7 BILLION!


Go look in a mirror because the best bet is, THAT'S what we all are.

The hologram field is the mind, but the human field is not located solely inside our skull - there are a number of fields that are part of us and they surround our body completely and some of them at least can be reliably measured.

Given earlier comments about the number of different topics I am trying to cover, that's probably enough for this post. :D More soon...

 

[Journyman16]

Harry Oldifeld is a guy from the 70's who has found ways to show fields, not just as photos but to video them. This video is lengthy but interesting. H.O. has gone on into selling crystals and healing I think, but what a man ends up doing doesn't invalidate work done earlier.

If it did we'd still be bashing flint in caves... :D


In this HO goes through types of field effects and more. Worth a view, even if to me he sounds like Benny Hill trying to be serious... :D

 

[Journyman16]

OK, to try to bring some of this together, I think we have a body, a brain, a mind and a field (or more than one) that runs an incredible system as a whole.

The next step is what cells actually are.

Most people, if asked what runs a cell would respond DNA. Some would say perhaps, proteins or maybe organelles - there are all kinds of views about cells. But DNA is definitely not the thing running a cell. DNA is more like a cabinet full of blueprints that can be accessed to go do different building projects.

So, how does a cell work? What happens is a molecule or other signal makes contact with the cell membrane. Depending on the 'signal' the membrane might open and let the messenger in, or it might react by opertaing some machinery inside the cell wall that causes the cell to do things. (usually read DNA, make RNA, create protein.

So if there is a 'controller' of a cell it would be the membrane.

And all cells work like this... All of them... Including ones in the brain...

So... how do we 'decide' to do anything? Clearly, if all cells work like this, i.e. perform tasks according to external signals, we don't have a 'God' cell. i.e. we have yet to find a cell that can initiate an action WITHOUT a prior signal.

So how do we move our arm?

Cells respond to other things. Radiation can reach right in and turn a mechanism on and cause uncontrolled growth that shortly kills the organism. Electric and magnetic fields can cause changes as well, some good, some bad or fatal.

And here we are, a construction of cells and fields, with sensitive systems for passing information and acting in duplex mode into every cell of the possibly 70 trillion that make up a body.

What do you think the chances are that we are using fields to 'drive' our bodies?

If a cell cannot initiate, the we cannot point at a cell or group of cells and say - that is where 'I' is. And all else is fields. So it seems an easy step to suppose that a field is initiating actions and a brain cell is the first port of call for the signal, and it then begins the messenger cascade that causes us to swing a bat.

So now we have a possible mechanism for things like spontaneous remission of terminal illness. The one common factor among all those I have read or heard about is they changed their mind.

For some it was getting religion, for others it was leaving it. Some found a selfless purpose and left the old them behind, others left their work in a hospital to enjoy their last days and found health as well. But by making a change to how they think, what they see and experience, they healed themselves, using the field to alter how the body is functioning, to turn on genes or turn them off using the epigenetic controls, all backed by access to the best processing system we've never dreamed of.

And usually, all done subconsciously.

 

[Journyman16]

So here we are, driving around the Solid in a transport light years beyond even a Bugatti Veyron, so in tune with the vehicle we 'own' it and most think of the vehicle as their 'self' but is that how it is?

Close your eyes and picture an orange. 'See' it as real as you can make it. This is you looking at a hologram-formed image of an orange. (the map is NOT the territory, OK?) Now picture it moving away from you a few feet or a metre. You can still 'see' it, right?

Now ask yourself... "Who is looking at the orange?"

There are some who feel the 'I' of all this cmes from some kind of 'pass-the-baton' among brain 'agents' - the idea is that when we have sex, there is a sex agent who runs things and when we need to exercise there is a gym agent and so on. The 'I' gets passed around according to situation.

I haven't seen an explanation for how this is meant to work as a brain function thing - certainly I haven't seen MRI's or PET images of functional areas of the brain lighting up to control everything while an activity is on. They may exist... But I think, what they are trying to say without actually stepping out of the 'consensus' is that the 'agents' are perhaps field areas. That's the only thing I can think of that might make sense of such a scenario.

Again, I could be wrong. These are simply my views put together from my life and experiences.

Now for non-sequitur... sort of...

I have been 'out of body' a number of times, consciously and with aforethought. There's nothing quite like it for giving one a real sense of just what 'I' is. I think there are exactly 2 things and only 2 things, the Universe and Consciousness... and I'm not real confident about the Universe. :D I think there is a piece of consciousness in all of us, (hard as it is to believe for the likes of Tony Abbot and Joe Hockey) and it uses the fields to 'attach' to the Solid and experience a body living a life.

As near as I can tell, and I acknowledge my limitations, this seems the best fit I can find for all the strange things and the normal things that occur in our existence. And it ties directly back into the Spiritual, which will get some people offside immediately. :D