NDES and OBES: dreams are the key

Not irrelevant at all Dan, because you used an analogy in the attempt to illustrate a principle…but your analogy (in its real world context) *actually* demonstrates the opposite of what you used it for. What do you imagine you would be conscious “of” as a “field.”? Give me an example of how such consciousness could even be aware. In fact, just try to give me an example of such consciousness, period, and you'll see the problem.

No it doesn't, this is only assuming your own personal variables, I have just listed one of mine which accounts for the gripe of yours. You asking for an example of how such consciouness could be aware, yet we don't even now how WE are aware right now. I could likewise ask you to "detect" this deep human psyche which happens to stream into our awareness at prescribed times in our lives.






I mean that there is no mental aptitude that can survive its species of brain damage, unlike your receiver analogy. If your claim is that the “picture and sound” represent human mind and personality…well then, this is *destroyed* by a malfunctioning set. The broadcast, even on those terms, is not a realizable picture and sound without a receiver, so again, the analogy is not actually one that works, even with the world of technology you are lifting it from. You can’t have your cake and eat it in that way. Either the broadcast is something completely different from the image, or it isn’t. Mind and personality (picture and sound) are only possible with a receiver. The broadcast wave is not a show…it can be considered potential only. To THAT degree I concede that the analogy might have some traction, but then it becomes no longer simply a "transmission" analogy, but an "enabling" analogy, something that draw potential into actuality.

Oh I see, (when you say there is no mental aptitude that can survive its species of brain damage") your just making a retrospective correlation which itself is based on your pre existing assumption that conscioiusness cannot function in a similar form that it does now without a brain.

Your reply is well thought out, but it falls down in that the whole point is that consciousness within and without the brain is different, a differently experienced thing with differeing capacities. Just like the picture and sound is in a different form within and without the set.




It’s not “my logic” Dan. It’s the logic of the whole of nature and of physics. There are no phenomena exempt from the universal energy currency. If you don't agree, again, please give a specific example. This includes what you are calling “mind,” which, as I pointed out above, is a phenomena of stellar proximity enabled by complex elements, a large reservoir of available enery, and complex structures.


You ignored my point, the afterlife can be considered as a part of this energy ecology in principle whether we have detected the "afterlife particle" or not based solely on generally and specifically corroborating accounts. Please don't casually say what the origin of mind is, it is just as possible that pre existing mind in whatever exotic form invades biology.

Question, what is the relationship between mind and the universal energy currency?




You are assuming a concept that is essentially “magical” in the attempt to solve a problem that is pragmatic. Magical wand concepts have no explanation content. That problem is that the universe is an inter-connected ecology. Nothing can happen in it that does not rebound upon other things in it. A “department” of the universe involving billions of afterlife beings all mentating would have to be a high energy domain. It is nigh inconceivable that this high energy domain could go undetected. Again, “magical” assumptions about its secretness, remoteness and so on are required to be shoehorned in to the argument to make an excuse for why it wouldn’t be detectable. Other dimensions, higher vibrations, “pure consciousness” etc are all such pragmatism-resistant “magical” constructs that do not really address the problem’s dimensions, these being 1) all phenomena are caught up in universal energy currency, 2) mind is a high energy and therefore “visible” phenomenon in cosmic terms.

Everything you just said is predicated on the assumption that we havn't detected this afterlife. This is of course patently false. All this stuff about it having to be high energy in the way we understand eneris an assumption about it's nature too.

Consider this, mind is clearly the dominant "force" in the "beyond", mind one thing we cannot yet measure, and hence it would be expected that we cannot measure this realm directly as of yet.

You need to stop conflating the strangeness of mind with the relative familiarity of matter.

We are told dark matter makes up most of the universe and yet we may only infer it's existence. Inferral is a valid method of science and it's use on confronting the data on the afterlife should not force us use our current notions of what should and shouldn't be apparent to cast it aside, but rather cause us to wonder and awe at just how much more there is to discover
 
There weren't any refutations to my point. You simply misunderstood what was being said, and then diverted the conversation from its important aspect…which was a discussion about how NDEs could have arisen as an evolutionary response to the threat of death. And by the way, it is *common practice* in evolutionary discussions to use such terms as advantage, response, selection etc, because everyone knowledgeable in these discussions knows that it is metaphorical. Dawkins, for instance, knows perfectly well that “selfish genes” aren’t actually “selfish.” It’s really only in dealing with the public, who often know nothing about these subjects, that one would need to worry about one’s exact language.

IPassig off my cogent refutations as a "misunderstanding" is a massively disingenuous sidestep. Either you know I did not misunderstand you or you don't understand fully the terms you are using, which according to my previous analysis is actaully the case.

It is common practice to use metaphor yes, but thee is a massive problem with this in biology in that a metaphor equates relatively analagous things, in biology equating an accident to a response is actually a dangerously misleading use of metaphor as they are, in actuality, complete opposites. There is a major problem in biology in that it cannot find its own lexicon divorced from words and phrases which imply both purpose and design.

Oh and thanks for clearing that up I always thought genes actually were selfish.............



This statement has *nothing to do* with what I just said to you about a change in survival pressure brought about by a change in environment.

You need to stop sidestepping, anyone who reads this will clearly see I was addressing your use of the word fit in line with our conversation

Well, no one can show anyone “millions of years of history,” but that doesn't mean they didn't occur and that we're stuck with the limited information about history that we have. What can be shown is trends in recorded culture, trends in biological form, etc. I can just as well say to you (and with much more impact) show me the spirit matter, show me the afterlife independent of the physical world, show me that it isn’t derived of the physical world…and of course this you cannot do.

I note how your now using the "we don't have the evidence but we can assume with limited information" line, exactly what you have been railing against regarding the afterlife in this thread.

I cannot show dark matte either sir or a great many things, but science has many more methods than direct observation and "knowing" is itself not restricted to science and your constant dancing around that issue is disheartening




The afterlife would have to be *billions* of realized relationships, and I’m not just talking about the intersubjective relationships between beings…I am talking about emotion/emotee….perception/perceiver… etc. Again, none of these phenomena could exist without partaking in universal energy, and so this “world” should be detectable. We’re simply creating fantasies for ourselves by imagining it shouldn’t be.


3 Your literally making up the rules, then basing you opinions on that. Again your point falls down. Really think about this as it's quite interesting. Your idea that we should be able to detect the afterlife if it is "billions of realized relationships" is based on, in your own words the "intersubjective relationship between beings, emotion/emotee, peception/peceiver etc. But these phenomenon are not even detectable NOW. These are the domain of the mind, they are experienced in the mind and hence an entire "afterlife" made up of such "stuff" would be equally elusive.

I'm sue you will refute this in some way but for the readers here it should be something interesting to consider I hope
 
But you take “evidence” which emanates from living brains and extrapolate this to nonliving persons…something you can’t possibly know. My “posture” is adopted from everything pragmatic we presently know about the nature of mind and self. For instance, that without established boundary, individual identity cannot exist. What makes you “you” is so heavily contributed by such things as genes, hormones, emotional modules in the make up of your simian brain etc, that even if consciousness does or did survive post mortem, “you” would be so frankly alien to yourself that there would be almost no point of comparison. There is then the problem of what on earth would constitute a boundary between “selves” in an afterlife realm, again without deus ex machina structures in order to answer the question. To have a resolvable “self” there needs to be a clear you/not you boundary condition.

I'm really not sue how familiar you are with the NDE literature honestly, if you were you would know the boundaries between selves "over there" is completely different than it is over here and many ways is relatively non-existent. The two states need not equate so much as you seem to want them to
 
That problem is that the universe is an inter-connected ecology. Nothing can happen in it that does not rebound upon other things in it. A “department” of the universe involving billions of afterlife beings all mentating would have to be a high energy domain. It is nigh inconceivable that this high energy domain could go undetected. Again, “magical” assumptions about its secretness, remoteness and so on are required to be shoehorned in to the argument to make an excuse for why it wouldn’t be detectable. Other dimensions, higher vibrations, “pure consciousness” etc are all such pragmatism-resistant “magical” constructs that do not really address the problem’s dimensions, these being 1) all phenomena are caught up in universal energy currency, 2) mind is a high energy and therefore “visible” phenomenon in cosmic terms.

Look, it's evident that this assumes that if a domain contains billions of sentient beings, then that domain must be highly energetic, but this assumption may well be false, because there may be a domain of pure information, not related to energy. In fact the quantum entanglement is a case of non-energetic / material relationship between two quantum systems.

Even I took what you said here as being remotely plausible, you would be talking about an energy signature so vanishingly small, that again it is essential “occult” in nature…no complex phenomena could possibly be associated with it because it wouldn’t be comprised of sufficient energy.

Again this assumes that the complexity of a phenomenon is proportional to its energetic signal, which may well be false. Who would have anticipated before the formulation of quantum mechanics the terrible complexity involved in the microscopic realm?

You say that you know that dimensions are not places, and yet you go on to discuss them as places. There is no such thing as a “two dimensional world” or a “three dimensional world.” These things are measuring conventions.

The two-dimensional world was a imaginary example. The visible world has three spatial dimensions. I do not buy your conventionalism.

What is relevant is whether there is any basis for them, and I am encouraging you to see that other explanations are available, explanations which, for the most part, require less violence done to what we already know in order to be true.

What according to your opinion requires less violence or destroys authentic aspects of phenomena that do not fit with what we know or are ridiculously contrived explanations for putting theoretical considerations rather than evidence.

But you take “evidence” which emanates from living brains and extrapolate this to nonliving persons…something you can’t possibly know.

Yes, I can know it following an abductive reasoning, a probable knowledge. You commit the fallacy that if we can not know with absolute certainty if there is an afterlife, then we can not know if there is an afterlife. Your epistemology is absurd if so.

My “posture” is adopted from everything pragmatic we presently know about the nature of mind and self. For instance, that without established boundary, individual identity cannot exist. What makes you “you” is so heavily contributed by such things as genes, hormones, emotional modules in the make up of your simian brain etc, that even if consciousness does or did survive post mortem, “you” would be so frankly alien to yourself that there would be almost no point of comparison. There is then the problem of what on earth would constitute a boundary between “selves” in an afterlife realm, again without deus ex machina structures in order to answer the question. To have a resolvable “self” there needs to be a clear you/not you boundary condition.

Well, the psychic evidence indicates that the spiritual realm is a similar but different from the realm of organic beings, so the transition to the afterlife may be gradual, not radical: genes, hormones, modules emotional in the make up of your simian brain, etc., only modulate our consciousness, not create it.

Yet I am not aware of any examples you are others have given of consciousness actually divorced from physicality. NDEs are realize and remembered through living brains. Mediumship messages are spoken through the mouths of living people with living brains, etc.

But say that the most plausible is that there is an afterlife does not require examples of "consciousness actually divorced from physicality" because it is sufficient to reasonably infer the existence of human consciousness of the deceased from NDEs, mediumship, etc.

It’s not just an opinion Hurahi. It’s a very deep principle reflecting everything we know about the cosmos we live in. I guess you can always retreat to…maybe there’s something we don’t know…but on something of this scale or gravity, it becomes very *very* unlikely.

Yes, it is your opinion, because things are or are not, only the opinions are "likely" or "unlikely", and your opinion is probably false because it is absurdly arrogant to think that in essence we know every corner of nature.
 
Last edited:
Again this assumes that the complexity of a phenomenon is proportional to its energetic signal, which may well be false. Who would have anticipated before the formulation of quantum mechanics the terrible complexity involved in the microscopic realm?

Interesting to think in this regard that microbes actually physically outweigh us on this Earth, and yet their weight is so dispersed in almost immeasurably small amounts
 
No it doesn't, this is only assuming your own personal variables, I have just listed one of mine which accounts for the gripe of yours. You asking for an example of how such consciouness could be aware, yet we don't even now how WE are aware right now. I could likewise ask you to "detect" this deep human psyche which happens to stream into our awareness at prescribed times in our lives.

It’s not a personal variable. I can promise you that transmitting towers are physical. With respect to knowing how we are aware right now, I would say that we know quite a bit about that. I don’t think that we know everything, certainly, but it does not seem to me that there are any (practical) examples that can be given of consciousness not in relation to perceived or contemplated things, and all that we know so far about perceived or contemplated things is that perception and contemplation are physical acts.



Oh I see, (when you say there is no mental aptitude that can survive its species of brain damage") your just making a retrospective correlation which itself is based on your pre existing assumption that conscioiusness cannot function in a similar form that it does now without a brain.

No, I’m saying that whatever mental aptitude you can name, its rootedness in one or another form of brain activity can be demonstrated, and its destruction or degradation by destruction or degradation of that brain activity can be demonstrated. Something of an anomaly if mind were possible without brains.


Your reply is well thought out, but it falls down in that the whole point is that consciousness within and without the brain is different, a differently experienced thing with differeing capacities. Just like the picture and sound is in a different form within and without the set.


There is no picture and sound outwith the set. There is only *potential* picture and sound, which needs a receiver for the show to exist in a consciously experienceable form (if you insist on using this receiver analogy).


You ignored my point, the afterlife can be considered as a part of this energy ecology in principle whether we have detected the "afterlife particle" or not based solely on generally and specifically corroborating accounts. Please don't casually say what the origin of mind is, it is just as possible that pre existing mind in whatever exotic form invades biology.

I don’t understand what you are saying here at all. It is *obvious* that there is no giant footprint being left in cosmic energy ecology by a whole information-rich world full of sentient beings.

Question, what is the relationship between mind and the universal energy currency?

Mind, like everything is, is not exempt from the universal energy ecology.



Everything you just said is predicated on the assumption that we havn't detected this afterlife. This is of course patently false. All this stuff about it having to be high energy in the way we understand eneris an assumption about it's nature too.


No, it’s not an assumption Dan. Stories from OR or from spiritualist mediums is not “detecting the afterlife” in terms of finding an energy footprint for the activities of its billions of alleged beings. All it is doing is detecting the energy footprint of those living and borderline living persons (mediums and NDErs).

Consider this, mind is clearly the dominant "force" in the "beyond", mind one thing we cannot yet measure, and hence it would be expected that we cannot measure this realm directly as of yet.


Mind is a catch-all word for a whole set of interlocking conscious relationships and actions. We can measure each of those. Also, to believe in a beyond one would first have to establish that a “beyond” was needed in order to account for phenomena.

You need to stop conflating the strangeness of mind with the relative familiarity of matter.


Oh, I don’t conflate them at all, because just as I don’t accept the existence of disembodied mind, thus I also don’t accept the existence of mindless matter.Being a neutral monist, I think the universe is patterns of a neutral principle…this is what neutral monism means.
We are told dark matter makes up most of the universe and yet we may only infer it's existence. Inferral is a valid method of science and it's use on confronting the data on the afterlife should not force us use our current notions of what should and shouldn't be apparent to cast it aside, but rather cause us to wonder and awe at just how much more there is to discover


Dark matter is a prima facie notion at this point. I think one might infer the existence of something in this way if there were empirical symptoms of its presence that categorically could not be accounted for by other means, and the doubts concerning even the existence of dark matter are too large.

  • C:\Users\Mark\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png
    agree x 1
 
IPassig off my cogent refutations as a "misunderstanding" is a massively disingenuous sidestep. Either you know I did not misunderstand you or you don't understand fully the terms you are using, which according to my previous analysis is actaully the case.

It’s pretty hard for me to tell whether you are trying to be ironic or not. No: I am 100% sure either that you misunderstood me or that you did it on purpose. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt however. Any time you actually want to get back to discussing that argument, don’t let me stand in your way.

It is common practice to use metaphor yes, but thee is a massive problem with this in biology in that a metaphor equates relatively analagous things, in biology equating an accident to a response is actually a dangerously misleading use of metaphor as they are, in actuality, complete opposites. There is a major problem in biology in that it cannot find its own lexicon divorced from words and phrases which imply both purpose and design.


This is all pointless Dan. I have a degree in evolutionary genetics, as I told you, and I know how Darwinism is conceived to function in detail absurd enough that I wish I could forget it. Now do you want to waste more time on this diversion or not?

You need to stop sidestepping, anyone who reads this will clearly see I was addressing your use of the word fit in line with our conversation

No they won't. Because anyone who actually *is* reading closely enough will understand that you didn't know what fit meant in the first place. But I’ll just keep answering to the points that are actually relevant. I’ll let others decide on who is sidestepping and who isn’t. So I repeat: fitness is defined by current properties of the environment under which the organism is experiencing a survival stress.

I note how your now using the "we don't have the evidence but we can assume with limited information" line, exactly what you have been railing against regarding the afterlife in this thread.

You don’t have “limited information” that a nonphysical world exists. You have zero information, because all the examples that you use to illustrate it with are inseparable from physical phenomena. With respect to the phenomena of biological, or even human mythic, history, we have a considerable body of information from books, from cave art, from philosophy and literature, and from the fossil record. We can clearly discern patterns and trends. Nothing even remotely of that quality exists for the premise of, for example, an “ethereal body.”

I cannot show dark matte either sir or a great many things, but science has many more methods than direct observation and "knowing" is itself not restricted to science and your constant dancing around that issue is disheartening

Science does not have many more methods than direct observation. If observation is not possible at some point in the process, then we are not talking science, we are talking notion. And at the moment, dark matter is notion by the way/


3 Your literally making up the rules, then basing you opinions on that. Again your point falls down. Really think about this as it's quite interesting. Your idea that we should be able to detect the afterlife if it is "billions of realized relationships" is based on, in your own words the "intersubjective relationship between beings, emotion/emotee, peception/peceiver etc. But these phenomenon are not even detectable NOW. These are the domain of the mind, they are experienced in the mind and hence an entire "afterlife" made up of such "stuff" would be equally elusive.


Oh but they are detectable now. Indeed, with modern brain scanning techniques it is even possible to discern when you are *looking* at something, when you are thinking of a sentence, when you are hearing something, etc.



I'm re
ally not sue how familiar you are with the NDE literature honestly, if you were you would know the boundaries between selves "over there" is completely different than it is over here and many ways is relatively non-existent. The two states need not equate so much as you seem to want them to

I’m very familiar with NDE literature. However, I can’t see any point you are making here that I can respond to. An assertion is not an argument.
 
Look, it's evident that this assumes that if a domain contains billions of sentient beings, then that domain must be highly energetic, but this assumption may well be false, because there may be a domain of pure information, not related to energy. In fact the quantum entanglement is a case of non-energetic / material relationship between two quantum systems.

Quanta are *energy* haruhi. The *synchronous relationship* between, for example, two photons is an informational attribute (although they cannot be used to signal actual information, if I understand correctly) but the quantal states that the system of capable of switching between is determined by the energy ecology, just like everything else.


Again this assumes that the complexity of a phenomenon is proportional to its energetic signal, which may well be false. Who would have anticipated before the formulation of quantum mechanics the terrible complexity involved in the microscopic realm?

Haruhi, it *is* proportional to available energy in the universal currency. There is absolutely nothing in the quantum realm that even begins to approach the complexity of the simplest bacterium.

The two-dimensional world was a imaginary example. The visible world has three spatial dimensions. I do not buy your conventionalism.

“Conventionalism” has nothing to do with it. It’s a question of correctly understanding the term you are using, and what its origin is.

What according to your opinion requires less violence or destroys authentic aspects of phenomena that do not fit with what we know or are ridiculously contrived explanations for putting theoretical considerations rather than evidence.

I can only respond to arguments, not assertions (which is all this is).

Yes, I can know it following an abductive reasoning, a probable knowledge. You commit the fallacy that if we can not know with absolute certainty if there is an afterlife, then we can not know if there is an afterlife. Your epistemology is absurd if so.

No: in order for a thesis to have even proximal conclusion, such that, for example, “symptom X is adequate evidence that an afterlife exists” this “symptom X” would need to be free of plausible alternative explanations. So for example, let’s say I posited that the sun is really a dragon. Am I “absolutely certain” that the sun isn’t a dragon? Well, no, but this isn’t a useful way of arguing. It does no sensible work. The useful way of arguing is to measure the temperature of the sun’s fireball, and to understand, for example, that the flesh of no creature could possibly survive that temperature. Ergo, either this dragon has “miraculous” properties or it cannot exist as the source of the sun. One would need to have properties of the sun that were diagnostically indicative of dragon origin…such as dragon scales being blown out along with solar flares or a photograph from space of a huge dragon with the sun in its mouth, along with samples of a wholly new type of flesh, analyzable by laboratory, that could show survival under plasma temperatures. But if there is no quality of the thesis “the sun is a dragon” that relates the actual symptoms of the sun exclusively to its nature as a dragon, and to no other nature, then the thesis has no traction whatever. Essentially, it’s just a myth.

Well, the psychic evidence indicates that the spiritual realm is a similar but different from the realm of organic beings, so the transition to the afterlife may be gradual, not radical: genes, hormones, modules emotional in the make up of your simian brain, etc., only modulate our consciousness, not create it.

No, that’s a circular argument, because the “spiritual realm” is the extraordinary claim that needs backing. The *idea* of it is not itself backing for its own extraordinary claim.

But say that the most plausible is that there is an afterlife does not require examples of "consciousness actually divorced from physicality" because it is sufficient to reasonably infer the existence of human consciousness of the deceased from NDEs, mediumship, etc.

Most plausible isn’t that useful a criterion, because you and I won’t agree on what is most plausible. Much more useful is what can actually be resolved about the behavior of phenomena, and concomitant phenomena that certain other phenomena are always found in association with. For example, if someone claimed that some books were written by squirrels, it is insufficient for them to say that they once knew a squirrel who wrote a book. We would need *coordinate facts* from everything else we know about squirrels. We would need evidence that their brains could process language at that degree of sophistication. We would need real time evidence of squirrels writing books. We would need evidence of an evolution in squirrel culture that led to this pass, etc.

Yes, it is your opinion, because things are or are not, only the opinions are "likely" or "unlikely", and your opinion is probably false because it is absurdly arrogant to think that in essence we know every corner of nature.

Corners are pretty small though. This would be like not only an elephant, but a woolly mammoth in the middle of the sitting room, and to be blunt: this is as close to impossible as anything that could reasonably be named.
 
There is absolutely nothing in the quantum realm that even begins to approach the complexity of the simplest bacterium.

I love when you say stuff like that, Kai! Your confidence should be bottled and sold at market. :)
 
I love when you say stuff like that, Kai! Your confidence should be bottled and sold at market. :)

You are welcome Chuck. Just make sure I receive a royalty. Alternatively you could always just break out that golden egg example that might actually be an argument against what I said ;)

Just so that you understand the rules...something specific in the "quantum realm" that is as complex as a bacterium. When you're ready...
 
You are welcome Chuck. Just make sure I receive a royalty. Alternatively you could always just break out that golden egg example that might actually be an argument against what I said ;)

Just so that you understand the rules...something specific in the "quantum realm" that is as complex as a bacterium. When you're ready...

I do really appreciate your gumption. I don't know squat about the bacterial or quantum realms. But I'm glad you know enough to lay it down with style!

I'm actually still thinking about the beginning of this discussion and hope some year to jump back into the thread with something constructive. I have a very hard time actually concentrating on any one thing for more than a few seconds though. So it might be a while.

My intention was friendliness, not snarkiness.
 
I do really appreciate your gumption. I don't know squat about the bacterial or quantum realms. But I'm glad you know enough to lay it down with style!

I'm actually still thinking about the beginning of this discussion and hope some year to jump back into the thread with something constructive. I have a very hard time actually concentrating on any one thing for more than a few seconds though. So it might be a while.

My intention was friendliness, not snarkiness.

That's cool!
 
Quanta are *energy* haruhi. The *synchronous relationship* between, for example, two photons is an informational attribute (although they cannot be used to signal actual information, if I understand correctly) but the quantal states that the system of capable of switching between is determined by the energy ecology, just like everything else.

But there is no energy transfer between two entangled photons.

“Conventionalism” has nothing to do with it. It’s a question of correctly understanding the term you are using, and what its origin is.

The conventionalism has to do with it, because you think that dimensions are conventional and I consider that the dimensions are real features of the space.

No: in order for a thesis to have even proximal conclusion, such that, for example, “symptom X is adequate evidence that an afterlife exists” this “symptom X” would need to be free of plausible alternative explanations. So for example, let’s say I posited that the sun is really a dragon. Am I “absolutely certain” that the sun isn’t a dragon? Well, no, but this isn’t a useful way of arguing. It does no sensible work. The useful way of arguing is to measure the temperature of the sun’s fireball, and to understand, for example, that the flesh of no creature could possibly survive that temperature. Ergo, either this dragon has “miraculous” properties or it cannot exist as the source of the sun. One would need to have properties of the sun that were diagnostically indicative of dragon origin…such as dragon scales being blown out along with solar flares or a photograph from space of a huge dragon with the sun in its mouth, along with samples of a wholly new type of flesh, analyzable by laboratory, that could show survival under plasma temperatures. But if there is no quality of the thesis “the sun is a dragon” that relates the actual symptoms of the sun exclusively to its nature as a dragon, and to no other nature, then the thesis has no traction whatever. Essentially, it’s just a myth.

What happens is that the psychic researchers which have been fair have managed to rule out plausible alternative explanations: the most robust cases logically only have two possible interpretations: afterlife or super-psi, and for various reasons super-psi is not a plausible alternative explanation. Your example of dragon is silly.

Most plausible isn’t that useful a criterion, because you and I won’t agree on what is most plausible. Much more useful is what can actually be resolved about the behavior of phenomena, and concomitant phenomena that certain other phenomena are always found in association with. For example, if someone claimed that some books were written by squirrels, it is insufficient for them to say that they once knew a squirrel who wrote a book. We would need *coordinate facts* from everything else we know about squirrels. We would need evidence that their brains could process language at that degree of sophistication. We would need real time evidence of squirrels writing books. We would need evidence of an evolution in squirrel culture that led to this pass, etc.

Well sorry but empirical science is loaded with subjective judgments and probable knowledge. And again your example is silly.
 
It’s not a personal variable. I can promise you that transmitting towers are physical. With respect to knowing how we are aware right now, I would say that we know quite a bit about that. I don’t think that we know everything, certainly, but it does not seem to me that there are any (practical) examples that can be given of consciousness not in relation to perceived or contemplated things, and all that we know so far about perceived or contemplated things is that perception and contemplation are physical acts.

. Everything you say is based on the assumption that perception can only occur within the "Physical body". We of course, disagree on this and can leave it as agreeing to disagree as we have previously established our differences in interpreting Near Death Data.



No, I’m saying that whatever mental aptitude you can name, its rootedness in one or another form of brain activity can be demonstrated, and its destruction or degradation by destruction or degradation of that brain activity can be demonstrated. Something of an anomaly if mind were possible without brains.

You say no an then proceed to do the same thing, confusing to say the least.To explain. It's quite exemplary of your capacity to "move the goalposts" when you think about what you are saying here. You say that any mental aptitudes desctruction is can be demonstrated as being correlated with the destruction of brain activity. And yet, during the NDE the perception of the individual, even though in some cases the brain is "dead" in so far as we know what is capable of medaiting conscousness. In this case you make allowances for that fact simply because of your starting point. More consciousness, more alertness, generally heightened mental facilities, all during a time of heavily compromised of essentially non-existent brain function. This goes against your idea that all mental aptitudes can be tied to the destruction of brain function yet you have to somehow allow for it with "deep dreaming" or "vast psyche akashic field thing" in order to keep your philosophical gravy train on track.

Also, we know too, that the brain can by physically remolded at the behest of thought itself. It is not a simple one way system as you like to explain.


There is no picture and sound ou twith the set. There is only *potential* picture and sound, which needs a receiver for the show to exist in a consciously experienceable form (if you insist on using this receiver analogy).

Yes, and there is no "consciousness as it is experienced in the human body without a human body" There is no problem with the analogy in this regard


I don’t understand what you are saying here at all. It is *obvious* that there is no giant footprint being left in cosmic energy ecology by a whole information-rich world full of sentient beings.

Your ignoring my explanations in this regard and going on as if I hadn't said them



Mind, like everything is, is not exempt from the universal energy ecology.

No, I'm asking you specifically, what it the footprint of mind in this ecology?


No, it’s not an assumption Dan. Stories from OR or from spiritualist mediums is not “detecting the afterlife” in terms of finding an energy footprint for the activities of its billions of alleged beings. All it is doing is detecting the energy footprint of those living and borderline living persons (mediums and NDErs).

Again, show me the "energy footprint" of mind, of consciousness. And do not reference the brains electrical activity because as I have stated, thought can preceed and precipitate this just as easily as it can be influenced by external cues.

Mind is a catch-all word for a whole set of interlocking conscious relationships and actions. We can measure each of those. Also, to believe in a beyond one would first have to establish that a “beyond” was needed in order to account for phenomena.

Your ignoring the simple point that "mind" is detectable only second hand, not directly, hence if the "beyond" is the domain of mind primarily, then it too is only detectable second hand, until we find a mind detector, again I refer to my previous question about the "footprint of mind" independant of second hand detection based on "interlocking relationships and actions" because the "afterlife" too by this logic can be considered a "catch all term" for a whole set of interlocking relationships.


Dark matter is a prima facie notion at this point. I think one might infer the existence of something in this way if there were empirical symptoms of its presence that categorically could not be accounted for by other means, and the doubts concerning even the existence of dark matter are too large.

Couldn't disagree more, it can indeed be scientifically inferred and the "alternate you speak of like "deep dreaming" utterly lack parsimony. By your own logic again then, the only theory that can account for all the NDE phenomena as of right now, is the "afterlife hypothesis". You of course disagree with this. Regarding dark matter, there are indeed other theories to account and contradictory data so again by your own logic it is not "Prima Facie". Indeed just recently a study was completed which accounted for all the matter in an galaxy without at all referencing dark matter. (I will try and find the exact study) You make everything seem so cut and dry yet it is not.

Again, inferral is a most valid method of science and can hence be applied to the "afterlife hypothesis" without the need to resort to such notions as detecting an "afterlife particle". That can come later if it comes at all, indeed much of physics is based on such ideas and models, and it is then only later that we have the capacity to demonstrate these things, the HIggs Boson being a recent example of this, so please stop with the "give it to me now" type remarks because it is not how science works
 
This is all pointless Dan. I have a degree in evolutionary genetics, as I told you, and I know how Darwinism is conceived to function in detail absurd enough that I wish I could forget it. Now do you want to waste more time on this diversion or not?

"This is all pointless" does absolutoly nothing to address my points, and telling me AGAIN that you are educated in evolutionary genetics just comes off as appealling to your own authority. Biology is my specialty and I am completely confident in what I am saying regarding the linguistics of the field. Couching in the whole things as a "diversion" comes of as intellectually dishonest and an evasion tactic of sorts. You brought evolution into this and you make it out that I am somehow engaging in a diversion, so if you expected me to just accept your conclusions due to your background then you expected wrong.


No they won't. Because anyone who actually *is* reading closely enough will understand that you didn't know what fit meant in the first place. But I’ll just keep answering to the points that are actually relevant. I’ll let others decide on who is sidestepping and who isn’t. So I repeat: fitness is defined by current properties of the environment under which the organism is experiencing a survival stress.

To repeat, I was indeed addressing your use of the word fit

You don’t have “limited information” that a nonphysical world exists. You have zero information, because all the examples that you use to illustrate it with are inseparable from physical phenomena. With respect to the phenomena of biological, or even human mythic, history, we have a considerable body of information from books, from cave art, from philosophy and literature, and from the fossil record. We can clearly discern patterns and trends. Nothing even remotely of that quality exists for the premise of, for example, an “ethereal body.”

Again you sidestepped. You used the "we dont have the evidence but we can assume with limited information" line regarding the historical mutations which conferred NDE visions on the biological entity, the exact line of reasoning you rail against regarding the "afterlife" Forget whether or not a "non physical world exists" Call it what you want, we have reams of corroborating evidence for it and saying we don't is nothing more than a different interpretation of that data, and opinion to be precise, one which you constantly conflate with a fact.

Science does not have many more methods than direct observation. If observation is not possible at some point in the process, then we are not talking science, we are talking notion. And at the moment, dark matter is notion by the way/

It either has toerh methods or it doesn't, which is it? We cannot observe the Big Bang, we cannot observe evolution of one species into another, we cannot observe dark matter directly, indeed by your yardstick these things cannot be considered classically scientific, and I would agree to an/specifically this extent. But this is just my point, we don't have to call it science, and all things that can be known cannot be known by science, hence attempting to denigrate something merely because it is innacesible to direct observation as either unproveable or non existent is the greatest arrogance and relegates even subjective feelings such as love to this category whether or not they have effects on the body and brain. You will argue that it is not that which is your problem but the data itself, yet you speak different.

Yes, a "prima facie" notion according to you. Again you show double standards, you admit that science is direct observation and yet you call dark matter a "notion". Hence in you words, a "notion" can be proven as "prima facie". With this logic in mind, we can at least say in principle that is is possible to come to the point that the "notion" of the "afterlife" is similarly "prima facie" in its potential apparentness. Without even going into that apparentness, we can follow your thought process to this conclusion





Oh but they are detectable now. Indeed, with modern brain scanning techniques it is even possible to discern when you are *looking* at something, when you are thinking of a sentence, when you are hearing something, etc.

Again you want to have you cake and eat it, this is not direct observation, this is secondary observation, the signals are precipitated by the act. An afterlife made up of the elusive "stuff" of mind would by this logic also be detectable only secondarily.

I’m very familiar with NDE literature. However, I can’t see any point you are making here that I can respond to. An assertion is not an argument.
[/QUOTE]

My point is clear, clear as day, just as it was on telepathy which you have just casually stopped responding too I notice.
 
Perhaps this quote from Ken Ring's 1997 paper "Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of
Apparent Eyeless Vision
" is worthwhile introducing into the debate:

---- quote ----

The Dream Hypothesis

One fairly obvious possibility that has often been advanced in connection with the NDEs and OBEs of sighted persons is that this experience is some kind of a dream, perhaps a lucid or exceptionally vivid dream, which has such realistic properties that it is easily misinterpreted and thus given an ontological status it does not deserve.

To evaluate this hypothesis, we first need to inquire into what is known about normal oneiric processes in the blind. Fortunately, there has been a great deal of research devoted to the dreams of the blind, some of it going back more than a hundred years. As a result of these investigations, certain generalizations about the presence of visual imagery in dreams appear to stand up quite well. Among these "empirical cornerstones" (Kirtley, 1975) are that (1) there are no visual images in the dreams of the congenitally blind; (2) individuals blinded before the age of 5 also tend not to have visual imagery; (3) those who become sightless between the age of 5 to 7 may or may not retain visual imagery; and (4) most persons who lose their sight after age 7 do retain visual imagery, although its clarity tends to fade with time. In addition, various researchers have found that audition tends to be the primary sense involved in dreams of the blind, with tactile and kinesthetic elements next (Kirtley, 1975).

In our interviews, we routinely asked our respondents about the nature of their dreams, and what we found in our sample accords with the generalizations just described. In addition, however, and particularly pertinent to the hypothesis under consideration, our respondents usually went on to say that not only were their NDEs unlike their usual dreams, but in the case of those blind from birth they stood out as radically different precisely because they contained visual imagery, whereas their dreams had always lacked this element.

Vicki, one of our NDErs blind from birth, provides a good case in point:

Interviewer.
How would you compare your dreams to your NDEs?
Vkki: No similarity, no similarity at all.

Interviewer:
Do you have any kind of visual perception in yourdreams?
Vicki: Nothing. No color, no sight of any sort, no shadows, no light,no nothing.

Interviewer:
What kinds of perceptions are you aware of in your typical dreams?
Vicki: Taste—I have a lot of eating dreams [laughs]. And I have dreams when I'm playing the piano and singing, which I do for a living, anyway. I have dreams in which I touch things. ... I taste things, touch things, hear things, and smell things—that's it.

Interviewer:
And no visual perceptions?
Vicki: No.

Interviewer:
So that what you experienced during your NDE was quite different from your dreams?
Vicki: Yeah, because there's no visual impression at all in any dream that I have.

These remarks, along with similar asseverations from other participants in our study, make it abundantly clear that from our respondents' point of view, the NDE, especially its visual aspect, has nothing in common with their usual dreams. It is instead something in a class by itself and not to be conflated with dreams. Since there is no support whatever from our interviews for the dream hypothesis of NDEs, we may confidently reject it as a potential explanation for our findings.

---- end ----
 
. Everything you say is based on the assumption that perception can only occur within the "Physical body". We of course, disagree on this and can leave it as agreeing to disagree as we have previously established our differences in interpreting Near Death Data.

No you shouldn’t leave it as that. Because it is a sufficiently extraordinary claim that it requires exclusionary evidence in its favor. At the moment (so far as I am concerned at least) any evidence that could be said to exist for what you claim is far from exclusionary (i.e. that which you think is perception outwith the determinants of the body is probably functioning by the determinants of the body). Of course, this might *in principle* not be true, but I have not seen any sufficiently strong species of evidence that presently leads to a justified belief that it isn’t true.


You say no an then proceed to do the same thing, confusing to say the least.To explain. It's quite exemplary of your capacity to "move the goalposts" when you think about what you are saying here. You say that any mental aptitudes desctruction is can be demonstrated as being correlated with the destruction of brain activity. And yet, during the NDE the perception of the individual, even though in some cases the brain is "dead" in so far as we know what is capable of medaiting conscousness. In this case you make allowances for that fact simply because of your starting point. More consciousness, more alertness, generally heightened mental facilities, all during a time of heavily compromised of essentially non-existent brain function. This goes against your idea that all mental aptitudes can be tied to the destruction of brain function yet you have to somehow allow for it with "deep dreaming" or "vast psyche akashic field thing" in order to keep your philosophical gravy train on track.

If the brain really were nonfunctional at the time of these experiences, in other words, if properly controlled time stamped, information-flow controlled studies were conducted which showed this, and if monitoring existed of neural activity to the degree that nonfunctionality could be declared with certainty, and if knowledge reports (especially nonsensory knowledge reports impossible to acquire via the senses) were again time stamped to nonfunctional neural activity, then we would be in a situation to claim what you claim above. But since none of that is presently the case (or even close to being the case) the notion that these experiences are actually furnished free of neural activity can in all seriousness be considered only of the most prima facie kind. We do NOT have properly controlled, time-stamped studies of anomalous knowledge acquisition. We do NOT have the kind of real time brain monitoring that can enable us to say that the brain was entirely without activity, especially unusual or emergency mode activity, we do NOT have the kind of data that enable us to be certain when NDEs are happening during the crisis curve, we do NOT have sufficient understanding of these experiences to know in what form they take root even, or how their (subjective) temporal flow relates to their actual genesis.



Also, we know too, that the brain can by physically remolded at the behest of thought itself. It is not a simple one way system as you like to explain.

Please show me “thought itself” occurring without a brain. Therefore, what you are talking about is a living brain changing its states. I do not dispute that living systems can change their states.

Yes, and there is no "consciousness as it is experienced in the human body without a human body" There is no problem with the analogy in this regard

Ah, but consciousness *is* what is experienced in the human body, just as “picture” is the thing experienced in your analogy. Provided that the analogy is limited to those terms it remains a useful or appropriate analogy. However, the terms of the analogy are now that the receiver is required for consciousness to exist. Again, I am just talking about the analogy here. It would be more productive for your case to argue that different types of receiver were possible. Though you would of course need evidence with traction for that, in order for it to be credible.
Your ignoring my explanations in this regard and going on as if I hadn't said them

I didn’t ignore you. I didn’t follow your point (and I still don't). Evidently you seem to think there is an easily discernible footprint of an afterlife realm in the physical world. This is the import of your comment. So I will await your response on what you impute this footprint to be.

No, I'm asking you specifically, what it the footprint of mind in this ecology?

No you didn’t ask that specifically. What you asked specifically was “what is the relationship between mind and the universal energy currency?” And thus I gave you my answer: mind is as much drawn into the universal energy currency as everything else, because “mind” does not exist on its own.

Again, show me the "energy footprint" of mind, of consciousness. And do not reference the brains electrical activity because as I have stated, thought can preceed and precipitate this just as easily as it can be influenced by external cues.

Oh I see. But you haven’t shown any such thing, whereas it can be readily shown that you cannot even susutain a waking state without concomitant activity diagnostic of the waking state showing up in your brain. So I am sorry, but I AM referencing brain electrical activity, because that is the correct answer.


Your ignoring the simple point that "mind" is detectable only second hand, not directly, hence if the "beyond" is the domain of mind primarily, then it too is only detectable second hand, until we find a mind detector, again I refer to my previous question about the "footprint of mind" independant of second hand detection based on "interlocking relationships and actions" because the "afterlife" too by this logic can be considered a "catch all term" for a whole set of interlocking relationships.

That really applies only to consciousness. We can discern mind and its activities by a number of tests, for example by asking a musician to compose an original piece of music. More usefully still, we can discern intelligence by a number of ranked factors, so this is not a problem. I have not said at any point that “consciousness” has a third person dimension to it.


Couldn't disagree more, it can indeed be scientifically inferred and the "alternate you speak of like "deep dreaming" utterly lack parsimony. By your own logic again then, the only theory that can account for all the NDE phenomena as of right now, is the "afterlife hypothesis". You of course disagree with this. Regarding dark matter, there are indeed other theories to account and contradictory data so again by your own logic it is not "Prima Facie". Indeed just recently a study was completed which accounted for all the matter in an galaxy without at all referencing dark matter. (I will try and find the exact study) You make everything seem so cut and dry yet it is not.


Well then, like I implied, you infer it only at the just-as-likely risk that you are entirely wrong in the inference, just as dark matter is likely to turn out to be entirely wrong. I don’t have a problem with that kind of inference. I only have a problem with you saying that we can conclude that consciousness survives death on the basis of present evidence. We cannot (unless we are simply electing to believe it).



Again, inferral is a most valid method of science and can hence be applied to the "afterlife hypothesis" without the need to resort to such notions as detecting an "afterlife particle". That can come later if it comes at all, indeed much of physics is based on such ideas and models, and it is then only later that we have the capacity to demonstrate these things, the HIggs Boson being a recent example of this, so please stop with the "give it to me now" type remarks because it is not how science works.


Science proceeds by evidence Dan. There comes a point where inferences have to be borne out, or else alternative inferences turn out to be successful (because borne out). There are consequences of this “afterlife” you pose. Either it would mean that phenomena exist that are somehow free of all bondage to energy (a truly extraordinary claim that would need extraordinary evidence) or else it is not free and there must be a footprint in energy at least sufficient to account for billions of post-mortal earth beings. This isn’t a magic show ;)
 
Last edited:
"This is all pointless" does absolutoly nothing to address my points, and telling me AGAIN that you are educated in evolutionary genetics just comes off as appealling to your own authority. Biology is my specialty and I am completely confident in what I am saying regarding the linguistics of the field. Couching in the whole things as a "diversion" comes of as intellectually dishonest and an evasion tactic of sorts. You brought evolution into this and you make it out that I am somehow engaging in a diversion, so if you expected me to just accept your conclusions due to your background then you expected wrong.

Okay, what do you mean it is your speciality? In what way are you qualified exactly and where did you qualify? You can answer that for me before I even bother with this further, otherwise it’s a waste of time so far as I’m concerned.


Again you sidestepped. You used the "we dont have the evidence but we can assume with limited information" line regarding the historical mutations which conferred NDE visions on the biological entity, the exact line of reasoning you rail against regarding the "afterlife" Forget whether or not a "non physical world exists" Call it what you want, we have reams of corroborating evidence for it and saying we don't is nothing more than a different interpretation of that data, and opinion to be precise, one which you constantly conflate with a fact.

No, there’s a fundamental difference between these two situations. One consists of a body of actual knowledge and hard data with an upper plausible limit of completion. We’re never going to fill in all the gaps in the fossil record for example. But we know that mammals arrived late, etc. The other consists of extremely ambiguous data which could (easily) have an interpretation other than what you give to it, and by all sensible contemplation probably does have an interpretation other than what you give to it, as the general pattern is for the case to be insufficiently examined. The two situations do not compare with each other. If you are talking specifically about the evolution of the near death experience as a response to survival stress, then I don’t claim that is provable, only that it is a theory that in principle could be testable. You are also sort of caught on your own hook by that…because on your own terms that is an “inference” that we can justly draw. I would like to know how you think the afterlife idea is “testable.”

It either has toerh methods or it doesn't, which is it? We cannot observe the Big Bang, we cannot observe evolution of one species into another, we cannot observe dark matter directly, indeed by your yardstick these things cannot be considered classically scientific, and I would agree to an/specifically this extent. But this is just my point, we don't have to call it science, and all things that can be known cannot be known by science, hence attempting to denigrate something merely because it is innacesible to direct observation as either unproveable or non existent is the greatest arrogance and relegates even subjective feelings such as love to this category whether or not they have effects on the body and brain. You will argue that it is not that which is your problem but the data itself, yet you speak different.
Right. None of those are “certain things” as far as I’m concerned, though some people claim that they are. The “method” of science is thesis-observation-verification/refutation. You, at the moment, have a thesis (sort of…it’s not sufficiently developed to be operational in any useful research sense). What you need to do in order to convert that thesis into knowledge is expose it to observations that will at some point confirm your thesis and refute others. That’s what all of your examples are trying to do, and there is no justification for your claim being exempt. What I’m saying to you is that your thesis must be put at risk to actually be a thesis, and by putting it at risk it has to acquire operational features that allow us to ask questions of it that it can in principle fail Questions such as “what if we really do monitor the brain to complete neural shutdown…will any NDEs whatever be reported from such a state?” If the answer is no, then your thesis fails. Since we don’t yet know the answer to this question, you simply have a thesis that as yet has no exclusive demonstration. You have yet to attain even the “observation” part of the method cycle.


Y
es, a "prima facie" notion according to you. Again you show double standards, you admit that science is direct observation and yet you call dark matter a "notion". Hence in you words, a "notion" can be proven as "prima facie". With this logic in mind, we can at least say in principle that is is possible to come to the point that the "notion" of the "afterlife" is similarly "prima facie" in its potential apparentness. Without even going into that apparentness, we can follow your thought process to this conclusion

Yes, dark matter is a notion because it is an interpretive basis placed on certain observations, when the interpretation is not the observation itself. Thus we acquire the kind of risk of being wrong I spoke of above. I’m not a believer in the dark matter religion, so you are probably asking the wrong person. I also don’t believe in multiple universes, or the universe as a simulation, or conscious machines, or other examples of rhetorical science, until I see specific evidence that these things either are, or can be, true. They are entertaining discussions only. It’s a question of what your standards are. If we develop a method of observing dark matter directly, then that is a different case. The concept of continuity of some form of consciousness post mortem is too important, imo, to be left to coffee room chat. I need more than that. I need more than “it’s one of about a dozen or so interpretations that might be true”
in some vague hand-wavey sense. And so should you (that is, if you really care about the question). I know I do, so I can only speak for myself.



Again you want to have you cake and eat it, this is not direct observation, this is secondary observation, the signals are precipitated by the act. An afterlife made up of the elusive "stuff" of mind would by this logic also be detectable only secondarily.

This statement makes no sense at all. If we landed on another planet and looked for “signs of human culture”…the discovery of such things as architecture, cave art depicting humanoids, farming, engineering, etc etc are entirely sufficient to indicate a “footprint” of life and consciousness.


My point is clear, clear as day, just as it was on telepathy which you have just casually stopped responding too I notice.

Sorry, what was your point about telepathy? I'll be glad to respond to it.
 
Perhaps this quote from Ken Ring's 1997 paper "Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of
Apparent Eyeless Vision
" is worthwhile introducing into the debate:

---- quote ----

The Dream Hypothesis

One fairly obvious possibility that has often been advanced in connection with the NDEs and OBEs of sighted persons is that this experience is some kind of a dream, perhaps a lucid or exceptionally vivid dream, which has such realistic properties that it is easily misinterpreted and thus given an ontological status it does not deserve.

To evaluate this hypothesis, we first need to inquire into what is known about normal oneiric processes in the blind. Fortunately, there has been a great deal of research devoted to the dreams of the blind, some of it going back more than a hundred years. As a result of these investigations, certain generalizations about the presence of visual imagery in dreams appear to stand up quite well. Among these "empirical cornerstones" (Kirtley, 1975) are that (1) there are no visual images in the dreams of the congenitally blind; (2) individuals blinded before the age of 5 also tend not to have visual imagery; (3) those who become sightless between the age of 5 to 7 may or may not retain visual imagery; and (4) most persons who lose their sight after age 7 do retain visual imagery, although its clarity tends to fade with time. In addition, various researchers have found that audition tends to be the primary sense involved in dreams of the blind, with tactile and kinesthetic elements next (Kirtley, 1975).

In our interviews, we routinely asked our respondents about the nature of their dreams, and what we found in our sample accords with the generalizations just described. In addition, however, and particularly pertinent to the hypothesis under consideration, our respondents usually went on to say that not only were their NDEs unlike their usual dreams, but in the case of those blind from birth they stood out as radically different precisely because they contained visual imagery, whereas their dreams had always lacked this element.

Vicki, one of our NDErs blind from birth, provides a good case in point:
Interviewer. How would you compare your dreams to your NDEs?
Vkki: No similarity, no similarity at all.
Interviewer: Do you have any kind of visual perception in yourdreams?
Vicki: Nothing. No color, no sight of any sort, no shadows, no light,no nothing.
Interviewer: What kinds of perceptions are you aware of in your typical dreams?
Vicki: Taste—I have a lot of eating dreams [laughs]. And I have dreams when I'm playing the piano and singing, which I do for a living, anyway. I have dreams in which I touch things. ... I taste things, touch things, hear things, and smell things—that's it.
Interviewer: And no visual perceptions?
Vicki: No.
Interviewer: So that what you experienced during your NDE was quite different from your dreams?
Vicki: Yeah, because there's no visual impression at all in any dream that I have.

These remarks, along with similar asseverations from other participants in our study, make it abundantly clear that from our respondents' point of view, the NDE, especially its visual aspect, has nothing in common with their usual dreams. It is instead something in a class by itself and not to be conflated with dreams. Since there is no support whatever from our interviews for the dream hypothesis of NDEs, we may confidently reject it as a potential explanation for our findings.

---- end ----

My question in this regard is always: how does someone who has never processed visual information "know" that they are processing visual information in this instance? This is a philosophical question that requires some careful consideration. We cannot just accept someone's statement "I saw for the first time" without knowing what the basis of this statement is, and whether that basis can be operationalized to evidence in some way. It is also worth bearing in mind that even persons blind from birth, indeed even persons anopthalmic (no eyes) still have a visual cortex. To be sure, this cortex will not have undergone normal childhood development, and may have been partly or wholly recruited to other tasks, but it is still a feature of the neural structure of these persons, and again, how that behaves in highly irregular situations is not something we can at present profess to know.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kay
But there is no energy transfer between two entangled photons.

You’re missing the point. There‘s no “energy transfer” between the words of a book and my eyes when I’m reading the book either, yet my entire reading process, the entire manufacture of the book, and my comprehension of the book in terms of ideas I am processing in my brain, are all energy dependent activities, and could not take place without energy currency.

The conventionalism has to do with it, because you think that dimensions are conventional and I consider that the dimensions are real features of the space.

I can only repeat for you the origin of the concept. Dimensions are simply degrees of freedom in a mathematical problem. To the extent that so many degrees of freedom are required to specify a certain problem, to that degree “dimensions” can actually be said to exist. But this is not literal realism. And again, only occult sources would treat it so.


What happens is that the psychic researchers which have been fair have managed to rule out plausible alternative explanations: the most robust cases logically only have two possible interpretations: afterlife or super-psi, and for various reasons super-psi is not a plausible alternative explanation. Your example of dragon is silly.

Well all I can do with that is disagree, as you’re not really saying anything new. In your terms I’m not sure I see the distinction anyway. If the “afterlife” is a form of psychic reality…in what way is this not a species of “super psi”? Perhaps you can clear that up for me.

Well sorry but empirical science is loaded with subjective judgments and probable knowledge. And again your example is silly.

The point of my example is that all facts must exist in a connecting ecology of inter-related knowledge. Things that give signs of not belonging in such an ecology at all ought to acquire particular suspicion. I don't think any serious scientist or thinker worthy of the name would consider that silly. At the moment, the whole idea of “afterlife” is a drifting raft of fanciful speculation, bereft of such ecology.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top