The Second Apocalypse
Miscellaneous Chatter => Philosophy & Science => Topic started by: Royce on September 17, 2013, 10:01:24 am
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I have just started to read Julian Jaynes "The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind",and Ramachandrans "The tell tale brain:A neuroscientist`s quest for what makes us human".
Exploring the single most interesting aspect of life,I hope that people on this board,whether you have read these guys or not have something to offer on the subject.I am hopeful that there are people who have studied this who can give useful information and tips on other relevant books that might enlighten me ;).
I hope that everyone with a interest,might share their thoughts on this :)
It might take me awhile to participate,I think I should back up my fragile arguments with some reading first.
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Everyone here must read the Tell Tale Brain, Ramachandran is amazing.
There's also a BBC documentary on him:
http://youtu.be/sq6u4XVrr58 (http://youtu.be/sq6u4XVrr58)
In the UK, everyone is forced by law to pay a £100+ annual license fee to the BBC. Mostly they put out rubbish and we all resent having to fund a bunch of coked up upper class london media twats producing shitty talents shows. But occasionally they make something that this documentary and it all seems worth it.
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Thanks for the link :)
In the UK, everyone is forced by law to pay a £100+ annual license fee to the BBC. Mostly they put out rubbish and we all resent having to fund a bunch of coked up upper class london media twats producing shitty talents shows. But occasionally they make something that this documentary and it all seems worth it.
Yeah,we have the same deal in Norway.We have to pay 270 british pounds in licence,and they provide three channels with no commercials.They have decent documentaries now and again,and it beats commercial television by far :) I have almost given up television,I only watch movies or series very rarely.
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PBS over here is failing. I wish we had something like mandatory broadcasting implemented in Canada - though I am ignorant.
Ramachandran is one of my idols. Jaynes was also an interesting read but, ultimately, he's constrained by his time and place; research that was available. Plus I'm taking an educated guess and suggesting that the brain functions in concert, not arbitrarily and independently (though, of course, dysfunction as a result of damaged nerve tracts - communication - happens).
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Ok,I am just going to throw something out here.Jaynes suggest that conciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.He mentions various examples like bicycling,tennis and so on where consciousness actually make things more difficult.He goes on to say that it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of men who spoke,judged,reasoned,solved problems,indeed did most of the things we do,but who were not conscious at all.The ego which has a birthday(5000 years ago?) is what makes us conscious.Before that he basically says that we were the same,just without a self :)
To me this sounds like what Itoh tried to describe in "harmony"(or am I wrong about that?)
My problem with this is that if this is in some way true,why and how did the ego come into existence?
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I think that sounds like Harmony too, Royce.
Ok,I am just going to throw something out here.Jaynes suggest that conciousness does not make all that much difference to a lot of our activities.He mentions various examples like bicycling,tennis and so on where consciousness actually make things more difficult.He goes on to say that it is perfectly possible that there could have existed a race of men who spoke,judged,reasoned,solved problems,indeed did most of the things we do,but who were not conscious at all.The ego which has a birthday(5000 years ago?) is what makes us conscious.Before that he basically says that we were the same,just without a self :)
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My problem with this is that if this is in some way true,why and how did the ego come into existence?
First off, Jaynes seems to be referring about what psychologists have come to be called 'procedural memory,' often skills, difficult to teach and conceptualize with language, that we learn by doing.
For the latter portion of the quote, to write completely hypothetically, the evolution of brains is like the metaphorical snowball rolling downhill - every new biological feature requires requisite neural tissue, which in turn adds to and allows for new, emergent patterns of activation. For instance, we go through the process of growing our brains during gestation as the brain has evolved (reptile, mammal, neocortex - humans).
Given that, consciousness might have spontaneously occurred after any given new feature (say, opposable thumbs).
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Given that, consciousness might have spontaneously occurred after any given new feature (say, opposable thumbs).
Or maybe language had something to do with it? Jaynes is suggesting that there are no references to "self" early in human history,although this is almost impossible to prove.He uses the Illiad as an example.
The use of metaphors among humans is an interesting aspect though.Almost every word we use is layer upon layer of metaphoric content,and the more intricate language gets(abstract descriptions and so on) the more we need counsciousness to provide us with metaphors,which again help us to communicate more broadly with each other.
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You should look into Neuronal Recycling Theory (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007) and Surfaces and Essences - Hofstadter & Sander.
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You should look into Neuronal Recycling Theory (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007) and Surfaces and Essences - Hofstadter & Sander.
Thanks for the tips :) I know Jaynes book was written in the eighties so there are probably newer authors who are more relevant,but I do enjoy him though,he is very engaging :)
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Ramachandran is fantastic. That documentary posted earlier led me to the corresponding book, then his others. His whole professional focus is on the oddest perceptual effects he can find. Read Montague, another neuroscientist, wrote Why Choose This Book, which is a book about decision making from the perspectives of computer programming, energy efficiency, and evolution. That one will cause rapid and deep reevaluations of your self. :P
Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is along a similar vein, tackling the myths of the blank slate, noble savage, and ghost in the machine from an evolutionary psychology view.
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Wic, sorry I missed this, you might enjoy my post (http://second-apocalypse.com/index.php?topic=955.msg7814#msg7814) in the Reading list? thread (if not the thread itself).
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Wic, sorry I missed this, you might enjoy my post in the Reading list? thread (if not the thread itself)
Thanks for that highly interesting link Madness ;)
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Lol - glad to facilitate, Royce :D.
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I will put in a passage which I hope to get some response to:)
"The hexagram patterns derived from the I Ching in response to a question are meaningful (usually) because they resonate with
something that pre-exists in the mind, below conscious awareness. The I ching clarifies that relationship and triggers an "ah ha"
moment. Or one`s horoscope is meaningful, not because the stars and planets control human destiny, but because the archetypal
processes they symbolically reflect correspond to subjective interpretations of character. In this respect, the notion of synchronicity
is quite profound, in that it asserts a correspondence between the mind and the external world- the so-called "real" world. The
Hermetic philosophers said it well: As above, so below."
"This mirroring of inner consciousness and the outer world still poses a conundrum for neuroscience and most Western philosophy.
Why, and how, do external events meaningfully relate to inner, psychic events? It is as if consciousness, or mind, forms the primary
ground of being, while the physical world is secondary- a construct created by the mind. Any eastern spiritual tradition or philosophy
will tell you this is the case. Western thought, with its emphasis on materialism, is uncomfortable with that notion. I am not aware of
any finding in current neuroscience that resolves this question, at least not yet; but we do know enough about brain function to say
with fair confidence that , to some extent, the world we call "reality" is a construct of our brains. The brain assembles a coherent story
(more or less) by combining sensory experience with memories, associations, interpretations, and intuitions, then presenting the result
as the movie, or perhaps more accurately the hallucination, we inhabit. If psychedelics teach us anything, it is how fragile this
constructed reality is, and how profoundly it can be distorted."
Can these phenomena be explained by neuroscience as we know it today?
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What is thing from, Royce?
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It is from "The brotherhood of the screaming abyss" by Dennis Mckenna, which I have finally started to read:)
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Damn, I've been wanting to read The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss since it came out. I was thinking the quote didn't read like it was from Bicameral Brain or Ramachandran's text corpus.
Let me try a breakdown for you:
"The hexagram patterns derived from the I Ching in response to a question are meaningful (usually) because they resonate with
something that pre-exists in the mind, below conscious awareness. The I ching clarifies that relationship and triggers an "ah ha"
moment. Or one`s horoscope is meaningful, not because the stars and planets control human destiny, but because the archetypal
processes they symbolically reflect correspond to subjective interpretations of character. In this respect, the notion of synchronicity
is quite profound, in that it asserts a correspondence between the mind and the external world- the so-called "real" world. The
Hermetic philosophers said it well: As above, so below."
The "ah-ha," or insight, moment is something that hasn't been heavily researched but in the past (decade?) the beginnings of work has been done to discern just what is happening in the brain during these moments. I think I agree with the bold standing alone but then McKenna's following statement makes his overall assertion unclear.
It's actually been a dream of mine to create a Tarot deck based upon modern neuroscientific understanding (because I have very little belief in the supernatural), especially as self-interpretation is key (the cards represent static archetypes that are created by our sociocultural interactions but it is the way they are internalized - applied to one's own life - that gives people insight into their lives)... almost as if by taking a person's questing emotions and all the circumstances involved, sticking 'em in a bag, and pulling them out in a new, random order is what provides a person with insight.
"This mirroring of inner consciousness and the outer world still poses a conundrum for neuroscience and most Western philosophy.
Why, and how, do external events meaningfully relate to inner, psychic events? It is as if consciousness, or mind, forms the primary
ground of being, while the physical world is secondary- a construct created by the mind. Any eastern spiritual tradition or philosophy
will tell you this is the case. Western thought, with its emphasis on materialism, is uncomfortable with that notion. I am not aware of
any finding in current neuroscience that resolves this question, at least not yet; but we do know enough about brain function to say
with fair confidence that , to some extent, the world we call "reality" is a construct of our brains. The brain assembles a coherent story
(more or less) by combining sensory experience with memories, associations, interpretations, and intuitions, then presenting the result
as the movie, or perhaps more accurately the hallucination, we inhabit. If psychedelics teach us anything, it is how fragile this
constructed reality is, and how profoundly it can be distorted."
Unfortunately, here, while it reads nice, McKenna is essentially saying whatever he wants to. "We don't know, they say Y, we say X, and so Z."
Again, as a stand-alone statement I agree with the bold. We definitely live in a hallucination. Does that support McKenna's overall contentions? Probably not. I mean, there is a far amount of research and imaging that has been done now to visualize what happens in the brain when we ingest mushrooms (and/or other psychedelics). Does that imply that drugs necessarily have something to teach us? Not really. If anything, the argument that follows is that psychedelics (or any drug really) may or may not randomly provide a person with insight. Is it an insight that would have been denied to them had they not taken drugs? Possibly, but probably not - it would simply have a taken a different configuration of circumstances to trigger the aforementioned insight.
I'm really probably the wrong person to talk to if you wanted validation of McKenna's thoughts from a neuroscientific perspective.
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I'm really probably the wrong person to talk to if you wanted validation of McKenna's thoughts from a neuroscientific perspective.
I am not looking for validation at all:) That is boring, and most likely lazy and wrong.
I much appreciate your thoughts on this.
Terence and Dennis are of course biased when they talk about psychoactive plants and such, and that is why I want a different
perspective on the matter involved.
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Haha.
Truth. I think there needs to be more research done, Royce.
Though, I truly do appreciate imagining the McKenna Brothers trip from inside their perspective: Mushroom networks are giant, myelinated alien brains, shot through space on meteors, which communicate to humans by our eating their "sexual appendages."
:o...
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lol. It will be interesting to read about their experiments in La Chorrera, where they ate shrooms constantly for about a month or
something:)
Anyway, what fascinates me most about Terence is his imaginative skills.He is truly one of a kind when it comes to just spin around
a topic and just let his mind roll with it. I do not take him that seriously, and I do not think he wanted to be taken seriously either.
He was an entertainer on stage, and he did not like that many of his fans took him literally. They became like a cult, and that was
something he did not want at all. He needed money to eat, so he held talks all over the world, that is it:)
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I believe it was a week or so but that is the exact trip I'm referring to. The Mushroom's there are the one's TM believed were part of an alien entity (whether he meant this allegorically or not, I'm not sure).
By the way, I found a blog yesterday and while I can't support the content entirely, I thought you'd find this post an interesting read (as per the thread): Mr. Jayne's Wild Ride (http://www.meltingasphalt.com/mr-jaynes-wild-ride/).
Anyway, what fascinates me most about Terence is his imaginative skills.He is truly one of a kind when it comes to just spin around
a topic and just let his mind roll with it. I do not take him that seriously, and I do not think he wanted to be taken seriously either.
He was an entertainer on stage, and he did not like that many of his fans took him literally. They became like a cult, and that was
something he did not want at all. He needed money to eat, so he held talks all over the world, that is it:)
Hm... I actually think he was still brilliant, despite some of his more extravagant beliefs.
I also think it interesting to note that he didn't eat mushrooms anymore for most of the latter part of his life; despite advocating them to pretty much anyone and everyone who would listen.
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Oh, don`t get me wrong, he is a personal hero of mine.
I also think it interesting to note that he didn't eat mushrooms anymore for most of the latter part of his life; despite advocating them to pretty much anyone and everyone who would listen.
Yes, Dennis writes about that in the book(have not read that part yet).
Personally I do not see the point in excessive use of these drugs, but that is just me:).
Do you think his ideas would have found the light without the mushroom? I think he was convinced "the mushroom" spoke to him:)
Will check out that blog when time lets me:)
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I feel confident his ideas would have come about regardless of TM specifically being the intermediary, yes.
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Come on now, it is much more fun if the mushroom was an alien entity which contained secret and sacred information, which could save
humanity from ignorance and show us the right way, so we can evolve together as one race of Nietzschenian supermen!:)
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Lol - mayhaps. Life isn't necessarily fun, all the time :).
There is growth to be had and lessons to learn. I'd rather say that something human (something us, whatever that is) can be responsible for such kinds of wisdom without the need for intercession by Alien or Divine...
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There is growth to be had and lessons to learn. I'd rather say that something human (something us, whatever that is) can be responsible for such kinds of wisdom without the need for intercession by Alien or Divine...
Yes. That is why I do not buy arguments about visiting other dimensions, or encountering alien entities while on a trip. I think you
throw yourself into your own gigantic well of imagination, where anything is possible. Maybe what you see is complicated aspects
of your own character, feelings and memories. It is all human though. Another thing is that I have never heard or read about anyone
describing the same thing, which to me may imply that we all differ in regards to imagination, feelings and memories.
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+1. Though, as I wrote elsewhere, I like possibilities. The bogus stories people make up about those things, don't discount that people might be visiting other dimensions or having alien encounters in ways they cannot even begin to imagine; I just doubt the stories that have these concise self-reports.
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Oh yes, the possibilities are endless and boundless:) Anecdotes on this subject means nothing to me. Have the experience and shut the fuck up, you do not understand it, so do not try and explain it to me please:)
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Lol.
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Alright. Just read about this experiment Dennis and Terence had at La Chorrera, and that was just crazy:)
They hoped to accomplish nothing less then to trigger an end to history, throw open the gates of a paradise out
of time and invite humanity to walk in ;D (Their words exactly by the way).
Dennis was only 20 at the time(Terence 24) and he ate 19 shrooms in the very beginning of the experiment. That is
an insane amount! I do not know about the size per shroom, but either way that is madness.
Took him a long time to recover from that experiment, and Terence and him kind of went separate ways(intellectually)
after this. Terence got seriously hooked on his timewave theory, and he claimed that modern science has no chance at
all explaining the events that happened during the experiment. Dennis was a little more humble and he pursued a career
as a scientist after this.
You should definitely read this book when you have the time. Very well written and these guys have experienced a lot
you might say:)
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It's on the to-buy list :).
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I am just going to bother you with another idea:)
It is from a computational neuroscientist named Jean-Pierre Rospars. He wrote a paper in Acta Astronautica, the journal
of the international Acadamy of Astronautics in 2010.
Rospars argues that the evolution of intelligence in the universe, far from being a rare and contingent event, is structurally
built into the constraints of physics, chemistry, and biology. The fact that living creatures exhibit predictable limits on body size, among many other functions, suggest there are universal "laws" that order evolution of intelligence; and human cultural evolution is an emergent and inevitable consequense of this process. According to this theory, there could well be more complex intelligent species than ours endowed with far more complex brains. Furthermore, we could be separated from these civilizations not so much by spatial distances but by temporal and cognitive distances. Such alien intelligences may be vastly older than our species , and so much more advanced in their cognitive evolution that not only are we incapable of communicating with them, we are incapable of recognizing them.
This sheds some new light(at least for me) about alien interactions while tripping. This is speculative of course, but a fun thought, that aliens try to contact us by seeding the earth with psychedelics so that after millions of years of evolution our nervous systems will discover their existence. Not by picking up radio signals, but by evolving intelligence through digestion of various substances:).
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Lol - it's a neat idea, for sure.
And as a general rule, changes in even simple states, not mediated by exogenous (produced outside the body) chemicals, can have drastic effects on our overall perception - implied in metaphors like "rose-coloured glasses," but founded in actual evidential research.
So, of course, drugs states are one of any number of complex configurations, mental states, which might enable you to perceive information that you couldn't possibly have in your previous experiential state (and I'm associating this with moment-to-moment, simple perceptual biases, which can be mediated by things like mood, diet, martial (kinetic) activity, thought states).
To the extent you are talking about? I'm not sure. Certainly, that kind of conception is a starting place for McKenna's "tuning metaphor," where our mental states are like the frequencies on a radio receiver - possible, maybe, but how is this knowledge made of practical use?
As to Rospars paper in particular; I will find it and read it. However, I think my criticism will stand. It's my concern that knowledge be made of actual use. If Rospars thought it possible to somehow discern and work towards these cognitive thresholds, I might be more sympathetic to his work, but even well-founded philosophy (and by generalization this is philosophy) bothers me with its hypocrisy - it could be mediating something, rather than narrating. But another thread.
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To the extent you are talking about? I'm not sure. Certainly, that kind of conception is a starting place for McKenna's "tuning metaphor," where our mental states are like the frequencies on a radio receiver - possible, maybe, but how is this knowledge made of practical use?
This knowledge has no practical use whatsoever......yet:) This is just people with fascinating ideas, and Terences intent with this experiment is something you just have to read for yourself. That man was quite ambitious I would say.
As to Rospars paper in particular; I will find it and read it. However, I think my criticism will stand. It's my concern that knowledge be made of actual use. If Rospars thought it possible to somehow discern and work towards these cognitive thresholds, I might be more sympathetic to his work, but even well-founded philosophy (and by generalization this is philosophy) bothers me with its hypocrisy - it could be mediating something, rather than narrating. But another thread.
Yes this is definitely philosophy, but the actual effects of these substances are not. Describing these effects and insights makes it a philosophical discussion, but the experience in it self is what it is. I am not sure if Rospar even has a
psychedelic view in his paper, it was Dennis who mentioned his ideas and mixed it up with his own theories.
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This knowledge has no practical use whatsoever......yet:) This is just people with fascinating ideas, and Terences intent with this experiment is something you just have to read for yourself. That man was quite ambitious I would say.
They are fascinating ideas - but in seriousness (and I mean this as an evaluation, I can still get stoned on ideas) these ideas are either practical or they are not.
We can either access greater-than-human knowledge by "tuning" ourselves with drugs or "Insert Experience-Whatever Here," OR we can't because there is no greater-than-human knowledge waiting around for the properly "tuned" receptors.
Actually using my time - more so than entertaining this thought experiment - to try and do something actionable with it... Probably not.
Yes this is definitely philosophy, but the actual effects of these substances are not. Describing these effects and insights makes it a philosophical discussion, but the experience in it self is what it is. I am not sure if Rospar even has a
psychedelic view in his paper, it was Dennis who mentioned his ideas and mixed it up with his own theories.
Lol - "the experience in it self is" not "what it is."
And "Rospars argues that the evolution of intelligence in the universe, far from being a rare and contingent event, is structurally
built into the constraints of physics, chemistry, and biology," which seems to be Rospars position specifically, is simply not verifiable at the moment - therefore philosophy.
Maybe you could be more clear in your second quotation that I've used, Royce? Specifically: "Yes this is definitely philosophy, but the actual effects of these substances are not. Describing these effects and insights makes it a philosophical discussion, but the experience in it self is what it is."
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...OR we can't because there is no greater-than-human knowledge waiting around for the properly "tuned" receptors.
Bingo
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Well this is what can happen when I try to explain something that sounds understandable in my own language, but when
I look at my previous post now, it makes little sense:) Sorry about that, I can give it another go.
As far as I know there are two alternatives regarding what these experiences are. Either you actually plunge into other
dimensions, encounter meetings with entities and whatnot. They give you insights that can help you in your daily life(I have experienced this first hand). I can say that it honestly made me a better person. This is to me a fact. These substances had an effect on many levels on my psyche. Does that mean that everything about that experience is "real"?
I do not know.
The second alternative is that my brain created this experience through chemical reactions and stimuli. To me it does not
really matter which is true, because what I experienced and what it did is what matters.
When I try to explain this it tends to end up as philosophical rants, because it is so hard to use language to explain this
to people who have not had a similar experience. So what I tried to say in my previous post, is that I think that when people try to describe an experience like this with abstract language, it becomes philosophical speculation immediately, even though when you had the experience it felt as real and understandable as food or water.
God, I wish I could take this in Norwegian Madness, because this is something I have a real passion for, but I can see that it is hard for me to make any sense. Well, not much to do about that:)
..................and when I see this post now after some sleep, I see that I still do not make sense and I look like I belong on a mental institution:)
Maybe the lesson is stay away from strong and potent plants that twist your perspective towards unexplainable conclusions:) I do get in my own way
every now and again, and I can see that I do not entirely agree with my own statements. I think when you gradually experience that the things you
take for granted in life is just conditioning, layers upon layers of conditioning, from you were born up til the present moment, it does "something" to you. You create everything in life through what you say and what you do(your actions). Then you realize that if that is the case, then why listen to anybody else?, why would you live a life that is not your own favorite creation? It took me awhile to digest this because the layers of conditioning are
so subtle and done over such a long time. This understanding of the power of language(how it literally creates the world we live in) made me much more aware of that you should pay attention to what you say, and how you say it, because it makes all the difference in the world.
It seems that I have not learned my lesson, since I still just ramble on:) but I have come to the conclusion that I do not think that I can answer you
satisfyingly in my less powerful second language. I do agree very much so that everything not verifiable today, is only philosophical speculation. But I am a philosophical creature who cannot help but ramble on:)
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Lol.
First off, you make great sense, even for a second language.
Second, feel free, at any time, to write in whatever language feels comfortable. If there isn't a script for your language, then I'll find out how to add one.
The worst that could happen is that someone learns some Norwegian. The best is that you meet other Norwegian speaking fans - I've offered elsewhere that I'd make a polylinguist forum for those who can use it. And that way you can have a standing post that does communicative justice to what it is you think you'd rather have communicated.
Aside ;).
I've done some drugs in my life. I've known people who've participated and aspects of experiences you might be trying to communicate.
But my opinion (from the evidence as I've seen it so far) is that those truth were available inside you - regardless of the cocktail that happened to unlock them in the instances you've historized.
I do think that humans have the unfortunate habit of attributing things greater than themselves to divine, alien, transcending experiences (Drugs?)... I've written this before I know.
But I have no real knowledge nor desire to dissuade you of your outlook. My go-to metaphor is that total-reality is probably far, far more complicated than we three pound brains are capable of imagining at this stage in our evolution.
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Second, feel free, at any time, to write in whatever language feels comfortable. If there isn't a script for your language, then I'll find out how to add one.
The worst that could happen is that someone learns some Norwegian. The best is that you meet other Norwegian speaking fans - I've offered elsewhere that I'd make a polylinguist forum for those who can use it. And that way you can have a standing post that does communicative justice to what it is you think you'd rather have communicated.
Since I am such a dinosaur, I was not aware of this:) I do enjoy the training and effort though, so I might just continue, although it can be frustrating at
times. After spending about 6 months here I have taken huge steps in describing concepts(which is the hard part for me at least).
I do think that humans have the unfortunate habit of attributing things greater than themselves to divine, alien, transcending experiences (Drugs?)... I've written this before I know.
Yes, I fall into that trap now and again. Part of the conditioning I guess, believing that there just has to be something "more" than humanness.
But I have no real knowledge nor desire to dissuade you of your outlook. My go-to metaphor is that total-reality is probably far, far more complicated than we three pound brains are capable of imagining at this stage in our evolution.
Oh, but my outlook really changes with the wind:) I think it does because I accept that we know nothing about the "big picture", if there is any.
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Since I am such a dinosaur, I was not aware of this:) I do enjoy the training and effort though, so I might just continue, although it can be frustrating at
times. After spending about 6 months here I have taken huge steps in describing concepts(which is the hard part for me at least).
Lol, I wrote it in some post, way back.
Concepts are probably the most difficult (and rewarding) aspect of learning new languages.
Yes, I fall into that trap now and again. Part of the conditioning I guess, believing that there just has to be something "more" than humanness.
I just think we deserve some credit for the few novel things we've done (compass good and bad).
But I have no real knowledge nor desire to dissuade you of your outlook. My go-to metaphor is that total-reality is probably far, far more complicated than we three pound brains are capable of imagining at this stage in our evolution.
Oh, but my outlook really changes with the wind:) I think it does because I accept that we know nothing about the "big picture", if there is any.
Good call. The unknowable option.
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Ok. I heard about this guy called Eben Alexander, who is a neurosurgeon, who allegedly has a interesting story to tell in regards of an after life. He was in a meningitis-induced coma for about a week. His family was told that he had maybe 10% chance of survival, and that he would definitely have severe brain damage. During this coma his brain was completely shut down, but he suddenly woke up, perfectly normal and with an interesting tale of his memories during this coma.
I know that this is an anecdote, and you need plenty more to see a pattern or anything. He might of course be a hoax, writing his book about this experience, saying to the media he has seen "heaven", being on Oprah and so forth. It does smell a little bit weird.
Here is an interview with the guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZFml7LEn68
The interview starts about three minutes in.
I do not usually pay much attention to people in general talking about near death experiences, but this guy has been a neurosurgeon for 20 years or something, and his brain showed no sign of activity during the coma.
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I will watch it, Royce, and give it some more thought. I've actually read and heard quite a bit about this story but nothing wrong with deeper considerations.
But I don't think anything I'm going to say is going to validate or invalidate his experiences. And while I certainly think it's possible (as I do everything really), if he's wants to wax evangelist about it as a scientist, then he needs to do some serious research because scientist opinion is still opinion.
I know that this is an anecdote, and you need plenty more to see a pattern or anything. He might of course be a hoax, writing his book about this experience, saying to the media he has seen "heaven", being on Oprah and so forth. It does smell a little bit weird.
This. Right?
Now it could simply be a by-product of the Consult endorsing and utilizing his works to further the narrative. But he gives people false validation when he doesn't have a community of research behind him (I haven't read the book mainly because knowing or not knowing whether the afterlife isn't oblivion isn't my concern in this life - so I could be completely wrong and he has a third book of citations).
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This. Right?
This. Yes. My wife got me on to this guy, and she is reading his book. Really, to me he is just another guy saying something pleasing.