We Actually Do Know that Literal “Spirits” Aren’t Real

[Teancum]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:19 PM, Calm said:

It seems to me logically and scientifically the best you can say is everything we are and experience can be explained without appealing to a spirit. I don’t see how you can prove the absence of one.

One cannot prove a negative. Scientific attempts to find spirit or souls so far have not succeeded to find one. Hence the current conclusion is a spirit does not exist.  Can you demonstrate other than by faith a spirit does exist? 

I am curious, how do you explain the phenomenon of two independent personalities, or selfs,  in persons where the hemispheres of their brains are split?

[Teancum]

On 5/3/2024 at 1:34 PM, LoudmouthMormon said:

Don't be claiming knowledge until you've got some.  Your proofs may be strong and persuasive, but they aren't compelling. 

And your proofs of the actual existence of a spirit are.....?

[Teancum]

On 5/3/2024 at 2:40 PM, Stormin' Mormon said:

Yes, my belief in spirit is unproveable, but it is also unfalsifiable. And I'm very comfortable with that notion.

And that is fine. You admit it is a matter of faith and that is the ilmite of your evidence. In other words no evidence at all.

[Teancum]

On 5/3/2024 at 3:29 PM, mfbukowski said:

Do you love your mother?  Most people do.  WHERE is that love?   How much does it weigh?  Is love REAL?

Because we can image the brain we can actually see the brain activity that represents love.  Emotions are not substance so it is absurd to make an argument like you do.  But emotions in our bodies produce electrical impulses as well as chemicals and hormones and thus can be observed.

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Why is it limit of science that it cannot observe something that someone insists exists and does so only on a matter of faith?  ...

I said a scientific theory cannot observe a measurand that does not exist in its theory. The classic (pun intended) example is quantum spin. Classical mechanics can see things that spin might do to the motion of particles, etc. but it can "see" spin. It simply does not exist in classical physics. Similarly, early version of Newtonian mechanics had absolutely no concept of entropy. Yet, those working on thermodynamics early on saw that something besides energy seemed to be influencing the variables they could observe and what they were observing was inadequate to explain the goings on. Introduce entropy and after working out the kinks, entropy could be measured and things again worked out beautifully.

Note that theology or faith here didn't enter into the response one whit. The statement "a scientific theory cannot observe a measurand that does not exist in its theory" is one of fundamental epistemological grounding. That's not to be confused with saying science must remain unchanging. Fortunately, we humans can imagine things beyond our current theories or even make up entirely new ones. Most of the time, it doesn't work. Sometimes it does. This process of modifying an extant theory and positing (ie imagining) new ideas happens all the time, now, today (you can read some nice articles about such on dark matter (or the lack thereof) in some recent articles this week). One cannot truly understand science without understanding this concept, at least not at the level of precision that philosophers would rightly impose upon us.

[Calm]

9 hours ago, Teancum said:

am curious, how do you explain the phenomenon of two independent personalities, or selfs,  in persons where the hemispheres of their brains are split?

I don’t really see any problem with it for two reasons. (Just remember you asked for an explanation when you get tangled in the weeds  )
 

First since it is essentially the same as the same person reacting differently when older as they did when younger, the same person possesses a young mind and an older one that may be dramatically different based on experience, health, etc.  Having variable mental states over the years doesn’t mean there are two or more spirits associated with the one brain at different times, but rather different sets of reactions, etc from the same entity, each of which we could if we choose label a unique mind based on its unique history and attributes.  

The split brain creates two minds in space, two apparently functioning minds rather than two different minds in two different times.  If in eternity all time is before God, interacting ‘at once’ with what are different minds over time would seem to be pretty much the same thing as different minds in space and whatever resolves the first will probably resolve the second.

Second, probably an easier idea to get your head around, I can see the split brain is a problem if you equate spirit with mind, but if the spirit is veiled as we are taught in LDS doctrine, it can’t be equated to the mind or whatever one wants to call the consciousness or perhaps our sense of self, which certainly is not veiled since we are quite aware of it. 

If a person’s spirit is separate from the mind in mortality as I believe is at least implied in LDS doctrine if not explicit, then one could view it as having influence on the mind similar to how the body has influence on a person’s mind.

In the split brain situation, having independent halves does not also require two bodies, quite the opposite as one body provides sensations, input, influence to both minds. Why not therefore the possibility that one spirit is providing spiritual sensations, input, influence to the two minds as well? 

Theoretically, after all, if communication between the two halves of the brain could be restored, the person would have one mind again.  It would seem to be is the illusion of two entities, not the reality of it. 

Now if one wanted to experiment by taking one half of a brain and placing it in a new body, so two bodies each with half a brain…or worse switching out halves between two bodies including brains and connecting the different brain halves do each becomes a whole brain, thus creating two new brains out of the brains from two different people, that could get very interesting. I speculate the result would depend on how much of the mortal body is part of the eternal being.  It could really get messed up if the mortal body is the ‘real’ thing and not just a temporary shell, a puppet more or less for the spirit/intelligence to play with before receiving its actual physical body that perfectly expresses its eternal nature in the resurrection as I believe is most likely.

I know people have claimed to see dead people looking identical to their mortal bodies, but if they are spirits and not resurrected beings, why could these not just be images created by the eternal intelligence/spirit because mortal eyes are incapable of actually seeing the eternal being…and therefore these visions of the dead can look however is appropriate*** (also it seems unlikely anyone so recently dead as to be recognized by a living loved one has been resurrected yet due to what Joseph said about the length of time it would take after death and before resurrection for us to comprehend the endowment and the principles of exaltation, apparently a necessity before Judgment and resurrection).

My speculation is not any of the mortal puppet body is joined with the eternal intelligence/spirit entity based on how the body is first created and then destroyed after death.  My only real question is how much of the DNA blueprint will be retained.

Other questions that occur to me that would have impact on determining the significance of the split brain phenomenon…

Does the spirit link more with the rest of the body or does it only link with the body through the brain?  If the first, would the spirit remain whole rather than splitting itself as well and if so, would it stay with the body or the brain?  And in the second case, would a spirit/intelligence link with both halves of the original brain or would it cause the new second half to become part of the entity associated with the spirit/intelligence?

***The mother of my father in law saw her long dead husband shortly before she died and he was wearing some clothes that he was wearing when he died. Obviously he was not buried in them, being LDS.  The actual clothes were probably long disintegrated in a landfill, if not burned. It makes no sense that clothes get resurrected or that he would have been wearing the same outfit for 60 years waiting for his wife to see him just so it was easy for her to recognize him and be reassured he hadn’t forgotten her (she was terrified of death because she was afraid her husband wouldn’t know her as an old lady).

[Calm]

10 hours ago, Teancum said:

Far beyond the realm of religion and faith.

Yet much of science is a result of religion, so without religion we would also most likely still be stuck in the dark ages. 
 

PS:  dark ages weren’t that dark unless by dark you mean unknown due to lost texts, lost records, etc. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

14 hours ago, Nofear said:

In another thread a few months ago I asked the question what differentiates asking for a sign vs asking, say, if The Book of Mormon is true. I came to the conclusion that we must have at least two things in place: 1) intention and 2) direction. The first is that we have intention of actually responding to the spiritual witness, regardless of outcome.

What equals a yes and what equals a no? Because that’s where the bias is from my experience. I was taught frequently a testimony is found in the bearing of it (not a rational way to determine truth). I was told frequently that God answers our prayers in unusual ways which leaves the individual looking for any possible occurrence in the days and weeks that follow that could possibly be interpreted as an answer to prayer. A great way to get a testimony but a poor way to determine truth. I was never taught what a no answer to “is the Book of Mormon true” would look like. That wasn’t an option. 

[Analytics]

On 5/4/2024 at 4:34 PM, CV75 said:

Maybe you overlooked my earlier questions: Why do you not like the belief that the human spirit is not real? Why did you never want to believe it? I ask because I think that observing a biological process (e.g. those taking place along the brain-gut axis that process spiritual experience and belief -- and not all that is going on is strictly biological) differs from observing the materials being processed. What is the unseen material being protected by the bias?

Hi CV,

I didn’t respond to the questions the first time because the questions don’t seem very relevant to how I see the world. I try to understand reality, appreciate it for what it is, and deal with it. Wanting the fundamental nature of reality to be different than what it is seem pointless. But, I do try to address questions, so here we go.

Why would I like spirits to be real? (that’s the question when you cancel out the double negatives) I like the idea of second chances. If a kid dies of malaria at the age of two, that just seems like a tragically short and painful life. For the sake of cosmic justice, it would be so nice if individual that had tragic lives had a second chance. And it would be nice for life to have a debriefing where mysteries and unanswered questions could all be revealed. 

On the other hand, I also like the idea of stories having endings.

Regarding the rest of your post, I think that all feelings are biological in nature. Spiritual feelings feel distinct, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t driven by chemical processes in the physical body.

Edited May 5, 2024 by Analytics

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

What equals a yes and what equals a no? Because that’s where the bias is from my experience. I was taught frequently a testimony is found in the bearing of it (not a rational way to determine truth). I was told frequently that God answers our prayers in unusual ways which leaves the individual looking for any possible occurrence in the days and weeks that follow that could possibly be interpreted as an answer to prayer. A great way to get a testimony but a poor way to determine truth. I was never taught what a no answer to “is the Book of Mormon true” would look like. That wasn’t an option. 

In bishopric counsel no answers are most distinctly something that happens. At the same time, if during a physics lab if a student finds momentum was not conserved during a collision, I'm going to say they messed up, that "no" isn't an option.

[ZealouslyStriving]

46 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Why would I like spirits to be real? (that’s the question when you cancel out the double negatives) I like the idea of second chances. If a kid dies of malaria at the age of two, that just seems like a tragically short and painful life. For the sake of cosmic justice, it would be so nice if individual that had tragic lives had a second chance. And it would be nice for life to have a debriefing where mysteries and unanswered questions could all be revealed. 

This is interesting...

* We teach that a child who dies at 2 under tragic, painful circumstances doesn't have merely a 2nd chance to endure more of mortality and it's painful issues, but that that child is raised to eternal life in the mansions of Celestial Glory to grow and progress in the presence of our Heavenly Parents in eternal joy. Which of these two concepts seems more merciful?

* There is a "debriefing" coming in the Millennium- where all the mysteries of the earth and it's history and what it all means and how it ties together will be revealed.

These are basic scriptural concepts... Did you never learn them while in the Church?

Edited May 5, 2024 by ZealouslyStriving

[Analytics]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

These are not rhetorical questions, I assume anything I can think up has been thought up long ago, so I am asking in order to learn what solution is given for these issues…

Your way of seeing these questions and claims is common, and Carroll does address them in the book. The qualifications, subtleness, and strength of his arguments are involved, so if you’d really like to know, I’d suggest reading the book. And I will let you know that while Carroll is an atheist, he is a very nice human being and you won’t find anything in his book that would feel like a cheap shot against beliefs you hold sacred like you’d likely find in something by Hitchens or Dawkins.

That said, I’ll give you some brief answers. You probably won’t find all of them satisfying, but if you dug in deeper into how robust the scientific finds are that Carroll thinks about, you might understand why Carroll finds his arguments compelling.

17 hours ago, Calm said:

While it may be possible in highly controlled environments to set up an experiment whose results are predictable each and every time and therefore one can claim no unknown force acting on the particles being observed occured during the experiment, can you also say that this occurs outside of these controlled situations?

Let me add a few details to the state of knowledge regarding particle physics. In th 1960’s and 1970’s, a model came together regarding particle physics called the standard model. The standard model sees everything in terms of quantum fields, and there are two types of quantum fields, fermions and bosons. There are about 25 of these in total: the electron, muon, tao, three types of neutrinos, six types of quarks, gravitons, photons, eight types of gluons, and a few other types of bosons, including the Higgs boson. Along with these quantum fields, there are a few formulas for how the quantum fields interact with each other. A fundamental part of this is that there is a fundamental relationship between forces and particles. Quoting Carroll:

Quote

 

The reason why we know there are no new fields or particles that play an important role in the physics underlying our everyday lives is a crucial property of quantum field theory known as crossing symmetry. This amazing feature helps us be sure that certain kinds of particles do not exist; otherwise we would have found them already. Crossing symmetry basically says that if one field can interact with another one (for example, by scattering off of it), then the second field can create particles of the first one under the right conditions. It can be thought of as the quantum-field-theory analogue of the principle that every action implies a reaction.

Consider a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself. That means that the X particle must interact with ordinary particles like quarks and electrons, either directly or indirectly. If it didn’t, there would be no way for it to have any effect on the world we directly see....

In field theory, every particle has an antiparticle with the opposite electric charge. The antiparticle of an electron is a particle called the positron, which is positively charged. Crossing symmetry says that the first process, scattering of an X off an electron, implies the existence of a related process in which an electron and positron annihilate to create one of our X particles as well as its antiparticle.

Here is the payoff. We have smashed electrons and positrons together, often and with great care. From 1989 to 2000, a particle accelerator called the Large Electron-Positron Collider (predecessor of today’s Large Hadron Collider) operated underground outside Geneva. Within its experiments, electrons and positrons collided at enormous energies, and physicists kept extremely careful track of everything that came out. They were hoping with all their hearts to find new particles; discovering new particles, especially unexpected ones, is what keeps particle physics exciting. But they didn’t see any. Just the known particles of the Core Theory, produced in great numbers.

The same has been done for protons smashing into antiprotons, and various other combinations. The verdict is unambiguous: we’ve found all of the particles that our best current technology enables us to find. Crossing symmetry assures us that, if there were any particles lurking around us that interact with ordinary matter strongly enough to make a difference to the behavior of everyday stuff, those particles should have easily been produced in experiments. But there’s nothing there.

There are probably more particles yet to be found. They just won’t be relevant to our everyday world. The fact that we haven’t yet found such particles tells us a great deal about what properties they must have; that’s the power of quantum field theory.

 

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 180-183). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Entire armies of physicists have spent hundreds of billions of dollars over their entire careers trying to disprove this model that was put together over 50 years ago now, and they have all failed. Within this model’s domain of applicability, we have an enormous quantity of evidence that this model is the truth. There are other outstanding questions on different scales (either really big or really small), but in terms of everyday life, this model is the ultimate truth.

Of course a layman could wave his hand and claim that unlike fermions and bosons, particle X can nudge an electron, but X can’t be created in particle accelerators the way everything else can be. Conceivable? Sure. Likely? You can disagree with Carroll on that, but the question remains regarding what laws of physics does X actually obey, how can it be detected, and how can the laws of physics be edited to accommodate it.

Meanwhile, on the macro scale other completely independent lines of evidence point to the same conclusion (e.g. the theory of evolution, cognitive neuroscience). And meanwhile, whatever miracles are performed tend to be about as effective as placebos, and there just isn’t anything that happens on a macro scale in controlled experiments that can’t be reduced to the underlying physics of the standard model.

17 hours ago, Calm said:

 If we do not understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy yet, if we can only measure it by its gravitational effect, if it is this difficult to observe, if dark matter and energy has not been fully defined in how it affects what is around it in the decades since scientists first became aware of it, how can we exclude that there is no additional form of matter, perhaps spirit matter, that we yet have been unable to measure and has no cause that triggers a change of interaction with particles we can measure in the highly controlled and highly predictable experiments?

What makes dark matter “dark” is the fact that it doesn’t interact with electromagnetic fields, and thus couldn’t push around electrons or protons, and thus has no way of interfacing with our brains. Carroll says: 

Quote

 

If any particle we haven’t yet found lasted long enough and interacted with ordinary matter with sufficient strength that it could possibly affect the physics of everyday goings-on, we would have produced it in experiments by now.

One as-yet-undiscovered particle we believe exists is dark matter. Astronomers, studying the motions of stars and galaxies as well as the large-scale structure of the universe, have become convinced that most matter is “dark”—some kind of new particle that is not part of the Core Theory. The dark-matter particle must be quite long-lived, or it would have decayed away long ago. But it cannot interact strongly with ordinary matter, or it would have already been found in one of the many dark-matter detection experiments that physicists are currently running. Whatever the dark matter is, it certainly plays no role in determining the weather here on Earth, or anything having to do with biology, consciousness, or human life.

 

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 183). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

17 hours ago, Calm said:

We are surrounded by dark matter…what if spirit matter acts on a property of dark matter we are not yet aware of and then the dark matter acts on the more mundane matter we are more familiar with?  Is this an illogical possibility?

Logically conceivable? Yes. But the idea that dark matter could push around an electron in our brains or otherwise interface with our bodies contradicts the laws of physics. When you add that to the fact that there isn’t any evidence of this happening, and add to that evidence from other branches of science (e.g. neuroscience that observes that with split-brain patients, each brain has its own conscientiousness and personality that is independent of the other half), and a pretty robust picture emerges. 

17 hours ago, Calm said:

Wouldn't we need to understand what the effect of spirit matter theoretically would be first and when it should occur in order to measure whether or not the expected result occurs or not?

According to Carroll:

Quote

 

To address this issue seriously, we wouldn’t necessarily need to have a “Soul Theory” that is as rigorous and well developed as the Core Theory of physics. We would, however, need to be specific and quantitative about how the Core Theory could possibly be changed. There needs to be a way that “soul stuff” interacts with the fields of which we are made—with electrons, or photons, or something. Do those interactions satisfy conservation of energy, momentum, and electric charge? Does matter interact back on the soul, or is the principle of action and reaction violated? Is there “virtual soul stuff” as well as “real soul stuff,” and do quantum fluctuations of soul stuff affect the measurable properties of ordinary particles? Or does the soul stuff not interact directly with particles, and merely affect the quantum probabilities probabilities associated with measurement outcomes? Is the soul a kind of “hidden variable” playing an important role in quantum ontology?

If you want to be a dualist and believe in an immaterial soul that plays any role whatsoever in who we are as human beings, these questions are not optional. We’re not rigging the game by demanding a full-blown mathematical theory of the soul itself; we’re simply asking how the soul is supposed to affect the mathematical theory of the quantum fields that we already have.

 

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (pp. 215-216). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

17 hours ago, Calm said:

How can one be certain they have included all possible causes of behaviour, sensation, etc in an experiment?

Carroll says:

Quote

 

The constraints provided by quantum mechanics and relativity make quantum field theory an extremely restrictive and unforgiving framework. We can use that rigidity to map out how well we’ve tested the Core Theory, the specific set of fields and interactions that governs our local environment. The answer is: really well. Enough to be convinced that we know what the relevant particles and fields are in this regime, and any new discoveries will involve phenomena that only manifest themselves elsewhere—at higher energies, shorter distances, more extreme conditions.

But how do we know, even if we can’t directly see new particles or fields, that they can’t exert some subtle but important influence on the particles that we do see? The answer can be traced to another feature of quantum fields: an idea called effective field theory. In quantum field theory, the modifier “effective” doesn’t mean something like “does a good job fitting the data.” Rather, an effective theory is an emergent approximation to a deeper theory. A kind of approximation that is specific, reliable, and well controlled—all due to the power of quantum field theory....

The strength of effective field theory is what allows us to assert “This time is different” when we make our audacious claim that the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known. When Newton and Laplace contemplated the glory of classical mechanics, they may very well have considered the possibility that it would someday have to be superseded by more comprehensive theories.

And eventually it was—by special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Newtonian theory is a good approximation in a certain domain of applicability, but ultimately it breaks down and we need a better description of reality.

What’s new is that Newton and Laplace, even if they had thought of their ideas as only accurate in a certain regime, had no way of knowing how far that regime extended. Newtonian gravity works very well for the Earth or Venus; it eventually starts breaking down when we consider the orbit of Mercury, whose tiny precession became some of the strongest evidence in favor of Einstein’s general relativity. But Newton would have had no idea how far his theory might be accurate.

With effective field theory, however, that’s exactly what we have. An effective field theory describes everything that happens to a certain set of fields, as long as the energies are lower than a certain cutoff, and distances are larger than a certain lower limit (as set by experiment). Once we have the parameters of the effective theory pinned down, we know what will happen to our fields in any experiment we can imagine within its domain of applicability, even if we haven’t done that experiment yet.

It’s this special feature of quantum field theory that gives us the confidence to make such audacious claims about the scope of our knowledge.

 

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 186-191). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

 

[Analytics]

51 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

This is interesting...

* We teach that a child who dies at 2 under tragic, painful circumstances doesn't have merely a 2nd chance to endure more of mortality and it's painful issues, but that that child is raised to eternal life in the mansions of Celestial Glory to grow and progress in the presence of our Heavenly Parents in eternal joy. Which of these two concepts seems more merciful?

* There is a "debriefing" coming in the Millennium- where all the mysteries of the earth and it's history and what it all means and how it ties together will be revealed.

These are basic scriptural concepts... Did you never learn them while in the Church?

Yes, I’m quite familiar with these teachings.

When I went through the deliberate process of shopping around for a belief system, my overarching criterion was finding the truth, not finding something that I liked or found comforting.

[ZealouslyStriving]

11 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Yes, I’m quite familiar with these teachings.

When I went through the deliberate process of shopping around for a belief system, my overarching criterion was finding the truth, not finding something that I liked or found comforting.

So you chose nihilism?

That saddens me.

Fortunately, God has made some provisions for just about everyone. Things will turn out better than your current atheism allows for- but you could've had so much more.

 

Edited May 5, 2024 by ZealouslyStriving

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

This is interesting...

* We teach that a child who dies at 2 under tragic, painful circumstances doesn't have merely a 2nd chance to endure more of mortality and it's painful issues, but that that child is raised to eternal life in the mansions of Celestial Glory to grow and progress in the presence of our Heavenly Parents in eternal joy. Which of these two concepts seems more merciful?

* There is a "debriefing" coming in the Millennium- where all the mysteries of the earth and it's history and what it all means and how it ties together will be revealed.

These are basic scriptural concepts... Did you never learn them while in the Church?

My niece is a Medium. She gave me a reading a few years ago and told me that there was a child with my deceased parents with dark hair, now can't remember the age. Maybe 8? My niece had no idea that my daughter had a miscarriage around that same time so my daughter and I wondered if it could be her daughter who is now with my parents and living her life there. She would be half white and half Hispanic, so explains the hair color. Thought it was pretty cool if so. 

[CV75]

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

Hi CV,

I didn’t respond to the questions the first time because the questions don’t seem very relevant to how I see the world. I try to understand reality, appreciate it for what it is, and deal with it. Wanting the fundamental nature of reality to be different than what it is doesn’t seem pointless. But, I do try to address questions, so here we go.

Why would I like spirits to be real? (that’s the question when you cancel out the double negatives) I like the idea of second chances. If a kid dies of malaria at the age of two, that just seems like a tragically short and painful life. For the sake of cosmic justice, it would be so nice if individual that had tragic lives had a second chance. And it would be nice for life to have a debriefing where mysteries and unanswered questions could all be revealed. 

On the other hand, I also like the idea of stories having endings.

Regarding the rest of your post, I think that all feelings are biological in nature. Spiritual feelings feel distinct, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t driven by chemical processes in the physical body.

Thank you. It seems you are saying that liking the idea of spirits being real has to do with a preferred outcome of cosmic justice, a sense of fairness or need for closure by finding meaning, or answering the “why” questions that bring a person into connection with the cosmic (the unseen universe beyond our immediate selves). This likely has a lot to do with your DNA and upbringing.

I agree that this and all other kinds of feelings can be proven to exist by scientific means and explained in scientific terms, but how do you see the sciences proving why you feel that way? We understand how we come up with “why” questions and the associated feelings, but why does biology or any other observable process produce them?

[mfbukowski]

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

Because we can image the brain we can actually see the brain activity that represents love.  Emotions are not substance so it is absurd to make an argument like you do.  But emotions in our bodies produce electrical impulses as well as chemicals and hormones and thus can be observed.

So if I watch that brain activity closely enough, it will give me the definition of "love"?

Wow!  Throw away all the songs, religions, literature,  feelings of what we say to those we love, what it is LIKE to fall in love, how feel about those we love and all connected to what the word "love" means culturally, and we can learn all that by getting out the good old microscope, chemistry set, and a lot of electronic stuff, and there it will be- a "representation" of the feeling the word expressed by the squiggles L-O-V-E?

Wow! I gotta get a ton of equipment and figure out how to use it, so that I can be a better poet, and write songs and become a billionaire!!??

Thanks!

But where do I get somebody's brain?  Can you volunteer- I mean it's your idea right? 

But wait a minute there.  How do I make sure it "represents"  LOVE accurately?   

How do I compare the feeling of LOVE with all that machine data?   I mean if it REPRESENTS the feeling, how can we check that out?   I mean I guess I have to look at my scientific data, and then look at LOVE and see that they both look alike?

But how do I SEE love to compare it to the data?

It's that good old correspondence theory problem all over again.   But I want to find TRUTH!   So how does this represent TRUTH about LOVE?

Where can I find a bucket or two of TRUTH so  I can compare it  with the brain data of LOVE?   Will they at least be the same color?   I would guess that color would have to be RED with all the blood and stuff, right?    Wow that is exciting to know!

Edited May 5, 2024 by mfbukowski

[BlueDreams]

14 hours ago, Teancum said:

 

I am curious, how do you explain the phenomenon of two independent personalities, or selfs,  in persons where the hemispheres of their brains are split?

I hesitate To jump into the thread. Both for time (I'm leaving on vacation in a couple days and am busy due to it) but I've found what I'm reading interesting. So I can't guarantee that I'll be able to answer much as I'd like. 

 But I think the split brain thing is a little misunderstood, particularly in differentiating between mind, consciousness, and sense of self. People with split brains, may engage and think more distinctively and more overtly than most do, but they still have a singular sense of self. This personally makes sense to me. We generally navigate multiple impulses within ourselves whether we're aware of it or not. Each time my daughter fights me, for example, there's a part of me that want to smack her in anger and a (luckily more developed and dominate part) that insists on being patient or finding non-violent means to get through the situation.  On the religious front, there's a part of me that is certain of my experience of God and that there is a God/afterlife. There's another skeptic part of me that is never certain and is a chronic source of doubt and analysis for other plausible conclusions or explanations. There's core aspect of  of me that acts as a middleman/pacifier between the two.  

Everyone has parts within themselves. Most are integrated to a degree that we don't really notice it. I have a client who has DID (dissociative identity disorder). Their parts are far more distinct and come from severe childhood traumas that fractured and froze memories into the personalities of them at the times of trauma. Access to these memories often included distinct personality shifts that effected everything from posture, voice, engagement with me, and even their handwriting and diction. They wouldn't remember or engage with the memories/knowledge these parts held. It was astounding to watch. Note that I use past tense. The more that this person integrated the information and parts of their experiences into the whole self the less and less distinct these parts have become. 

The problem I see in this example, is one of the main problems I have with assumptions founding much of scientific methodologies: they're reductionistic. This isn't always a bad thing. It's useful in understanding what mechanism in a system is doing what. But it can be a problem when making assertions about the total function and naming the system. So for this, scientific inquiry and data can note how the brain utilizes different neural pathways to make a congruent picture. it can point to what damaging those neural pathways splits. This can include bahaviors, motor processing, translation of data, opinions, etc. But What it can't do/what takes a leap to interpretation is assuming that these equal "the mind" and that the mind equals "consciousness" and that consciousness is the same as "the soul." That's a big leap...and one that's not warranted IMHO.

So for example if I had a split brain and one part of me expressed my God-engaged part and another my "skeptic" part, that doesn't mean I've gained to consciousnesses. It means aspect of my whole do not engage the same way as they used to due to brain damage. My self, the part of me that is constant no matter how I've shifted isn't necessarily touched. When I'm engaging with said client with DID, there is a self that I will reach for who is different and constant beyond their parts. I've done the same with personality disorder, where parts are also taking over...I find a core self that engages with said parts (but isn't a part) in a wise and different way. When said clients have found "self" it's often described as a spiritual experience. It's this self that is hard to even define using scientific language...let alone study. And it's this self that is what I associate with spirit. When I can get this aspect of a human to be in the driver's seat of their mind and life, they start to deeply heal and reintegrate the parts that are out of whack. (PS. THere's a newer therapy model that's based on this called internal family systems).  

 

Gotta run! If I have more time I hope to say more on other aspects of the OP. 

 

With luv,

BD  

 

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, Teancum said:

Based on @Analyticsposts above such material should be detectable.

Go back in your time machine and tell Einstein and  Oppenheimer that they will never get energy out of a hunk of rock..

What a waste of time that was!   Where is the bang in the rock?

And how can you detect fire in a hunk of wood?  I agree with you that fire can never be in wood.   Gosh- it would burn up!  🤔

[mfbukowski]

21 hours ago, Teancum said:

I likewise could gloat that when the arrogant self righteous believers like yourself die and find there is nothingness, and think it would be grand to see.  But alas, there will be nothingness. 

Nothingness doesn't "gloat" or know what "alas" means, so if he is wrong, so are you.  It's heads and tails of the same imaginary coin.

Edited May 5, 2024 by mfbukowski

[manol]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

But where do I get somebody's brain? 

You can have mine.  I'm not using it. 

[Calm]

 

4 hours ago, CV75 said:

but how do you see the sciences proving why you feel that way? We understand how we come up with “why” questions and the associated feelings, but why does biology or any other observable process produce them?

That one is pretty easy.

Because there is survival value in such beliefs.  People aren’t killing themselves or their children to save them from suffering needlessly because there is hope for more.  They put up with boring as hell or immensely painful lives with little joy in them because the next life promises much greater things or because they don’t want to ruin the next life too.

Those whose biology did not produce this type of hope killed themselves off before reproducing (generally speaking).

Edited May 5, 2024 by Calm

[teddyaware]

8 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

So you chose nihilism?

That saddens me.

Fortunately, God has made some provisions for just about everyone. Things will turn out better than your current atheism allows for- but you could've had so much more.

 

Reminds me of a famous 1935 cartoon that would appear on TV from time to time when I was a kid — it was called “The Sunshine Makers.” The villains of the story were miserable trolls who loved darkness rather than light. They’d drag themselves around all day in gloomy darkness while singing a very depressing song with the following lyrics: “We’re happy when we’re sad, we’re always feeling bad. How are you? Terrible! That’s fine! We’re happy when we’re sad.”

[Calm]

I am not sure I am going to express well enough this reservation I have about the usefulness of the physical realm experiments to identify spiritual forces, etc even if matter as defined by JS, but here goes.

There seems to be an assumption in these experiments that spirit whatever are just more of the same physical elements, iow, the spirit realm plays by the same rules as the physical realm.  I think I get why….because the assumption is physical matter behaves a limited number of ways and interactions can only occur within these limits.  It is like refusing to define God as outside of time because then how could he affect inside of time (so to speak, too lazy to be precise here).

But what if the spirit realm is fundamentally different in some way…perhaps its unifying force is a type of consciousness and all interactions between spirit and physical will have a purpose to that interaction, or perhaps something else beyond the comprehension of mortal men is involved in activating interaction…think of it as two universes that can only intersect when intentional forces are applied to connect them and God sets the rules for using these forces.  If it didn’t serve the purpose of God to expose these interactions, if one assumes there is a mind behind these interactions, can one say with certainty God or whatever the mind is couldn’t simply not engage anytime he/they/it are aware of the potential for being observed?

I get that the macro observations of miracles and placebos allegedly is enough to cover this type of interaction, but I honestly don’t see how one could control variables enough or understand all the behaviours, internal and external that take place at this level of human behaviour in order to say “nope, nothing different between these two”.

Edited May 5, 2024 by Calm

[CV75]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

 

That one is pretty easy.

Because there is survival value in such beliefs.  People aren’t killing themselves or their children to save them from suffering needlessly because there is hope for more.  They put up with boring as hell or immensely painful lives with little joy in them because the next life promises much greater things or because they don’t want to ruin the next life too.

Those whose biology did not produce this type of hope killed themselves off before reproducing (generally speaking).

Yes, I was thinking of this biologically-sustained mental process in terms of favoring the perpetuation of our species as the observed or interpreted result of the inclination to seek cosmic justice, but that still does not get to "why." Why are the natural processes of any species, or involving the elements that compose them, designed to perpetuate life in opposition to those that don't? Granted, some will say there is no reason. Some among the one form of life I can think of that does ask "why" won't or don't ask it, and still perpetuate the species. Does someone lacking or suppressing the impulse to ask "why?" ultimately operate against the perpetuation of their species? Are things that are "acted upon" bound to degrade (and why?).