(April 16, 2017 at 8:07 am)Little Rik Wrote:(April 15, 2017 at 12:33 pm)Lucanus Wrote: I'm sorry but this is simply not true. If consciousness is such an abstract entity, how come damage to the brain can result in severely altered states of consciousness?
I mean look at this:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage (it's in Italian for your convenience)
Easy explained Luc.
When you drive your car and you get involved in an accident you car get smashed and most of the time you too get injured.
The consciousness being an abstract entity can not really get damaged but because is stuck inside the
pineal gland and the brain when the brain get damaged the consciousness that rely on the brain as his source of energy can not work properly that is why .............can result in severely altered states of consciousness........ as you say.
As far as the person is alive the consciousness is stuck inside this body-brain but as soon as the body-brain die the consciousness separate.
Even if the body was smashed under a roller machine the consciousness will not be touched.
She is immortal.
This is completely testable. Go on and test it! Get a Ph.D. in neuroscience, go squish some mouse's pineal gland and then see what happens. Most likely, they'll just lose the ability to sleep.
People have already studied the pineal gland to death. It's only function is the secretion of melatonin, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle. Get over it.
Also, how is consciousness "stuck" inside the body? If it is stuck, then it means that it has some interactions with the physical structures of the brain. How would you then study these interactions? If what you said was true, then we would be able to -indirectly- study consciousness with scientific means!
(April 16, 2017 at 8:07 am)Little Rik Wrote:Quote:Even if it was something beyond what we can physically explain, then what would it be? How would you go about testing your hypothesis that consciousness is abstract and exists independently from the brain?
1) Energy and consciousness are the two sides of the same sheet.
One can not exist without the other.
Even science say that energy can not be destroyed so if energy can not be destroyed also consciousness
can not be destroyed.
2) NDEs are the evidence that consciousness never die so it is clear that consciousness once the body die
will be independent from the body.
1) To our current scientific understanding, that is simply false. Consciousness does not seem to be "energy" as you put it. All the processes that make consciousness possible require energy in the form of chemical gradients and ATP, and they also require that this energy is released in a particular pattern. This, in turn, requires an actual physical scaffold (the Central Nervous System) to unfold. Without this scaffold, all these processes simply cannot go forward, and consciousness ceases to exist.
2) No they aren't. Because of the fact that they are -Near- Death Experiences. The body is evidently still alive during those moments, as proven by the fact that people actually recover from those and actually live to tell the tale. At most, what NDEs do is show what people experience in the moments just before death. But they definitely do NOT show what happens after.
"Every luxury has a deep price. Every indulgence, a cosmic cost. Each fiber of pleasure you experience causes equivalent pain somewhere else. This is the first law of emodynamics [sic]. Joy can be neither created nor destroyed. The balance of happiness is constant.
Fact: Every time you eat a bite of cake, someone gets horsewhipped.
Facter: Every time two people kiss, an orphanage collapses.
Factest: Every time a baby is born, an innocent animal is severely mocked for its physical appearance. Don't be a pleasure hog. Your every smile is a dagger. Happiness is murder.
Vote "yes" on Proposition 1321. Think of some kids. Some kids."
Fact: Every time you eat a bite of cake, someone gets horsewhipped.
Facter: Every time two people kiss, an orphanage collapses.
Factest: Every time a baby is born, an innocent animal is severely mocked for its physical appearance. Don't be a pleasure hog. Your every smile is a dagger. Happiness is murder.
Vote "yes" on Proposition 1321. Think of some kids. Some kids."