General Chat

Psychical Research - research into the paranormal - has attracted some of the finest intellects in the sciences and arts since the middle of the 20th century. Many of these started off scoffing at the idea or, at least, were sceptical but became convinced of the reality of paranormal phenomena.

The Society for Psychical Research alone has had 12 Nobel prizewinners as members plus many Fellows of the Royal Society. Therefore the charge that psychical research attracts only the gullible and foolish could not be further from the truth. It would be more accurate to say that it attracts those with active minds open to the unanswered questions of science and those who take the time and trouble to seek out and read the vast, carefully researched, number of published papers on psychical research. They are available in scientific magazines, on the internet and elsewhere. Google such names as Robert Jahn, J.B. Rhine, Stephan Schmidt of Freiburg University, Dr P van Lommel to start with

The laboratory-based research into the paranormal (usually known as parapsychology) can be said to have started as long ago as 1930 under the guidance of William McDougall, head of the Psychology Department whilst Professor J.B Rhine and Louisa Rhine of Duke University in North Carolina set up the first parapsychology laboratory.
Since the time of the Rhines, a number of laboratories in Europe and the USA have furthered the research, using more rigorous and exacting control than the Rhines or other areas of science, to produce results supporting the existence of the paranormal. These include Stanford Research Institure (now SRI Internationa), the University of Edinburgh, University of California, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, University of Nevada, University of Iceland, Institute of Psychiatry London, University of Goteborg. Engineering Anomalies Dept. at Princeton University, Freiberg University. All these and other renowned academies of learning have made and are continuing to make major discoveries in the field.

I think that Dawkins is a deeply religious person. His religion is not organised and has no name but seems to be roughly Christianity without Christ (or God). He has a definite sense of good and evil and of right and wrong. This comes across quite clearly in his writing in a quite unscientific way. His objections to religion are that organised religions have caused what he regards as harm to humanity. (It is nothing to do with Darwin who is irrelevent to the question of whether there is a God. The Vatican accepts Darwinian evolution. This is in their view is simply the method God used.)
A true atheist would hold that all life is merely a complicated chemical reaction taking place in an organic scum covering the surface of a fragment left over from the formation of a minor star. He would aver that the concepts of good/evil right/wrong love hope compassion etc have no objective reality and are just a particular type of chemcal reaction in the brains of humans. Dawkins clearly does not see the world this way. I think he is unconsciously developing his own religion, based like all the others on propositions which he cannot prove, which are indeed unprovable. It can be summed up thus:
"There is but none God and Darwin is his prophet"!

Hi Len,

Glad to see u are still about and posting.

I, like you, do not like the new format of the boards. But again like you I have a very busy life and I am greatful that the exceptional 'busyness' came at a time when GR is in great flux.

I love psychology and sociology but all you have writtenis not lost on me by far. I really dont think there is a massive difference between all sciences when we got to the root values.

Glad to see you about.

love Theresa

Quote "Is consciousness (id, mind, soul or inner being) a form of energy? Many believe it to be so - in fact this is borne out by it being associated with a chemical/electrical activity in the brain so it follows, that when the body dies, consciousness cannot be lost but, to obey the laws of physics, must be transmuted into another form …..Spirit?"

It is true that energy cannot be lost but this does not mean that a light cannot be switched off. When somene dies their brain stops working and stops producing energy. If man has a soul/spirit/id whatever you want to call it, I doubt that it can be found in any measurable energy or substance.

Michael
So all the medical and scientific reports I have quoted above are wrong and you are right?

By comparing an interruption of electricity flowing along a wire to a light bulb, by flicking a switch, to the act of brain death is ludicrous.

Consciousness is not a brain function and the brain is not the source of elecricity - although it depends on an electro-chemical process to carry out its biological monitoring - as does the heart and all the other bodily organs.

In fact, the entire biological system can be artificially kept alive after consciousness has departed. This includes parts of the brain which will continue with bodily maintenance so long as there is an oxygenated blood supply. The state is called "brain dead" but this is a bit of a misnomer as only consciousness (mind) and memory has departed. Please refer to the findings of Drs Parnia and Sabon above.

In his own field, genetics, Prof. Richard Dawkins is excellent. I have several of his books on my shelves but his latest, on the God problem, certainly demonstrates that, in his own way, he is a religious fundamentalist. Atheists too may become quite fanatical. He lloks a bit maniacal when speaking on the subject. I suspect that, if he could get away with it, he would advocate that all adherents to sectarian religion be put down. He would say it very politely, of course.

Having said that, I would have to agree that organised religion - although in some ways good for society - has a lot to answer for. Perhaps religion is OK - it's what people do with it. Warfare and violence would continue even if religion died out.
len

A baby is born and opens its eyes for the first time. What does it see? The answer is – it may seem obvious to some – nothing. Normally, its mother will hold it in her arms in such a way that the baby eyes are near her face and it will gradually begin to gain an impression and make out the general shape of her face. This process will go on for perhaps 40 minutes when it will imprint her in its mind and mother and child become bonded. It presumably has experiences going on in its mind but it does not understand any of these on a cognitive level. It has already begun to receive stimuli whilst in the womb and responds to discomfort and sounds. Its memory started to form at about 12 weeks after conception after which it begins to react to sensory experiences such as sound or discomfort.

The baby’s parents immediately start to condition it with verbal, aural and visual stimuli which baby absorbs and processes and lays down as memories. The parents then start to condition it by telling it the cause, in their culture’s opinion, of those experiences going on in its mind. They point to objects and give them names. They indicate that the pink thing waving about in front of them is part of itself, a hand or a toe. They show it other objects that are separate from it and gradually it is conditioned to the idea that it is surrounded by objects which are not part of it. And it learns that the reflected particles of electromagnetic radiation bouncing off these objects and being collected into its eyes and transmitted to its brain as electrical impulses are colours like red and green. Baby believes these light waves of varying length (colours) are an intrinsic property of the object being observed. Remove the light source and the colour disappears. Fortunately, our eyes are equipped to deal with extremely low light and have cells called rods that come into operation for detecting gray-scale (black and shades thereof). Colours are detected by cells called cones. Some animals cannot detect colour and live in a gray-scale world. Other animals detect more colours than do humans.

Baby may, of course, itself be described as an electrochemical machine having a little computer at the top and 5 sensory devices for intercepting and translating pheromones, gas and particles in the air (smell), detecting and interpreting molecules of chemical compounds (taste), detecting fluctuations in air pressure (hearing), receiving and changing into electrical impulses an exceedingly small part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum (sight), detecting resistance to pressure, fluctuation in temperature and assessing texture (touch). That was until fairly recently when other things began to be discovered. There is no computer on earth (or even envisaged) that has the power and complexity of the human or animal brain. Two of the mightiest computers on earth linked together are, arguably, less complex than a hen’s brain. There are things going on in the brain, mine and yours, which are works of creation and not necessarily linked to what is going on “out there”. The physical body is itself one of the things “out there”, not the human being.

Some children experience things which the adults around them do not. They are considered by the already normally conditioned adults to have over-active imaginations. Those adults “know” that the things the children experience are not “true”. Children up to about 16 years old can hear what older folk cannot yet this is acceptable as it can easily be proved. Some children have imaginary friends and others have out-of-the-body experiences and describe floating around the house at night. Sometimes the parents become angry and scold the children who then stop talking about any experience they may have had. Such parents have a heavy responsibility for the possible destruction of an extra power of perception in their child, or what might be regarded as an extra window into a dimension of the universe that they themselves no longer possess

Len

Len I don't like being described as ludicrous. Not many people do. If you are serious about wanting a debate I suggest you try and avoid personal snide remarks. Of course you might just want this to be a blog for your own unchallenged views

You argued that since conciousness is a form of brain energy and since energy cannot be lost then the energy must be transformed into something else. This is true but not very informative. I used the example of an electric light which can be switched off without any loss of energy. I do not claim to know what happens when a brain dies, I merely point out that the fact that it was previously using energy does not necessarily mean that there is any continuation of anything.

I disagree that conciousness is not a brain function. If not the brain then what? It is true that you can have a brain without conciousness but that does not mean that you can have conciousness without a brain.

Comparing brains with computers is like comparing oranges and apples. In some ways computers are more powerful, in other ways much less. I think there is much less similarity that most people imagine. Computers can only do a tiny fraction of the things that a brain can do, but they can do those few things much better.

Sorry Len, this is too profound for me at this time in the evening.
Will have to book mark it and read it later.
Good night .... glad you stayed.
Deanna X

Michael. I have described no one as ludicrous - only the analogy you used to compare the brain with a lighting circuit. I am sorry if you took it personally.

I am afraid that better brains than mine, and perhaps yours, have considered the matter of consciousness and have come to the conclusion that consciousness is not a brain function but can operate independently. I tend to go along with their findings as their reports are impressive and have not met with the opposition that one might have expected from the scienific world.

How would you respond to the findings of Schmidt, Van Lommel, Sabon, Jahn and the various other emminent medical people and physicists who have published papers on the reach of the mind?

Richard Dawkins says he is an atheist. Who are we to tell him he is mistaken? Those who saw him on TV some time ago may even describe him as a fundamentalist.

Evidence for correlation between distant intentionality (DI) and the brain. Stanford University Medical center, Palo Alto, CA.

This study, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, demonstrated that distant intentionality (DI), defined as sending thoughts at a distance, is correlated with an activation of certain brain functions in the recipients. Eleven healers who espoused some form for connecting or healing at a distance were recruited from the island of Hawaii. Each healer selected a person with whom they felt a special connection as a recipient for DI. The recipient was placed in the MRI scanner and isolated from all forms of sensory contact from the healer. The healers sent forms of DI that related to their own healing practices at random 2-minute intervals that were unknown to the recipient. Significant differences between experimental (send) and control (no send) procedures were found (p = 0.000127). Areas activated during the experimental procedures included the anterior and middle cingulate area, precuneus, and frontal area. It was concluded that instructions to a healer to make an intentional connection with a sensory isolated person can be correlated to changes in brain function of that individual.

**************

"DI" is the new-fangled term for telepathic transmissions. At one time it was suggested that this may be some sort of subtle electromagnetic energy but it takes place instantaneously over any distance - which takes it outside of any dimension presently known to physics.
__________________

At birth, the human brain is unformatted except for a particular area which is already hard-wired with automatic survival mechanisms. This part is functioning and memory-forming at about 12 weeks after conception The electron microscope can see nerve-cell membranes and specialised contact points (synapses), by which selective chemical and electrical communications established from cell to cell can be seen. The main area, the cortex, is a blank sheet waiting to be filled in by life experience.

We are born with some 50,000,000,000 nerve cells (neurons), far more than we shall need for normal living and reproduction. The hard-wired bit is operating well before birth and has memory which a foetus needs, particularly if premature, in order to know what is what for survival and how to manipulate mum so as to get what it needs by way of nurture.

The more sensory stimulation the undeveloped brain receives the more it will develop. Surplus connections that receive no sensory input will wither and die. After the age of maybe 7 or 8, there will be no more basic development, the unused neurons and synapses will atrophy. Children, who have not experienced speech by then, will never learn grammar and syntax. What of ESP? Many children seem to possess but lose it. Is it knocked out of them or does it wither through disuse?

We all have the same basic mental kit but each brain develops individually, according to its owner’s life experiences. Lots of things we take for granted would have been unbelievable in the childhoods of those born more than 30 years ago, let alone to our forbears. Not so long ago, electricity, radio, x-rays, electronic equipment, gps systems, silicon chips, computers were not even pipe dreams.

A Croat called Tesia and a chap called Marconi (some older folk may have heard of them) independently and separately developed the technique of harnessing a small part of the electro-magnetic spectrum and transmitting it through air and space and materials without wires. At first it was called “wireless” but later the name “radio” became universal. How come two widely separated, living people had - and developed - the same inspiration? Suppose the developing brain is stimulated by sensory input, not necessarily from nearby but from remote sources, what then?

These days, the successors of Tesia and Marconi are still at it, as are international corporations e.g. IBM, Sony and other electronics giants not to mention Mullard.. Names to ponder are Dr Stephan Schmidt of Freiberg University who, in 2005 published in The British Psychologists Journal a paper conceding that the mind, or its essence, is able to travel through space at near the speed of light at indeterminate distances and affect another mind. Techno-speak is “Distant Intentionality”. Our-speak is “telepathy”. Schmidt confirmed earlier work by Prof. Jahn.

Vision researcher Dan Simons of the University of Illinois suggests the existence of another phenomenon, “Mind Sight”. In his research with blind people and animals he discovered interesting and previously unknown phenomena. Some people (and animals) are able to perceive things by means other than the eyes or the known 5 senses.

Studies in Holland, particularly by Dr V.P.Lommel of Rijnstate Hospital, mentioned before in this thread, whose team have investigated hundreds of patients in 10 hospitals across the country. These patients have all been resuscitated after being clinically dead, and has reached conclusions that have “pushed at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind/brain relationship”