New stuff in neuroscience

Here is but one narrative among a sea of examples of memories not being stored in the brain. The example comes from a series of tests where Grof gave participants LSD and the subject experienced an occurance from before they were born:

I recall the experience of a young Finnish woman who attended one of our workshops in Sweden. Inga experienced herself as a young soldier during World War II, a full fourteen years before her conception. The soldier she became was her father, and she was in the midst of a battle, experiencing it all through his senses and nervous system. She fully identified with him, reliving how his body had felt and the sharpness of the high adrenalin emotions he was undergoing at the time. She was acutely aware of everything that was happening in the area around her. While hiding behind a birch tree, a bullet whistled past and grazed his-her cheek and ear. Inga’s experience was extremely vivid and compelling to her. She could not even imagine where such a memory could have come from. She did know that her father had fought in the Russo-Finnish war, but she was certain he had never told her of anything like the experience that had come to her mind. She decided to call her father on the phone and ask him about her experience. After speaking with him for some time she reported back to the rest of the workshop group. As she spoke, she grew more and more excited, awed by her discovery. When she described what she had experienced to her father he had been absolutely astonished. Everything she described to him had actually occurred! Her descriptions of the battlefield and his thoughts and feelings that day were absolutely correct, down to the detailed descriptions of a birch tree forest where the event happened. He also assured her that he had never spoken to anyone about his experience because he had never considered it serious or interesting enough to tell. Though he had never verbalized it, the experience had somehow been passed along to his daughter.

Grof, Stanislav; Bennett, Hal Zina (2009-10-13). The Holotropic Mind (Kindle Locations 2136-2141). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
 
Here is but one narrative among a sea of examples of memories not being stored in the brain. The example comes from a series of tests where Grof gave participants LSD and the subject experienced an occurance from before they were born:



Grof, Stanislav; Bennett, Hal Zina (2009-10-13). The Holotropic Mind (Kindle Locations 2136-2141). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Cool! The problem is though, can we differentiate between memories and subconscious thoughts?
 
One theory is that they are more like patters in activity over the whole brain, rather than simply stored in one place.
But still in the brain. Not beyond the brain as Tallis and others want to believe. I don't think there's any evidence memories are stored in one particular part of the brain also.
 
Here is one more that is similar. Obviously these examples are open to all the usual questions, which is fair. I offer them only as possible examples.

One aspect of ancestral experiences deserves special attention; careful and unbiased study can occasionally reveal that they convey specific information that was unknown to the subject, and, in some instances, not even accessible to him at the time of the session. The mechanism involved is, at this point, quite obscure; none of the explanations available seems to cover all the unusual coincidences of this kind observed during my LSD work. The nature of this problem can be illustrated by the following typical example.
Nadja, a fifty-year-old psychologist, experienced in her LSD training session a very realistic identification with her mother and relived a scene that she considered to be a part of her mother’s childhood. Here is her report of the relived event: “To my great surprise, my ego identity was suddenly changed. I was my mother at the age of three or four; it must have been the year 1902. I was dressed up in a starched, fussy dress and hiding underneath the staircase; my eyes were dilated like those of a frightened animal, and I felt anxious and lonely. I was covering my mouth with my hand, painfully aware that something terrible had just happened. I had said something very bad, was criticized, and someone roughly put their hand over my mouth. From my hideout, I could see a scene with many relatives—aunts and uncles, sitting on the porch of a frame house, in old-fashioned dresses characteristic of that time. Everybody seemed to be talking, unmindful of me. I had a sense of failure and felt overwhelmed by the unrealistic demands of the adults—to be good, to behave myself, to talk properly, not to get dirty—it seemed so impossible to please them. I felt excluded, ostracized, and ashamed.”
Motivated by professional interest, Nadja approached her mother to obtain the necessary data about her childhood, which they had never discussed before. Reluctant to admit that she had had an LSD session, which her mother would have disapproved of, she explained to her that she had had a dream about her mother’s childhood and wanted to know if it was true. No sooner had she started her story than her mother interrupted her and finished it in full accord with the reliving. She added many details about her childhood that logically complemented the episode experienced in the LSD session. She confessed to Nadja how ominous and strict her mother had been to her; she talked about her mother’s excessive demands regarding cleanliness and proper behavior. This was reflected in her mother’s favorite saying, “Children should be seen but not heard.” Nadja’s mother then emphasized how lonely she had felt during her whole childhood, being the only girl with two much older brothers, and how much she craved to have playmates. Her description of the house exactly matched Nadja’s LSD experience, including the large porch and the steps leading up to it. She also mentioned the dresses covered by starched white pinafores that were characteristic of her childhood. According to the mother’s narrative, Nadja’s grandmother used to invite many relatives for family reunions on Sundays and made food for everyone.

Grof M.D., Stanislav (2010-04-10). LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious (Kindle Locations 3204-3220). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.
 
It seems to me that those accusing Tallis of "wanting" a particular view to be true might ask themselves if they are the ones desperate for the veracity of a particular metaphysical paradigm. Taking the supposedly most pessimistic position (materialism is actually quite a relief to certain persons, as noted by Tart here) and arguing for its validity on that ground is logically fallacious.

I'll get back to memory in a bit (here's past discussion on criticism of physical memory traces, which is similar to but AFAICTell not exactly akin to the argument Tallis is making). I need to make sure I can explain intentionality correctly as it's tricksy.

However, I figure the lurkers might be interested in what an accomplished* neuroscientist-philosopher like Tallis has to say about other subjects relating to the mind:

Raymond Tallis: What Consciousness Is Not

One of the most impressive parts of The Character of Consciousness is Chalmers’s investigation of the relationship between neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. In recent decades, neuroscience has increasingly focused on identifying so-called “neural correlates of consciousness” and describing their characteristics. Hence the rash in the media of images from brain-scanning devices, that show parts of the brain “lighting up” as a purported explanation for various phenomena of the mind.

There have been various theories proposed as to how neural activity might become consciousness. One key fact, which is embarrassing for mind-brain identity theorists, is that the overwhelming majority of neural activity — in both the brain and the spinal cord — is not correlated with awareness of any sort. For some, this means that the answer is location: neural activity in the cerebral cortex is consciousness and neural activity in the spinal cord or cerebellum is not. Yet location hardly seems an adequate explanation of how some nerve impulses get upgraded from mere biophysical events to bits of awareness. What is it about the cerebral cortex that is special? What qualities does it, or whatever part of the brain underlies awareness, possess that the others do not? What physical qualities could account for the supposed difference between awareness-causing neural activity in the cerebral cortex and neural activities elsewhere in the nervous system, which even hard-line reductionists agree are not conscious?

Various alternative theories appeal to neurobiological properties that are less anatomically localized. These include “systems,” such as the one emphasized most recently by Gerald Edelman, in which consciousness arises from “loops” of activity between the thalamus and the cortex. Similarly, Francis Crick and Christian Koch speculated that consciousness might involve a particular sort of cell throughout the cerebral cortex, which has “a unique combination of molecular, biophysical, pharmacological and anatomical properties.” Other approaches focus more on what the neurons are up to than where they are — their patterns, their intensity, their frequency, the extent to which they are synchronous, and so on.

But none of these characteristics seems likely to deliver the difference between neural activity that is and is not associated with consciousness, not the least because they all aim to narrow down a phenomenon that is inherently multifaceted. And the approach faces other inherent limitations. For a start, as Chalmers points out, correlation is not causation: even if one identifies some neural feature correlated with consciousness (say, by stimulating a part of the brain and having the subject report being aware of some mental state), it does not follow that this neural feature is solely or mainly dedicated to consciousness. More to the point, even if some of these phenomena do turn out to be truly and uniquely causative of consciousness, none of them would enable us to get a handle on the “hard” questions. As Chalmers candidly points out, “why should [some particular neural feature] give rise to conscious experience? As always, this bridging question is unanswered.”

*Credentials:

Medical Career

On leaving Liverpool College, Tallis gained an Open Scholarship to Keble College, Oxford, where he completed a degree in animal physiology in 1967. He completed his medical degree in 1970 at the University of Oxford and St Thomas' Hospital in London. From 1996 to 2000, he was Consultant Adviser in Care of the Elderly to the Chief Medical Officer. In 1999–2000, he was Vice-Chairman of the Stroke Task Force of the Advisory Group developing the National Service Framework for Older People. He has been on the Standing Medical Advisory Committee and the Council of the Royal College of Physicians and was secretary of the Joint Specialist Committee of the Royal College on Health Care of the Elderly between 1995 and 2003. He was a member of the Joint Task Force on Partnership in Medicine Taking, established by Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, in 2001. For three years he was a member of one of the appraisal panels of the National Institute of Clinical Excellence. He retired in 2006 as Emeritus Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Manchester.[2]

Philosophical works

Tallis attacked post-structuralism in books such as Not Saussure,[3] Theorrhoea and After[4] and rejected the assumptions of much artificial intelligence research in his book Why the Mind is Not a Computer: A Pocket Dictionary on Neuromythology.[5] He denies that our appreciation of art and music can be reduced to scientific terms.[6] His philosophical writings attempt to supply an anthropology that acknowledges what is distinctive – and remarkable – about human beings. To this end he has written a trilogy of books entitled The Hand;[7] I Am: A Philosophical Inquiry into First-Person Being;[8] and The Knowing Animal.[9]

In 2007, Raymond Tallis published Unthinkable Thought: The enduring significance of Parmenides. His book The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head, which explores the range of activities that go on inside the human head, was published in April 2008.[10] and Michelangelo's Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence was published in 2010.[11]

Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity was published in 2011.[12] In Defence of Wonder and Other Philosophical Reflections, a collection of essays from The Reader and elsewhere, was published in April 2012.[13]
 
What do those concepts really mean though...? It's like your still stuck on first base, with ideas similar to naive perception.[/quote explain
What concepts? I haven't proposed any. A concept would be non local consciousness or holographic memory or morphogenic fields. I don't see that the brain is where memories are a concept, but an actuality based on overwhelming evidence. If you do, than explain how it is like the concepts just mentioned?
 
Post number five.

In his own words he writes:
I have to agree with Sci; he seems to imply memories are somewhere else.
At first I didn't recognize this man, but having done a search is bringing it back to me whom this fellow is. The more I read the less impressed I am. In this particular example I stand by what I said.

Well, while I don't follow his rationale on that idea that doesn't mean it isn't a reasonable claim - to him. I can't believe we still have to have these discussions because you open up a whole can of worms (which I think is your intended purpose here). You have to understand the subjective aspect of the question you ask. Is it a reasonable claim? Well a simple answer is: Yes, to him it is. Your very question is flawed with the assumption that there is a reasonable scale that applies to everyone. Please re-think your thought process before posting from now on - so we can have a real discussion and not your insights in to absurdities.
 
Last edited:
But still in the brain. Not beyond the brain as Tallis and others want to believe. I don't think there's any evidence memories are stored in one particular part of the brain also.
Where in the brain? Where is your memory of grade school in your brain?
 
Well, then let's go about it scientifically. One of you can volunteer to be the test subject. We'll pick out a specific memory and go slicing up your brain until that memory diminishes or goes away. Anyone want to volunteer?
 
You said...



So what do you mean with regards to 'memories' and the 'brain' by these terms...

'Still in'
'Not beyond'

?
What do I mean? Using terms psi proponents oft use local vs non local. You are familiar with those two aren't you. I guess I should use them from now on.
 
Didn't Karl Lashley already do this with his rat studies?
Yeah Pribram and Lashley did this, which is how Pribram came up with the holonomic theory of mind. Him and Bohm actually worked together for a time, and Pribram commented that it would have to be an amazing coincidence that both the mind and the universe could be understood via the concept of holograms.

To be clear here, the importance of a hologram is not the idea that it's an illusory construct made of light but rather parts contain details regarding the whole.

Talbot was the one who took their ideas and extrapolated in his book Holographic Universe, but it's important to keep in mind this is an extrapolation. Personally it was less than satisfactory to me as I think Talbot made too many assumptions about how Psi might work. Nontheless both Bohm & Pribram had some interest regarding the existence of Psi:

What is under discussion here is, of course, not merely a way of understanding and working with parapsychological phenomena. It is a different self-world view, emerging out of modern physics and yet going beyond the restrictive framework from which modern physics grew. In this way, the discoveries of modern physics come to give support to the movement in which the rigid division between observer and observed can be dropped—a movement that could evidently be the beginning of a fundamental change in [our understanding of] consciousness itself.
-Bohm, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 113-135

"It isn't that the world of appearances is wrong; it isn't that there aren't objects out there, at one level of reality. It's that if you penetrate through and look at the universe with a holographic system, you arrive at a different view, a different reality. And that other reality can explain things that have hithero remained inexplicable scientifically: paranormal phenomena, synchronicities, the apparently meaningful coincidences of events."
-Psychology Today Interview
 
Yeah Pribram and Lashley did this, which is how Pribram came up with the holonomic theory of mind. Him and Bohm actually worked together for a time, and Pribram commented that it would have to be an amazing coincidence that both the mind and the universe could be understood via the concept of holograms.

To be clear here, the importance of a hologram is not the idea that it's an illusory construct made of light but rather parts contain details regarding the whole.

Talbot was the one who took their ideas and extrapolated in his book Holographic Universe, but it's important to keep in mind this is an extrapolation. Personally it was less than satisfactory to me as I think Talbot made too many assumptions about how Psi might work. Nontheless both Bohm & Pribram had some interest regarding the existence of Psi:

What is under discussion here is, of course, not merely a way of understanding and working with parapsychological phenomena. It is a different self-world view, emerging out of modern physics and yet going beyond the restrictive framework from which modern physics grew. In this way, the discoveries of modern physics come to give support to the movement in which the rigid division between observer and observed can be dropped—a movement that could evidently be the beginning of a fundamental change in [our understanding of] consciousness itself.
-Bohm, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 113-135

"It isn't that the world of appearances is wrong; it isn't that there aren't objects out there, at one level of reality. It's that if you penetrate through and look at the universe with a holographic system, you arrive at a different view, a different reality. And that other reality can explain things that have hithero remained inexplicable scientifically: paranormal phenomena, synchronicities, the apparently meaningful coincidences of events."
-Psychology Today Interview

What I find interesting is how well the holographic principle aligns with the ideas of the All in all and the microcosm/ macrocosm connection often connected to Hermeticism
 
Well, while I don't follow his rationale on that idea that doesn't mean it isn't a reasonable claim - to him. I can't believe we still have to have these discussions because you open up a whole can of worms (which I think is your intended purpose here). You have to understand the subjective aspect of the question you ask. Is it a reasonable claim? Well a simple answer is: Yes, to him it is. Your very question is flawed with the assumption that there is a reasonable scale that applies to everyone. Please re-think your thought process before posting from now on - so we can have a real discussion and not your insights in to absurdities.
It does not matter if he considers the idea reasonable, which it seems he does. What matters is if the claim itself is a reasonable one? A confluence of evidence is compelling enough that to think memories are non local is an absurdity.
What I find odd is your rationale to defend a rationale you don't comprehend?
We wouldn't have these types of conversations if members would stop referring to these types of people as experts.Blame it on Sciborg for bringing up R. Tallis.
 
I find it amusing that Steve001 presenting an expert defending his viewpoint in another thread is perfectly fine, but I'm somehow committing a sin against his materialist faith if I post links to Tallis' arguments that people can read and judge for themselves.

In the other thread he specifically notes the credentials of the author he cites as being important. Well after Steve001 referred to Tallis as a "fool" I presented Tallis' credentials here.

Now waiting for Steve001 to post his credentials so that we might compare them to Tallis'.

As for where our memories are if not in the brain, we might turn to the thread entitled 'Do we need morphogenic fields?' as offering one possibility.
 
Back
Top