Alex
Administrator
fixed :)Alex,
Usually the title links across to the other Skeptiko website from which I can download the audio. Did you forget something?
David
fixed :)Alex,
Usually the title links across to the other Skeptiko website from which I can download the audio. Did you forget something?
David
Alex's question at the end of the interview:
What do you think Michael's best point is -- what's his best argument from the many different topics we discussed?
Michael Shermer: Keep up the good work. You’re the skeptic’s skeptic.
What do you think Michael's best point is -- what's his best argument from the many different topics we discussed?
That's a bit like like asking what I think L.Ron Hubbard's best argument was. Truth is, Shermer's views are just so naive and pedantic that it's impossible to hold a productive conversation with him.
They are in different ballparks for sure, but I'm not sure they are intellectual ones.He isn't in the same intellectual ballpark as people like Bernardo Kastrup or David Chalmers.
A large part of brain function has been shown to be inhibitory. Lower activity in these (predominantly cortical) inhibitory circuits may well result experiences that feel richer, hypervivid, etc. It's just not that simple.I was screaming out at Alex to say that extended consciousness experiences correlate not with increased or even normal levels of neural activity, but with reduced levels thereof. Shermer hinted at it himself when he talked about cerebral anoxia. I would have concentrated on that...
A large part of brain function has been shown to be inhibitory. Lower activity in these (predominantly cortical) inhibitory circuits may well result experiences that feel richer, hypervivid, etc. It's just not that simple.
So wheres the disagreement then?
There may be none.
As someone with an historically low bar for slapping fellow posters on "ignore", I'm not sure what a "productive conversation" with you would look like. :D
A large part of brain function has been shown to be inhibitory. Lower activity in these (predominantly cortical) inhibitory circuits may well result experiences that feel richer, hypervivid, etc. It's just not that simple.
I find the afterlife debate to be an emotionally charged side dish to the real meat of the nature of consciousness/reality.Hey Malf, I’m curious to know where you stand on the argument of afterlife vs none. I’ve seen a few of your postings but I don’t think on this specific topic. I could be wrong. I promise I’m not being an ass hat. Genuinely curious.
How do you know I ignore more people than others? It may be simply that I'm a tad more open about it than some others are. At any rate, I'm not ignoring you, plainly. And for once you make a cogent comment:
I'm not so sure about that: I said neural activity and made no mention of the type of that activity (inhibitory vs. excitatory). If you can post a link or two to evidence that heightened inhibitory activity leads to lowered overall neuronal activity and heightened extended consciousness experience, it might be helpful. Can you?
Yea we need more guest besides shermer and that dude who scammed peopleI couldn't finish listening to it, too frustrating. Here's a fantastic video showing how his treatment of another subject misrepresents what's actually going on. He went to the Electric Universe conference a few years ago and basically misunderstood everything. Fortunately the EU people didn't take that lying down and shot back with the video below. It's really worth watching.
I really wish Alex would interview Wal Thornhill or David Talbott of the Thunderbolts Project, it's another area that fits into the milieu of Skeptiko.
To be clear I’m saying decreased inhibitory action may lead to ‘less managed’ or’unfiltered’ experiences.
Not sure you meant to say that. Decreased inhibition would seem to be equivalent to increased excitation, and if this leads to less managed/unfiltered experiences, then it appears one would expect that extended consciousness experiences would accompany more excitation rather than less excitation/more inhibition. I suppose that would imply that, if excitation is associated with increased neuronal activity, it would be the opposite of extended consciousness being associated with decreased neural activity.
And yet, the authors seem to be agreeing that: The results were remarkable because they showed for the first time that characteristic changes in consciousness brought about by a hallucinogen are related to ‘decreases’ in brain activity.
I gotta admit, I found the paper a bit confusing and could have it wrong. If you know of anything that puts it more simply, please do let me know.
See the bolded bit in the quote on my last post. The inhibitory/management networks do their inhibiting when active. Therefore less activity = ‘richer’ experience.
Exactly. This all seems to support the hypothesis that the brain works as an inhibitory filter of consciousness. When you inhibit the inhibitor, you get closer to experiencing “pure” consciousness, or your “true” self. Eben Alexander has written/spoken about this a fair amount.If the inhibitory networks are active, then there is some brain activity, even if there's less than when they're inactive. But during NDEs, the brain is flatlined. As to psychedelic experiences, one would have to show that the reduced activity was the cause of the sensation of enhanced consciousness. Even if that were true, wouldn't it support the contention that reduced brain activity correlates with enhanced conscious experience?
Being an Idealist, I think the causation would be the wrong way round: it wouldn't be that a material cause (i.e. inhibition) were causing enhanced consciousness, so much as enhanced consciousness appearing to us to as an inhibitory process.
Alex's question at the end of the interview:
What do you think Michael's best point is -- what's his best argument from the many different topics we discussed?
His best point was the argument about how "copying" a person's consciousness wouldn't be an effective way to preserve what he called the "point-of-view self". In that, he's entirely correct. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to realize that, if anything, that's a point against materialism. The whole segment about the "logistics" of the afterlife is him applying physical logic to non-physical things and then believing that when that naturally doesn't work, he's disproven the idea of consciousness beyond death. He lays out a bunch of problems with proposed methods of physical immortality and thinks those are effective arguments against non-physical immortality. He seems to lack imagination. He just can't get out of his strict materialist paradigm, even when he thinks he's trying to be open-minded about other ideas.Alex's question at the end of the interview:
What do you think Michael's best point is -- what's his best argument from the many different topics we discussed?