Mod+ 246. DR. MICHAEL GRAZIANO LIKENS NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE RESEARCH TO ASTROLOGY

Actually I think Ghost's point isn't that different from Alan Watt's -> the materialist evangelist, New Atheist movement doesn't really offer answers regarding meaning and as Benjamin Cain notes the truth is materialist science has a history of unseating our treasured notions.

So you have people peddling the multiverse* to avoid questions regarding fine tuning & observer-participancy - which offer the possibility of a reality with meaning - but not offering any livable truths in exchange.

Thus for people actually going about their lives it is arguably better to wander into various spiritual paths so long as one isn't completely divorcing themselves from things like modern medicine.

*Lanza suggest the multiverse allows for a "quantum soul" but I confess to not understanding that part of his argument. The man does have some interesting ideas though.
A quantum soul is the closest approach between physics and the paranormal. if something invisible shows up in your room late at night, something that most people would call a ghost, and that invisible something touches you, pokes you, pulls your blankets down, blocks light, emits light, or in any way acts upon things in the physical world, than that invisible something has energy states; it can absorb, store and release energy. In a similar way when physicists solve the Schrodinger equation and obtain a wave-function solution, that wave function solution, which is also considered a quantum field, has energy states that can absorb, hold and release energy. Now admittedly, it's entirely possible that some ghosts, as they say, "go on into the light", and move on to higher planes in which case the resemblance to quantum fields might be sloughed off like snake skin or the physical body. I was simply trying to point out that spirits are not so different from quantum fields and are therefore a reasonable view of reality.

But I do agree, and you have articulated my point very accurately, that there does come a point when it is perfectly natural, reasonable and serene to embrace a religion or spiritual practice of one's choice.
 
I don't know. If qualia can be realized across multiple systems of hardware then perhaps. We have no reason to suppose that they can.
This is why I think that consciousness is something that cannot be made of anything; it is rather some phenomena that is invited in, captured/contained, or alerted.

In other words, it's not a squirrel in someone's head. Although it is possible that the observer contained within a brain might be receiving nonsense signals from their brain, telling them there is a squirrel in their head.
 
Since consciousness only occurs between 10 and 40 Hz, it is also possible that the brain acts like a signal filter that passes consciousness, a universal consciousness, at that frequency. It wouldn't be unreasonable to try an electronic experiment with a signal filter that passes 10 to 40 Hz to see if maybe a ghost can be detected.
 
This is why I think that consciousness is something that cannot be made of anything; it is rather some phenomena that is invited in, captured/contained, or alerted.

In other words, it's not a squirrel in someone's head. Although it is possible that the observer contained within a brain might be receiving nonsense signals from their brain, telling them there is a squirrel in their head.

This is what I got out of Hammeroff's work, which ideally will get more attention now that there's suggestive evidence. -> Consciousness is something invoked into material existence by the structure of the microtubules.

It's definitely controversial but it doesn't seem that far from emergence which posits particular structures evoke consciousness...which runs into the aforementioned "something from nothing" problem. From a pragmatic, "truth that keeps you standing", position Hammeroff also offers ideas on how the notion of a "quantum soul" might be good for humanity.

Nbtruthman also brought up Wallace's idea that consciousness entered into biological forms here. Worth a read IMO.
 
I haven't finished listening yet (60% done)... but I am already having stomach cramps.

The premise is that we have a skechy, cartoonish and almost completely faulty representations of both the outside and the inside world. (So there's basically no hope) But somehow Dr. Graziano is able to tell us what consciousness is and how it works exactly! Amazing :D After that introduction I was already trying not to laugh as hard as I could.

Then comes the guy with the squirrel in "his head" which can obviously be compared to consciousness "in our head"... . Of course, it is the same thing. Best metaphor ever! LOL :D

I am not sure if I'll make it to the end but I think I've got the bottom line: yet another "consciousness as a computational process" guy with the worst eloquence ever ... :eek:

This is almost exactly what Dennett argues, only he doesn't use the vague term "information", but argues in terms of "memes". Basically mind = host for parasitic information/memes = self-deceiving magician-like Turing machine. It's funny we are supposed to accept that, somehow, they are such higher level thinkers as to be able to sidestep this seemingly thorny/intractable property of mind. They have the "Truth" already. Trust them. Only we, the ones who believe in "woo" and other such nonsense, are the ones being misled by our robot-magician grey matter.
 
Sorry about my "manner of delivery". :(

I actually share some of the ideas/opinions you have, both on metaphysics and the shortsighted nature of the materialist evangelicals who thought they could promote humanism via science without worrying about nihilism.

But I think we have to recall that we shouldn't jump the gun in assuming other people aren't finding meaning via their own approaches which might include a combination of science, philosophy, and spirituality.

:)
 
This is almost exactly what Dennett argues, only he doesn't use the vague term "information", but argues in terms of "memes". Basically mind = host for parasitic information/memes = self-deceiving magician-like Turing machine. It's funny we are supposed to accept that, somehow, they are such higher level thinkers as to be able to sidestep this seemingly thorny/intractable property of mind. They have the "Truth" already. Trust them. Only we, the ones who believe in "woo" and other such nonsense, are the ones being misled by our robot-magician grey matter.
Good point, indeed Dennet does the same.
What strikes me, among other things, is that a good orator shouldn't shoot his own foot by beginning a discussion with such unsurpassable premise. It is pretty arduos to convince an audience that we can unravel the mystery of consciousness right after having painted a picture that leaves essentially no hope :D

Also such a gloomy premise is delivered with a few sentences and a couple of references to mundane "optical illusions" to substantiate it.

Isn't this like a giant monument to the straw-man? :D
( in other words... a gross misrepresentation of the subject )
 
Thank you Alex for a fun interview and Dr Graziano for being a good sport when you pressed him. You were easy on him yet still pointed out his flawed reasoning. Hopefully Dr Graziano will learn from the interview, wouldn't it be cool if he contacts you again excited about NDE research. I was struck by his simplistic view of consciousness. Apparently he has not explored his own consciousness a common mistake in our culture. Ignorant overconfidence so often blots out wonder or curiosity, sometimes it sucks to be human.
 
Good point, indeed Dennet does the same.
What strikes me, among other things, is that a good orator shouldn't shoot his own foot by beginning a discussion with such unsurpassable premise. It is pretty arduos to convince an audience that we can unravel the mystery of consciousness right after having painted a picture that leaves essentially no hope :D

Also such a gloomy premise is delivered with a few sentences and a couple of references to mundane "optical illusions" to substantiate it.

Isn't this like a giant monument to the straw-man? :D
( in other words... a gross misrepresentation of the subject )

Yeah I think it's a philosophical position that immediately leads to an impasse in any sort of discussion on these topics. Therefore it's borderline worthless. Of course we're prone to self-deception, holes in memory, etc. That in and of itself is an important consideration for sure with interesting implications. However, placing it at the forefront & establishing a theory of consciousness on this fact makes little sense to me, because it cuts hard both ways. What makes them so certain about their certainty in light of such a thing? I don't see how one could adopt this philosophical premise, and then be dogmatic or stubborn about anything. But some of the most stubborn and/or dogmatic people seem to be attracted to it. It's weird. With that said, certain epistemologies and hyper-rationality are put on very high pedestals, and never critiqued for their own biases and fallacies. And I really have no idea how this fellow thinks/believes his theory is any different than Dennetts. It's exactly the same.
 
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I haven't read the interview yet but this is the guy who thinks puppets are conscious. His opinion matters because.....?

Because it's closer to actuality than the opinions of most. If by "conscious" one means "possessing consciousness" than the puppet is conscious. In fact, everything is conscious. Matter is a manifestation of consciousness. Unfortunately, terminology comes into play and those for whom consciousness is a term meaning human/animal awareness will have a tough time with realizing that.
 
Because it's closer to actuality than the opinions of most. If by "conscious" one means "possessing consciousness" than the puppet is conscious. In fact, everything is conscious. Matter is a manifestation of consciousness. Unfortunately, terminology comes into play and those for whom consciousness is a term meaning human/animal awareness will have a tough time with realizing that.
But isn't that an overly generous interpretation, ascribing such far-sighted vision and wisdom to someone who demonstrated none of it in the interview?
 
But isn't that an overly generous interpretation, ascribing such far-sighted vision and wisdom to someone who demonstrated none of it in the interview?
'ey, I'm a generous type ya know? :D lol. I did state "closer to" . . .the interview did seem to go off the rails. I'm not sure it gives an accurate representation of his viewpoints.
Even if it does, my comment is only that what he wrote about puppets is closer than most perspectives. But not if by "consciousness" one means certain states of creature awareness.

I'll also add that I continue to state that non-specific terminology is a hindrance in discussing this subject but few here want to address that.
 
In trying to pin down the definition of consciousness, it seems to be something that experiences information, and reacts to it. So does a computer chip experience information because it "experiences" input and then reacts with output? It's not given a choice of how to react. It just follows the laws of physics and it's programming. I can't make a computer chip respond "creatively". What if I put a quantum number generator on the chip? It could respond in a random way, but not in a creative way. Even an amoeba will respond to food or a predator in some intelligent way, by moving towards the food or away from the predator. I bet the amoeba could learn to recognize food and predators, and respond accordingly. Does the amoeba store memories by moving molecules around? This molecule means "big scary looking amoeba eater" and that molecule means "yummy food"? How does the amoeba remember what is food and what is a predator?
 
It seems like the minimum necessary requirement for consciousness is that it should be able monitor information streams, like it's looking at an earthquake detector or a lie detector and be able to render a judgement: that looks good or that looks bad. Maybe on that basis, a computer chip could be able to mimic consciousness, and we could build a C3PO cybernetic organism some day. But that's not the same as having a spirit entity trapped inside that actually experiences the data streams.
 
Because it's closer to actuality than the opinions of most. If by "conscious" one means "possessing consciousness" than the puppet is conscious. In fact, everything is conscious. Matter is a manifestation of consciousness.

That's your belief. Though I tend towards idealism, even in that, it is not asserted that everything is conscious or possesses consciousness but that material entities are within consciousness. Everything is conscious, if and only if, panpsychism is true. In any case, this is not what Graziano is talking about.
 
In a way, the registers of an IC chip experience the inflow of digital information that is clocked into it, one cycle at a time.
shift-register-serial-input-schematic.jpg


But in the case of a brain, the information flow is in the form of molecules.
It is the cells that experience the ebb and flow of potential energy voltages, V(x,y,z,t); and it feels like something because each one of those cells is being experienced by a spirit entity. I suppose theoretically a spirit entity could experiences the shift registers of an IC chip if their were some way the spirit could be injected and locked into the transistors of the shift register.
 
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It seems like the minimum necessary requirement for consciousness is that it should be able monitor information streams, like it's looking at an earthquake detector or a lie detector and be able to render a judgement: that looks good or that looks bad. Maybe on that basis, a computer chip could be able to mimic consciousness, and we could build a C3PO cybernetic organism some day. But that's not the same as having a spirit entity trapped inside that actually experiences the data streams.

Yeah, I think this is a big deal that gets papered over by Singularity adherents - symbol manipulation is not the same thing as symbol comprehension. Searle's Is the Brain a Digital Computer is a good introduction to how important this separation is and why programs are likely never going to be conscious entities.

Additionally one might want to consider EJ Lowe's There is No Easy Problem of Consciousness. Lowe contends Chalmers - who says subjective experience is the only thing materialism can't account for - is conflating information as defined by Shannon and information gained by conscious coginition. This results in the kind of confusion that leads to thinking subjective experience is the last hurdle computers have to jump over to become minds when in truth the mountain between the two is almost certainly insurmountable.
 
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