43 replies to this topic

[cats_lover]

Everyone knows about the placebo effect; the brain has some control over the physiology which is not very surprising. But even if this does not make much sense, if you intake a substance without any effect on human physiology, confusing the brain that this substance has a positive effect, the positive effect happens ("The lazy brain need be deceived, he could do without the substance).

But even though many are not surprised that the brain has control over physiology, or on the body A very old research had already shown that the brain also has control over the matter, and that the properties of matter change when observed. New evidence also shows this phenomenon.

So Double-slit experiment (aka Young's experiment) showed that the behavior of the particles changed depending on whether or not these were observed for a human being (I do not know if animals was used as observers in any research).

If the particles behave as determined by the brain, then the universe behaves as it determines the brain?

The universe and matter is something created by the brain?

There is something like the placebo effect but applied to reality and the universe?

[johnross47]

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

[cats_lover]

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

Well, this is true. These things seem to be no relevant when one has to take their children to school or when you go to the supermarket to buy food. As you said before go about your daily life as normal.

But unlike many religious statements that also could be possible or not; today we have scientific evidence that the brain controls somehow the reality in which we live.

[johnross47]

There are an awful lot of brains busily being, and we don't know how many more there might be out there in the rest of the apparent universe. I suspect that the effect would be to smooth out and average any influence brains might have. If I was asked whether things would be pretty much the same without conscious brains to influence the quantum universe, I would probably come down on the side of yes, though that is just a guess and not based on any science.

On the whole I am a naturalist, and as far as my experiences go I think I am my brain and its sensory apparatus. I don't believe in any sort of soul, as proposed by religions and other superstitions. There is nothing operating my body from some remote location in non-space or whatever imaginary place it might be supposed to inhabit. Immaterial things, supernatural things, don't exist. In my brain, anything that exists is natural.

[cats_lover]

If I was asked whether things would be pretty much the same without conscious brains to influence the quantum universe, I would probably come down on the side of yes, though that is just a guess and not based on any science.

So the control that brain have over matter can just be an effect. Interesting theory.

[johnross47]

If I was asked whether things would be pretty much the same without conscious brains to influence the quantum universe, I would probably come down on the side of yes, though that is just a guess and not based on any science.

So the control that brain have over matter can just be an effect. Interesting theory.

My understanding, and I'm not a scientist, is that the effect breaks down at larger scales. You can put particles or even atoms and small molecules through the double slit experiment but it wouldn't work for a boulder.

[Jeoshua]

I think you're reading a bit too much into the observer principle here. The effect on the double slit experiment is not due to the presence or non-presence of a human reading the data, the effect is due to the fact that in order to "observe" something, one must interact with it, or have it interact with them. The sensors attached to the slits, when turned on, interact with the light particles as they are going through the slits, and therefore change the results. It's not due to their being a human on the other side, at all.

[cats_lover]

I think you're reading a bit too much into the observer principle here. The effect on the double slit experiment is not due to the presence or non-presence of a human reading the data, the effect is due to the fact that in order to "observe" something, one must interact with it, or have it interact with them. The sensors attached to the slits, when turned on, interact with the light particles as they are going through the slits, and therefore change the results. It's not due to their being a human on the other side, at all.

Well, im not an expert, just an entusiast reader; but as i know is the human presence the main point of the change in the particles behavior.

[johnross47]

I think you're reading a bit too much into the observer principle here. The effect on the double slit experiment is not due to the presence or non-presence of a human reading the data, the effect is due to the fact that in order to "observe" something, one must interact with it, or have it interact with them. The sensors attached to the slits, when turned on, interact with the light particles as they are going through the slits, and therefore change the results. It's not due to their being a human on the other side, at all.

Well, im not an expert, just an entusiast reader; but as i know is the human presence the main point of the change in the particles behavior.

For me these experiments show only that there is something totally fundamental missing from our understanding of the deep nature of reality.

[cats_lover]

I think you're reading a bit too much into the observer principle here. The effect on the double slit experiment is not due to the presence or non-presence of a human reading the data, the effect is due to the fact that in order to "observe" something, one must interact with it, or have it interact with them. The sensors attached to the slits, when turned on, interact with the light particles as they are going through the slits, and therefore change the results. It's not due to their being a human on the other side, at all.

Well, im not an expert, just an entusiast reader; but as i know is the human presence the main point of the change in the particles behavior.

For me these experiments show only that there is something totally fundamental missing from our understanding of the deep nature of reality.

Totally Agree

[shadowhawk]

[johnross47]

What exactly this experiment shows in unknown. Something influences the results. Nobody knows what. It would be no more than their usual presumptious, premature, unsupported band-wagon-jumping, for the theists to claim it proves anything about god. It would be yet another case of god-of-the-gaps thinking. "We don't know what it is so it must be god." You would think they might learn from all their previous failures; just to hold their tongues till the evidence is in, if nothing else.

[shadowhawk]

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

Perhaps your experience is the illusion and all else is real.

[shadowhawk]

What exactly this experiment shows in unknown. Something influences the results. Nobody knows what. It would be no more than their usual presumptious, premature, unsupported band-wagon-jumping, for the theists to claim it proves anything about god. It would be yet another case of god-of-the-gaps thinking. "We don't know what it is so it must be god." You would think they might learn from all their previous failures; just to hold their tongues till the evidence is in, if nothing else.

There you go again with that name calling. One thing it snows is the physical is not all that exists. You have Atheism of the gaps.

[Jeoshua]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

[johnross47]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

That is pretty much what I said....until we know what these effects are caused by, they prove nothing about anything.

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

Perhaps your experience is the illusion and all else is real.

If you read it again you'll see that I was summarising the ideas of various expressions of solipsistic thinking, not agreeing with them. They can't really be argued against but they go totally nowhere so they either end all conversation or you agree to just ignore them and continue as if apparent reality is real.

[Jeoshua]

If we are just all existing in some greater mind, who is just imagining all of this, does it really change who we are? After all, we would always have been that, and everything that we thought we knew about how the universe operated would be unchanged, excepting the deepest levels and what is "outside" the universe. It doesn't change my bank account, or what happens when I drop a bowling ball and a tennis ball from the same height.

But there is something to the solipsistic argument, not really that it says that "other people don't exist", but if you think about how the brain works, it grabs quantized bits of information from the world outside, performs computations and interacts with itself, and forms a simulacrum of reality. Wave-Particle Duality nonwithstanding, what you see as "the real world" really is just an illusion, and whatever really is outside of our minds is vastly different on every level than the representation of it in our mind.

[shadowhawk]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

That is pretty much what I said....until we know what these effects are caused by, they prove nothing about anything.

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

Perhaps your experience is the illusion and all else is real.

If you read it again you'll see that I was summarising the ideas of various expressions of solipsistic thinking, not agreeing with them. They can't really be argued against but they go totally nowhere so they either end all conversation or you agree to just ignore them and continue as if apparent reality is real.

So, you have not taken a viewpoint on where the illusion is? You said your experience was real. Everything else could be an illusion. Which is it?

Edited by shadowhawk, 21 February 2014 - 11:18 PM.

[shadowhawk]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

You are right, never said it was. It is evidence perhaps for the in-material.

[cats_lover]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

No body say that in the whole post, the title of the post is "...Brain the Center of the Universe", it is not talking about god...

Is interesting to see that the people that more talk about god are the atheist people.

[johnross47]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

That is pretty much what I said....until we know what these effects are caused by, they prove nothing about anything.

This sounds like the ultimate solipsism. Only my experience is real; all else could be an illusion. I might be a computer simulation. etc. The problem with all these possibilities is that they go nowhere. All you can do is say, "yes that's possible" and go about your daily life as normal.

Perhaps your experience is the illusion and all else is real.

If you read it again you'll see that I was summarising the ideas of various expressions of solipsistic thinking, not agreeing with them. They can't really be argued against but they go totally nowhere so they either end all conversation or you agree to just ignore them and continue as if apparent reality is real.

So, you have not taken a viewpoint on where the illusion is? You said your experience was real. Everything else could be an illusion. Which is it?

I have a busy life and don't always have time to post in depth. The illusion, almost by definition, is in the brain, but since it involves a response by the brain to external stimulii, it is also partly outside the brain. I do not take a solipsistic view myself.

If we are just all existing in some greater mind, who is just imagining all of this, does it really change who we are? After all, we would always have been that, and everything that we thought we knew about how the universe operated would be unchanged, excepting the deepest levels and what is "outside" the universe. It doesn't change my bank account, or what happens when I drop a bowling ball and a tennis ball from the same height.

But there is something to the solipsistic argument, not really that it says that "other people don't exist", but if you think about how the brain works, it grabs quantized bits of information from the world outside, performs computations and interacts with itself, and forms a simulacrum of reality. Wave-Particle Duality nonwithstanding, what you see as "the real world" really is just an illusion, and whatever really is outside of our minds is vastly different on every level than the representation of it in our mind.

Absolutely, the world we perceive is a construct of our brain; I am my sensory system and the brain that co-ordinates, processes and generates sensory experience from the sensory inputs. The sensory system is primary.

[johnross47]

If we are just all existing in some greater mind, who is just imagining all of this, does it really change who we are? After all, we would always have been that, and everything that we thought we knew about how the universe operated would be unchanged, excepting the deepest levels and what is "outside" the universe. It doesn't change my bank account, or what happens when I drop a bowling ball and a tennis ball from the same height.

But there is something to the solipsistic argument, not really that it says that "other people don't exist", but if you think about how the brain works, it grabs quantized bits of information from the world outside, performs computations and interacts with itself, and forms a simulacrum of reality. Wave-Particle Duality nonwithstanding, what you see as "the real world" really is just an illusion, and whatever really is outside of our minds is vastly different on every level than the representation of it in our mind.

All these ideas, solipsism; that we are simulations; that we are experimental subjects; that we are illusions in some great mind, etc., share the common feature of being unproveable and of advancing the debate by zero centimetres. They are amusing essay topics for philosophy 101 but don't help much beyond that. They don't change our experience of the world unless we are susceptible to auto-suggestive panics and fears arising from these ideas.

There is no longer much doubt that what we see as the world is a construct generated by our brain in response to sensory inputs. And given the effects seen in comas and diseases like alzheimers it is fairly clear that the conscious experience, once mistaken for a "soul" is just that same product.

Edited by johnross47, 03 March 2014 - 08:54 AM.

[johnross47]

Guys, this doesn't prove or disprove God... move along now, nothing to holy war about, here.

You are right, never said it was. It is evidence perhaps for the in-material.

If you include everything down to the quantum vacuum level as material there is nothing else. Immaterial is the same non physical, ie not there. It doesn't exist.

[cats_lover]

All these ideas, solipsism; that we are simulations; that we are experimental subjects; that we are illusions in some great mind, etc., share the common feature of being unproveable and of advancing the debate by zero centimetres. They are amusing essay topics for philosophy 101 but don't help much beyond that. They don't change our experience of the world unless we are susceptible to auto-suggestive panics and fears arising from these ideas.

This is the problem of unfalsifiable arguments

[shadowhawk]

Quantum level debunks materialism

http://www.youtube.c...C5pq7W5yRM#t=64

Edited by shadowhawk, 04 March 2014 - 01:15 AM.

[Jeoshua]

This is the problem of unfalsifiable arguments

Well, some unfalsifiable arguments are fruitless (God exists, but doesn't want to be known, and is all-powerful, therefore you can't know him, and since he doesn't want to be known the universe acts as if he doesn't exist). Other unfalsifiable arguments are interesting, but sometimes useful (The world that you experience is that of your own imagination, the real world exists outside yourself but you can't ever really know it, therefore you can create your own "reality").

[johnross47]

Quantum level debunks materialism

http://www.youtube.c...C5pq7W5yRM#t=64

Absolute drivel. Waste of our time. You might think that religious people would learn from past mistakes, but they don't.

[shadowhawk]

Quantum level debunks materialism

http://www.youtube.c...C5pq7W5yRM#t=64

Absolute drivel. Waste of our time. You might think that religious people would learn from past mistakes, but they don't.

What a powerful argument.

[johnross47]

This is the problem of unfalsifiable arguments

Well, some unfalsifiable arguments are fruitless (God exists, but doesn't want to be known, and is all-powerful, therefore you can't know him, and since he doesn't want to be known the universe acts as if he doesn't exist). Other unfalsifiable arguments are interesting, but sometimes useful (The world that you experience is that of your own imagination, the real world exists outside yourself but you can't ever really know it, therefore you can create your own "reality").

You not only can create your own reality, we all do create our own reality. Included in that reality is other people. Problems arise when an individual's reality doesn't match the apparent reality of others. You really have to accept that the apparent is real, or there is no way of resolving the problems. You have to accept that there really are others out there, each existing in their own bubble of brain created reality. It's not something you could ever prove, it's just the only practical way to live outside of an institution. It doesn't make any sense to ask what the world really looks like. "Looks" only applies to the experience in a brain. The world doesn't really "look" at all, but if you accept that there is some reasonably useful correspondence between reality and its appearance, you can cope with what comes at you. When I see a tree it makes sense to assume that there is some gross accumulation of particles acting in a way that correlates with my idea of a tree. The stream of photons interpreted by my brain as a tree thirty yards away is caused by a real object. To say that we are free to create our own reality is slightly off reality as I see it. We can't do anything else, so to call it freedom is IMHO empty.

[shadowhawk]

This is the problem of unfalsifiable arguments

Well, some unfalsifiable arguments are fruitless (God exists, but doesn't want to be known, and is all-powerful, therefore you can't know him, and since he doesn't want to be known the universe acts as if he doesn't exist). Other unfalsifiable arguments are interesting, but sometimes useful (The world that you experience is that of your own imagination, the real world exists outside yourself but you can't ever really know it, therefore you can create your own "reality").

You not only can create your own reality, we all do create our own reality. Included in that reality is other people. Problems arise when an individual's reality doesn't match the apparent reality of others. You really have to accept that the apparent is real, or there is no way of resolving the problems. You have to accept that there really are others out there, each existing in their own bubble of brain created reality. It's not something you could ever prove, it's just the only practical way to live outside of an institution. It doesn't make any sense to ask what the world really looks like. "Looks" only applies to the experience in a brain. The world doesn't really "look" at all, but if you accept that there is some reasonably useful correspondence between reality and its appearance, you can cope with what comes at you. When I see a tree it makes sense to assume that there is some gross accumulation of particles acting in a way that correlates with my idea of a tree. The stream of photons interpreted by my brain as a tree thirty yards away is caused by a real object. To say that we are free to create our own reality is slightly off reality as I see it. We can't do anything else, so to call it freedom is IMHO empty.

Mind and consciousness may be the ground of being? Interesting