Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

The catch-all forum for general topics and debates. Minimal moderation. Rated PG to PG-13.
_Tarski
_Emeritus
Posts: 3059
Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:57 pm

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _Tarski »

mikwut wrote:Hello Tarski,

I don't think there is anything wrong with interpreting any and all data within a particular worldview - in this case materialism. But, this just doesn't fit the data. That isn't to say a materialist view still isn't the correct one. I have studied at great length false memories and suggestion, particularly the work of Dr. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck. They have done work with preschool aged children concerning suggestibility and false memory particularly in light of child sexual abuse allegations that turn out to be false memories.

The phenomenology of a false memory certainly depends on what type of false memory we are talking about and etiology matters. A false memory created by the suggestions of a therapist need not be anything like those created for other, perhaps neurological reasons. I am sure you are aware that there are people who spontaneously spin false memories of a very vivid nature constantly since their memory process is so dysfunctional. Those memories are vivid, internally consistent and can be about things that happened moments ago or years ago. A man may walk into a bar, find someone to talk to and proceed to recall totally false memories about how he got to the bar as well as false memories about his past. His false memories also display universal themes like having been young or having been married or having had sex, singing, eating, crying, falling in love and so on. Cross cultural human stuff man. Not surprising.

The point is this, a false memory need not conform to your preconceptions or be anything like another type of false memory. The false memories I am talking about come about in a different way under different circumstances. Have you studies those false memories? No because you just assume they aren't false memories. The a different more reasonable attitude would be to add to your catalogue these new types of false memories and their distinctive (hetero) phenomenology. Instead you compare to an entirely different type of false memory that occurs in normal brains and conclude that since they have different features, they can't be false memories at all. What?? That begs the question.
Since the brain is malfunctioning during OBEs and NDEs, and since the brain's job is in part to remember and recount things, we should certainly expect there to be false memories---we expect malfunction when there is malfunction. How vivid and how detailed such memory should be is an empirical question and we can't just assume things a priori. From my perspective we are just learning about the amazing ways in which false memories can occur where there is brain malfunctioning and how different they are from false memories produced in normal brains by the power of suggestion and so forth. Totally reasonable.
OBE and NDE just add to the catalog of things that can go wrong under special neurological circumstances.



How are all these thousands upon thousands of people creating a same core experience (tunnel, obe, light, review of life, sense of oneness and love, meeting dead relatives etc..) that is simply a false memory?


How is it that jokes make people laugh and smile across all cultures.
How is it that one sees basic geometric patterns when one presses on ones eyes (across all cultures)?
How is it that humans love their children and wish to protect them (across all cultures)?
How is it that people hope for an after life across all cultures?
How is it that sudden loss of blood pressure makes the visual field blank out and other familiar effects (light-headedness) across all cultures?
How is it that coming close to ones death in extreme old age makes people reflect on their lives (in a kind of review) and think of their loved ones.


That hallucinations and false memories and various misjudgments that arise when brain trauma or malfunction occurs in a setting already associated with possible death (car accident, hospital setting etc.) do indeed feature similar basic human themes is no more surprising than that people generally love their children, are afraid of death and smile when happy. We are all the product of millennia of biological and cultural evolution. We all use nouns and verbs too no matter the language!

You see a mystery where I see something expected.

"My only claim is that there is nothing at all that makes us think the experience (or mere memory of an experience) happened during zero brain activity.
I consider that essentially impossible.
"

Which is obviously why you can't see other points of view as clearly your so wedded to one.


I am tethered by what we already know! I am similarly tethered to the idea that germs can cause illness (as opposed to evil spirits).
Does that make me closed minded?


So memory isn't stored in the brain that the conscious experience 'emerged' from in the first place but rather is localized from the fundamental unbounded consciousness that is primary.


Oh my! We already know that memory is stored in the brain. This alone settles the whole argument. (Of course, the absurdities your view leads to are endless. I can go on for a very long time explaining with mechanistic detail what your view can not even begin to explain except in fuzzy mystical terms that add no real understanding.)


One example that helps understand is Jung's collective unconscious.


WTF? You can't be serious?
To the extent that the notion suggest something not already expected from the fact that we are all similarly constructed physical and social creatures with innate linguistic and social faculties, Jung's collective unconscious is fantasy not supported by any data. Nothing ever came of it. It is vague, open to endless excuse making and not clear enough to even test. It isn't something real that needs to be explained anymore than "the force" needs to be explained.

This does not reduce or eliminate empirical reality like brain states, or damage to a brain or the physical world and the findings of science in any way - it in fact accepts them at a more parsimonious ontological level.


Huh? It sure seems to. Your disembodied OBE mind/soul ghost can supposedly see, hear and remember without any eyes, ears or brains.
So what exactly are brains for then? What are ears and eyes for in your view? Why does something have to be in view and obscured by opaque surfaces to be visible.
Idealism doesn't have to posit a outside shadow or reflective world of things in themselves that we can never actually know it can in fact claim the real is all mind.

I can't think of a more fuzzy, ill-defined, dubious ontological category than "mind". After years of introspecting, reasoning, reading, meditating, experimentation with theogens and psychedelics, and generally trying to make sense of "mind",... I think I can safely say that I no longer believe that such a thing exists in the sense you intend (immaterial ghostly something or other) . But shouldn't it just be undeniable by introspection? Well I deny it.


I have a couple more things for you to think about now that I know you actually think that thought, memory, and perception can occur without involvement of a brain.

1) First let me note that you did not explain why my facial muscle move to make a speech act that recounts something I saw while my brain was not functioning. Are the language centers involved? How are they informed of what happened when they were out of the loop?

2) When a disembodied OBE patient looks an object why does he or she only see the surface of the object and why does the patient still see only one side of the object? If there were eyes involved we could appeal to optics and the nature of the sensory apparatus.

3) When an OBE patient looks out of the window does he or she see distant objects as appearing smaller than closer ones?

4) Why would the OBE subject only be able to see through things that are transparent to human eyes? No of that makes sense without the usual story physical story about how oblivion works and the consequent limitations. Why should my vision as an OBE patient be subject to the limitations of the brain and eye and optics when none are in play?

5) Since seeing is an instance of being physically touched and moved (by photon which carry real momentum and energy transfered to the retinal tissue) apparently an OBE patient can be "pushed" by a physical entity? Will the patient feel warmed from the sunlight treaming in therough the window or from the nearby heater? To see is basically to feel the light on ones tissue even if we don't conceptualize it that way normally.
So what about heat, air current, and objects?

If can sense photons (since I can see colors), why can't I taste sugar molecules when in an OBE state? Who needs eyes so who needs taste buds.
Is vision special in the spirit realm?

4) Why would the patient only be able to look in one direction at a time? What is going on when the patient "turns to see in the opposite direction? What is turning?


Finally, you appealed to dreams:

According to idealism all of reality exists within 'mind' this isn't to say reality exists in someones head. Mind is bound by physical structure, this is made plain when we dream - we have a body in a dream and experience movement, sight, touch etc... but what photons, electromagnetic fields and energy create those sights, touch etc.. - mind.

Yes a human can incorrectly judge that there is an apple when there isn't and all that we need for that (in dreams) in some noise in the nervous system and an over active interpreter. I will gladly, admit that dreams and hallucinations exists. These are internal misjudgements at some level of processing and nothing more.
How does the dream apple produced by a brain deprived of external data help you argue for a a perception of a real apple without the activity of a brain at all?? Unbelievable.

Your question also conceals the very problems of materialism. The fantastic fact of a real apple being processed by a brain and then presenting to our consciousness an actual real representation of that same apple that really exists but represented somehow within our conscious experience?


Nothing gets "presented to consciousness". You are under the sway of the myth of the Cartesian theater.
When I look at an apple there is not then a second inner act of looking at a mental something. There is no little theater of consciousness when my little inner self looks at and becomes conscious of a representation of the apple. That would just postpone the whole problem of how something is perceived. The whole thing shows up again in the small when we try to explain how I "see" my own mind or the ghostly figments it produces. There is no little guy looking at immaterial mind images.

Now I know that I am very different than a computer as we normally think of them. But as far as this topic is concerned, it is roughly the same. The topic being the ontological status of hallucinated or misperceived intensional objects.
If a computer could be programmed to recognize objects and faces, and if it made a mistake we would not think that there was a little immaterial thing inside corresponding to the mistake. If a computer system makes the identification "apple" and it is wrong, we don't say that there was a little mental apple in there.

But what if the computer had to make explanations to itself and to other computers without employing a computationally expensive theory about how it itself worked and no notion of computation or digital representation. Maybe the computer could get by with false concepts that would satisfy the need for some explanation. The computer might say to itself and other systems (and believe it too) that "it looked like a cat in my mind, but it was really a dog. Sorry about that". All that really happened was that some part of the computer had incorrectly made the judgment of cat. That the computer might be programed to defend its own substitute version to the death as it were proves nothing does it.
Your irresistible notions of an inner mental world being viewed by your soul is just false. The fact that it seems that way doesn't create actual entities. The idea that something exist just by virtue of seeming to, is also dubious. "The cat wasn't real, but my purely mental images is really there so it must be made of something! I know, it is made of "mind stuff".
Misconception and hallucination are just misjudgements period.
The activity of my whole brain and body and the subsequent ability I have for navigating the world and forming theories about how it works is all there is, or would be would be the whole story but... unfortunately, to deal with the possibility of perceptual error, we seem to innately employ some substitute fictional theoretical constructs (things in my mind). All there is is different parts and levels in the brain making preliminary judgements passed to high levels to be further processed or sometimes to be overridden as when I decide that the pencil in the glass of water isn't really bent even though some lower level part of my visual system is attaching that content prematurely. The idea that something, something mental, some "figment" made of mind stuff is actually bent, is just a wrong idea no matter how natural it seems.
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_Bret Ripley
_Emeritus
Posts: 1542
Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2010 3:53 am

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _Bret Ripley »

Yeah, that memories of disembodied visual experiences seem to be binocular in nature should probably give one pause.
_Tarski
_Emeritus
Posts: 3059
Joined: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:57 pm

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _Tarski »

Bret Ripley wrote:Yeah, that memories of disembodied visual experiences seem to be binocular in nature should probably give one pause.


Exactly!

So much in so few words. That's all I should have said.
LOL
when believers want to give their claims more weight, they dress these claims up in scientific terms. When believers want to belittle atheism or secular humanism, they call it a "religion". -Beastie

yesterday's Mormon doctrine is today's Mormon folklore.-Buffalo
_Gadianton
_Emeritus
Posts: 9947
Joined: Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:12 am

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _Gadianton »

Mikwut wrote:In idealism consciousness doesn't come from the brain, but rather the brain is a modulating medium for which consciousness (which is fundamental and unbounded) is filtered or localized to individual egocentric experiences of reality. So memory isn't stored in the brain that the conscious experience 'emerged' from in the first place but rather is localized from the fundamental unbounded consciousness that is primary


I think this statement is problematic because without some major articulation and probably back-peddling, what's proposed here is dualism, not idealism. This statement says you have consciousness, and the consciousness is "filtered" through a material object, the brain. I'd think an idealist would say the "brain" is a mental construct of some kind. Your first sentence could be interpreted this way, maybe, but the second sentence says "memory isn't stored in the brain" -- but why not? If the "brain" is a mental construct, then why shouldn't memory be stored there? If I program a virtual person with a virtual brain, and I program the brain to be the command center, then the "brain" is where memory is stored even if I know its reality isn't what the virtual person thinks it is.

The problem with dualism -- for the lurkers, if anyone is stupid enough to lurk -- is the interaction problem. How do two different substances influence each other? So as wild as idealism may sound, it's apparently less wild than allowing for both a tiny bit of non-physical mind in conjunction with a physical world. It's easier to either go all physical, or go all mental. So if I were an idealist responding to Tarski, I would tell him that it begs the question to demand physical cognitive centers to be involved for a spirit to apprehend the world, because physical cognitive centers aren't involved for a living person with a "body" either.

But then if I were Tarski, I'd point out that whatever idea/mental constructs are in place that allow a living person to experience, such as a "brain", there must be a substitute after death that performs the same function -- something must be there to "localize individual egocentric experience" in precisely the same way the "brain" did for the living person to "see" the operating table below and the white hospital walls etc.

The only way around this I can see is if everything is a sham. The virtual person programmed isn't programmed with a controlling virtual brain, but rather with the illusion that the virtual brain is the command center. But then nothing is required to "be there" to "localize egocentric experience". In this case, we are an undefined receptacle, and when living, God provides the experience stream that we have brains and eyes and see the operating table with our eyes, but it's a sham. We see the operating table due to direct illusions from God, and then after death, we still receive the same directed illusions, but with the illusion that we are now some kind of disembodied entity rather than a 'physical' creature with a brain.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.

LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.
_Bret Ripley
_Emeritus
Posts: 1542
Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2010 3:53 am

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _Bret Ripley »

Tarski wrote:
Bret Ripley wrote:Yeah, that memories of disembodied visual experiences seem to be binocular in nature should probably give one pause.


Exactly!

So much in so few words. That's all I should have said.
LOL

Actually, I was just just looking for an excuse to trot out my "spirits as disembodied Cyclopes" theory. Hell, AFAIAC the primary attraction of dualism or idealism is that they leave the door open to the possibility that the real 'me' is some sort of Cycloptic ghost.

I mean, c'mon: Cycloptic. Ghost. It's both empowering and a great name for a band.
_EAllusion
_Emeritus
Posts: 18519
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2007 12:39 pm

Re: Mormon theories about the origin of the cosmos

Post by _EAllusion »

I probably should build on my comment before. While the linked "journal" clearly is crank-central, I don't think that should in of itself discredit any arguments found in the article. For those being prudent with their time, it might be a good indicator that anything found therein is likely to be a waste of it, but it would be ad hominem to simply assume things are wrong because of the source. However, to the extent that it is linked because it is an example of peer-reviewed literature I requested, I think it is fair to point out that it really isn't. At best, it is a list of other citations the reader is asked to hunt down. It's the equivalent of citing a Mormon-Interpreter article on the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

With that out of the way, the article makes a variety of claims that I simply disputed - the most important of which is that disembodied NDE and OBE events involve subjects learning information they could not have known unless they had a visual perspective outside of their physical body. I will simply flat state that there isn't good evidence that this happening and claims to the contrary tend to come from very poor experimental designs or none at all. That's why the Parnia research is at least interesting in that his group is likely to maintain proper controls.

I'd further add that if there were credible evidence of disembodied perception, it would be one of the more important discoveries of the past 100 years and not the sort of thing regulated to fringe sources quoted. Someone's skeptic-meter should've been in the red.
Post Reply