NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/alt/outofb/430

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From: Corp.Sun.COM!Eric.Arnold (eric )
Subject: message...
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 23:42:51 GMT
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Original-Sender: Corp.Sun.COM!Eric.Arnold (eric )

I tried sending this message to [e-mail].  I was
wondering if it worked, since I didn't get it sent back to me.


-Eric

Subject: Re: OOBE or just vivid imagination

> Original-Sender: [e-mail] (Gary S. Trujillo)
>
> So it turns out that Robert McGrath and I are not in agreement about some
> things.  Oh well.  Here we go, then...
>
> In <[e-mail]> [e-mail]
>     (Robert McGrath) writes:
>
> > In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
>     (Gary S. Trujillo) writes in part:
>
> >> Yes, I know, these hypotheses sound fantastic, but I find Dr. Sheldrake's
> >> gedanken experiment which demonstrates the fallacy in our conventional
> >> assumptions to be a particularly fascinating one...
>
> >> ...The state of brain science is simply
> >> not sufficiently advanced to demonstrate that what we observe about our
> >> own mental functioning all takes place "inside the box."
>
> >    1.  There is substantial evidence of what psychologists would call
> >    the "Neural-identity-hypothesis".  There are 150 years of research,
> >    thousands of studies, which show that mental experiences are corellated
> >    to physilogical events in the nervous systems.  This body of evidence
> >    cannot just be dismissed as "occam's razor".
>
> I am not disagreeing with correlations, but with any statment that says that
> consciousness has been proven *to reside* within the confines of the physical
> organ of the brain.  Further, I don't know any way to establish that it does.
> Sheldrake's interpretation of certain experiments would seem to suggest that
> consciousness may not be localized to the brain.  There is no problem accomo-
> dating the quite correct observation (which I cited in my article) that one
> can produce effects on perception and behavior by stimulating regions of the
> brain.  Clearly the brain is somehow related to mind and consciousness, but
> the state of our present knowledge is not sufficiently advanced to be able
> to demonstrate the nature of that relationship.  That's all I'm saying.  I
> would not attempt to disagree with the fact that "mental experiences are
> correlated with physiological events...," but I'm unsure about the cause of
> those events.

The crux of this problem rests on whether you posit the existence of
paranormal events.  To state my position, I personally cannot confirm
such, but there is so much anecdotal evidence that it is at least worth
the effort to include it, and see what that does to the problem (I'm
obviously relating the paranormal to OOBE for the same reason).

If you don't/won't posit the paranormal, then this particular
discussion isn't for you, since I'd say all conventionally studied
mental phenomena fall under the cognitive sciences' paradigm
sufficiently (for Occam's razor, anyway).  There's no point in
discussing whether or not all phenomena are localized in the brain if
you don't believe there is anything outside the brain.  It isn't
productive to say that an argument is wrong because one of its
under-pinning suppositions, which is tacitly but generally known to be
controversial, is false (of course, it's false, if you won't allow one
of the axioms -- if that's so, you'd be better off focusing your
efforts on the problem of placing OOBE in the physical or metaphysical
domain.)

I bring this up because the person (Robert, I think) arguing against
the TV analogy appears to be generally skeptical to the idea of
metaphysical OOBE models.  I think in one previous article, you/Robert write:

  >IMHO, it is a mistake to start speculating on the relation of OBEs to
  >hypothetical psi-phenomena.  This will serve to obscure the study of
  >OBEs in the smoke and confusion of ESP research.

It obviously states a position which denies paranormal axioms for
logical arguments.  This seem to have created at least one blind spot:
just because we can measure the EM waves used for TV, and thus know it
to be a local-remote phenomenon, that doesn't disprove the TV analogy
because "carrier waves" for metaphysical phenomena are by definition
technologically unmeasurable.  Please don't confuse an argument by not
agreeing on axioms.  (This confusion is a problem that rears its head
in many other places here and at large.)

However, Gary writes:
  >
  >   >IMHO, it is a mistake to start speculating on the relation of OBEs to
  >   >hypothetical psi-phenomena.  This will serve to obscure the study of
  >   >OBEs in the smoke and confusion of ESP research.
  > I'll accept this recommendation for the present, unless and until I might
  > find evidence to suggest looking for correlations.  In fact I agree
  > strongly.  I just wanted to indicate one possibility, not to say that I
  > think that I think it's likely or that it represents a good place to begin
  > looking.
So, now I don't know why you/Gary would be interested in something like
the TV analogy, since the physical/metaphysical, mind/brain, etc. etc.,
problem rests squarely on reproducing paranormal events.  (Remember,
that today's metaphysics is tomorrow's physics, once it becomes
understood and reproducable.  (A paraphrase of some quote by Asimov or
Clarke.) ) Some smoke and confusion is inevitable, since I'm going to
guess that the quest for understanding the "carrier waves" for the
brain-TV is going to run, pretty quickly, into other "connection" ideas
like telepathy.

The reason that paranormal events have this important role to the TV analogy
(IMHO, of course) is that it provides the central mind-brain contradiction.
How can it be that nearly everything about day-to-day experience be tweaked by
physically manipulating or measuring the brain, and yet the paranormal is
in direct contradiction (by definition) to this physical causal link?
The only model that seems to me to to encompass this situation is that of "the
brain as receptacle", which is the TV analogy.  You can twiddle the
knobs on the TV, mess with the tubes(!), and it all has an effect as if
the whole phenomenon is local, but in this case we know it isn't.

There is nothing I've heard of that proves that OOBE.s are either
mental or metaphysical, and this TV analogy probably doesn't really
help prove it one way or the other (unless the experiment itself is fruitful),
but it might help understand how OOBEs *could be both*.

> >    2.  The gedanken experiment you describe is faulty, at least as you
> >    describe it.  It would not be difficult for a cognitive psychologist
> >    to determine that the TV is a receiver not the originator of the
> >    signals.  In fact, psycholgists would quickly determine the wavelengths
> >    and basic forms of the signals received by the TV.  This is called
> >    "perceptual psychology"!
>
> Please don't take the analogy too literally.  We happen to be lucky enough to
> have equipment which can detect the signals being received by the television
> receiver - which is no great surprise, since TV is a human invention.  We may
> not have any means of reliably detecting whatever it is that relates the
> brain to Sheldrake's "morphogenetic field," however.
>