I was a complete skeptic until ...

[SorryImPsychic]

Would you be good enough to answer Matts question i.e. tell us more about your experience.

You only want to know more about the experience so you can refute it. Save your energy. The result will be as it is now - you will not believe that I saw a ghost....

[Mulder]

You only want to know more about the experience so you can refute it. Save your energy. The result will be as it is now - you will not believe that I saw a ghost....

Confidence in your sighting slipping?

[SorryImPsychic]

Confidence in your sighting slipping?

No 8)

[Mulder]

Then why the secrecy?

[SorryImPsychic]

Then why the secrecy?

It's just reluctance Mulder.....reluctance to have to argue with all your "rational explanations" after I describe my "rational experience".

[Mulder]

Experiences are not rational - they are the product of the unconscious parts of our brain at work. What we see at any instant is our brain's projection of how it thinks things should look now (depending on how they looked just now), using sensory input varying from 1/10s old to much older and incorporating stuff taken directly from visual memory! Our brains try to 'rationalise' sensory inputs against memory and sometimes get it wrong - hence misperceptions and hallucinations. Our experiences can also be altered by expectation and suggestion. But they are always presented to our consciousness as 'true'. How cool is that?

[Matt]

It's just reluctance Mulder.....reluctance to have to argue with all your "rational explanations" after I describe my "rational experience".

You could always try not arguing with them.

[SorryImPsychic]

Experiences are not rational - they are the product of the unconscious parts of our brain at work......

Science cannot explain conscious experience let alone unconscious (perhaps subconscious is the better word here) experience.

The current Holy Grail of neuroscience is the discovery of what actually is Consciousness. So I don't find it reassuring that you refer to neuro activity which is not really fully understood.

[SorryImPsychic]

You could always try not arguing with them.

Well that would mean staying away for another year or so.

[Mulder]

Science cannot explain conscious experience let alone unconscious (perhaps subconscious is the better word here) experience. The current Holy Grail of neuroscience is the discovery of what actually is Consciousness. So I don't find it reassuring that you refer to neuro activity which is not really fully understood.

Consciousness is a whole brain activity performing an exective decision making and monitoring role over the much more important unconscious brain activity. It is a bit of an illusion, really, that keeps us occupied while the really clever stuff is all going on in the unconscious (not 'subconscious' - Freud has been gone a long time now!).

There's nothing particularly controversial in what I've written - it's all established science - admittedly much of it recent. Neuroscience really is moving very quickly now - it can be tricky to keep up.

If you have any radically different information about sensory perception, perhaps you'd like to share it?

[Dr B]

Science cannot explain conscious experience let alone unconscious (perhaps subconscious is the better word here) experience.

Which theories of consciousness in particular are you referring to?

The current Holy Grail of neuroscience is the discovery of what actually is Consciousness. So I don't find it reassuring that you refer to neuro activity which is not really fully understood.

Actually, we know what brain regions are necessary and some would argue are sufficient, for consciosuness to occur - is this not important? In addition we know about the synapse, numerous electrochemical responses (and consequences for awareness), brain damage and mental impairment, brain stimulation and human experience, We know why people are colour-blind, why they are deaf, why stroke has the effects it does, we have good ideas about perception, attention, memory and consciousness, we know about amnesia, Capgras, Cotard, Fregoli, Charles-Bonnet syndrome, eplilepsy, migraine, and the consequences for experience and belief. We know about alien-hand syndrome, depersonalization, the OBE the NDE and the sensed-presence. Yes there is much to learn but the explanatory gap is no where near as big as your ill informed position would have you beleive.

[Dr B]

besides.....limitations in science give no support to pseudo-science - so don't make that additional logical error....

[Mulder]

You put it so much better DrB ...

[Dr B]

Just don't ask me about d-SLRs

[SorryImPsychic]

Which theories of consciousness in particular are you referring to?

Yes there is much to learn but the explanatory gap is no where near as big as your ill informed position would have you believe.

There is no globally accepted Theory of Consciousness.

We can observe neuronal activity related to conscious experience but neuroscience cannot explain how this activity is translated into "conscious' experience and all that entails.(e.g. qualia). I believe we do need to understand what consciousness is before we can talk about "rationality".