If consciousness is the product of the brain how come scientist who study the brain can't explain it or map it in the brain? Not being a smart ass just a question.
@Quazire there are two schools on consciousness. One is materialism or the brain creates consciousness.The other is idealism/dualism--consciousness and the brain are separate.
It is an assumption that the brain causes consciousness. It has never been proven but just a random assumption. (materialism)
Scary thought i must say. Imagine being stuck here, meaning being reborn and reborn again and you not noticing, forgetting memories from your past life without any suspicion living your life again and again. Ughh.
Consciousness, personality, and memories are from the brain. There is no debate about this is the real world. When someone develops alzheimer's disease, as the brain shrinks, consciousness and cognition are reduced or destroyed. And then you have cases of amnesia where people loose memories, character, personality, and in many cases, they become completely different people. One must ask oneself, why is the soul or consciousness being affected by the material brain? Because it is a product of it.
@buddhasknowbest have you thought of reading irreducible mind, because they address those exact questions, and make a very good case against a purely material consciousness
@buddhasknowbest: You could not be more wrong, the debate is alive and well. None of what you posted is proof of anything. It’s correlation, not causation. Everything you posted could just as easily be explained if you view the brain as an evolved regulator and limiter of consciousness rather than the producer of consciousness.
@buddhasknowbest: There are people with severe brain damage who can’t even remember the names and faces of family members or hold a conversation, yet as they approach death they enter a lucid state where they are able to remember and converse as if they had no mental affliction, despite the fact that the brain damage supposedly responsible for their affliction is still very much present. This is called Terminal Lucidity, and it flies in the face of materialism.
@buddhasknowbest: Additionally there are cases of severe hydrocephalus where people can have normal cognition and mental function with a small fraction of the brain mass of a normal person. One particularly impressive case that was published in The Lancet, a leading peer reviewed journal detailed an honors student in mathematics with an IQ of 126 that had ‘virtually no brain’. More recently severe hydrocephalus made the news under the headline ‘tiny brain normal life’.
Dr. Stevenson was quite tough and extremely rational in his approach to each case. If there wasn't enough evidence, just a parent's hunch, he didn't hesitate to dismiss it.
That's why Carol Bowman has taken a softer, more experiential approach in her study of American children's memories. She keeps hearing stories from parents who notice similarities between past relatives & their young children, but the children themselves don't have many past-life memories.
I disagree with the contention that reincarnation can just be...void of any viable explanation as to how? Everything as we know of can be rationally and scientifically explained.
@hmm3065 Here's the thing though, if you actually read Dr Stevenson's work you would see that the most rational explanation for all these children being able to spontaneously remembering lives from the other side of the world, is reincarnation. And literately no other explanation fits these cases.
Sure we don't have the knowledge of how it could work, but im sure in time especially with quantum mechanics it WILL be scientifically explained.
@hmm3065 - perhaps it can, but as yet it hasn't been.
It's just one method of measure - had you instead been raised in a forest and perceieved reality as an interconnected whole, then it'd be difficult for you to remove all the links you know exist between everything, in order to imagine there are no links - so that you can take things separately to one another in a reductionist manner. That is why you cant get at the 'how' from the method of determination you are using.
@hmm3065: There is an explanation as to how this could be possible, but it is outside the closed-minded materialist paradigm. In the words of Cyril Burt: “The brain is not an organ that generates consciousness, but rather an instrument evolved to transmit and limit the processes of consciousness and of conscious attention so as to restrict them to those aspects of the material environment which at any moment are crucial for the terrestrial success of the individual”
@hmm3065 Newton faced very similar criticism when he published his equations for gravity in Principia. Skeptics believed it was insufficient for him to merely describe gravity mathematically and challenged him to show that it had a natural, observable cause or his work was flawed. He responded "Hypotheses non fingo"--I claim no hypotheses--i.e. "I don't claim to know anything beyond the facts, just the facts and empirically verifiable patterns in the facts I've found through induction."
That such a person (and their subject of description) could be found has such a staggeringly small probability, that to reject the hypothesis is irrational. Additionally, to find this trend repeated in numerous cases makes the null hypothesis (that reincarnation is not a real phenomenon) almost laughable.
It is real. It has been described by people in essentially every culture around the world. It's time for people and science to catch up to reality as it is, not how they would like it to be.
Strange thing is that our instant access to information in the modern age leads us to a false premise of omniscience.
Just think of being a peasant in the Middle Ages and being told everything is made up of tiny atoms with protons, neutrons and electrons, about nuclear fusion, X-rays etc, everyone would think you're bat-shit crazy.
Maybe one day our future selves will see our current selves as those very peasants.... ignorant of the true beauty & complexity of our universe.
@OrthodoxDarwinist I believe you are right. We should not feel omniscient, but, on the contrary, rather ignorant. We do not, after all, have any viable means to fulfill our own epistemological cravings. Existence itself as a phenomenon carries with it its lot of questionings. We are surrounded by the mysteries of what is. "Who knows?" Nobody really knows, because we all are on the same boat.
I would like to point up some at-least-to-me inspiring piece of thinking concerning the sometimes-arising cultural resistance to such research: tinyurl[.]com/anthoneff -- that is rattling-sound, pertinent cogitating, and thus accordingly ought to be pointed out.
I think the work is interesting but can certainly be challenged on cultural grounds. It appears that the majority of the children examined grew up in cultures where 'rebirth' is or was accepted as a sound view anyway, which - although it disproves nothing - does lead me to question whether the claims and perceptions of the children were to some extent culturally conditioned.
With nearly 7 billion people on the planet, it is not unlikely that some small number of people alive would have a set of life circumstances so similar to people who have lived in the past that they believe that they are a reincarnation of that person. That is the most likely explanation of reincarnation which is it is statistically probable given that there are 7 billion people on the planet.
@ALTERED13TH Yes, indeed. But, that however is not much related to Stevenson's strongest cases, in which it is well established that the youth had no previous contact with or knowledge of the life of the particular dead person or his family and surroundings. That youth just "happened" to know many things related to that dead person (apparently) without ever having been in contact with information regarding those.
I came across this research recently...and I honestly dont know what to make of it....Its causing me to totally question my view of reality but I cannot figure out what conclusions to draw. It would be easier, i guess, to just pretend that it was some amazing hoax but considering thecare that was taken in the study that conclusion would also make me querstion almost everything that i decided to accept in science. I'm baffled.
@idlenessss All revolutionary ideas are initially met with scorn by the mainstream scientific community, because they go against every preconceived notion of how the world works. Many scientists are turned off by Stevenson's work because they incorrectly associate it with irrational religion and superstition. This is not the case! Carl Sagan and Arthur Clarke were highly intrigued by Stevenson's research and both entertained the possibility of reincarnation judging from the evidence presented.
Mr. Almeder has a mistaken understanding of science. Evidence can never proof a theory. Theories can only be falsified, when the evidence contradicts the theory. When the evidence does not contradict the theory, it will also not contradict other theories which either do already exist or might be put later.
So you cannot prove reincarnation scientifically.
Scientists should not look for evidence for any theory, but for evidence against it.
@5amuel5Hin Well. You're right about that. Such oriental doctrines indeed seem incompatible with mathematical integrity. They are not making sense in that matter. The comment is right on, and due.
However, it must be noted that Stevenson merely states of reincarnation that "it seems to be the most-adequate explanation for some cases." And by that he refers to the strongest cases he has collected.
In other words, "it seems some people reincarnate." That's a possibility, and that's his message.
@5amuel5Hin Stevenson never suggests a "transmigration" of one soul to another body in a 1 + 1 = 2 fashion. He only says that traits that existed in one person or experiences that were embedded in their psyches may be passed onto another person through a process independent of genetics or upbringing. He admitted that the lack of a (currently) known mechanism for such a process was a weakness in his research, and he was careful never to make any religious claims.
This is a tough issue. When one has past life recall, it is a mix of possible memory, imagination, archetypal identification, suggestion - What is what? When does possible memory become probable memory? The best that most adults with recall can do is verify that some memory matches some records. In most cases this is not strong enough evidence for empirical proof, and if it happens to be strong, it's still questioned or dismissed as fraud. Now THAT'S sloppy thinking. Prejudice always is.
Fraud is not really the issue on the part of Stevenson though it is in those who offer their reports. Stevenson is not dishonest just empirically sloppy and lacking in rigor in both his investigations and his attempts to eliminate all naturalistic alternatives. I would invite anyone to read the case studies themselves, closely as Almeder suggests and ask if any of his reports would be admissible to a court as evidence or to a peer reviewed scientific journal.
@Hume77 Really? I read on the all-knowing Wikipedia that many scientists believed Stevenson's work was conducted with appropriate scientifig rigor. I also read somewhere else about a man who travelled with him who said that he was his own toughest critic. Really what's needed here is more research. Stevenson was the ONLY scientist in the world studying reincarnation for fifty years, which is quite amazing and unfortunate to me.
Perhaps if reincarnation was proven we would be better stewards of our planet, since we would be the the future inhabitants. Thus the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons.
given the universe might always have been existing, one is inclined to adhere to some of the advaita vedenta philosophy, which postulates an ineffable monad, or eternal source. carl jung's "mysterium coniunctionis," amongst others, hints to a potential underlying unity of the world (the unus mundus), concerning which jung states that "there is nothing i am quite sure about. i have no definite convictions, [except that i exist, and that] i exist on the foundation of something I do not know."
I learned recently that the ancient Hindu philosophy postulated that the never-ending universe oscillates forever between expansion to the point of stalling, then reversing, and contracting over eons into incredibly dense matter, and then exploding again... ad infinitum. This seems more believable to me than presuming there was a singular "big bang" which originated from... ?????
as previous posters have pointed out, it may well be that the purpose of reincarnation is for people to "broaden their life experiences," for them to "become more mature souls." stevenson himself seems to believe that karma may not be working "on the retributive basis of 'paying off debts' or 'action and reaction,'" (lawton) and to be interested in "the notion of a succession of lives with improvement in each." however, we should remain critical towards every kind of, however coherent, doctrine.
It appears to be human nature to attempt to associate some kind of "fairness" doctrine to reincarnation... like "karma". But what probably exists is as much a part of the natural world as any other property that it took mankind centuries to discover and comprehend.
Read "Irreducible Mind" by Kelly and Kelly et al -- this book addresses the failure of material reductionism to explain the properties of human consciousness by reducing them to mere brain function.
@WhollyBabbleOn One critic on amazon reviewed that book in a way I especially liked: "In my humble opinion, Myers's theory, as presented by the authors and as understood by me, is just as insightful as all the other theories attempting to explain consciousness and to put it into a scientific framework, that is: it explains absolutely nothing whatsoever..."
I really liked this video. I wrote a blogpost about Jim B. Tucker's book, Life before life, and it was such a nice addition to it. Thank you!
lelkunk 2 weeks ago
If consciousness is the product of the brain how come scientist who study the brain can't explain it or map it in the brain? Not being a smart ass just a question.
Quazire 3 months ago
@Quazire there are two schools on consciousness. One is materialism or the brain creates consciousness.The other is idealism/dualism--consciousness and the brain are separate.
It is an assumption that the brain causes consciousness. It has never been proven but just a random assumption. (materialism)
DStrike0083 1 week ago
Scary thought i must say. Imagine being stuck here, meaning being reborn and reborn again and you not noticing, forgetting memories from your past life without any suspicion living your life again and again. Ughh.
joshuapratt6 4 months ago 5
Consciousness, personality, and memories are from the brain. There is no debate about this is the real world. When someone develops alzheimer's disease, as the brain shrinks, consciousness and cognition are reduced or destroyed. And then you have cases of amnesia where people loose memories, character, personality, and in many cases, they become completely different people. One must ask oneself, why is the soul or consciousness being affected by the material brain? Because it is a product of it.
buddhasknowbest 5 months ago
@buddhasknowbest have you thought of reading irreducible mind, because they address those exact questions, and make a very good case against a purely material consciousness
marcusantonio91 5 months ago
@buddhasknowbest: You could not be more wrong, the debate is alive and well. None of what you posted is proof of anything. It’s correlation, not causation. Everything you posted could just as easily be explained if you view the brain as an evolved regulator and limiter of consciousness rather than the producer of consciousness.
AnduinX 4 months ago in playlist Consciousness
@buddhasknowbest: There are people with severe brain damage who can’t even remember the names and faces of family members or hold a conversation, yet as they approach death they enter a lucid state where they are able to remember and converse as if they had no mental affliction, despite the fact that the brain damage supposedly responsible for their affliction is still very much present. This is called Terminal Lucidity, and it flies in the face of materialism.
AnduinX 4 months ago in playlist Consciousness
@buddhasknowbest: Additionally there are cases of severe hydrocephalus where people can have normal cognition and mental function with a small fraction of the brain mass of a normal person. One particularly impressive case that was published in The Lancet, a leading peer reviewed journal detailed an honors student in mathematics with an IQ of 126 that had ‘virtually no brain’. More recently severe hydrocephalus made the news under the headline ‘tiny brain normal life’.
AnduinX 4 months ago in playlist Consciousness
I don't know how I grow my bones, beat my heart, or heal my scars, but I seem to do it very well. Alan Watts said something like that.
Tengent 6 months ago
Dr. Stevenson was quite tough and extremely rational in his approach to each case. If there wasn't enough evidence, just a parent's hunch, he didn't hesitate to dismiss it.
That's why Carol Bowman has taken a softer, more experiential approach in her study of American children's memories. She keeps hearing stories from parents who notice similarities between past relatives & their young children, but the children themselves don't have many past-life memories.
xander7ful 7 months ago
I disagree with the contention that reincarnation can just be...void of any viable explanation as to how? Everything as we know of can be rationally and scientifically explained.
hmm3065 8 months ago
@hmm3065 Here's the thing though, if you actually read Dr Stevenson's work you would see that the most rational explanation for all these children being able to spontaneously remembering lives from the other side of the world, is reincarnation. And literately no other explanation fits these cases.
Sure we don't have the knowledge of how it could work, but im sure in time especially with quantum mechanics it WILL be scientifically explained.
jaksonhunt 8 months ago
@hmm3065 - perhaps it can, but as yet it hasn't been.
It's just one method of measure - had you instead been raised in a forest and perceieved reality as an interconnected whole, then it'd be difficult for you to remove all the links you know exist between everything, in order to imagine there are no links - so that you can take things separately to one another in a reductionist manner. That is why you cant get at the 'how' from the method of determination you are using.
MannySteinerBIeeky 7 months ago
@hmm3065: There is an explanation as to how this could be possible, but it is outside the closed-minded materialist paradigm. In the words of Cyril Burt: “The brain is not an organ that generates consciousness, but rather an instrument evolved to transmit and limit the processes of consciousness and of conscious attention so as to restrict them to those aspects of the material environment which at any moment are crucial for the terrestrial success of the individual”
AnduinX 7 months ago
@hmm3065 Newton faced very similar criticism when he published his equations for gravity in Principia. Skeptics believed it was insufficient for him to merely describe gravity mathematically and challenged him to show that it had a natural, observable cause or his work was flawed. He responded "Hypotheses non fingo"--I claim no hypotheses--i.e. "I don't claim to know anything beyond the facts, just the facts and empirically verifiable patterns in the facts I've found through induction."
Isenyne 7 months ago
That such a person (and their subject of description) could be found has such a staggeringly small probability, that to reject the hypothesis is irrational. Additionally, to find this trend repeated in numerous cases makes the null hypothesis (that reincarnation is not a real phenomenon) almost laughable.
It is real. It has been described by people in essentially every culture around the world. It's time for people and science to catch up to reality as it is, not how they would like it to be.
tr0798 8 months ago 5
Strange thing is that our instant access to information in the modern age leads us to a false premise of omniscience.
Just think of being a peasant in the Middle Ages and being told everything is made up of tiny atoms with protons, neutrons and electrons, about nuclear fusion, X-rays etc, everyone would think you're bat-shit crazy.
Maybe one day our future selves will see our current selves as those very peasants.... ignorant of the true beauty & complexity of our universe.
OrthodoxDarwinist 8 months ago 22
@OrthodoxDarwinist I believe you are right. We should not feel omniscient, but, on the contrary, rather ignorant. We do not, after all, have any viable means to fulfill our own epistemological cravings. Existence itself as a phenomenon carries with it its lot of questionings. We are surrounded by the mysteries of what is. "Who knows?" Nobody really knows, because we all are on the same boat.
twipley 4 months ago 2
I would like to point up some at-least-to-me inspiring piece of thinking concerning the sometimes-arising cultural resistance to such research: tinyurl[.]com/anthoneff -- that is rattling-sound, pertinent cogitating, and thus accordingly ought to be pointed out.
twipley 10 months ago
I think the work is interesting but can certainly be challenged on cultural grounds. It appears that the majority of the children examined grew up in cultures where 'rebirth' is or was accepted as a sound view anyway, which - although it disproves nothing - does lead me to question whether the claims and perceptions of the children were to some extent culturally conditioned.
PorteousR 10 months ago
With nearly 7 billion people on the planet, it is not unlikely that some small number of people alive would have a set of life circumstances so similar to people who have lived in the past that they believe that they are a reincarnation of that person. That is the most likely explanation of reincarnation which is it is statistically probable given that there are 7 billion people on the planet.
ALTERED13TH 10 months ago
@ALTERED13TH Yes, indeed. But, that however is not much related to Stevenson's strongest cases, in which it is well established that the youth had no previous contact with or knowledge of the life of the particular dead person or his family and surroundings. That youth just "happened" to know many things related to that dead person (apparently) without ever having been in contact with information regarding those.
twipley 10 months ago 8
I came across this research recently...and I honestly dont know what to make of it....Its causing me to totally question my view of reality but I cannot figure out what conclusions to draw. It would be easier, i guess, to just pretend that it was some amazing hoax but considering thecare that was taken in the study that conclusion would also make me querstion almost everything that i decided to accept in science. I'm baffled.
idlenessss 11 months ago
@idlenessss All revolutionary ideas are initially met with scorn by the mainstream scientific community, because they go against every preconceived notion of how the world works. Many scientists are turned off by Stevenson's work because they incorrectly associate it with irrational religion and superstition. This is not the case! Carl Sagan and Arthur Clarke were highly intrigued by Stevenson's research and both entertained the possibility of reincarnation judging from the evidence presented.
GermanOperaSinger 10 months ago 2
Mr. Almeder has a mistaken understanding of science. Evidence can never proof a theory. Theories can only be falsified, when the evidence contradicts the theory. When the evidence does not contradict the theory, it will also not contradict other theories which either do already exist or might be put later.
So you cannot prove reincarnation scientifically.
Scientists should not look for evidence for any theory, but for evidence against it.
AndreAy1975 11 months ago
I've read this book and had the same impression as you. objective, cool, empirical research which impressed my deeply.
catandpiddle 11 months ago
@Oreceo Very true. If that were the case, many scientific breakthroughs would never have been achieved!
squamish4244 1 year ago
Mathematically Reincarnation does not make sense because there is a growing population.....
5amuel5Hin 1 year ago
@5amuel5Hin Well. You're right about that. Such oriental doctrines indeed seem incompatible with mathematical integrity. They are not making sense in that matter. The comment is right on, and due.
However, it must be noted that Stevenson merely states of reincarnation that "it seems to be the most-adequate explanation for some cases." And by that he refers to the strongest cases he has collected.
In other words, "it seems some people reincarnate." That's a possibility, and that's his message.
twipley 1 year ago 9
@5amuel5Hin Stevenson never suggests a "transmigration" of one soul to another body in a 1 + 1 = 2 fashion. He only says that traits that existed in one person or experiences that were embedded in their psyches may be passed onto another person through a process independent of genetics or upbringing. He admitted that the lack of a (currently) known mechanism for such a process was a weakness in his research, and he was careful never to make any religious claims.
squamish4244 1 year ago
This is a tough issue. When one has past life recall, it is a mix of possible memory, imagination, archetypal identification, suggestion - What is what? When does possible memory become probable memory? The best that most adults with recall can do is verify that some memory matches some records. In most cases this is not strong enough evidence for empirical proof, and if it happens to be strong, it's still questioned or dismissed as fraud. Now THAT'S sloppy thinking. Prejudice always is.
ThePsychicTutor 1 year ago
Fraud is not really the issue on the part of Stevenson though it is in those who offer their reports. Stevenson is not dishonest just empirically sloppy and lacking in rigor in both his investigations and his attempts to eliminate all naturalistic alternatives. I would invite anyone to read the case studies themselves, closely as Almeder suggests and ask if any of his reports would be admissible to a court as evidence or to a peer reviewed scientific journal.
Hume77 1 year ago
@Hume77 Really? I read on the all-knowing Wikipedia that many scientists believed Stevenson's work was conducted with appropriate scientifig rigor. I also read somewhere else about a man who travelled with him who said that he was his own toughest critic. Really what's needed here is more research. Stevenson was the ONLY scientist in the world studying reincarnation for fifty years, which is quite amazing and unfortunate to me.
squamish4244 1 year ago 2
Perhaps if reincarnation was proven we would be better stewards of our planet, since we would be the the future inhabitants. Thus the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons.
marshaincc 2 years ago 69
given the universe might always have been existing, one is inclined to adhere to some of the advaita vedenta philosophy, which postulates an ineffable monad, or eternal source. carl jung's "mysterium coniunctionis," amongst others, hints to a potential underlying unity of the world (the unus mundus), concerning which jung states that "there is nothing i am quite sure about. i have no definite convictions, [except that i exist, and that] i exist on the foundation of something I do not know."
twipley 2 years ago
I learned recently that the ancient Hindu philosophy postulated that the never-ending universe oscillates forever between expansion to the point of stalling, then reversing, and contracting over eons into incredibly dense matter, and then exploding again... ad infinitum. This seems more believable to me than presuming there was a singular "big bang" which originated from... ?????
HurricaneHeidi 2 years ago 27
as previous posters have pointed out, it may well be that the purpose of reincarnation is for people to "broaden their life experiences," for them to "become more mature souls." stevenson himself seems to believe that karma may not be working "on the retributive basis of 'paying off debts' or 'action and reaction,'" (lawton) and to be interested in "the notion of a succession of lives with improvement in each." however, we should remain critical towards every kind of, however coherent, doctrine.
twipley 3 years ago 2
It appears to be human nature to attempt to associate some kind of "fairness" doctrine to reincarnation... like "karma". But what probably exists is as much a part of the natural world as any other property that it took mankind centuries to discover and comprehend.
Read "Irreducible Mind" by Kelly and Kelly et al -- this book addresses the failure of material reductionism to explain the properties of human consciousness by reducing them to mere brain function.
WhollyBabbleOn 2 years ago 11
@WhollyBabbleOn One critic on amazon reviewed that book in a way I especially liked: "In my humble opinion, Myers's theory, as presented by the authors and as understood by me, is just as insightful as all the other theories attempting to explain consciousness and to put it into a scientific framework, that is: it explains absolutely nothing whatsoever..."
twipley 1 year ago 5