Can consciousness be non-local?

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I'm probably most familiar with VS Ramachandran. My take is that what they're finding is very likely every bit as correct as it seems - ie. consciousness and manifestations of it are tied to certain brain structures and when you perform a split of the corpus collosum you end up with different parts functioning independently. Its been fascinating, like in his video about one half of the brain (left) being male and the other half (right) identifying as female. I know such differences of identity aren't always so pronounced - both are just as often male or female, but it does raise an interesting point; ie. if your familiar with the masculine/feminine aspects in nature and physics one definitely does represent more than the other in how it operates.

As far as creating metaphysical claims on split brain patients though we have to be careful on labeling what it is we're really seeing. If we find the brain to be the generator of consciousness then yes, its a bit like having - at a very minimum - an extremely hyphenated identity. On the other hand if we were to find consciousness to be non-local it could very well be that you're still seeing one consciousness but on split-screen ( a bit like using a splitter on a television) but being that you're splitting the means by which it interfaces with the world you also have to realize that the splitting of the corpus collosum also has an upstream effect on such a non-local consciousness, giving evidence to the then created fact or at least strong hypothesis that the physical world and health of the physical mind essentially effects what the non-local consciousness is forced to deal with and that it can't simply just bridge over anything it finds impractical (ie. it needs that physical mind as a receiver to participate at all in what we consider the physical world).

- The laterality of the brain seems to be roughly reflected in a lot of folklore and the like.



This.

Back off-topic, I googled 'mri split-brain' to see if the right side remains fully-functional, but as far as relevant articles go, I only found one with 'residual functional connectivity' in the title, which reminds us of he brainstem's and cerebellum's role in 'subcortically coordinating' brain activity (as the author[s] put it).

maybe it is just neither the left nor right but something else altogether. maybe the soul is the platform upon which rests the incarnate personality resultant of the interaction between the eternal soul and the traits of the physical body/soul host. maybe the soul is the coin upon which rests the right brain on one face, and the left brain on the opposite face. just a jejune thought

I think something else that happens could be indicative of this. Like when someone's ruthlessly pragmatic with themselves to the point where they've repressed the right brain and then are under the weight of all kinds of existential angst to find something like a benevolent imaginary friend trying to push through and comfort them, even run intercession, that already the right side trying to get the left back in its place. No corpus collosum clipping necessary to create even multiple phases of self to that extent.

What soul? Brain hemispheres show up on x-ray or MRI imaging. What displays a soul?

ruveyn

I always thought Jesus seemed a bit 'girly'

It does get complex, though - I had a huge 3yr-old brain tumour removed from inside the right-hand-side of my skull a year ago (related to my unfounded worries about autism rather than my autism itself, I'd strongly suggest), and soon noticed a sense of relief from many of my worries. Online, I recently found this report of a study which confirmed this was normal, and that a right-sided brain lesion does not turn one into some kind of robot:

http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/74/9/1278.full

-Perhaps the left side, no longer informed by intuition's efficient channeling of information, subliminally notices something's missing and justifiably gets spooked-?

Nonetheless, we're still more or less off topic, as is this:



I don't believe in souls either - Not even a properly-defined version of the concept adds anything (beyond what it takes away through over-complication) to potential explanations of phenomena. This alone isn't enough to disprove the existence of souls, since by definition they couldn't be 'displayed' by scientists' equipment, but I have my own reasons, which others have mostly laid out here and nearby (and which would take me too much time and effort to re-hash now) to strongly doubt their existence.

I take it that souls are supposed to be 'non-local' (my mum confused them with India's "subtle body" physiology), but don't see what makes consciousness as we already know it a localised phenomenon.

I'm sorry but I am unable to agree if the best we can do is talk about awareness. Dennett introduces the concept of the "Cartesian Theatre" as the place in the brain where awareness takes place. He does so to emphasize the fallacy of imagining a center of conscious awareness where sensory information from the external world is processed and finally projected to some inner observer. This clearly descends into infinite regress over and above self awareness (which only makes things worse for pinpointing consciousness).

Some people are exceedingly uncomfortable with this because it might appear to bolster the argument for dualism - we appear to have to choose between an immaterial soul like the one that most people think they know about, or something apparently absurd - that there is no such thing as subjective conscious experience (or qualia). However, Douglass Hofstadter would encourage us to embrace the latter, while reassuring us that appearances can be deceptive. It's quite difficult to swallow, I'll agree, but given his explanation that the appearance of subjective consciousness is due to a rich system of symbolic representation (that is also richly self-referential) I can get a brief flicker of understanding (the deception is remarkably powerful though).

If we test this explanation against split-brain phenomena and the gradual development and decline of consciousness seen in different stages of life and illness, it holds up well. Any attempt to divide mind and body into discrete entities does not fare so well.

It sounds interesting and parallels my own thoughts. I'm going to see if I can get a copy of that book.

I'm finding this increasingly fascinating because now I'm hearing POV's that are completely different than what I've heard before.

In another forum I was talking to a guy who believes that consciousness is part of the brain but that the brain can manipulate quantum events - hence the random number generators on 9/11 or psychic phenomena don't surprise him.

OTOH there's been the set of issues that the AWARE study has been looking into. Its the seeming verification of out of body events during near-death experiences. I'm curious to know what the outlook is from those who believe that the physical brain generates consciousness but who are only what I'll now at the moment coin the term as 'fuzzy materialists' - ie. believe in non-local abilities of a physically grounded mind that comes into existence at birth and ceases to exist somewhere around the point of death.

Wouldn't it be fun if there were such paranormal effects, but there's an ocean of natural explanations to drain away before we can get to a single drop of genuine voodoo. OTOH true random number generators are based on thermal noise which is transduced electronically. A disturbance in the Electro-Magnetic spectrum is a given as people around the world get on cell-phones, switch on TV's etc. to monitor the unfolding event so I'd be looking there before anywhere else for an explanation. I don't want to get off topic debating the pros and cons of particular cases but if statistically significant findings for non-local phenomena of this sort were obtainable then there should be no shortage of it. Despite this I've seen not one solid example to date.

It is also very instructive to look at the evolution of the nervous system and its functional role and consider the steady accumulation of enhancements that have taken place. Nature has been working with natural materials all along and is completely "open minded" regarding the adoption of one mechanism over another. Any useful physical property is therefore available for exploitation so if something like quantum entanglement was of significant benefit we might expect it to be utilized. However, from an information theoretical pov, entanglement is thoroughly prohibited from conveying information as in being an instantaneous, non-local phenomenon, it cannot do FTL signalling. So I can see no non-local physics that provides the kind of disembodied consciousness that's being discussed.

You'd have to look up the paper for that particular study. You've probably heard of it a dozen times though - ie. random number generators between ten major colleges between US and Europe measuring variances and they found wild jumps out of the normal schema between the day before and the event of 9/11.


See, this is where things get to be a headache, not so much by necessity but by where state of the art is at this precise moment. I don't know if you've heard all the stories about strongly, I mean very strongly, verified out of body phenomena during near death experiences. The only causal way to work out how it would be material is if all involved - the patient, the doctors, and the interviewers, confabulated like crazy - either with the agenda of proving it real or just turned into excited blithering idiots. The specifics though, if they are accurate, make a very difficult case to refute. Supposedly there are at least one hundred stories like this that defy materialistic explanation (ie. them knowing things that they had no access to, during the time they were out per EEG and not even just in their own room). That's part of what the AWARE study is trying to deal with - ie. is it just epic confabulation or is there something else to it. If there is; non-locality is kind of a given, or at least momentary non-locality prior to nonexistence.

Here's the question that made me a solid materialist. Please describe yourself without referring to your physical body ?

There is no need to posit an inner observer, only an inner power of observation - Anything surplus to this minimal explanation has likely been dreamt up by this power (with which we all -in practice and at heart if not in the comforting theories we defer to- self-identify). I say 'likely', since this power is self-evidently that to which consciousness -in the word's narrow meaning (related to that of 'ego') of the sense of 'observer' or even in the still-narrower meaning of self-awareness- is necessarily an illusion if your 'infinite regress' is to be avoided. Our consciousness, then, lacks a centre, but nonetheless somehow holds itself together unless (it seems) it fears falling apart - It is less extraneous to imagine it floating -as a kind of potential rather than as ghostly soul-stuff- over its potential objects and coalescing, to varying degrees, over the highlights presented to it by the brain, particularly (in all but the most psychotic or spaced-out) once they have been fully processed.



Have you really reflected fully on the subject matter at hand? What we're doing isn't exactly a national sport unless you're from India or (possibly) France I don't think 'theory of mind' is central to autism, but see how its fleshing-out could be skewed by differences in sensory processing, making it easier for someone like yourself to believe -into middle age- that your own mind doesn't exist as mind in any way whatsoever. From what you've summarised from your links:



, I'd still ask what is it that's being deceived or (symbolically) represented to? You contradict yourself through the context in which you say 'appearances can be deceptive', since the concepts 'appearance' and 'deception' (not to mention 'symbolic representation') necessarily involve subjective conscious experience of some kind. If all conceivable consciousness, subjectivity, appearance, and deception is indeed 'an illusion', then what is it an illusion to? Is it, in fact, the contents of consciousness that are illusory, rather than consciousness itself? Why, in that case, should we should use words like 'deception' now that we know how the world is not exactly as it appears (having been necessarily 'encoded' by our brains for our consumption)? Finally, what bearing does that have on the existence of consciousness?

I already deduced many years ago, while working out how to deal with my autism btw, that most of the 'NT' experience of the world forms a closed loop of complex cross-referencing, all of it purely social in its significance, rather than actual objects (of consciousness). This still leaves open the theoretical possibility that someone could be conscious of reality as it is, embracing (in sharp relief) the closed loop I mentioned, without consciousness itself needing to be being swallowed up in the process.

Given that many of the thinkers involved in this whole trend of 'consciousness denial' (which its better-publicised supposed spokespeople such as Dennett and Blackmore don't fully endorse fyi) are not diagnosed 'neurodiverse' in any way, I'd suggest they're subliminally aware that their positions are absurd nonsense, but just go along with them because they're fashionable, given that doing fashionable things convincingly always gets you admiration, whatever the fashionable thing in question actually is in any particular place and at any particular time. It helps, though, I think, that this particular fashion appears superficially 'hard', and that there is a loophole (in our culture's established means of understanding reality) that ensures that even self-evident falsehoods will be believed if 'the evidence' isn't seen to contradict them - Do I have to be the umpteenth autist on an autistics' forum to mention 'The Emperor's New Clothes'?

I realise my take on this topic is likely to come across as unsettling -as well as both bleak and turgid- to both 'Soul' and 'Not Even Consciousness' camps. However, since many of us 'auties' sense -from 1'st-hand experience- a special connection between raw awareness (with which we alone confront the world) and positive feelings that normally appear somehow 'personal' and even social -such as warmth and groundedness- there is little cause for alarm if I've somehow knocked over anyone's 'sacred cow'.



How so?

[quote=George Orwell's "1984"] Human beings are infinitely malleable[/quote]

That fact does not make anyone a non-human - or a non-being.



My position is that subjective mind exists as a phenomenon that can't be called an entity - it just 'is'.

In any case, whether an argument seems convincing to certain people at certain times has no bearing on its degree of validity. Appeals to probability will remind me of a section of an appallingly left-wing (but hilarious) Russian TV propoganda show I saw recently. {I could only find the source news story for that clip:
rt.com/business/news/citi-percent-chance-drop-108 .}
- Either outcome X (Greece leaves Euro) will happen or outcome Y (Greece doesn't leave Euro) will happen - A percentage mix of both outcomes won't.

On the other hand, genuine mysticism has always said exactly that (i.e. that in most arguments, both sides are equally right), so maybe we're both right and Schrodinger's cat is both alive and dead - Who knows?

Last edited by undefineable on 05 Aug 2012, 7:35 pm, edited 7 times in total.

Sorry, you lost me there - How can an ability be 'local'?

I forgot to mention an obvious way of keeping your still-naked 'Emperor' 'clothed' - Just don't gather the evidence to begin with. Yours may not be a good example, as research into near-death experiences has been funded -at my local University of Southampton for a 2'nd example- but I'm skeptical that the contents of such experiences aren't mostly hallucinations in any case. However, until quantum physicists start investigating the cross-dimensional fairies their theories appear to allow for, I'll hold this line.



I didn't see that consciousness is 'non-local' in the quantum sense of being in many localities at once - It's already impossible to pinpoint within the brain, so in that sense it already is darting about in several places at once. My quibble has been that phenomena such as 'abilities' don't strictly have particular locations, being patterns of events rather than their physical contributors. Beyond this nit-picking, I'd question the idea that all phenomena have to exist in particular places - This just seems too simple and childlike an idea to reflect the fullness of reality, never mind about Theism!

Last edited by undefineable on 05 Aug 2012, 7:39 pm, edited 2 times in total.