The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Alex123
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Metta-4 wrote: I don't agree with the conclusion that drugs affect consciousness itself;
How to explain that doctors can put a person under complete anesthesia by using drugs (anesthetics)? It is not that a person can't get the right word or right bodily gesture out. It does not simply interfere with bodily consciousness, it totally shut downs mental consciousness itself. The awareness does not remain intact for the duration of the chemical action that the anesthetic does. I had a very enlightening experience about being knocked out. There was no awareness of time, space, black empty space, nothing-ness, any thoughts or anything.

If all consciousness can be shut down with drugs and resumed when the effect of drugs wears off, it does very strongly points to physical causes which these medicinal drugs affect.
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BubbaBuddhist
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Agreed, being under anesthesia is like dropping into a black hole--total loss of time. If you want a dhammic explanation I would suggest the anesthesia shuts down the sense-gates. if the sense-gate is shut down, no accompanying citta arises. An interruption in any part of the causal chainaffects the experience. Like when the eyes are closed, blindfolded or in utter darkness, there is no sight-sense-consciousness. No sense object, or no sense gate--no sense consciousness. If the brain is anesthetized, there is no mind-consciousness. What takes over during this period to maintain continuity of consciousness during 'un-counsciousness' is called bvangha-citta, and this is the topic of another thread/conversation altogether. I think several threads have already unreeled on the topic of bvanga.

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Alex123
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Metta-4 wrote: If the brain is anesthetized, there is no mind-consciousness.
So brain is the required cause for mind consciousness which ceases when its source, the brain is affected by anesthetics or whatever.
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BubbaBuddhist
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

Post by BubbaBuddhist »

I really don't know where you're going with this alex. Consciousness NEVER ceases. Even when mind-consciousness pauses bvangha continues. And so since, as the Buddha commented, "since beginningless time." I think you need to bone up on basic Buddhist theory.

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chownah
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

Post by chownah »

Alex123 wrote:
Metta-4 wrote: I don't agree with the conclusion that drugs affect consciousness itself;
How to explain that doctors can put a person under complete anesthesia by using drugs (anesthetics)? It is not that a person can't get the right word or right bodily gesture out. It does not simply interfere with bodily consciousness, it totally shut downs mental consciousness itself. The awareness does not remain intact for the duration of the chemical action that the anesthetic does. I had a very enlightening experience about being knocked out. There was no awareness of time, space, black empty space, nothing-ness, any thoughts or anything.

If all consciousness can be shut down with drugs and resumed when the effect of drugs wears off, it does very strongly points to physical causes which these medicinal drugs affect.
I think it is clear that you do not remember anything from the time the drugs were in effect....it is not so clear whether there was consciousness or not.....
For example, many years ago I had a head injury and my experience is that i passed out to a state of no experience...black out...nothing.....then I came to (woke up) in a hospital...........but........my friend who was with me throughout this experience said that I did not black out at all but was pretty much totally conscious the entire time and I could walk and talk and observe my surrounding with the major difference being that I did not know my name or what day it was etc.........
So......from "my" perspective there was no consciousness but from my freind's perspective there was...........the point being that just because one does not remember being conscious does not mean that there was not consciousness........another example....do you remember being conscious throughout your entire life.....if not then was there no consciousness during large portions of your life?......I guess for me consciousness makes good sense as a concept for the present moment but trying to deal with it in the past or future gets very tricky......
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Consciousness is aware of mind going to sleep and waking up. If consciousness is the mind, it cannot be aware of these things. Whatever consciousness is aware of isn't consciousness itself.
And what is right speech? Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter: This is called right speech.
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gavesako
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

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Interesting article on NDE and the issue of "where is consciousness":

http://www.skeptiko.com/pim-van-lommel- ... -research/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Dr. Van Lommel: It’s a special interest in the relationship between consciousness and the function of the brain because as I have learned always and accepted the hypothesis. They haven’t proven the hypothesis that consciousness is a product of the brain. This topic should be discussed again because people experience an enhanced consciousness, the paradoxical occurrence of an enhanced consciousness during the period of a nonfunctioning brain.

So I’ve been seeing also in the literature about what we know about what happens in the brain when the heart stops. We know also the chemical features of such a patient. He loses consciousness within seconds all of his body reflexes are gone which is a product of the cortex of the brain. But also the brain stem reflexes are gone, the gag reflex, the corneal reflex or the wide pupils are clinical findings in those patients. And also the breathing stops. So the breathing center close to the brain stem stops functioning.

The clinical findings are there is no function of the brain anymore and the electrical activity where you measure it in the EEG is. In an average of 15 seconds there’s a flat-line. And the average period you need in a coronary care unit to resuscitate the patient is at least one to two minutes or more. So there are all those patients who have a cardiac arrest in the hospital and out of hospital arrests that flat-line on an EEG and they have about 20% of having a near-death experience, which is an enhanced consciousness in combination with emotions and memories from early childhood. Also sometimes with future events, with the meeting of deceased relatives, and also at the end of the experience is the consciousness returning to the body.

So all these aspects of consciousness that the people tell you, and there are so many who have told me or written me. It’s not possible that the current medical concepts that the brain product makes the consciousness, that consciousness is a product of the brain, that is impossible. So the brain function for me, it’s not producing consciousness but it is facilitating. That means it makes it more possible to experience your waking consciousness and doesn’t produce it.

Alex Tsakiris: One of the terms you kept using over and over again that I think is key is this idea of an enhanced consciousness. For me that’s one of the things I really don’t understand from the folks who are familiar with the research and yet they gloss over this. I mean, we’re not talking about even the same level of consciousness. We’re talking about almost uniformly people reporting an enhanced-a hyper, a super-consciousness at a time when at the very least the brain is severely compromised if not completely off-line. And I just don’t understand how there can be a complete denial of this basic fact.

Dr. Van Lommel: Because it doesn’t fit in their concepts. They have to change their own paradigm if they accept it so they close the door. This enhanced consciousness which I also call the non-local consciousness, there is no time and no distance. Everything is there at the same time and you have a life review during cardiac arrest for two minutes. You can talk for days about what happened to you but everything is there at the same time.

And the past and the future is there as well, so your consciousness is in a dimension where there’s no time and no space, which is totally different from the consciousness we have here. They are united in this physical world. You are the subject and the object. But in the other dimension there is only subject. You’re one with everything.

:reading:
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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gavesako
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Re: The mystery of consciousness: Sam Harris

Post by gavesako »

Define neuroethics.

It’s a kind of subspecialty of bioethics. Until very recently, the human mind was a black box. But here we are in the 21st century, and now we have all these new technologies with opportunities to look inside that black box — a little.

With functional magnetic imaging, f.M.R.I., you can get pictures of what the brain is doing during cognition. You see which parts light up during brain activity. Scientists are trying to match those lights with specific behaviors.

At the same time this is moving forward, there are all kinds of drugs being developed and tested to modify behavior and the mind. So the question is: Are these new technologies ethical?


So what would be an issue you might look at through a neuroethics lens?

New drugs to alter memory. Right now, the government is quite interested in propranolol. They are testing it on soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. The good part is that the drug helps traumatized veterans by removing the bad memories causing them such distress. A neuroethicist must ask, “Is this good for society, to have warriors have their memories wiped out chemically? Will we start getting conscienceless soldiers?”


What do you think?

It is a serious business removing memories, because memories can affect your personal identity. They can impact who you think you are. I’d differentiate between offering such a drug to every distressed soldier and giving it only to certain individuals with a specific need.

Let’s say you have a situation like that in “Sophie’s Choice,” where the memories are so bad that the person is suicidal. Even if the drug causes them to live in falsehood, that would have been preferable to suicide.

But should we give it to every soldier who goes into battle? No! You need memory for a conscience. Doing this routinely might create super-immoral soldiers. As humans we have natural moral reactions to the beings around us — sympathy for other people and animals. When you start to tinker with those neurosystems, we’re not going to react to our fellow humans in the right way anymore. One wonders about the wrong people giving propranolol routinely to genocidal gangs in places like Rwanda or Syria.


Some researchers claim to be near to using f.M.R.I.’s to read thoughts. Is this really happening?

The technology, though still crude, appears to be getting closer. For instance, there’s one research group that asks subjects to watch movies. When they look at the subject’s visual cortex while the subject is watching, they can sort of recreate what they are seeing — or a semblance of it.

Similarly, there’s another experiment where they can tell in advance whether you’re going to push the right or the left button. On the basis of these experiments some people claim they’ll soon be able to read minds. Before we go further with this, I’d like to think more about what it could mean. The technology has the potential to destroy any concept of inner privacy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/scien ... brain.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

:thinking:
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

Access to Insight - Theravada texts
Ancient Buddhist Texts - Translations and history of Pali texts
Dhammatalks.org - Sutta translations
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