critique of Susan Blackmore's dying brain hypot

[Kazbadan]

I just dont get if that women believes in obes or believes that obes are just a brain phenomenon (as science explains).

Afterall, what the hell does she want to transmit us (i dont wanna read that big text![])?

[kiauma]

Good critique.  

[Kazbadan]

Can you resume breifly that critique? it is hard to me to read in "diagonal" fast reading. What is this about?

[Ant]

What's the problem? She believes in science and reinterprets the world in accordance with this belief system. For this sort of forum what she writes is a joke, but that doesn't affect her

[MJ-12]

as

[Ant]

But that is how scientists always work - a mixture of reinterpretation and ridicule. Why should you expect anything different. Of course this is a basic part of a society that is inherently anti-spiritual. Don Juan said that when the indians were conquered by the Spaniards the best of them were able to hide in a place that the Spanish didn't believe in - it was the perfect escape. She won't bother you when you ap!

[upstream]

There are people who just want to oppose current trends to be unique. I think, Susan Blackmore is one of them. Just see her green and purple hair on this photo below, look into her eyes and you'd see her personality.

[image]http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Photos%20of%20Sue/images/Sb7.jpg[/image]

Blackmore is the bad example when woman doing science. Taking various drugs is as easy as got frustrated after many years of failure to repeat an early OBE experience. So, after the paranormal has not worked she made carrier in the SCICOP. They didn't interested in her lack of scientific ability because sceptics don't do any scientific research. They just attack paranormal researchers to defend ourselves.

[MJ-12]

as

[atalanta]

Ant, I can understand why you may be feeling negatively about science but I have to say that I am offended by this idea that science is the domain of some hard, cold, cruel, biased, cynical, etc, people.  I studied at university along with many people on this board.  Do not confuse science with cynical sceptism.  Science is nothing more than a tool, in the same way that money is a tool.  If the person who is using science is a fool or egotistical or angry with the world, etc, then how they interpret their results is also going to be affected.  That is why science also demands repeatability by other scientists, so that several scientists with different viewpoints, can test any idea out to see what is true and what may be false.

I keep saying this, unless someone has a better idea on how to objectively verify information, please let us know.  I mean how else do you know the truth of something?  Do you just believe everything you hear?  When a woman stabbed her child to death because she saw its eyes glowing and she knew it was a demon child, is it true that it was a demonchild or is that she is mentally disturbed?  I believe that some of what Susan Blackmore is saying may have some basis in truth but I also think that she is ignoring certain things, for reasons only she can know.  It is not fair to her that we are nasty to her as much as it is not fair that some people choose to do character assassinations of scientists who are on the pro-side of the debate.  It does not help the debate, it just ruins careers and causes even more division.

Upstream, please tell me that this is a problem of language and its not a sexist remark. [B)]  I will have to punch you up if you are saying that women shouldn't be doing science! [:O][]

quote:Blackmore is the bad example when woman doing science.

[Ant]

Hi there Atalanta, I also went to university - in fact I'm a full time medical doctor. And i didn't develp my cynicism until personal experience led me to see through the medical system, and a huge amount of personal research (over 400 books) helped me to see that cynicism of science was quite justified, and the tricks that i mentioned are indeed used often. i'm not paranoid about it, i just realise that science as a discipline has its blind spots and its ways around them.

b.w.

ant

[upstream]

Please forgive me Atalanta, I'm just so frustrated....come on, hit me, hit me

Now seriously, I suppose you're a female. I just made this trap for those who have some problem with this. It worked obviously.

Now more seriously: of course they are no real differences between sexes except the more flexible buildup of woman's brain. I'm sure woman's brain would be very good for science if wouldn't be set already for dealing with other issues like finding the one and only romantic love of life, tittle-tattle, etc. (come on, hit me...hit me)

The real problem is our social conditioning. Indulging in firm identification with sex role stereotypes is foolish path.

[Frank]

Some druggie has a whacky experience and starts shouting about it, big deal. What she knows about non-physical realms you could fit ten of them on a pinhead.

Conventional science, as it stands today, is a tool that is simply not capable of analysing non-physical phenomena. One day all those science bods will have to shrink their egos small enough to come to terms with that fact.

One of the reasons this planet is in such a mess is because people put their faith in science. Some bod sticks on a white coat and spouts off some nonsense and everyone follows like lost sheep. Ego-mania is rife all over the world. The intense obsession for money and power has infected virtually every area of society and science was one of the first areas contaminated.

Yours,
Frank

[jilola]

Frank:/b] I think conventional science is fully capable but not willing to investigate.
Like you said the science community needs to get over the ego trip first. Only the problems we have at the moment (and have always had) are not due to science but to rampant ego.
Ego is a tool, not a master.

2cent & L&L
jouni

[atalanta]

ANT, its not the number of books that you have read that makes you wise or an expert, its what you understood of them and how you use that knowledge thats important.

Secondly, I never said that science is perfect.  It has its limitations and weaknesses, one of which is that it can be influenced by the person who is running the research.  However, there is no such thing as a perfect way or method of understanding Reality in its entirety.  Its not that science is perfect, its that it is the more stable forms of enquiry that we have.  By all means, I agree with you, science has faults, so please tell us of a form of study which is perfect then.  One which is not easily manipulated by egos, profit, etc.

UPSTREAM, I am still not clear, you mean to say that women shouldn't do science because they are too busy socialising and are culturally set up to not think clearly?  Is this as opposed to men who stand outside any cultural influences and are not socially conditioned?  Is that what you mean?  I take it that you are male, then.  I am also curious why you would be interested in gaining attention by trying to hook people - women primarily.  Are you not capable of gaining attention from women by open, honest methods, that you need to ridicule them?  I won't bother punching you, since I feel so sorry for you and your inadequacies.  [xx(]

Frank, is that the famous missing Frank.  Welcome back.

[Ant]

Hi there Atalanta. entirely agree with you. In terms of personal experience i had a lot of healing, including around 27 attached entities that i was fortunate to have the help of a VERY psychic acupuncturist with, lots of acupuncture, and over the past few years continuous work with my chakras. I have had several lucid dreams, including one in particular that was absolutely as real as waking reality. i have not managed a waking oobe yet, though i got to the edge of it with the rope method several years ago. So i know a little about the non-physical. My research showed me clearly how science is dedicate to preserving the secular face of contemporary society; its purpose is to explain things in terms that do not include any non-physical causes, and the system operates to belittle alternative explanations in a way that transcends the individual scientists ego.

Kuhn's original insight was that we can never fully understand reality - it's just too big; so all enquiry acts on a cut down form. However, my understanding is that there are two levels of knowing. the rational  , scientific , aristotelian intellectual enquiry kind, which science uses exclusively. the second is the mystical/shamanic 'knowing' (gnosis in greek). hre is an example that i picked up on my trawls; long but well worth it:

Original Wisdom

Robert Wolff

ISBN 0-89281-866-2

p153 onwards.

The morning was especially beautiful, I thought, crisp with a chill
in the air. It felt good being out in the jungle again and I was
looking forward to the walk.
I made a firm resolve not to have any expectations. Whatever happened
would happen. I wanted to have all the wonder a child has at the
beginning of the day. We walked. I was thirsty and very tired - I was
sadly out of shape after a month of inactivity. In the early
afternoon, the hottest part of the day, when it might be cool in the
shade but very humid - we came to a big clump of bamboo about twenty
feet ahead. Bamboo tends to bunch together, forming an impenetrable
barrier.
Ahmeed stopped, listened, turned to me (I was walking behind him),
and motioned: Be silent.
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but he gestured quite firmly,
motioning with his hand: No talking, stay still, quiet.
We stood frozen for what seemed a long minute when from the right a
large light-coloured snake came from under some bushes, slowly crossed
in front of us, and passed out of sight into the trees on our left.
...

I asked him, "Did you know that snake was coming?"
"Yes" was all he would say.
I tried to phrase the question differently: Had he heard it, seen it?
No, but he knew.
We walked on, my thoughts falling over each other. I returned to the
evening when he had introduced us to the Lord of the Great Ocean. That
had been a similar mystery. He had seen the ocean - and only the
surface of the ocean at that. He had probably not even put his feet in
the water, but he had known many things about the ocean that he could
not possibly have known.
"When we were in Port Dixon, did you walk into the ocean?" I asked.
No, he confessed, he did not get his feet wet.
"Is the ocean rainwater?" I questioned him, thinking I would trap him.
"Salty," he said.
"But how did you know?" I burst out.
He smiled his childlike smile.

...

The next day, after walking an hour, I realized that I was thinking so
much that I did not pay attention to where we were, to what was going
on in the environment. I was trying to figure things out in my head,
making lists, weighing probabilities as if Ahmeed's talents were a
problem in statistics. I decided instead to really open my ears, my
eyes, my nose, my skin to whatever I could pick up in the jungle
around us.

I stopped abruptly.
The jungle was suddenly dense with sounds, smells, little puffs of
air here and there. I became aware of things I had largely ignored
before. It was as if all this time I had been walking with dirty
eyeglasses - and then someone washed them for me; or as if I were
watching a blurry home movie - and then someone turned the focusing
knob. But it was more than that - much more. I could smell things I
had no name for. I heard little sounds that could be anything at all.
I saw a leaf shivering. I saw a line of insects crawling up a tree.
Ahmeed noticed that I had been walking slower and slower, while
paying intense attention to the world around me. He too stood still.
"Sit?" he asked.
"Well, no . . . not really . . . perhaps . . . I don't know," I
stammered.
"Drink?" he asked.
Afterward I realized that he had spoked very softly, so as not to
intrude on what was going on inside me, and he had used simple, single
words: Sit? Drink? Yes, I was very thirsty. I looked at him, thinking
he would find a water vine. He was the person who knew the jungle,
after all. He looked back at me with a perfectly blank expression. He
was not helping. He was not talking.

Suddenly, a new thought burst in on me: maybe I could sense water. In
my mind I made a sort of list: seeing water, hearing water, smelling
water. I might smell water, or even hear it if it was dripping on a
leaf perhaps. I looked around.
"Do not talk," Ahmeed said - I knew he meant "Do not think." "Water
inside heart," he said next, with a gesture of his hand on his heart.
I knew he meant I should sense inside - not with my mind, but from the
inside.
It is sad to have to use so many words to say something simple.
As soon as I stopped thinking, planning, deciding, analyzing - using
my mind, in short - I felt as if I was pushed in a certain direction.
I walked a few steps and immediately saw a big leaf with perhaps half
a cup of water in it.

I must have stood there for a full minute, in awe. Not in awe of
anything in particular, simply in awe.
When I leaned over to drink from the leaf, I saw water with feathery
ripples, I saw a few mosquito larvae wriggling on the surface, I saw
the veins of the leaf through the water, some bubbles, a little piece
of dirt. Reaching out, I put a finger in the water, then saw that one
of the wriggling mosquito larvae had been trapped in a tiny bubble on
my finger. How beautiful, how perfect. I did not put the finger with
the water droplet in my mouth, but looked back at the leaf.
My perception opened further. I no longer saw water - what I felt
with my whole being was a leaf-with-water-in-it, attached to a plant
that grew in soil surounded by uncounted other plants, all part of the
same blanket of living things covering the soil, which was also part
of a larger living skin around the earth. And nothing was separate;
all was one, the same thing:
water-leaf-plant-trees-soil-animals-earth- air-sunlight and little
wisps of wind. The all-ness was everywhere and I was part of it.
I cannot explain what went on inside me, but I knew that I had
learned something unbelievably wonderful. I felt more alive than I had
ever felt before.
All of me was filled with being.

What this other sense is, I do not know. For me it is very real. I
think of it as a sense of knowing. It probably is a quality we all
have to a greater or lesser degree. For me it works when I can get out
of my mind, when I can experience without having to understand, or
name, or position, or judge, or categorize.
It is a quality that has to be used or it fades away; just as one has
to exercise muscles, so too knowing must be exercised.
I am saying this after the fact, trying to describe something that
does not fit into our Western concepts, and therefore there are no
words. At the time I did not think anything. I was learning how to put
my mind aside and use some other sense to know.
Standing over a leaf with a little water in it, somewhere in the
jungles of Malaysia, I did not think in words. I did not think. I
bathed in that overwhelming sense of oneness. I felt as if a light was
lit deep inside me. I knew I was radiating something - love, perhaps -
for this incredible world, this rich, varied, and totally
interconnected world of creation that, at the same time, gave love to
me. And with the love, I also felt a very deep sense of belonging.

After a while, I slowly woke up. I came to, so to speak, and was in my
body again. I looked around. Ahmeed was not where I thought he was. In
fact, he was not anywhere in sight. He must have walked on, I thought.
And as soon as I thought, I panicked. I realized that I was alone,
that Ahmeed had left me in a strange place. I had no idea where I was,
or how to get back to Three or to find Ahmeed. My first reaction was
to shout, to yell, to call him. But the sense of being part of this
wonderful whole was so strong that I could not raise my voice. I
opened my mouth and tried to make a sound, but no sound would pass my
throat. I could not possibly disturb this oneness by yelling, by
feeling panicked. I could not be afraid - after all, I was part of
this all-ness.

My life changed in that moment.

And then I knew I need not shout for help, I need not run after
Ahmeed. I knew with great certainty that all I had to do was put my
mind aside and know where he was. Almost immediately I knew: He was
not too far away. I had an impression of him walking leisurely in that
direction. He sauntered as if he were deep in thought, or perhaps he
was thinking of me. In my mindless state of being I sent him a
voiceless hello, and it was easy to imagine recieving his slight smile
that barely stretched the corners of his mouth.
Part of me wanted to join Ahmeed, go back to Three to eat and drink.
But another part wanted to stay here and know this new world more
intimately. I stayed.
I was certain I would find my way back to Ahmeed and the village
later, when it grew dark perhaps.

...

I had frequent flashes of what I then called oneness, that magical
sense of being one with literally everything in creation. Each time I
had the oneness experience, it became more natural, more a part of me
- not something that I knew, but something I am.

Today I no longer wonder at the things I say when I let my inner
knowing speak. My mouth may surprise me, but, when, after I say the
words, their meaning penetrates my consciousness, my consciousness
admits that my mouth spoke truth.
The knowing I learned is not the same as consciousness. It is far
deeper. I have found that sometimes I know something that I cannot
possibly know, much as Ahmeed knew about the ocean. That kind of
knowing does not fit into the Western view of what is real. Scientists
need to measure, dissect, analyze, and prove harmless before they can
accept that a plant has valuable properties, for instance - and, of
course, the properties of the plant have to fit into current theories
of Western medicine.
Anthropologists and other scientists have occasionally, and wth great
reluctance, studied herbs that people in out-of-the-way places have
used for millennia, forgetting that a healing system is just that: A
system. Pharmaceuticals cannot be considered separate from the healing
system in which they were developed.
Western scientists seem surprised when they find that some herbs and
potions work. The next step then is always an elaborate, high-tech
chemical analysis of the herb to identify the active principle. The
active principle is then recreated from chemicals so that it can be
commercially produced without the many "impurities" of the original
plant material (although now nobody will ever know whether perhaps one
or more of those impurities plays an important part in the
effectiveness of the natural herb).
...

The explanation Western scientists give for how people all over the
world discovered the healing qualities of plants without the benefit
of our sophisticated science is always the same: trial and error - as
if primitive people tried this tree bark, or that leaf, and perhaps
experimented with cooking it, eating it raw, shredding it, baking it
until, in the end, they kept what worked.
In reality, the preparation of many native foods and medicines is
often so complicated, requiring so many steps, that it is hard to
imagine how people would use trial and error to learn what is good and
safe to eat, or which herbs prepared which ways prove to be medicinal.
How would people discover through trial and error that curare, a
quick and deadly poison that can be applied to blow darts or arrows,
must be prepared by collecting the sap of the plant and cooking it
down to a thick paste, being careful, the whole time, not to touch it
with their hands?
...

All through history there have been people who knew with an inner knowing.
Once, while walking up the steep and very narrow trail that goes into
Hanakapi'ai Valley on the island of Kaua'i, I had an almost disabling
sinus headache. Each step pounded in my head. As I trudged up the
steep trail, I looked up and saw a plant I did not know, maybe twenty
feet above me on the side of the cliff. As I looked at the plant, I
knew what it would feel like (hairy, but not stinging), what it would
smell like (aromatic), and I knew that if I could get even one leaf of
that plant, crush it, and put it in my nose, it would clear my
sinuses. A friend reached up with a long stick and managed to break
off a leaf of the plant. It felt as I knew it would, and it smelled as
I knew it would. I put it in my nose. It cleared my sinuses, as I knew
it would.
The plant, I later learned, is a wild species of oregano. Hawaiians
know it for its medicinal properties.

Another time, in the mountains of Luzon in the Phillipines, walking
from one Igorod village to the next with two Igorod guides, I slipped
perhaps thirty feet down a very steep slope of scree and badly scraped
the insides of both hands. I knew that I had better not get an
infection on the inside of my hands: We were at least two days from
civilization. I looked for water, but the landscape was dry and sere
and there was no water near us. I saw a plant that grew all around,
and again I knew what the leaf of that plant would feel like (hard,
harsh, prickly), what it would taste like if I chewed it (bitter). The
knowing came in a set. I also knew what to do with these leaves: I had
to chew them to make a poultice that would clean out the dirt from the
many scrapes on my hands and perhaps even disinfect the wounds.

[LordoftheBunnies]

There's an article here on Susan Blackmore's parasychology research "results" that I found interesting.

http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/skeptic_research.htm

Don't let the name of the website fool you, its the openminded brand of skepticism they promote.

[Adrian]

Greetings Frank,

quote:Originally posted by Frank



Some druggie has a whacky experience and starts shouting about it, big deal. What she knows about non-physical realms you could fit ten of them on a pinhead.

Conventional science, as it stands today, is a tool that is simply not capable of analysing non-physical phenomena. One day all those science bods will have to shrink their egos small enough to come to terms with that fact.

One of the reasons this planet is in such a mess is because people put their faith in science. Some bod sticks on a white coat and spouts off some nonsense and everyone follows like lost sheep. Ego-mania is rife all over the world. The intense obsession for money and power has infected virtually every area of society and science was one of the first areas contaminated.

Yours,
Frank

Yes I agree completely. The "problem" with science is that scientists have been trained, and continue research in a Universe which is entirely perceived with the five physical senses, and most scientists will do anything and everything they need to do to make their "results" fit into this framework.

Even when scientists investigate what they believe to be "paranormal" or "supernatural" etc., they approach it with their own immutable mindest and standards which precludes the possibility of anything existing beyond the confines of the physical Universe and five physical senses, and therefore their objective is to disprove these "phenomena" rather than prove them, because it fits in with their own comfort zone.

If they were to discover the realities we know to exist, it would shatter the life work and beliefs of most scientists, and they would be unable to function. It is therefore better for them to remain in denial and just focus on disproving the existence of higher realities.

I don't have a problem with scientists per se, in fact I am a qualified organic and physical chemist before I moved into the high-tech arena.

I would strongly recommend reading the excellent book by Victor Zammit; A Lawyer Presents a Case for the Afterlife" downloadable free from the file library:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/file_library.asp?showmethefile=40&thatcat=14&thiscat=E%2DBooks

With best regards,

Adrian.

[manuel]

A critique of Susan Blackmore's dying brain hypothesis

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/articles001.html