The 'Astral' is 'Real'

[jeffd]

Hello all. I've been in some recent discussions on another forum about whether or not Free Will exists and about whether or not Dreams,Lucid Dreams and OBEs are 'illusions'.I put together this argument to defend my position on the reality of what is called here 'Astral'. It might not be perfect and it may have some mistakes and fallacies that I've missed but it's my best shot none the less.( I'm not a philosopher,I work in the Medical field.)Anyway here it is,feel free to poke holes in it or whatever:







                    The Mind  Is Not Equal To Brain Material, it is Real and Variably Separable

Here I have intended to construct a summarized argument for the reality of our mental world(s) as being something existentially separable and not wholly constituted by the material brain. I will not try to rule out the idea of a functional relationship between the material brain and the mind as it is almost indisputable that damage to the material brain affects the mind. Certain idealistic philosophies may account for this fact but  I will exclude such arguments and start from the premise that a material world does in fact exist.

 I will address the mental states we call Dreams, Lucid Dreams, OBEs, and NDEs and will attempt to counter the conventional assertion that they are "illusions". First will be a short argument concerning the definition of the word "illusion" itself ,which is usually meant to be something 'false' or 'unreal' from the material reductionist  perspective. In this world view ,the only things that truly exist are interactions and properties of matter-energy and space-time taken to be 'real' and independent of mind. I will not invoke religion, however, in the pursuit of some resolution  I will draw from arguments made by both theists and non theists.


                 Preliminary Argument for the Reality of "Illusions" From a Materialist Premise:

1a.
Something that qualifies as 'real' is something in consensus agreement.
We generally agree that we each experience private perceptual content.
Private perceptual content is 'real'

2a.
Perceptions of what we call "illusions" occur.
Something that occurs is part of reality.
Illusions are part of reality.

3a.
Material brains and their occurring states are 'real'.
An illusion is a material brain state that occurs. [1].
Either illusions are real or material brain states are false...

Hence "illusions" are 'real'.

         The Mind is Not Equal to Brain Material, it is Real and Variably Separable

1. Excluding 'direct realism' it is generally accepted that object perception in the ordinary waking mental state is said to 'represent' an 'external' object 'in' the brain.

2.A 'mental state' , is generally discussed as being purely physical ,supervenient upon the physical ,purely mental or some combination. It may be said  in any such case that a mental state, is, or can be, about an object. 'Aboutness' is synonymous with intentionality ,this is the generally accepted definition. The following will attempt to rule out the purely physical and supervenient definitions of an intentional mental state.

3.At a given time in a mental state of object perception, we experience some combination of what John Lock called Primary Qualities ( solidity, extension, motion, number and geometric shape)  and Secondary  Qualities. ( Color, taste , smell and sound ) [2.]


4.  At a given time of  object 'representation'  in a  brain  one can find single neurons  made of biological material in some metabolic, functional  and structural state. A neuron participating in the act of object 'representation' will be receiving chemical and electrical inputs and will be referring chemical and electrical outputs to other  neurons and tissue in a comparable situation. Such an event will follow the predictable laws of chemistry and physics that have been discovered thus far.

5. At such a given time in a single neuron's state of  'object representation' the primary and secondary qualities of the 'represented' object are not present. What is present is  ,assuming the mind independent existence of  the brain and it's neurons, is the material state of a neuron described in (4) possessing  it's own primary qualities. The secondary qualities, qualia ,are not present at all.

6.If primary and secondary qualities of an external object are not present  in the material state of single a neuron ,which has only it's own physical state and primary qualities ,then the primary and secondary qualities of the external object are not present in a larger collection of other such neurons in a causal chain. Nor can the external object's primary or secondary qualities be present or emerge from the act of reference to other neurons as they will each have their own physical states and primary qualities present at the given time.

If a patch of  such neurons happen to 'fire' in a shape that has some correspondence to the shape quality of an external object as a part of a visual representation, in V1 for instance, it will still be the case that each individual neuron and the collection as a whole will have only it's own primary qualities present. It needs to be further clarified in this example that our mental state of external object perception is not present 'in' the physical location of V1-we are not specifically aware of our V1 cortical firing patterns as being numerically identical to the shape quality of object perception. The point above is that if an external object's primary quality of shape is A and the corresponding collection of firing neurons is B then they are not duplicates because they are qualitatively different. If the spatial location and material of an external object of perception is A and the corresponding collection of 'firing' neurons is B then they are not numerically identical. The state of an object of perception and a corresponding material brain state are qualitatively and numerically distinct. The individual neurons in such a material brain state are also qualitatively and numerically distinct in relation to each other.

7.A 'mental state' is 'about' an 'external' object  because we agree that we perceive things such as the visual perception of a (real) single ,round, red apple.(1a)However, material does not appear to be 'about' anything other than it's current physical and primary properties. This same difficulty must arise if one wishes to reduce more abstract intentional mental states such as belief and creativity to material states.

8. As well it is that material brain states cannot  both at once symbolically represent objects of perception and perceive them. A single neuron or a collection of neurons can not be said to know what it is that they represent without presupposing  the conscious mental property of 'aboutness' ,the very thing that material reductionism denies the 'real' mental existence of.  Brain material would have to transcend it's own micro and/or macro scale state to know what it signifies. (4-7)

9.Mental states do interpret representations ,symbols and meaning. [4] Therefore ,following  from (1-8) the mind is not exclusively the material or processes of the brain. Mind must 'transcend' the supposed 'symbolic' or 'representational' states of brain matter ,if it does not then we can not reach out to, or know the external world. If the external world is 'real' then mind is 'real'.

10.The experiential content of Dreams, Lucid Dreams, OBEs  and NDEs generally do not have immediate local counter parts present in the external world to modify physical sense organs. There are no external objects present to 'represent' or 'symbolize'.

11. The mental states of  (10) are often said to be constructed from material brain states associated with memory in order to account for the absence of external material objects.

12.The relevant material brain states appealed to in (11) do not have bits of qualia physically and locally present. The relevant areas of brain material possess only their present physical states which do not reach into the past or the future.[3] They  possess only their present arrangements of primary qualities as is the case with other referent material brain regions correlated with Dreams, Lucid Dreams, and OBEs (4-7) NDEs. are an exception as evidence exists for the complete absence and/or drastic reduction of material brain activity during said experiences. Such mental experiences have been reported to possess veridical content. [6][7][8][9]

13.Aditionally, the problem is even more acute for materialism because the process in (11) requires intentionality, belief, interpretation-meaning and intrinsic creativity. If there are no external objects present for material to be 'about' then material brain states must play the intentional roles of  both (creative) symbol-signifier and the (mental) roles of  experiencer ,interpreter and believer while possessing only their individual physical states and primary qualities in the total physical absence of  qualia. Given that mental states are 'real' (9) excluding their existence would require matter to 'transcend' itself  to itself  -which is meaningless- while possessing the properties of mental interpretation, intentionality, belief and creativity which are not intrinsic to matter and are said to either not exist, or remain causally impotent according to materialism.[5] Materialism is then required either accept the reality of nonmaterial conscious mental states or  redefine mental categories as physical categories which would entail abuse of the language of physics.
(4-9)

14. An even deeper problem occurs for strict materialism when it is considered that the mental states of Dreams, Lucid Dreams, OBEs, and NDEs can hold veridical content not drawn from personal memory and conventional sensory input. This is only controversial if one is unfamiliar with the numerous reports of such occurrences or if one has not had a personal experience .[6] [7] [8][9]

15. Given that such  private perceptual content does occur and that private perceptual content is 'real' under the materialist premise (1a-3a) and given that the material substrate associated with memory cannot provide an explanation for the occurrences stated in  (14) without accusations of fraud, delusion or  coincidence, we can reasonably claim that mental states are variably separable from material brain states. (4-14) In other words: If mental state A does not  qualitatively or quantitatively correspond to material state B ,or there is no  material state B to speak of then it is reasonable to say that they are existentially separate entities.

16. Applying consistent and equal treatment to both object perception of the consensus external world and private object perception related to the mental states called Dreams, Lucid Dreams, OBEs and NDEs I believe it is justified to claim that "if the external consensus world qualifies as 'real' then so is the case for the phenomenological worlds experienced in Dreams, Lucid Dreams, OBEs and NDEs."  How it is that we perceive the external consensus world is not fully explained or understood and so is the case for the ungrounded mental worlds of perception. There is however, no good justification I can see to dismiss such private mental experience as "Illusions".(1a-15)

Hence: The mind is not equal to brain material, it is real and variably separable.



Further Questions:
If we are "just what it's like to be a material brain" then why do we not experience the primary qualities in the brain?

If consciousness is a causally impotent by product of  brain material and processes how then could it be naturally selected?

Is the true nature of reality mental, physical or some combination?

How does the conscious mind reach the world?


Notes:
[1] One could argue that 'mental' states are qualitatively different from material brain states while they are also 'supervenient'  upon material brain states. This is 'property dualism' and in such a case from the materialist perspective, the  qualitative experience of an illusion, or  a qualia ,has no possibility of  having casual efficacy upon the material of the brain. It is because of this that the above argument also applies to property dualism. See Peter B. Lloyd's book "Consciousness and Berkeley's Metaphysics" for a detailed argument.  

'Substance dualism' however, is a different situation into which I leave the possibility open. There is mounting evidence that qualia do in fact affect the course of material brain states.  See:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17349730

As to how the 'substances' interact is another issue which does in fact have possible solutions despite the  common objections about the conservation of energy and open vs. closed systems.

One could also argue that illusions and conscious minds in general are 'emergent phenomena' that arise from material brain functions and complexity. The situation still reduces back to the argument above because of the following: Consciousness can't arise from a physical system as described by conventional physics because emergent phenomena can still reduce to their physical components.' Wetness' reduces to H2O molecules that are always present in the liquid phase of water. A brick house is built from individual bricks. Heat involves the vibration of individual atoms and molecules at the macro and micro levels. Ant colony behavior reduces down to the behavior of each ant. If consciousness "arises" then that would be unlike any other emergent property and would therefore be extraordinary. Similar appeals to functionalism, complexity or information can be said to presuppose consciousness.

[2]Color and taste are among primary properties in physical science. I believe this is a bit contradictory as recent research does not yield the presence of qualia in the brain.

[3] http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527427.100-you-wont-find-consciousness-in-the-brain.html

[4]See this book:  http://xianphil.org/book_gsm.html  and this:   http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#5.2

[5] http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html

[6]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_Mind

[7]http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Ring/Ring-Journal%20of%20Near-Death%20Studies_1997-16-101-147.pdf

[8]http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dream-catcher/201107/precognitive-dreams

[9]http://www.skeptiko.com/eeg-expert-on-near-death-experience/


Jeff Dymek
May 28th 2012

[Szaxx]

Hi,
I like the terminology; 'entail abuse of the language of physics.' at the end of 13. This shows an excellent knowledge and indicates an in-depth study of this subject has not manifested within the establishment. Being within the prefix of para- its hardly likely either.
Amusing...
More later.

[jeffd]

Hello Szaxx,
Thanks for reading it. Peter B Lloyd makes this point about the language of physics in his book "Consciousness and Berkey's Metaphysics" and it has been pointed out by others too on the web.I wanted to incorporate it because it is something that I've noticed happening quite often in statements about the brain and mind. You can read statements like: when x mental state occurs "the brain is interpreting..."...or "the brain believes" such and such when....etc. I've always thought "No,it doesn't" the brain is carrying out it's metabolic,biochemical and electrochemical reactions...It is this kind of conflation that adds alot of confusion IMO.It's like throwing sand in the air. I don't recall ever having read anything in chemistry books describing a chemical reaction yielding a 'belief or 'interpretation' you know?

It would be nice to see the establishment look into some of the things labeled 'para' more often but I can imagine that funding and big business might have a bit to do with that.

Have you seen this?
http://www.nature.com/news/psychedelic-chemical-subdues-brain-activity-1.9878

[Contenteo]

Nice post jeff, props. You really did a class act job compiling these thoughts.

In short.

I agree. A careful study of the mind will always yield a fatalist disposition. It seems everything is preordaned, however, this is studying only one side of the duality. The other side is this physical realm. For instance, wheat happens when your body gets thirsty. No matter how much prowess the intangible predictable side may have, it will never predict the exact time your neurons fire from a state of being creatively dehydrated. If you want a physical random factor, just calculate in whatever the evaporation rate would be based in your climate.

After all my analyzing, I have reached a funny place. It is that that succumbs to entropy of the physical environment. It is the one factor that can re-dictate out nonphysical predictability. This combination, in mind, tends to be the wrench in the works of our freewill. It is just ever so ironic that this critical factor comes from the physical and no the intangible stream of consciousness. However, if one accepts entropy as a fact, the matter is easily logically clarified.

Cheers,
Contenteo

[Szaxx]

Hi,
The illusion of sight I'll reference to.
As the images we see are represented in the rear of the brain as electro-chemical functions there is a question I'll ask.
In the case of physical reality and dream states including the astral this same part of the brain remains active. This assumption is based upon a symptom of scintillating scotoma. Suffering from this myself these assumptions are first hand experiences.
The consensus is the concious mind is not within the brain and as what we remember or create during dreams must be at least interfaced here. On occasion from within a dream or the astral the scotoma appears and I have the choice to awaken or continue on. The first occasion of this I was wide awake within seconds and the  image distortion was identcal from the dream state to the physical. If you continue on with the dream the typical expanding scenario completes its cycle.
Is there any research into pulsed magnetic induction which affect the operations of the neurons within the sleep condition to your knowledge?
Im aware of the effects of differing parts of the brain being affected by this equipment (motor/speech centres) but nothing on scotoma or sleep cycle interaction. The effectiveness and safety issues of creating a device is also of interest.

[jeffd]

Nice post jeff, props. You really did a class act job compiling these thoughts.

In short.

I agree. A careful study of the mind will always yield a fatalist disposition. It seems everything is preordaned, however, this is studying only one side of the duality. The other side is this physical realm. For instance, wheat happens when your body gets thirsty. No matter how much prowess the intangible predictable side may have, it will never predict the exact time your neurons fire from a state of being creatively dehydrated. If you want a physical random factor, just calculate in whatever the evaporation rate would be based in your climate.

After all my analyzing, I have reached a funny place. It is that that succumbs to entropy of the physical environment. It is the one factor that can re-dictate out nonphysical predictability. This combination, in mind, tends to be the wrench in the works of our freewill. It is just ever so ironic that this critical factor comes from the physical and no the intangible stream of consciousness. However, if one accepts entropy as a fact, the matter is easily logically clarified.

Cheers,
Contenteo

Hi Contento,
Thanks.If I get your meaning, yeah I definitely agree that we always do eventually succumb to the entropy of our apparent material environment,there's no stopping that. I do think there's limited room for freewill though.We may not be able to intervene directly on material events ;but I think there may be evidence to support the idea that we can guide causality toward our desired experiences.What I mean is that there may be limited degrees of freedom or indeterminacy (uncertainty) that allow our sense of will to guide material events (mostly related to parts of our physiology) in desired directions as long as some overall statistical distribution is met.At least that's the story I like best....


And when that moment of material death comes, a certain percentage of people who return do report organised and coherent experiences while their brain was in disarray or nonfunctioning.After that who knows what really happens when we reach the point of no return?

[jeffd]

Hi,
The illusion of sight I'll reference to.
As the images we see are represented in the rear of the brain as electro-chemical functions there is a question I'll ask.
In the case of physical reality and dream states including the astral this same part of the brain remains active. This assumption is based upon a symptom of scintillating scotoma. Suffering from this myself these assumptions are first hand experiences.
The consensus is the concious mind is not within the brain and as what we remember or create during dreams must be at least interfaced here. On occasion from within a dream or the astral the scotoma appears and I have the choice to awaken or continue on. The first occasion of this I was wide awake within seconds and the  image distortion was identcal from the dream state to the physical. If you continue on with the dream the typical expanding scenario completes its cycle.
Is there any research into pulsed magnetic induction which affect the operations of the neurons within the sleep condition to your knowledge?
Im aware of the effects of differing parts of the brain being affected by this equipment (motor/speech centres) but nothing on scotoma or sleep cycle interaction. The effectiveness and safety issues of creating a device is also of interest.

Szaxx,
That is extremely interesting.I will certainly look for more information about all of this.Michael Persinger's reseach may be one place to look...Hmmm,I will have to try and map out the situation more...

My mind is going towards a possible split awareness type of situation where one can perceive the physical and astral state at once.I've done this quite a few times myself and have both been 'pulled back' to physical perception and have at other times been able to remain and focus there.This requires some more thought...

[Contenteo]

we can guide causality toward our desired experiences

or is it the causality of daily entropy(random chaotic occurrences) that guide us?

This seems to be a very succinct rendition of the greater duality in which we exist.

Even more so, it is this freewill that allows us to overcome entropy in the first place.

Cheers,
Contenteo

[Stillwater]

Hmm... I am not sure I fully grasp the scope of what you are arguing toward. It seems to me that your goal is similar to that of the philosopher John Searle, in Mind, where he argues for a weak kind of dualism on the grounds that mental states and first-person qualia-type experiences are ontologically different from brain states, and that therefore basic materialism fails on this level; even as a dualist, however, his position is still rather close to materialism, insofar as he thinks that although mind is another ontology from the physical, it is also generated by and entirely dependent on the physical.

Are you doing something similar to what Searle did, and arguing for another ontological substance called mind, but which is dependent on phsyical states, or are you going further in scope?

I think I grasp your concept of "real", perhaps because it has similarities to the version of "real" I profess. Similarly to Lockes argument you mention about our inability to apprehend the true primary qualities objects possess, but rather merely representations of those secondary qualities our sense organs have perceived and transduced, I would also argue that we have no contact with or experience of any quality of what we percieve to be an external world; all we have are what we perceive to be representations of one. Because there is ultimately no way for us to apprehend a possible physical world external to our minds that our senses seem to tell us about ( the Cartesian fear), if we want to declare anything "real", our perceptions are the only candidate. We can't visit this supposed objective external world in any way, so perception must be the true object of anything we would predicate of it.And as I think you also are arguing, there is no legitimate way for us to separate perceptions we percieve to be about an external world, and perceptions our current scientific school of thought tell us are completely non-representational (dreams, hallucinations, etc). If we want to declare our perceptions we consider to be about the world real, we are obligated to call all of our personal perceptions and thoughts real. I think that is where our arguments agree.


To play devil's advocate here, the usual criticism of this sort of argument is that you have played a Platonic trick (in this case with the defintion of real). We start with a claim to refute (here in this argument that dreams and astral perceptions and the like are not real), and rather than assail the claim directly, we actually challenge and change a defintion of an essential word ("real" in this case), and with the new defintion in place, declare that the original statement is false. What the opponent of this type of reasoning is obligated to say, is that the word (real) described a consesus concept as you put it, and that by changing what the word was talking about, you merely diverted the argument onto grounds more suitable to you; it would be argued that it is all well and good to change the defintion of real to something more logical, but that the concept itself still remains, even if it is now disenfranchised from a word- those perceptions and things which are real are those which are ultimately caused by primary qualities outside of ourselves, and which are nearest representations of those externals; that is clearly the sense of real that people would be concerned about when it comes to dreams and astral perceptions, not rather a semantic case of the word real (even if you and I seem to share a similar one).

When people say real in this case, they are concerned about whether what they are experiencing in an astral experience here is really something which is objective, or a product of their mind. I agree with your version of real, but it does not address this particular concern which is at the heart of why people ask this question ("is what I am seeing real?").

But nevertheless, I appreciate your argument and well thought-out post!

[jeffd]

Stillwater:
"Are you doing something similar to what Searle did, and arguing for another ontological substance called mind, but which is dependent on phsyical states, or are you going further in scope? "


Jeff:
Thanks for your input Stillwater,
Well,at this point there's enough evidence IMHO to at least justify substance dualism ,which goes further than John Searle I think.If there is a physical world that is independent of mind then I'd say that the mind can be a separate entity while having a functional relationship with the brain.

Alter the brain and you alter the mind's input.An example might be that you can interact with your computer and it's response depends on your input, it's output has an effect on you.You can destroy the computer and you will still exist and vice versa.Of course,as the brain is altered or destroyed our mental experience would necessarily be very different.There could be other worlds that mind interacts with,maybe a quantum mechanical or multiverse type of situation....

If some form of idealism is true,which I think I'd prefer,then the problems above would be alittle different.There would be no need to explain how 'substances' interact,how things are 'represented' or how subjective first person experience can 'arise' from objective lumps of matter or be reduced to it. Perception could be fundamental -the 'basic furniture of existence' as cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman puts forward.There would still be plenty to explain though, like apparent objectivity and how the 'meta' level of mind organises content seemingly outside of our sense of ownership..lots of things...

I was mostly aiming to take back the derogatory term 'illusion' that materialists use when referring to things like consciousness,NDEs,OBEs,lucid dreams ,astral and such.I started from a materialist premise to try and show the absurdity of eliminative materialism specifically because the other forms of materialism actually reduce to it.For instance Daniel Dennett claims that consciousness and qualia are "illusions" which commonly means unreal or false. This is a contradiction because if they didn't exist he would have nothing to try and explain away.And if conscious mental states,like qualia involved with an optical illusion, are identical to material brain states and only material exists, then either conscious experiences of "illusions" (or free will?) are real (because they are identical to matter ); or material brain states are unreal and false. So the word 'illusion' seems to make no sense to me.The events we call illusions happen,but they are experiences and experiences are real.Our subjective experience is all that we can say is real.

Stillwater:
"I would also argue that we have no contact with or experience of any quality of what we perceive to be an external world; all we have are what we perceive to be representations of one. Because there is ultimately no way for us to apprehend a possible physical world external to our minds that our senses seem to tell us about ( the Cartesian fear), if we want to declare anything "real", our perceptions are the only candidate. We can't visit this supposed objective external world in any way, so perception must be the true object of anything we would predicate of it.And as I think you also are arguing, there is no legitimate way for us to separate perceptions we percieve to be about an external world, and perceptions our current scientific school of thought tell us are completely non-representational (dreams, hallucinations, etc). If we want to declare our perceptions we consider to be about the world real, we are obligated to call all of our personal perceptions and thoughts real. I think that is where our arguments agree."

Jeff:
Well put,I agree with you totally. You explain it much better than me.  


Stillwater:
"To play devil's advocate here, the usual criticism of this sort of argument is that you have played a Platonic trick (in this case with the defintion of real). We start with a claim to refute (here in this argument that dreams and astral perceptions and the like are not real), and rather than assail the claim directly, we actually challenge and change a defintion of an essential word ("real" in this case), and with the new defintion in place, declare that the original statement is false. What the opponent of this type of reasoning is obligated to say, is that the word (real) described a consesus concept as you put it, and that by changing what the word was talking about, you merely diverted the argument onto grounds more suitable to you; it would be argued that it is all well and good to change the defintion of real to something more logical, but that the concept itself still remains, even if it is now disenfranchised from a word- those perceptions and things which are real are those which are ultimately caused by primary qualities outside of ourselves, and which are nearest representations of those externals; that is clearly the sense of real that people would be concerned about when it comes to dreams and astral perceptions, not rather a semantic case of the word real (even if you and I seem to share a similar one).

When people say real in this case, they are concerned about whether what they are experiencing in an astral experience here is really something which is objective, or a product of their mind. I agree with your version of real, but it does not address this particular concern which is at the heart of why people ask this question ("is what I am seeing real?").

But nevertheless, I appreciate your argument and well thought-out post!"


Jeff:
This criticism seems valid to me and thanks for the complement.I guess it's a matter of wrestling back the word 'real' and 'illusion' or at least neutralizing it...

[Xanth]

"Real"...
To me, whatever you experience is "real".
Whether it be a physical or non-physical experience... it's all, for lack of a better word (because we all know our language sucks at this), "real".

[Contenteo]

It's a shame languages are technically also subjective. Anything you sense in the physical is open to interpretation in the nonphycial.

It's the existence of physical world that creates this objective constraint. Duality.