Is there a scientific theory that explains the quality of pain in terms of the physical universe?

[untermensche]

There is no research that can explain how we are doing what we are doing right here.

There is no research that comes close to explaining human capabilities. None that understand what any activity in the brain is specifically doing. Only where it is.

First, those of us in the field are keenly aware of shortcomings in intra and intercellular communication research. We are trained to take steps to insure our EEG, for instance, isn't comparable to that of linked worms or gourds filled with jello. A relatively simple multicellular multiple probe study, even in the sixties and seventies had so many controls and conditions that successful data collection often took five or six iterations to get useable information from just one subject or sacrificial mammal, bird, fish, or even reptile.

As for sacrificial we have come to know nervous systems, their relations among gnera, and their evolution through quite a bit of of what you attempt to denigrate. In my view if research didn't include corporate research animal studies would be considered necessary by most everyone. I think it was I who brought up the example of cellular recording being akin to the task faced by Martians trying to understand humans when they dropped a microphone fifty feet above ground at the junction of seventh and broadway in NYC.

I'm encouraged that with physics we have come to understand that matter and energy as we know it composes only about 5% of all matter and energy in the universe and still we can plot orbits, plan planet missions, construct experiments based on visual observations of things we may never touch directly.

If we took your pessimism and dismissive attitude to those circumstances we'd surely just close up shop and end out exploration of our world. Sure we can't say that this neuron did that when Joe received photons at his retina. Still we knew as early as the 1950s that what Joe saw depended on the quantum catch of photo receptors in the retina. We know that the brain makes many maps of most every visual event and process and that particular ones in particular areas in the visual cortex are responsible for generating perceptions of objects, their movement and interactions, and their importance to our dealing with them. We even have fairly specific ideas now about where decisions relation to action are made in frontal cortex.

That isn't much when compared to what we don't yet understand, but, I'll put it in the ballpark with what physicists know of their topics matter and energy. We are even generating molecules, as I write, that can impact specific behavioral syndromes with some precision compared with the storing we used to use to teat these so afflicted.

I'm very happy with where we are at this time relative to other sciences and I sense we are getting more and more support as the result of our status.

We won't 'know' exactly the biological engineering needed to execute behavior. Yet we can model and train with fair certainty how humans react to a broad range of time critical events in emergency situations because of what we know about human behavior. We know so much that we are getting scared that we aren't controlling why we choose because of such as AI, data mining, trend following and predicting. Now it is time for the social sciences to get a move on so we can keep a lid on our ability to deal with data and social commerce and remain a society or system of cultures.

A scientist first and foremost knows what they don't know.

Some around here are making claims to knowledge they cannot back up.

Like some use their mind and it's decision making capability to, out of thin air, claim the mind does not exist.

If there is experience there is a mind.

Since the mind is that which experiences and knows it is experiencing.

If the arm can be willfully maneuvered there is a mind.

The mind is that which has limited command and control over the movement of the body.

The command and control increases when the mind practices the movement. Even mental practice can increase the control.

Underneath this overall limited command and control are incredibly complicated mechanisms that make the actual movement possible, like the workings of the cerebellum.

Now either science is going to one day discover what exactly the mind is and how it is created or it will not.

But until then nothing is known about willful intention except what we experience.

And there is no reason to think repeated daily experience is some illusion or lie.

 

[fromderinside]

... nothing is known about willful intention except what we experience.

And there is no reason to think repeated daily experience is some illusion or lie.

That there is a mind is a bit like the discounted belief that the earth is the center of things because it's self evident through the senses.

Foolish conjecture? Not really. Nice place holder to soon be replaced by one based on objective evidence and experiment. Unfortunately holding belief in mind reverts to disproven methods and presumptions. There is no disembodied thing doing. That is clear. Neuron function gives lie to that.

What awaits is evidence that oxygen uptake actually marks brain process resulting in behavior. A very short trip from now.

We know where intentions begin pretty well. Still no evidence of free will though. For that there is just belief by some.

 

[fromderinside]

The delusion lies in ignoring the mechanisms and means of your conscious experience. It is clearly not the researchers who are caught in this delusion.

It's a bit hard to parse from free will when you use such as conscious experience instead of just experience. We designate conscious and unconscious based on several different and sometimes conflicting bodies of study. All of the conscious statements are based more on philosophical rather than material bases.

Is the unconscious something used in Freudian and Jungian analysis or is it something resulting from studies of somnolence and wakefulness or is it something related to behavioral reactive behavior versus directed or targeted behavior. Actually none of these have substantiation related to what philosophers and functional behaviorists conjecture.

The point is that if one wants a clean argument one needs to get rid of all indefensible or nonmaterial 'causes'.

Just sayin'

Otherwise I enjoy your discussions very much.

 

[DBT]

The delusion lies in ignoring the mechanisms and means of your conscious experience. It is clearly not the researchers who are caught in this delusion.

You know NO mechanisms for the production of the ability to experience something.

You know NO controlling mechanisms of the brain.

You don't have the slightest clue why the brain does the things it does or how it does them.

You can not explain the simplest experience in the mind in terms of brain physiology.

Your empty claims to understanding some mechanism are total bullshit!

Ah, there is, The Mantra. Right on Cue.....all the while asserting that you in fact do know what the brain mind relationship is and how it works. Seemingly incapable of seeing the irony of your own position.

And around and around it goes, this little Circus of absurdity.

 

[untermensche]

The delusion lies in ignoring the mechanisms and means of your conscious experience. It is clearly not the researchers who are caught in this delusion.

You know NO mechanisms for the production of the ability to experience something.

You know NO controlling mechanisms of the brain.

You don't have the slightest clue why the brain does the things it does or how it does them.

You can not explain the simplest experience in the mind in terms of brain physiology.

Your empty claims to understanding some mechanism are total bullshit!

Ah, there is, The Mantra. Right on Cue.....all the while asserting that you in fact do know what the brain mind relationship is and how it works. Seemingly incapable of seeing the irony of your own position.

And around and around it goes, this little Circus of absurdity.

It is a series of claims you can't answer.

So like a child you label it "dodo", a "mantra".

 

[untermensche]

... nothing is known about willful intention except what we experience.

And there is no reason to think repeated daily experience is some illusion or lie.

That there is a mind is a bit like the discounted belief that the earth is the center of things because it's self evident through the senses.

Foolish conjecture? Not really. Nice place holder to soon be replaced by one based on objective evidence and experiment. Unfortunately holding belief in mind reverts to disproven methods and presumptions. There is no disembodied thing doing. That is clear. Neuron function gives lie to that.

What awaits is evidence that oxygen uptake actually marks brain process resulting in behavior. A very short trip from now.

We know where intentions begin pretty well. Still no evidence of free will though. For that there is just belief by some.

You have freely chosen, with your mind, to actually believe the thing you made the free choice with doesn't exist.

Go try to sell that nonsense to children.

And saying it is a place holder is just saying how little is actually known about it.

There is no inkling how anything happening in the brain could result in a mind that experiences the sight and smell of a rose while remembering the time in France with the person they loved.

A mind is so much more than your pitiful descriptions of it.

Experience is so much more than you come close to explaining.

To say you know "where" intentions begin is absolute nonsense.

What you know is a place where some activity takes place near the report of voluntary activity directed by the mind.

Where intention begins is in the mind and you know nothing about either.

All you know is where some activity takes place after the mind has acted.

 

[DBT]

Ah, there is, The Mantra. Right on Cue.....all the while asserting that you in fact do know what the brain mind relationship is and how it works. Seemingly incapable of seeing the irony of your own position.

And around and around it goes, this little Circus of absurdity.

It is a series of claims you can't answer.

So like a child you label it "dodo", a "mantra".

''Ask yourself, is the functioning brain identical to the mind? If your answer is no, you are a closet dualist. You believe that brain and mind are made of different kinds of stuff. Such a stance will make it hard for you to understand the nature of consciousness. It will make the mental aspects of our lives mysterious and unknowable.

I am a working neurologist who sees brain disease causing mental dysfunction every day. Take the case of Representative Gabrielle Giffords. If she does not recover pretty much full brain function, her mental states will be altered, and she may not be able to function in Congress as she did before the bullet damaged her brain. If the bullet had done more damage than it apparently did, she might not now be fully conscious. Hopefully she will recover. There is the famous case of Phineas Gage, however, in which brain damage to the frontal lobes of the brain by a railfoad spike turned a sober, hard-working man into a lout. His mind was altered because his brain was altered. He was a different person after that spike went through his brain.


''As a neurologist, I contend that consciousness is nothing more than the ability of our brain to acquire information (which is the state of being awake) AND all the content that the information contains AND the ability to get all that information into and out of memory. The key word is "ALL". If you have all that, you are conscious of the blue sky and the red sun. Nothing more is needed to be conscious of that beautiful sky. My contention is that the brain can do all that, and, therefore, a functioning brain is identical to a conscious mind. That makes me a materialist and not a dualist.''