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Speculations on Near Death Experiences

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In our normal every day experience, we rely on our senses to help us piece together our physical place in the world.  If we see palm trees, feel the warm sun on our face, smell sea water and feel the soft sand between our toes, we recognize ourselves as being on a beach.  But what would it be like if we didn't have the use of our senses?  Is it possible to place ourselves in an environment without the use of any of the senses we rely on daily? The answer is, in a way, yes.  When we dream all of our senses have little to no utility in the experience we have.  In a dream we can experience ourselves on a beach interacting with other beachgoers.  We conjure up the surroundings in some unknown way.  We can also do this with our imagination on demand.  So it's possible to have an experience of being in an environment, interacting with "others" without the use of our senses at all. Sleep Paralysis In order to protect the dreamer from acting out their dre...
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Thinking out loud - is there a way to find empirical evidence to support dualism?

I've been frustrated with the scientific research in consciousness.  If you've read some of my other blog posts, you'll know that I am interested in the idea that the brain and mind are separate entities.  If you subscribe to dualism, which I sometimes do, then physical / neuronal evidence of dualism can be tricky.  The brain is involved in our thoughts in many ways.  This is clear when we have physical effects on the brain such as the effects of alcohol, a bump on the head, or dementia.  So to find evidence that the brain doesn't generate consciousness is difficult to tease out from all the noise in the brain.  The mind and brain are so tightly coupled that its near impossible.  I've thought about this a bit, and I was wondering if there could be some signs that might hint that the brain doesn't originate every thought.  If you can prove this, you can weaken the stance that mind = brain. To take this on, I go with the assumption that all thoughts...
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The Fermi paradox - has it unknowingly been resolved?

Enrico Fermi once wondered aloud about the existence of extraterrestrial life.  Where are they?  Assuming that life is abundant in the universe, we'd expect that by now some signs of an advanced civilization would be apparent.  Perhaps a signal in the form of an interstellar “hello,” an alien space craft, or a broadcast of some alien version of the Price is Right. Yet Nothing. The fact that there is no evidence of extraterrestrial life, in a universe that should be teeming with life, is the Fermi paradox.  UFO accounts are not considered good evidence.  Despite numerous video and eye witness accounts, none of this evidence could be considered conclusive.  Photos and videos could be misleading and/or doctored.  Eye witness accounts may be based on a misunderstanding of what was witnessed or simply hoaxes.   If an alien civilization has sent us a message in response to a signal detected from earth, it would have detected the signal within the range ...
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The Mind Brain Interaction (a possible model of interaction based on Mind <> Brain)

If one accepts dualism, then the brain is an organ that has evolved to interact with the mind, with the mind being a separate independent entity from the brain.   The “mind” is our awareness, our thought processes/reasoning/cognition, desire, emotions as well as much of our memory.   This interaction is a two way interaction (more than what some might describe as a “filter” or “receiver”).   The brain is  an organ that is finely tuned to what I describe as interfering with the mind.  In this way it can also partly be considered one of our sensory organs.  In the mainstream, dualism has been rejected in favor or other explanations of mind/brain interaction.  It's generally believed that the mind arises from the physical workings of the brain.  There's good reason to believe this as the correlations between mental states and physical activity in the brain are tight.  Of course correlation is not causation, and so it's fair to say that other th...
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