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Interesting video , thanks for sharing it . I heard this theory on tv (by some pseudo-scientist), i don't completely agree but neither deny it. There are many stuff we haven't yet explored and until then it better to be open minded.


oh and ... MAGIC, SORCERY, BURN IT WITH FIRE

I'll watch this later, seems interesting

Dionysos wrote:

coder0xff wrote:

city14 wrote:when the brain just constructs its own reality

But the whole point of the topic is that this does not happen - that the brain constructs nothing. In reality though, your brain does construct your perception, and when you are hallucinating it's just doing it wrong.

I thought the point was that this "morphic field" or whatever is akin to another sense, not that the brain constructs nothing.

You've just described ESP. AKA. MAGIC!!!

He's a WITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotta say I don't get his point. He seems to imply that what we percieve has a seperate physicality to "what is really there".

He mentions that people are taught that what they see "is in their skull" but it's really "out of their skull where the real thing is", to paraphrase badly.

Who actually believes that there is a tiny little mental field shaped like a computer keyboard and monitor inside their head? Because to the best of my knowledge that's what he's implying we believe.

Our perception expanding to match the actual physical location of things makes little sense (ever misjudged a distance before?) and is just plain wishywashy.

I'm not even convinced that the virtual model we construct and our perception is all it's cracked up to be. Can we demonstrate that are perception is any more than procedural - a complex machine finding correlations in data, using pattern recognition to identify in what ways we can interact with the environment? A computer can do the same thing (though to a lesser proficiency), so how can we even be certain we do "see" things in a conscious way.

I'm sure you're inclined to disagree and say, I look at my computer monitor and I can "see" it. In that case, I challenge you to define it. Then prove it.

I think it extends to other senses, too. Like feeling pain. There is no material that pain is comprised of. You might say that the pain is there, in your thumb when you smash it with a hammer. But it's all in your head. I think it ultimately boils down to an organism, reacting to stimulus. Of course we are inclined to recall it negatively - it was bad for us. Even to say that we "felt pain IN our thumb" makes sense in this context, because your brain is wired to associate pain with the location the nerves indicated it injury, and so when it's recalled it will still be associated with the same information from the nervous system. When an amoeba reacts violently to alcohol in it's environment, can we show that it's experience is any different from ours?

I don't think it's as easy to say "pain is us recalling something negative". This has nothing to do with the video btw.
Yes, pain is all in the head and something triggered by the nerve impulses - but what makes it painful? Imagine a robot: you could teach it to recoil from something hot and associate it with "danger"/"bad", but what makes it "painful" in the abstract feely way? I think this is extremely interesting. The question is what happens to the nerve impulses between being registered (sent on their way to the brain) and our experience of those impulses.

I have a better idea that can explain all of these effects.
It's based on waves - if you know some physics, you probably know of the particle / wave nature of light, electrons, and matter. We all know that brainwaves are a real phenomenon, and even that your brainwave can tell us about diiferent things your mind is doing. I claim that we can get in sync with other animals' and peoples' brainwaves, and that information can travel at the speed of light between beings because of the wave nature of our existence. In this manner we can get "synced" with other people and that will explain everything this guy is saying.
But I can't prove any of it more than he can!

Gradius wrote:Who actually believes that there is a tiny little mental field shaped like a computer keyboard and monitor inside their head? Because to the best of my knowledge that's what he's implying we believe.

Most modern cognitive neuro-scientists, philosophers, and whatnot believe this actually. It's broadly called the "Representational Theory of Mind". However, you must redefine your concept of shape, since the tiny keyboard isn't shaped in 3 physical dimensions like a keyboard but is rather shaped accross a space derived from your neural network and "colored with pixels" derived from activity strength in the network over time. Think of it like a really complex form of bumpmapping where the bumpmap is the keyboard, the texture is your consciousness, and the brush it's applied to is your brain.

As for it projecting out from the skull it makes perfect sense and is entirely reasonable as that is the simple nature of a field (all fields fill the universe). However, this does not mean that your cognitive field is very strong outside your body.
He also ties this up with the notion of quantum entanglement. In quantum mechanics there is a key idea called non-locality in which a particle, wave, or I guess field (since a field is a group of particles/waves/charges/properties/objects), has instantaneous on any other object it intereacts with as everything is non-local. In otherwords, two things ten miles apart can still interact (remember that a probability curve for a particle tells us where it should be, not where it is).
A cool thing about entanglement is that it's persistence. If two objects become entangled, say, a neuron clusted representing an object and that object itself then they can have action on each other, and will stay entangled until the connection is broken somehow.

EDIT: The key concept of entanglement is that if two particles are entangled, and one changes quantum state, the other will instantly change quantum state to match it.

Sorry dude, but your physics stuff is way off.

Dionysos wrote:I don't think it's as easy to say "pain is us recalling something negative". This has nothing to do with the video btw.
Yes, pain is all in the head and something triggered by the nerve impulses - but what makes it painful? Imagine a robot: you could teach it to recoil from something hot and associate it with "danger"/"bad", but what makes it "painful" in the abstract feely way? I think this is extremely interesting. The question is what happens to the nerve impulses between being registered (sent on their way to the brain) and our experience of those impulses.

Looking at it objectively, and in the case of extreme heat, you could construct a robotic arm, and give it thermal sensors that trigger when the robotic arm's temperature is almost high enough to start melting. The sensor would send an electrical signal that would tell the arm controller that the heat is too high, and it needs to get away from the source of the heat and/or cool itself down.

Google searching 'how the brain registers pain' gives this page, which seems to explain it pretty well

Unreal_Me wrote:...
Google searching 'how the brain registers pain' gives this page, which seems to explain it pretty well

I know how the brain registers touch etc. My point is what is the difference between registering something is very hot to it's painful. A robot pulling away at a predertimed temperature wouldn't be the same as the robot pulling away because it's feeling pain(ful). Again, how do you program something to experience pain, instead of the knowledge/input "temp too high".

Aside from testimony, there is no evidence (that I know of) that suggests that we are any different from the robot.

People have different pain levels. There is a disorder called congenital insensitivity to pain where a person can still receive tactile information, but either doesn't feel pain at all or doesn't "care". There seems to be a difference between just sensing/receiving information about texture/temperature/taste etc and actual pain. Again, a robot would only receive the information and execute the command retract hand, whereas a person wouldn't feel for instance heat as such; just pain. Extreme cold etc can be indistinguishable. Is that just a sensory overload? Of course it happens in the brain, but what makes you feel "uncomfortable"? It's not just the sensory input, it's the response generated in the brain. Question is how is pain generated.

Dionysos, I'm confused about what you're getting at.