[MD] Mystics and Brains

[Ham Priday]

Arlo, Platt, Craig --

> Our minds have us continually reflecting back or projecting
> forward, and we rarely are "in" that "endless now".

Actually the phrase "endless now" is an oxymoron in a constantly changing
world.  As Case has argued, sense data traveling to and from the brain takes
several microseconds to be processed as cognizance, so that none of us is
really conscious of the 'infinitesimal present', and all cognizance is
reflective of
past experience.

The Time article is an entertaining piece on mental cogitation, but it
doesn't provide any new evidence about time travel.  Man is "capable of
visiting
the future or revisting the past" only through his imagination and memory
recall.  New Age claims that purportedly defy the laws of physics by
"turning time backwards" or projecting the psyche forward through black
holes, etc., fall into the same category as inventing a perpetual motion
machine or being kidnapped by ETs.  They make the headlines that sell
tabloids and fill the late-night hours of Coast-to-Coast AM, but have not
earned scientific validity.

What may be more significant is the finding of researchers that when certain
new areas of the brain "light up" (indicating increased activity on an MRI
screen), other areas (the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes) go dark.
Since it is these areas that connect incoming sensory data to efferent nerve
centers which enable us to adjust physically to external changes and
manipulate the objects experienced, it seems reasonable that cerebral
concentration
is more effective without the distraction of these auxiliary areas, and they
are
temporarily shut down, leaving the cerebrum activated (i.e., lit up on the
MRI).

>From a metaphysical perspective, I believe the human brain is as much a
"filter" or buffer of incoming information as it is an integrator of sense
data.  Such a design reinforces consciousness of the self in opposition to
otherness, thus preventing disorientation of the S/O dichotomy due to
extraneous, unnecessary information.  What the mystics call "deep
meditation" may be no more than "darkening out" the proprioceptive regions
of the brain so that consciousness loses its self-identity and differential
discrimination.  But this is just speculative on my part.

One of the most interesting philosophical writers on brain activity is
Antonio Damasio, head of the Dept. of Neuro-Physiology at University of Iowa
College of Medicine.  Excerpts from his recent book "The Art of Life: Body,
Emotion, and the Making of Consciousness" are accessible on line.   I've
quoted some revelant statements:

"Quite candidly, this first problem of consciousness is the problem of how
we get a 'movie-in-the-brain,' provided we realize that in this rough
metaphor the movie has as many sensory tracks as our nervous system has
sensory portals - sight, sound, taste, and smell, touch, inner senses, and
so on.

"From the perspective of neurobiology, solving this first problem consists
in discovering how the brain makes neural patterns in its nerve-cell
circuits and manages to turn those neural patterns into the explicit mental
patterns which constitute the highest level of biological phenomenon, which
I like to call images.  Solving this problem encompasses, of necessity,
addressing the philosophical issue of qualia.  Qualia are the simple sensory
qualities to be found in the blueness of the sky or the tone of sound
produced by a cello; thus, the fundamental components of the images in the
movie metaphor are made of qualia.  I believe these qualities will be
eventually explained neurobiologically, although at the moment the
neurobiological account is incomplete and there is an explanatory gap."

Indeed, Science is far from understanding the complexities of consciousness,
and its objective methodology will never reveal the true nature of
proprietary sensibility.

Esssentially yours,
Ham