OBEs--a reductio ad absurdum

[_Tarski]

She then told me that not only was it first hand information but that the spirit testified to everyone in the meeting that it was true. The spirit was there with a power and certainty she had never witnessed and everyone felt it.

So, I gotta ask...

What was her response to the spirit lying to everyone in the chapel?

Silence and sulking on her bed? Actually, my memory of her reaction isn't so clear.

[_The Dude]

Isn't he the one that likes acid so much?

That's him. He's given LSD some of the credit for his discovery.

Scotty, PCR stands for "polymerase chain reaction" and is a simple method to synthetically amplify small regions of DNA. Essentially, one molecule of DNA can be turned into billions of molecules in 1-2 hours, and this method is used in research, medical diagnostics, law enforcement, you name it.

[_Tarski]

Isn't he the one that likes acid so much?

That's him. He's given LSD some of the credit for his discovery.

Scotty, PCR stands for "polymerase chain reaction" and is a simple method to synthetically amplify small regions of DNA. Essentially, one molecule of DNA can be turned into billions of molecules in 1-2 hours, and this method is used in research, medical diagnostics, law enforcement, you name it.

I think we should consider giving LSD some credit for his ability to believe weird crap.

[_EAllusion]

I guess that if I were to believe OBE/NDE stories, I should believe UFO abductions and Bigfoot sightings as well.

Yes, you should be consistent like Kary Mullis (he believes in UFO abductions).

PCR is a real time-saver, though!

And HIV causes AIDS denial! Ahh Kary Mullis, the zaniest of the Nobel Prize winners.

[_EAllusion]

One of the coolest scientific breakthroughs of the last year was developing a method to induce out of body experiences noninvasively. Prior to this, it could only be done with some surgery, which obviously involves nonhealthy subjects. (Taking LSD is kinda touch and go on that front).

This thread is as good as any to mention it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141057.htm

[_gramps]

Tarski (and other skeptics),

How do you respond to those that claim to have had an OBE, travelled to a loved ones presence and later described exactly what that person was wearing, doing, saying, etc?

Do you believe these are just non-credible stories?

Pretty much. I remember hearing an interview with Kary Mullis a few years back. He said that when he was a young man he had a tank of nitrous oxide in his house and he would sometimes put on the mask and zone-out for a while. One time there was something wrong with the tank and he passed out, and he should have died.... Years later he met a woman who claimed to have saved him that time. She was meditating in another part of the country and journeyed out of body to where Kary was slowly dying, and she shut off the gas and saved his life. So he says she said. Anyway, Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for inventing PCR, but he believes in so much crazy sh!t that I have little problem dismissing his story to the non-credible pile. PCR is a real time-saver, though!

Ha ha! I had just pulled out Mullis' book: "Dancing Naked in the Mine Field," from my shelf in order to recount the same story. You beat me to it.

I don't know what to make of that guy. Apparently he has lost a lot of credibility in the scientific field for his stand on the AIDS issue. I wonder if he has changed on that at all? Anyone know the answer to that?

Anyway, what a fun read. Some really brilliant essays. A few of the essays I highly recommend: Fear and Lawyers in Los Angeles (his experience being involved with the O.J. trial; The Realm of the Senses; My Evening with Harry; No Aliens Allowed (yes, if you can take him seriously, he does believe in aliens); and Better Living Through Chemistry (his experiments with chemicals in the 60's).

All really fun stuff to read. Highly recommended.

[_Tarski]

Similarly I do not see your question about why a spirit would see things in the manner or one item blocking other items. How else is seeing going to keep track of relative position in space?

I can think of dozens of ways if I am allowed to make make stuff up about what a spirit is and the nature of the spirit world.
For example, how does a blind person tell the location of a person far away in the parking lot calling them from a person close up talking to them? Ever heard of a bat?
Also, if I could receive "spiritual vibrations" from something, then I might be able to tell exactly where it is with extreme precision by a triangulation. Perhaps a spirit is in direct contact with each (spirit) atom in an area and knows its location and spirit "type" and chenosity or cata-nobleness (who know what properties spirit has, LOL). Maybe the spirit would accesses the background quantum field. Maybe it looks on things from "above" as if from another dimension thus seeing even the interior of things (read flatland if that doesn't make sense). Maybe a spirit "smells" the spirit of other things and each smell datum also encodes the location and size of the spirit thing (what is the physics of immaterial spirit anyway?).
Maybe the spirit accesses the holy ghost and thus can feel with perfect precision what is behind that door and even the nature (color?) of its interior. But why would it then appear as if viewed by human eyes?

Well, if we could walk right through the sunshine then how could we know it was there?
If a car didn't block the sound from what was behind it, how would we know it was there or where it was?

Why do we imagine the physics and possible perceptual modalities of "spirits" to be just like those of meaty mammals on a ball of mud spinning around this hot physical sun?

The point is that the physical apparatus of perception, along with the particularities of the nature of the world sensed, is what gives the subjective aspects of perceptions its character. Unless the spirit world is just a double of this one down to the very physics, I don't see why it would seem the same at all to a spirit creature.

Now there is another thing wrong with your question. You ask how it could tell where things were without this opacity thing. But opacity is just a fact about how light is obscured from the retina. Opacity isn't there because of our needs! We just take advantage of a fact about light and its inability to pass through certain objects. there are as many ways to locate an object perceptually as there are possible worlds--remember spirits aren't subject to ordinary physics (if they were they would just be ordinary people (or super people? or infra-people) visible to us all.

[_John Larsen]

One of the coolest scientific breakthroughs of the last year was developing a method to induce out of body experiences noninvasively. Prior to this, it could only be done with some surgery, which obviously involves nonhealthy subjects. (Taking LSD is kinda touch and go on that front).

This thread is as good as any to mention it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141057.htm

I also read that NDEs could be induced in a the centrifugal devise that astronauts use once blood is forced out of their head.

[_Tarski]

One of the coolest scientific breakthroughs of the last year was developing a method to induce out of body experiences noninvasively. Prior to this, it could only be done with some surgery, which obviously involves nonhealthy subjects. (Taking LSD is kinda touch and go on that front).

This thread is as good as any to mention it.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 141057.htm

I also read that NDEs could be induced in a the centrifugal devise that astronauts use once blood is forced out of their head.

Let's discount this powerful evidence that the OBE is a brain effect shall we? What about that sentimental scientist who points out the little boy who saw is dead Grampa whom he never met. He couldn't have just guessed his Grampy was tall! I'm feeling touched right now. *sniff*
A brain can't be fooled! Especially a sincere little boys brain.

[_huckelberry]

Similarly I do not see your question about why a spirit would see things in the manner or one item blocking other items. How else is seeing going to keep track of relative position in space?

I can think of dozens of ways if I am allowed to make make stuff up about what a spirit is and the nature of the spirit world.
For example, how does a blind person tell the location of a person far away in the parking lot calling them from a person close up talking to them? Ever heard of a bat?..............

The point is that the physical apparatus of perception, along with the particularities of the nature of the world sensed, is what gives the subjective aspects of perceptions its character. Unless the spirit world is just a double of this one down to the very physics, I don't see why it would seem the same at all to a spirit creature.

Now there is another thing wrong with your question. You ask how it could tell where things were without this opacity thing. But opacity is just a fact about how light is obscured from the retina. Opacity isn't there because of our needs! We just take advantage of a fact about light and its inability to pass through certain objects. there are as many ways to locate an object perceptually as there are possible worlds--remember spirits aren't subject to ordinary physics (if they were they would just be ordinary people (or super people? or infra-people) visible to us all.

Hmm, you have replied enough that you must be interested in whether the hypothesis of spirits can be coherent, not just that out of body experiences do not demonstate spirits. I conceeded that second part. Still I was a bit suprised by our disconnect. Mybe I was careless on the point I should have been more precise.

In was not imagining that there could not be other methods of tracking experience. I would suppose bat spirits would feel at home in a different imaging system than I use. I am not sure how much different my dogs visual display methods are than mine, I suspect different. I wonder if there is an inclusion of smell information? I suspect my dogs spirit would feel at home it that sort of experience processing. My spirit might find the methods used by my dog's spirit confusing.


Am I belaboring this? I think my spirits methods of processing enviromental information are formed by my bodily systems.

Maybe I souldnt have intered this discussionr. I do not share the LDS view of spirits beings eternal or long developed in a preexistence. I believe my spirit started with my physical birth and is a dimension of my physical reality I do not believe my spirit is some thing attatched to my body like an appendix.

Your question reminds me of a rather lenghty discussion a Mr Aquinas undertook about how angels know. He figures they have no perceptual process at all but instead function through direct knowedge from God.
angels would be parallel to the spirits you are wondering about. Neither Mr Aquinas nor myself think of my spirit, human spirits, being the same. Instead we are bodily and are aware through the process of forming concepts from sense impressions.

Of coures those ideas about angels are pure speculation, He is asking how can the idea of angels make sense. His view would be one possiblity.