OBEs--a reductio ad absurdum

[_Tarski]

I had been reading about perception (from a book by Ray Jackendoff) when I first wrote this.

The following occurs to me (now stay with me).

1. We experience things visually via surfaces. Why? Because the eyes are an optical instrument. Surfaces are how we see things and imagine things. Light reflects from surfaces and creates 2-images on our retina. The core of an apple exists but we do not sense it visually unless we cut into it --we only see surfaces or what can be accounted for by how an object retransmits light into our optical apparatus.

2. We take it for granted that we cannot see what is beyond an obscuring object like a hand or closed door or wall. We also take it for granted that we cannot see the center of things like apples. But why? This is just a function of the optics and eyes. There is nothing otherwise obvious about no matter how used to it we are. If this did not happen for objects would everything be transparent and hence possibly invisible? Again this is because vision is optical and light traces out obstruct-able, usually straight, paths to our eyes. Our eyes must absorb the photons so we also cannot be transparent ( a true ghost could not see it seems).
Photons carry this information about the superficial and reflective aspect of our world--not about how the world really is in itself.

3. Creatures with other perceptual apparatus may have dramatically different perceptual worlds not hung up on surfaces. What do things look like to a God?
Things in themselves are really more than just surfaces and any being that detected objects by some other means might experience all sides and the interior of an object simultaneously. A bizarre perceptual world not comprehensible to us!

4. The fact that we see colors is a function of optics also and the reflective properties of material surfaces with respect to visible light are what matters along with the processing in our brain.

5. That the grass is green and apples red is a function of the quantum mechanics of the reflective molecules and would be different if they did not have the same mass, if the electron did not have the same mass and charge.
Indeed, hardly anything can change without throwing the whole perceptual world into an unrecognizable state.
Even the fact that the eyes are sensitive to the colors they are is related to the spectrum of the sun peaking where it does and this in turn is due to the temperature of the sun- all totally physical things and circumstances.

Now,...............

5. During an OBE, a subject claims to be able rise above the operating table and see things from a different perspective, maybe even reading something that is not in sight from the level of the operating table. The subject may fly to other places and look at them.


Now, does the subject recall a bizarre world where things are not perceived as surfaces, shadows and color? No, it looks normal. He/she can still read for example. Is the grass on the hospital lawn seen through the window still green? Are the doctors eyes still not blue? Does the OBE spirit not just see the red surface of the apple but the core too-why or why not? (the reason was optics before)?

But now we have problems!! Are we to suppose the following fantastic things?

1. The spirit body has spirit eyes that detect spirit photons?

2. Do spirit photons react with the spirit wall just like material photons? Does the wall have a reflective spirit?

3. Are we to suppose that spirit photons interact with spirit chlorophyll to reflect just the right spirit photons to cause the spirit eye and brain to experience green when looking at grass during an OBE? Do spirit photons bounce off the doctors face (with the same reflective properties) and then into the spiritual eye of the floating spirit. Do signals get sent to the spirit brain? If the spirit brain needs such, and can process such, then why do we need a body/brain/eyes in the first place? If the spirit senses directly then why does it see only surfaces, shadow and color? Is there a spirit sun with the same "spirit" temperature? Remember, the spirit can't catch physical photons or we could see it! It would cast shadows and indeed and just be essentially material itself.

4. How is 2 & 3 possible unless the QM and thermal properties of spiritual photons and spirit wall molecules and spirit chlorophyll are exactly parallel to the material counterparts?

Aren't we grossly violating Occam's razor by postulating a whole dual world with parallel properties from the eye and wall right down to the atomic level? Everything is doubled. Well, that looks like we have just another physical world parallel to ours for no reason accomplishing nothing new. But it still doesn't work does it.

I could go on counting absurdities.
There is no plausible reason a spirit could see the world in colored surfaces as we do (which is not as it is but as it appears to our perceptual apparatus)

One final question. If the OBE spirit remember seeing these things, how is it recorded in the brain so that the language centers of the brain can report the experience? Remember the brain is not functioning or not connected to the "spirit body"

Nothing fits; nothing makes sense in this picture.

Reductio ad absurdum.

[_The Nehor]

If someone created such a world and then tried to explain that it made perfect sense, I would agree with you. But if you've experienced such a thing then arguments that it would seem implausible seem moot. It's akin to someone arguing that existence makes no sense. Unfortunately for the arguer, it simply is.

[_Some Schmo]

Cause ya gotta have faith, a faith, a faith
Yaaaa gotta have faith...
Oh yeah ya gotta have faith, a faith, a faith
Yaaaa gotta have faith, a faith, a faith...

I remember when you posted that before. I totally enjoyed it then, too.

[_The Dude]

If someone created such a world and then tried to explain that it made perfect sense, I would agree with you. But if you've experienced such a thing then arguments that it would seem implausible seem moot. It's akin to someone arguing that existence makes no sense. Unfortunately for the arguer, it simply is.

No, for the arguer, it simply is perception. What is really going on to cause the perception is very much open to discussion.

[_Tarski]

If someone created such a world and then tried to explain that it made perfect sense, I would agree with you. But if you've experienced such a thing then arguments that it would seem implausible seem moot. It's akin to someone arguing that existence makes no sense. Unfortunately for the arguer, it simply is.

It works like a dream except that it is vivid, charged with spiritual emotion (seretonin rush), lucid, and gets recorded into memory under unusual circumstances that tricks the brain into taking it as veridical.

You are simply fooled. I'm am as sure of it as you are sure that your little sisters nightmare is just a dream (I hope.

You brain plays the magic trick and you fall for it hook line and sinker. Who can blame you? Its your own brain and that's all you have to work with. It's in charge of judging whats real. (but a long road of rationality can get you to see behind the scenes of the trick).
Did you forget that I have had an OBE as well as numerous transcendent experiences? My youth was filled with this kinda stuff.

[_Some Schmo]

You brain plays the magic trick and you fall for it hook line and sinker. Who can blame you? Its your own brain and that's all you have to work with. It's in charge of judging whats real. (but a long road of rationality can get you to see behind the scenes of the trick).

This reminds me of a great Emo Phillips joke:

"I used to think that the brain was the most fascinating part of the human body, and then it occurred to me... well, what's telling me that?"

[_asbestosman]

Maybe spirits really do experience the universe differently, but when they go back inside of people, they are placed behind the veil again and only remember things that correspond more closely to earthly experiences.

Maybe the laws of physics are wrong and spirits can detect photons without disturbing them even though nothing else can.

Maybe if all life has spirits it isn't such a stretch to imagine that all matter has spirit including photons so there really is a duplicate world or spirit.

Maybe we're all just spirits in a vat and so the only problems are the occasional software glitch and maybe an design issue or two.

(You'll never be able to disprove that I have a dragon in my garage).

[_Some Schmo]

Maybe spirits really do experience the universe differently, but when they go back inside of people, they are placed behind the veil again and only remember things that correspond more closely to earthly experiences.

Maybe the laws of physics are wrong and spirits can detect photons without disturbing them even though nothing else can.

Maybe if all life has spirits it isn't such a stretch to imagine that all matter has spirit including photons so there really is a duplicate world or spirit.

Maybe we're all just spirits in a vat and so the only problems are the occasional software glitch and maybe an design issue or two.

(You'll never be able to disprove that I have a dragon in my garage).

Well, maybe. Do you really believe any of this though? Seems to me like a whole lot of mental contortionism to make a needless (albeit potentially comforting) idea work.

[_asbestosman]

Do you really believe any of this though?

I suppose they're all possibilities. I'm not sure how likely I think any of them are. Spirits not disturbing photons seems plausible to me. Still, it brings up other questions. Why would a spirit have approximately the same visual resolution that my body does (why not see bacteria or small things)? Why does it seem to have the same field of view (why not eyes on the back of its head?).

[_huckelberry]

I am a bit dubious about out of body experiences but Tarskis opening statement presents some interesting questions to how we think about the theory of spirits.

I had two thoughts starting out. First I understand (as a Christian believer) our spirit to be a diminsion of our physical body not something fundamentally seperate from it. I do not find my self at all suprised by our counscious experience being tied to both the physical world and our physical processing of it.

Second, I think Tarski has seriously oversimplified perception. We receive and focus photons on a retina but we experiece images which our imagination constructs out of a combination of those neural sensations and our understanding of the world. What we actual experience seeing is a constructed image, an active idea that the brain forms. If spirits saw in any fashion information received would be processed into the same image forming patterns we are familiar with. That is colored or light dark shapes whose contours reflect surfaces of volumes. The result would likely be that even if some different source of initial informaion was involved it would be possible that the experienced result would look the same because that appearance is how we understand seeing.