Philosophical Speculations

Schoonover, Fink, and their colleagues from Columbia University allowed mice to sniff the same odors over several days and weeks, and recorded the activity of neurons in the rodents’ piriform cortex—a brain region involved in identifying smells. At a given moment, each odor caused a distinctive group of neurons in this region to fire. But as time went on, the makeup of these groups slowly changed. Some neurons stopped responding to the smells; others started. After a month, each group was almost completely different. Put it this way: The neurons that represented the smell of an apple in May and those that represented the same smell in June were as different from each other as those that represent the smells of apples and grass at any one time.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/arc ... ch/619145/

I'm certain someone could use this as good supporting evidence from science for idealism.

However, it could be explained in other ways.

https://broadspeculations.com/2021/07/1 ... n-neurons/

Yet another annoying piece of evidence that does not fit into the physicalist narrative. From that point of view there is no reason why specialized neurons should "drift" towards other functions while subjected to the same stimulus. From the non-physicalist view which sees the brain as a "channel", not as a generator, it would make more sense.

Marco Masi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:53 pm Yet another annoying piece of evidence that does not fit into the physicalist narrative. From that point of view there is no reason why specialized neurons should "drift" towards other functions while subjected to the same stimulus. From the non-physicalist view which sees the brain as a "channel", not as a generator, it would make more sense.

I thought somebody would find this an appealing bit of evidence.

The current physicalist view is that the brain is a generator, not a channel. How does the non-physicalist view of the brain as a channel help matters? Channel from where to where?

Jim Cross wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 7:14 pm

Marco Masi wrote: ↑Mon Jul 12, 2021 5:53 pm Yet another annoying piece of evidence that does not fit into the physicalist narrative. From that point of view there is no reason why specialized neurons should "drift" towards other functions while subjected to the same stimulus. From the non-physicalist view which sees the brain as a "channel", not as a generator, it would make more sense.

I thought somebody would find this an appealing bit of evidence.

The current physicalist view is that the brain is a generator, not a channel. How does the non-physicalist view of the brain as a channel help matters? Channel from where to where?

Many of these things are clarified when we begin to realize the 'brain', like any other 'object' in space-time, is only a tiny partial image (symbol) of much broader, inter-connected, and invisible processes (invisible to the 'naked eye' and to all scientific measuring devices). The idealists also forget this simple fact much of the time, although they have a much better chance of grasping it than the physicalists, who, almost by the definition of their axioms, rule out this possibility from the jump. Once this fact is internalized, we realize that none of these studies can explain the essence of mind-consciousness by themselves, because we are always only studying partial images. We cannot take experimental results from studying neural activity in mice here, activity in monkeys there, activity from psychedelics in humans elsewhere, etc. and cobble together the fundamentally spiritual essence of mind.

This discussion reminds me of the Bohm-Pribram's holonomic brain theory:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory

Specifically about this part:
"This model allows for important aspects of human consciousness, including the fast associative memory that allows for connections between different pieces of stored information and the non-locality of memory storage (a specific memory is not stored in a specific location, i.e. a certain cluster of neurons)"

As usual, this theory is also categorised as pseudo science by the materialist camp.

papangul wrote: ↑Tue Jul 13, 2021 2:00 pm This discussion reminds me of the Bohm-Pribram's holonomic brain theory:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holonomic_brain_theory

Specifically about this part:
"This model allows for important aspects of human consciousness, including the fast associative memory that allows for connections between different pieces of stored information and the non-locality of memory storage (a specific memory is not stored in a specific location, i.e. a certain cluster of neurons)"

As usual, this theory is also categorised as pseudo science by the materialist camp.

Isn't Pribram more of a neutral monist?