Near-Death Experiences Explained?

[Wade]

@Constance Here is a copy and paste job going into detail about my interaction with an preying mantis in my childhood. Through the years especially before trips back home I would recall this dream to the extent that it was almost as if I were reliving it all over again...Over and over. This dreams came to an end and to a head some five years ago.

"...When I was young, about 10 years old I believe, I was sitting on the steps to my grandmother’s house on a hot summers’ day. What I was doing at the time was what passed for fun at the time when I was by myself and not yet given much reign to go exploring in the nearby woods.

We lived just across the river from what was then a secondary military base. Presently this base (Ft. Drum) is the home of the 10th mountain division but at the time with the exception of summer troops in the reserve forces and the marines in the winter it was a underused base and as we got older we had much freer rein on exploring the base.
What I was doing sitting on the steps of my grandmother’s was trying to get a response from the convoy of troops going back onto base after doing some night maneuvers. With each approaching vehicle I was pumping my skinny little arm up and down very rapidly trying to get a honk from the drivers. Like I said, fun, even more so when we would also get the occasional middle finger from some of the troops in the back of the carriers.
Being the middle of summer I was wearing some cut-offs and being distracted I did not notice that until after I felt a funny kind of tickling-itching on my left thigh , i sae that that an adult praying mantis had taken up residence on my knee. As I mentioned I was young and therefore at that age when a young boy might take a strong interest in bugs and would find it amusing that there was an insect propped up on your knee, BUT it was a (to me) large praying mantis and mere inches from my face and seemingly ready to attack me and because of that my first instinct was to try to swipe it away. That instinct was very, very brief though and in the blink of an eye I changed my mind and instead spoke to it. “Hello there” I said. As soon as I said that the mantis did that exorcist thing with its head turning at what seemed to be 180 degrees and looked directly at me, as if it acknowledging my greeting
We stared at each other for a bit as if contemplating each other. I could now see that it meant no harm and went back to my fist pumping and the mantis went about his(hers) business which I assume was hunting/preying as my knee seemed to act as some kind of vantage point for which to survey it’s hunting ground. At any rate they next time I turned around (15 seconds or so ) it had completely disappeared. I didn’t question it at the time but now that I think back, I figure that was not normal behavior for a mantis, as all the ones I had seen at the time camouflaged themselves in a garden, posing as a leaf or a flower, waiting for an unwary insect to stumble upon the scene

For whatever reason this seemed to be one of the seminal events in my life as a kid because I dream about it quite often before I take trips back east and of all the events of childhood that I remember without coaxing this one stands heads and shoulders above all else..."

 

[smcder]

I haven't read this entire article yet, but I think it fits here:

The Shrinking World of Ideas - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

You should (read it all).

I hesitate to give anyone any more "ideas" but here goes:

"That said, what the postmodernists indirectly accomplished was to open the humanities to the sciences, particularly neuroscience. By exposing the ideological codes in language, by revealing the secret grammar of architectural narrative and poetic symmetries, and by identifying the biases that frame "disinterested" judgment, postmodern theorists provided a blueprint of how we necessarily think and express ourselves.

In their own way, they mirrored the latest developments in neurology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. To put it in the most basic terms: Our preferences, behaviors, tropes, and thoughts—the very stuff of consciousness—are byproducts of the brain’s activity. And once we map the electrochemical impulses that shoot between our neurons, we should be able to understand—well, everything. So every discipline becomes implicitly a neurodiscipline, including ethics, aesthetics, musicology, theology, literature, whatever."




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[smcder]

Here's one I've been thinking on for a while but haven't seen discussed on the forum because we aren't good at or interested in looking at the moral implications of ideas ... Or because we think facts are the way it is and so it's pointless to consider the moral implications.

"For instance, psychologists and legal scholars, spurred by brain research and sophisticated brain-scanning techniques, have begun to reconsider ideas about volition. If all behavior has an electrochemical component, then in what sense—psychological, legal, moral—is a person responsible for his actions? Joshua Greene and Jonathan Cohen in a famous 2004 paper contend that neuroscience has put a new spin on free will and culpability: It "can help us see that all behavior is mechanical, that all behavior is produced by chains of physical events that ultimately reach back to forces beyond the agent’s control." Their hope is that the courts will ultimately discard blame-based punishment in favor of more "consequentialist approaches." - See more at: The Shrinking World of Ideas - The Chronicle of Higher Education"

 

[Constance]

Maybe the mantis just flew away? Why did you think that you'd inadvertently harmed it?

Was your mantis green or brown? The green ones are beautiful. Here's a great photo of one on top of a fiddle-head fern.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...-3miEbx_k8dZsrLK1YHQHorDOq4UvBsFrpMyH741aLFWA

 

[Constance]

You should (read it all).

I hesitate to give anyone any more "ideas" but here goes:

"That said, what the postmodernists indirectly accomplished was to open the humanities to the sciences, particularly neuroscience. By exposing the ideological codes in language, by revealing the secret grammar of architectural narrative and poetic symmetries, and by identifying the biases that frame "disinterested" judgment, postmodern theorists provided a blueprint of how we necessarily think and express ourselves.

In their own way, they mirrored the latest developments in neurology, psychology, and evolutionary biology. To put it in the most basic terms: Our preferences, behaviors, tropes, and thoughts—the very stuff of consciousness—are byproducts of the brain’s activity. And once we map the electrochemical impulses that shoot between our neurons, we should be able to understand—well, everything. So every discipline becomes implicitly a neurodiscipline, including ethics, aesthetics, musicology, theology, literature, whatever."

I read it [it's mostly a crock in my opinion] and all the following comments. I'll quote a few of the best ones when I get back from running an errand.

 

[Wade]

Maybe the mantis just flew away? Why did you think that you'd inadvertently harmed it?

Was your mantis green or brown? The green ones are beautiful. Here's a great photo of one on top of a fiddle-head fern.

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...-3miEbx_k8dZsrLK1YHQHorDOq4UvBsFrpMyH741aLFWA

It was a green one but I didn't harm it, it just disappeared. the one I subsequently killed was almost 40 years later and a brown one, it was the start (bad) of a remarkable series of coincidences that occured after I had come back to Los Angeles after I had gone back east to celebrate my parent's 50th. anniversary. Just before I left I had the dream and as was the case while back there i visited the property (now a warehouse) where my grandparents lived at the time and i had my encounter. These events (below) happened in 2009

MONDAY I manage one of those mbe/private mail box locations where the lobby is usually open 27/7/365 and the gate is inside separating the front desk from the general area. I just unlocked the padlock and pulled back the squeaky gate (which did and does make a horrendous noise) when my peripheral vision saw something” vibrating” on the wall next to the gate. It had been hidden by my view from the main frame of the gate. The vibration was a brown khaki colored preying mantis and I think it was probably vibrating because of the gate( it was not a pleasant noise sort of like nails on a chalkboard ) as soon as I turned the alarm off I scrounged up a paper cup to capture it and take it outside because it would be doomed if I let it stay in the store. After GENTLY placing the mantis on the sidewalk outside I went back to my opening procedures, and to my surprise I saw the mantis “clawing’ at the pane glass of the front with its forelegs as if it was desperately trying to get it. I again knew the mantis would be doomed if left to its own device because of the foot traffic I get so I got the paper cup, locked the gate again , scooped up the mantis, crossed the street and GENTLY deposited the mantis in the cool shady grassy green landscaping of an apartment building and went back to work
I didn’t really give the event much thought at the time, but as I approached the store the next day

TUESDAY Upon arrival at my work place I half-jokingly looked down by the entrance to see if I could see my friend. It was all clear so then when I went inside to unlock the gate I also looked on the wall to see if my friend had made its way inside. It did not. Then I decided that I would go outside and sweep up the sidewalk in front of the store and went about doing so. I wasn’t particularly paying attention to my work, it was just a sidewalk after all, but I had made a couple of piles and it was then that I noticed that one of the piles stated to move, that is there was movement in one of the piles. I IMMEDIATELY knew right then and there what it was. Sure enough after brushing away some of the dirt I uncovered a brown, khaki colored praying mantis. Only this time I could see I had mortally wounded it. Its thorax was open and its insides were visible. To say that I was horrified would be an understatement. I was devastated. I don’t know why, but I was close to tears, you could say i consumed with guilt and even anger. Why didn’t I look closer?, Why did it come back?
(note: I can by no means be certain it was the very same mantis and that for some strange reason it had decided to make its way from a couple of blocks away, across a busy boulevard and show up at the front steps, but mantis’s do not travel in pairs, I don’t even think they mate in a companionship type of way, and there was definitely no “infestation” or anything of the sort that would indicated that there would be a logical reason to find another khaki colored mantis at my doorstep again)
So I once again, gently put it in another paper cup and took it back to the same place I had left it ( or the other one) and put it down into what I was sure would be its place of death. I had a hard time concentrating on work all that day, and this time upon leaving for the day I made a point of going home past the condo where I had laid it/them to see if it was still there or if it had indeed died. I didn’t see it but I didn’t spend a long time looking for it because there was a transient resting in the shade …it was mid-July…in very same place and he gave me a very baleful look as I was probably disturbing him. So I left and told him sorry(just in case)

 

[smcder]

Even more damning are the accusations in Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld’s Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, which argues that the insights gathered from neurotechnologies have less to them than meets the eye. The authors seem particularly put out by the real-world applications of neuroscience as doctors, psychologists, and lawyers increasingly rely on its tenuous and unprovable conclusions. Brain scans evidently are "often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system … so seeing one area light up on an MRI in response to a stimulus doesn’t automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions." - See more at: The Shrinking World of Ideas - The Chronicle of Higher Education


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[smcder]

I have a list of what I call "themes", that is repetitive particulars within my dreams a country mile long. Outside the repetitive mantis dreams, where I would replay the interaction I had over 40 years ago (at the time) I don't have repetitive dreams per say but in the act of writing them down...I can be pretty detailed...I find myself writing about an aspect or action within the dream that is pretty minor in that it had little to do with the dream as a whole but I'll find myself writing it down and then thinking "SonaBitch, there it is again" Train stations, tunnels, long narrow ramps descending into darkness, escalators, stairs that by pass the floor I want and I have to go out of my way to get to the right one, freeway on ramps offramps, suburban shopping malls at night, empty and off the interstate, empty construction sites, catwalks, quinoset huts. The list is pretty impressive. These are what I focus on instead of the actual dream. Very crowded communal living, usually in the context of a unclean enviornment, The obligatory flying dream, but with me it's usual fits and false starts, like a gooney bird trying to get airborne and when I finally do get aloft it is not for very long. Running along trails and trying to keep my footing, I'll be running so fast my momentum propels me off the track and I'll fight to stay on, frequently within these dreams I'll tell myself "Hey, I've been here before and know what comes next. I (rightly or wrongly ) interpet this as being lucid because it's like I'm directing my dream, up to a few months ago I would tell myself within the dream "Wade, you may want to remember this when you wake up." Truly, no lie. I haven't done this in sometime but usually I do recall a great part of them after a few minutes of grogginess and a little bit of concentration. But if i concentrate too hard I lose focus (sounds paradoxical I know) and inevitably forget so I just relax and it pretty much always comes back.

Given that you can understand why I consider my dream life a gift.

It is a gift but you work hard too ... my mom has kept a dream journal for years and meets with a Jungian dream circle on a weekly basis. She has had some remarkable experiences.

Thank you for sharing this with us. I hope you will consider a lucid dream quest for the mantis.


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[smcder]

@Constance look forward to your thoughts:

"Can ‘Neuro Lit Crit’ Save the Humanities?" The New York Times asked in 2010. Apparently so, if the government and foundations are more inclined to support the humanities when they start borrowing terms and ideas from cognitive science. It seems that the more "scientific" the approach to the arts, the more seriously they are taken. In a 2008 paper titled "The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations," Deena Skolnick Weisberg and colleagues demonstrated that ordinary people’s opinions were so influenced by neuroscientific terms that any explanation or critical judgment employing them seemed valid, however nonsensical. Well, professors of English and philosophy are ordinary people, too. - See more at: The Shrinking World of Ideas - The Chronicle of Higher Education"


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[Constance]

It was a green one but I didn't harm it, it just disappeared. the one I subsequently killed was almost 40 years later and a brown one, it was the start (bad) of a remarkable series of coincidences that occured after I had come back to Los Angeles after I had gone back east to celebrate my parent's 50th. anniversary. Just before I left I had the dream and as was the case while back there i visited the property (now a warehouse) where my grandparents lived at the time and i had my encounter. These events (below) happened in 2009

MONDAY I manage one of those mbe/private mail box locations where the lobby is usually open 27/7/365 and the gate is inside separating the front desk from the general area. I just unlocked the padlock and pulled back the squeaky gate (which did and does make a horrendous noise) when my peripheral vision saw something” vibrating” on the wall next to the gate. It had been hidden by my view from the main frame of the gate. The vibration was a brown khaki colored preying mantis and I think it was probably vibrating because of the gate( it was not a pleasant noise sort of like nails on a chalkboard ) as soon as I turned the alarm off I scrounged up a paper cup to capture it and take it outside because it would be doomed if I let it stay in the store. After GENTLY placing the mantis on the sidewalk outside I went back to my opening procedures, and to my surprise I saw the mantis “clawing’ at the pane glass of the front with its forelegs as if it was desperately trying to get it. I again knew the mantis would be doomed if left to its own device because of the foot traffic I get so I got the paper cup, locked the gate again , scooped up the mantis, crossed the street and GENTLY deposited the mantis in the cool shady grassy green landscaping of an apartment building and went back to work
I didn’t really give the event much thought at the time, but as I approached the store the next day

TUESDAY Upon arrival at my work place I half-jokingly looked down by the entrance to see if I could see my friend. It was all clear so then when I went inside to unlock the gate I also looked on the wall to see if my friend had made its way inside. It did not. Then I decided that I would go outside and sweep up the sidewalk in front of the store and went about doing so. I wasn’t particularly paying attention to my work, it was just a sidewalk after all, but I had made a couple of piles and it was then that I noticed that one of the piles stated to move, that is there was movement in one of the piles. I IMMEDIATELY knew right then and there what it was. Sure enough after brushing away some of the dirt I uncovered a brown, khaki colored praying mantis. Only this time I could see I had mortally wounded it. Its thorax was open and its insides were visible. To say that I was horrified would be an understatement. I was devastated. I don’t know why, but I was close to tears, you could say i consumed with guilt and even anger. Why didn’t I look closer?, Why did it come back?
(note: I can by no means be certain it was the very same mantis and that for some strange reason it had decided to make its way from a couple of blocks away, across a busy boulevard and show up at the front steps, but mantis’s do not travel in pairs, I don’t even think they mate in a companionship type of way, and there was definitely no “infestation” or anything of the sort that would indicated that there would be a logical reason to find another khaki colored mantis at my doorstep again)
So I once again, gently put it in another paper cup and took it back to the same place I had left it ( or the other one) and put it down into what I was sure would be its place of death. I had a hard time concentrating on work all that day, and this time upon leaving for the day I made a point of going home past the condo where I had laid it/them to see if it was still there or if it had indeed died. I didn’t see it but I didn’t spend a long time looking for it because there was a transient resting in the shade …it was mid-July…in very same place and he gave me a very baleful look as I was probably disturbing him. So I left and told him sorry(just in case)

I'm glad you shared this with us, too, Wade. I'm very sorry it happened and understand exactly why you felt as you did, and still do. And wish there were more people like you.

 

[Randall]

We haven't even fully figured out how exactly it is that we have an everyday living "experience", so why the big focus on near death experiences or life after death? Maybe if we find out the answers to why we experience anything at all we'll have the answer to both mysteries.

For those who don't think that the brain creates experience, by what mechanism does some mythical or hypothetical non-corporeal soul or spirit thing create experience? For that there's even less to go on, and it's certainly not an answer in and of itself. The "spirit" doesn't create experience for the "soul". So what does? What component of the so-called soul generates the experience that so many people believe has the same sensory perception as is provided by brain and body? Why do we even have bodies and brains or souls at all if we don't need them to experience things?

Ultimately, trying to solve these kinds of questions is IMO a fools errand. Our experiences are the result of biological processes made possible by a material universe. If we die, those processes end, and if they are all somehow taken over by some mysterious life support system located in what we call the afterlife, then are we even the same people anymore? I find that hard to believe. At best we'd be virtual representations, or ethereal copies of our past real selves.

 

[smcder]

I'm glad you shared this with us, too, Wade. I'm very sorry it happened and understand exactly why you felt as you did, and still do. And wish there were more people like you.

Buddhism is an efficient religion/belief system/philosophy/wisdom tradition (apply your own sobriquet or term of endearment here) ... it has Five Precepts instead of Ten Commandments (and you should have seen the five Moses dropped) ... the first is not to kill. Anything. Period.

Unfortunately the fifth is not to consume fermented or distilled drinks as they are the occasion for carelessness.

In the meantime you shouldn't steal, lie or indulge in sexual misconduct.

What lies behind the precepts is intention and karma ... karma is a sophisticated concept and not simply a matter of simple punishment ... it functions something like a thermodynamic law of morality but your present actions influence the development of your karma ... how the seeds you plant develop. So it's not as bad as you think. But ... it isn't as far from Original Sin as it's Western proponents would propone. Greed, Anger and Delusion defile the mind from the get go. Another topic for another time.

Another way to think of killing any living being is that you kill it's offspring and evolutionary outcomes. What that mantis might have become a million years from now ... that is an awesome thought and one that hit me when I threw a Red Wasp out in the cold to it's probable death the other night.




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[Constance]

I have a list of what I call "themes", that is repetitive particulars within my dreams a country mile long. Outside the repetitive mantis dreams, where I would replay the interaction I had over 40 years ago (at the time) I don't have repetitive dreams per say but in the act of writing them down...I can be pretty detailed...I find myself writing about an aspect or action within the dream that is pretty minor in that it had little to do with the dream as a whole but I'll find myself writing it down and then thinking "SonaBitch, there it is again" Train stations, tunnels, long narrow ramps descending into darkness, escalators, stairs that by pass the floor I want and I have to go out of my way to get to the right one, freeway on ramps offramps, suburban shopping malls at night, empty and off the interstate, empty construction sites, catwalks, quinoset huts. The list is pretty impressive. These are what I focus on instead of the actual dream. Very crowded communal living, usually in the context of a unclean enviornment, The obligatory flying dream, but with me it's usual fits and false starts, like a gooney bird trying to get airborne and when I finally do get aloft it is not for very long. Running along trails and trying to keep my footing, I'll be running so fast my momentum propels me off the track and I'll fight to stay on, frequently within these dreams I'll tell myself "Hey, I've been here before and know what comes next. I (rightly or wrongly ) interpet this as being lucid because it's like I'm directing my dream, up to a few months ago I would tell myself within the dream "Wade, you may want to remember this when you wake up." Truly, no lie. I haven't done this in sometime but usually I do recall a great part of them after a few minutes of grogginess and a little bit of concentration. But if i concentrate too hard I lose focus (sounds paradoxical I know) and inevitably forget so I just relax and it pretty much always comes back.

Given that you can understand why I consider my dream life a gift.

I think dreams are definitely meaningful and I wish I could remember more of mine. I sometimes know as I wake up that I've just had an important dream, but with only a few exceptions (that have stayed with me for years) I can't recall them. The recurring themes and images you listed remind me of the style of some French and German film directors of the 1960s-1980s representing the contemporary world as increasingly unmanagable and intractable for humans, including a sense of an inevitable emptying out of sites of former human activity. Your dreams might be precognitive glimpses of such a future.

 

[Constance]

Even more damning are the accusations in Sally Satel and Scott O. Lilienfeld’s Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience, which argues that the insights gathered from neurotechnologies have less to them than meets the eye.

Sounds like a very important book:

"Brainwashed was a finalist for the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science.
Advance Praise:

“In this smart, provocative and very accessible book, Satel and Lilienfeld are not out to bury neuroscience; they are here to save it—to rescue it from those who have wildly exaggerated its practical and theoretical benefits. Some of this book is very funny, as when they review the dubious history of neuromarketing and neuropolitics, and some of it is dead serious, as in their discussion of how the abuse of neuroscience distorts criminal law and the treatment of addicts. Brainwashed is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the use and abuse of one of the most important scientific developments of our time.

—Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale and author of How Pleasure Works
“Satel and Lilienfeld have produced a remarkably clear and important discussion of what today’s brain science can and cannot deliver for society. As a neuroscientist, I confess that I also enjoyed their persuasive skewering of hucksters whose misuse of technology in the courtroom and elsewhere is potentially damaging not only to justice but also to the public understanding of science.”

—Dr. Steven E. Hyman, Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health
“An authoritative, fascinating argument for the centrality of mind in what, doubtless prematurely, has been called the era of the brain.”

—Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac
“There is a widespread belief that brain science is the key to understanding humanity and that imaging will X-ray our minds, revealing why we buy things and whether we are telling the truth and answering questions about addiction, criminal responsibility, and free will. Brainwashed is a beautifully written, lucid dissection of these exaggerated claims, informed by a profound knowledge of current neuroscience. It is essential reading for anyone who wants a balanced assessment of what neuroscience can and cannot tell us about ourselves.”

—Raymond Tallis, author of Aping Mankind: Neuromania
“Brainwashed provides an engaging and wonderfully lucid tour of the many areas in which the progress and applications of neuroscience are currently being overstated and oversold. Some of the hyping of neuroscience appears fairly harmless, but more than a little of it carries potential for real damage—especially when it promotes erroneous ideas about addiction and criminal behavior. The book combines clearheaded analysis with telling examples and anecdotes, making it a pleasure to read.”

 

[smcder]

Sounds like a very important book:

"Brainwashed was a finalist for the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science.
Advance Praise:

“In this smart, provocative and very accessible book, Satel and Lilienfeld are not out to bury neuroscience; they are here to save it—to rescue it from those who have wildly exaggerated its practical and theoretical benefits. Some of this book is very funny, as when they review the dubious history of neuromarketing and neuropolitics, and some of it is dead serious, as in their discussion of how the abuse of neuroscience distorts criminal law and the treatment of addicts. Brainwashed is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the use and abuse of one of the most important scientific developments of our time.

—Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale and author of How Pleasure Works
“Satel and Lilienfeld have produced a remarkably clear and important discussion of what today’s brain science can and cannot deliver for society. As a neuroscientist, I confess that I also enjoyed their persuasive skewering of hucksters whose misuse of technology in the courtroom and elsewhere is potentially damaging not only to justice but also to the public understanding of science.”

—Dr. Steven E. Hyman, Director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Former Director of the National Institute of Mental Health
“An authoritative, fascinating argument for the centrality of mind in what, doubtless prematurely, has been called the era of the brain.”

—Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac
“There is a widespread belief that brain science is the key to understanding humanity and that imaging will X-ray our minds, revealing why we buy things and whether we are telling the truth and answering questions about addiction, criminal responsibility, and free will. Brainwashed is a beautifully written, lucid dissection of these exaggerated claims, informed by a profound knowledge of current neuroscience. It is essential reading for anyone who wants a balanced assessment of what neuroscience can and cannot tell us about ourselves.”

—Raymond Tallis, author of Aping Mankind: Neuromania
“Brainwashed provides an engaging and wonderfully lucid tour of the many areas in which the progress and applications of neuroscience are currently being overstated and oversold. Some of the hyping of neuroscience appears fairly harmless, but more than a little of it carries potential for real damage—especially when it promotes erroneous ideas about addiction and criminal behavior. The book combines clearheaded analysis with telling examples and anecdotes, making it a pleasure to read.”

I can't wait for neuro-comedy!

And ... What is the evolutionary neuroscience of man's fascination with evolutionary neuroscience? Neuro-ironists want to know!


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[Constance]

Here are some of the most on-point comments following the Chronicle article. I expect that the Chronicle will want to publish a paper-length response to that article and will likely have several articulate options from which to choose.

antiutopia • It gets its intellectual history about as completely wrong as possible, particularly in the belief that the linking of neuroscience with the humanities is a new thing (Freud is early neuroscience, remember, and has anyone read I.A. Richards lately?), and in its association of postmodernism with scientific paradigms -- which is completely backwards. Postmodernism is both post humanistic and post-scientific discourse, and what tends to dominate now are neo-historical approaches.


disqus • Are the humanities shrinking because of postmodernism, if that category even makes sense anymore, or are they rather shrinking because of the corporatization of the university under neoliberalism and their lack of economic relevance to degree seekers?


Stelleen I find the ideas in the article interesting, but the selection of "neuroscientists" chosen seems to be missing an entire school of thought about consciousness and self awareness. For example, there is no mention of neurologists like Damasio and Sapolsky, who believe that self-awareness and consciousness are based in our emotions and feelings, not the extended consciousness traits of language and intellect. As Damasio puts it in his books "The Feeling of Knowing" and "Self Comes to Mind" self awareness is the feeling of feeling.

Many traditional psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers who have focused their careers only on the abstract extensions of consciousness seem absolutely phobic toward the idea that consciousness can best be explained as a feeling. But I would think that many in the humanities might find the idea that consciousness at its base is a feeling rather than an abstraction more in line with classical humanities.

This is not to say that the consciousness as feeling scientists are any less grounded in the physical structure of the brain. In fact, most of those in this school reached their conclusions by working with people who have brain damage and seeing the patterns of behavioral impairment associated with damage to specific parts of the brain.

. . .This school of consciousness also has another characteristic that I find endearing. At the same time that they extend many of the traits that traditionally have been considered exclusively human to a much broader range of species they also make our uniquely human variants on these traits even more awe inspiring.

Finally, the idea that if our mind is just a product of our brain means there is no basis for morality and accountability also is not the only conclusion that can be reached. There is no mention of Sam Harris' books "The Moral Landscape" and "Free Will," both of which attempt to reconcile the mind as a product of the brain with these pertinent issues.


BartonFink • Neuroscience at this point cannot identify where a thought or emotion is located in the mind. Neuroscience cannot provide physical, chemical or linguistic interventions for psychotherapy, and neuroscience has provided no solutions to schizophrenia or Alzheimers or any of the brain diseases we believe to be caused by organic brain dysfunction (and hence these illnesses would be, one hopes, eventually treated by therapies based upon neuroscience). If neuroscience cannot contribute a single thing to psychotherapy or to the field of human behavior in general, why would neuroscience be some kind of masterkey to literature and the humantiies? What even remotely intelligent person believes that "neuroscience will be the totalizing and commanding discipline which will consume and control the humanities"?

marketnow • I'm an English professor whose scholarship and teaching are rooted in formal (literary and rhetorical) and historical methods of analysis. Hence, I have deep reservations about the state of my discipline. That said, I'll wager you have no idea what "postmodernism" even means. What exactly are you trying to capture with that term? Do you mean Foucault and his ideas about power? Do you mean Marx and the cultural Marxists? Do you mean feminism (and if so, do you mean Anglo or French)? Or do you mean "postmodernism" as a movement across the arts that exists as a (partial) rejection of the essentialism of (some) modernisms?

My point is that "postmodernism" is a straw man that is particularly attractive to determinists who believe science can answer fundamental, longstanding questions about how humans should conduct and organize themselves in the world. Science cannot answer those questions -- cannot tell us what truth is, what it means to be human, what the social contract should be -- because such issues are as political, rhetorical, and literary as they are material. Science will not and cannot save us, and I'm damn tired of listening to people who don't understand that. In fact, some good postmodern theory might be just the ticket for them!


Anonymous: it's really just a turf war on the research field of university budgets.

 

[Constance]

I can't wait for neuro-comedy!

And ... What is the evolutionary neuroscience of man's fascination with evolutionary neuroscience? Neuro-ironists want to know!

Priceless.

 

[Wade]

porary world as increasingly unmanagable and intractable for humans, including a sense of an inevitable emptying out of sites of former human activity. Your dreams might be precognitive glimpses of such a future.

Interesting i never considered that. I went back and forth with Rosemary Ellen Guiley when she dropped in for a bit about some of my feelings. About the precognitive aspect, at the risk of sounding trite I never really pursued this because I do recognize some of my dreams are just warped variations of real life events and as i said I do at times jump in and tinker around with things so it would pretty daunting to try to isolate anything that could be considered precognitive.

 

[Constance]

Interesting i never considered that. I went back and forth with Rosemary Ellen Guiley when she dropped in for a bit about some of my feelings. About the precognitive aspect, at the risk of sounding trite I never really pursued this because I do recognize some of my dreams are just warped variations of real life events and as i said I do at times jump in and tinker around with things so it would pretty daunting to try to isolate anything that could be considered precognitive.

The full complement of the details in that list feels precognitive to me. Coherent and precognitive. And frequently repeated. Hope I'm wrong, but I have a strong feeling that these could be images from the future that your subconscious mind is picking up on. What have your feelings been after waking from these dreams, if you want to share them?

 

[Soupie]

TUESDAY Upon arrival at my work place I half-jokingly looked down by the entrance to see if I could see my friend. It was all clear so then when I went inside to unlock the gate I also looked on the wall to see if my friend had made its way inside. It did not. Then I decided that I would go outside and sweep up the sidewalk in front of the store and went about doing so. I wasn’t particularly paying attention to my work, it was just a sidewalk after all, but I had made a couple of piles and it was then that I noticed that one of the piles stated to move, that is there was movement in one of the piles. I IMMEDIATELY knew right then and there what it was. Sure enough after brushing away some of the dirt I uncovered a brown, khaki colored praying mantis. Only this time I could see I had mortally wounded it. Its thorax was open and its insides were visible. To say that I was horrified would be an understatement. I was devastated. I don’t know why, but I was close to tears, you could say i consumed with guilt and even anger. Why didn’t I look closer?, Why did it come back?

A friend of mine is a biologist fascinated with reptiles and amphibians, snakes in particular. We've gone searching for rattlesnakes in the mountains on many occasions. If you go early enough in the morning, when it's still cold, you can "safely" pick them up.

His love of snakes has spanned his entire life. As adults one summer, we were helping his brother build his house. We had a Bobcat track loader that we were using to move materials around the property. At one point, as my friend was operating it, he came to a stop under a tree. As I arrived to unload some materials, he spotted a mortally wounded rough green snake. A large portion of its body had been crushed by the machine as my friend had driven it beneath the tree.

He noted that he had never seen one before. He had finally found one, and he had killed it.