THANK YOU Ufology, Stonehart and Sue -- You all rocked!

[Sue]

Ufology, I think generally, people are prepared to make certain leaps of logic depending on the estimated distance. I also think that, sometimes, an individual's non-repeatable life experiences support leaps of logic that, to the unexperienced, seem as wide as the Grand Canyon. Then again, I think there's a lot of confusion about such things that results from too much enthusiasm, and not enough cool reflection.

Those are three very useful sentences that everyone should remember. (I liked the typology that came after them, too. You diced your theisms fairly fine from my point of view, but the resulting angels danced nicely on the pin.)

 

[Sue]

But isn't the abduction w/surgical overtones a relatively recent phenomenon. Why out of the blue would these guys...where ever they come from...would only in the past 30 years or so add this to their repertoire?

It's almost like a meme got out and loose amongst us.

How and why did we get from soil samples to stool samples?

Are any of you guys familiar with any stories of missing fetus(s) going back before the 80s?

Alien abductions is where I would go all psychosocial on the explanatory ass, because I think you are right - abduction with surgical overtones is relatively recent, it's a meme, there is no logic to back up the master narrative (and tons to undermine it) and yet you mention missing fetuses as if they were a real thing. There may have been real unexplained experiences involved or not. With respect to American ufological abductology, it's impossible to tell since the head men in the field have forever obscured the kind of evidence that would allow us to answer that question or even allow the experiencers to speak in their own voice.

Soil samples to stool samples? A good line, but I'm not aware of any actual alien stool sampling. According to the alien's lawyers, it was just probing.

 

[Wade]

Soil samples to stool samples? A good line, but I'm not aware of any actual alien stool sampling. According to the alien's lawyers, it was just probing.

Yeah it was s crass little remark but I think you get my point for some reason alien visitation got a little more personal just a few decades ago. This really bothers me in trying to fit it in visitation history. I know it's been brought about that when it comes to this changing scenario the abduction expereince molds itself to the mood of the times, but what is this supposed to mean ? is this to say that while Joe Simonton was enjoying his space cookie and A.V. Boas was enjoying his space nookie (see what i did there ?) they were actually being violated but given the era they thought they were experiencing something a little more sociable ? Does it mean that whatever could be doing this suddenly decided that were were grown up enough or that we showed our cards when it came to hostility and thereafter decided to let victims experience what was really happening ?

There is just so much noise, so much baggage when it comes to the abduction phenomenon if i were a researcher i would treat this aspect like a third rail. there is so many inconvient things that we have brought up in this forum here i sometimes wonder if maybe the abduction process isn't a distraction meant to knock a researcher off his/her game.

Mind you i don't have a lot wrapped up in this, my interest for some time in this realm has been from a psychological and a sociological point. I don't need to believe nor to find out and i embarce the folklore that goes along with it, but abduction stories really bring out the cynic in me. Mostly because we have all these unanswered questions and the best thing we can come up to explain it to ourselves is our logic isn't necessarily their logic or we can't know their agenda.. RPJ (i think) stated that maybe a traumatic abduction is exactly the point. that it's meant to let us know our place on this planet and while i can't disavow that as an open minded person if i was trying to get somebody involved in this phenomenon or get a sceptic to open up and that was my best answer i wouldn't be surprised if i was rewarded with a snicker and some eye rolling.

there is an aspect i have heard in some abduction/contact accounts and that is the distorted perspective that is is reported from people who say that the insides of these vessels they think(?) they are brought aboard appear larger than they do from the outside. the reason why i find this intriguing is that this aspect pops up in my dreams, again and again and again. It's tempting to wonder if there is a connection here. While i wouldn't necessarily tell a person they were dreaming an abduction expereince i have to wonder what possible connection there could be here. I wonder, is this percieved warped peerspective unique to a dream state or can it come up in a hypnotic regression or repressed memory?

I have mentioned a few times that if an abduction experience is happening it's because our consciousnesses were being hijacked this seems a reasonable scenario, maybe more so than getting sucked up into a flying disc. But if this was the case if our consciousness was being taken for a ride do you think it would be lucid or would it take on a dream like state quality?

 

[Randall]

Ufology, I think generally, people are prepared to make certain leaps of logic depending on the estimated distance ...

Excellent post, but the points still boil down to logic versus a leap of faith, and even if that leap seems fairly small, it makes all the difference. So let's look at why "life after death" isn't possible, and consequently why nobody is talking to dead people:

The Impossibility Of The Transcendent Self

Virtually all notions of "life after death" hinge on some version of a transcendent "self", generically referred to as a "spirit" that continues to do something we call "live" when the material body associated with it dies. Straight off, if this situation is true, the initial premise that nobody is talking to dead people remains intact, because if contact with such spirits is taking place, it is not contact with dead people, but contact with living people, minus their physical bodies. At this point the believers are likely to say that this perspective is just a matter of semantics, and that their essential point remains justified. But is it? On closer inspection the answer is, "No", at least not logically. It is still based on a leap of faith that sets scientific evidence and logic aside.

One way of explaining this is to pose this question: Why should we assume that contact with people minus their physical bodies can take place? Let me emphasize here that I say "can take place" as opposed to "is taking place". I say this because I do accept that there have been phenomena that have led people to associate deceased people with phenomena they have experienced. As a consequence that phenomena has then been accepted as evidence that what was being experienced was the presence of a dead person. Logically however, this is not necessarily the case. It may be the case that some third party other than the deceased person is responsible for the phenomena that was being experienced, and for the sake of argument, we can take it for granted there have been many instances involving hoaxes where this has proven to be the case.

So moving along, we have now established that the phenomena alone does not logically prove the hypothesis of life after death. So then what can ( if anything )? At this point it should already be clear that for us, nothing can prove life after death other than to experience life after death ourselves. But is that even possible? Again the answer is, "No", because in order to do so, the part of ourselves that does the experiencing of life after death would need to be the same part that does the experiencing of life before death, and logically that simply cannot be the case because all substantial scientific evidence indicates that the part of us that does the experiencing ( our consciousness ) is the product of a normally functioning brain, which is a material part of our bodies.

We've been discussing this at some length over in the Consciousness thread, and it's important to note that the evidence doesn't indicate that the brain material is itself conscious, but that it gives rise to consciousness by virtue of its natural form and function similar to the way a light bulb gives rise to light. Just like the light emitted from a light bulb is not a material component of the bulb, consciousness is not a material component of the brain, yet just like light from a light bulb is dependent upon the bulb in order to exist, all substantial and verifiable medical evidence indicates that when the brain dies, consciousness also ceases to exist, and therefore there is little reason to assume that it is maintained by some other mechanism beyond the death of the brain.

However for the sake of argument, let's suppose that there is some other mechanism that is able to revive our consciousness following the death of our brain. Is that enough to qualify as "life after death"? Again the answer is "No". At best, what has really happened is that instead of our original brain giving rise to our original selves, a surrogate brain has taken over and replicated our original consciousness, and we are therefore no longer our original selves, but a copy, and even worse, we have no bodies, which like it or not play a key role in our identity as well as our personalities.

Scientific study has conclusively shown that manipulation of the brain and body chemistry has drastic consequences for our personalities, and in the absence of our physical selves, all we would have left is our personality. So if we lost our personality too, there would be no case at all for any "life after death" in the sense that we continue to be the people we once were before we died. Therefore in addition to some sort of mechanism that replicates our consciousness, some sort of system that mimics the biochemistry affecting our personality would also have to be involved.

So again, even if the phenomena experienced is real, and seems in every way like the original living person, logically they simply cannot be that person, and therefore, if the stimulus for the phenomena is objective and external, logically the only viable alternative is that some third party is stepping into the picture with a clever copy and making the experiencer believe that the phenomena is actually the original person. There is in my reflection on this matter no reason to assume that anything else can be case. But if you have some way around it, by all means let's explore it. The only other alternative is wilful ignorance combined with blind faith, and we know how that tends to work out.

 

[boomerang]

Excellent post, but the points still boil down to logic versus a leap of faith, and even if that leap seems fairly small, it makes all the difference. So let's look at why "life after death" isn't possible, and consequently why nobody is talking to dead people:

The Impossibility Of The Transcendent Self

Virtually all notions of "life after death" hinge on some version of a transcendent "self", generically referred to as a "spirit" that continues to do something we identify with "live" when the material body associated with it dies. Straight off, if this is the situation is true, the initial premise that nobody is talking to dead people remains intact, because if contact with such spirits is taking place, it is not contact with dead people, but contact with living people, minus their physical bodies. At this point the believers are likely to say that this perspective is just a matter of semantics, and that their essential point remains justified. But is it? On closer inspection the answer is, "No", at least not logically. It is still based on a leap of faith that sets scientific evidence and logic aside.

One way of explaining this is to pose this question: Why should we assume that contact with people minus their physical bodies can take place? Let me emphasize here that I say "can take place" as opposed to "is taking place". I say this because I do accept that there have been phenomena that have led people to associate deceased people with phenomena they have experienced. As a consequence that phenomena has then been accepted as evidence that what was being experienced was in fact the presence of a dead person. Logically however, this is not necessarily the case. It may be the case that some third party other than the deceased person is responsible for the phenomena that was being experienced, and for the sake of argument, we can take it for granted there have been many instances involving hoaxes where this has proven to be the case.

So moving along, we have now established that the phenomena alone does not logically prove the hypothesis of life after death. So then what can ( if anything )? At this point it should already be clear that for us nothing can prove life after death other than to experience life after death ourselves. But is that even possible? Again the answer is, "No", because in order to do so, the part of ourselves that does the experiencing of life after death would need to be the same part that does the experiencing of life before death, and logically that simply cannot be the case because all substantial scientific evidence indicates that the part of us that does the experiencing ( our consciousness ) is the product of a normally functioning brain, which is a material part of our bodies.

We've been discussing this at some length over in the Consciousness thread, and it's important to note here without referencing the hundreds of pages, that the evidence doesn't indicate that the brain material is itself conscious, but that it gives rise to consciousness by virtue of its natural form and function similar to the way a light bulb gives rise to light. Just like the light emitted from a light bulb is not a material component of the bulb, consciousness is not a material component of the brain, yet just like light from a light bulb is dependent upon the bulb in order to exist, all substantial and verifiable medical evidence indicates that when the brain dies, consciousness also ceases to exist, and therefore there is little reason to assume that it is maintained by some other mechanism beyond the death of the brain.

However for the sake of argument, let's suppose that there is some other mechanism that is able to revive our consciousness following the death of our brain. Is that enough to qualify as "life after death"? Again the answer is "No". At best, what has really happened is that instead of our original brain giving rise to our original selves, a surrogate brain has taken over and replicated our original consciousness, and we are therefore no longer our original selves, but a copy, and even worse, we have no bodies, which like it or not play a key role in our identity as well as our personalities.

Scientific study has conclusively shown that manipulation of the brain and body chemistry has drastic consequences for our personalities, which apart from our physical characteristics, are all we have left of our "selves". So if we lost not only our bodies, but our personalities, there would be no case at all for any "life after death" in the sense that the people we are and are known to be by our personalities would continue to exist. Therefore in addition to some sort of brain replicating our consciousness, some sort of system that mimics the biochemistry affecting our personality would also have to be involved.

So again, even if the phenomena experienced is real, and apparently seems in every way like the original living person, logically they simply cannot be that person, and therefore, if the stimulus for the phenomena is objective and external, logically the only viable alternative is that some third party is stepping into the picture with a clever copy and making the experiencer believe that the phenomena is actually the original person. There is in my reflection on this matter no reason to assume that anything else can be case. But if you have some way around it, by all means let's explore it. The only other alternative is wilful ignorance combined with blind faith, and we know how that tends to work out.

Randall, your points are well taken. But I fail to see how we can rule continuation of consciousness and sense of self either in or out. I would say, as much for the sake of argument as anything, that the wildcard in our speculations is the seemingly infinite nature of time and the fate of information in the universe itself. Nor do we have a good operational definition of personal identity. Except to say it seems defined by our memories internally, and by our history in interaction with the world outside of our biological selves, externally.

A stab at a scientific definition of conscious identity is that we are composed of memories evolving over time which coalesce in a poorly understood set of neurological moments we perceive as "now". This seems to imply sense of self not as a fixed quantity, so much as an ongoing process of information processing possessed of a meta-processing capability that is emergent consciousness. I am not the same person I was twenty, or even one year ago. But by virtue of an ongoing consolidation of memories and external actions, a certain continuity is preserved.

Memories are a type of information. We can then (maybe ?) logically ask a question quantified in physics as to whether information is always in some form conserved. Of course, infinite conservation of information in the universe does not necessarily equate to infinite conservation of consciousness. But I think the question of where information comprising the essential "I", or even a collective "we" might go after physical death is a legitimate one.

 

[Wade]

also thanks to
@Sue for bringing the sheep-goat effect to my attention i never heard of this term but am not surprised that such an aspect exists.

I wonder if there is a parallel between this and what Kirby Surprise was talking about when he was explaining how one's emotional state had an effect on the odds of a coincidence happening i.e. the outcomes of a gambler's bets .

Thanks to @stonehart for your lambasting of Donald Trump. IMHO there can never be enough Trump lambasting

Thanks to @ufology for putting in a good word for humanity at the end of the show. We really are a double edged sword aren't we?

 

[stonehart]

also thanks to
@Sue for bringing the sheep-goat effect to my attention i never heard of this term but am not surprised that such an aspect exists.

I wonder if there is a parallel between this and what Kirby Surprise was talking about when he was explaining how one's emotional state had an effect on the odds of a coincidence happening i.e. the outcomes of a gambler's bets .

Thanks to @stonehart for your lambasting of Donald Trump. IMHO there can never be enough Trump lambasting

Thanks to @ufology for putting in a good word for humanity at the end of the show. We really are a double edged sword aren't we?

Thanks Wade, I know it upsets some people and that the Paracast is not a political show but in the case of people like Trump exceptions need to be made. Hell I don't live in the USA and I don't like the guy with a passion.

 

[stonehart]

Excellent post, but the points still boil down to logic versus a leap of faith, and even if that leap seems fairly small, it makes all the difference. So let's look at why "life after death" isn't possible, and consequently why nobody is talking to dead people:

The Impossibility Of The Transcendent Self

Virtually all notions of "life after death" hinge on some version of a transcendent "self", generically referred to as a "spirit" that continues to do something we call "live" when the material body associated with it dies. Straight off, if this situation is true, the initial premise that nobody is talking to dead people remains intact, because if contact with such spirits is taking place, it is not contact with dead people, but contact with living people, minus their physical bodies. At this point the believers are likely to say that this perspective is just a matter of semantics, and that their essential point remains justified. But is it? On closer inspection the answer is, "No", at least not logically. It is still based on a leap of faith that sets scientific evidence and logic aside.

One way of explaining this is to pose this question: Why should we assume that contact with people minus their physical bodies can take place? Let me emphasize here that I say "can take place" as opposed to "is taking place". I say this because I do accept that there have been phenomena that have led people to associate deceased people with phenomena they have experienced. As a consequence that phenomena has then been accepted as evidence that what was being experienced was the presence of a dead person. Logically however, this is not necessarily the case. It may be the case that some third party other than the deceased person is responsible for the phenomena that was being experienced, and for the sake of argument, we can take it for granted there have been many instances involving hoaxes where this has proven to be the case.

So moving along, we have now established that the phenomena alone does not logically prove the hypothesis of life after death. So then what can ( if anything )? At this point it should already be clear that for us, nothing can prove life after death other than to experience life after death ourselves. But is that even possible? Again the answer is, "No", because in order to do so, the part of ourselves that does the experiencing of life after death would need to be the same part that does the experiencing of life before death, and logically that simply cannot be the case because all substantial scientific evidence indicates that the part of us that does the experiencing ( our consciousness ) is the product of a normally functioning brain, which is a material part of our bodies.

We've been discussing this at some length over in the Consciousness thread, and it's important to note that the evidence doesn't indicate that the brain material is itself conscious, but that it gives rise to consciousness by virtue of its natural form and function similar to the way a light bulb gives rise to light. Just like the light emitted from a light bulb is not a material component of the bulb, consciousness is not a material component of the brain, yet just like light from a light bulb is dependent upon the bulb in order to exist, all substantial and verifiable medical evidence indicates that when the brain dies, consciousness also ceases to exist, and therefore there is little reason to assume that it is maintained by some other mechanism beyond the death of the brain.

However for the sake of argument, let's suppose that there is some other mechanism that is able to revive our consciousness following the death of our brain. Is that enough to qualify as "life after death"? Again the answer is "No". At best, what has really happened is that instead of our original brain giving rise to our original selves, a surrogate brain has taken over and replicated our original consciousness, and we are therefore no longer our original selves, but a copy, and even worse, we have no bodies, which like it or not play a key role in our identity as well as our personalities.

Scientific study has conclusively shown that manipulation of the brain and body chemistry has drastic consequences for our personalities, and in the absence of our physical selves, all we would have left is our personality. So if we lost our personality too, there would be no case at all for any "life after death" in the sense that we continue to be the people we once were before we died. Therefore in addition to some sort of mechanism that replicates our consciousness, some sort of system that mimics the biochemistry affecting our personality would also have to be involved.

So again, even if the phenomena experienced is real, and seems in every way like the original living person, logically they simply cannot be that person, and therefore, if the stimulus for the phenomena is objective and external, logically the only viable alternative is that some third party is stepping into the picture with a clever copy and making the experiencer believe that the phenomena is actually the original person. There is in my reflection on this matter no reason to assume that anything else can be case. But if you have some way around it, by all means let's explore it. The only other alternative is wilful ignorance combined with blind faith, and we know how that tends to work out.

Randall, your points are well taken. But I fail to see how we can rule continuation of consciousness and sense of self either in or out. I would say, as much for the sake of argument as anything, that the wildcard in our speculations is the seemingly infinite nature of time and the fate of information in the universe itself. Nor do we have a good operational definition of personal identity. Except to say it seems defined by our memories internally, and by our history in interaction with the world outside of our biological selves, externally.

A stab at a scientific definition of conscious identity is that we are composed of memories evolving over time which coalesce in a poorly understood set of neurological moments we perceive as "now". This seems to imply sense of self not as a fixed quantity, so much as an ongoing process of information processing possessed of a meta-processing capability that is emergent consciousness. I am not the same person I was twenty, or even one year ago. But by virtue of an ongoing consolidation of memories and external actions, a certain continuity is preserved.

Memories are a type of information. We can then (maybe ?) logically ask a question quantified in physics as to whether information is always in some form conserved. Of course, infinite conservation of information in the universe does not necessarily equate to infinite conservation of consciousness. But I think the question of where information comprising the essential "I", or even a collective "we" might go after physical death is a legitimate one.

And it is posts like these that keep me coming back to the forum

 

[Wade]

Amen

 

[technomage]

Thank you for keeping the political commentary down to a minimum. It made it easy to fast forward to the paranormal discussions, unlike the couple of shows where the new Star Wars movie was discussed, which required much more fast forwarding.

 

[Randall]

Randall, your points are well taken. But I fail to see how we can rule continuation of consciousness and sense of self either in or out.

OK let's have a closer look .

I would say, as much for the sake of argument as anything, that the wildcard in our speculations is the seemingly infinite nature of time and the fate of information in the universe itself. Nor do we have a good operational definition of personal identity. Except to say it seems defined by our memories internally, and by our history in interaction with the world outside of our biological selves, externally.

We do in fact have a very good idea of what constitutes our identity, and the largest portion includes our material characteristics ( gender, height, race, hair color, eye color, DNA coding, health, and other medical and visual properties ), paired with our personality ( the various psychological facets that manifest themselves when we are conscious ).

Together, these elements form a detailed profile ( all the way down to the molecular level ) from which any individual on the planet can be distinguished from another. When death occurs we certainly lose all physical identity, and even if some other invisible system can take over for the brain and body, then logically it still ends up being a copy of us rather than the original us.

A stab at a scientific definition of conscious identity is that we are composed of memories evolving over time which coalesce in a poorly understood set of neurological moments we perceive as "now". This seems to imply sense of self not as a fixed quantity, so much as an ongoing process of information processing possessed of a meta-processing capability that is emergent consciousness. I am not the same person I was twenty, or even one year ago. But by virtue of an ongoing consolidation of memories and external actions, a certain continuity is preserved.

Memory is only a fraction of who we are, but it is assumed by believers in things such as reincarnation to be sufficient to propose that a person who seems to have obtained a memory matching that of a deceased person, is then that deceased person, but in reality, even if such memory is able to be transferred from one person to another, that it is only a transference of a memory from one unique individual to another, not a transference of personhood.

Memories are a type of information. We can then (maybe ?) logically ask a question quantified in physics as to whether information is always in some form conserved. Of course, infinite conservation of information in the universe does not necessarily equate to infinite conservation of consciousness. But I think the question of where information comprising the essential "I", or even a collective "we" might go after physical death is a legitimate one.

Again, memory is only a fraction of who we are, and even if it is "conserved" in its original state, or for that matter, even if everything we are is considered information, and conserved in some buffer someplace, the result is still that such an information buffer constitutes a copy of our original selves at some moment in the past rather than our original selves in the moment. So again we run into the same problem. It seems that only way to truly live forever is for our original selves to remain intact.

 

[William Strathmann]

Those are three very useful sentences that everyone should remember. (I liked the typology that came after them, too. You diced your theisms fairly fine from my point of view, but the resulting angels danced nicely on the pin.)

Hi Sue! I count myself honored to receive an endorsement from you on my three observations. I also enjoyed and appreciated your interaction during the show, and have so often here on the forums as well. Go for it, Paracastanette extraordinary!!!

 

[William Strathmann]

The Impossibility Of The Transcendent Self . . .

Mr. Murphy, first of all, thanks for taking a few moments to express your views on this question. Regrettably I will have to bow out from any prolonged "back-and-forth" on the subject of consciousness, especially when it is presented in terms of "impossibility" and "conclusive evidence." Unless one is omniscient, then I don't think at this stage that one can logically say that something is "conclusively impossible" as regards the nature of consciousness. Assuredly that does not make the opposite argument so, by any means. It is just that, IMHO, "highly unlikely" would have been a more appropriate comment, but, hey, that's just me.

I did not see at your website that you have any studies, degrees or professional experience that would provide you authoritative expertise that could back up your categorical phraseology. And I, myself, have no expertise that could possibly provide any fair corrective. So, when I consider such complex topics beyond my expertise, I try to find degreed professionals who do address the questions at hand, pro and con, and then I attempt to weigh their evidence.

The predominant view of consciousness in the west is related to "reductionist materialism," (i.e. brain = mind) which I grew up believing, and which, evidently, is the view you hold. So, I don't need to present that view. But that is not the only view of reality held by competent observers, and it is highly inapproprate to plaster "wilful ignorance combined with blind faith" on such people. For example, the following six, 25 minute interviews between Stuart Hameroff, MD/PhD, and Jeff Mishlove, PhD, provide a thoughtful alternative for the view you hold. Even with their combined expertise, Hameroff and Mishlove refrain from categorical statements, and make rather restrained, qualified comments. Hameroff is not as confident about the nature of consciousness as you, even though as a professional anesthesiologist he actually does have decades of clinical and laboratory expertise on the question. So, if you are inclined, enjoy the interviews.

Possibilities with microtubules

The mystery of anesthesia

Quantum consciousness

The orchestra of the brain

Consciousness in the universe

Spiritual implications

 

[Randall]

Unless one is omniscient, then I don't think at this stage that one can logically say that something is "conclusively impossible" as regards the nature of consciousness.

Actually, the beauty of logic is that it allows us to ascertain certain truths regardless of how powerful or omniscient the PTB might be, and what I said is that life after death isn't logically possible. Invoking God does nothing to change the logic.

I did not see at your website that you have any studies, degrees or professional experience that would provide you authoritative expertise that could back up your categorical phraseology. And I, myself, have no expertise that could possibly provide any fair corrective. So, when I consider such complex topics beyond my expertise, I try to find degreed professionals who do address the questions at hand, pro and con, and then I attempt to weigh their evidence.

A position which utilizes logic to reach a conclusion cannot be invalidated by invoking authority. Therefore credentials are irrelevant. I would be willing to change my position if you can identify the flaw in the logic or introduce some new information that would require that the problem be reframed so as to more accurately illustrate the problem and the facts surrounding it.

The predominant view of consciousness in the west is related to "reductionist materialism," (i.e. brain = mind) which I grew up believing, and which, evidently, is the view you hold.

Not exactly. I believe I did say that the brain and the mind are separate and explained that using the analogy of a light bulb and the light it produces. In my exploration of the issue, this is a much more accurate version of he so-called "Western View". I have not found any "Western" philosopher or neuroscientist who thinks that brain=consciousness. They do however seem to be virtually unanimous that consciousness is dependent on a functioning brain, and this also appears to be well accepted by neuroscientists around the world, not simply in the West.

in So, I don't need to present that view. But that is not the only view of reality held by competent observers, and it is highly inapproprate to plaster "wilful ignorance combined with blind faith" on such people. For example, the following six, 25 minute interviews between Stuart Hameroff, MD/PhD, and Jeff Mishlove, PhD, provide a thoughtful alternative for the view you hold. Even with their combined expertise, Hameroff and Mishlove refrain from categorical statements, and make rather restrained, qualified comments. Hameroff is not as confident about the nature of consciousness as you, even though as a professional anesthesiologist he actually does have decades of clinical and laboratory expertise on the question. So, if you are inclined, enjoy the interviews.

I've been through all of that and none of it reveals any flaw in the logic I've used. However if you think I've missed something in particular, please feel free to quote it with a reference and explain how it invalidates the logic I use or provides new information that would force me to reformulate my position. Simply posting links to videos is not sufficient counterpoint. In the meantime, if you haven't checked these out, you might find them interesting for your own reflections on the matter:

Ramachandran - Eminently Well Credentialed

And Of Course David Chalmers