Quote Originally Posted by snoop View Post

Can you elaborate a little bit more, like what you mean by holes in the filter? When I speak about filters, I am not talking about a filter like the kind a coffee filter provides for coffee grounds.

The brain, from what one can observe, works via various feedback loops. These loops work as the acting "filter" of which we speak, by looping and reacting to each other to compare and contrast data provided by stimuli that actually exists, and works by ending the chain of other loops of erroneous data. When these feedback loops fail to "properly" do their job, a "noise" so to speak occurs and spills over into nearby neurons. The random activation of said neurons leads to unpredictable results that lead to hallucinations. Our ever cycling and updating construct of reality thus suffers from phantom stimuli and you believe you hear, see, feel, taste, touch, or hear things that aren't actually there according to what our brain is able to provide as its most accurate educated guess at what's really going on around us. We lose our sense of time completely, perhaps, or it dilates or constricts. We feel ourselves expand, implode, shift, translocate, die, live, speak, experience pressure waves, whatever.

These are not "holes" in the filter per se, but one could liken the spillage of neuronal excitation to the next nearest cluster to having a hole in the filter. Is that what you were talking about? Do you have more you can add? I implore you to be more specific next time, or perhaps not specific but to go further than to put forth a single statement. I like that you're thinking and getting me to think too, but honestly you've caused more confusion than prove anything. So if you care to, please try and explain yourself more.
Snoop

Im using the term "filter" as it is explained in the link. Here is the next bit.


There is no doubt that the brain and the conscious mind interact.

(snoop, I think you might disagree with that statement as many folk believe that the mind is just the result of the complexity of the human brain and that the mind cant exist apart from the brain.)

Brain damage can cause loss of some functions of consciousness. Amnesia after a head injury or poor memory due to aging are two examples. Brain tumors, injuries to the brain, mental illnesses, other diseases like rabies, and even puberty all influence behavior. Neurological activity can be measured and shown to be associated with mental activity. Nerve impulses from sensory organs result in brain activity, and the conscious mind has awareness of the sensations perceived. When the mind generates the impulse to move, nerve impulses are carried from the brain to the muscles to cause movement. Consciousness is affected by brain activity and it is able to influence brain activity. However this is only a correlation, it is not proof that neurological activity causes consciousness.

In fact, there is no good reason to believe that consciousness is produced by the brain.

(snoop, many believe consciousness IS produced by the brain)

The brain is a physical system. It is made of atoms that behave according to the known laws of physics. The brain is no more than a mechanical machine or an electronic computer. The reason such devices are*not capable of being conscious*is explained in more detail below. But consider a simple machine or a simple computer. No one would say such a device is conscious. However, because the brain is a very complicated system, some materialists will state that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. This is a fallacy and is also*dealt with in more detail below. Calling consciousness an emergent property doesn't really explain how the brain could produce consciousness, it is just a fancy of saying materialism can't explain it.

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The correlation between consciousness and brain activity should also exist if the brain is an interface between a nonphysical mind and the physical body.

One way to think of this is that the brain is like a filter of consciousness

. This is called the filter model of the brain.

In the filter model, consciousness is a nonphysical phenomena and the brain filters consciousness while we are incarnated in our physical bodies. The brain could filter some aspects of consciousness the way a colored glass can filter out some wavelengths of light. What passes through the brain filter is a restricted set of conscious faculties that we have while in the physical body.

The filter model is superior to the hypothesis that the brain produces consciousness because the filter model explains more evidence.

You can damage a filter in two ways. You can clog it or you can punch a hole in it. When brain damage causes loss of function like amnesia, that is like a clog in the filter. When brain injury results in increased function, (snoop, like dream remote viewing, precognitive dreams, mutual dreaming and dream to waking-life synchronicities) that is like a hole punched in the filter. Examples of increased function include*Acquired Savant Syndrome*and when people have increased psychic abilities after a brain injury.

In the filter model one of the functions of the brain is to restrict consciousness. In that case, if you release the conscious mind from the brain as happens during a near death experience you should have expanded, unfiltered, consciousness. This is exactly what happens during a near death experience. People who have NDE's are able to perceive more than they do when in the body. They report seeing in 360 degrees and seeing colors that they do not see when in the body. Blind people report seeing during NDE's. Some near death experiencers report being able to communicate telepathically with other beings. Some report understanding that time is just an illusion or that they seem to have access to all the knowledge in the universe.

Restricting consciousness probably has some survival value. If a person had access to all the information in the universe about any time in the past, present or future, it might be difficult to concentrate on surviving here and now.
Snoop, I think that before the all pervading god came into existence, Billions of years from now, nothing had an eternal soul. But when god exploded into being, at the end of time, he merged with everything, giving each and everything, his eternal life.

When our filter breaks down (a bit) we start to sense what the eternal being can sense (a bit), me thinks.