CSflim

Out of body experiences have been proven time and time again to be fake. Whether or not the people that claim to have them are purposely out to deceive or that they are convinced that what is happening is real isn't really important.
One particular guy claimed to be able to "remote-read", and would wow people with his amazing psychic powers. But like all mysticism it failed to work in a controlled environment under scientifically rigorous conditions.

I absolutely hate the idea of mind/body dualism. Its just downright dismissive. We have an incredibly beautiful, complex organ, which is proving us with an absolutely wonderful and exciting challenge to try to understand it. And what do people do? Trivialise it, by passing it off as magic!

Don't take me the wrong way. I am as amazed at the wonder of the human brain as any of the rest of you, but I firmly believe that it follows physical laws for matter, just like everything else in this universe. I mean why wouldn't it?

Take for instance a computer running a very complex program. You know nothing about how computers work, and are intrigued by what it is doing. You decide to break it open (causing it to stop working) and start examining the complex arrangement of silicon, plastic and metal. You can't figure out how it works, and therefore conclude that it is actually a magic box, which cannot be explained rationally.

Anyway, as for the original question, WHERE does consciousness exist, I would answer thus:
Where does a countries economic climate exist? Where does a piece of music exist?
They are, like consciousness, intangible, but none-the-less very real.
I wouldn't try to place consciousness physically. It is a real phenomena that exists because of the actions of the brain, but I wouldn't say that consciousness itself is IN the brain.

Just have a few questions, mainly to people who have a mystical view of consciousness. They aren't questions to "catch you out" and prove me right, just curious on your take about certain issues:

1.Take an Alzheimer’s patient. To start out they are most definitely conscious. As the disease develops however they start to become less and less aware. They lose their faculties for reason, communication, movement etc. It is a very slow process, but essentially they end up as a breathing vegetable that has to be fed by a drip. I have seen this first hand, as my grandmother is like that. She is now, essentially, dead, I guess, only technically alive, in that she is breathing, and presumably has at least some mental activity. But is she conscious?

My take on it is that consciousness is not a black and white issue. There are different levels of it. A dog is certainly conscious, but not as much as say, a human. And rabbit would also be conscious, but less so than the dog. As so on down to very simple creature which are probably not conscious. (Exactly where consciousness stops is impossible to say...is an ant conscious?).
Similarly I would say that victims of Alzheimer’s, and similar debilitating diseases, slowly lose their consciousness, going from highly conscious like a normal human, through medium levels of conscious, like say that of a dog, down to being barely conscious, if at all, in the final stage of the disease.

What would your opinion be? Has the patients consciousness actually been affected by the disease, or are they still fully conscious, but lack the motor skills to display it?

2. Would you attribute literally multiple consciousnesses to a schizophrenic patient, or would you see it as a purely psychological disorder? Obviously for me, it is the latter.

3. It has been shown that physical damage to the brain can have very profound effects on consciousness. Take for instance a railroad worker, who in an unfortunate accidental explosion had a metal spike driven through his skull, right through his brain, and out the other side of his head. The doctors managed to successfully remove it, and amazing the man survived. What is incredible is the way his personality changed. (presumably personality is related to consciousness?). His friends and family found him to be an incredibly different person. To them, the man they had known and loved was dead!
This is I suppose the same question as number one. Did the spike physically case damage to his mystical consciousness, or was he simply unable to allow his REAL consciousness to manifest itself in the damaged body?

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