Mind, Life, and Tensegrity

Posted on September 28, 2013 by James Cross
Endothelial cells under the microscope. Nuclei are stained blue with DAPI, microtubles are marked green by an antibody bound to FITC and actin filaments are labelled red with phalloidin bound to TRITC. Bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells (This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.)

Endothelial cells under the microscope. Nuclei are stained blue with DAPI, microtubles are marked green by an antibody bound to FITC and actin filaments are labelled red with phalloidin bound to TRITC. Bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells (This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons.)

My position on mind and consciousness is a materialist position. A materialist believes that everything is matter, that there is nothing above or beyond matter, that mind and consciousness are matter or derivable from matter and physical laws. By “matter”, I mean “matter” in the very broad sense that matter and energy, wave and particle, are all material. The strict materialist position must be that there is nothing that is not matter. So even an emergent property such as mind or consciousness would also need to be material.

If the materialist lets into his model anything that is not matter then the floodgates are open and there would be no reason to rule out a priori other non-material emergent properties – ghosts, spirits, God, or whatever. This is precisely Nagel’s argument in Mind and Cosmos – that is there is something about consciousness that is not material. So the strict materialist cannot argue that consciousness is non-material, even if it is an emergent property and dependent upon the underlying matter. Just arguing it is dependent upon the underlying matter isn’t sufficient.

So what kind of material is mind? Continue reading →

Posted in Consciousness, Origin of Life, Quantum Mechanics | 14 Comments

Wave Theory

Posted on August 18, 2013 by James Cross
Portland_Japanese_gardens_zen_garden

Portland Japanese Garden. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: I, Laurascudder

While the universe seems to be built in an orderly manner, it might that its imperfections, breakages in order, and even disorder are partly the key to its beauty and complexity. In a perfectly ordered universe, the amount of matter and antimatter would have been the same; but, if the amount had really been the same at the beginning of the universe, matter and antimatter would have annihilated each other and we would have no universe. Asymmetry is often seen in quantum physics. Many seemingly symmetric forms in the living natural world, such as sea shells generally only coil in one particular direction according to species. This can be traced back to asymmetry in the chemistry of life. Most of the molecules of life can be exist as mirror images but living organisms almost exclusively utilize the left handed configuration for amino acids and the right handed configuration for sugars belonging to DNA or RNA.

These observations about the universe as a whole may have direct application to our health and how we live our lives. While many of us crave and protect order in our life, sometimes too much order is not good. A Zen garden never has its stones perfectly spread equidistant from each other. The beauty of the natural world comes from a sort of dynamic disorder. Physical and mental health may not be a matter of perfect order and balance but is instead produced by a balanced chaos.

Continue reading →

Posted in Cold fusion, Randomness, Running, Waves | 4 Comments

Dying Brain Active

Posted on August 12, 2013 by James Cross

A study Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain has found that the brains of dying mice show unusual coherent activity for up to 30 seconds after cardiac arrest. Let me quote from the abstract:

The brain is assumed to be hypoactive during cardiac arrest. However, the neurophysiological state of the brain immediately following cardiac arrest has not been systematically investigated. In this study, we performed continuous electroencephalography in rats undergoing experimental cardiac arrest and analyzed changes in power density, coherence, directed connectivity, and cross-frequency coupling. We identified a transient surge of synchronous gamma oscillations that occurred within the first 30 s after cardiac arrest and preceded isoelectric electroencephalogram. Gamma oscillations during cardiac arrest were global and highly coherent; moreover, this frequency band exhibited a striking increase in anterior–posterior-directed connectivity and tight phase-coupling to both theta and alpha waves. High-frequency neurophysiological activity in the near-death state exceeded levels found during the conscious waking state. These data demonstrate that the mammalian brain can, albeit paradoxically, generate neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death.

This could explain near death experiences as discussed in a previous post.

Posted in Consciousness, NDE | 1 Comment