tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7294505416127496842.post3122813333615035319..comments2024-03-25T14:09:59.347-05:00Comments on Augoeides: More Thoughts on ConsciousnessScott Stenwickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12389664381513219613noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7294505416127496842.post-10402062132134165252012-02-07T15:24:09.523-06:002012-02-07T15:24:09.523-06:00I think you are tying to study magic like you woul...<i>I think you are tying to study magic like you would an extant, mature and hard science, when you should be approaching it like an immature science</i>.<br /><br />Well, I have to say, I disagree with this statement entirely with regard to the experimental work that I actually do with magick. I'm well aware that it can't be treated like a hard science, and rather am trying to approach it much as the early behaviorists did in psychology, tracking results and trying to come up with some reliable statistical methods. That's not what they do in the hard sciences - those relationships are already well-understood in most cases.<br /><br />I also disagree that if there were anything in the brain that related to consciousness we would have found it by now. Roger Penrose, for example, has proposed that quantum consciousness may be mediated by structures in the brain called microtubules, which are small enough to interact with particles on the quantum level. One piece of evidence that his research team has managed to find is that these structures seem to stop working when patients are anesthetized, but they are so small and hard to measure that it's difficult to get much more accurate data.<br /><br />I'm not saying I think Penrose is right, since there are a lot of possible explanations for anesthesia interfering with the function of particular structures. But what his team has found is certainly more than a "trace" of something whether or not his interpretation is accurate. Furthermore, if you start looking into research going on right now in consciousness studies there are a number of other hypotheses being explored that may be promising. Now is most certainly not the time to throw up our hands and insist that we're never going to be able to understand the phenomenon so we should just quit trying.Scott Stenwickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12389664381513219613noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7294505416127496842.post-83741392378377735492012-02-07T11:47:31.185-06:002012-02-07T11:47:31.185-06:00It is because they have made such great strides th...It is because they have made such great strides that the probability of finding a palatable answer is so unlikely. Brain wave readers and brain scanners are good enough right now, that if there was any deeper materialistic answer to consciousness, memory and all that other stuff that any honest neuroscientist throws his hand up at, we would have found at least a trace by now. There really isn't much more advancement left for those machines, a lot of what their doing now is just increasing speed, and getting a larger area at a slightly higher resolution. <br /><br />It took me a while to come up with a way to say what I think without saying what I believe but have no evidence for. I think you are tying to study magic like you would an extant, mature and hard science, when you should be approaching it like an immature science. When the sciences you know today were getting created, the men who worked on them had to observe the workings, and then make their own tools of objective observation based on what they knew of suspected would work. You don't have any tools, by which I mean literal ones like a microscope, because you haven't gone about seeing if anything reacts to magic in a way that is reliable under the same conditions most every time. That will give you at least the beginnings of a hope for the laboratory results you want. If you went about it seriously you would either find some or at least get on the right track. I can think of some ways of producing the same effect and getting the same result, but it would be another thing entirely to get a visual or auditory reading of that, which I think is something you wouldn't be satisfied until you got.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09543062411623956606noreply@blogger.com