XPost: sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.consciousness, talk.origins   
   From: craig.franck@verizon.net   
      
   "CAndersen (Kimba)" wrote   
      
   > "Paradox Balance"  wrote:   
   >   
   > >Your recommendations, however, are admirable in that they display the   
   > >caution of the concerned professional.   
   >   
   > Do all concerned professionals automatically assume they know everything   
   > about everything? "This is outside my experience, therefore it cannot be   
   > real" is not logical thinking.   
      
   No, it's not. But many of these claims themselves do not hold up to   
   even the barest of logical analysis. "Out of body" experiences are   
   particularly troubling.   
      
   It's a scientific fact that the space of our visual field consists of several   
   mappings in the visual cortex that are then somehow combined. When   
   people leave their bodies -- and thus their visual apparatus behind --   
   their visual field should disappear or radically alter. If they continue to   
   see colors as before even though V4 part of their visual cortex is still   
   laying on the table as they float above, you have a huge problem.   
      
   Also, since what we see and feel are in fact representations inside our   
   brains -- even if it's just an interface with a soul -- the admittedly odd   
   experience of floating into the environment is explainable by the fact that   
   the "felt location of one's sense of consciousness" is in fact somewhat   
   arbitrary; the head, chest, feat, or even under the ground you're walking   
   on are all common enough.   
      
   So you haven't so much "left your body" as shifted sensate focus to   
   some other part of your brain which is then interpreted as being out in the   
   environment. (I had a girlfriend who told me, with enough of a certain   
   kind of pot, she could do this at will. Picture Meryl Streep trying to mind   
   meld with the phone system in "Adaptation" and that's basically her.)   
      
   I'll admit there is a logical problem with saying the fact you are clinically   
   dead renders you incapable of being a reliable witness as to what   
   happens -- when you're dead. But we know the experience of having an   
   oxygen-starved brain is going to be extremely weird. So when it turns out   
   to be weird, putting forth an alternative hypothesis when the first one   
   works just fine is pointless from a strictly logical POV.   
      
   Again, it's fair to point out the fact that there is nothing one could claim   
   they experienced that couldn't be written off as a "side effect" of being   
   dead, and it therefore explains absolutely everything you throw at it,   
   almost by definition. But no one has reliably been able to establish this   
   experience is "real" the same way other types of experiences that were   
   once considered nonsense have come to be accepted as legitimate.   
      
   --   
   Craig Franck   
   craig.franck@verizon.net   
   Cortland, NY   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)