Mind Sees things before they appear!

[Guest guest]

Hello All,

Did the researchers know before they 'knew' finally and definitively. Well

that could only be ascertained by a further group of researchers attached to

them and so on like a group of elephants on the march? So what is the point of

it and what is it supposed to prove. Brain/Mind theory in philosophical

psychology, neuroscience whatever you like to call it is a massively complex

specialist field in philosophy, Guruprasad was referring to David Chalmers

consciousness papers site if you want to discover what a busy area it is. So

painting with a very large brush please take for granted freely scattered

IMO's, IMHO's, and occasionally IMEHO here goes.

 

On this ancient computer reading mail when I click on 'next' or 'previous'

there is a busy whirring and clicking and then the message appears. Taking

this as an analogy of brain/mind activity in the way of thinking which is known

as psycho-physical dualism the self noting the data that is coming to awareness

is like me reading the screen. Electrical activity has gone on in the

brain/box and then lo and behold information. There is a process and at the

end of it knowledge. This would be the primary target of such an experiment.

Actually this view is quite widespread and it may even affect the setting up of

experiments and distort what they are supposed to be showing. Daniel Dennett

writes persuavively on this issue in 'Consciousness Explained' which treats at

length such anomalies as the Phi Phenomenon and Blindsight.

 

The next position up, which we are being nudged in the direction of is that the

process is conscious of itself as a process while it is going on but until all

information is distributed and correlated and pooled together in a coherent

whole intervening steps are suppressed for the sake of navigational efficency.

It's like hitting a stroke, too much 'conscious' information is ruinous and if

any of the information is bad it takes clever coaching to isolate and excise

it.

 

So what's wrong with that, the screen is reading itself. This sounds like good

old self-effulgence. You could say that it was the basic Buddhist position.

The Self is a useful fiction a bit like a centre of narrative gravity but it is

essentially not a separate thing from the flow of momnentary consciousness.

 

Vedanta differs from this in adhering to the reality of the self and in noting

that the self is changeless and is there through the state of deep sleep.

Vedanta also asks the question 'How is Consciousness?' This is famously

addressed in the Preamble to B.S.B. by Sankara. The answer to that is

ontological, concerning the being of the world and how things must

fundamentally be for the phenomenon of consciousness/awareness to exist.

 

This is a fundamental shift away from the idea that the primary condition of

the human is elaborated from the basis of the individual consciousness. The

individual consciousness only arises because pure undifferentiated

consciousness is bearing the upadhi of the individual mind. In this state it

(Pure Consciousness) becomes known as the Saksin/Witness.

 

The single self-effulgent state of consciousness is the locus where we do our

sadhana of course but it is not the given indubitable datum which is the

foundation of all knowledge as Descartes would have it or the ground of the

sunyavadin. For the faithful, bound up with the world and foundational of the

world are the Vedas. Coterminous with Brahman they give a total ordered

cosmos. Obviously this is the background to the rational deliberation of

Sankara and thus the single consciousness could never be an ultimate ground.

 

Best Wishes, Michael.

[Guest guest]

What presponse? Reply to Bierman’s pseudo-proof experiment

 

Danko Georgiev, Medical University Of Varna

 

 

The presponse (unconscious [or maybe conscious?!] perception of stimulus that

has not yet been presented, forecasting) is widely cited by certain authors

(Jack Sarfatti, 2003 -most of the papers) and quotations of experiments done by

Dick Bierman are presented, as well as references are given Bierman's papers.

However, Bierman’s pseudo-proof experiments are nothing but fraud.  

 

Here are Bierman’s results summarized by Stuart Hameroff (2002) in Time Flies

(backwards!?).

 

>  “Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of

> emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on

> which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which

> are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent,

> sexual....). In Radin and Bierman's early studies, skin conductance of a

finger

> was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded

> strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the

> emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds

BEFORE

> the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam)

> repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found

> emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli.

Moreover

> he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional

> responses before stimuli appeared. Professor Bierman presented these findings

> to the Tucson 2002 conferenceâ€.

>

>

 

Bierman’s experimental results are presented on the following original

diagram:

Figure 1 The vertical axis measures the neural activation (indirectly via the

skin conductance or directly in fMRI studies), which rises even before the

stimulus is presented (because the stimuli are presented after exact intervals)

and the horizontal axis measures the time.

This diagram shows that there is (1) increase of the anxiety (stress, alarm)

before the stimulus is presented (due to learning of the rhythm), (2) there is

a delay time in order the stimulus to enter the brain cortex where it is

realized i.e. consciously experienced and (3) the patients with animal fear

reacted to animal images the same way they react to calm (neutral) images before

the

stimulus, but as if there is difference in their reaction before the

presentation of the sexual stimuli, (4) the conscious response is obviously

different

for the three stimuli clearly showing that the sexual stimulation is greater

than the experienced fear from the animal pictures.

Indeed this experiment only shows that sexual stimuli are stronger than those

that are frightening (induce fear). The experiment of Bierman and Scholte

(2002) [as all other experiments done on the topic] does not take into account

the growing anxiety of the subjects (attempt to anticipate what’s going next).

The sexual stimuli are shown more emotional, so the physiologic response is

to anticipate whether the next image will be sexual one, and with every next

calm (neutral picture or animal one) this anxiety is growing giving us the

feeling that the chance the next image to be sexual one is growing! Exactly the

same physiologic response explains the gambler's fallacy. The gambler's fallacy

is the mistaken notion that the odds for something with a fixed probability

increase or decrease depending upon recent occurrences. This physiologic

response

is the cause so many people to go into casinos and loose their money.

If we have to take account for that physiologic (ABSOLUTELY NORMAL) response

then we could draw the following picture (note: this is in case where the

anxiety grows linearly, in order to simplify the mathematical calculations).

 

Figure 2 Physiologic anxiety presented during the experiment after certain

number of pictures presented when the subject expects to see new sexual picture,

and when knows the rhythm of the picture show.

This anxiety is measured exactly several seconds (as Bierman claims up to 4

seconds) before the image when the subject is disturbed by the thought

“what’s

going next?†i.e. starts anticipating. Here I would like to mark that there

is no need the anticipation to be verbal (asking yourself questions) - the

rising neural activity is enough!

Let’s construct the mathematical model. We already assumed that anxiety grows

linearly with every next picture (the results will hold also for non-linear

process, however the mathematics is more complex) so for each step we could

write . For one cycle (until the sexual picture is shown) with total number of

pictures shown = n, we could write that the mean elevation in the anxiety before

the sexual stimulus presentation is:

 

and for the mean anxiety before the neutral stimuli plus the animal ones (the

Bierman’s results show no difference !!!!) we can write:

 

                                   

 If we then calculate the mean values from all cycles the ratio 

        [sexual anxiety] versus [normal + animal pics anxiety] will be

still

2:1 

Here is used simple mathematical truth i.e. that the sum of the row [1, 2, 3,

4 … n] divided to n is just (equal) the half of n+1.

The results show that the expectation for the mean anxiety (anticipating

neural activity) will be 2 times greater before the sexual stimuli. JUST BECAUSE

OF THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY PHYSIOLOGIC EFFECT. But if we compare not the mean

values but n (sexual picture) anxiety with n-1 (the picture before the sexual

one) anxiety the presponse (in Bierman’s sense) will be not statistically

significant because about 90% of the gambler’s effect will be washed out. The

conclusion is that indeed THE USE OF THE MEAN VALUES IS FRAUD!

If we look again the Bierman’s results (Figure 1) the prediction is

fulfilled. The mean anxiety before the sexual stimulus is about 2 times the

neutral or

animal image anxiety. 

>

> Note: it is less than 2 because in the mean values are taken also results

> before the subject had learned the rhythm and before he had learned that there

> would be more sexual images in order to enter the gambler’s phase presented

> on Figure 2.

 

A CONTRADICTION WITH THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY EFFECT WOULD BE GREATER PRESPONSE

TO STIMULUS THAT LEADS TO LOWER NEURAL CONSCIOUS ACTIVATION (I.E. ANIMAL

INDUCED FEAR > SEXUAL EMOTIONS, BUT SEXUAL PRESPONSE > ANIMAL ONE). THERE IS NO

SUCH CONTRADICTION IN BIERMAN'S EXPERIMENTAL DATA, SO THE GAMBLER'S FALLACY

EFFECT IS REAL FACT, WRONG IS BIERMAN'S INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA!

Suggestion for really scientific experiment. Because always will remain this

gambler’s fallacy effect the study should be done with only one sexual picture

unexpectedly presented and then the subject stops its participation in the

study.

 

References:

 Dick J. Bierman and H. Stephen Scholte. (2002). Anomalous anticipatory brain

activation preceding exposure of emotional and neutral pictures. <A

HREF="http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/presentiment.\

pdf">

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/presentiment.pdf</A\

>

 Dick J. Bierman. (2002). An fMRI study of Anomalous Anticipation of

emotional stimuli. Toward a science of Consciousness, Tucson, April 10, 2002. <A

HREF="http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/tucson-2002.p\

pt">

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/tucson-2002.ppt</A>

 Stuart Hameroff (2002). Time Flies (backwards!?). <A

HREF="http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/Time_Flies.ht\

m">

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/Time_Flies.htm</A>

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

 

Apologies for not replying earlier (and sorry that I seem to say this quite

frequently!). I have not really been paying close attention to the posts

recently having been quite busy. But I think the article to which you are

all referring is:

 

ANOMALOUS ANTICIPATORY BRAIN ACTIVATION PRECEDING EXPOSURE OF EMOTIONAL

AND NEUTRAL PICTURES

Dick J. Bierman and H. Steven Scholte

 

I thought we had touched on all this stuff back when we did the discussion

on fate and free will. At least it was around then when I came across the

paper. It is downloadable as a large pdf file (381k). It's called

'presentiment.pdf' in my machine but I don't recall whether that was the

original title or simply the one that I gave it. Anyway a search on the

authors will probably locate it (needless to say I don't have the URL). If

anyone desperately wants it and cannot locate it, I'd be prepared to email

it. Or if lots want it, I could either put it on my website or better still

send it to Sunder to add to the Advaitin files.

 

Best wishes,

Dennis

[Guest guest]

advaitin, "Dennis Waite" <dwaite@a...> wrote:

>

> But I think the article to which you are

> all referring is:

>

> ANOMALOUS ANTICIPATORY BRAIN ACTIVATION PRECEDING EXPOSURE OF

EMOTIONAL

> AND NEUTRAL PICTURES

> Dick J. Bierman and H. Steven Scholte

 

It is downloadable as a large pdf file (381k). It's called

> 'presentiment.pdf' in my machine

 

I could either put it on my website

 

or add to the Advaitin files.

 

Namaste,

 

The link has been added under Consciousness Studies (in Links):

 

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/Time_Flie

s.htm

 

[N.B. If the link split on two lines does not work, pl. type or paste

whole URL in address box.]

 

Regards,

 

Sunder

[Guest guest]

Namaste Dennisji:

 

You are quite right and I used search using the name of the

authors "Dick J. Bierman and H. Steven Scholte" and found so many

interesting papers, slide shows, dissertations, etc. some in HTML,

some in word and some in pdf formats. I highly recommend the

interested sadhakas to put some 'sadhana'by using appropriate search

engines to get more information on this topic!

 

Warmest regards,

 

Ram Chandran

 

advaitin, "Dennis Waite" <dwaite@a...> wrote:

>

> Hi All,

>

Anyway a search on the

> authors will probably locate it > Best wishes,

> Dennis

[Guest guest]

Dear Noble Devotee of Sri Samkara Bhagavatpujyapada,

 

May I request you to send me a copy of the paper,please.

 

 

Thank you very much.

 

Yours

 

Chilukuri Bhuvaneswar

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 Dennis Waite wrote :

>

>Hi All,

>

>Apologies for not replying earlier (and sorry that I seem to say

>this quite

>frequently!). I have not really been paying close attention to

>the posts

>recently having been quite busy. But I think the article to which

>you are

>all referring is:

>

>ANOMALOUS ANTICIPATORY BRAIN ACTIVATION PRECEDING EXPOSURE OF

>EMOTIONAL

>AND NEUTRAL PICTURES

>Dick J. Bierman and H. Steven Scholte

>

>I thought we had touched on all this stuff back when we did the

>discussion

>on fate and free will. At least it was around then when I came

>across the

>paper. It is downloadable as a large pdf file (381k). It's

>called

>'presentiment.pdf' in my machine but I don't recall whether that

>was the

>original title or simply the one that I gave it. Anyway a search

>on the

>authors will probably locate it (needless to say I don't have the

>URL). If

>anyone desperately wants it and cannot locate it, I'd be prepared

>to email

>it. Or if lots want it, I could either put it on my website or

>better still

>send it to Sunder to add to the Advaitin files.

>

>Best wishes,

>Dennis

>

>

>

>

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