Neural networks are the structural basis for a variety of brain activities. The destruction of neural networks is accompanied by a violation of brain activity, one of which is the cognition of oneself, the world around them, and the Creator. For the natural activity of neural networks, many conditions are necessary both within the brain and throughout the body. The brain consists not only of neurons, but also of the intercellular matrix, glial cells, blood vessels, cerebrospinal fluid. Consequently, the activity of the brain will be determined by the coordinated functioning of all these components. Violation of the activity of any of these components is accompanied by the development of a pathological process that leads to disruption of the activity of neural networks and consciousness. Pathological events outside the brain, for example, at the heart level, are accompanied by a violation of the blood supply to the brain (hypoxia, ischemia, stroke) and disruption of the activity of neural networks. One consequence of these processes is loss of consciousness. Please study carefully the two manuscript in Attachment.

Neural networks are the structural basis for a variety of brain activities. The destruction of neural networks is accompanied by a violation of brain activity, one of which is the cognition of oneself, the world around them, and the Creator. For the natural activity of neural networks, many conditions are necessary both within the brain and throughout the body. The brain consists not only of neurons, but also of the intercellular matrix, glial cells, blood vessels, cerebrospinal fluid. Consequently, the activity of the brain will be determined by the coordinated functioning of all these components. Violation of the activity of any of these components is accompanied by the development of a pathological process that leads to disruption of the activity of neural networks and consciousness. Pathological events outside the brain, for example, at the heart level, are accompanied by a violation of the blood supply to the brain (hypoxia, ischemia, stroke) and disruption of the activity of neural networks. One consequence of these processes is loss of consciousness. Please study carefully the two manuscript in Attachment.

It depends upon how you define consciousness.

Dear Vladimir and Nathan,

(i) Thanks Vladimir for the two attachments!

(ii) Thanks Nathan for your answer: for the definition of consciousness see a.o. the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Some experts say there is no definition of it. Maybe, Nathan, you can give me the right definition. Thanks for that! Marc.

Do you mean to beg the question by asserting in the question that psi and near death studies have already correctly shown that a ncc is not necessary? I think it unlikely that many neuroscientists would concur that psi and near death studies have shown much of anything.

Dear David,

My short answer is as follows: (i) I am still ignorant whether the psi- and near death studies have already correctly shown that a ncc is either necessary or not. That is the why of my question. Maybe you can help me! (ii) As far as I know, there already happens to be a distinction between (at least) two types of neuroscientists: (a) the neuroscientists of the 'objective knowledge' (mostly neuroscientists with fysiological psychology as background discipline); (b) the psi-neuroscientists (who already have any nde and have any conviction that ncc is not necessary), and neuroscientists of the near death studies (who study the nde and... id).

Thanks for your answer. Marc.

Dear Marc, Let me start by saying I am not current on recent literature on either near death or psi. One cannot follow all the literature on every subject all the time, but the reason I no longer follow this literature is that I have in the past found it to be hopelessly unscientific. I am also sorry that I can nolonger cite sources of the following information. Let's take the near death and psi people separately. With respect to near death studies, how can they say anything about consciousness without an ncc when they are not studying a dead brain without an ncc? A near death experience is not a death experience. In general, the commonalities of near death experiences have been well-explained by ordinary physiology. The tunnel vision can be readily explained by the relative susceptibility to oxygen deprivation of neurons processing central and peripheral vision. The out of body experience, again, is understood by the loss of function of neurons that are required to place an individual in his environment. Fighter jet pilots experience something almost indistinguishable from the near death experience in what they describe as a red-out when they fly a path that gives them greater than one g downward acceleration (which pools deoxygenated blood in the brain). No one gets all excited about this event because the pilots know they haven't almost died and haven't seen heaven. With regard to psi studies, the use of statistics and controls is appalling. Randy describes trying to replicate a rather famous piece of work in which a great many students were tested on their ability to guess the cards drawn out of a deck and observed by a medium while they were in an adjoining room. One student proved to be incredibly consistent in beating expectation. With the help of the researchers who did the original study, Randy played the part of the student. Randy reported that no one went into the adjoining room with him. While the cards were turned, he stood on a chair and watched the cards being turned through a gap between the door and the top of the doorway. I can give other examples if you're interested, but this seems long enough. It is possible to construct neural networks that 1) process information about how they are processing information (perhaps self-awareness) 2) and information that could be sensory but is generated internally from memory (perhaps imagination). Many people feel that at network that imagines and is self-aware fills the requirements of consciousness, and that no magic is needed to explain consciousness. People who insist on consciousness without an ncc usually do so from a fundamentally religious perspective even if they claim to looking at the data objectively.

Dear David,

Many thanks for your interesting answer. (i) Please send more informations about those jet fighter pilots; (ii) Is the nde repeatable? (iii) Please send me more informations on Randy's study; (iv) Can I conclude from the 'indistinguishable' you mention, that it is beyond {matter;space;time} the 'objective knowledge' is speaking about? (v) According to you Can you give me some authors writing and claiming that? (vi) Please explain me scientificly but concisely why, according to you, the near death studies and the psi-research are hopelessly unscientific. Again, many thanks for your next answer! Marc.

I'm afraid I haven't time to look up resources. I can tell you that I doubt pilots (or anyone else) will be interested in repeating red outs. I am reminded that several decades ago, I think it was the Air Force's Blue Angels precision flying team that got wiped out when the lead pilot presumably had a red out and flew straight down into the ground. The teams fly in tight formation by watching one another's wing tips, and so, the rest of the team followed him down. What I mean by comparing the near death experience to the red out is this. Those aspects of severe brain anoxia that are common to various near death reports are also seen in red outs. The characteristics of individual reports that are not common are likely attributable to the fact that anecdotal reports of almost anything are usually exaggerated in some way. So, we find that the experience is emotionally uplifting in most cases and that is understandable in terms of the pathophysiology of anoxia. On the other hand, when one individual reports being greeted at the end of the tunnel by his family, while the other reports seeing god, I'm inclined to attribute these things to either exaggeration to convince an audience or false memory syndrome. My own grandmother had a reputation as a psychic, and when my father had a serious automobile accident at five o'clock in the morning, she reported the next day that she had been awakened at exactly five o'clock hearing my father screaming for help. She seemed unaware that they were in separate time zones. As for Randy, I suggest reading the Wikipedia article on him. I have had my own experience with psi investigators. As a section chair at a meeting I received an article from two investigators at Maharishi University (MU). MU was constructing a new building during an Iowa winter when there were not many days warm enough for pouring concrete. Students and faculty of MU held a mass meditation seeking warm weather the night before each pouring, and the researchers found a significant correlation between their meditations and warm weather the following day. As the paper was properly submitted and the author's conclusions were carefully worded (no claim was made that correlation implies causation), I approved the paper for the conference. However, further investigation revealed that the actual sequence of events was this: First, the contractor contacted the weather bureau for their 4 p.m. prediction for the next day's temperature. If the weather was expected to be suitable and the contractor decided to pour concrete, the contractor called the president of MU to inform him of the plan. Finally, the President of MU called on the students and faculty to have a mass meditation that night. So the data in the paper was actually a study of the Weather Bureau's ability to predict temperature one day in advance. As for the religiosity underlying the view that consciousness can exist without a neural network, take note of the first response you got. The respondent asserts that there is neural circuitry dedicated to maintaining cognition of god.

Dear David,

After reading your long but very interesting account I begin to understand your many points. There are of course much mess, even ignorance (by experts), in near death studies and psi-research. This might be one of the weak-points of the 'subjective knowledge' I am searching after. However, 'objective knowledge' deserves the praise of inventing such finegrained instruments of scan-technology and resuscitation methods that have made possible the nde stories etc. (I myself doubt such stories covered in complete logical propositions as ours).

My question of (iv) is Leibniz-like but it has to do with distinction upon which science as we know it today is grounded. I trust you are very able to give me any answer, as long as you like. Thanks in advance! Marc.

Marc, To indicate what I think, I would have to write the book I've always wanted to write. I view “objective” evidence skeptically and typical subjective evidence just makes me cringe. The problem lies in trusting anything a human brain reports. My own work includes a simple, rather brain-like model of a neural network constructed to do simple associative conditioning. Emergent properties of the network emphasize all the dubious properties of brains ever discussed by psychologists. Refabrication is not just an occasional oddity of memory, it is the dominant mechanism, and the nature of the mechanism makes it impossible for us to know what is remembered from engrams, and what is refabricated. False memory syndrome is not an aberration, it is normal, everyday brain behavior. Mechanisms are easily demonstrated by which decisions made emotionally can be transferred to regions of the brain that might function somewhat rationally and call up the most rational argument the brain has for them without consideration of other options. We are driven by innate programming that has (or once had) identifiable survival value, but is utterly irrational and over-generalized creating unadaptive behaviors. We imagine we can think of anything there is to think of for the simple reason that we can't think of anything we can't think of. In fact, thoughts are represented by brain states, and no matter how combinatorically fabulous the number of brain states may be, infinity being what it is, there are still an infinite number of thoughts we cannot have, some of which are demonstrably simple. Our thoughts being governed by some number of innate programs, they are even more restricted than is implied by their finite number. I say this in preparation for the following: People are fascinated by the brain and given to uncritically accepting the perceptions it gives them as representing reality. The more preposterous those perceptions, the more fascinating they become, but unless I share those perceptions and am confident I have not used a training mechanism I know to produce deception, I am not going to accept them as real. I'm wrong often enough without that. As an undergraduate, I took an introductory psychology course that was the most interesting course I took as an undergraduate. The instructor was full of information that was fascinating because it was just on this side of believable. As a graduate student in neurophysiology, I learned it was all bull. I don't know how relevant this rant is to your question, but it is a condensation my starting point for theory of knowledge.

Dear David,

Thanks for your long and interesting answer. I would like to know more about your theory of knowledge. Would it be published by Research Gate? Marc.