Man with no brain

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
barcsimalsi
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Man with no brain

Post by barcsimalsi »

After reading this topic i became interested in the brain-mind link.

Then i found this:

From Christian point of view:
Daniel H. Harris wrote:The Man Without a Brain!
One young man examined by Dr. Lorber, who was then a student at Sheffield University, had a measured IQ of 126, a first class honors degree in mathematics; and virtually no brain. This student's brain cortex is a layer about 1/25th of an inch (1 mm) thick, lining his skull. His brain weight is estimated to be about 2/10 of one pound (about 0.090 kg). That is only about 7% of normal brain weight. This student is one of many normal persons with almost no brain.
Clearly these observational facts show that intelligence and brain size are not related. Normal brain size is not necessary to be of perfectly normal intelligence. What makes man unique is not the size of his brain.


The Expectation of Evolution is Just Plain Wrong!
But the belief that brain size and weight must be related to intelligence is essential to the evolutionists supposition that man arose from apelike ancestors, this belief is the core of evolutionary thinking, it is the tree on which the paleontologists hang the transition from ape to man. This expectation-prediction of evolution, is totally contrary to the observations, it's just pain wrong. Man does not have just an unusually large and complex animal brain, A large brain is not what makes man unique, nor is it what makes man human.

The Human Mind is a True Miracle.
Therefore, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that man did not arise by the naturalistic process of evolution from animal ancestors. The human mind can only be understood as being the result of a supernatural agency. Your mind is a gift from God. The human mind is a true miracle, not just a complex computer or an advanced animal brain. There is much more to mind than just brain.

Man: Made in the Image of God.
The Holy Bible makes clear that man is special because man is made in the image of God (see Gen 1:27). Man is made intelligent and man is given the faculty of speech, not by random evolutionary developments. Man is what he is for the purpose of pleasing the God who made him, the God who made the entire universe [to see that God made the universe please click on INFINITY #2: Purpose and Order in the Universe.]
From Buddhist perspective, it was the activity of the mind that creates things.
So the question here is;
Is the mind independent of the brain formation since the mind is known as the function of the brain?
And what is the origin of the mind if we can't agree with the Christians?
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tiltbillings
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by tiltbillings »

barcsimalsi wrote:
Man: Made in the Image of God.
Image
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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gavesako
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by gavesako »

If some children with hydranencephaly are conscious, then the brain does not require an intact cerebral cortex to produce consciousness. Still, research on hydranencephaly and Roger's case study indicate that self-awareness—this ostensibly sophisticated and unique cognitive process layered on consciousness—might be more universal than we realized. The insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex cannot by themselves account for conscious recognition of oneself as a thinking being. Instead they propose that self-awareness is a far more diffuse cognitive process, relying on many parts of the brain, including regions not located in the cerebral cortex.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... mple-brain" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


What if the brain and nervous system relate to consciousness like the TV set to radio signals? Let's call this the nonlocal model of consciousness. If we accept the nonlocal model of consciousness provisionally, we can compare TV reception to sense perception. We can compare qualia (conscious experience) to TV images and sounds; we can compare memories to the recording function, thoughts to the playback and edit functions, and mental chatter to audiovisual noise. Furthermore, if the nervous system/brain functions as receiver/modulator of consciousness rather than its producer, it follows that consciousness is not based on the brain, but that the brain is based on consciousness. There are a number of theoretical considerations and phenomena that point in this direction. These phenomena show the limits of the current mainstream (materialistic) understanding of consciousness and provide theoretical support for the nonlocal model of consciousness.
http://www.thebigview.com/mind/nonlocal.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


"We don't know how consciousness works, or what it does," says controversial biologist, Rupert Sheldrake. "This is one of the things which in science is called 'the hard problem,' because there is no known reason why we should be conscious at all, or exactly how the mind works."

"What I'm going to suggest," says Sheldrake, in a fascinating Google TechTalk, "is that our minds are field-like, that they are not confined to the inside of the head, that they spread out into the environment around us. And because our minds are extended beyond our brains, they can have effects at a distance."

"I'm suggesting, he says "that minds are field-like and spread out beyond brains in a similar way to the way that magnetic fields spread out beyond magnets, cell phone fields spread out beyond cell phones, and the Earth's gravitational field stretches out far beyond the Earth. These fields are within and around the systems that they organize, and I think the same is true of our brains."

Taking vision as an example, Sheldrake suggests that the mind is more than just the bio-chemical processes within the brain, that what we 'see' is not just an internal re-creation of an externality within the brain, but rather that the mind projects what we 'see' out to where it 'exists' in space-time.
http://spiritualnotreligious.blogspot.c ... -mind.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

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tiltbillings
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by tiltbillings »

gavesako wrote: . . .
After read this:
Image

It is interesting topic. I have assumed that the brain functions, in good part, as a sensory organ, but what that really means, damdifino.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
barcsimalsi
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by barcsimalsi »

tiltbillings wrote:
barcsimalsi wrote:
Man: Made in the Image of God.
Image
"The selected attachment does not exist anymore." I'm curious what it looks like.
gavesako wrote: ...it follows that consciousness is not based on the brain, but that the brain is based on consciousness...
The problem with this statement is when someone got hit hard on their head, they became unconscious.
I still don't get it, if the mind can works fine without the brain but why brain damage will affects how the mind works?

Thanks to both.
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Dan74
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by Dan74 »

I have read a fair bit on this case and the findings are disputed. The imaging technology was not what it is today and unfortunately we don't have unequivocal findings that one can function normally with only a tiny percentage of the brain as Lorber's study indicates.

But I like the fact that he was a maths honors student!
_/|\_
barcsimalsi
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by barcsimalsi »

Dan74 wrote:I have read a fair bit on this case and the findings are disputed. The imaging technology was not what it is today and unfortunately we don't have unequivocal findings that one can function normally with only a tiny percentage of the brain as Lorber's study indicates.

But I like the fact that he was a maths honors student!
Thanks for the input i won't be selling my brain for the moment.
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gavesako
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by gavesako »

So if you want to become fluent in a foreign language, just knock your head against the floor to fall into coma where you lose your ordinary consciousness, and wake up later with a different set of ideas and abilities. :?
Croatian teenager wakes from coma speaking fluent German
A 13-year-old Croatian girl who fell into a coma woke up speaking fluent German.
The girl, from the southern town of Knin, had only just started studying German at school and had been reading German books and watching German TV to become better, but was by no means fluent, according to her parents.
Since waking up from her 24 hourcoma however, she has been unable to speak Croatian, but is able to communicate perfectly in German.
Doctors at Split's KB Hospital claim that the case is so unusual, various experts have examined the girl as they try to find out what triggered the change.
Hospital director Dujomir Marasovic said: "You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react. Obviously we have some theories although at the moment we are limited in what we can say because we have to respect the privacy of the patient."
Psychiatric expert Dr Mijo Milas added: "In earlier times this would have been referred to as a miracle, we prefer to think that there must be a logical explanation – its just that we haven't found it yet.
"There are references to cases where people who have been seriously ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that spoken in old Babylon or Egypt – at the moment though any speculation would remain just that – speculation – so it's better to continue tests until we actually know something."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... erman.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Comments:

One possibility that occurs to me, based on my own experience, is that when you are exposed to a language, you hear the sound and intonation of it. And when I spent 7 weeks in China, although i didn't understand Chinese, in my dreams I would hear people speaking Chinese and it sounded very authentic. Since this girl had studied German, and also had listened to a lot of it, there was a considerable amount of German in her brain, but her analytic mind and knowledge of her native language would somewhat block her access to this information. If that part of her brain shut down, the less-accessible information rose to consciousness. This fits with research that has been done using magnets to shut down parts of the brain. When the analytic mind is silenced, many people demonstrate savant-like abilities.

Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, produced a theory on language acquisition. We are endowed with an universal grammar frame, we are born with a kind of frame for all languages; the input a new born babe recieves, it activates his/her mother tongue.In other words, the babel tower software is inside our heads.


----------



I have always sensed that this must be true, and it is my own method of learning new languages: I cannot just learn from tables and grammar rules as they are presented in textbooks, instead I listen to the foreign language and look at it until I can "tune in" and understand it intuitively like small children pick up their first language.


Morphic Resonance in Human Learning

Morphic resonance has many implications for the understanding of human learning, including the acquisition of languages. Through the collective memory on which individuals draw, and to which they contribute, it should in general be easier to learn what others have learned before.

This idea fits well with the observations of linguists such as Noam Chomsky, who propose that language learning by young children takes place so rapidly and creatively that it cannot be explained simply in terms of imitation. The structure of language seems to be inherited in some way. In his book The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker gives many examples to support this idea.

"Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance” by Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-four-nov ... resonance/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

Access to Insight - Theravada texts
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Alex123
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by Alex123 »

Dan74 wrote:I have read a fair bit on this case and the findings are disputed. The imaging technology was not what it is today and unfortunately we don't have unequivocal findings that one can function normally with only a tiny percentage of the brain as Lorber's study indicates.

But I like the fact that he was a maths honors student!
Right. It is possible that
a) There was an error in imaging
b) Even if a person has smaller brain, maybe due to brain plasticity and such the brain somehow manages to work around injured areas.


A seems very likely. There is simply too much evidence that damaging the brain, damages the mind.
barcsimalsi
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by barcsimalsi »

I would like to relate this topic to Buddhist philosophy as much as possible.

It appears to me that "Cittena niyate loko"(world is mind made) is under the shade of the physical component of the brain.
Bottom line, we can't afford to attain right view and we might also lose insights due to flawed or incomplete physical formation of the brain.

Let say if a Sotapanna has screwed part of his memory and intellect after an accident, he can't recall much of the dhammic right view and his mind is more likely to think like a putujana. Will his kammic status of "stream-entry" degrade?(In regards to the phrase "Cittena niyate loko")
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gavesako
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by gavesako »

This is from Ven. Thanissaro:
When I visited Ajaan Suwat that last time — he'd had some brain damage in his automobile accident — he mentioned that he had the mindfulness to know when his brain wasn't functioning right. He said that his brain was giving him all sorts of weird perceptions. But because he'd been a good meditator, he had developed the mindfulness not to fall in with them. This was very different from my father, who developed Parkinson's dementia as he got older. He'd see big animals in the house and people committing suicide out in the yard — all kinds of disturbing things. You'd try to talk him into realizing that they were all illusions, but he wouldn't believe you. If there was a black dog in the living room, there was a black dog in the living room no matter what evidence you could show that there wasn't. This is the difference between a mind that's trained and a mind that's not.

So you have to nip these things in the bud. Otherwise a mob psychology takes over in the mind, and it's not just voices screaming in your head, but also changes in your body. The blood starts racing faster, the heart's racing faster, different feelings of tension and pressure arise in different parts of the body. When you're angry, there's a weird feeling in your gut. And because there are the physical symptoms you say, "Gee, this must be what I really feel." But that's not the case. It's just your hormones running amok. A hormone gets into your blood and it keeps circulating around in your body even after the particular mind state is gone. You've gotten used to the idea that if you've been angry and the physical symptoms of anger are still in the body, then you must still be angry. That makes room for the thought of anger to come back in and take over again. So one thing to remind yourself of is, "It's just the hormones in the blood, and the actual thought of anger comes and goes." It's the same with all the other hindrances.

Just because there's a physical symptom doesn't mean that the emotion is especially real. It's like people presenting arguments. I've been reading through a critique of the monks' rules book right now and the person writing the critique has some strong arguments as well as some weak ones. The strong arguments are the ones where he simply points out, "This is a mistranslation," and that's it. When the arguments are weak, that's when he starts getting belligerent, throwing in a lot of emotion.

This is the way the mind works. When a particular defilement knows that it has a weak case, it shouts and it screams and it uses every trick it can think of in order to push you into following it. So when things come on that strong, learn to recognize them just as the hype of the defilements, in the same way that you learn to see through the hype in an advertisement. If all else fails, just hunker down, for sometimes when these things come on really strong they've got to run their course. All you can do is make up your mind that you're not going to fall in line with them, you're not going to act under their power, and you just hunker down with the breath. Don't get involved in the conversations. Don't get pulled into a shouting match.
http://pratyeka.org/a2i/lib/authors/tha ... ions3.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

Access to Insight - Theravada texts
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barcsimalsi
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by barcsimalsi »

Thanks Gavesako, i got your point. Mindfulness established save the day, and this explain why all crazy people are less mindful.
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gavesako
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by gavesako »

"When we lose mindfulness for one minute, we are crazy for one minute." - Ajahn Chah
:rolleye:
Bhikkhu Gavesako
Kiṃkusalagavesī anuttaraṃ santivarapadaṃ pariyesamāno... (MN 26)

Access to Insight - Theravada texts
Ancient Buddhist Texts - Translations and history of Pali texts
Dhammatalks.org - Sutta translations
danieLion
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by danieLion »

gavesako wrote:Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, produced a theory on language acquisition. We are endowed with an universal grammar frame, we are born with a kind of frame for all languages; the input a new born babe recieves, it activates his/her mother tongue.In other words, the babel tower software is inside our heads....

I have always sensed that this must be true, and it is my own method of learning new languages: I cannot just learn from tables and grammar rules as they are presented in textbooks, instead I listen to the foreign language and look at it until I can "tune in" and understand it intuitively like small children pick up their first language.


Morphic Resonance in Human Learning

Morphic resonance has many implications for the understanding of human learning, including the acquisition of languages. Through the collective memory on which individuals draw, and to which they contribute, it should in general be easier to learn what others have learned before.

This idea fits well with the observations of linguists such as Noam Chomsky, who propose that language learning by young children takes place so rapidly and creatively that it cannot be explained simply in terms of imitation. The structure of language seems to be inherited in some way. In his book The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker gives many examples to support this idea.

"Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance” by Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
http://noetic.org/noetic/issue-four-nov ... resonance/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Chomsky proposes a hardware not a software argument for verbal behavior.

I agree with Sheldrake that "mind" does not reduce to "brain". But why refer to Chomsky? He over-emphasizes phylogentic behavior acquisition and dismisses not only ontogenesis but also ignores phylogenetic/ontogenetic interaction. You can see this, ironically, in his use of language. If verbal behavior is hardware (innate), then acquisition is meaningless; yet, Chomsky wants it both ways. This kind of fascist-thinking is typical of Chomsky who engages in "is of identity," rigid, all-or-nothing thinking as revealed by his proganda attack on B.F. Skinner et al (which really amounts to a fascist-thinker diverting attention from the fact that he's a fascist-thinker by trying to convince everyone else the other guy's a fascist.).

Chomsky's a tool.
Nyana
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Re: Man with no brain

Post by Nyana »

danieLion wrote: Chomsky's a tool.
Language is a tool, or a weapon....
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