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I agree that a high proportion of metaphysics is bullshit. Although Leibniz was 'critiqued' by Kant as too fond of 'pure reason' he was in fact a practical engineer and the Russell even chides him for being 'unduly practical' in his philosophy. The idea of a world entirely consisting of...

Yes, that is exactly what modern field theory says. A diamond is a composite of a wide range of types of Planck's quanta of action.

But we understand brains without reference to their consciousness. The whole point about science and philosophy is that they consist in discovering that our intuitions tend to be muddled and unworkable when analysed in detail. Positing consciousness of a sort everywhere is not designed to...

My definition of consciousness is the biomedical one and the one used by most philosophers - in line with Chalmers's famous definition: X is conscious if there is something that the world 'is like' to X. I appreciate that 'self-awareness' is a popular definition of consciousness for some people...

Biocentrism looks like a mish mash of old popular ideas. Even Berkeley did not hold that nothing was there without us - because it would exist in the mind of God even without us. But some of what Lanza seems to say is just ordinary physics. Nothing is absolute in physics because physics can only...

I fear we may get into deep water here and nothing much to do with ethics but at least Diane is familiar with my published writings on consciousness and seems to approve. What Descartes argues in the Meditations is that the one thing we can be sure of is something here that senses patterns...

I fear we may get into deep water here and nothing much to do with ethics but at least Diane is familiar with my published writings on consciousness and seems to approve. What Descartes argues in the Meditations is that the one thing we can be sure of is something here that senses patterns...

I don't think I have any particular take on that. Sorry.

I am not convinced and don't really see why this is likely. If I go on an exercise bike and get a tachycardia and short of breath I am no more likely to feel any emotions as far as I am aware. I thin I would be more likely not to have a sudden emotional response to some other stimulus because i...

I think it is just window dressing to counter accusations of bullying and exploitation. It is a manifestation of the 'job-using' of science. Everything is now seen in terms of career prospects and employment rights. The actual science has been forgotten about.

I don't think that is the question that all the fuss is about. The brain creates an illusory redness when objects that reflect or transmit or emit low visible range wavelength light preferentially and it does that because it is useful for survival. Emotions are not really even illusions. They...

That's correct. The standards by which PACE was designed were not the accepted standards of the time by any stretch of the imagination. They were simply the accepted standards within MRC. Which of course is very embarrassing for the MRC.

In view of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology I am not sure how reliable any of these reports are, but it seems likely that injecting adrenaline might alter interpretation. But then surely so might a couple of glasses of wine or a warm sunny afternoon or some nice music. And I...

Indeed. It is an indication of what airheads run science these days.

They get away with it because it is considered to be the right way to think by the grand masters of the field - people like Damasio (sorry spellcheck caught me last time). Cognitive neuroscience is run by people who do not understand the illusory nature of our percepts of the world. Damasio...

This the idea De Masio has been plugging for the last twenty years. It does not make sense to me. Why should a pounding heart make us feel fear? In fact a pounding heart can also be associated with rapture or just running for a bus that you just about catch. So a pounding heart cannot be the...

Immunological problems in childhood or adolescence that peter out in adulthood are reasonably common. Juvenile inflammatory arthritis often peters out, whereas adult rheumatoid tends not to. Childhood allergies and asthma may peter out whereas adult asthma probably less often does...

Yes, on re-reading it becomes clearer what the sentences mean. And I guess that reading the full paper would help. However, as it stands the abstract is pretty opaque and I am still not convinced that the way the data are presented is always legitimate.

An alternative possibility is that ME is a pattern of breakdown of signalling in a complex control system (maybe neurological or immunological or both). That reversibility of that pattern may depend on the state of maturation or development of the system. Early on there may be ways to re-route...

It adds a whole new meaning to 'phone a friend'. If the answer to a crossword puzzle clue is not immediately obvious, souls in one's head pause and wait until other souls (that have read the clue) chirp up with 'baker's dozen' or 'Huckleberry Finn'. If you think about it, there have to be lots...