An interesting thought.
I am currently working through alot of theoretical physics and have great fun theorizing myself. Currently looking at atoms and energy and I had a humorous thought. Our consciousness is a collection of electrical pulses and chemical signals. When we die the biological machine that perpetuates our consciousness ceases to function, but what happens to the electrical pulses? They must slowly fade as well. So after someone is clinically dead, they may still be conscious until the pattern dissipates.
Take for example when someone's heart stops beating. They are effectively dead, but through a series of shocks it is possible to "hard boot" the body back into working again. The electrical pulses are still there and the person remembers who they are and where they were last, but have no concept as to what happened because the chemical process of saving memories ceased for the time the heart stopped.
So where were the electrical pulses? Good question. Could the electrical pulses maintain a hollow form of consciousness without the means to retain memory until they finally fade away? Could this explain why some people that are resuscitated return comotose?
What if it turned out there was a "soul" but that it was just an extension of the dying process, that it was not immortal, not divine, but in fact quite mortal and a part of us.
Ah, wonderful musings for this morning.
What if you had a mortal "soul"?
by Paralipomenon 6 Replies latest jw friends
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Paralipomenon
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nvrgnbk
I definitely think you're on to something, para.
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RAF
well the electrical pulse are produced by the biological brain what's left in the matter of though (all our being in being our total experience and feelings) is intangible - does it dissapear? does it stay as essence as a whole (maybe in an other whole) or as essence shared in the whole well ... we might never know in our state and maybe not even in an other state ... but if is is essence which doesn't fade somehow we are still alive.
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greendawn
Interesting thoughts but electrical brain currents are still part of the body's physiology they will also cease once the brain cells completely die off. Whether there is a soul substance that leaves the body and takes with it the person's personality and memories nobody can tell.
Angels have such an invisible body that needs no physical body to reside in and can exist independantly but for humans who knows?
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Paralipomenon
Picture it like an old television. You could unplug it and watch the screen slowly fade out as the small light bulbs released their energy. All the while you would continue to see an echo of the screen slowly fade to black.
Who says how quickly the energy of our brain gets released, and by extension, if the energy makes up any part of our consciousness does it continue to interact on an atomic level?
I'm not trying to create a new belief or disprove another. It is just an interesting theoretical idea about the dying process. -
funkyderek
Paralipomenon:
When we die the biological machine that perpetuates our consciousness ceases to function, but what happens to the electrical pulses? They must slowly fade as well. So after someone is clinically dead, they may still be conscious until the pattern dissipates.
It seems that happens to some extent. It's a little like the way a television will hold an electric charge even after it's been unplugged.
So where were the electrical pulses?
They weren't anywhere. When the brain stopped generating these pulses, they stopped happening. The matter/energy conversions done by a living body mostly stop at death (and are replaced by other less pleasant ones).
Could the electrical pulses maintain a hollow form of consciousness without the means to retain memory until they finally fade away?
Not sure what you mean by that exactly. I think people put too much emphasis on consciousness because it's so mysterious and so important to our identities. But as a function of our brain, it seems to be relatively insignificant. We spend a good deal of our lives in an unconscious state. It seems unlikely we would be able to remain conscious while dead, certainly not for very long.
Could this explain why some people that are resuscitated return comotose?
This is (I think) usually due to brain damage from lack of oxygen or other trauma.
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poppers
"Our consciousness is a collection of electrical pulses and chemical signals."
You have made an operational definition of what consciousness is, but nobody knows just what it actually is.