RobertLumley comments on Open Thread, May 1-14, 2013 - Less Wrong
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I initially thought I would really like this article on consiousness after death. I did not. The guy comes off as a complete crackpot, given my understanding of neurobiology. (Although I won't dispute his overall point, nor would many here, I think, that we continue to exist for a bit after we are legally dead.) I would appreciate anyone who is so motivated to look up some things on why a lot of the things he says are completely bogus. I replied to the person who sent me this article with a fairly superficial analysis, but if anyone knows of some solid studies on this, I would like to know. I will paste what I've written below:
Say you want to raise your arm. Your intent will initiate the mental processes required. We don't know how the subjective thinking of ”Raise arm!” initiates cellular processes. Intent may be related to a function of the parietal cortex, but how thinking something initiates cellular process we are unsure of. To this they refer.
The brain produces an electromagnetic field. They were hypothesising that the field has a reciprocal effect on the cells that produce it, and this effect is 'consciousness' or whatever our subjective experience communicates to initiate an action. Maybe when we can clone a human brain with green fluorescent protein we'll find out all neurones initiate other neurones, thus we function. We don't know yet.
I'd beware of dismissing an expert of a field in which one has no domain expertise - check or ask first. This is the corollary to trusting experts too much.