On 12 Apr 2014, at 12:53, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
On Wednesday, April 9, 2014 10:49:29 AM UTC+1, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 08 Apr 2014, at 18:58, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Monday, April 7, 2014 11:03:35 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote:
On 8 April 2014 09:41, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, April 7, 2014 4:38:42 PM UTC-4, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
2014-04-07 22:25 GMT+02:00 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com>:
On Sunday, April 6, 2014 2:45:35 AM UTC-4, Alberto G.Corona wrote:
Probably you saw people visiting houses in your neighbourhood, but
that did not reached consciousnees you were busy thinking about other
things. (I will not insert here these funny videos of people failing
to recognize a bear in the middle of a scene).
These kinds of dismissals are not scientific. When you have a
genuinely precognitive experience, you would really have to bend
over backward to mistake it for anything else.
If you say so...
But according with a theory of evolutionary psychology, dreams are in
order to be prepared for possible threats specially the most
dangerous
ones. The material of the dreams is taken from past events, and the
subconscious takes into account not only the things that were you
conscious of, but everithing.
You could just as easily say that dreams are in order to confuse us
so that we will be unprepared for possible threats to weed out the
more easily confused members of the species. Just-so stories are
fun to make up, but we shouldn't take them seriously.
You could as easily say it as well that plants are aliens. and
Craig is the father of Dark Vader. Yes . You can say so. But it is
not something based on the theory of evolution, that is, natural
selection and evolutionary biology.
What I'm saying though is that the theory of evolution can be used
to advance or deny any position on dreams that we care to take.
It's all reverse engineered story telling.
There is an element of this in all evolutionary explanations, but
only until we are in a position to gather enough evidence to make a
call for or against some idea. Evolution has been observed in
action, to a limited extent, and the links between genes and
various behaviours, structures etc is becoming clearer, so we have
a better idea as time goes on what mechanisms have evolved and why.
For example I recently read something about zebra's stripes being
"for" protecting them from insects (I think it was) rather than
making them harder for carnivores to spot. This was because someone
had done some experiments to distinguish between several theories
of what advantage the stripes gave.
Sure, but mechanisms which have an effect on the world of the body
need not have an impact on something that doesn't (like dreams).
Since the work by Jouvet, LaBerge, Dement, Hobson and others, we
have strong evidences that the brain activity, corresponding to some
action in a (REM) dream, match the brain activity when that action
is performed when awake. That is the reason why a cat "performs" the
dream activity when Jouvet disabled the brain natural inhibition of
the muscles during the dream. Dreaming is a wakening state, with
hallucination, and paralysis of the muscles (so that we stay in bed!).
Bruno
Your conclusion doesn't follow the evidence you mention. There's
evidence of correspondence with areas of brain activity.
The experience by Jouvet shows correspondence of behavior instead.
LABERGE S. P. & DEMENT, W. C., 1982, Lateralization of alpha activity
for dreamed singing and counting during REM sleep, SPR abstract 1981,
Psychophysiology, 19 (1982), pp. 331-332.
LABERGE S., GREENLEAF, W. & KEDZIERSKI, B., 1983, Physiological
responses to
dreamed sexual activity during REM sleep, SPR abstracts, 1983,
Psychophysiology, 20 (1983),
pp. 454-455.
LABERGE S., LEVITAN L., GORDON, M. & DEMENT W. C., 1983, The
psychophysiology of lucid dream initiation, SPR abstracts, 1983,
Psychophysiology, 20, pp.
455.
Many information can be found in the selected papers book:
LABERGE S. RHEINGOLD H., 1990, Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming,
Ballantine Books, New York.
From memory there is a connection between this phenomenon and types
of activity before sleep. I'm pretty sure there's already a lot done
in the related area of how the brain takes action to support
learning - particularly when body coordination is involved, and
there are studies showing areas correspondence in dream states with
activities like that.
There may be a more general correspondence....I'd be surprised to
hear the technology is anywhere near being able to identify specific
kinds of thought with dreams.
Not specific thought, but enough to distinguish singing from counting
or computing, or to see that muscles would perform if they were not
inhibited.
And I'd put money down that there are ways yet to confirm such
thoughts were indeed taking place.
The lucid dreamers can communicate with the person in the laboratory
through the move of their eyes (which are the only one not inhibited).
I heard that later they have used also some spasmodic movements of the
fingers (we can move them a little bit).
Bruno
There is a real problem with dolloping very large assumptions onto
the top of very limited evidence. The problem is, doing can obscure
the real landscape of uncertainties and possibilities and in doing
damage the chances of real discovery now and in the future.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
